Rogue
Rogues are the masters of shadows. While two other
classes actually use the shadow as a source of magical power, it's the
Rogue who can potentially live and breathe the shadow, and make it an
essential part of who he or she is what he or she does."The Shadow" as a concept, could mean a number of different things to your character, however -- anything from literal shadows that he or she might disappear in, to underground networks, knowledge of the street, and secret societies few others know about. An advanced rogue might even possess an intimate relationship with "the Shadow" as a mystical force he can wrap around himself in as a kind of cloak, or step through the shadows to appear behind his enemy in a flash.
In fact, your rogue may not even use the term "shadow" at all, and may simply think of himself as a simple bandit, thief, pickpocket, detective, scout, special agent, assassin, bank-robber, or even a venture capitalist. In fact, the Rogue class is suitable as a broad catch-all class for a number of seemingly unrelated character types, from a court jester to a penniless tourist.
Tricks of the Trade
Unlike classes like the Shaman, Druid, or Paladin, who each have a clearly defined class culture and collective identity, your rogue's social identity is limited less by the lore more by your own imagination. Like a Warrior, your rogue could be anything that fits the general abilities and temperament of the class.
But there's a trick to roleplaying a rogue well. Too many rogues somewhat ruin their character's effect by standing in the center of town, wearing their sexiest rogue armor for all to see, bragging about how very sneaky and shadowy they are. Of course that option could conceivably make sense for certain rogue characters -- but consider how very non-rogue-like it is, how very lacking in either subtlety or style for a person to actually say, "'I've got lots of subtlety and style!"
Being a "master of the shadow" presents us with one of the most interesting opportunities as roleplayers in WoW: to try and take the emphasis off of our own characters as much as possible, and just fade into the background. Instead of wearing all your hypercool leathers, or discussing the various ways you can dispatch your enemy and get away undetected, consider how much more rogue-like it is to simply listen to the bragging and talking of other people, nod and smile, and store away as much information as you can for later use. If people ask something about you, you might simply answer with information about your outer persona as a professional tradesman (such as engineer or tailor), a simple traveler, or even something so common as a "Master of Cheese" (who could even carry around cheese and offer to sell it in city streets just like an NPC vendor would). It's only when people get to know you well enough that they would want to go on an adventure with you that they might see your blades for the first time. But even then, you needn't say, "I'm a swirling vortex of daggery death!" -- just "I've got some skill with a blade" would suffice.
Of course, if you view your rogue as the sort of rogue who comes across as a wannabe or comedic relief, then perhaps overstating your own roguey powers is just the type of thing you want to do. But even then, there's no reason your rogue can't be more than meets the eye. In fact, one of the best ways to roleplay a rogue character is to think of him or her as an onion, a series of layers which other players may uncover (or not) as circumstances permit. Keep in mind, though, that openly stating, "I'm like an onion, I've got layers" (a la Shrek) is a very non-roguelike thing to say. Instead, try and say things indirectly, try to convey one meaning while also implying something else at the same time, and when smooth words just don't come to mind, fall back on the trusty phrase, "Is that so? Tell me more," and let someone else do the talking. Many a man has earned a fantastic reputation with just those words alone, listening so well that everyone around them feels validated in their presence, even if they know nothing about him at all.
When the time comes, you may find yourself able to deliver your own "roleplaying backstab" -- that special phrase or action which comes at just the right time and place to have an amazing impact on the stories unfolding all around you, or give some interesting insight into you and your friends' characters. The more you've listened and understood other people, the easier this will be, and the more it will mean to them when you do it.
Layers
That said, there are countless layers your rogue can develop. Each race has its own organizations which characters can serve for the greater glory of their people (even if the actual service entails deeds that are far from "glorious"). Elizabeth Wachowski outlined the basics of these organizations in an "Encrypted Text" column about 8 months ago, but if there is sufficient interest, All the World's a Stage could address each one in some more detail next week. However, no matter whether your character serves the Shattered Hand, the Deathstalkers, the Farstriders, Ravenholdt, SI:7, or simply your own interests, remember that this isn't all there is to your character. It's just a point to start with, like a pearl you may conceal within multiple layers of motivation and character.
It may be helpful to think of various moments in your race's lore and ponder how your character snuck through it unscathed. Where other classes might have hacked and slashed and pyroblasted their way through history's problems, how could you have found an alternate route? When your Forsaken character first started regaining his or her free will, did he immediately make a run for Sylvanas' newly conquered Undercity? Or did he pretend to remain a mindless slave until the perfect moment to escape came along? When your gnome saw legions of troggs storming into her beloved Gnomeregan, did she draw her sword and charge in, or did she look to the ceiling for things she could drop down on their heads?
Each race has countless such examples when the most obvious solution wasn't necessarily the best one. These stories allow you to define some way that your character first stepped off the path of normalcy into the "shadows" -- the ways of doing things that other people might not think of. But there are countless additional personal situations that might have influenced him or her as well. What else did your character learn other than daggers and stealth? Do you have a day job? How important are your characters other activities? Do you have an abiding passion for fishing in faraway places, shmoozing with the most famous people, or brokering the most profitable deal?
More than any other class, these extra elements that aren't necessarily part of the core class abilities and lore of a rogue are nonetheless extremely important to your character. When your class is all about stealth, subtlety and grace, it is good to have some qualities that make you seem normal, circumstances that would make your core motivations less obvious, and social skills that move the spotlight of attention off of yourself and onto other people. Then, your character can be more than just a rogue in name, but a rogue in style too.
Horde Rogue
Any class needs its role models. Rogues don't have all that many great heroes from lore, but the ones they do have stand out, especially for the prominence of women in this class.
Garona Halforcen is probably the most famous of rogue protagonists, one of the main characters of the original Warcraft I storyline that launched the whole Warcraft series. She's been strangely missing ever since the end of the First War, actually, but it seems that she is finally making her comeback to the story in the World of Warcraft Comic Book. Her full story is best left for others to tell (such as the immensely talented Elizabeth Wachowski, or the mysterious collective mind known as WoWWiki), but for now, suffice it to say that she represents a lot of what makes rogues who and what they are. Here's a few reasons why:
- She's incredibly cool.
- She doesn't talk about how incredibly cool she is.
- She has conflicted loyalties, neither all good nor all bad.
- There's so much we don't know about her, and so much we want to discover.
- She's something of a lone wolf, extremely independent and active.
- Her skill with words was just as important as her skill with weapons.
- She has a great wealth of complicated emotions and ideas that drive her deeper into the story.
The Shattered Hand Clan of the orcs and trolls
Even though Garona was half-draenei, and did have a few strong relationships with humans, she was definitely a part of the Horde first, and identified herself primarily as an orc. She must have felt this was her only option, particularly back in the days when the old Horde was still made up of orcs only, and controlled by the Burning Legion.
In those days, the Shattered Hand clan was among the most bloodthirsty of the clans in the war with the draenei, and again very eager to take the war to the humans in Azeroth. They were named for the gruesome practice of self-mutilation they used to follow in those days. Following the Second War, however, the clan was split in two, with those remaining on Draenor under the command of their old chief, Kargath Bladefist, and those stranded in Azeroth eventually following Thrall when he founded the New Horde.
Those that follow Thrall now are the ones who carry on Garona's legacy the closest -- as the guild of spies and assassins among the orcs and trolls of the Horde, it is their responsibility to train the next generation of rogues in service to the Warchief. The ravings of one rather insane member of the Shattered Hand indicate that there may possibly be some plot amongst them to assassinate the Warchief, but then again, that may just be mad ravings without any substance whatsoever. If your rogue is a member of the Shattered Hand, you can choose whatever loyalties strike you as most interesting.
Forsaken Deathstalkers
Sylvanas' elite guard of rogues is among the best in Azeroth. Members of this guild, called the Deathstalkers, have a number of advantages that few other groups can claim: They never need to eat, drink, sleep, rest, or breathe. They have all the single-mindedness and focus of a machine without any of the drawbacks. They have incredible willpower, and can stay patiently focused on their goal indefinitely, whether that means they staying underwater, or disguising themselves as corpses (which... they are).
That reminds me, the only downside I can think of as a Forsaken rogue is: would you stink really bad? Would anyone you spy on always wonder where that rotting stench is coming from?
Anyways, the loyalty of the Deathstalkers is even more questionable than that of the Shattered Hand. [Spoiler alert! Stop reading now!] The demon Varimathras has for a long time been master of the guild, and it stands to reason that many of the rogues and spies under him would have sided with him in his betrayal against than the Dark Lady. Generally speaking, however, the Forsaken are fiercely loyal to Sylvanas, and it's more likely that any player's character would remain loyal to her. In any case, even if you wanted to betray her and side with Varimathras, there's no way you could actually do so in the game; the quests in which this issue arises require rogues to kill the demon just like everyone else. On the other hand, perhaps a traitorous character could just stand by and watch while her friends do him in, knowing that she cannot save him, and wishing she knew who his true master was. [This spoiler is now complete. You may continue in your regularly scheduled blissful ignorance.]
The Deathstalkers were originally a group of human bandits who followed the "Bandit King" Blackthorn during the Third War, until Sylvanas decided that they ought to serve her instead of running around terrorizing people. She had one of her banshees possess the body of Blackthorn and integrated his soldiers into her undead army.
Blood elven Farstriders
The high elves originally founded the Farstriders organization as an adjunct to the general army, with a focus mostly on using information and specialized tactics to protect their kingdom from enemies. They never thought of themselves as rogues or assassins so much, however, since as followers of the Light, they believed that sort of thing was morally beneath them. The Scourge attack on Quel'Thalas changed much of that, however.
Having become the "blood elves" and thoroughly reworked their value system, the Farstriders decided that some degree of underhanded dealings was necessary to ensure their survival. They still remain one of the more high-minded elements in blood elf society however, and disapprove of many of the excesses that have been perpetrated by the Blood Knights.
Incidentally, the second most famous rogue protagonist in Warcraft is a blood elf, and a woman too: Valeera Sanguinar from the World of Warcraft comic. Her background story is an excellent example of what a typical blood elf rogue's story might be like, and integrates well with their history. She has little to do with the Farstriders, however; she started out as a homeless orphan who stole things just to get by until she was caught, sold as a slave in an underground Arena circuit, and trained to use her talents in battle.
Many players know Valeera by name and face, but few enough have actually read her story that a new roleplayer coming up short on ideas for his or her rogue could easily use her story as a kind of template many such characters might have faced in times of war. Just keep tweaking it until it's different enough from the original so as not to be plagiarism.
Alliance Rogues
Many of the most famous rogues outside of the Warcraft setting have been nuanced and exciting characters. Bilbo Baggins, the Prince of Persia, and James Bond, could all be reimagined as rogues if they had existed in Azeroth instead of their own settings.
As an Alliance rogue, you have a certain amount of freedom to borrow from other settings, or from the real world, since the Alliance races tend to be more similar to heroes of other stories we've heard before. To a certain extent, Blizzard has already based its Alliance rogue guilds on stories from other settings, and left some aspects of these institutions rather vague. There is certainly enough room for roleplayers to fill in a bit of the blanks with their own creative inspiration. The only danger is that it could be easy to overdo it and descending into Mary-Sueism: one ought to feel free to reach for a bit of the flavor of James Bond, for instance, without ever believing your character is the single best secret agent Stormwind could ever have.
SI:7 and all them other roguish humans
The largest intelligence arm of the Alliance seems based in many ways on the fame and popularity of James Bond, actually. Britain famously established 6 sections of its "Directorate of Military Intelligence," with the last, "MI6," being the branch in charge of highly dangerous top secret missions, and of course also being 007's employer.
Nobody knows if there were any branches of the "Directorate of Stormwind Intelligence" numbered 1-6, but we do know that the current Master of SI:7, Matthias Shaw, is the grandson of Pathonia Shaw, who founded SI:7's mommy-organization: the somewhat less creatively named "Stormwind Assassins." Pathonia pathologically instructed Matthias in the roguish arts with the hope that he would grow up to take up her mantle. It appears she succeeded with flying colors, since Matthias not only became a great leader of human rogues, but also renamed the Stormwind Rogue's guild to a much more suitable name -- "Stormwind Assassins" just couldn't have been good for PR.
Stormwind isn't the only place where rogues have found work, though. Ravenholdt is another very significant rogue guild, but its origins and ultimate purposes are much more shrouded in mystery. One thing we know for sure is that they are opposed to the Syndicate -- a Mafia-like organization whose leaders are former nobles of the Alterac region and who will stop at nothing to try and regain their lost lands. Why Ravenholdt and the Syndicate are out for one another's blood isn't clear, but it's safe to say that they've crossed knives a lot in the past and that grudges have built up over time. If you want Ravenholdt to be a big part of your character's story, feel free to try and fill in the holes of the plot here with your own creativity, but not so much so that it limits stories other rogues might want to tell about it.
The Defias Brotherhood is yet another group of human rogues, but, like this Syndicate, this one is directly opposed to Stormwind and the Alliance. It doesn't make much sense that an Alliance rogue could actually side with the Defias, even if he or she felt somewhat sympathetic to their reasons for hating it.
Theoretically, a player-character rogue could be a spy for the Defias (or the Syndicate, or anything else for that matter), except that there would be no way for that player to actually report information to Edwin VanCleef and bring a bunch of Defias thugs to come and take over Stormwind. What's the point of being a spy when the only thing it lets you do is tell people that you're a spy (which is the last thing a spy would actually say anyway)? It's like painting your belly button pink in the hope that someone will lift your shirt up a tad and ask you what in the world is the point of a pink belly button.
Dwarves, Gnomes and the shadows of Ironforge
If you wanted to play a really weird rogue of some sort, then gnomes and dwarves would be the way to go (though Forsaken could do a passable job at the weird rogue role too). Gnomes are perfect for any sort of quaint and silly personality, especially one involving any sort of crazy inventions. Dwarves may have a reputation for being loud and boisterous, but they do love gold, and it stands to reason that some of them will dedicate much of their significant intelligence to getting as much of it as they can, even if that means being quiet for a change.
I didn't find any organized guild of dwarven or gnomish rogues, but there are certain sections of Ironforge which could be focal points of roguish activities. Certain tunnels and corridors may be condemned and/or scheduled for reconstruction, and there may be other sections of the dwarven capital which have been largely forgotten over the centuries. Places like this provide lots of opportunities for minor rogue guilds to group up and hide out. As a gnome or a dwarf, you could either join up with SI:7 in Stormwind, or else form your own smaller counterpart to Ravenholdt.
Night Elves and ... the night?
One could argue that night elves are all rogues somewhere deep inside, on account of their Shadowmeld ability and their love of the night. They naturally prize agility and quick-thinking over brute force, so the skills of a rogue come naturally to them as well. Consequently, night elf society might be one of the only places where a person can openly declare that he is a rogue without everyone around him suddenly getting very suspicious. Rogues just do what night elves do best.
That said, night elf rogues gather in the dark depths under the roots of one of the great trees in Darnassus, so it may well be that they have quite a bit to hide after all. That, or all their sneaking around has made them somewhat disdainful of daylight.
Night elf rogues may choose to join the wardens, who arbitrate night elf justice on behalf of their people, rather like a darker and elfier version of James Bond's MI6. A warden may be tasked with trailing and jailing criminals, or with top-secret impossible missions carried out under the utmost secrecy. Other rogues may work in a special forces unit of the main Sentinel army, or they may just go freelance, as it were, and pick up work wherever it comes along.
Assassination Rogue: Assassins take the art of killing for money to a new level. There are mercenary killers, then there are the Assassins. Assassins take pleasure into their assassination of their mark, making them suffer horribly through specially made poisons or cutting their mark open to watch them suffer. A warrior may know ten ways to kill you with his sword, but the assassin knows how to kill you twenty ways with their hand, fifteen with their foot, and ten with the table inside the room.
Combat Rogue: The combat savvy rogues treat a melee as a dance. Side-stepping elegantly to dodge the blade strike or flipping backward to avoid the blood-crazed swings of the enemy. Then, when the enemy is tired or recovering from their last attack, the rogue will send a well aimed dagger or blade into the targets artery or vital organ to quickly finish them. They are quick and aim to kill quickly, not one to 'play' with their enemy as much as assassins. These rogues find quick kills better then wasting their time.
Subtlety Rogue: Espionage, spying, theft, stealth. All go hand and hand with a subtlety savvy rogue. They are one with their surroundings. May it be the surrounding forest, the shadow in the alley, the crowd in the street, that new recruit within the bandit fold. They are experts at blending in, not getting caught. They have entries and exits thought out in more ways then one. They can sneak into an enemy camp, posing as a soldier of that group may they be the same race or sneak through the shadows, roof tops, or hide within a crate of new supplies to a secret hide-out. They are experts of being unseen, unnoticed... none existent.
