WoW’s New Paladins Are Getting Three Unique Racial Mounts

World of Warcraft is about to gain Forsaken, Darkspear Troll and Night Elf Paladins in Patch 12.2, which is already enough to produce several weeks of extremely reasonable arguments about whether an undead person being repeatedly burned by the Light is technically a career choice. Blizzard, however, is not simply ticking three new boxes on the character creation screen. Each of the new Paladin races will receive its own racial Charger mount, continuing one of the class traditions that has gradually become considerably more interesting than everybody riding the same armored horse.

Associate Game Director Paul Kubit confirmed the mounts during a post-BlizzCon interview with MMORPG.com. According to Kubit, all three new races will receive their own version of the traditional Paladin Charger. The Forsaken get a glowing undead horse, Darkspear Trolls get a raptor, and Night Elves get a cat. Blizzard has also given the designs what Kubit described as the full Paladin treatment, including the expected armor and shieldwork.

Which is good, because putting a Darkspear Troll on a normal human warhorse would have been an act of extraordinary cowardice.

Forsaken Paladins Finally Get Their Unholy Holy Horse

The Forsaken mount is probably the one that will attract the most attention, simply because Forsaken Paladins have spent years occupying that wonderful Warcraft space between “technically possible” and “please do not start this discussion at dinner.” Blizzard is leaning directly into that contradiction rather than trying to smooth it away.

Kubit explained that the new Paladin options are tied to Eclipse’s broader conflict between Light and Void. Players will get questing that provides background for how members of these races discover or embrace the Paladin path, with the Forsaken fantasy specifically built around wielding a force that can physically hurt them.

That idea is suddenly appearing across Warcraft rather than existing as a strange lore footnote. Warcraft III’s new Forsaken Kingdom campaign introduces a Forsaken Paladin as the game’s first new Tavern hero in more than 20 years, and Blizzard has deliberately connected that story to its newer Warcraft projects.

Now Retail gets to join the experiment.

Darkspear Paladins Get the Raptor They Needed

The Darkspear choice may be the most visually obvious of the three.

Trolls already have one of Warcraft’s strongest racial mount identities through raptors, so turning that silhouette into a Paladin Charger gives Blizzard plenty of room to make something gloriously excessive. Armor plates, Light effects, ceremonial decoration and a large reptile that looks entirely capable of eating the horse parked beside it should make the Darkspear Charger stand apart immediately.

The lore side may prove more interesting. Troll spirituality has traditionally been built around the loa rather than the human and dwarven traditions most closely associated with Paladins, but Warcraft has spent years expanding what “Paladin” actually means. Tauren Sunwalkers already demonstrated that the class fantasy does not require every culture to arrive at the Light through exactly the same religious door.

Patch 12.2 now gets to explain the Darkspear version.

Night Elves Are Getting a Paladin Cat

Night Elf Paladins, meanwhile, will ride a racial cat mount, presumably taking the familiar Nightsaber silhouette and introducing it to a frankly irresponsible quantity of holy decoration.

Night Elf Paladins have felt increasingly inevitable for years. Warcraft has already shown individual Night Elves moving toward Paladin-like paths, and Midnight’s obsession with Light, Void and the future of Azeroth gives Blizzard an unusually convenient point to make the combination broadly playable.

The timing also fits a wider push toward character customization. Patch 12.2 is adding the three Paladin combinations, while Patch 12.2.5 will later remove armor-type restrictions from transmog. Players are getting considerably more freedom over what their characters can be and how they can look while doing it.

Apparently the next logical step was making sure the cat also dresses appropriately.

The Mounts Matter More Than They Sound

Unique Paladin Chargers are a small feature compared with the Worldcore raid and Midnight’s first Legendary weapon or the return of Sargeras’s sword to the main story. But they represent something Warcraft often loses when class restrictions are loosened: racial identity.

Opening more classes to more races is generally good for player freedom, but there is always a risk that every race eventually feels mechanically interchangeable. Racial Paladin mounts push in the opposite direction. A Forsaken Paladin should not simply be a Human Paladin with fewer functioning internal organs. A Darkspear Paladin should not look like somebody accidentally selected the wrong portrait during character creation.

The mount becomes a tiny piece of cultural storytelling.

Forsaken get their haunted holy horse.

Darkspear get their armored raptor.

Night Elves get their Light-infused cat.

Three new Paladin races were already a good Patch 12.2 feature.

Blizzard giving each of them a Charger that actually belongs to their culture makes it considerably better.