Wowabunga!

There’s one thing, only one, that has been bugging me from the very start of WoW. The turtles. Don’t get me wrong - I love them bulky little fellas and in my somewhat nooby first year of WoW I used these ones on a regular basis, even in raids! (I finally came to my senses and switched to a raptor though.) I went on epic adventures to collect different colors of them and named them after my own turtles at home. As a leatherworker I crafted the whole Turtle Scale armor set, and searched for other additional turtle gear, such as the Band of the Great Tortoise you get from Tooga in Tanaris. As you probably have noticed, I was a huge turtles-nerd.

But to the point. Most animals in WoW are anatomically correct except the turtle. Even Blizzard’s own creation, the “zhevra”, looks exactly like an ordinary zebra (with a horn though). The giraffes look like giraffes, the bears are bears and so on. I think you get it. But not the turtles. They are something completely different.

The following are three common prejudices about turtles:

1. The shell only covers the turtle’s back.Wrong! My grandmother once said with a disappointed look on her face when she saw my own turtle: “Oh, I thought I could pat it on its belly.” The shell surrounds the turtle.
2. Turtles have teeth. Wrong! Both turtles and tortoises have sharp beaks.
3. Turtles are peaceful. The turtles are in WoW, with few exceptions non-hostile, but the fact is that these creatures think that most things are food and snap after it. They can even eat themselves to death!

The Warcraft turtles are very non-turtlish. If this is due to lack of knowledge or spaced out creativity I don’t know. Another thing is that these creatures seem to be aquatic, therefore turtles and not tortoises. This is decided by the facts that they’re classified as such in-game by name, in addition that they’re actually living at beaches and oases etc. But here’s the contradiction – they have the body of a tortoise! How can they swim with non-webbed tortoise-feet? My mind gets fucked by these sorts of things. “But you know, there can be a mix between these two”, you might say. Then I answer that turtles have the urge of visiting non-aquatic areas to function normally, which kinda explains why the mobs can be found on land sometimes. The sam thing cannot be said about tortoises, which obviously were Blizzard's main reference while creating these beasts.

What are these creatures? The question is even more confusing now, since Blizzard added sea turtles in Cataclysm. Should they represent the opposite of the former turtles? If that's the case, does this actually mean that they're tortoises living the life of a turtle? WHAT ARE THEY?! Will we ever know?

EDIT (25/3): Found this the other day! :D

EDIT (1/4): An additional video on the subject. Check it out on youtube!