I had a long post written up, but then I realized if just be responding to more whinging.
So by all means carry on.
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(trying to combine two posts on a cell phone sucks…)
Honestly I wouldn’t hate Nightborn also being involved but I think they wouldn’t want to?
(Speculative): I don’t see why the Nightborne wouldn’t be interested in meeting more of their people, though like I said, it’d probably be one scorning after another for something they personally had no direct involvement in. Granted I imagine the Horde might be better off interacting with new tribes of trolls instead, or tauren.
This all sounds good, but it’s not exactly “rebuilding” Night Elf culture. They basically destroyed two entire zones, left 1 in limbo(ashenvale, no one knows what happened to it) and gave 1 of the completely destroyed one’s back. And then in response to it their leader was said to do some ritual never mentioned before that changed her completely, and now the entire Night Elf culture is nothing but that change. They’re Night Elves in little more than name now.
Going out to find other night elves and learning about them is great, and could be an amazing story. But it’s not “night elf culture” in the sense of what it was to be a Night Elf for the past 10 years of this game’s lifetime. The druidism, the sentinels, guardians, children of the stars,… all gone. Burned down, stomped into the dirt, and replaced.
This is how Night elves are introduced to players on this very website:
Venerable Guardians
The ancient and reclusive night elves have played a pivotal role in shaping Azeroth’s fate. The night elves of today still remember the War of the Ancients over ten thousand years ago, when they halted the Burning Legion’s first invasion of Azeroth. When the Legion’s remnants rallied together with the vile satyrs centuries later, the night elves again opposed the threat, ultimately vanquishing the forces that set out to wreak havoc on their world.
Night Elf History
The Legion’s emergence had forever changed night elven society. Under the leadership of Tyrande Whisperwind and Malfurion Stormrage, they cultivated a peaceful civilization, and shunned the use of arcane magic, which had attracted the Legion to Azeroth.
But the night elves’ tranquility was shattered anew when the Legion and its terrifying undead Scourge launched a new invasion of Azeroth in the modern times–a conflict known as the Third War. The Night Elves fought alongside the Horde and Alliance to defeat the Legion, but their victory was only made possible through an explosion that damaged the blessed World Tree, which had long granted the night elves immortality and protection from aging and disease.
Against Malfurion’s warnings, renegade druids created a new World Tree in hopes of restoring the night elves’ immortality. But this new World Tree eventually became tainted by a dark malady called the Emerald Nightmare, which the night elves were able to combat with Malfurion’s aid.
Although the night elves still struggle to cope with the loss of immortality, the fate of Azeroth rests on their resilience and willingness to aid other races; qualities which the Burning Legion will surely test again.
Tell me if that accurately describes what Night Elves are today after BFA. Compare the Night Elf of today to the Night Elf of Warcraft 3 and WoW’s launch. Do they really strike you as the same people? Has any other culture in this series changed so drastically?
So yes; exploring those new cultures would likely be cool. But it does nothing to address the problem of what the Night Elves have lost over the course of this game; Identity. It’s just replacing it with new ones, not restoring or expanding on the culture/identity of old.
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None of that description however mentions them forever being locked to guarding a Ashenvale forever though.
They still have their sentinels, druidism is still at the forefront to their detriment. The only thing lost was their “savage” nature but that post itself doesn’t really call them that either.
The night elf identity was lost in the transition from WC3 to WoW, I won’t deny that. But since then their identity had basically just been “tree elves who get attacked by Horde”, with just about everything else we learned about them being pre-Sundering stuff about how awesome their empire was before it collapsed. Or Druidism.
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Couldn’t stay away could you?
Holy crap! That’s who they remind me of! Call back! 
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Its seems you still have hope for the story and are interested in the possible future plots that could be planned after what happened and im glad that at least someone is enjoying themselves.
Look, for me its not feasible to get emotionally invested any more into any story in regards to my faction, i could maybe appreciate it from an outsider’s perspective just as i can see the plot of the horde’s narrative mainly as an alliance player, however after the last expansion i will never be immersed in the story as i was before, i will never believe “for the alliance!” from the bottom of my heart, I believe this game’s story has marched on and is just not for me anymore.
I began to play alliance since TBC and have enjoyed being a fan of the faction, for me Teldrassil burning was the event horizon, like in the case of black hole once you go past that there is no going back, your escape route is in the past, space bends in a way you can never escape, this is the same no matter what they do, no matter if the new stories can be interesting i cant get invested on as i was before.
You may think im overdramatic but whats the point in roleplaying in a story if you’re not going to get really invested on it? Vengeance is… just the compromise i would have to keep myself invested in the story of my faction, but as you can tell ive accepted that is not happening and im trying to enjoy wow for what it is now.
Lucky for me (or not) shadowlands is mostly somewhere else and we see little about the factions so i can still appreciate the stories each afterlives for what they are.
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(Clarification): What I meant by the speculated storyline of other Night Elven settlements, making contact, exploring their culture, etc… was not to create a new culture but to essentially place a magnifying lense over the various aspects of what makes up the collective Night Elven culture.
(Speculation): For example, let’s say there is a militant settlement of Night Elves on some distant landmass. They fight as the sentinels, with the tactics of the sentinels, the skills of the sentinels, the armaments of the sentinels. They can easily join the existing Sentinels, but for us as players, we have an opportunity to see not only the varying ranks and chain of command and tactics on a far more intimate scale, but also reconnect to that savagery from WC3.
(Speculation): Then, maybe there’s another settlement of Night Elves, one that is primarily Druidic. They have their own sacred forest, something like Ashenvale or Val’sharrah, but on steroids. The Wild Gods they commune with and learn from are actively a part of their society and culture (this might even enable new Druid form options for Night Elves). We see how this group functions. More importantly, perhaps we see how their devotion to nature supersedes their concern for themselves. This could be a vital window of opportunity for characters like Tyrande and Malfurion to see how they themselves might have gone too far with the Cenarion Circle, and why characters like Leyara not only existed, but ever amassed the kind of following they had.
(Speculation): Then we see other settlements. Maybe there’s an underground society of Wardens who devote themselves to their view of justice, who have prisoners of various races on this other continent, who are seen as these jailers or the worst of the worst, and how their duty is sacred and inviolate to them. Maeiv encounters them with Tyrande, see’s their zeal and discipline and perhaps that they haven’t been compromised by their emotions. Maybe she decides to learn from them, and they in turn see the ultimate Warden and want to learn from her as well.
(Speculative): Maybe there’s a settlement of Highborne who basically have a society that focuses more on knowledge rather than power, and serve as advisors and councilors to various other settlements, collecting and storage knowledge in a vast library. It’d be a chance for Highborne among the Kaldorei to see a vital service they can provide their people, a way to better fit into society.
(Commentary): I do think it’s a chance to rebuild what has been lost by not only getting in touch with the roots of the Night Elves, but also expanding on it vastly, building a powerful narrative, and especially in bringing in new characters. Say what you will about our modern writers, but when they’re allowed to make new characters rather than write pre-existing ones, they tend to do either okay, or very good.
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To be fair, that tree wasn’t supposed to really be there anyway.
This is a section of the forum where people who play the game can discuss the over all story. Playing on particular faction or race means nothing and gives no special privileges one way or the other.
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It did hold some nostalgia value though which I can understand. I’d feel the same if they suddenly decided to nuke all of Mulgore. Plus all the people who died is pretty tragic in itself.
That being said though, if Fandral Staghelm can grow a tree to reclaim their lost immortality then Malfurion Stormrage would be able to do it too just to create a new home.
If they committed they could likely get a new tree up and running faster than Lordaeron could be cleaned of Blight.
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I play night elves.
Y’all are worse than the “Garrosh did nothing wrong” crowd back in MoP. We get it, the game hates your race. Just like every other race. The players aren’t the ones who make the story.
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We should all be glad Varian died in Legion or else he personally would have retaken Darkshore.
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Outside of the mechanical element, isn’t part of this due to the general decline and end of “The Long Vigil”; and subsequently the race’s immortality? They essentially lived for 10k years guarding the second WoE. So much of their culture in some way revolves around both it and the once timeless nature of that task. Now time is moving a whole lot faster for them.
Though that could be the ravings of a crazy person who genuinely doesn’t believe, considering the context, that the Blessings (either of Nord or Teld) were meant as rewards for the NEs in any way. But more the Aspects feeling they needed to help clean up Kaldorei messes, just as they had with the WotA. The fact that the NEs benefited from that is irrelevant. They weren’t prizes.
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The Night Elf drama queens of this forum will give you tales of woe and deliberate persecution of Night Elf players by Blizzard as if it’s conceivable that a game company would deliberately take on a plan to intentionally piss off a significant segment of it’s player base.
If you’ve skipped BFA, all I can suggest is that you read what you will on the onsite novellas or the novels to pick up as much of the story as you care to, watch the cinematic and the shorts and decide on your own if you want to pick up the story in Shadowlands or not.
It’s not like there isn’t other games out there if you don;t feel motivated to move forward.
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Imagine a Darkshore Warfront that functions more like the Arathi one, with alternating forces and commanders.
A Little Patience 2, Varian claims the Valkyr kill, and two out of the three commanders for the Warfront are human and stormwind forces.
Oh man, and then it all caps it off with Elune choosing Varian as her champion, just like Goldrinn did. Tyrande is all mad and doing her ritual, and then a massive beam of light rains down and lifts … King Chin three feet to her left up into the Air and makes him the Legendary Night Warrior. Tyrande looks up in rage and confusion, only to see written in the stars “Patience Tyrande”.
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I’m looking forward to Shadowlands simply for the rather minimal levels Horde vs Alliance drama the expansion seems to have. The only difference I’ve seen so far is Tyrande yells at the Horde player. Big deal.
That alone at least makes it worth a look.
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Night Elves still get their black eyes customization, but only because King Chynn chooses to share the power.
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I’ve been mulling over a thought for a bit now that the reason Teldrassil is so resonant, and produces such relentless anguish, is that it serves as the culmination of a long process - the inevitable denial of the Night Elf racial supremacy fantasy.
There’s something very enticing about the idea of this immortal, ancient, self-sufficient, divinely blessed, physically dominant, magically wise species. They were their own faction in WC3, and they’ve got a lot of lore pumping them up as these juggernauts of military, magic and culture. They beat the legion, the a’quir, the trolls… you name it, Nelves dunked on it.
Now, for anyone who has played WC3, the whole point of setting them up on such a high horse was to knock them right off it. Tyrande being poked off her perch was the point. But if you only look at it in a purely aesthetic sense, which WoW encourages, the narrative purpose of the Night Elves’ many blessings fades from a cautionary metaphor into pure hype. But that hype can never be cashed in, WoW’s story has no place for ‘Nelves As Advertised’. If you go looking for them you end up doing some rather grim accounting of how they aren’t living up to their incredible hype, and in fact kind of suck relative to their marketing.
Of course, that difference was the entire point. They thought of themselves as those who broke free of a decadent and corrupt precursor, only to end up as the same thing, resting on their laurels. That self conception ran face-first into a warsong axe and they spend the story recovering.
The point of ‘Ozymandias’, for comparison, wasn’t to think “wow this guy was really cool, sweet statue my man”. But if you were playing an MMO about peoples from old poems (for some reason) and the game told you all about how there was this sweet civilization that made the mighty of other peoples look on in despair, you might fall into that false understanding of what Ozy’s glamor stood for.
Night elves, within the narrative, were built. to. fall. They are a line of shining, purple dominoes, proud of how closely they can stand. It’s not exactly subtle. But… if you don’t approach them through that lens, such as if you have engaged them through a medium like WoW where there is meant to be a sense of equivalence and equal moral stakes, this doesn’t work. The format means that those metaphorical trappings get pulled away and the metaphorical becomes ‘material’.
Teldrassil broke a lot of brains because it was a stark adjudication that the Nelf self-conception as a superior people, unfairly held back, was never going to materialize. The glorious, implicit promise that they’d one day sweep clear the board in moonfire can never come true. If you’d invested personally in that, it’s easy to see why Teldrassil is such a monumental calamity, even though the story itself spent an unwholesome amount of time showering glory, heroism and pathos on the Nelves.
For my own health, I will not be responding to nelfposter (you know what I mean by this) replies to this post.
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