9.1 PTR Elune Feedback SPOILERS

Lore Story Forum
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I think there’s been some level of miscommunication, so I’ll try to state it another way.

Night Elves are basically described as the “best” race. They’re the beloved children of the only known true deity. They’re strong, agile, intelligent, wise, magically gifted, and blessed with longevity. That’s basically their description on sites like Wowpedia.

Unfortunately, that portrayal is unsustainable within an MMORPG, because it means Night Elves would basically be the “I win” button. That’s simply saying that for the game to function, Night Elves can’t be overpowered.

My comment was that Night Elf players tend to become upset when their portrayal within the game doesn’t match their racial description. What value is it of being the one chosen race, if that deity doesn’t help them? What value is it of being extremely agile, if somehow Horde rogues can overcome that? What value is it of being magically gifted if it can be overcome by an Archer and a blind throw of an axe?

The storyline deviates the Night Elf portrayal from the racial description sometimes to help move the story along. This seems to upset Night Elf fans. Often though that doesn’t come with the recognition that if the Night Elves were constantly portrayed to match their own backstory, every other race would be nothing more than a footnote.

Some of the complaints regarding the entire Horde army marching to Teldrassil is that the Night Elf forces and city guards should’ve slaughtered them in the forests. Why? Well, from their description they’re better, strongest, faster, smarter, wiser, magical-er, spiritual-er, forest-er, etc. And if you read their Wowpedia page - yeah, why not? 8x as many Horde should’ve been a pretty easy kill. But from a gameplay perspective, that is terrible.

They could try retconning in something akin to, “Oh, they’re really not that smart, in fact they’re basically only smarter than Orcs, but they wrote their own Wikipedia pages to say they were smarter.” Or they could introduce a plague that physically weakens them so they aren’t nearly as strong and/or as agile. Apparently they decided to try lessening the whole connection to the only known true deity.

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Or you know…blizz could stop being incompetent and stick to the racial fantasy of each race in game. But that’s me :wolf:

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Okay, so Night Elves are the best at everything and they win the World of Warcraft. Congratulations. Seems like not much fun for anyone who isn’t a Night Elf. I don’t think backing off from that (sometimes) translates to Blizzard being incompetent.

But if that’s how to move off “incompetence” then I’d rather Blizzard say, “Everything we wrote about Night Elves was from a Night Elf-centric perspective and it turns out it’s completely false when they started interacting with other races. They’re actually weaker than most races, but very agile. They have a lot of wisdom because of their age, but they’re not very smart. They are decently skilled in forest maneuvers, mostly due to being able to camouflage themselves well, but other races (and some classes) are equally adept at doing this. They’re very rigid in their society, refuse to modernize, and isolationist. This led to their beliefs regarding Elune, they just thought they were the chosen race because they were so isolationist they didn’t know much about other races, but it turns out those feelings are not reciprocated.”

Yep, it’s a huge retcon for the entire race. I think there would be so many level 10 Night Elves that the forums might crash, but at least future interactions might match up with their racial description. Blizzard isn’t incompetent then, right?

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That would be just negligent behavior at that point. People play Night Elves for that specific fantasy, not because they wanted to be secretly dumber than a orc peon and actually not really good at anything. :wolf:

But as a worgen player, I do understand the frustration with not getting what you were promised/shown previously :wolf:

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Night elves Fans are the worst. They have this unrealistic fantasy of being a power race that can defeat anything with their superior skills in everything. I am glad the war of thorns dunked on them and destroyed that fantasy for good. Night elf fans should accept that they are mediocre like everyone else.

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So you are saying that night elf player play them for being the best and overpower race and can’t accept anything that doesn’t make them better and perfect…

Thank for saying out loud what everyone knew about how night elf player really feel.

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I mean, is it really shocking? It’s the worst kept secret out there :smiley:

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Please don't make this thread another thread about Night Elf fantasy, the War of Thorns, Teldrassil, or what have you. Stick to the topic of Elune vs First Ones vs Pantheons vs Faction ties to Cosmic Forces. Thank you.

If you want to discuss that topic by all means, there are LITERALLY FIVE OTHER THREADS ABOUT THE SAME TOPIC lmao

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Yep and that doesn’t make it more right. I mean i get that it s*%k to have its fantasy being drag down but can’t you really expect the fantasy of one race being stronger than everyone else combined in a 23 playable race game???

You talk yourself about how bad it is to see its fantasy be drag down so now imagine what it is to be a horde player and being told how weak and useless we are against 2 alliance race just because the rts make them OP.

Imagine what it is to play the warrior faction, keep being told that most of your core race are just warrior master vs the magic alliance, for then being told that the magic alliance still have the better warrior…

Imagine what it is to be a troll, the night elf ancestor, who accepted that the night elf was better in magic because of the well, somehow being told that the smaller night elf were stronger warrior despite having no lore reason of why the night elf would be stronger than their taller, strong and super agile ancestor who also have regeneration…

Don’t you think that night elf being the better warrior didn’t undo lie 90% of the fantasy of the core horde race??? Such as the super orc warrior race, the gigantic warrior tauren race and the forest warrior troll all being weaker than a magic smaller night elf race???

So now how you expect us to have pity of the night elf for going from super overpower race to just overpower race when our whole faction power fantasy is lower than 2 of the alliance race.

P.S. Worth mentioning how are two elf race which are suppose to be the pinnacle of the magic, still being weaker in magic than human despite them having no lore reason for being good at magic considering that they are just degenerated vrykul who aren’t that strong at magic. So its once again 2 horde race fantasy being drag down by one of the 2 perfect and overpower alliance race.

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Honestly, the topic of the Night Elves is kind of relevant. I understand that Night Elf fans feel like they’re getting what they were promised yanked out from under them. I’m arguing that the game can’t sustain maintaining this description perpetually.

Making Elune not a First One doesn’t offer a real long-term solution (as you pointed out pretty well in the Spanish quote - I like that saying). But continuing the description of being the chosen race of a First One doesn’t help either.

It does offer a way of putting it into a larger framework:
The Watchers seemed to have some role in designing/shaping certain races. Mimiron probably has some affinity for the Gnomes/Mechagnomes. I don’t know if certain Watchers were created by certain Titans, but it’s a possible framework. It also helps offer a potential path for tying certain beings amid differing Pantheons to certain races.

We can introduce some other person who loves Orcs, Trolls, etc. But it’s easier to fit those into a Pantheon rather than create a First One for each race, or extend Elune to other races beyond Night Elves.

Even if An’she were introduced as a First One, it’s tough to say An’she is a First One who loooovvveessss Blood Elves, Tauren, Orcs, Trolls, etc. But within a Pantheon-style framework, it’s easier to offer patron “deities.”

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They were, Mimiron was empowered/created by Norgannon, and thus Gnome’s are the “grandchildren”/great-granchildren of Norgannon. You can do this for all the Titanic races; and for the Forsaken as the “grandchildren” of Zovaal + Primus.

The problem is:

Orcs were created by Aggramar, who unfortunately ended up looking Human.

In fact, the only member of any Pantheon we’ve seen so far that resembles a Horde race both physically and thematically is the Primus, for the Forsaken.

If An’she is planned to be revealed, there’s actually A LOT of unexplained Horde lore that is tied to the sun:

  • The mysterious vision that Dath’remar had for Felo’melorn
  • We didn’t see any phoenixes in the Firelands
  • Rezan has “the power of the sun”
  • The Hand of Valor that saved Vol’jin
  • Shadowmoon Clan was probably “Elune”, but Nagrand’s Elemental Throne is day-themed; An’she could’ve been the “forger” of the First Ones who created the elements in the first place, thus tying him to all Shamanistic races (Orcs, Tauren, but also Dwarves)
  • Hakkar, Mueh’zala, Rukhmar, Rezan, A’lar, Sethe could all have been tied to An’she given themes of Phoenixes, Red Moons (solar effect on the moon), and Wild Gods empowered by the sun/light.
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I don’t disagree with it conceptually. I just think feasibly it’s easier to tie in a number of Pantheon races elsewhere (let’s say within the Life Pantheon) to other races. I don’t mean “one” Pantheon member for them all.

I meant more like “Hey, look, in the Life Pantheon we have a ton of Horde representatives. Look there’s a giant Tauren! And he’s also the weakest member of the Pantheon! Also, the Light Pantheon actually has a couple of folks!” And when we find the Void Pantheon, we could hear, “BAI GAWD THAT’S THE TROLL MUSIC!”

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Well so far we have hard-confirmed Elune is one, which is Night Elves.

Void Pantheon Troll Father is Yikes imo, extra bad.

Not holding my breath because:

We have seen eight (8) Titans and have six (6) Eternal Ones. We are fourteen (14) Pantheon Members in and only ONE (1) resembles a Horde race.

We’re an afterthought dude. Which would’ve been fine, tolerable, if a First One was Horde-adjacent and parallel to Elune.

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I mean, and despite my “ire” with the conceptual NE Racial Fantasy, isn’t a lot of this solved by just recognizing how they have actually been portrayed in Lore. Rather than based off this pedestal they’ve apparently been placed upon. The NEs are “Formidable, but not Overwhelming”. They are powerful, but not to the point where they can just invalidate every other Race’s Racial Strengths. Which seems to be the expectation for some. And while the balance of power on Kalimdor for example was massively tipped in their favor in WC3 … that balance began to shift as the Horde continued to grow and advance (rather explosively in the last decade) … and the NEs largely stayed the same. At least within the confines of their Military Tech and Tactics (they’ve grown in other areas certainly). Which makes sense. A lvl 10 and a lvl 59 will not grow at the same rate; that distance will eventually be bridged unless you’re placing glass ceilings on that level 10 to maintain that disparity.

Here’s sort of what I mean. In WC3, their outcome with the Warsong (small group vs small group combat) was them being “Formidable, but not Overwhelming”. With the NEs putting absurd pressure on the Orcs, but the Orcs, caught unawares, fighting an enemy they’ve never faced before, and on the NEs home turf … still managed to fend them off AND push them back. Until their Patron Cenarius arrived. In the WotA, again you have the NEs being “Formidable, but not Overwhelming” … and were having real rough go of things before Jarod brought up the idea of asking for outside help. And even THEN, outside of a few AMAZING individuals like Malf/Tyrande/Ill, the NEs were still having a rough go of things until the Stone Giants, Wild Gods, and Aspects came in to do most of the heavy lifting. The WotSS? Kind of the same deal, but with an extra step.

Nothing in the lore really supports them being as powerful as some NE fans seems to expect. Outside of when those Patron entities show up to shoulder the NEs burden, and those guys are iffy to rely on at best in conflicts between mortals. The NEs don’t hold a monopoly on guerilla warfare. Their WC3 Savagery was sort of rendered “Savage by Highborne standards” due to the WotA content. And much of their 10k year old tech and tactics they still heavily rely on were largely in relation (and response) to the enemies they were developed to combat. The Highborne and the Legion. Not the races of the Horde, and a 1-1 transfer of effectiveness is not guaranteed. Which again, goes back to my point. The NEs have always been portrayed as brutally formidable, but not overwhelmingly so. And certainly not overwhelming enough to just invalidate the immense changes in the Horde over the last decade … without doing anything on their part to result in that.

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The warsong as entire clan was able to whitestood a small party of nightelves. They never faced the mainarmy. The legion saved them in more then one way of complette annihilation.

The mainarmy was on the way, but didn’t arrive in time before the legion showed up

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The Warsong were also a small party themselves. Which people like to conveniently forget. Of course if the NEs threw their “main army” at them they would have lost. It was small group vs small group combat. Which means it was a reasonable gauge of the two groups strengths.

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Thats not entirely true, they were the biggest orcclan right there and we know, orcclans are huge.

The info “biggest orcclan” is from lord of the clans". Their were able to defend themselve in lordaeron against troops from the alliance, over 10 years.

They were no small clan, they were the strongest hordeclan and their backbone in the liberationcampaign to free the orcs

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Not after the Internment camps and the exodus from EK they’re not. There is no evidence the Warsong shouldered the consequences of the 1st and 2nd wars any better than any other clan. They were also not sent into Ashenvale for a fight, so “numbers” were not something to reinforce them with. Grom was sent on what Thrall believed would be a reasonably easy mission to get Grom out of the way and cool him down. The Orcs weren’t in any way prepared for a fight.

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His entire clan was send, and read lord of clans again. The warsongs were demoralized but still very powerfull

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His entire clan REMAINING was sent, on what should have been an easy fetch quest for Lumber! You’re acting like they were some army sent to invade NE territories. They were woodcutters sent in to cool the hell off after Grom got prickly with Thrall.

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