Elune’s characterization is so weird.
She has a connection to Light and life (does she have an Arcane connection too? Celestial magic is associated with it). Not to mention the theory that her “dark-side” is related to shadow/void.
Much of recent lore was pointing to her being something much grander. To have her as the Winter Queen’s sister is odd. Even the First Ones seem to have specific domains. Elune stratified too many to be a lesser deity.
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I wouldn’t worry. Nelfs will get a new tree, at the very least, I am sure. As for orcs? Well, as long as Thrall, a human “”"“raised”"" orc, is the only “noble” rep they have, I don’t have high hopes.
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I meant that the orcs never built an army to wipe out the breakers, primals, and arrakoa until they formed the horde.
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I personally don’t mind it being a genetic trait, but I do mind that it being inherently bad, instead of, you know, a useful thing for the given environment.
Be sure to suppress this thing that you were born with, or you just might kill your dog accidentally 
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I’m aware. Bringing order to or setting up a conflict doesn’t necessarily mean the First Ones invented these powers or that they had never interacted before. I think it’s more likely they shaped/structured what core essences they found in the cosmos.
If the First Ones invented these forces from nothing then we have surpassed Dr. Who territory and they are literally untouchable because they exist in a higher reality altogether.
I find it hard to imagine higher-dimensional beings building things like swords and stairs. But hey, who knows. Blizzard seems to prefer the GoT approach to story writing these days.
Wow! how much debate! That just shows the importance of my race 
No matter the origin of my goddess, I only know that she is currently very powerful and we, the night elves, are her blessed children!
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I like your post. 
She has a lot of these kids and doesn’t really care about them. Or she has “plans” for us.
Optimism is a good thing.
Sadly he said the word created. So they did invent.
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Yah creation means just that, you created something where once there was nothing.
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I’ve actually been pondering about Elune and her power source. So, in BFA we were shown Azshara was able to figure out a way to convert worship into power, that’s why the Naga were forbidden to mess with the ghosts of Zin-Azshari; they worshiped her as a goddess.
Elune is worshiped by entire civilizations across the entire Great Dark, and she began at least as Titan Equivalent… so pulling on all that worship she could truly be alarmingly powerful, and I’d argue would qualify her as a being worthy of being called a “True God”. It would also stretch her thin in some ways, as if she isn’t truly omnipresent and omnipotent she can only be looking in so many places, and doing so many things at one time. She has a lot of devoted people to tend to all at once across an entire universe.
Over time, she may of taken on additional aspects of other cosmic forces as needed to protect and provide for her devoted, ending up dabbling in the forces of Order, Life, Death, and Light as we see her doing across the lore.
Also might be why Xalatath is so irritably dismissive of Elune. The Void likely would not be fond of a being who came swooping in across the Great Dark and began providing people power to evict them from worlds they try to warp.
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Eh. Copying a story element from American Gods by Gaiman isn’t beyond Blizzard, but it just honestly doesn’t fit into the story I feel.
A beings power being suddenly proportional to worship is just very left field.
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Why is that? We actually have copious examples of it with the Loa, if they are not Worshiped in their temples they fade away, but the more worship they receive the more powerful they become.
Perhaps worship is a method of anima extraction not touched on yet. Except, in that case you are more donating it than having it extracted out of you.
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Well precisely for the reasons you point out. Elune has always been stated as A True God™ of WoW.
To have Elune play by the same rules as a Wild God/Loa… Oof.
It would not hurt the humans led by Anduin to be in that status for a while IMO.
When it comes to the content of the rest of the comment:
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When blizz uses a certain ideas to sell the game to the players, and then does not follow-up, how should a new player react to it?
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Frequently I see “being underdog” as a reason to pick the horde. If there is equal footing expected, that would mean that such narrative line should be removed entirely. Either the underdog role, or becoming closer match. (or a
story) -
What is the point in pretending that the only path is to bash the night elves? How about alternative, where gasp actually horde character get the build up and development? Now, that would still mean no underdog stories anymore, but still.
The whole thing could’ve been executed much better if the elves just like is stated on their page
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.
and show that after being at the forefront of the events, be it the scourge battles, Cataclysm, and the Burning Legion invasion, they started to crumble. And then this whole story could’ve go on, etc. That would be a reasonable way to tone down former night elf power, show most of their allies from the past, like wild gods, etc., suffering greatly, and being unable to do much more than to halt the backstab attack, while building actually more of the horde background: magisters of blood elves (and now nightborne), the horde version of death take on druidism in Darkspear + Bwonsamdi, as a horde way to introduce drust-related topics and “death-life” vision of druidism, more on goblin tech and their deals with elementals / Light / etc.
Well, I had a feel that the build up of other races / aspects would be a good way to progress the story, not dragging everyone though some odd substances.
Well, “lucky” enough, the story does not recognize it, and one of reasons to call “high king” is that the main force of the alliance is supposedly humans. So you can sleep well knowing that the reign of Anduin the High King will offer you more speeches in the future about what is right™, etc.
It is also important to note that the human’s relative military strength compared to other members of the Alliance is much larger
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sorry did not get to your post in time
On topic of Elune, to me the main problem is the scope of how much the identity of Elune would touch. Literally everything related to the Well of Eternity or the region, origins / reasons behind how the night elves came to be, and plenty of stories spanning across thousands of years and different planets.
And to be honest, I do not think that with the current state of the story, the devs already prepared the outline to cover those stories and recontextualize / explain how it would all fit into the new narrative.
Plus, that cheapens the idea of “one of true deities” that kept her as something different than pantheons, something else out there. Not only for other “true deities”, but also that it does not have much meaning anymore. I guess we’ll have to wait for the upcoming book for new cosmology stuff, but it will be seriously different from what we knew before.
And the story direction does not help in any way (as I see it) to improve / fix the current messy state of things. Oh well, I guess Anduin-Sylvanas story described as central to the Shadowlands, is more relevant that the rest there is.
gl hf
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rip in pepperonis
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, basically verbatim.
As a Night Elf fan since I started playing this game, I really don’t want Elune to be some omni-diety. I don’t want her to be a First One or anything of the sort.
The only thing that matters to me is her connection to the Kaldorei.
Elune is a night elf symbol. Yes, I understand that she has connections to other races, but, up until Shadowlands, the night elves were the 90% shareholders in Moon Inc. I’m not trying to diminish her relation to other races, only put those relations in proper context. She’s a footnote in the annals of other races but the nucleus of night elf culture. And, her being that nucleus is what made her important to me. It was a reciprocated relationship: it seemed like the night elves were as important to Elune as Elune was to the night elves.
Personally, I don’t want her to be very powerful, because a lack of power explains why bad things can happen to her children. If she’s just a moon goddess with her fingers in various astral powers, then the answer to “How could you let our people burn?” is “I weep for your suffering, but I’m not capable of stopping that, it’s out of my domain.”
If she’s some First One with her fingers in the Light, the Void, Death, Arcane, whatever… Then it just makes it seem like the night elves weren’t important to her. Just as I wouldn’t want them to take Elune out of the night elves, I don’t want them to take the night elves out of Elune. Keep them equally important to one another.
If I could, I’d take out every mention of Elune out of the Shadowlands. But, if I had to write the story given what’s been established to this point, including the 9.1 Beta, here’s what I’d do.
Elune is the Winter Queen’s sister, her counterpart in the Gardens of Life. Elune’s domain within the Gardens of Life is the celestial bodies of the universe, which are just as much a part of nature as the earthbound trees and animals. She sets the stars in the sky and moons in orbit. She is a mother figure to many races, elevating some of her favored children to a different form and bestowing some of her astral power on them.
Additional Details
She created the moonkin. It would make sense that the druidic totem that draws upon astral magic was made from a goddess of astral magic.
Through her being a life deity, she has a connection to the Emerald Dream. Though it was created by Freya using Eonar’s power, Elune can still connect to it. That’s how she Malorne and Ysera, became one’s lover and the other’s friend. Elune may very well be on friendly terms with Eonar.
Through her connection to The Winter Queen, she has some command over the spirits of powerful nature beings and those races that are her children.
The uh… The Naruu thing is the weirdest. I’d either say that Khadgar was just wrong (after all, his source was a non-specified book he just found somewhere). Or… Clearly, being of one pantheon doesn’t lock you into that magic. Eonar uses life magic despite being an arcane titan. Tyr called on the Light. Maybe Elune, being a star deity (and stars having light associations) used her astral light to help make Xe’ra’s core. Or maybe Xe’ra’s core was a crystalized star. idk man it’s weird
This helps limit her scope. She is the astral deity of the Life domain. It makes sense why she couldn’t do everything. Additionally, it retroactively contextualizes the Winter Queen’s position in the most-dubiously-defined cosmology ever. Furthermore, it accomplishes the goal of asking, “Okay, if they’re sisters, then who is their parent/creator?” It prepares our minds for something bigger that doesn’t have to be answered now.
If/When we do eventually go to her plane, the night elves could be received as long-awaited children finally come home, finally having found their way to her directly. She is excited to see us, but we are beings of the material world so can’t stay with her forever. Confirms that we’re important to her, she’s important to us, she can only do so much to help, and we’re good to go.
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This ship has sailed.
You’re contradicting yourself.
Pantheons aren’t deities, “astral” isn’t a Cosmic Force.
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Yeah, they’ve been throwing out bad retcons like beads at a Mardi Gras parade, maybe it’s about time they threw out some good ones.
I mean, parents can love multiple children at the same time. There is a difference of scale. Being welcomed into a family of a dozen or so races? Fine. Not ideal, but I can live with it. Being one insignificant ant in a pool of hundreds or thousands? Not so fine.
It’s not a cosmic force, but it is a magic type! Woven of arcane and nature magic! In my mind, I’ve always thought of arcane magic as like… “processed”, whereas astral magic was just raw force shooting straight off the stars. But that’s a lot of head-canon there.
Also, hell, deities is so vaguely defined, it could mean literally anything that is immortal and poorly understood. Arguing that it refers to specific things is pretty trivial.
EDIT: Hell, the wiki article on Gods starts with, “Gods are vaguely defined in Warcraft.”
Okay, but the Pantheons are divided by Cosmic Force, and at most you can assign a “secondary” Cosmic Force to each Pantheon. Gameplay magic schools aren’t real and inconsistently relevant for lore purposes.
This is written by players, myself included lol
Devs have stated Elune is “a true goddess” of WoW, unlike the various Pantheons.
To be clear:
You are saying you prefer Elune be reduced in power, stripped of any sense of “real god-hood” for in-universe purposes (we can, and have, defeated MULTIPLE members of MULTIPLE Pantheons) just so she can remain “special” for Night Elves? You think this is a fair trade?