I probably shouldn’t be speaking for Baal, but my interpretation of the post was development expense. I think that, for horde fans that care about the spiritual side of their races, it rubs a bit raw that not only is that largely overlooked in a Shadowlands expansion of all things, but that the Emerald Dream got retconned to create an entire second associated realm that fixates on themes that are heavily aesthetically-adjacent to night elves.
Isn’t what that means to favor something, though? It doesn’t mean you don’t like other things at all, but you wouldn’t call something favored or your favorite if you didn’t have a preference. Which again, makes sense since Elune’s so heavily tied to NE stuff as you laid out, but I think in WoW’s case, it does mean fans of the not-preferred races probably won’t have as much of an investment in Elune-related plot beats. Which is an entire zone so far.
If it makes you feel any better, as an Alliance fan who really likes Night Elves too.
All I wanted for them to do was have vengeance, a show of strength that they are not pushovers and maybe in the future just see them rebuild their home somewhere.
Thats all.
This weird leading on storyline of Tyrande and Elune that answers none of the needs above but also frustrate literally everyone is not what anyone wanted to signed up for. Its just pure madness at this point.
I guess, but that’s uh… Pretty loose, to be honest. A lot of things get developed. Why did the “parallel being” come at the expense of Elune? It could have come at the expense of Revendreth. Or the Sylvanas campaign. Or literally any other plot point. There’s nothing necessarily suggesting that, “Because Elune favors the kaldorei most, there was no parallel being created.”
I know you’re not Baal, and you’re not speaking for him, but I had thought of this stuff when I originally responded lol So, I figured it’s a good chance to get those reasons out there.
I guess that’s… Kinda the thing about WoW? There’s a lot of zones that have content targeted towards a certain group of people. BfA had an entire continent about trolls and another about humans. Legion had an entire zone about Tauren. WoD was about orcs (with a bit of Draenei). MoP was about Pandaren, with very little diversity into the other races. Zone-themes vary a lot, and sometimes they hit, sometimes they don’t.
I didn’t care too much about uh… Any of the Shadowlands zones? Even the Night Fae campaign, I only cared about the kaldorei stuff. The rest was… I mean, it was there.
I mistyped, I’m gonna edit that. I meant to say, “I thought Baal was saying that the taurens/trolls/orcs/KTs…” My point was that, if the argument was “Elune favoring the kaldorei most is at the expense of something”, then it must be that it was “at the expense of her favoring other races equally”.
More Night Elf Wild Gods because Aessina and wisps
More Night Elf lore development
If its Lightlands it’ll be:
Turalyon as the neutral character, maybe with Velen too
Lots of Silver Hand and Draenei focus as per usual
Possibly more Calia shoved down our throats (who, reminder, was an Alliance character functionally until five minutes ago and even now as undead is just Lightforged Undead)
We’ll be lucky if Liadrin gets the Baine treatment: forced cameo for “Horde token representation” and does nothing for the entire expansion
I suppose that’s a fair question to ask, but the other zones don’t really go into anything horde-specific to the level of Elune either. And given that An’she is the other half of the taurens’ nature beliefs, if Blizzard HAD to make another nature zone, something in Ardenweald’s place would have been the best spot to do it. An alternative could have been giving more focus to Bwonsamdi, as he’s currently shunted off to the side as a dungeon and mostly persona-non-grata in Ardenweald proper. So far, I think he’s had very little impact on the story and now that the zone’s all fixed up, there’s nothing left for him.
This is kinda how I feel in general, since I don’t even connect with the NE stuff. The whole expansion’s kinda “eh” because of it. The side stories have been cute, and it’s a functional-if-nonengrossing vacation expansion, but that’s all it is to me.
They couldn’t even bother to have Bwonsamdi show up in the Ardenweald battle scenario against Sylvanas, nor the Ardenweald Maw assault (or even as a Korthia quest giver)
Yes but the thing with those zone is that it was making sense. We expected orc and draenei in draenor, we expected gnome in mechagon, we expected draenai in argus,etc. But for SL, it is fair to say that we could have expected more horde presence since many horde race have a strong link to the afterlife. But the night elf??? It kind of look like a stretch to make a whole zone out of only 4 important zone of the afterlife being so much about them. I expected them way more and would have accept them way more in Naz’jatar than in one of the four major SL zone while i was expecting way more about troll/tauren/orc/forsaken in this one.
Which is probably why we also have a problem with the upcoming life and light expansion. Because we know that alliance will have more relevance in those because they have a way better connection with those and its make sense. Meanwhile, the horde was left out in the expansion about the only major cosmic force which they had a way better connection than the alliance.
I actually wouldn’t bet against that as hard as you’d think, because people love elves. I’d guess that as far as market appeal goes, targeting the majority of your playerbase through themes relevant to them would go further than the uggo races, like most horde stuff or dwarves. Like, I highly doubt a dwarf could carry an expansion as its face; Magni sure didn’t for BFA.
Edit: My reasoning for that instead of Lightlands is that neither alliance elf race is associated with the Naaru-flavor light, but humans are. Especially if Turalyon is leading. There’s Jaina for arcane, sure, but all 4 elves intersect with the arcane on at least some level.
Exactly. I would be more confident if we didn’t had so many ‘‘nature’’ zone over the time which each of them having no horde content at all. Same with all the ‘‘light’’ content nearly being all about the alliance race/leader aside from Liadrin from time to time.
Well we did have many arcane pantheon content ( the titan) and guess which faction had many of their race being titan origin?
Yeah but as far as the arcane is concerned, there is one thing that will always beat the elf popularity, the human potential.
It is much more typical Blizzard at this point to focus on Jaina as the main character for such a thing. You really believe elves will be there for anything more than just side characters with a minimal story arc if at all?
I agree honestly Falothorin! Initially I balked a bit at the cinematic but the more I think about it, it’s not that bad.
Elune caring for the night elves is good, and important.
As for the revenge vs justice thing I went back and watched some W3 night elf stuff and it turns out it’s very much in line with Tyrande’s characterization. During the part of the Frozen Throne Night Elf campaign where Malfurion, Maiev and Tyrande go to Lordaeron, Tyrande says to Kael he shouldn’t lead with vengeance in his heart and should focus on his people - despite the obvious horror of what the Scourge did. She’s now simply applied her own logic to herself.
So Sylvanas and the Horde should be allowed to genocide with impunity and any retaliation and the intent for restitution is considered wrong and self-destructive?
Are you asking my personal opinion or what Tyrande’s previous characterisation suggests?
Because if it’s the former, I obviously think it was a horrible event and believe the Alliance are quite within their rights to be angry about the fact that there’s even a peace treaty in the wake of such horror.
If it’s the latter… All I can say is that Tyrande, in Warcraft 3, told Kael’thas not to focus on vengeance in the wake of the Scourge. The Scourge that killed his father, caused a widespread racial magic addiction (that was becoming, at that point, impossible to sate), and wiped out 90% of his people. Faced with this, Tyrande told Kael’thas to focus on his people, not on vengeance.
Does that mean Tyrande thinks he should’ve given the Scourge a great big cuddly hug? Of course not. I think she was suggesting that his priority becomes serving his nation first and foremost. That’s not unreasonable.
If Tyrande follows her own advice as indicated in the cinematic where she made her own choice to let go of the Night Warrior, and instead focus on her people… I think it could ultimately benefit the Night Elves more than a few orc heads on a platter.
I am asking about the narrative message this story is sending. Considering the current state affairs at Blizzard I don’t think its right to tell victims “just let it go man, focus on renewing yourself. Dont seek justice and retribution! Thats bad.”
Thats a lot of buzzwords that really don’t mean much. What specifically are you suggesting Tyrande is supposed to do when Sylvanas or some other warchief and the Horde can attack again and decimate the NE population even further? Tyrande already tried a diplomatic approach to the Horde as their neighbors after MoP and we had the War of Thorns event as the consequences of that decision.
I don’t think blizzard had the opportunity to radically alter their entire patch story within days after the allegations came to light lol. It’s bad optics but I doubt they planned it that way.
I wish they kept Elune mysterious, or at the very least a different category of god.
Godlike characters always lose a lot of their appeal when explained, like Titans after Legion IMO.
I also just don’t want every non-evil godlike being to just be a flavor of titan.