So as a preface I’m not a big Kaldorei player or fan. I’m not even a big Alliance guy I just think Worgen are really cool, theoretically quite like the Rendorei and think Kul Tiras crushes it. The rest of the Blue pride parade I’m vaguely positive to indifferent toward with Stormwind being the only playable faction I outright hate which tanks the coalitions GPA as you pretty much have to spend time there.
But the Kaldorei I always filed under drag shows and baseball games. IE something I’m not terribly interested in all said and done but there are aspects to them I really do like.
So I was sad to see Darnassus go. Especially in such a thunder headed way. But yeah this Amirdrassil place seems pretty cool. Idk. Has a nice vibe to it. Fun to fly around. I can certainly see how it not being a 1 for 1 replacement could be an annoyance but this is way better than what anyone else is getting.
Like if the next expansion comes out and there’s a fully realized next gen Lordaeron and Gilneas that manage to be both home faction zones and current content hubs then Kaldorei players will be well within their rights to throw plants at Blizz HQ. But so far like - am I missing something? This seems pretty great.
Not really my scene but short of it’s geographic location what’s wrong with it?
At the risk of being Them, being on Kalimdor, defending Kalimdor, and biting everything that steps on your part of Kalimdor without mercy or hesitation is the fun part of being a night elf for me.
Also, Darnassus was weird to begin with (10 year old capital?), and treating the night elves as a people that need a centralized location that isn’t Ashenvale or its surroundings doesn’t hit.
So I’m stuck wondering why night elves need a capital at all beyond gameplay reasons and parity, and if they must have one, why is it a random island that night elves haven’t been guarding vindictively for ten thousand years.
No… No, you are not THEM. You did not even scream or make strange comparisons and false equivalencies. I personally always wished we had gotten an HD Nighthaven but here we are.
Yeah but they ruined the fun part of the factions in BFA.
As in literally that’s when they introduced War Mode. And while that charitably worked alright for one expansion, enough that I stubbornly never turned it off for the duration, it was a disaster for SL and even DF.
Where inevitably I had to relent and turn off WM because back up never came anymore. Because everyone else also not in a massive guild and/or an adult with limited time sighed and shut it off.
That ruined WPVP which was the heart of the faction conflict. Unless Blizz starts redesigning zones with separate fortitied hubs this is an entirely moot point for me.
I get this is the story forums but it exists within in a game and luddonarrative dissonance is a thing.
Also for the record this neither seems impossible nor undesirable.
Like let’s imagine a Lordaeron and Gilneas that’s so friendly they even have a shared spooky steam train that runs between capitols.
But ALSO Alterac City and Fenris Isle are bitterly fought over regions where both instanced BGs happen and WPvP is encouraged. With whoever controls it gaining control of powerful buffs and anti air that force the opposing side to bank around it, making their lives more frustrating and encouraging them to join the fight.
You know use mechanics and narrative to make a more interesting world. Just have us come off as neutral / unfriendly in others territories depending on race with WM off.
Like heres a cheat sheet;
Worgen and Forsaken = Neutral
Tauren and Kaldorei = Neutral
Orcs and Dwarves = Neutral
Forsaken and Humans = Unfriendly
Kaldorei and Orcs = Unfriendly
Dwarves and Tauren = Unfriendly
They had to bribe people to turn it on because as it turns out yelling faction pride wasn’t going to make people who had largely abandoned the old pvp servers turn on wpvp mode.
I once played on old ED (on both sides), I didn’t restart all but one toon from scratch just so I could enjoy the garbage that was old ED again.
They also limited it by forcing you to activate or deactivate it in the current hub city or SW and Org. Cities i usually refuse to go to out of principle, and far from where the actual world PvP is.
You have to put it in context. In the context of trying to fix the mess that was the story coming out of BfA/Shadowlands, it is perfectly fine. In fact, I would argue better than Blizzard’s previous efforts to clean up story messes. In the context of Kaldorei/Alliance fanatics, it isn’t enough nothing ever would be. In the context of WC2 Horde fanatics, it is far too much. So you know all a matter of perspective
Add on top of that now, you can only activate in Org/SW and Valdrakken, you can deactivate in any rested area/inn across the world. At least make every major city if they don’t want it to be every inn.
To the main point here, I was rooting for Nordrassil and Hyjal to be the new zone for them. Brings it all back to their roots, they still get a tree, surely you can put a magic door like in Teldrassil to get you to Barnassus, and really centers them back on Kalimdor proper rather than an artificial island off the coast. Redo some quest flows Hyjal > Winterspring and then down the mountain, or you can do that weird ‘ope you’re done here? You can’t walk into the next zone but you can fly to it 4 zones across the map, to then back track two to get to where you need!’ like the poor Tauren. Rework the rest of the zones too. Elune forbid if we ever updated Felwood, Ashenvale, or Darkshore from their Cata statuses.
The new world tree surley is the best of the bunch we have seen yet. Nordrassil isn’t that big and Teldrassil was stuck in 2004 graphics. Amidrassil is what I imagined the grand type of a mother tree esque when I would think of wood elves. Like the oak of ages in Warhammer. Blizzard did let the night elves eat good in Dragonflight surley.
Because it’s tied to the Shadowlands story inextricably. You can’t really divorce it from the events of the preceding two expansions, which are the worst expansions the game has ever had. There wasn’t ever any real feeling of real catharsis for Teldrassil and likely never will be. It was the single most poisonous plot point in WoW that eventually led to this. In other instances of the game you can kind of forget that SL exists, you can pretend it’s not there even if it is canon. With this, you cannot.
Geographical location is also a big part of it as well. They had to put a lot of effort into “Night elves aren’t abandoning Kalimdor guys, they’re going to have it all!” as if moving your population center literally to the other side of the world isn’t going to make it a teensy, eentsy bit harder to defend all the holdings you have on the other side of the world. Except we have portals now. Which Nelves didn’t have during the War of Thorns?
The entire thing becomes a mess and collapses in on itself like a house made of wet toilet paper even under the slightest bit of scrutiny. It’s a badly written story.
If you say Bfa is the worst expansion followed by WOD then I would agee with that. Shadowlands was the saving grace for Sylvanas as a character and alot of Horde leaders who had a poorly bummed plot relevance the expansion before. And Jailer had potential to be Thanos which should have meant he should have survived beyond SL so we can see his actual masterplan, maybe using the infinity stones to snap out Orgrimmar and Stormwind similar to show the real threat he poses to the whole universe.
Its a fun idea I suppose, and I wont speak for Maurdeth, but the recent trends of almost forced reconciliation to the point it feels artificial makes something like this simply gaudy, bland, and out of character.
That’s pretty much it.
It’s godawful. Like your neighbor burns down your house, so you retaliate with the same, and while you’re both in the middle of using the charred remains of each other’s family as impromptu toilets out of raw spite you’re just suddenly, with no rhyme or reason, despite the burned out husk of perfect cause still fresh in the minds of both, friends.
It’s ridiculous, pathetic, speaks to a profound misunderstanding of human nature probably resultant a life flush with comfort and barren of critique.
Too kind would it be to say I merely hate it, but I have yet to find a word that adequately encapsulates my loathing.
