Blizz just has to be willing to pull the damned trigger man. We could get to some nice nuanced middle ground between the two factions if they just would get over this weird self-imposed prison of “good vs evil” they’ve created for themselves. All races should have the capacity for good and evil. All races should have tangible cultural flaws and strengths. They just gotta commit!
EDIT: Also, Orcs, Trolls, Forsaken, and Goblins have all been pretty dark over the years.
I bring here the example that says it all: They defanged the night elves, for example Maiev’s words from WC3:
“Many lesser races have awakened the wrath of our people, no one has survived”.
The statement shows the self portrayal as the night elves were meant to be. As this warrior elf race, whose wrath when awakened is terrifying and truly dark, and seems to know no end or no relation. Because the content of this statement is so damn dark and grim. The night elves were also still proud of it in a way, if that had remained canon, Teldrassil would still be a dark chapter, but ultimately exactly what they themselves have brought upon many peoples.
Or for example: The humans from the alliance of lordaeron, even the paladins were much more willing to act in an dark way, sometimes even righteous anger is as dark as bloodlust.
Who exactly is she referring to with this though? I would hardly call the Quraji a “lesser race”, and in both the War of the Satyr and WotA they NEs were essentially fighting their own race+ some magical corruption. Hardly lesser, outside of perhaps culturally. Sigh … nvm. This is just me constantly reminded that NE savagery never made any damned sense beyond the the confines of “Savage by Highborne standards”.
That doesn’t mean the Kaldorei are Dark or terrifying It just means they are slow to anger and when you get them to that part, they don’t hold back.
in wc3 lore, the kaldorei were different in terms of lore and their position on the world. in wc3, they wiped out entire races.
here, a few quotes:
“Naga? Many craven races have tempted our wrath over the centuries. None have survived!”
“Blood elves and naga! Your bastard races are an affront to everything the night elves stand for!”
That is dark, because it exceeds any relation, it is only pure revenge and does not stop even before children.
I mean, yeah, WC3 lore … but its been ages since that portrayal was relevant.
As soon as Blizz started dumping WotA info into them, they really did start thematically becoming more and more Lothlorian over the years. Sort of the same vein as the High/Blood Elves took a lot of inspiration for Rivendell esk elven mistique. NEs are formidable, but much of that savagery has been drained away.
i will never forgive knaak to change the entire wota in such an…i have no words for it. its just sh**.
I mean, a badass 250 year lasting war, with battles around the globe, to a …human and orc- silliy show.
and thats my point, from the human btw, too. the humans were much darker once. The horde would have an worthy …Opponent, with flaws all of their own, they just kept getting taken down, taking away profile from the alliance in the process.
I don’t see this so much as a rebuttal as I do a statement of the problem. Night Elves gained their interest from how they were portrayed in Warcraft 3, and we only saw their interest drop off starting in Cataclysm, which coincides with the start of the great de-fanging that has gone on to this day.
Is that to say that we got terribly savage Night Elves in Vanilla? Not really, but it is to say that the race largely being left alone allowed them to maintain that pedigree.
It just feels like most of the Savagery people pin in the Kaldorei…never actually existed to begin with. Are they awesome warrior women? Of course, they’re the type of army you really don’t want to fight on their home turf. With Malfurion, Maiev, Tyranda and Illidan as some of the worlds most powerful beings, a lot of the Kaldoreis actual strength gets severally blown out of proportion
Nah, I think this is pretty unfair. They were portrayed about as well as you could do it in an RTS, but they did work in that element.
I think the problem comes in when people read books like the War of the Ancients or Stormrage and start to extrapolate from the absurd and crazy powers that Knaak in particular irresponsibly gave to the Night Elves’ core heroes - that of course could never reasonably be presented in lore. Blizzard hasn’t really learned from this problem of course. Malfurion is probably yesterday’s Jaina, looking back.
thats only one problem, knaak did more…knaak destroy the entire wota in the process of his writing.
I’m not saying they aren’t a powerful and strong army. They are deadly to fight for sure. But you take them out of their forests and they loose a lot of their Scaryness if that makes sense. I just think them being Dark and Terrifying was never actually a thing.
Hope that helps.
I think if we decided to account for the full scale of Knaak’s lore vandalism, we’d be here all day. So, I will stick to this - and it does annoy me somewhat because I see people taking what looked like a fairly balanced part of Warcraft 3 and tossing in all of this stuff to transmogrify them into gods - both to their benefit and detriment.
Night Elves aren’t gods. They never were gods, and people need to put away this expectation. That does not mean that they were not formidable. It certainly doesn’t mean that we should sit back and say “oh, it’s reasonable then” when the story elects to sweep them away for shock value. But it does mean that they have a place within a balanced system.
@ Micah
Dark and Terrifying was initially how they were presented. It comes through in how the Warsong Clan initially reacted to them, it’s reflected in the race’s mechanics even going to this day. The problem is that a LOT of this stuff was sanded down in favor of Ferngullyization (let’s see how well that term sticks).
… and, I don’t want Ferngullyization. I don’t want tears. I want the race’s spine back.
I think most people agree that the Kaldorei lost their spine, and it’s not that Grom was terrified of the Kaldorei, he wasn’t. He actually had a healthy respect for them and found them to be a Worthy Opponent. For the first time in a long time, the Warsong found an enemy who could keep up with them.
We all know a lot of the Kaldoreis power has been stripped away and was stuffed into their leaders instead, which is why they come off as incompetent whenever they show up. A little Patience scenario I think was the point where blizz didn’t hide how they really felt about writing the Kaldorei…I’ll never forgot how hard I cringed at a human king teaching a 10k+ yr Priestess patience.
Grom’s tone of voice, depending on how well you do, does shift occasionally to fear - although this is brief. Bear in mind though, Grom was also dismissing his soldiers concerns before the initial attack, and I think that gives us a good read on how your rank and file orc felt about things.
Anyway - the power being stripped away and stuffed in leaders. Yes, but that’s also happened across the board. There’s way too much focus on faction leaders and uberpowerful characters that crowd everyone out in terms of attention, importance and power level generally. That’s a widespread issue that’s not just happening to us. This is how we get stories that on paper were supposed to be about a global war instead being about Jaina, Sylvanas, Anduin, and Saurfang.
Random orc: “They’re women.”
Grom: “yes they look like elves, but they’re far too tall and far too savage.”
I never get the impression of fear from Grom especially when he casually dismissed his men’s concerns.
Grom: “These dancing lights are strange, perhaps they are the spirits you’re so afraid of.”
Or Grom: “Am I surrounded by cowards? it’s a tree like any other, cut it down!”
Not then, no. You get it from the “perfect warriors” comment later on.
My point about his conversation with the Rank and File Orcs is that his men were concerned. Grom is a bad yardstick because he’s unusually confident and sure of himself. He doesn’t represent what your average orc thinks, even if he is to embody what an orc should aspire to be.
I think with how the Kaldorei been treated since end of Wrath and beginning of Cata, I admit it has skewed my view of them. Don’t get me wrong, I want the Kaldorei to be the savage warrior women they were potrayed as, but I am really biased when I say this, I just don’t know how you do that when we worgen players were essentially promised that the worgen were going to be basically the Viscious Monsters of the alliance.
The Night Elves and the Worgen compliment each other - there’s nothing written in stone that the Night Elves can’t be what they were while the Worgen are what they should have been. You get the differences from the differing cultures and the different techniques that they might use as well as the different way that they do things. A Night Elf might wait for an ambush - a worgen might show up from out of nowhere and leap at you before you know what to do - that sort of thing.