The in game book I just linked (if I could link) is a classic item. So “old lore”.
even chronicle said…exactly…1000 years
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/799792179928498216/799792200258420786/unknown.png
Please reply to my earlier query. 
with old lore I meant now:
Dragons flew over the ruins of Ahn’Qiray and discovered the Qirai.
New lore: NE woke them up.
https://classic.wowhead.com/item=20415/the-war-of-the-shifting-sands
for you, droite.
which one?
I mean, doesn’t answer my question on whether that passage was truly referring to exactly 1,000 years and not just the rough concept of a thousand but… this entire conversation is also something of a tangent.
So to Droite - I’ll again say that I find it somewhat inappropriate to graft a strategic consideration like who technically started the war to a tactical consideration like “who is on the offensive” in a given battle. Given that, the Night Elves have had successes and failures both offensively and defensively. Hence I hesitate to say that such is it.
I think it’s easier to say that they are generally competent in areas that they’re familiar with and areas that they geared their military around fighting. It makes sense that they’re not as good on an open plain, or in an urban environment which… they largely don’t have.
New lore supercedes old lore.
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I even posted above the source…exactly a thousand years, from Chronicle. i don´t know what you want more.
yeah, i get it, i even said, i must backpadle.
Yes, and that was disputed by my query on post 460.
I generally assume what I always assume. The NEs will be good at just about anything, and are expected to be portrayed as such. You know that “peeve” of mine that generally enjoys the NEs, but sometimes feels that their conceptual power fantasy is oppressive at times. That’s part of it. Its why when the subject of the NE navy (or lack thereof) ever comes up … all of sudden its just a given that the NEs have a competent one. Because they can’t be competent if they don’t, even though culturally before the last 35 years they’ve never really needed anything beyond troop transports.
Lets just say, as a Horde player, I have long come to terms with the reality that the only time I am allowed a power fantasy … is exclusively when Blizz intends to villain bat and shame me for having it. Sigh … god, it really sucks to be the conceptually weaker of two factions thats always forced to punch way outside our weight class so the Alliance can maintain Blizz’s weird self-made prison of Moral Absolutism. Its probably just as bad to have to get nerfed hard everytime the Horde is forced to do that, to make that absurd story work. We are kept both weak, and evil … I have no idea whats going on lol!
Truly, I hate the faction conflict. But I genuinely do believe that the constant artificial maintenance of the Alliance Moral Absolutism is one of the most damaging factors to the story. Both to the Alliance story (who are kept too pure for genuine internal conflict and contention), and the Horde story (who’s allowances of flaws are used as an excuse for "evil’, in lue of the Alliance having nuance).
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If it makes you feel better and if you remember when I mentioned that RPed my Warden as an engineer - she DID prefer goblin engineering over gnomish.
Anyway - I’m trying to work in areas of nuance here, rather than simply asserting that they’re good at everything. But, I do want to speak on the concept of villain batting the Horde. The faction conflict should not be this way. There should be no moral victor, there should be no all-powerful faction, on paper or in presentation. It should present different societies with different, but defensible motivations with an eye to attracting serious participants to either side.
I read once that you objected to the idea of the faction war being a sport. Maybe I’m misattributing, but if I’m not, I absolutely disagree. It is a sport - it stands up the competitive multiplayer environment, and competitive multiplayer games require balance. You and I should feel just as motivated to jump into a battleground and compete with one another for those feelings of a power fantasy. I shouldn’t feel like Blizzard only thinks that I’m good for tragedy, and you shouldn’t be the automatic villain.
Once we get there, I can feel good about replenishing my stock of rockets and getting my goblin-glider cloak and saying “I’ll see you in Warsong Gulch”. Until then - I agree with you - they have handled the faction war intolerably.
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Well, that’s sort of my point. I do agree that the Faction Conflict is a sport, and is treated largely as one. My problem with it is, its a international war story with no stakes, change, or consequences. Its purely the justification of PvP on a story level, and to that end … people thinking it could ever be good are those conflating their positive experiences with the game mechanic that is PvP with the actual story of the the Faction Conflict. And the actual story of the Faction Conflict has always been utter crap.
Its weird for me to both dislike Anduin’s oppressive nature to the story, and sort of like him for being the only person who seems perpetually perplexed by the reality of all these near extinct people trying to constantly kill each other in between regular end-of-the-world style conflicts. Its like he walks into a room and constantly questions “what even is this?”
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The night elves do use mounts, but not as closed cavalry, but as a faster means of transportation which can fight back. Besides, tigers would not be nearly as good as a horse for cavalry charge and front line breaking. The sheer force and violence of horses would be simply overwhelming compared to a saber charge.
They would be much more formidable in single combat. Imagine you have to defend yourself against a mount and a rider, and the mount slashes your legs off as well.
The navy would be an additional case: sure, there are night elf ships, but they are by no means Kul’Tiras or Zandalari-level. The night elves are more of a “land power” than a sea power. Besides, they never needed such ship powers, they have plenty of druids.
Then technology is one of their weaknesses. They are by no means a people who place much value on goblin/gnome/Draenei technology, they bet their money on magic and craftmensship aswell as soldiers.
May I ask: What would it look like for you in terms of these three things?
Let me clarify. The Faction Conflict people want is a Faction Conflict with none of those things. What they want is to be able to put their team jerseys on in between the “real” story, and for the board to be reset by the end. Its the type of story that constantly reminds me that population numbers never matter, and enforces status quo writing. The latter of which is far, FAR less beneficial for the Faction and Racial stories of the Horde than the Alliance.
And I ask you, what would the consequence look like, how would you have rewritten BFA …to get just those things of a true story instead of just a status quo and a handshake at the end?
The story hasn’t always been utter crap. It was at its best in Vanilla - Wrath, always in the background, something that you could participate in, but didn’t have to, and something that had some tie-in content that showed that the factions were in a simmering war.
Could it have been better? Yes. There could have been more background - but when you talk about stakes, change, and consequences, I’m going to come right out and say it: those things generally are not good for competitive multiplayer experiences because of their potential to kill motivation to play - and so you have to be extremely careful with the narrative content that you introduce.
This is an extremely difficult problem for any multiplayer game. How do you incorporate story elements that do not distract or detract from play? How do you set the field so that it’s fair every time you step onto it?
Well, one of the ways is realizing that people do not experience story content entirely from purposely crafted narratives. The stories that matter are the personal ones, about the characters that are in the experience, and this is where we bring in that in an interactive medium, the player is a writer too. They craft, through their actions, their triumphs and failures, a personal narrative that chronicles their advancement, and the franchise writer gives context to that through environment, through characters, through background setting, etc.
What Blizzard did instead was take a concept that should have remained for something to be expressed in competitive play, and shoved it into the PVE experience. That is the simplest and most explanatory reason for why this sucks. You can’t shove a three act structure into a rivalry with players on either side, and sides that are comprised of communities with different objectives. Further, the big lore characters do not matter. The characters that we create matter.
Principally, I believe in writing a faction conflict that supports the objectives of the game mode - and again, that requires balance. That balance, to summarize, conflicts with the common uber-narrative desires of franchise writers, leaving “story” as something that should be expressed emergently.
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I mean, I don’t like the Faction Conflict at all. Its never a positive experience for the Horde, who always has to be the villains. Pushed by a writing team who has a tendency of never even wanting to give justifications or motives for why the Horde needs to be antagonistic towards the Alliance; let alone validating those justifications. We’re just “Goblins, its what we do” like Silithus. Its disgusting.
But, I’ve made my opinions very well known about the easiest way to make the story of BfA work more cohesively. It wont create a more enjoyable experience, but the story would make more sense at least. Actually validate the several major acts of Alliance aggression leading up the WoT; thus validating the Horde in the WoT. The Alliance was effectively already at war with the Horde before Saurfang made his plan, their actions were just never allowed to count. Then, have Sylvie use Saurfang’s WoT to cause her burning of Teld; and from then turn the Horde side of the story into an entrapment narrative. Doing so means you can keep most of the major story beats, and a lot of the tactics on both sides make more sense.
The Horde is allowed to comment on Teld. Hate Teld. Hate being made tools to cause an event like Teld. But are too afraid to weaken themselves enough to the Alliance to oust Sylvanas. Thus, what the story breaks down to is a battle between Sylvie trying to keep the conflict escalated and prolongued (to sell the idea that the Alliance is committed to a war of extermination against the Horde for Teld, thus keeping her control over them as long as she needs) … while Anduin attempts to prove that narrative wrong. To give breathing space for the Horde to turn on her themselves. With actors on both sides frustrating both leaders efforts, and it tying more naturally into the current SLs back and forth between the two we see now.
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I’ll partially answer your question as well - by reference to this proposal:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/writing-a-pvp-narrative-post-shadowlands/801368
The thing that I want to note is - there are no major changes. The content is built up around, and supports battlegrounds - which I think should be the gameplay equivalent for these narratives as dungeons and raids are. Those are where you should find your power fantasies, if you’re good enough to get them.
i have no interesst in reading this post over and over again, sorry. I read him twice, thats more often that anything else here. I know your position^^
Fair enough! Just making sure that I present the counterpoint.
Honestly, that wouldn’t really change the problems. In fact, it would make one side eat up even more internally, and ultimately even move against each other, and not the characters ingame I mean, but the players. it would fix a problem for the Horde, yeah, point taken, but the overall problem would still endure.
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