BfA screwed Gilneans/Worgen

Can we talk about how BfA did Gilneans dirty? Coming into BfA Blizzard was like:

1) You lost your home once already? Weeelllll… how about you lose your second home in Teldrassil. LOL good luck living in the streets of Stormwind!

2) Remember how we made Gilnean NPCs have “long coats” in-game and depicted them as wearing long coats in the comics, hearthstone, etc, and then updated Genn’s model in Legion to have a long coat, and then when heritage armors were announced Worgen players were asking to have a long coat like Genn? Weellllll… we are going to give the long coat to Kul Tirans.

3) Remember how Gilneas had a dark, gothic vibe with dark forests that had monsters lurking in them while the people fight off these monsters? That whole theme that separated them from Stormwind? Welllll… we are going to give that to the Kul Tirans too with Drustvar.

4) Remember how we made Worgen “unique” druids by making them Harvest Witches who follow the “Old Ways”, but we didn’t expand on that at all and just gave them the same druid forms as Night Elves? And remember how we made the Gilneans a big part of Hallow’s End and had them be the reason for the Wicker Man practice coming to the Alliance? Welllll… we are giving the wicker connection and stuff to the Kul Tirans also with Drustvar, and giving them their own unique druids and expanding on the lore for their druids while giving them unique wicker forms. Sorry not Sorry.

5) You know how all the allied races are getting their own cool racial flag in the embassy and the Darnassian flag is there also? Welllll… we are going to add the Gilnean flag for the Heritage quest but we are just going to slap the Stormwind logo on it. You already homeless and living in Stormwind so you are part of their kingdom now right? Right… I mean your king is already licking Anduin’s boots and kissing the ground he walks on soooo.

6) Remember how for the last 10 years the Gilneans have been saying “Our curse grants us strength” yeeaaahhh forget all that. Tess Greymane is going to realize that the curse just freaking sucks, it doesn’t define the Gilneans anymore, and basically needs to die out with this generation of Worgen. Lol racial pride? Who needs that!

I am being salty today. Now I don’t believe any of this was intentional on Blizzard’s part to screw Gilneans/Worgen, at least I hope not, but man. It really feels like this race is just an afterthought to Blizzard. It feels like they took everything that made them unique and different from Stormwind Humans and gave it to the Kul Tirans. So the Kul Tirans get the themes and aesthetic of Gilneans, AND have their own kingdom and capital, where does that leave the Gilneans? It really feels like Blizzard is trying to fade them away into just assimilating into Stormwind.

Gilneas deserves better!

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This so much x10000%. Took the words right out of my mout hun :gift_heart:

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My only Alliance character is Worgen. I agree they deserve better!

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Well…

At least for one of those you better raid castle nathria for those sweet leather coat sets.

About the others, isn’t kultiran lore that they come from gilneans as well?

And as far as it sucks for worgens losing teldrassil as well, it seems all Gilneans managed to leave the tree in time.

Now about the curse thing… It was… Bad…

I still like the worgen heritage armor, sadly worgens can’t be monks, and i don’t like stealth to play a rogue, no Jon Talbain for me.

I don’t disagree with you on worgen getting shafted, i just like kultirans as well.

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You know, I’d never thought of it that way, but OP isn’t wrong. That said, I thought Kul Tiras and Gilneas were essentially sister kingdoms the way Lordaeron and Stormwind were. Wasn’t Kul Tiras founded by Gilneans who left the mainland?

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They don’t know how to reconcile the darker aspects of worgen with “lawful good overdrive” Alliance. Gotta shove them into the cupboard so the real stars can shine: humans and elves

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They were, but you gotta admit that the current Kul’tirans have very little in common with the gilneans, especially the worgen specifically.

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Humans and Orcs, really… I don’t see any elves with an entire narrative arc and several high end cinematics about how sad they are before heroically dying.

On topic, this is definitely something I noticed with Gilneans and Kul Tiras with BfA, and it honestly confused me, because they set up a lot of narrative focus on Kul Tiras for multiple Alliance races but never seemed to capitalize on it. I can only assume that a lot of it was cut when they merged expansion ideas and they just never picked it back up.

One thing I really enjoyed was how Gilneas was portrayed in various Hearthstone cards, and the idea that they barely touched it in BfA is pretty wild. Drustvar absolutely has the vibes Gilneas was meant to have, and Kul Tiras draws from many of the same themes as well, but the Gilnean connection is never actually explored and that’s very strange to me. Contrast it with how the other Cataclysm race, Goblins, were treated in BfA and it’s a marked difference. They actually got real advancement this expansion, almost the sleeper winners in terms of lore, while Worgen got… to essentially be errand boys/girls for Stormwind, and only got brief moments of where there should have been, that being out west fighting the Horde in Darkshore, or Gilneas. I’m okay with Tess not going Worgen, really, but the lack of advancement to their plot beyond that is pretty wonky.

Gilneans are just more victims of Stormwind rolling over everything culturally.

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Yep, Drustvar the whole time felt like something that should have been a Gilneas themed zone, I felt ripped off as a Worgen player honestly. And agreed Worgen got absolutely nothing in BfA really outside of being told the curse sucks.

Admittedly I loved seeing the Gilneans choose to side with the Night Elves over the Alliance. That was a nice moment in BfA as I always felt they were closer to the Kaldorei than Stormwind Humans. But, outside of that moment our entire identity is just being forced into being a part of the Stormwind culture as the rest of our themes were just given to the Kul Tirans the “other” humans.

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It is sort of an awkward thing, as Kul Tiras was settled by immigrants FROM Gilneas. So on one hand it makes perfect sense they would have the same themes as they are the same culture… but in game during the whole of BFA that is never touched upon.

As mentioed above I think part of it is Stormwind human culture is a black hole that the Gilneans fell into. I think the Gilneans would be a WHOLE LOT better off if Blizzard would just give them back Gilneans after Shadowlands. Just say it was reclaimed and cleaned up during the time skip.

Turalyon is already talking about reclaiming lost bastions for the Alliance, and I am pretty sure given who he is he is NOT talking about the current Alliance, after all.

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I admittedly squealed a little when Genn told Anduin Yeah, we’re going to help the one race who actually gives a damn about us :gift_heart:

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Exactly. It is mentioned that Kul’Tiras was settled by former Gilneans thousands of years ago or whatever, but that is it… it never gets touched upon or brought up after that. There is no commonality between the two, no, “Ah you are our sister nation.” type deal, they just steal the Gilnean themes and that is that.

Meanwhile, as you said, the Gilneans are just sucked into the blackhole that is Stormwind. I really blame this on Genn being Anduin’s lapdog. With him there that is all Blizzard cares about so they are content with just having the Gilneans be absorbed by Stormwind and live on their streets, hence why their flag now has the Stormwind logo instead of the Gilneas one. This is made even worse by Tess saying the curse is horrible and doesn’t define them, so the one last thing that made Gilneans unique and different is theoretically being thrown out as presumably the curse is going to die off after this generation of worgen… That’s awesome Blizzard! I totally signed up to be a worgen just to be a furry Stormwind Human!

But I do have some hope, because as you said, Turalyon talks about reclaiming lost Alliance bastions, and again like you said, given he hasn’t been around since the Second War that likely includes Gilneas. Which would be nice. It has always annoyed me that Genn has been okay with his people just squatting while the Alliance does nothing to help them get their lands back, at least the Kaldorei were kind enough to let them live with them, the rest of the Alliance can kick rocks.

I did too. I wish he was a little more stern about it, instead of being a wimp to not hurt Anduin’s precious feelings, but overall I enjoyed the message that Genn basically chose Tyrande and the Kaldorei over the rest of the Alliance.

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it is often easy to forget that my character and other worgen are supposed to be gilnean, because gilneas as a culture is pretty much non-existent. being a refugee race for over 9 years certainly doesnt help in that

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I was typing up a whole bunch of stuff and realized it’s things I’ve already said before in other threads, but it did make me realize one additional thing that the worgen effectively had pinched from them. Void Elves.

My reasoning is that worgen already had problems where they don’t get to “own” their own lore since it’s all night elf stuff, and Dard already well-covered their human side being developed as Kul’tiras. And unless Blizzard decides to make one alliance race attack another, the worgen are incapable of exploring the two most common werewolf fantasy gimmicks of “peekaboo I’m not a human” and “I’ll turn you into one of us.”

But there was ONE thing they could still uniquely call their own on the alliance, and that was their mental state. You wouldn’t know it unless you either read Wolfheart (or have someone tell you if you didn’t, like I had to) but the balance ritual from the starting zone was partially retconned into just being a sort of clarity booster shot that could fail. This still sucks a bit, because it took away from the Gilneans’ own ability to manage their curse with Krennan’s tonic, but at least it was still something. But now that theme of managing a psychosis is probably going to be split with, or perhaps completely overtaken by void elves.

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at the end of the day gilnean’s really dont have a identity anymore, even other races who were screwed over by blizzard still have some semblance of an identity. gilneans are just furry stormwindians with an accent

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It makes me so sad too really. We truly have nothing to call our own.

Being honest, i wish playable nelf worgen was a thing too. And non worgen gilneans as well.

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might as well at this point, blizzard already gave away everything else that was gilnean.

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That’s a bit of a mixture of an alternate setting and that Blizzard would rather continue with new continents and realms than going back to old ones. If Gilneas was never blighted, or if they’re resettlement was more featured and expanded upon, it could definitely fit that ‘Witchwood’ theme. The ‘werewolves’ went back to their home, but a whole lot of other evil things festered there or returned as well.

But since more toned back stories in the mainland isn’t the story they want to tell, all that go poured into Drustvar.

Having the Gilneans reclaim Gilneas would be an easy way to make this happen. Since many of the Worgen that attacked Gilneas were Kaldorei, it would be cool to see Gilneas reclaimed and the Kaldorei Worgen taking up residence in the Blackwald, maybe with other Night Elf refugees as well.

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