I thought they turn into wisps that remain on Azeroth when they die?
I’m confused
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ret cons are ret cons
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A shame the living Night Elves won’t be able to use their souls as slaves to build up structures as they did back in the WC days.
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Wisps are kind of a mystery spot in lore. We don’t really know much about them. Are they connected to Aessina? Do only certain elves become wisps and other go to the SL? Or do they all do it? Is Elune involved or the Aspect blessings on the trees? Questions questions.
For now I’d just assume they’re in the Maw.
You release a bunch of them from Torghast so yes the Night Elves all wound up in the Maw.
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it was all our imagination. Old lore is deleted now.
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It’s complicated and magical. The shadowlands and “reality” are pressed tightly against each other and our journey into Oribos is only showing our mortal minds only a 5-zone sliver of the infinite realms that handle various afterlife-like existances.
I imagine there are actually a lot of grey areas where spirits wander at the edges of shadowlands close to reality in various limbos before or after being picked by kyrians (or other retrieval orders that might exist).
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I’m gonna say that Blizzard likely just didn’t think about this particular thing. They decided on an Afterlife expansion and didn’t want to make exceptions for a race that already had a spirit thing going on.
That said, they could always tie it back in so it makes sense. New lore is new lore. Wisps are essentially spirits, yeah? So maybe their connection to Elune allows them to have a limited presence in the realm of the living or something while their soul is technically still in the Shadowlands. Whatever. A sentence or two like that is all we really need for it to work. Wouldn’t be that different from Druids delving into the Emerald Dream / Nightmare.
Or maybe Wisps are ephemeral in nature. Elf dies, that’s the spirit that lingers until the Kyrian eventually come to ferry the soul to the Shadowlands.
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clearly the soul is split in twain.
one soul half goes to the Shadowlands
one soul half becomes a wisp
We don’t like to discuss our dead slave labor.
Especially when we turn them into sem-sentient, walking, sometimes talking, trees that thirst only for training or protecting their alive kin.
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Yeah it’s pretty weird.
Even as a night elf when we die in Azeroth or other planets we enter wisp form. Somehow in Shadowlands we do still keep the movement speed but it’s odd that we don’t look like a wisp.
Only theory I could imagine is there is a force that transforms us into wisps and which somehow has been suppressed by Sylvanas/Jailor.
-night elf on most characters
How about when Super Saiyan Deer Man used the souls of the dead as a shield at the north frontier of Ashenvale? Seems the Jailer could learn a thing or two from the Night Elves.
Is that better than slave labor?
The maw is a cosmic frostmourne. Imagine it sucking up wisps.
I think its like orc shaman spirits that are only supposed to be in nagrand. This expansion they just said all that died end up here and ignored past story. You can see the spirits at the crystal mountain in outland nagrand.
That’s another thing the Night Elves like to gloss over, much like the fact that Tyrande crowned herself the ruler of the Night Elves, and demanded every Elf submit to Elune. She also exiled the ones that might question her ways or had the power to oppose her.
The icing on the cake has to be how she had a Secret Police Force to ensure her rule was unquestioned. The Wardens frequently killed any Night Elf who dared use magic, and then shamed the surviving family members, even if they were innocent.
All of this is playable in Classic WoW btw. Check Desolace out.
Oh and the Wardens also incarcerated a mass of Blood Elf Demon Hunters who never were subject to the Night Elves laws in the first place. TBH if I were Rommath or Lor’themar, I would of demanded their immediate release as soon as I caught wind of it.
In the very likely event that the Night Elves didn’t comply, I’d of just sent Lady Liadrin and the Blood Knights in to burn the entire Vault down with stolen light energy, showing them that Sun > Moon; and then execute every Warden as a legitimate military target. I mean the Blood Knights did more to the Silver Hand for less. Would of been very cool.
Let’s face it. If you tell a group of people to leave their homeland, and they do, and THEN you invade their new homelands and sabotage their Arcane Sanctums “just because”; as well as then arrest a bunch of their people who are not subject to your laws; simply because the Night Elf Secret Police dislikes who taught them…
Be glad Teledrassil was as far as it went.
A good culling of Shadowsong and her Wardens would of been way over justified. It also would of also made a solid reason for why the Blood Elves and Alliance finally fully cut their ties. Bolvar would of heard that the Blood Elves invaded some vault and slaughtered a bunch of Wardens and made off with a mass of fel-crystals.
The Blood Elf Demon Hunters did not have to be released immediately, but leaving any asset in enemy hands is incompetence; and the Night Elves had no claim on those specific individuals. It could of been a fascinating bit of story for either before or after Kael’thas death.
I guess Wisps really were only good for hygiene after all, to wax the Warcraft III joke.
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Hey you don’t need to tell me Night Elves are far from saints, using souls as slave labor is only the tip of the iceberg.
But after playing this game for 11 years, I know well that every single bad thing done by any, and I mean literally, any Alliance race, will be glossed over, painted as “not as bad” or retconned, because an Alliance race looking “flawed” would be a terrible crime.
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Remember when the Ironforge Dwarves built Bael Modan, after killing with explosives any and all indigenous Tauren, for simply wanting to remain on their own lands? Gann Stonespire remembers…
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I still find it hilarious that the Dark Irons summoned the freaking Firelord over a family feud and then let him be for 300 years 
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And this.
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I think they just made that the Night Elves have a special interaction due to their connection to nature - In other words, the whole rebirth thing in Ardenweald is very much real for them, go to Ardenweald, serve them for a while, you are reborn in the Emerald Dream and eventually re-summoned by your kin in the waking world to be used to make things and burn trees.
That’s at least how I see it, I doubt they gave any explanation.