This is gonna be fun… So Elves are overused. They’ve been a major focal point for 2 expansion now, and it’s starting to wear on people. The War of the Ancients seems to be the only historical war blizzard cares about, their characters have been a common presence since the first part of legion, and the most important battleground this expansion has been Northern Kalimdor. I know we’ve had the story be dominated by soyfang and sadmoore, but to ignore the elfafant in the room because their is a blue whale is not gonna solve either problem. This is bad in the long term for several reason, so i’ll just explain it bit by bit.
It makes the rest of the fanbase not want to see more elves. It’s really simple, you overuse something, people get tired of it and want something new
Less races get potential development, and if they do, they may circle back to being about elves. The Tauren are the big example here, with our moosemen, the Highmountain, having their history go directly to the War of the Ancients and Cenaruis, two very Nelfy things. This is bad for both sides, as Tauren players want unique lore, and Night Elf Players likely do not want their lore “Stolen”. Or how all the new forsaken character have been pretty undead Elves, not rotten undead humans, both Forsaken and Night Elf Players have said very bad things about what they think of Sira and Delaryn.
If it is bad lore, the rest of the playerbase likely won’t care, and still not want it properly fixed. It’s a lot harder to sympathize with pissed off nelf fans when they actually have blizzard working on them. It would be hard to tell a Troll fan that the Night Elves are in desperate need of fixing when they can rather effectively argue they get treated worse for the few times they do show up. This just breeds bitterness and divide in the fanbase. This is also likely a major reason so many people hate the idea of high elves, we already have 4 elven races competing for screentime, making another playable one just means less lore for other races in favor of slightly different elves.
You wind up just rehashing the same story over and over again. How many times have we had an “Elves get wrecked and need to reavulate their society” story by now? 3, 4 times? It’s as overused as the “Horde Needs to find its soul” and “How can Jaina be so Sad” storylines. This is especially Dumb when you remember the Mana Hunger plot used in Legion was the exact same as the one in Burning Crusade.
Ultimately, Elf Fatigue is a major part of why the playerbase is so divided. If the Elves were to sit out an expansion or to, or had purely optional content to fix their problems (Which we should have more of in general tbh), i think it could give both sides a much needed break. Elves won’t have to worry about being Worfed and the writers can actually begin thinking of new interesting stories for them, and other races can finally be developed.
Part of the issue with the night elves is they didn’t even get proper resolution. They’re the puppy the horde kicks to start the war yet this story on the alliance side is dominated by humans.
Mostly though I’d say it was just Legion that was super elf heavy. Having Suramar full of elves and three other zones having some old night elf lore attached. I don’t think BFA has ‘too many elves’ or anything.
Some other races are lacking devleopment though for sure. But if anything we need a bit more elf in BFA to justify the night elves being the punching bag for it and giving their part of the story closure/development.
Sorry, but what Elves? They’re not really a big part of this expansion.
The Night Elves (who by any metric should have been a huge part) have been sidelined almost entirely. The Horde’s Elves play a role in the Nazjatar intro and then disappear.
I guess Sylvanas is an Elf, but you barely interact with her at all, it’s all Nathanos and Voss.
I do agree that night elves need closure, I’d never argue for any race to receive bad lore, just that i’d like them to wait it out for an expansion or two while we focus on other races/non-elf storylines.
I do think Elves in general have been pretty prevelant this expansion, even if they’re not the Primary focus. War of the Thorns, the fact Sylvanas is the main antagonist and as such will show up a lot to taunt people, Darkshore, and Azshara are all very elfy in either elf background lore or just elves in general.
Once again, not the main focus but have a decent presence.
I think that’s fair. Legion did have a LOT of elf stuff, mostly night elf and neutral nightborne and not as much blood elf, but a lot of night elves/nightborne. I wouldn’t be opposed to night elves getting colosure here and getting a new home to start rebuilding and then taking a backseat for a while.
Major part implies that if it was gone the divide would have been lessened and I absolutely do not agree with that.
You could replace every elf with another race in every role they played this expansion and nothing would have changed in terms of the playerbase’s reaction.
I have Human fatigue but sadly I’m stuck with them no matter the expansion or patch or continent. There is always humans so unless they do something about it first leave my elves alone.
Night Elves are really the only elves who get consistent screen time but quite a bit of it is just them getting abused.
Nightborne and Void Elves have been around for like 5 minutes and have not been screentime hogs at all.
Blood Elves have been consistently irrelevant since BC. They had a bit of relevance in MOP but not more than Orcs or arguably Trolls. Then one quest line in WOD and a brief appearance at the end of Suramar.
There are significantly larger screen-time hogs than the Elves…
Ignoring the elfafant seems to have been Blizzards strategy in 8.2 and 8.2.5 so far.
And I’d like you to keep experiencing fatigue for now and let the closure happen now, then we can move on for an even longer, continuous break from Elves (or not), rather than anxiously waiting around racking our brains wondering when the Night Elf closure was going to drop.
Blood elves had roles in MOP and WOD, though they weren’t screen time hogs by any means there. Then for 7.1 they were involved in Suramar. Blood elves I think have hit a good middle spot where they’ve been showing up and having rolls but not dominating entire expansions.
Nightborne have had a small roll in BFA but had a very large role in Legion.
I feel like one big issue with night elves in general is that when they do get screen time, it’s either to suffer a terrible loss (usually at the hands of the Horde) or prattle on about history or ghosts or whatever. Current night elves don’t really get much in the way of advancement, just losses or looking backwards. I’m sick of hearing about the War of the Ancients and I’m sick of humans being the ones to swoop in to maybe occasionally vindicate nelves against the Horde by tossing some footmen at some grunts and calling it a day.
Just wanted to piggy back off this and clarify that I’m pleased with the amount of content the Blood Elves get. I wish they had a bit more relevance in Wrath and Legion considering how central Arthas and the Legion are to their story but beyond that I agree that they are sitting in a pretty good middle ground for content between overexposed and forgotten.
Exactly, what Elves. NE’s amounted to getting their faces kicking in by the Horde during the pre expansion event than a single quest chain Alliance side that lasted all of 20 minutes and that’s been it.
And what BE’s? a tiny amount in Naz?
They wanna talk about fatigue what about ORC fatigue and HUMAN fatigue?
Blood elves were mostly used in the Nexus War side of things via Dalaran. And not that involved in fighting Arthas. Similarly, the Forsaken fall off the map after the Wrathgate and the Ebon Blade take on the roll of vengeful undead gunning for the LK. It’s a bit odd looking back. I guess they just hadn’t recovered enough to raise a large army against the LK etc.
Isn’t most of the fan base Elf players? I thought Blood Elves dominated Horde side and Night Elves came in second on Alliance.
Legion certainly had some nice Elfy things which was nice coming off of World of Orcraft: Warlorcs of Draenorc.
But I kind of understand your point, though I’d lean more into everyone having better representation and screen time than saying we’ve reached some sort of saturation point.
The thing about Elf lore is sort of inescapable as much of that - historic events in Azeroth - would naturally revolve around Trolls, Elves, Titans, and Void entities.
