As a Nelf fan, I am not sure why you would support the deconstruction of Nelf lore and their cultural identity.
So what follows is just my personal viewpoint on this since at the end of the day races are allocated by Blizzard based on gameplay, variety and the narrative value and balance they see with them.
Firstly I think BEs are fine as they are. I donāt see the point in any BE āSubracesā. I dislike the Void Elves because I think their lore is kind of silly and bordering on emo and to a lesser extent because I dislike Blizzard potentially legitimising the Allianceās claims to horde stuff. Whatever else you might have through about the Nightborne, they didnāt suddenly give the Horde a legitimate claim to Teldrassil. I honestly think if they were going to add a BE sub race they should have just gone with High Elves since they were highly demanded by Alliance players and we have already had to put up with them.
As for the Nightborne, really they could have gone either way. I will say this. Nightborne arenāt really any more Night Elves, apart from appearance, than Blood Elves are Night Elves. Put aside appearance they have different cultural, ideological and political standpoints. Yes the Night Elves allowed the Highborne of Dire Maul back into their society but under the condition they conform to the Night Elf way of life and that their use of magic was strictly regulated. Even the Moon Guard we see would have been outcasts from NE society back 10 years which is probably why they are not connected to the general NE society even when they live so close to Valāsharah.
At the end of the day any popular neutral race taking a side is going to be contentious and the Nightborne certainly were. However I feel it should be said that Nightborne are less similar to Night Elves than High Elves are to Blood Elves and the idea of the High Elves all joining up with the Horde was not received well by the High Elf fanbase.
I feel I should also add I really hope we donāt get any more Undead allied races. I have zero faith blizzard can distinguish them without either making them moody versions of the living races or typecasting them. My greatest fears with Calia is the moment she turns up the Forsaken will either get Caliaafided or she will take over the undead narrative completely and the forsaken will get only rolled out when they need someone to play a bad guy undead.
āWe are going to start a story dealing with undeath and death magic. Quick, we need to introduce an Alliance undead character for Horde players to follow around in neutral content.ā
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And maybe to annoy Maiev as well.
Just a different kind of Night Elf fan. I started out back in Vanilla and wasnāt really into the Night Elf stuff, I just wanted to play a Druid - and didnāt want to play a Tauren. So from Vanilla through Wrath I played as a Night Elf that had left home to see more of the world and get a broader view of things. That was to say, I played World of Warcraft for the World rather than any one specific aspect of it. It wasnāt until Cataclysm that I connected with the Night Elves after playing through the Kalimdor revamp and falling in love with the Night Elves kicking tail and taking their land back. And have been in live with the Night Elves through Cataclysm, Mists, Legion, and BfA ever since.
If you can imagine, I was not happy with then results of the War of the Thorns.
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If you are willing to have the aspect that defines everything nelves are, completely erased and undermined, then you are not a Nelf fan.
Noā¦heās just not YOUR kind of Night Elf fan. Donāt be a gatekeeper. This also goes to those who think the only proper representation of Night Elf was from Warcraft 3.
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I mean it. If you are willing to erase everything that defines a race, then you are not actually a fan of that race because you donāt actually care about the things that race is about.
Or he feels that other aspects of the race are more important in the present context of the game. The Night Elf presentation of Warcraft 3 was like the Vulcans of Star Trek:Enterprise, a powerful race clearly sure of their own self-superiority and more than a little touch of xenophobia.
Things HAVE changedā¦especially for players in which WOW is the first and only experience they have of Night Elves.
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If you donāt care about the cultural identity of a particular race, then you are not a fan of that race. Period.
As a fan of the Sindorei since WC3, I feel Void Elves are a bit of an insult to Sindorei, and Horde lore.
With their introduction, we know many Sindorei always wanted to be Alliance, and that they are willing to study the path of Darākhan Drathir. It really cheapens the lessons of the past.
To a Blood Elf player such as myself, it made me feel as if Blizzard were taking a wrecking ball to Sindorei lore, just to give a piece of it to the Alliance.
Having said that - Alliance races are unappealing. Except Void Elves. They are alright. I have two level 120 Void Elves.
As a Blood Elf player, lore wise, Void Elves are an insult. But Gameplay wise - I am glad there is at least one race in the Alliance I find appealing to play as.
That could be a motivating factor for Blizzard - to get people to experience the other Faction with a familiar, popular race.
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I knew Nightborne were perfect for the horde the minute I met them. I thought, these guys are bloodelves 2.0 but even MORE into magic.
The second I heard Alleria get told that her race has an affinity for void magic I thought, incoming void rangers. It was surprising to see them as an allied race, but they were BE so that directly answers everyone asking why the BE donāt rejoin the alliance.
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To be fair, I had played Warcraft III, and I didnāt like Tyrande in it. Iāve come to like her ever since Valāsharah, but I didnāt like her before. I always liked Cenarius and Malfurion more. Illidanā¦ well, I wish he could have been better integrated into Night Elf society in Legion. He hasā¦ issues, to say the least, but I wish he really could have lived up to supposedly caring about the Night Elves after everything he did for them (and for himself).
And what is that cultural identity? Iām trying to remind you that Warcraft 3 is no longer the sole definer of that identity. WOW itself has gone long enough that new generations of Champions have arisen whose experience is far different than those who preceded them. Night Elves are being taught the arcane. Theyāve even invited another race to live among them. Welcoming the Worgen would have been unheard of to the Night Elves of the ancient Empire, as well as those who determinendly kept those not of their kind away from their lands in Kalimdor. The Night Elves have been in an arrested state for a very long time. to quote a Hellscreamā¦ āTimes change.ā
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Ah good. We have all the prominent Night Elf posters in one thread.
Someone go get the catapults.
-On a more serious note, I can understand how much it must suck to be a Night Elf fan looking forward to Nightborne, only for it to go to team āKilling you since Vanillaā.
This especially so because of Void Elves. Apparently made from whole cloth, one canāt help but get the feeling that the decision to give the Horde Nightborne came first, and Void Elves second. Not saying thatās how it happened. But one can definitely get the impression.
That said, I donāt see Horde Nightborne as an entirely bad thing either. I am not a Night Elf fan, a Nightborne fan, or even a Blood Elf fan. So I canāt really weigh in on topics like this.
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A Matriarchal Theocracy dedicated to the preservation of the Balance of Nature. That should not be taken away from the Night Elvesā¦ It is the only thing that differentiates them from any other elf. Having them abandon that completely ruins the race, and to express the desire for it means you donāt actually care about Nelf lore.
Oh snap. Am I considered one of the prominent Night Elf posters now? Did Story Forum-sempai finally notice me?
Catapults.
- *Shakes fist.*
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I understand the message you are conveying, but what exactly does āalaā mean? Iāve never heard it before, and Google isnāt helping.
I might be a minority among troll players, but not really. My first impression was that they and Kulātirans were the only ones that look like they had any actual work put into them, until I saw that they were based off of night elf animations and now Iām put off on the whole concept of allied races. Iām sure the back-end of unifying the race skeletons was a lot of work, but the presentation makes the whole thing look like a lazy cash-in for everything shown so far. Likeā¦woo, tauren with different horns. Recolored orcs. Anyone excited by that is just comically easy to please.
If anything, I got a little salty that their addition meant trolls wouldnāt get an option to stand up straight(er) either. But I guess I can see how some troll fans would be hyped up to play zandalari, since their existence in WoW has pretty much been ātrolls except these ones donāt suckā.
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I wanted amani.
One side was going to be salty no matter what happened with the Nightborne. They looked like Night Elves and shared their architecture weāve seen in all the ruins, but theyāre culturally similar to Blood Elves. Not to mention both sides spent a lot of time helping them during Legion.
Void Elves probably had more customization options than the other 3 allied races combined. Alliance High Elf fans were just looking for things to be outraged over
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