Has Blizzard Always Hated Night Elves?

I think anyone who thinks Blizzard hates any race in the setting is reaching to confirm their own biases and dissatisfaction with the story.

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They also underestimated that Zekhan will become popular from first cinematic.
That doesn’t mean anything. They were so sure Saurfang will be a star, but Zekhan stole the show.

And really by the amount of massive lore they got they’re definitely NOT hated.
Plenty of races received far worse treatment than they did.
Especially the trolls.
This annoying nelf QQ really needs to stop.

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I’ve been ignoring this bait thread and inflammatory stabs at certain posters most of the night, but so far i think Poised here sums it up best (also welcome to the best elf race).

I’d probably add in that some developers seemingly have a misogynistic bias that comes out whenever the Night elves come up, but i attribute that mostly to a group of guys favoring stories that involve testosterone poisoning and not bothering to ask if women have facets of said genre they like (and we do). Ever since Warcraft became WoW, they have been trying to erase or marginalize the original gender roles. However Blizzard’s trend of using the night elves as victims has the unfortunate trend of motivating people of baser instinct and fostering some very toxic subcultures and tropes.

Ita often said that you can tell the quality of a game setting by how they treat long-lived races in it. Look at the Elder Scrolls and Final Fantasy for good examples of this trend.

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Simple thing: If you hate something or don’t like it, you don’t normally talk about it or want to be involved in it.

Blizzard just seems to be completely out of touch what people really like.
They do thought NEs would like being the center of the story and thus being involed extremly since the biggest critique allwys is that it is too much human driven. Yet they failed completely because they involved them by being basically kicked in the teeth. They failed to deliver the story they probably wanted:
NEs being attackes, they have ahuge setbakc and then continue with even greater ferocity" -> implied of NEs basically are half of the striking power of every Alliance war in BFA. But tehy completely failed to tell that story.

Also Blizzard is buiding extremely beautyful Assets currently for NEs. With legion they started and now look at darkshore the few buildings that arent destroyed, they are beautyfull.
Yet blizzard somehow fails to deliver on that as their storys allways revovle around destruction, never around building.

Don’t think they hate NEs, I mean blizzard is composed probably of the same people the wow community is.
And on Alliance side we have like 40% NE fans for example. This will be the same case for Blizzard.

Blizzard just has one issue: Its writing team is ether a complete and utter fail, or the thing the writers come up with can’t be implended an dhave to be watered down and cut to such an extend that the story is no longer transportable and paints a completely different picture.

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IMO, this is kind of the fundamental problem with using an MMO solely for story advancement. The strategy/narrative approach used in WC3 was better for introducing the NE’s. However, there was no way they could remain anything close to what they were in WC3, especially after 16 years of expansions. The night elves are fundamentally static characters in a static civilization; Varian, Genn, Jaina, and Anduin get most of the story development not because they’re better characters, but because they’re capable of change.

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I mean, I’m a walking, talking, playable product of immense societal change in Night Elven culture.

The writer’s just never capitalized on the upheaval, beyond Maiev getting a bit stabby (which they later just dropped). Before jumping right back to the Varian saga.

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I disagree.

NE were probably teh race that has the most cultural changes inflicted upon them but blizz was unable to tell that story proberly:

Preamble: NE society was formed out of fear against the Burning legion could return and find a way to Azeroth -> Thus magic was prohobited as it functioned as a beacon for the Legion in the Nether. The whole NE society thus revolved around banning magic and replacing it with druidism to counter the addiction.

With Illidan and parts of the NEs not being able to follow that and get over their addiction he created a new Well of eternity on the Hyjal hence teh term Betrayer.
After that the NE society revovled around protecting that Well so it cannot be and be used and thus luring the burning legion to azeroth.
NE thus oathed to insolate itself around the Hyjal and started the long vigil. The sole protecting of the well.

This long vigil ended in WC3 with the arrival of the Burning legion again, the incident the NE wanted to prevent and for what they have prepared. This is why Medivh has sent the other races to Kalimdor.

Now with WC3 Ending the first cultural change was that NEs had to give up their siolation yet continued their long vigil as the Burning legions thread was still at hand.
Thus the NEs had to again engage in what happens around them in the world.
Next was cataclysm where their past again started to haunt them. Deathwing was involved in teh War of the Ancients and NEs defeated him (with the other aspects). Now he was back and threatend the Well again as well of the world.
Also NEs accepted the Highborn back into their ranks with harsh restrictions. Mainly because their ban on magic would be futile anyway as they realized the rest of Azeroth didn’t care and were able to use magic.

Then the next big cultural change happend with Legion:
The burning egion was finally defeated and with it the sole reason for the long vigil, protection of the well of eternity and the sole ban on magic.

With BFA then a new change happend with the burning of Teldrassil, thus teh reduction of NE numbers and their realization that they are back at war with world ending factions. A full circle they are again back where they started after the War of the Ancients where they now have to redefine themselves and how they want to continue in the world.

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Only the title is bait. I make good headlines!

I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about here. My comment in the OP isn’t actually a jab, but a respectful shout out.

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Ok, so I was partially wrong.

The Night Elves have changed over the years. But on the other hand, those changes are not popular with the playerbase. How many times in this forum have people gone off on the devs for screwing up the NE storyline? Really, to work with the game as it is, Night Elves more or less have to be purple-skinned humans; the WC3 Night Elves are more in line with what the playerbase want, but it’s difficult if not impossible to make them work as members of a faction.

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I wouldn’t say that actually.
The problem was (beside BFA this one was a dumpster fire) that these changes were not properly explained and introduced.

It just makes no sense when you are for 10k years in isolation that you suddenly embrace the “human potantial” or stuff like that. I would have wanted more resolute behaviour for Nelves. Showing them distanced, maybe cold, alien.

But they were just basically portraited as Alliance High elves and that was not well received yes.

Also a lot of these stories came with strange things like NEs suddenly forgot how to fight or what they were doing for 10k years.

Basically this yes. The cultural changes that have been inflicted upon Nelves were reasonable but their reaction was not.
They shoudl have allways been more of like a distant member of the Alliance , while doing basically their own stuff. A bit like Forsaken have been before. They wwere somehow Horde but … actually doing their own buisness and even from times acting against their own faction.

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Its always about the nightelves. They should stop being ungrateful all the time. You get more then enough attention. Let some other races their time to shine for once. For example Undead and blood elves.

Like after Val’shara you get yet another nelf themed zone for yourself. Ardenweald.

Blood Elves get to talk to Kael’thas and like 2 of the Shadowlands zones are spooky and fit right in with Undead.

Also your posts are what I would make if I wanted to mock the Story Forums. :v:

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I hope Draka and Kael join the horde and help healing the damagest character roster the Horde suffered doing the latest few years.

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Or you post banzai about it. The most vocal posters I see in Star Trek Discovery groups are from those who loathe the show.

The Greeks, misogynists that they were, created the theme as monsters for their heroes to overcome. Just about all of the big names had an encounter with them as either enemy or ally.

That’s the real irony, the creation of the Amazons is one of the oldest relics of male misogyny that persists to the present day.

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This has always been the case for the good guys of ANY Blizzard story! Overwatch destroyed, Tristam in ruins, James Raynor a fugitively holding his rebellion together with duck tape, the list goes on and on. It takes years before the good guys in Blizzard stories actually manage to make a positive change in the world and even then usually at a huge cost. At the very least for the night elves they managed to get back Darkshore at the end of BFA(the only problem Blizzard has is showing rather then telling of the victory).

Because Azeroth is a world in near constant crisis! Obviously, most of the places in the world usually end up destroyed rather then repaired!

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Okay. I’ve taken a step back. Hmm. Don’t see much different. Most of the Night Elf stuff that you guys tell people to be so happy with is repeatedly not the themes that “fans” of the Night Elves ask for. It’s more boopity boop hehe fairies! Or “We are ghosts of Azsharas past x1000” Zillionith time repeated.

:point_down:

And, pretty clearly they aren’t!

And part of the misogynistic theme seems to be tearing them down and taming them so to speak, hmm :thinking:

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Night Elf fans are a huge group of people with varying opinions; I’m not sure they or any races fanbase are in a consensus of what they want.

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I just made a new Worgen character after losing my old account (as you can see to the left) and they love the Night Elves so much that half of the story of Worgen at the beginning, and most of it past their starting zone, is based around, you guessed it, the Night Elves!

I remember doing the Worgen story myself and the Night Elves don’t come into it until towards the end of the Gilneas story.

It’s mostly Genn that does the gushing and that’s actually more offscreen in the form of the short story.

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