I got a nice mount of it …yay I guess.
So did we I guess … yay? Though to be fair, as cool as that bat mount is there aren’t any good Purple sets for chain really. Outside of maybe the Darkshore Epic Warfront one, and I REFUSE to wear full sets. So I wont wear that since there aren’t any other sets to match it.
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Suddenly, my avatar is all shiny. 
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What?! 9000?!?
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I did it on my horde main at the time as that was the only toon I had at max level. The bat mount is pretty sick tho. I didn’t enjoy the questing because horde were bad guys again and I don’t play this game to feel bad about myself. It’s why I refuse to quest through BFA on horde toons anymore.
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The Alliance players joined their faction to be heroes, and instead are victims. The Horde player joined their faction to also be heroes, but instead are villains. Fun … fun.
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I’ve never used the bat mount, and I don’t intend to. Whoever called it the “villain bat” was right.
(I only did the Alliance side of the WoT anyway.)
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It was the superior narrative of the two. Horde side had the most inconsistencies and the pay-off ends after the tree burns.
The quest to try and rescue all the citizens on an impossible time limit is probably one of the only times where it incorporated gameplay into controllable helplessness and I loved it.
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Whoever called it the “villain bat” was right.> Blockquote
Ba dum tis.
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Hi. Me again. I want to look at northern Kalimdor next since both that whole area and northern Eastern Kingdoms seems to be the two primary points of contention when we discuss development. Pssst Night Elves, this is where you can actually have input and Im asking for it. Unlike the other 4,700 posts. Area development is rebuilding the Horde as, clearly, the majority of core area content has not be updated since Cata and even the BFA mission table events were mostly Cata events 2.0. The goal here is to give up the least amount of ancestral land in some areas, regain as much land as possible all around, while also allowing coherent gameplay.
- Teldrassil is restored through some prepatch/expansion questing, Darnassus is rebuilt (not that fire really gets rid of stone, but hey) and you take your boat to Darkshore as you have to rebuild and reestablish that as well. Its a great place for Draenei and other Alliance input to Marshall Plan that place back together.
- In Ashenvale The Horde is pushed back further leaving only really the southeastern corridor. We keep Splintertree post, Warsong Hold, and Demon Fall Canyon. Zoram’gar is lost, permanently. The Alliance, and therefore Night Elves, control about 75% of Ashenvale while allowing the Horde a questing place, and just enough road to get up to Felwood to continue working the Emerald Circle. A bridge is created over the Great Divide (the molton canyon that splits Northern and Southern Barrens) to allow access to Stonetalon and the Tauren. Further allowing Night Elves to have a deeper control over Ashenvale and keeping the Horde away. The goal is to not use mass conflict as development.
- Felwood retains itself as a primarily Night Elf zone, and allows for ground access into Winterspring, and eventually Hyjal, for Horde players. The primary folks people work with is the Emerald Circle to further restore the land. We’re talking all druids, all night elves, with a few token trolls, orcs, and tauren, from Felwood all the way up to Timbermaw Hold. Its a great opportunity to expand Horde druid practices and representation in the Cenarian Circle, a chance to collaborate with the Earthen Ring, and a token of good will/repentance for Felwood and small amends for WoT/Teldrassil. This also keeps the Horde further south and away.
- Winterspring is… yep. Ya got me there. Northern expedition archeology with the elves? Night Elves, Highborne, High Elves, Void Elves, Blood Elves, and Nightborne just shanagizing each other?
- Hyjal ends the northern Kalimdor/Night Elf/druidy leveling story. Its full on Cenarian Circle and Defenders of Hyjal. I’m looking at a 5:1 Night Elf to other ratio, if not higher. Its routing out remaining Twilight Cultists, demons, restoring the land, dealing with Sulfaron Spire, maintaining/rebuilding shrines. Root out Druid of the Flame, Druid of the Fang, and other Nightmare affiliated druids infiltrating the circle. Just ideas.
What this ultimately does for the Horde is provide opportunity to expand our own druidic practices and associate one of the primary Alliance centered neutral orgs with the other earth/nature caring organizations that is seemingly Horde centered. We see them working together in Sillithus at the sword, why not elsewhere? It can also allow for exploration into Alliance shamanism.
It allows for Elven collaboration, and rivalry, in Winterspring. 10,000 year old grudges do not disappear over night. Also allows the Reliquary more action. Everlook I dont think should go anywhere either. So a good neutral town in the middle of it.
The Horde gets their small lumber operations in Ashenvale, which have been happening for decades anyway, while also holding a memorialized area. Keeping that to Mor’shan allows for continued WSG story continuation, small skirmishes against unofficial/radical/auxiliary forces, which retains an identity and contention of sorts at the borderlands.
Most importantly, it largely separates the Kalimdor Horde away from the larger Night Elf body to develop independently, neither side relying on each other for further development. It can remain an undercurrent, sure, but not a primary reason. WoT won’t be well forgotten and rebuilding towns with a few extra walls or watch posts just kinda make sense.
Im also here for the Teldrassil/Hyjal trade. Working through all that is kinda a nightmare however, though I have some inklings on how to do so. Thats more of an Night Elf question though, rather than what does for the Horde.
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I want to pick this part out of the proposal having gone through the rest of it - because it seems to rely on a cooperation that I don’t think should really exist given everything that’s happened.
I explained this in a different thread, but the story of the Night Elves in World of Warcraft has been of them putting faith in institutions like the Cenarion Circle, the Alliance, and Thrall’s Horde and watching every one of these groups betray them, ranging from the Cenarion Circle’s historical neglect of a people whose soldiers they count on to protect what’s important to them, to the Alliance both not assisting during the War of the Thorns outside of the evacuation and not wanting to take their territories back because they were too busy securing interests that were important to Stormwind, to the Horde repeatedly invading them for resources, and later, out of pure racial paranioa.
I don’t think it makes sense for the Night Elves to be as open in trusting especially the Horde in the post WoT environment - not enough that we’d see the return of the Cenarion Circle in any meaningful capacity. Certainly not enough that they would tolerate any Horde presence in Ashenvale, which isn’t just sacred to them, but is a critical territory for them to control for their own security. They also must attend to that security lest they either become the victim of another war of extermination, or contend with abandoning their home of ten-thousand years - neither of which strike me as acceptable options.
I realize that Northern Kalimdor is where lots of things have been happening, but Horde development is going to have to turn south, and one consequence of the War of the Thorns I think has to be that they never have good relations with the Night Elves again - not even between them and the Tauren. (I mean, let’s face it, it took Derek for Baine to say something? Not Teldrassil? … and what about their active participation in the War of the Thorns? That’s not a friend, that’s an adversary.)
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I understand your point about gameplay mechanics and quest areas, but I still have to say this:
Teldrassill should stay as it is now, it should become a memorial, and Hyjal should become the new main hub instead. Maybe there will be a kind of “genuflection to Teldrassil” at some point as a development.
I think the night elves - after they have shown good will several times now - should finally get some kind of real reconstruction. Ashenvale, Felwood, Darkshore and Hyjal should be established as core zones, about this narrow strip in Ashenvale one can possibly talk, because for questing reasons the Horde also needs quest areas.
What I don’t believe is that the night elves will ever trust the Horde or Horde-neutral factions enough to be welcome at Hyjal. Even the earthen ring shaman who brought thrall there needed a permission in Shadow Rising not to be killed immediately by the night elves.
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There are two considerations for quest areas.
- Lore positioning does not necessarily reflect or have an impact on questing. Teldrassil is gone, but you can still quest there. Ashenvale was wholly within Night Elf hands from at least MOP through Legion, this did not impact Horde questing. These are separate conversations.
- If you must update questing areas, other paths are possible.
It’s for these two reasons that I reject questing as a rationale.
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I feel as if this is the crux of the argument, and its a good argument I agree with. If there wasn’t larger gameplay issues at stake I’d be fully on board with it. However, I didn’t really put in much, if any, real Horde proper development into Northern Kalimdor. The primary attempt was to give the Night Elves enough breathing room to develop independently, allowing the Horde to do the same. The development given was through 3rd party and independent institutions.
However, the Cenarian Circle despite all of what happened during BfA did work with the Earthen Ring throughout. Two neutral factions, each having a particular weight to them as Alliance and Horde respectively, continued cooperation throughout the war. The Emerald Circle as well has gotten little obvious development since Classic. A few characters moved on, but not really.
Winterspring though was an off the cuff idea. I dont think anyone really knows what to do with the area. Its in the heart of Night Elf land, inaccessible any other way, and has the climate that is super jarring to the current Night Elf motif. So what do we do with it?
Similarly, Hyjal during the Cataclysm managed to get races of the Horde and Alliance to work together in the middle of another war through the Cenarian Circle. It is also so far into Night Elf territory with no other real way to get there, beyond portals, that we can’t simply cut if off narratively either to Horde players. The point being here is Horde players, not the Horde as a whole. The Horde as a faction is relegated to the very edges of Ashenvale, in well established posts and a memorial canyon. Narratively, the Night Elves were backed into such a corner that even losing a sliver of the land seems like an egregious offense and there really isn’t a way around that, even when the suggestion comes that the Horde has 0 presence in the other 80% of the zone.
What it comes down it is as much as many Night Elf fans may enjoy the idea of a fully Night Elf controlled Northern Kalimdor from Ashenvale to up to Hyjal, it is not possible for the game we want to play/is developed. An MMO requires zones for its factions to play in. Taking away four zones from the Horde to experience kinda just can’t happen unless we want more unfulfilling contested, but faction controlled, zones like current Hillsbrad, Duskwood, Wetlands or Redridge. 3 of which already have Alliance exclusive content.
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As I stated, the lore status of these zones does not necessarily have to impact questing, and even if it did, there are plenty of opportunities for reshuffling. Accordingly I don’t follow the gameplay arguments on this.
Regarding Cenarion Circle cooperation with the Horde - this was already a source of friction that ended up making the Firelands crisis much worse - due to the Cenarion Circle’s failure to address the Horde’s invasion of Ashenvale, and it’s at that point that I would debate whether on balance the Horde’s participation was of a net gain. At the beginning of BFA, sure, there was joint work to deal with the sword, but that work started before Teldrassil, and that anger that I referenced earlier I imagine would spill over if the Cenarion Circle continued to work with the Horde as though nothing had happened earlier. We’re dealing with a power at this point that has at one time or another made its manifest policy that of exterminating the Night Elves - not taking their territory and resources for their own needs - exterminating them or otherwise trying to “end them as a people”. That’s not something that you just get over, especially when we consider that the Horde never abandoned the ideology that led it down its path, and that many of the council members were complicit in this policy, including Baine.
I do also have to react to this specifically:
Teldrassil should not have been possible on this basis, and yet it still happened. I realize that I’m introducing a far different argument here - one that’s less about lore and more about the meta - but I’m personally getting sick of being the fanbase that has to compromise or sacrifice for other people when they give no such consideration for us. Ashenvale IS the compromise position - something that would actually compensate us for the past eleven years would be something FAR more expansive.
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I dont think rebuilding Teldrassil is a good idea. It sends the wrong message, really. Teldrassil was grown as a mistake of Hubris, which was embraced and blessed despite itself. We do not need to make a repeat, as there are no longer Dragon aspects about to bless it.
Instead, what I would say is the Kaldorei need to rebuild in Hyjal, and the Cenerion circle can just backtrack out of the region.
I would argue that the region of Ashenvale between the Falfarren and Southfury rivers should be permanently demarcated as a demilitarized zone. Each side can build up and fortify along their respective river, but no military or presence or settlement is permitted between the two rivers. That does not stop intrepid adventurers from entering the Ashenvale DMZ, but formally you are on your own as far as the major regional powers are concerned.
Winterspring can remain a neutral/contested zone as no one wants to invest the resources in securing a perpetual frigid wasteland, and the goblin carted settlement there is neutral to the factions.
Darkshore can take up the mantle of the wartorn toxic land needing rejuvination, and Felwood can finally be shown as restored as what it used to be, Northern Ashenvale.
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This is also something that I’ll disagree with, although further discussion might be best for another thread.
There is nothing wrong with the Night Elves taking steps to make life better for their people. They have been asked to sacrifice and dedicate themselves to the protection of Hyjal for the past ten-thousand years. Other peoples are maneuvering to either destroy them or take advantage of them, and they certainly have no reservations about hubris - but the Night Elves are the only ones who self-flagellate and hold themselves to ridiculous standards that include blaming themselves because they happened to get killed in a global Cataclysm (Cata Darkshore Questing), or because the Horde chose to invade them in the most brutal way possible (Elegy - from Tyrande).
Such a DMZ would be a suicidal move for the Night Elves. The Farfallen River isn’t deep enough to present itself as a strong border against the Horde. It worked for Hindenburging them, for a while, it’s not nothing, but it also doesn’t offer an ounce of the defensive capacity that the Southfury River gorge and the mountain range south of Ashenvale would.
Couldn’t the Draenei and worgen build a defensive settlement there instead? It might make the horde think twice about crossing than.
I do not see it as a suicidal move, really, this is why you build up fortification along the full extent of the river. The river becomes part of the fortification, not the fortification itself.
An Ashenvale DMZ would give the Horde a buffer and effectively close off access to Azshara and The Northern barrens by alliance Assets, at the same time providing a buffer for the Kaldorei from further deforestation efforts as well.
The Kaldorei being right in the back yard has fueled a lot of the Horde aggression, and Horde players keep pointing out how close we are. Its an attempt at trying to address both sides without actually giving territory over to the Horde.
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As I stated, the river itself provides poor protection, especially when compared to the river gorge and the mountain range, both of which provide barriers for which there are only a few chokepoints - which presents a far more tenable defensive line than an expansive, and resource intensive wall of fortifications going across relatively flat terrain - which the Night Elves would also have to trust the Horde with when it comes to the matter of whether they’d have the time to actually build such a “Maginot Line” like series of fortifications.
It’s giving the Horde an incalculable advantage.