How would you justify new Forsaken/NE cities?

A big thorn in our sides is the fact that the story is limited in the MMO medium due to time constraints and resources.

So how would you justify resources to create new fully functioning cities for the Forsaken and the Night Elves?

i think what might happen is they only get new cities in the lore that only appear in books and are only mentioned ingame

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(Commentary): Unit Exacitor would see the Night Elves relocate to Moonglade, and make Nighthaven their Capital, as it once was. With the Legion order halls, there doesn’t seem to be much need for Moonglade to serve as a location for all Druids to congregate anymore. The only tricky part to this would be the Lunar Festival, but that could be easily answered with a Bronze Dragon nearby to set it to it’s older phase.

(Speculative): As for the Forsaken, I’m torn on this one. I think it depends on where the writers want their story to go. More importantly it should focus on where Forsaken players want their story to go. I’d be open to a Black Citadel, like Naxxramas, becoming their new home; a mobile fortress seems like it’d be very useful for them. At the same time, if the Night Elves aren’t forced off of Kalimdor, why should the Forsaken be forced out of the Eastern Kingdoms? Perhaps making Stratholme into their new city would be the smoothest course of action.

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Forsaken have a perfectly suitable city already, it’s just a bit blighty at the moment.

Why don’t the Forsaken use huge water hoses (or shaman) to wash off the Blight from upper Lordaeron? If Jaina can freeze the Blight, I’m sure it can be diluted severely and washed away too, preferably into the Lordamere lake which is already quite dead.

Edit: I just remembered that Thrall used the spirit of water to wash away blight in the Battle for Undercity.

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For the Forsaken, the justification is that new member of the Undead community, Derek Proudmoore, convinces his sister to allow the Forsaken to move into the ruins of Theramore.

It’s a very nice location for them. It’s in the middle of Horde territory, as well as a creepy swamp, and everyone there is already dead. And if Derek lives there, he can say he’s taking care of it in his family’s name.


For the Night Elves, the justification is that Elune wasn’t just easing the pain of the NEs during the burning of Teldrassil, she was teleporting them to the Moon. And when we finally get to the expansion where we all have to go to the Moon, we’ll find that the NEs Elune teleported there have already built a new city for their people.

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Rule of cool strikes again!

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Yes, I find these days a lot of the historical record surrounding that particular scenario has been lost to the sands of time. It’s a good thing Blizzard doesn’t employ people to actually keep track of these things, some kind lore historians (coughtheydocough).

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I don’t think I could justify a fully functioning city for each. No, I’ll rephrase - they shouldn’t get fully fresh, newly built and designed cities. The most reasonable thing I can think of is one that has twofold benefits.

Gilneas will get restored, with night elves moving in there. There would be additions of night elven architecture across the city as well, obviously. Now, I don’t mean “Gilneas is back and night elves get a hub in one corner of the city” (this would be a good idea in conjunction with the following), instead they would just live as a ‘mixed’ city. I think that would work nicely.

The forsaken would get western Silvermoon (or perhaps somewhere in the Ghostlands?). This would co-incide with the ‘revamp’ or whatever they’d call it; the modernisation perhaps, of the Azeroth BC zones.

I would give these races new cities in an expansion featuring a world revamp, and make them both city and adventure zones like Boralus, Dazar’alor, and Suramar.

Have the pre-patch for their expansion involve a lot of warfront- or Ahn’Quiraj-esque material turn-ins as well as the normal pre-patch stuff, just for flavor. Bring in a bunch of named night elf/Forsaken characters from all over and let them be part of this effort.

For the night elves, I would have them rebuild in Hyjal. The city would include giant marble buildings on the ground level as well as wooden/tree buildings built into the lower trunk of Teldrassil, connected by paths on the World Tree’s great meandering roots. The city would include shrines to different Ancients, and I would put in scheduled vignettes of those Ancients showing up every now and then to collect their offerings, browse the land around the World Tree, and/or speak with their followers. Associated quests could involve obtaining offerings for those shrines, pruning unruly plants, tending the World Tree’s roots or the Well, playing tag with some dryads and wisps, etc.

For the Forsaken, I would have them take Stratholme. Put out the fires (maybe keeping an eternally-burning scrap pile somewhere with a nearby NPC with funny dialogue about it), expand and build a big harbor to rival Stormwind’s, build spooky laboratories on the hillsides, turn a nice crypt into the inn. (For a world revamp, I’d deal with the Argents by having them move their main base to Tirisfal to work on cleaning up the blight, and Light’s Hope is left under Leonid Bartholamew and maaaybe Calia, so it can stay a neutral town but keep the undead aesthetic, just representing the Forsaken who choose to hold onto their old lives rather than go full cackling-apothecary.) Quests in this city could involve helping dredge up more ships in the harbor, fetching limbs for an apothecary stitching together a new abomination, dealing with fallout from some blight experiment gone bad, futilely throwing more buckets of water on that ever-burning pile of rubble to see if it will do anything this time, etc.

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They’re both pretty easy to rebuild, honestly. Malfurion is the strongest druid in history. There’s no reason he couldn’t grow a new Teldrassil out of the charred corpse of the old one and then set his druids to re-growing the old buildings and such.

Meanwhile Undercity really just needs to be cleaned up. If the Cenarion Circle can purify parts of the plaguelands I don’t see why the Horde druids, shamans, and possibly mages couldn’t deal with the Blight.

The unfortunate reality is that Blizzard probably doesn’t want to replace them though. They’ve been trying to force players to abandon the extra cities for years. We’re more likely to see Thunder Bluff and Ironforge get destroyed next than see new cities added.

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I’d justify a new Night Elf city with new developers because with the current ones it’s not going to happen ever, not even in the lore.

The remaining Night Elves should go to Hyjal, repair everything, kick the Horde out of it and make it their new home.
The forsaken could just repair undercity or get Stratholme.

I’d say;

If the Night Elves had to seek a new home elsewhere- why not Hyjal?

As for the Forsaken; if Lordaeron has been destroyed by the concussive blasts of the blight bombs detonating, and is unlikely to be habitable for both the living and undead alike for quite some time, why not Gilneas, Andorhal or Alterac?

If not, however, just take Lordaeron again. No force is occupying it. The living couldn’t if they tried. It is inhospitable, between the blight, re-animated dead and other matters that make both living off of that land and building fortifications elsewhere impossible.

Stratholme is, currently, off the table, given that it is cursed, to forever burn with the fires of hell.

I wouldn’t.

They can go back and reclaim their lost territory, or just invade the tree area again for a new Undead hovel since its closer to Org and easier to reinforce than some blasted ruin half the world away.

My justification is that we had an expansion based around class identity in Legion. One based around faction identity (however ill-recieved) in BfA. And we’re on the cusp of an an expansion focusing on your character’s individual identity in Shadowlands, with a bevy of customization options, and the supposedly major choice of which Covenant you’ll join. The next logical step is an expansion centered around racial identity. And racial identity hinges on a given place that your race belongs.

So, there needs to be a reclaimed and rebuilt Gilneas. A reclaimed and rebuilt Gnomeregan. The Exodar needs to be repaired, if not to the point of flying, at least fix the giant cracks in the floor and hull. Telogrus needs actual buildings. Night Elves have a few choices: revamped Nordrassil, cleansed Shaladrassil, with the Old Gods gone they could literally grow Teldrassil II anywhere, etc.

With phasing, there’s no real reason these shouldn’t happen, other than the devs self-fufilling prophecy on nobody using them (because they dump all the ammenities in Stormwind). Especially if there’s a post-Shadowlands timeskip.

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I think people are missing the op’s point. Blizzard will have to find a gameplay use to justify new cities. The elves and undead will have to star in an expansion to get new cities. Either that or Blizzard needs to get off this mindset of forcing people into one city per faction.

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I’m guessing by resources you mean development time and energy.

We see new areas in every expansion. Tons of time and man power went into developing them. So, to justify that I would make an expansion where a new Capitol city for each group is important to the expansion, likely being the “hub” for each faction.

Each xpac seems to have a few phases. One were we establish the overall plot and are introduced to with later phases returning us to the hub or having branching mini hubs, like in legion. We first establish dalaran, later patches we moved to shal’aran, broken shore, and eventually the Vindicaar. Bothell the new night elf and forsaken capital would be the expansions equivalent to dalaran.

Where and why would depend on the content of that expansion.

Tldr: it would be a feature of a new expansion

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He’s on the story forum, not the general forum. He will get a lore answer, not a gameplay one.

Nelfs have like all of Kalimdor north of Ashenvale to occupy. Felwood could use some cleaning up, Moonglade is essentially Nelf anyways, and Hyjal is itching to become a new Teldrassil. Just move everyone north lol.

Forsaken are a bit trickier. Population wise they shouldn’t be doing so good. Most of the original Forsaken should have been supplanted by the post-Cata Forsaken. Arathi was a promissing new city until the DKs killed everyone. That’s out.

Alterac is neat, but I don’t think the Frostwolves will take kindly to Forsaken Blight so close to the valley.

The only solution is bringing the Forsaken to the Western Plaguelands. They can expand Andorhol, and turn Scholomance into a new magic university for the Horde! Thinking about it more, the Scarlet Monastery should be converted into a Cathedral of the Forgotten Shadow. Whitemane shouldn’t mind since she’s a DK now, and the rest of the Scarlets are in Northrend.

Eastern Plaguelands is a bit tricky because the Argents have made their home there since Vanilla. However, I think a consequence to their failure in Legion would have them losing influence in the Plaguelands. I’d like to think of them going the way of the Scarlet Crusade. They’re present, but only in pockets. Most paladins are returning to the Alliance. Many of them become custodians to Uthor’s tomb and Tyrion’s in Hearthglen. Stratholme would be the hardest choice for me. I’d very much like it if they kept it because they’ve been cleansing the place since Vanilla. They arguably have more of a claim to that city than Forsaken. In keeping with the Forsaken’s “morally grey” theme, I think they should intimidate the Argents into abandoning Stratholme. The most hardcore would rather die, but they have no lore use going forward. When Straholme is turned into a new city, I expect the port in the Plagelands to open up.

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easy they are the new horde/alliance hub for a expansion

edit: I read the rest of the thread, why people posted lore, like duh, civilizations build cities all the time, thats not the point lore literally doesnt matter when designing a mmo, lore will never be the reason forsaken and nelves get or dont get a city.

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Blizzard can really justify anything, especially these days. As for me I don’t think the intent with Undercity is that it’s pretty much destroyed for the most part, and that the blight there is basically to avoid people from entering the underground part which they didn’t block off.

As for Teldrassil, I personally would find it hard to believe if Malfurion just plopped a new tree on there myself, but whatever.

I think rebuilding Auberdine, going somewhere on mt. hyjal, or simply making a city on the northern coast of Kalimdor would suffice for the Night Elves.

And the Forsaken should probably get Lordaeron back in some way, though I think Alliance keeping a bigger presence there would be somewhat reasonable. They have been noted setting up camp there during the Fourth War, and it would make sense with previous actions done to keep the Forsaken in check.

Though this doesn’t mean I think they should completely settle in Tirisfal, maybe as someone suggested somewhere in the Ghostlands would be appropriate, as they would be even closer to their elven allies. I would suggest Deatholme, clear it of scourge and plant a forsaken flag in there.