This thread seems relevant for further reading. (You can guess from my posts in that thread how I feel about this subject.)
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This sounds like an old god prophecy, lol.
(This isn’t a knock to you, but auto-translators are hilariously ruining the broken bowl metaphor.)
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True, but I knew I was taking the bait when I replied two days ago. The OP did apologize, to me anyway, about bashing the NE and Elune instead of focusing on what he wanted with the Tauren. At this point is not even him egging this thread on.
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The problem isn’t people saying “X shouldn’t be developed, Y should be instead”, because beyond bait threads, nobody actually says that. The problem is that some people honestly feel that everything not about “fixing” their favorite race either needs to instead be about that very thing, or it’s bad for not also being about “fixing” their favorite race.
Look at any post about fixing the inherent problems with the Horde, and look to see what a small group of night elf fans say every single time. “Fixing the Horde requires them begging the night elves (players or NPCs, or sometimes both) for forgiveness, first and last and only stop. That is all that the Horde needs right now.” Similarly, look at any post talking about genuinely developing the Tauren (this one gets a pass because it was obvious bait). Same types of posters, same types of comments.
And in the end? You can’t blame them.
You can’t blame them because they undeniably did get shafted in BfA in a special way. They lost their tree, their backyard became a pretty boring warfront (I know, “boring warfront” is a redundant statement) and Ashenvale’s in limbo again. And now their queen, who just got a major power-up, is going cray-cray somewhere in the Maw and is looking more and more like a potential raid boss.
But at the same time you can’t blame that subset of players, it’s undeniable that they aren’t the only ones who got shafted. The Horde as a whole got it pretty bad, the tauren’s only real prominent guy looks more and more like a lovesick emo kid, the Forsaken entirely exist in limbo, the orcs have been nothing but expansion cannon fodder since MoP and only got an official racial leader in the same expac he died for the Horde’s sins in, troll leadership likewise was in limbo and their entire identity is slowly becoming more and more subsumed into the identity of the newer, shiner trolls, goblins got a whole minute of development since their introduction, and…
And it’s not much better Alliance-side, where gnomes for the first time since Wrath have had a narrative existence. Worgen are… There? I think they’re still there. Genn hardly shows up in wolfboy form, so for all I know all worgen are just uncursed Gilnean humans, whose major differences from Stormwind humans just got co-opted by the Kul Tirans. Dwarves do… Slightly better.
So yeah, when someone’s talking about one of these under-developed, never-developed, or just plain shafted races or an square peg entire faction constantly hammered into a narrative round hole, where development amounts to “and how do we become the baddies this week?” and someone comes along to be all “but what about the night elves tho? They never, ever get anything and have not since Vanilla” or some other hyperbolic statement? It does tend to devolve into pointless bickering match about who has the “right” to feel shafted the most.
And while I’m specifically talking about a subset of night elf players, it’s hardly just them. They’re an easier subset to identify, given a common racial fantasy, but you see it from all potential player-groups. Subsets of Horde fans, MHPs, blonde blood elves (HI!!!), take your pick. It’s not exclusively night elf fans, not exclusively Horde fans.
… Yup, that’s all I got to ramble on about for now.
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Naw, Tyrande should be fine. She’s got WAY too many Liadrin’s formation of the Blood Knight parallels to go raid boss. Whether she keeps the Night Warrior in some form or not, I honestly dunno, but I’d wager she’ll come out of this in one peace. Especially IF Blizz intends to do something cray-cray on Azeroth while 90 percent of the peaceniks on boths sides are chilling in the land of the dead.
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I’m not suggesting she is going to become a raid boss, but I absolutely understand why night elf players, especially ones who did the Ardenweald campaign, might think all signs point that way. She’s being all crazypants, shedding dark power all around her, being extra-aggro even to her lifelong pal Shandris, and… Well, Blizzard did go and kill Vol’jin to balance the scales for Varian’s death, and we’re expecting to murderize Sylvanas at some point. I can see the argument being that “Tyrande’s night warrior power was too much for her to control and she gonna blow up the whole Shadowlands if we don’t murder her first” as an excuse to kill off an Alliance leader right when we kill off a (former) Horde leader.
Again, I doubt it’s happening, but I totally get why night elf players would be concerned.
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They really didn’t … sigh. I wish it were that simple, but Jin’s death had nothing to do with Varian I’m afraid. They killed him off in the same scenario they were already treating Sylvanas like Warchief before he hit the ground, so that they could force her into the drivers seat. To get her to do something with the Horde they could never justify with him. Same reason Garrosh got shoved into the Warchief slot in Cata. Which is why the only thing she did after swearing to avenge Jin was go off on a personal errand in Stormheim, and pull a direct homage to Arthas’ “New World Order” line when he killed his dad. But only the Alliance PC, cuz that was a good sign for the Horde.
He died for her to become Warchief because the only thing Blizz wanted to do with the Horde in the entire Legon Expac was to set them up for more “we luv writing Horde” Plot-Device time in BfA. NEs should not be stressing about Tyrande because of Sylvanas and “keeping things equal”. They should be more worried because Sylvie is Danuser’s waifu and Golden’s cat. That would be a more reasonable reason to be concerned lol! We all should be.
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Given that they wrote Mueh’zala being the one to influence Vol’jin in the first place, I don’t think offing him was really necessary if Blizzard was that gung-ho to make the horde start another faction war anyway. We’d just have “the spirits” pushing him to do it.
And yes, it’d be out of character. But that’s been a complaint for a number of horde characters in BFA to begin with, so I don’t think anything would change on that front.
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I mean, they’ve literally “Ner’zhul’d” half the Horde cast at this point. So … true.
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I’m neither stressing about Tyrande nor worried about Sylvannas because after all… what’s the point? There’s nothing I can do to affect things. I could quit of course, but the concerns of roleplayers are at the absolute bottom priority of Blizzard’s concerns about their customer due to their (correct) perception that the vast majority of ther players don’t have the wow story on their major concerns list.
I could go off on a very long, very rambling tangent (so, really, nothing different from all of my posts) going on about how there was clearly a narrative change in their plans for Sylvanas sometime around alpha development of BfA, moving her to the clear antagonist of BfA from being the leader of the defending faction (alpha quest dialog and text implicating Jaina as the initiator of the conflict, blatant retcons for her actions and internal dialog in novels, etc), but it doesn’t really matter.
My point is, I can understand why night elf players might have that concern. Noting more.
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Yes, because pulling direct Homage quotes to one of Arthas’ literal darkest moments, but only to members of the opposing faction … while abandoning the champion of her own faction in Hel (the one that was supposed to be securing the Aegis needed to fight the Legion) was always a good sign. All she does all of Legion is a back room deal with a malignant bitter Demigod (that we knew nothing about), and nothing else … all so should could fill a role that Jin could have filled; but more forced and worse? Sure.
Also, I still have no idea what she was lying to herself about when people mention that? In BtS? When she cursed Jin and the Loa for making her Warchief? People do realize that with how Mueh is SUPER resistant to give out the details of that event, she may not actually know it was him that did it right? She may not be lying?
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Can’t the “new world order” line just be generic villainous dialogue to reinforce to the alliance player that they’re still supposed to hate Sylvanas? I imagine Blizzard’s not going to want her to look sympathetic to them at that point in time, or else it might cause a “feel bad” moment for the whole Stormheim ambush.
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Yes, because CLEARLY the woman being compared to the Lich King since Cata pulling an Arthas Homage was just a throwaway villain line. And she doesn’t just come off as garbage for the Alliance PC, she comes off as garbage to BOTH. Because she just abandons the Horde PC she’s entrusted to get the Aegis (in her total neglect and absence to do it herself) in Hel. She comes off as a villain to both sides! And is a reminder that the Horde was totally worthless and optional in the fight against the Legion.
When will people realize that the Expac Intro cinematics since WoD have been misleading at best. And that they are VERY poor indicators of what the main story is going to be?
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Chill out. I’m just offering up possible meta reasons for it.
The game didn’t need Sylvanas’s help to show the horde being largely pointless in Legion, though. I imagine we’d just spend more questing time dinking around with thunderchin dragons and Odyn’s cosplaying instead, since it’s not like the horde has any story presence connecting them to the zone in the first place.
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Truly. The question I asked myself when Jin died the way he did was “would Blizz have really killed him off to replace him with Sylvanas, if all they wanted from her was for her to fill the same role he could have? But worse?” And despite many Sylvie fans telling me that “they did it because she was more popular” … the answer was always … No. The only reason you’d kill him for her is if you want her to do something that would be harder to justify with him. To serve the same sort of role Garrosh did, and turn the Horde into a Plot Device again.
Which is why she takes charge not because she earns it, but because of a Gimmick that suppressed everything that represented the WC3 image of the Horde. Especially after all they did with her in all of Legion, was Stormheim. She was never slated to amount to anything positive for the Red Team as Warchief.
It’s almost like the Forsaken being a playable part of the Horde was a huge mistake lol
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Meh, I’m not quite as cynical about the Forsaken as a concept.
Its not like most of them even knew why they were in Stormheim. I genuinely think now that with Sylvie gone, and BtS actually bringing up a really conceptually interesting dual-identity philosophy with them … they could really be built up into something special. To come to embody the Horde, which is a hope that Cairne always had for them. Provided they can get leadership that can facilitate both sides, and the spectrum in between, in positive ways.
Which is part of why I am open to Calia AND Voss co-leading them. As the prior could represent their People of Lordaeron part of their identity, while Voss could represent their Forsaken side. Both in positive ways. With the right TLC. You add in them learning some Quality of Life improvements from Maldraxxus, and maybe how to nurse Scourge back to mental health … they could truly grow from tools into a functional, “stable”, people.
But … sigh … this would take real passion/effort on Blizz’s part to pull off. And … that’s unlikely.
What does this mean?
While Magatha did have a hand in it, Cairne originally vouched for the Forsaken due to his belief that they had the capacity to one day embody the Horde that Thrall intended to build. I would assume not in the aesthetic sense, but more in thematic one; to become a positive part of the Faction. Granted… they kind of went the entirely other direction … but Cairne did apparently believe they were capable of better.
So, who knows, maybe its time to have the Forsaken moving in a direction that can bring that perspective that got them even into the Horde into reality in some way. I can see options to that at least.