I mean, Metzen is also responsible for this: “Hush Tyrande”
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Partly, but atleast back then the race was still a thing in the game and the story as opposed to being fully exterminated, tortured, and then have their souls obliterated. All while still being painted as wrong somehow. Hopefully someone told the children in the maw that what’s happening to them is deserved before they were obliterated.
Maybe. Maybe not. I do not know. It would be a bit odd to both versions to come from the same person.
I can only guess, but to me it seems that him having to work on the story and world building for multiple franchises could mean a limited amount of time on polishing the details in WoW.
I do not know how much of the problems attributed to him are on his odd call, and how much - on fails of the execution by the people who should’ve been doing it in the game form.
I remember how surprised I was when I learned that the lead of the narrative team for both Cata and Warcraft 3 was Metzen. I could not get how a single person could change so much, from a simple but solid story to… whatever it turned into.
Maybe it was Metzen. Maybe Metzen was also criticized for some things that were done by others.
gl hf
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Ok.
You have a huge chunk of the Ardenweald campaign dedicated specifically to tying up the Kaldorei’s plot started in BFA, and despite how much you wanna say otherwise, most of the souls were saved rather than destroyed. A small circle of them were destroyed, and your victim complex has convinced you that this means most of them were. No other race has a segment of the Covenant Campaign dedicated to them, but the Night Elves do - closest another race comes is Bwonsamdi, but that’s more character specific than racial specific.
Further than that, a huge portion of the campaign is dedicated to Tyrande - now you’re going to say that this is negative exposure because she can’t beat Sylvanas, but I’ll let you in on a little secret; this is not unique to Tyrande. Saurfang got one-shotted by Sylvanas. Bolvar got his butt handed to him by Sylvanas. You’re taking this as a testament to Tyrande’s weakness, but that would only be true if it was an isolated incident.
Past that, the storyline Tyrande is going down is a positive one for her as a character. Her physical strength plays second fiddle to the idea that the Night Warrior’s boon can and will kill her, as it has in the past, but rather than acknowledging this and choosing to let it kill her (much like Sylvanas’s choice in Edge of Night), you have a storyline where Tyrande chooses what’s best rather than what she wants. You get a plotline where your leader specifically has positive character development, but you can’t see it because she can’t beat someone nobody else can.
And I doubt you’ll accept any of this, because then it’d mean you don’t have anything to piss and moan about anymore.
To be fair! That line is delivered completely incorrectly, since it’s actually taken directly from Knaak’s WotA trilogy. In context, Malfurion says this to a hysterical Tyrande calmly, as if to say “it’s ok, slow down.” But with how it’s delivered in the dungeon, it just sounds like he’s randomly going “QUIET WOMAN!”
So that’s more of a case of poor delivery and missed context.
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Her getting to Shadowlands to begin with was about Sylvanas. Since she is not appearing in the fight, and possibly giving up the core motivation of the character, can the story that jumps back and forth when convenient instead of consistent progression of the characters, be called “positive”?
Quantity does not mean quality.
we do not have official numbers so far afaia
Could be a misstep in execution indeed.
gl hf
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If the core motivation lends itself to being directly hazardous to the character itself and they choose a different course, then yeah. You have too many characters who self-sabotage themselves, Tyrande chooses not to be one of them.
We don’t, so it’s also disingenuous for someone to pretend like every Night Elf soul was obliterated because victim mindset is all they know.
Is the only thing I’ll give you, but once again - not unique to the Night Elves. I’m also sick and tired of Blizzard using the same four characters in everything.
Except that you have nothing to back this up, yet I have actual numbers to back it up, well atleast partly. We know that we saved around a hundred, and a thousand died in Teldrassil alone. Now think about Ashenvale and Darkshore. At best, we’re talking about like 5% here…
Except you know… trolls. But everyone ignores that.
And the troll souls were even saved by bwonsamdi, something Elune didn’t even care about.
The problem is that neither of the 2 are or should have a comparable powerlevel to Tyrande as a Night Warrior, since she’s basically Elune and yet can’t beat Sylvanas. After all this buildup, she just loses to Sylvanas. The Sylvanas that entirely eradicated her race from azeroth, made them suffer and obliterated their souls. That is now getting away with all of those crimes.
Mentioned the beating part above, it’s just a distasteful development on top of that.
Finding out that Tyrande was consumed by vengeance (though meta wise she wasn’t, she just wanted to free her people and beat Sylvanas, but both of those failed) and her losing her powers isn’t positive. Furthermore, blizz trying to paint her as insane and attacking us certainly isn’t good character development either. They are painting someone that wanted justice and to free innocents as some crazy villain.
And making her give up on justice means that there also will never be justice, and now it’s all about Sylvanas ’ justification arc that we know about since… forever.
Tyrande also says unreasonable things like renewal when her people are mostly dead and have no lands left, and most of her dead people have been obliterated in the maw.
So they’re once again making a character act in an unreasonable way just so that Sylvanas can be forgiven and get away with everything, even be glorified as the one who ended the Night Elves as a race.
Nothing about this is in any way positive. Nothing.
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The failure to depict Tyrande as being unreasonable doesn’t undo the intent that Blizzard wanted her to be seen as being consumed by vengeance. I’ll fully agree that she doesn’t seem unreasonable. But she’s supposed to be, or else this dumb plotline about saving her doesn’t work.
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How could we know? I mean, the devs might make a choice to portray it that way. But is it really? For consistency and story progression that is.
(I am saying under the assumption that continuity is more relevant than “cool” or “right” turns of the story).
That is not the only way to interpret that story, with some far more condemning ways to see the impact on the story and characters. Arguably this take might do a lot of damage to the story and the image of the devs from which it might be not possible to recover without big changes in the team.
True.
It is indeed a problem for both the handling of night elves, but also to more elements of the story. Oh well…
IMO it just does not work anyway.
gl hf
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Souls are continually being saved by multiple Maw Walkers. There’s even a specific repeatable quest from Ardenweald to get Night Elf souls in particular. Night Elves who died in the War of the Thorns and the Burning - Astarii, Ferryn, Ilthalaine - are still completely intact. It stands to reason most, if not all, of the Night Elf souls are saveable and are being saved. The only credence you have to their destruction is the small circle of ones that were turned into a shade, which mind you, was in the middle of the BIG CIRCLE of Night Elves you go on to save.
The numbers are actually on my side.
I acknowledged the trolls. The troll campaign is specific to Bwonsamdi and Vol’jin as characters, but for a moment, let’s pretend that it’s troll specific. Are the two chapters dedicated to it such a crushing blow to the Night Elves in the face of their three? Four if you count 9.1?
Are Night Elves so put upon again because they have to share their special spotlight that nobody else gets? Are they really the only ones allowed to cinch up plot threads? OH! And in those troll chapters, you rescue Ashamane, a Wild God primarily worshipped by Night Elves. But a Loa dies! God, Blizzard must HATE trolls.
Saurfang? Naw, probably not. But Bolvar was literally the Lich King. He absolutely should have an equivocal power level to Tyrande, if not more. When it was still in position, the power of the Lich King was basically that of a god.
Sanctum of Domination would like a word.
It is NOT gonna be about Sylvanas’ justification. A character can simultaneously acknowledge something is flawed, but also proceed to create monstrous actions in order to “fix it.” That does not make them right, and it does not justify their actions. Theorizing that something will happen that hasn’t happened yet is not credence to your argument, that’s just doomsaying.
Well then you’re never going to see any less but Night Elf domination in every aspect of the plot as positive. You are going to be perpetually unsatisfied, but frankly, I find it difficult to empathize with you given how you go about it like a pissy child.
But you wanna talk about who Blizzard hates? We can talk about that using your own standards.
The Forsaken got played like suckers since… I dunno, Cataclysm? They got to find out that their leader doesn’t actually care about them, before she ran off and became actively hostile to them. The only other guy who could fill their position ended up becoming a loot piñata for two weeks, and he’s now nowhere to be found. Their only major characters at this point are a sometimes questgiver from Cataclysm, and a princess who’s entirely antithetical to their whole worldview.
What about how many they lost? Tons of Forsaken probably bit the bullet in the Battle for Lordaeron. And Darkshore? The battle you cited for Kaldorei deaths? They LOST that battle, so how many of their people you think died there? And given that at a certain point, the Forsaken were being killed not only by the Alliance, but also by the Horde, that probably lended a big death count to their numbers as well.
So no capital, no leader, no followup to their stories. Yet according to you, it’s the Night Elves Blizzard hates.
I’m just telling you what the story tells me. Citing that it’s the devs who make the choices isn’t really an argument. You could say that the devs could completely garrote a character, and I’d have no way to disprove or validate that.
It’s a nothing argument.
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Is it really? Because in the same category we have dragging the W3 horde through the BfA to validate the “new” and improved horde. Does it mean that because the game portrayed the original horde concept as incompetent, it’s not a thing to consider in discussiions?
Or with Sylvanas. That instead of all the possibilities to evolve other qualities / ideas of the character, it took the direction it took.
Is talking about the damage BfA landed on the character is a “nothing argument”? Cause IMO the idea is the same. Portray what is there as “not valid” or “incorrect”, and install a “new vision” of the devs.
gl hf
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Let’s just say that Hanlon’s Razor has its limits. I’ve been watching them take the Night Elves to the woodchipper for eleven years now, and it certainly doesn’t feel like they want to do right by us.
One or two mistakes I can forgive, but not when it’s a pattern.
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This discussion is pretty strange, and atleast does partially encompass the NE, but probably shouldn’t just to let things pan out like a thread.
If you think Sylvanas sounds like a generic villain, and that’s wrong, and out of character for her? Grab a brush, and put on a little make-up. Hide the scars, and fade away the shake-up.
*especially if you’re trying to make the NE pick up the ‘bone they were given’.
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Guess it really is all going to be shunted to a book.
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Do you seriously need to force your headcanon into every single thread you participate in? Nobody asked you to force your made up storyline, which I’ve completely disproved in another thread, into every thing you make your way into. This thread is about the Sylvanas fight. Not Elune or Teldrassil or Tyrande. Just cut it out man. Stop derailing stuff, it’s just annoying.
As for the subject of the thread, a lot of the big reveals are consolidated into the final phases and the cinematic. We’ve already datamined the Arbiter’s Sigil so we know she’s done for. These are probably the big lore reveals, and depending on whether or not we save Anduin, we’ll also get Arthas back into the story.
Here’s the Arbiter’s Sigil for any interested.
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Did you see the Nekrogoblikon video of that song? It was pretty fun.
On topic, I think they’ve been trying to write Sylvanas as mysterious and obscure for so long now that they don’t know how to write her as blatant and straight forward without it coming off as blunt, campy, and out of character. Partially this is because they’ve gotten fan expectations too high, even jaded fans at this point are like ‘what, that’s it?’ expecting a little more out of the dialogue for the climax of events that have been built up over the last few years.
I don’t think there is any dialogue missing or any trouble behind the scenes coming up with plot points at the eleventh hour - I think the story is just as shallow and surface level and stupid as it apparently is and always has been and we are just the victims of a ceaseless hype-machine engineered for no greater purpose than to try and drive sub numbers.
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I haven’t, but I’ll look it up. I’m sure you’ve heard the Richard Cheese version of the song, but if you haven’t check that out right quick.
I agree. I haven’t really ever liked Sylvanas as a character, but that’s just due to personal preference. After Broken Shore though, I hated her as a character, and her impact on the story, and I think it’s still suffering from her influence, and will after… I still totally agree, there’s nothing she could say that’s short of an actual death monologue about her being wrong or something like that, that would appease anyone. The Forsaken fans I’m friends with only want a specific line of dialogue from her basically, and much like you said yes. There just isn’t cohesion with her scheme to begin with, so she’s busy playing the role with her dialogue in this farce of a raid.
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The whole thing with this line of dialogue could’ve easily been fixed. It comes off as so uncaring… when Tyrande gave her all to hold back the demon swarms while their forces (us) battled Manneroth.
A simple “Rest now, Tyrande. where is Illidan?” Would’ve made this entire scene so much more tolerable. Since it conditions the romance between Malfurion and Tyrande, without making such an off-handed feeling every time it’s heard.
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Knaak was the one who wrote that line during the War of the Ancients Trilogy… The only time he wrote Heroic(at the time) Females that weren’t Dragons well was during Night of the Dragon which is presumed to have been a deliberate attempt to counter complaints of Sexism…
Uh just because a few of them are still intact, doesn’t mean that all are. As long as we don’t have anything stating otherwise, we only saved around 5-10%. That’s a fact and the only numbers we have. It’s you assuming that we magically have hundreds of maw walkers saving night elf souls for some reason.
Their special hatred from the writers where they turn a promised resolution into more misery?
Nope, disagree. From how we’ve seen him perform against Sylvanas and in general, there’s no chance he should be as strong as Elune. He’s not even close to Arthas either, and I doubt he was being empowered by the Jailer at all.
The raid where she isn’t brought to justice, but instead wins and then once again gets away? Can you explain how that should make me happy?
Except that we’ve heard multiple times that not only Sylvanas isn’t evil, but that she’ll also not die or go, and this is especially clear since even Tyrande said that there can’t and won’t be justice.
It does in Sylvanas case, especially since they’re spinning around the Night Elf genocide and the obliteration of their souls to be no big deal, something that doesn’t even need to be addressed in a positive way, something Tyrande can just forget about.
I’m not theorizing, I know it and time will just prove me right.
No, I’m actually seeing positive things as positive. I would’ve even been happy if their souls were freed instead of obliterated, but since the writers hate them that much the only treatment night elves are allowed to get is being burned alive, tortured, and then obliterated while the one who did it gets a pass on genocide because the writers like her and hate Night Elves.
Last time I checked, Sylvanas is still alive and has her own expansion again.
I also wonder why the night elves never got their heritage armor, totally not because they can ignore a race that doesn’t exist in the game or the story anymore.
I’m not forcing any headcanon, just talking about the story.