Now with BFA, the Zandalari come along with all of these Loa, all pretty powerful. Bwonswamdi, Akunda, Kimbul, Krag’wa, Gonk, Gral, Pa’ku, (our lord and savior Jani) and possibly others depending on if any of the dead ones come back or Vol’jin become a Loa.
Now this all sounds pretty familiar because the Night Elves are usually the most famous animal worshippers on the block with their Wild Gods. However they currently aren’t affiliated with the Night Elves nor are they helping them with the whole Horde destroying Kalimdor thing.
So my question is…are the Night Elves going to get any Wild God support any time soon? Because it seems like the Horde have stolen one of the Night Elve’s main attributes with the whole animal worship thing. I thought the Loa would balance out the Wild God favoritism but the Night Elves are severely lacking in that department right now, even from Cenarius.
The night elves don’t worship animals. They revere and have respect for the wild gods, but they do not worship them. They worship Elune. The reason the Ancient Guardians are neutral is because they are protectors of Hyjal, which both factions defended both times it was under threat.
Animal god worship has always been the troll’s thing. We just went over a decade without our gods actually doing anything but serving as backstory for raid encounters.
And as I said in the other thread, I don’t want to see the Ancient Guardians mowed down by the Horde, which is exactly what would happen if they got involved. Blizzard loves killing divine guardian entities.
If the Wild Gods openly support the Alliance, you can expect at least one of them to immediately get killed for it. You know this. I’m not saying you should like it, but you have to acknowledge that staying neutral is the only reason Blizzard hasn’t written Sylvanas as capturing one and force-feeding it Blight until it becomes a boss in her (still possible) future raid.
They should at least give Elune to the Alliance then, to kind of balance it out.
The only thing she’s done this expansion was ensure a few of her priestesses didn’t feel pain while they burned alive in Darnassus. She hasn’t actually helped.
Elune has always been an odd hands off kind of goddess. She has only directly intervened a few times. Most recently giving Tyrande her Night Warrior powers and before that saving Malfurion from Saurfang’s axe.
I wouldn’t mind seeing her do more things, but it’s a careful balance. Blizzard isn’t going to let her majorly change the direction of the story they want to write, and honestly I personally would feel better losing a war where my god eased the suffering of the lost than lose a war where my god was actively trying to defend against my enemies and was incapable of stopping them.
There are shrines for the Wild Gods, mostly Night Elf in Origin. How is that not worship? Obviously Elune is above all but the Wild Gods are up there, especially Malorne.
It just seems to me like bs that the Night Elves don’t get their guardians who have been established for years and all of a sudden the Horde get a whole plethora of guardians. Like they don’t even get Cenarius, does he not care that his favorite druid got axed in the back of the head?
It’s not worship because night elves don’t pray to the wild gods or make offerings asking for favors. Night elves revere the wild gods as powerful beings favored by Elune, their one true god.
You realize that in the course of questing in Zandalar the Horde loses three of those guardians with a fourth being killed and reincarnated as a baby, right? Rezan lasted all of a single quest chain before he got killed off. In the next raid the Alliance gets to fight Bwonsamdi to half health, kill his empowered champion, kill the champions of every other loa, and then leave.
Do you really want that to happen to the Ancient Guardians?
I guess we need them since our god like characters keep getting foiled by two undead archers who’ve died multiple times each.
Sure, perhaps not worship, but they do ask for blessings and revere them. And you did just say Elune’s chosen, so clearly they have a relationship with the Night Elves more so than the other races based off Elune alone.
I do realize, at the moment my main is Horde and I played through everything. Regardless of the danger it feels pretty cool to have these Loa working with you in the defense of Zandalar. Of course there’s a risk, but them choosing a side and fighting to defend Kalimdor and their longest allies is better then them sitting there and doing nothing. The Horde just burnt down a World Tree, are chopping down Ashenvale, and are blighting Darkshore. They clearly belong with the Night Elves.
The druids who tend to their specific cults ask for wisdom and guidance. The night elves as a society don’t pray to Malorne to help the crops grow or ask Agamaggan to defend them from incoming invaders. That is the difference between worship and reverence. They worshop Elune. The wild gods are just things they admire.
As far as racial relations, I’d say the Guardians are far closer tied to the various races they are the progenitors of than the night elves.
It might be pretty cool, but as someone who is a huge fan of the wild gods and their lore I can tell you that when I heard of the Alliance raid on Zuldazar all I could do was be afraid that they were going to butcher a bunch of wild gods. Why was this a fear? Because Blizzard has conditioned me to fear that possibility.
We go to Zul’Gurub? We butcher the loa’s champions. We go to Zul’Aman? We butcher the loa’s champions. We go to Zul’Drak? We watch the frost trolls murder their own gods. We go to the Hinterlands? We kill a wild god that was there. We go to Zandalar? Three more wild gods dead.
Wild gods drop like flies whenever they go up against players. The Ancients have only survived this long being neutral. I loved questing alongside them in Cataclysm and Legion. I want to continue questing with them again. But if they fight the Horde I promise you Blizzard will not be able to resist the nostalgia of seeing Cenarius slaughtered by orcs again.
I think the Darkshore Warfront would have been actually an ideal place to put Cenarius in. It would have shown him actively aiding the Night Elves, on the Alliance side we’d only see him when we’re winning the Warfront, and it pretty much keeps Cenarius safe from dying again.
Well the Wild Gods are tied to the emerald dream and can never die as long as the Horde doesn’t do some evil magic stuff. They always regenerate. Now idk if this applies to the Loa on Zandalar because idk if they’re the same tier of Wild God that the Night Elves know. We do know that the turtle dude either reincarnates or has a baby. Idk about Hir’eek, Shadra, or Rezan.
They’ll be stuck in that limbo until the story suddenly flings them to the forefront, and they’ll mention they were “Busy, because (WARFRONT LOCATION) needed them.”
And then both sides will wonder, “OH, does that mean MY side WON?”
And the Warfront character will say nothing. Because that will generate arguments on the forums, and that… is the goal.
According to an interview all the loa we lost can still regenerate in the Dream, which is the one saving grace. The question is if they’ll ever become relevant in the story again. Technically all the Ancients alive have died before. We brought them back in Cataclysm with some effort.
But there is no guarantee Blizzard is going to write the story where the dead loa return. For now they are functionally as dead as anyone else.
I also don’t want wild gods to end up like the Swarmlord in Warhammer 40K, or really any other immortal. Where they are supposed to be really powerful beings but in practice they just get their butts kicked every time they appear because the writers know they can just bring them back without consequence.