Druids are not the average night elven citizen. They are very distinct culturally from the rest of their society and have a far closer relationship to the wild gods than the rest of their people because of the nature of their abilities and duties.
More than that, modern druidism is not night elf exclusive. Go to the Shrine of Avianna. Over half the Druids of the Talon that revere Avianna are tauren. If this is your case of night elves worshiping the wild gods then that means tauren also do it, which means the wild gods would be slaughtering their own followers if they sided against the Horde.
I made the comparison because you insist that a group MUST worship something because they name things after them. This isn’t true. We know for a fact that the Night Elves of Malfurion’s time did not worship the wild gods because they didn’t believe they existed. Your example is a single named group of NPCs with no backstory vs actual novels like the War of the Ancients trilogy that explain all this.
I’m not being protective. I am saying that the night elves don’t worship the wild gods as legitimate gods because they don’t. In the night elven religion the wild gods are called Ancient Guardians, which they classify as demigods distinctly beneath Elune in status, and are viewed as powerful allies of nature worthy of reverence and a source of wisdom.
It’s not the same relationship that trolls have with their wild gods. The Ancients are far removed from elven society, and even needed to be convinced to step in to help them during the War of the Ancients at the behest of Cenarius.
I still don’t see it from your point of view. You originally claimed that Night Elves don’t worship the Wild Gods and ONLY worship Elune. I bring up examples of groups from the War of the Ancients that are represented by Ursoc’s name. My point here is that not only are they empowered by Elune, but they also receive Ursoc’s blessings and power. Like I said in an earlier post, when a person is represented by a deity’s name, either the deity claims the person or the person claims the deity. If these sentinels have no relation to Ursoc like you claim, then why did Blizzard give them a unique name, with an appropriate mount and weapon? That’s like saying an NPC carrying the name of the Twilight Hammer doesn’t ACTUALLY worship the Old Gods. When it comes to deities like Ursoc, names matter.
I also brought up MULTIPLE groups of Night Elves who have constructed, protected and worshiped shrines to the wild gods since the War of the Ancients, before Tauren even became druids.
I’m not saying the relationship between Loa and Troll is the same as the Night Elves worship, but they both worship multiple deities.
Read: Stuff you said about Ursoc. I am sorry but I couldn’t get this to quote right and it is steadily driving me insane!
Using Ursoc’s name isn’t proof of worship. You are assuming they worshiped Ursoc as a god because they used his name, but they could just as easily see him as a symbol of strength they want to emulate. People in the real world name military things after ancient gods that are no longer worshiped all the time.
And we have clear cut lore from the novels that explain that night elves before the War of the Ancients didn’t believe the wild gods existed. You can’t worship something you think isn’t even real.
If I had to guess Blizzard’s intent, I’d say they were meant to be precursors to the Druids of the Claw. Likely elves who grew up on the myths of Ursol and Ursoc and were fond of them, then took up the mantle when the war started.
You brought up multiple druid sects that are not representative of the night elves as a whole. The druids live a very different life than the rest of their kind, one that is dedicated to the patronage of a specific wild god. Even then I wouldn’t call it worship. For the vast majority of their history the wild gods were dead, and even the druids usually referred to them as demigods or simply Ancients.
The Shrine of Ashmane wasn’t just built because they saw Ashmane as a god. It is specifically to honor her sacrifice in defending Suramar against the Legion long enough for them to erect their barrier. This isn’t much different than the monument the orcs built to Grom for killing Mannaroth, as an example. You don’t need to outright worship something to be inspired to build it a shrine.
The night elves don’t see the wild gods as full deities though. Elune is their true god. They call the wild gods demigods, which denotes them as beings of only semi-divine nature. This isn’t a case of Zeus and the Olympians, where Elune is Zeus and the wild gods are her pantheon. It is more akin to Zeus and his children like Achilles or Herakles before he ascended. The Greeks didn’t worship Achilles or Theseus as gods because they weren’t gods, but they did occasionally build shrines and statues for them as they were worthy of reverence and respect.
Edit: Formatting in this new forum is a pain. Why is the reply window so freaking small?!
Well it sounds like Trolls, possibly the least druidy of the 4 primary druid races, get their own Wild God connections but the Night Elves, clearly the most in tune with nature, are forced to share with the Tauren which is why the Ancients won’t be helping the Alliance. Even though they and the Night Elves fought and died together and the Night Elves have “revered” them ever since. And Kalimdor in the hands of the Horde is pretty much goners.
It sounds like to me this could easily be resolved if Blizz made all the Horde druids team up with the Loa and the Alliance druids team up with the Ancients. That way both sides get powerful magical animal pals and neither side loses their druidic connections.
There’s a little bar in the middle of the reply window, right above the writing section on the left and the preview section on the right, that you can click and drag up to increase the size of the window.
This is false. Wowencyclopedia referred to her as one of multiple gods and it also calls the Wildgods as actual gods even as they were demigods. The only source that referred to Elune as the only true god was the non-canon RPG. WoW has always called the Wildgods as actual gods.
The Wildgods are repeatedy reffered to as their moniker of what kind of god they are. e.g.: Ursoc the bear god.
Yeah Elune’s the main God, honestly the wild gods being as tolerant of the Horde as they are has always felt like big strain on credulity. The Nelfs have been on Hyjal for years, have many thousands of years in historical connection to the land and these shrines, etc…
It was a big criticism in Cataclysm and other times that the Cenarion Circle and various assorted factions in Hyjal felt like a nelf plot and the Horde races felt kind of tacked on. Even with the wolf god we had relatively little connection, the tauren know OF him but is there any more than that?
EDIT:
If Nelfs don’t get Hyjal gods they ought to at least get a new set of wild deities or major ancients to support them.
The Warcraft Encyclopedia called Elune “one of the few full deities”, which isn’t an RPG book.
Wolfheart also refers to the Ancient Guardians as demigods. It’s also mentioned in Loreology in Twitter. Technically demigod in Warcraft simply means an immortal being capable of death, but that is a distinction between them and Elune. At least as far as we know.
God is a term used very loosely in WoW. What an orc might consider a god, such as the Earth Mother, a gnoll wouldn’t give a damn about. The term is incredibly subjective and WoW has never been consistent in what it, as a third-person narrative, considers a true god. There are “requirements” to fit the criteria of a god, but they’re ill-defined, vague and contradicted near constantly.
As for examples of things being called gods, you’ve got the Old Gods, the Wild Gods, Al’ar is a phoenix god, Anzu and Sethe are arakkoa gods, An’she is a sun god, Rukhmar is both an arakkoa and sun god, the Drakkari have a set of non-loa gods, Elune is a night elf god, genesaur are botani gods, Hakkar and G’huun are both Blood Gods, Sargeras and all the other Titans are gods, Volcanoth is a turtle god for the pygmies, Xeleth was a god in Zangarmarsh, it goes on and on.
Similarly, demigods are equally as ill-defined and vague. Generally the term is used to refer to the Ancient Guardians sect of Wild Gods, but was also given to Arthas, Gahz’rilla, Ka’alu, Kil’jaeden, Ordos, Ragnaros and a few others.
You’re making my case for me. "Few full dieties’ isn’t “true god”. “Few full dieties” acknolweges other gods and is contrary to any notion of monotheism.
There are no hard and fast rules to define what it means to be a god in Warcraft, save that all gods are [immortal] <— Under “Gods” section.
“True” vs “full” seems like a matter of semantics to me. Some gods are 100% and some aren’t. Some are true and some aren’t.
Additionally when I say night elves are monotheistic I mean their religion is, not that the Warcraft cosmology is a monotheistic one. As Cannibal said, what is and is not a god is pretty subjective in this setting.
My assertion is that the night elves don’t view the wild gods as being the same form of divinity that Elune is. It’s not a pantheon. Night elves and the Ancient Guardians have a fairly neutral relationship outside the druid vocation.
Deciding that “full” means “true” is a bold move. Perhaps, to bold. That’s your confirmed decision, not Blizz’.
Nelves don’t need to view Wildgods as the same as Elune in order to view them in the same pantheon. Trolls Loa and our RL Greek pantheon are proof of this. We see Nelves refer to wild gods as gods. We see them with temples to these gods. They may not be considered equal with Elune but they are counted as gods by the Nelves.
edit; Not all greek gods were worshipped with the same fervor. Some weren’t even worshipped at all if they had little bearing on the peoples lives in the reagion but they were acknolwged as gods.
I feel like you’re putting an over emphasis on my word choice. Like I said, it seems like a disagreement in semantics.
The wild gods don’t have any temples as far as I can remember. Their only shrines are tended to by druids around Hyjal, which is home to just as many tauren druids as night elves going by NPC spread. If you go to Darnassus there’s a massive temple to Elune, but nothing for any of the wild gods. This tells me that to non-druids in night elf society the wild gods aren’t actively worshiped, or if they are it is almost entirely focused on small personal shrines we don’t see.
At any rate, I feel like I’ve made my case. I’m just going in circles sharing the same information now. So we can agree to disagree on this point.
Outside of druidism, Wildgods aren’t actively worshipped, just as some of the greek gods weren’t either. But I feel it’s important to point out that Druidism worship of these Wildgods was exclusive to the Nelves up until a few years ago and that Druidism is a huge portion of Nelf society. And on page 95 of Chronicles 1, it says the majority of Nightelves continued honoring the old ways of revering the wilds.
So, while the elite of Nelf society had incentive to built huge temples, the majority of nelves would have been using those shrines to the Wildgods.
edit: actually, the majority of nelf society continued to revere the wilds before druidism. So, it may not be exclusive to druids at all.
Out of curiosity does that quote refer to pre or post-War of the Ancients night elf society? If it is pre- then it might be retconning an awful lot about Malfurion’s journey in finding Cenarius and bringing his people back to their roots (pun intended).
“Publically, Azshara prohibited expansion into Hyjal out of respect for the Nightelves ancient kinship with the forest… In truth, she despised the mountain and the harmony it represented”
“the fact that these folks still lived in harmony with the land warmed cenarius’ heart, but he knew that they had no influence over azshara or her arrogant followers.”
It still says Cenarious hoped Malfurion would spread druidism and bring Nelves back to their “Harmonious roots” but it may be in refference to the powers in the society rather than the peons who were already revering nature.
That makes sense though. The nobility may have been trying to actively move away from nature while the peasantry that still need to deal with farms and livestock maintained their emphasis on not being wasteful and respecting the land.
What Cenarius likely wanted was for Malfurion to do exactly what he did: Remove the arcane emphasis that was steadily taking over Kaldorei culture and convince them to stop building cities so they can live in tree houses instead.
It’s a shame most of the wild gods died during the war. We might have seen the night elves develop a much closer relationship with the wild gods if they’d stuck around.
Oo, I think I found something. Immediately after the “he knew they had no influence over Azshara and her followers” bit, it says:
“As time passed, the night elves began eschewing diplomacy and largely ignored Azeroth’s other cultures. Azshara’s dogmatic belief reguarding racial purity seeped into the night elves psyche, creating an atmosphere rife with xenophobia.”
Then it goes on about how only the trolls drew their full attention and then how they relly tapped into the arcane power. So, the hope for harmony may have encompassed all of that.