Let’s Talk About the Night Elf Problem: When Trauma is Used as a Narrative Crutch

Community General Discussion
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Author’s Note: I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I tend to get a bit wordy when I’m feeling contemplative. If you just want to skip ahead to the discussion about the burning of Teldrassil, scroll down to the bolded text that reads “And here’s the part where you might be interested.” The rest is mainly context related to Night Elf lore as a whole.

Thank you!

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So, it’s a beautiful day outside. Sun is shining, birds are singing, and my pupper sits by my side as I lounge about on my porch. So, I figure it’s a perfect time to talk about some WoW. I mean, when isn’t it a good time to talk about some WoW?

So let’s talk about one of my favorite races, and one of the most controversial pieces of BFA’s overall narrative; the Night Elves.

Now, as an avid WC3 player I’ve always been in love with this race. The cross between the wood elf and amazonian aesthetics with a dash of celtic druidic folklore made the night elves one of the most enigmatic yet enthralling races to play as.

Of course, that was back in WC3…

Since then, the Night Elf aesthetic has been more than a little neutered. They no longer use their home field advantage to its fullest potential, sit back feebly and watch as the Horde carves its insignia into the region of Azshara, and when they do get attention, namely in Cataclysm, it is typically centered around their new druid lore, which has been so defanged that the focus has shifted away from levying the savage powers of the wilds against the enemies of nature and more towards preserving the Emerald Dream, which is by far one of the weakest aspects of WoW’s overall lore. For inexplicable reasons, these same druids, originally only the night elves, saw fit to teach their crafts to Horde races, and they did so under the guidance of Malfurion himself.

Why? Because the Night Elves were repurposed by WoW to be pushovers.

It’s no wonder why the Night Elves have historically been unfavorably compared to the Blood Elves. There is something innately romantic, and heroic, about a race that pulls itself up from its own bootstraps to reclaim a kingdom that was stolen from them by the literal army of the dead. They are impacted by a magical addiction that defines their very biology, and the means of satiating this addiction is scorned by many around them, yet they forge their own path in the world regardless. Eager to take up arms to defend their home and often first into the fray when danger strikes, even when that danger comes from its own former leaders, Blood Elven heroism is not something that has ever been in short supply.

So what was the solution to shake the Night Elves from the dreariness of their past lore and bring them up to snuff with the Blood Elves?

Legion. Legion was the solution.

Well, Legion was a good start at least in that it focused on expanding the more interesting aspects of Night Elven culture. The wardens are innately interesting in that they’re a militaristic police force that should clash with the theocratic nature of night elf society, and in many ways they do, but in many ways they are necessitated by it. Similarly, the demon hunters are outcasts who do what they believe the rest of their people are incapable of doing to achieve victory, and yes, while we still got the dreaded aesthetically-pleasing yet druid-obsessed Val’sharah, it was at least tempered by the Warden and Demon Hunter prominence elsewhere in Legion’s narrative. And then we arrive at Suramar, a perfectly-preserved snapshot of what the Night Elves used to be when they were at the height of aristocratic prominence. Regardless of one’s feelings with the ultimate political allegiance of the Nightborne, they, along with the demon hunters and wardens, were part of spectacular world building that expanded on the best aspects of what makes a night elf a night elf.

Legion made night elf lore interesting again. So how would Battle for Azeroth continue the trend?

By burning down Teldrassil.

Initially, I welcomed the Night Elf story beats in BFA with open arms. I can’t say I cared much for the implications of Darnassus in lore, but burning it to the ground at least necessitated that Night Elves play some part in the faction war storyline of BFA. Given the Night Elves’ lackluster participation record prior to Legion, any kind of night elf exposure was good exposure. This culminated in the Darkshore warfront, where the night elves take center stage and we get to see how an almost-exclusively night elf army (with some Gilnean support) would look like in WoW. Archers, huntresses, glaive throwers, dryads, chimaeras; basically everything I loved about them in WC3 was recreated before my eyes, and it was glorious. At one point, I was ready to argue that Legion and BFA did more for Night Elf lore than any other expansion in WoW history. Perhaps in some ways this is true, but now we’re at the point where the writers say “mission accomplished, Night Elves got their revenge,” and the players say “nuh-uh!”

And here’s the part where you might be interested. Because this is where the writers made their mistake.

And of course, this was the natural outcome of the modern Night Elf story. BFA could not continue the path that Legion began, so in order to keep the Night Elves in the limelight they resorted to one of the most tired of narrative tropes; the nuclear “trauma” button.

Narrative trauma is perhaps one of the biggest crutches whenever a writer needs to kickstart the plot or make a character suddenly become interesting. For instance, when an inexperienced writer wants to feature an action-adventure heroine but forgets to give her a personality, it isn’t uncommon for said writer to throw her into the plot by means of a traumatic incident; typically by having her suffer at the hands of malicious men. Now, tropes are not inherently to be avoided, but when mishandled what you get is a paper-thin 1-dimensional character.

Ironically, it’s a mistake WoW has already made with two prominent women; Maiev Shadowsong and Jaina Proudmoore. Maiev up to and including Burning Crusade is only ever fixated on capturing “the one who got away” Illidan Stormrage, and the rage she feels for him dictates her entire character. Even she acknowledges that, once she finally kills him, “I feel nothing, I am nothing.” Where does she go from there? Well, Wolfheart decides to make her displace her rage onto the rest of the Night Elf people and turn her into a domestic terrorist hell-bent on genocide, and damn anyone and everyone who gets in her way!

Obviously, Legion had to retcon that, because it was terrible.

The other example is Jaina Proudmoore, who after the bombing of Theramore feels nothing but hatred for the Horde and can only ever talk about dismantling it. Despite Christie Golden’s efforts in the supplementary novels to make Jaina more nuanced in her emotions, the in-game representation of her only ever came across as a one-dimensional warmonger. This fortunately changed when Golden was brought onto WoW’s writing team and Jaina was rehabilitated so that she turned her trauma into an opportunity to find healing and grow from the experience.

The writers could learn a lot from John Wick.

Seriously. Want an example of when trauma is used well outside of WoW? Go watch John Wick. John is gifted a dog by his wife who dies of an unspecified illness, only for said dog to be killed by the son of a local crime lord. John goes on a path of vengeance to kill the son and avenge the dog, as expected, but in doing so he enters a world of assassins he walked away from years ago, a world he never wanted to return to. The antagonist is not the son, but rather the father, who knows John’s reputation well as an analogue of the boogeyman, and while he has to do everything in his power to protect his son, he also never wanted to incur the wrath of John Wick and has a perverse sort of sympathy for him being dragged away from his life of relative peace. The world John navigates is interesting on its own, but so too are his reactions and interactions with said world’s moving bits.

The trauma of John Wick works because it takes an interesting character and puts him in interesting circumstances. In avenging the dog, John is metaphorically fighting for the peace his wife wanted for him, and by extension he’s fighting for her memory. Trauma facilitates the plot in spectacular fashion here, but it is not used as a replacement for character development.

The biggest crime committed by the Teldrassil incident isn’t that it was poorly thought out, it’s that it’s also derivative. In a plotline already heavily influenced by Garrosh Hellscream’s turn as warchief, the Burning of Teldrassil has more than a few similarities to the Scourging of Quel’thalas. Of course, the difference is that the Scourging of Quel’thalas was amazing writing. The Blood Elves regrouped and redefined their entire society because of it, and their worldview shifted appropriately. They did not become one-dimensional seekers of vengeance, but their every action is done with an eye glancing backwards at their history.

But with the Night Elves the question on everyone’s mind is “when will they get their vengeance?” And of course that’s the only question, because the Burning of Teldrassil hasn’t been written to facilitate any other question. It’s not a call for Night Elven social reform, it isn’t a dark chapter in a Night Elven story with a clearly defined goal, it’s just something bad that happened that must be avenged. And now certain Night Elven players are so venomous that they express dissatisfaction that Sylvanas kill-stole Lordaeron, or that the Humans led the charge, or that the night elves didn’t outright kill Nathanos, or that the Night Elves didn’t just raze Orgrimmar in response.

Let me ask you, how will any of that improve Night Elf lore?

It won’t. It will just be an expected outcome for an inciting event meant to cause drama more than actual character development. And Tyrande gaining a new power level does not equate to character development, let’s just deal with that here and now. Changing a character’s level from 120 to skull face does not suddenly make them interesting.

The question Night Elf players should be asking isn’t “when will we avenge Teldrassil?” It’s “how will what happened to Teldrassil make us better?” And it’s no wonder there isn’t any Night Elf content planned for patch 8.2, because Teldrassil wasn’t ever intended to have long-reaching narrative consequences. It’s just short-term drama designed to achieve short-term relevance, and that relevance began to die for me once I completed my hundredth run of the Darkshore warfront.

And that is the problem with using trauma as a narrative crutch. It serves the moment, but never the story.

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Where they went wrong was trying to involve the night elves.

Or, I take that back. They went wrong where they always do when they involve the night elves, which is describing them in terms of what they were. 10,000 years ago the night elves had a vibrant culture, a massive empire, multiple prominent faiths, a huge military, and they have not developed since. They have only regressed, and tried to stop their regression. Even Maiev, who spent most of her time being the token elf who wanted to get things done, really only wanted to put Illidan back in his box and return to the status quo.

Night elf stories are boring, because night elves are boring. They don’t want, they don’t aspire, they don’t build. They could, of course, and I think they should, but ultimately the writers’ conception of night elves is like an oil painting: pretty to look at, but not alive. Other races want things, even if it’s only to conquer and subjugate. They create things, if only newer and more bizarre war machines. They grow and change. Not night elves, though. All of their big stories are about trying to get back to a lost status quo, and inevitably failing.

If night elves are going to be interesting, they need to grow. They need to strive for something. The writers can’t keep them the same year after year and pretend that that’s enough.

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And it’s so easy too, because there’s nothing that stokes nationalistic fervor quite like a fallen empire, especially if all the inhabitants are old enough to remember the times before. It is not as if the night elves are wanting for pride; Teldrassil itself was a monument to night elven hubris.

Fandral, much like Garrosh, was a good storytelling opportunity tossed to the wolves. Unlike the other night elf leaders (Malfurion, Tyrande, Illidan, Maiev), he didn’t go neutral at a drop of a hat, and without night elves like him, rather than xenophobic, you’d think that night elves are practically the friendliest race on Azeroth.

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We are when luring prey :wink:

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Very elaborate and eloquently written Rorrand.

I think my rational Night Elf friendos like Arshia, Dreadmoon, Carissaria, etc are very proud of their race and are patient and understanding in waiting for the progression of their race!

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Well, admittedly, the old night elf empire did sort of end in fire. And many of the leaders of the current regime were those who fought against Azshara and her Highborne. They’ve seen firsthand what could go wrong if they tried to form a new empire. But they haven’t taken the opportunity to do anything else with their species.

Even their religions are static, as opposed to say the Church of the Light which, in the last two generations, saw the birth of the paladin orders and a schism between more smite-happy factions like the Scarlet Crusade and Argent Dawn, and the more temperate clerical groups like the Netherlight Temple. For a pair of religious leaders, Tyrande and Malfurion seem awfully content to not actually do anything with their respective religions.

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That was a really well written viewpoint and definitely a unique vision of where Blizz should go with the NEs. I really hope Blizz does something like this but i fear with all the talk of strife within the Ali on its way, Tyrande and the NEs are going to be used as another plot device soon. Im not saying I’m against that. It could be interesting and would definitely add some urgency to the Ali story, especially if done well. Something more deeply engrained in NE lore and racial evolution will probably have to wait until after that story is concluded I think. It will definitely require a lot of patience on the communities part, if it ever actually happens at all.

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Another part of the problem is that the vengeful Night Elf players will never get the “justice” they want when that involves basically eliminating the two most important Horde races from relevance (Orcs and the Darkspear trolls). They could have shown more of Night Elves pushing all the way to Ashenvale, but then you run into the problem of needing an actual Warfront for the Horde to take part in and we are back at the Nathanos and the Night Warrior problem.

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The Night Warrior plot will culminate in Tyrande killing Sylvanas, imo. Sylvanas will get resurrected by the last of the Elder Val’kyr. This final resurrection will push her over the edge completely turning her into a raid boss or maybe the baddie for next expansion.

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Well, nobody cares about nelfs. So… yeah.

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Thanks for that! And I definitely agree. Those that thirst for vengeance are probably a vocal minority, however the threads that pop up advocating for the Night Elves to effectively eradicate the Horde certainly aren’t uncommon. I can understand where the desire is coming from, but at the same time the need to fulfill it is probably a sign of bad writing more than anything else.

But yeah, Arshia, Dreadmoon, and Carissaria are definitely amongst the cool ones!

Agreed. Thanks for reading!

A good point. One could also argue that the loss of Lordaeron for the Horde was already sufficient “revenge,” an eye for an eye and all that. But because of how the story is set up, and how Teldrassil is portrayed as a traumatic act of genocide rather than a military decision gone wrong, and because the act itself doesn’t lead to any interesting story developments for the night elves, that thirst for vengeance is quite literally the only thing night elf players are left with. And how do you satiate a thirst that powerful? What would be an appropriate catharsis? Committing genocide against the Orcs? Torture? Nothing short of total victory?

Rooting for any of those options is bound to leave our proverbial night elf fan in a state of severe disappointment.

I doubt this will happen. The narrative beats just aren’t there to set up Tyrande’s confrontation with Sylvanas. She’s more of a side plotline while the war compaign proper wages in the Kul Tiran and Zandalari theatre of war. There’s also the fact that Sylvanas doesn’t really need an excuse to go over the edge and become a raid boss. Her actions have already isolated the majority of the Horde’s leaders and Saurfang has begun the process of gathering support for a resistance. Having Tyrande kill Sylvanas to trigger a resurrection that breeds insanity would not only be unnecessary, it would come completely from left field.

Well, they’re the second most played race on the Alliance and I’m certain I didn’t invent the threads that popped up to complain after the Teldrassil incident. I’d say it’s pretty obvious that a lot of people care about night elves. But if I’m being perfectly honest, the only person I really need to care about certain things when I’m writing threads is myself. If I care about something, I’ll make a thread about it, hence why this thread exists. If nobody else cares about what I care about, that’s totally fine, I’m cool with being in a minority, but I’d wager that on the topic of night elves I’m far from the minority.

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I mean… we all know the answer here already. Right? They won’t.

Again, we all already know this answer. The NE’s, and the Alliance in general really don’t grow. They don’t change or get “better”. Why? Because the story isn’t about them. They have no agency in the story, the story is about the Horde and Thrall and Sylvanas and Saurfang etc.

The Alliance is a prop and props don’t need to grow and change or “do things”. They just transform into whatever the story needs them to be in the moment (Jaina in BFA is a great example of this), they just “do” whatever the story needs them to do to further the main story (seige of UC is a great example here too).

They win, lose, die, triumph, fail, fade away or return at the whims of what is required for the real story to move forward. The Horde story.

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You’ve lost any credibility. John Wick is a fun movie… but paper thin is too thick for his actual character development… Especially going into the 2nd movie. “I was wronged so everyone must die” is thinner than Sylvanas.

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they are played for aesthetics.

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Your original post was well written, Rorrand. Fortunately, the night elf story is not over yet. Of all the playable races in the game, the Night Elves still have the second most extensive lore. Hopefully we will see it put to good use going forward.

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Not true. KT and Zand are basically wrapped up in 8.2, despite the fact that game mechanically the war will forever rage on both islands the same way the Legion is forever invading Broken Isle zones(Themepark MMOs being the way they are).

BoD was the culmination of the KT/Zand war with the Zandalari fleet being wiped out and the last of the Horde forces fleeing across the sea to set up Nazjatar.

This war started with the invasion of Darkshore and a battle between Malfurion and Sylvanas. The Night Warrior plot is brand new NE lore and a complete model revamp for Tyrande, who is now an avatar of destruction for Elune whose only purpose is revenge against Sylvanas, so explain to me how the beats aren’t there?

I bet we hear more from Tyrande in 8.2.5 once the aftermath of the Azshara raid becomes clear.

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Who also stole John’s car; which John previously refused to sell him.