Moving the Kaldorei off Kalimdor completes the Horde's attempt at genocide instead of safeguarding against it

Lore Story Forum
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I want to start this conversation by saying I am not trying to spew vitriol at Blizzard’s narrative team. I am attempting to refrain from calling names and being overall rude. This is an attempt for me to highlight the problematic thematic and narrative elements of this development for the Night Elves. I am IMPLORING Blizzard, in good faith and with good will, to consider what I am laying out here and to take action that these messages are NOT what they are endorsing.

If the Night Elves are now going to be based in the Dragon Isles (an ocean and more away from Kalimdor), then Blizzard is effectively saying three things:

  • The Horde is rewarded for Teldrassil.
    They ethnically purged Kalimdor of the Night Elves through genocide and fear and now they have free reign over Kalimdor and the resources within. They lost nothing (Undercity is cleansed of blight and retaken) and gain everything.

  • Assimilation is healing from genocide (which is wrong)
    Part of the Kaldorei cultural identity is Kalimdor. They are inseparable. Not only are they still obligated to defend Nordrassil and the Well of Eternity, but their very existence is carved into the land. By moving away from Kalimdor, they are effectively losing their identity, which is assimilation. By assimilating and losing their identity, the remaining Night Elves as we know them cease to exist, therefore completing the Horde’s genocide.

  • Giving up is the way to find peace from genocide
    Despite having shed blood, sweat, and tears to retake Darkshore and other holdings from the Horde, the Night Elves have given up. Just two expansions ago, they invested in Kalimdor and proudly declared that they will not cower in the face of genocide and will fight for their survival. Now they’re just saying, “I am so tired, Malufrion,” and riding off into the sunset and abandoning their way of life. Not only is surrendering to genocide problematic, but it also makes no sense narratively.

It’s pretty revolting that these are the messages Blizzard seems to be writing into the story, given that they have painstakingly (and to the detriment of the story) written cooperation and unity as core themes. By completing and rewarding genocide, they COMPLETELY undo any goodwill written into the themes of cooperation and healing.

Healing from genocide is not abandoning your land or your identity while in the process giving the perpetrators of the genocide EXACTLY what they wanted, and more, at no cost.

INB4 violence isn’t the path to healing either. I am not advocating for the Night Elves to take revenge or something stupid. I am simply advocating that Blizzard does not force them to give themselves up.

Another edit, sorry: I am also OK with the Kaldorei GROWING as a result of being victims of genocide. Perhaps they learn that isolationism isn’t the answer, and they can play a more active role in guiding the world, for example. That is growth, not wholly erasing their identity. The difference is that one is an evolution of their current culture. The other is abandoning their culture. Imagine if in the wake of this tragedy and Tyrande’s epiphany, they eventually take a more active part in the happenings of the world. Where people and nature are suffering, the Kaldorei come together to aid them. While still somewhat cringey, it’s at least somewhat in line with the themes Blizzard has been writing lately AND keeps Night Elf identity intact (and also doesn’t reward the Horde for genocide).

In fact, healing from genocide needs to involve the perpetrators as well. They need to actually face the consequences of their actions and actively seek to make reparations (IF and ONLY IF the victims accept that). Healing from this genocide for the Horde would mean, quite simply, leaving the Night Elves alone. Seriously, that’s the bare minimum. Leave them alone. Forever. Let them have their land and their identity.

Do better.

Edit: If I’m wrong and Amirdrassil is an extension and growth of the Kaldorei presence in the world and not a complete relocation, I will eat my words. For that to be OK, it would need to simply be a base of operation for the Night Elves outside of Kalimdor, while the bulk of their people and their culture is located in Kalimdor.

PLEASE, Blizzard, consider the messages you are sending implicitly in this writing. Writing genocide and then passing it off as healing is DANGEROUS, especially in today’s world.

If I have a TL;DR for Blizzard, it’s the following: Please do not make your only take-away from this thread “Wow, our story has developed such deep conversation, it must be amazing.” NO! It is problematic, not only as an (in)cohesive narrative but as a seeming endorsement of problematic ideas. Imagine if the discourse around genocide in the real world was simply, “Well, have you tried moving away from your oppressors?” IDK, this feels very akin to telling Natives that reservations are a good thing. “Look, you have your land and sovereignty, and we can’t murder you (anymore!).”

Another edit: Wow, so Gilneas is being reclaimed, which means that every single refugee population from the end of the Third War to the end of the Fourth War has reclaimed their homeland EXCEPT the Night Elves, who are arguably the most connected to their homeland. Gnomes have Gnomeragon again, Gilneans get Gilneas, Forsaken get Undercity back, the Dwarves are reunited in Ironforge, the Darkspear Trolls got their island back, and the dragons have their islands back. Who am I missing?

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Blizzard hate night elves, no surprises here

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We get.

A lot.

Of night elf content.

I understand the OP complaint, but Blizzard pretty clearly doesn’t hate night elves or their players, they’re just incompetent at writing this story and balancing it against the requirements of the game… and I’m not gonna lie, I’m really tired of the fruit of this poisonous tree one way or the other.

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I guarantee you Night Elf fans would rather have that they remain true to their cultural identity rather than have more content.

I would have GLADLY given up the entire ED patch, the entire Amirdrassil storyline, Tyrande’s fall, and then redemption, all of it, if it meant that Night Elves don’t lose who they are.

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I understand that. The playerbase is not to blame for the writing being bad.

Speaking purely to the “Blizzard hates night elves” – they don’t. They just keep handling this badly over and over again.

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I know there’s a lot of night elf content from the last few expansions, the issue is its really really really bad content, and id rather have had none.

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It’s not like Blizzard is responding to external things guiding the story, and they keep messing it up. They are -ACTIVELY- writing the genocide of the Night Elves. It is a choice they are making solely within their hands.

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I think there is a point though where we compared this to what other actively used races get, and admit at the very least, blizzard doesn’t like what NE’s actually are and wants to erase that. They celebrate what the Forsaken are fully in their heritage story: they get to look powerful, they get their land, they get hailed as heroes of their people.

This patch shows they are at least aware of the OG lore. But seriously… mentioning Fandral just to say “lol but we’re better people than him because we only want our blessings back to survive” is stupid when that is literally exactly what Fandral also believed lmao? Yeah he was an entitled jerk about it, and he was wrong imo, but the dragons acting smugly like they’re better when they were working for this, then just conveniently got it some other way out of nowhere, is silly.

They bring up NE lore in these patches to degrade it or hype up their own stuff. There is no other way to look at stuff like an interview after the patch reveal, when asked “Is Malfurion going to be here?” and they replied “No but Vyranoth will be, lets talk about her” that makes them look like they actually care about who NEs are, and not who they can beat and bend them into because they vaguely like the ‘nature elf’ aesthetic.

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I think what is pushing this is purely practical concerns, more than any malign story intention. They wanted to resolve the Teldrassil…issue… let’s call it. They were not prepared to touch Kalimdor right now. That is not in the pipeline and they do not have the free people to do it with how tight a ship they are running now. So, what to do?

Simple. Just build the solution into Dragonflight. From the expansion’s first alpha build they intended Amirdrassil to be the final solution for torching Darnassus. They were able to use it as a patch zone and thus justify the cost to the Beancounters. From a developer perspective, what they did makes perfect sense.

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Just make the tree disappear or never make a new tree and revamp Nordrassil slightly like they did for the above ground sections of Undercity.

Or even alternatively. Remove all the NPC refugees back in Shadowlands, and have an NPC explain what the book and exploring Kalimdor revealed: that the NE’s already took massive sections back and went back to Nordrassil, so don’t need to be here.

Just do for them what they seemed to be able to do for Forsaken.

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They had no plans to revamp Nordrassil, is the thing. They thought they were being nice doing what they are doing now, I am pretty sure. They legit thought this the preferable solution.

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Then they’re absurd or don’t respect their lore enough. NE fans have been saying this for years now, they had ample time to change.

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The thing is we never needed a new world tree, we needed to see that despite the Horde’s attempts at genocide, the night elves endured, reflect in game that the night elves now control and have rebuilt northern kalimdor. But of course, revamping those old zones would take precious development time away from kalecgos being cringe or something

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I would much rather the Night Elves be in some dumb state of limbo representation in-game than have genocide.

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Honestly, even leaving the old zones alone and writing it into a novel (and maybe some dialogue in-game to cement it) is preferable to this.

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You will not get argument from me that Blizzard does not seem to understand what the hardcore lore fan appreciates about night elves. The reason I usually say I am not a night elf fan is because what I want night elves to be – something close to the WC3 presentation and the old lore materials – has no relationship to what Blizzard wants them to be and has not, in my opinion, since Wrath. Everything else has just been momentum of old writing propelling them forward rather than the direction that leadership actually wants to take.

That is compounded with the fact that they clearly don’t understand the meaning of having a specific home – homes aren’t fungible. But it’s written in a very naive way that seems like the writers think they are.

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We did not no. I will never say this was the IDEAL situation, by far. I will say it was far from the worst possible solution. At least we did not end up crammed into the Blackwald in Gilneas or given some weird village outside stormwind.

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its troll land

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Those were at least parts of Kalimdor and we have actual history with those lands to some extent.

We have VAGUE history with the dragons where half the time they do the same bs they criticize the elves of, and look down on us until the threat actually becomes dangerous enough to knock on their door too, like the War of the Shifting Sands.

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The Greens and the Kaldorei have long had a close bond, more than any of the other flights, who all saw the blessing of Nordrassil as more of a means to an end than anything else. Heck we used to have ancient kaldorei dragon riders who partnered with green drakes, even.

So, I will give props to them letting us be next door to them at least?

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