New Haranir Lore Is Contradictory (And I Want To Complain)

Lore Story Forum
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Firstly, this is just my own way of airing out my grievances with the new patch. It’s infuriating, and misses the mark of what it was trying to do by a mile.

Haranir murals Just Work™ until they don’t. Now we are told that there needs to be a connection of lineage in order to use them- conveniently left out when we explore the Den of Echoes with Halduron; that is, it makes sense why Halduron would be able to use the murals, but only in retrospect. It does not make sense why outsiders, especially if you are playing a race that isn’t an elf, troll or Haranir, would be tasked with reliving the history within the murals.
As well, the murals we recently relive are of Amani history. If the Haranir that would become Amani stayed on the surface, they could not paint these murals in the Den of Echoes. If the painter was a Haranir observer, we know that, until recently, there has been a long divide between Haranir that venture to the surface and those who stay in Harandar, and thus it is unlikely the painter would be welcome back to record these memories.

There are little discrepancies in the writing that make this storyline feel further rushed- the first that comes to mind is Elder Hagar being referred to as “Mother Hagar” in one of the new cinematics. This detail has little relevance to the story overall, of course, but it is an error that contributes to the perceived lack of quality in the writing.

Bringing this back around to the start of my topic: additional grievances. It suuuucks. This whole thing is a hamfisted way to escalate Zul’jan’s villain arc and eventual death (WHICH I REALLY HOPE DOESN’T COME TO PASS). The concept of the elves and trolls being descended from Haranir, rather than elves being descended from trolls (who themselves could have been descended from Haranir (still hate it, thought it would’ve been less egregious)), removes an edge from a history they have been proud of- part of that being that they came before the haughty nobles that descended from them and colonized their forests, and have survived just as long.
It tries to equalize the power struggle of a race that has always been POC-coded and the oppressors who, up until a few years ago, had literally no customization options for skin tones that weren’t white- in before “it’s not that deep”, I think it should be something worth talking about because there was division in the community of those who supported it and literal fascist blood elf guilds!! There was enough racial discordance baked into their lore to draw that crowd!

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Agreed re the story, especially the mural bit. It makes me feel a bit dumb running around on Sarestha using them all expansion. Guess her great great grandpa was an elf, but the family doesn’t talk about it xD (I’m kidding, it’s bad)

IDK man I don’t see elf oppressors vs poor oppressed Amani, that whole narrative is a consistent tit for tat of let’s wipe out civilians and give each other 5 more reasons per day to hate each other, spiralling into thousands of years of warfare.

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Both these themes can exist at the same time, but I don’t see where in midnight the blood elves have been actively trading back blows on the Amani. They have Zul’jan and the lumber camp encroachments for the narrative to wag its finger at as a bad thing, and then punished either by you, the player, or death off screen. There’s nothing of that same energy, short of the main elf npcs that are allowed to speak their thoughts without any perceived consequence in the narrative. Pretty sure that’s at least part of the point OP is making. Amani narrative gives every consequence for hating the people that stole their land and warred with them for years, to the hinted point that the blood elves might have kept it going on purpose, and to the point that Loa might have abandoned them for wanting to escalate under Zul’jin.

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Yeah look I’m talking about the story in totality. It’s very easy to restrict the evidence to a very small window of time to make an argument, but there’s no doubt that it’s been tit for tat in the past. Liadrin’s own past is at least alluded to, and it’s pretty full on. The recent short story with Lor’themar and Torundo the Grizzled highlight some major transgressions on both sides. So even in Midnight there’s at least hints of the broader evidence.

But hey at one point the Amani nearly wiped out the High Elves entirely, and would have succeeded if not for the OG Empire of Arathor. So to suggest that the Elves are the big bad oppressors does not seem an honest argument to me. Rather I see it more as two powers who hate each other deeply and have been involved in constant warfare.

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Which, again, both themes can exist and I’m not sure why what I said is being treated as an argument rather than pointing out it’s currently not being carried forward in Midnight’s story. The major transgressions that were brought up in the short story were about sixty years before midnight, the current story.

Neat. It’s almost like one of them shouldn’t have been there to begin with, aptly dubbed colonizers by the game now.

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“My empire is moral and fine, we can murder and cannibalize smaller tribes and other people with moral surety that we’re correct. But you? You who came in and beat us and took land from us that we took from others? Humph, you evil colonizer.”

The troll empires weren’t sunshine and rainbows and bad things happening to them isn’t just a modern reflection of Gaza or Indigenous Americans. Stop pretending it is.

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I mean you can say this to me and exaggerate what I said all you want, but that doesn’t change that the narrative calls them colonizers and that the highborne shouldn’t have been there. :person_shrugging:

Not the nicest to come in and derail the op’s topic, though, so I won’t be feeding this.

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The troll narrative. The elf one, if you bothered to pay attention, is that they’re fighting for their homeland.

But yeah current politics it, buddy.

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I agree OP. Adding in the fact that the person receiving the visions has to be related is dumb. I would have been fine if they just said they “think” that trolls, elves, and haranir had a common ancestor. The elves and trolls could have kept their skepticism. Others who believed it could have used some easy deductions to come to the same conclusion. The vision the Haranir shared could have been another telltale sign but not taken as gospel. Problem solved. But Blizzard writers want to tie things off in a ham-fisted way.

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If we must make a comparison to modern politics and throw around words like “colonizer” it’s a little funny that the Blood Elves were arguably not colonisers, but refugees. They had been cast out of their own lands, and were deeply unwell after their short stay in Tiristfal, so like… why are the Amani so anti immigration? :rofl:

It’s a dumb point but that in and of itself is the point. Modern politics does not mesh neatly with WoW’s fantasy universe and I get so bored of people trying.

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I get the point you’re trying to make with this, but as an aside, just in case you aren’t aware, the Amani went on the attack almost immediately because of their history with the elves. At the time, the Quel’dorei weren’t the high elves we think of today. They were Night Elves in form, and the Amani were quite familiar with them. Their Empire, like all the other empires that had comprised the Empire of Zul, had been greatly reduced in size and humiliated by the Kaldorei Empire. As such, when Kaldorei showed up in their lands, they were none too pleased to see them.

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Good explanation for a bad faith discussion. I want to add that refugees is an intentional misread when the highborne were recklessly using magic, after a time when doing so under their queen had invited the Legion to Azeroth and caused the Sundering. Every instance of trying to tie irl to this on the forum trolls’ parts is a joke and very telling when I’ve said nothing but use the word colonizer as the game calls the blood elves and as their lore represents them.

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Their lore also presents them as sick refugees fleeing a larger culture that hates them trying to find a place that they wouldn’t die of magic starvation from.

The game also presents, rather openly for most of the last 20 years, that the Amani were brutal, man eating monsters that even the Darkspear didn’t like because they were expansionistic and cruel. They, in game, literally try bind and try to consume the Darkspear representative as a sacrifice to their Loa.

So if the highborne quel’dorei are vestiges of the Kaldorei empire coming in contact with this chunk of the Amani empire, why should we specifically feel sad that the Amani lost the game of empires? They’re not innocent people just vibing when evil elves descended from on high to murder them. They repeatedly try to expand their empire, and Zul’jah wants to do so again.

Yeah, the ZA quests only from an embittered enemy who lost the game of empires. How tragic and neutral this telling is. Poor little trolls, now they’re stuck in their mountain holdfasts, pushed out of murdering and eating other sentient races. :cry:

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There are no fascists, or oppressing narratives outside of the two races hating each other.

It’s literally a war about settling scores which is why its so damning, every act brings about a equal or worse retaliation and that’s why its was good to witness and cool to take part in. Because the characters would do anything to outdo one another; Both sides consistently shown to commit war-crimes equally as heinous as the other and I much prefer we keep that present? I dont play a game called warcraft for the hugs, rainbows and kisses…

But I do agree that the Harrinir lore makes little to no sense. First Arcanist Thalyssra says it best when she says none of it makes a lick of sense lol.

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Sylvanas may have been onto something when she said to new Nightborne players: “The Nightborne are a wise and powerful people..”

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And if we must continue the comparison, early English American settlers were also refugees by their own admission, fleeing religious persecution. Colonizers can also be refugees who find their footing and develop that mindset. The elves continued, too, towards what became the Sunwell, to a large leyline convergence, settling on a sacred place to the trolls but also what we can call a very resource rich area claiming it for themselves. Refugee and colonizer are not mutually exclusive.

It can be frustrating, especially when some are so flippant, cannot wholly express their points, or are trolling but WoW’s narrative is political, just as it was in 2004, and just as it was in 1994. It isn’t explicitly partisan as we think about it today, but everything is political. We are all shaped by our sociopolitical and economic material conditions. Did we forget the multi-billion dollar company decided to create a whole questline to act as a union buster to unlock the vulpera?

It doesn’t fit in very neatly, it probably will never fit in very neatly because wow story and politics are all unique, even historical narratives are constantly changing and dont fit neatly into a singular outlook (thats why people spend 300 pages explaining why theirs is right). However, we can draw comparisons, we can use similarities to better explain what is happening and what story beats writers are choosing.

They are choosing very Afro-Caribbean styled nations to be constantly beaten back to obscurity and shadows of their previous selves, largely devoid of resources, by very western styled nations and do this time over time. They use very real parallels to the real world that have real world effects when people take in the media. Why is it so often that black and brown styled peoples and nations often depicted as the bad guys? Why are the trolls, who again very clearly are derived from Afro-Caribbean people, described as cannibals when the world itself originated with Columbus in the Caribbean to distinguish what people should or shouldnt be enslaved? What does that tell an audience when they show these people in negative lights over and over and over again? This is the story forum the point is that we critically analyze the story and lore, and this is part of it.

People are against these depictions because its done so often and Warcraft, especially WC3 on, made it a point to flip these stereotypes on their head and make the “evil” races heroic. This isnt even a ‘trolls/the Amani can do no wrong’ argument, and no one has ever seriously made that argument, but there is greater context to these narratives we should reconsider and Blizz should write carefully.

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Honestly, Wow stereotypes a lot of European ethnicities with the villain bat too. Vrykul, Goblins, and Ogres. The House of Barov are all given eastern European accents.

Goblins are seen as a greedy vermin race that spread corruption, pollution, and organized crime.
The Vrykul were portrayed as racial supremacists and fanatic cultists to dark powers. The Barov family similarly were mad scientists and cultists.
The Ogres with their cruelty and decadence are given the aesthetic of Imperial Rome.
To a lesser extent this even happens with Dwarves and Draenei.
The Dwarves are shown to have a love of alcohol. And the Draenei are given Eastern European accents and sometimes Greek sounding names to emphasize their alienness and foreignness. The Eredar are also another group that are known for making demonic pacts.

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Yes. And that is before you even include things like the Scarlets. Think about how many times Blizzard has dipped into that white styled people for the villain role.

The problem is, if someone comes in with an existing assumption/bias they can find ‘evidence’ of it. WoW does not map onto the real world. But people try to fit it when they have a specific assumption and are willing to cherry pick data.

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