Without reading every reply (yet), I just want to point out what surprises me most about this image.
I’d have assumed Light and Shadow would be in each other’s places - that is, Light would border on Order and Life, while Shadow would border Chaos Disorder and Death.
The difference, to make an understatement, is significant.
Apologies to anyone who already said this. I’ll probably upvote your posts when I encounter them. 
I feel pretty encouraged (if not vindicated) that the dual-snake orobouros plays so prominently in the new cosmology chart. Not even a stylized representation of an abstract concept, but actual giant snakes.
Would you agree that the Amani Akilzon’s deciple (champion) seems also to be based on the thunderbird? Well with a “central-south american” atire.
Note, he and his followerd are using storms, wind and lightning.
Or do you see some different influence?
Strangly enough Akilzon himself is colored like a regular / see eagle in contrast.
Absolutely. The Tauren are not the only race in WoW which appropriate native American motifs, The Trolls also steal from Mesoamerican cultures. Hakkar is like a bad take on Quetzalcoatl.
Yeah Troll Akilzon and Tauren Ohn’ahra are both Thunderbirds
Yo but you missed what I said about Elune/Mu’sha being more of a Mayari myth because Elune is missing an eye (we have an artifact called The Eye of Elune.) An’she is mostly a take on Apolaki, sure that doesn’t make him inherently bad, despite the fact that he wounded his sister. But I’m sure you can see that the Fairy Tales story The Eyes of the Earthmother and The Embrace tell a similar story only this time it was An’she who was wounded. I’m sure we will yet find out how Elune lost an eye, and this eye was the artifact used to turn Tyrande into the Night Warrior.
There’s room here for Zorval to be An’she that’s all I’m saying. Everything is lining up nicely for Tyrande to confront him as Elune’s avatar.
Night Elven mythology and Tauren mythology can both be right in their own ways. It’s clear from the Eyes of the Earthmother story that An’she was seen as a protector of the Tauren. The Light and the Shadow are not all black and white.
As a person of mixed cultural heritage including Tribal, married to a full hispanic (very native), I wish people would stop trying to erase every reference to Native American culture in fantasy fiction as apropriation.
If it werent for caricatures of romans and spartans, people wouldnt remember who they were, and greeks and italians arent even close to disappearing like American Natives are.
Chief Wahoo is offensive. Every single tomahawk and dream catcher is not offensive.
As someone with Plains Cree heritage I accept your point of view and reject it.
I honestly don’t care that much that there are native American themes in wow, The Tauren are a great race and I love them. I just personally hate when people defend things as non offensive just because they like them. But that probably makes me a hypocrite just like everyone else.
I don’t see any argument here that they are trying to make the traces of indigenous people of any kind that is not European disappear, rather I see many efforts to push back the European mythology and thus cultural preference to have more space for other cultures that are not European.
Elunenever lost an eye, the eye of elune is an artifactname, but she did not loose one eye. She ´s according to the tauren myth an eye of the earthmother…
since The Eye of Elune was just added in BfA as supposedly this secret Night Elven artifact that has the power to turn a priestess of Elune into a living avatar of her wrath, it seems like something they are going to expand upon and may even be a retcon. Night Elves already worship the Tear of Elune which is a diversion from the accepted Tauren canon that Lo’sho was born of a Tear of the Earthmother and they say that the Blue child was actually born of the tear of The White Lady. We really have no idea how these comparative mythologies relate to actual cosmic truth. I was hoping this book would give me more clarity on this topic but I don’t get the book until late August 
Anyone who does actually have the book is there any mentions of Night Warrior lore? can you share it?
I think the original basis for An’she/Musha/Earthmother was Lakota myth + Japanese myth, because Lakota or Dine mythologies are the most accessible and Metzen was a weeb.
But yes, the characterization of them in the new Folk Tales book definitely used more myths, both Artemis for Mu’sha and probably Apolaki for An’she, given the “Moana” reference in the Earthmother art.
Again my take is simple:
Fantasy will always use our cultures, because it’s par for the course. The original intent of WoW was to take the Traditional High Fantasy Monster Races and make them good, reversing the racial coding Tolkien admitted to and regretted later in life (basing Orcs on Mongolians, making them racially evil).
To my knowledge there is only ONE Black Woman author (McKinney, the one who wrote the Eyes of the Earthmother story), for example, associated to Blizzard. Various other authors of various other backgrounds, yes, and to my knowledge (from Twitter and social media otherwise) none are Native.
What makes or breaks my culture being used is its representation and treatment in the story.
The use of Andean myths of African Diasporic elements from Zul’Dazar was objectively good. It was awesome, looked cool, was generally thematically respectful.
8.0 and Shadows Rising was good.
8.2 (BOD) was bad.
But overall? I’m happy with how my culture was used in Zul’Dazar.
Because I play WoW to see my culture because this is the only franchise on the market that uses specific cultures as the basis for in-game specific races.
Ain’t that the rruth.
Newer retcons though move away from what Metzen wanted from the franchise and I’m more interested in that.
8.2 addition of the Night Warrior lore was honestly the best thing to happen in Night Elven lore in a long time. I’m not mad.
Pulls out my copy of Folk and Fairytakes book.
"And what does the mighty Sun do to feel love as true as that known by those [mortal races?] "
The stars laughed, “The Mighty Sun loves himself well enough. He does not need the love of a family.”
That is all that I need to make an assumption that Zorvall is An’she.
Why was it bad? Why? I mean…the Horde attacked multiple location too, why is that not bad, but in the other way around it would be bad? Because the alliance is build on euorpean identity?
The idea was good, the implementation horrible.
But to reduce night elves only to the asia would simply not be true
Celtic, Roman-Latin, Irish, Germanic, Far Eastern influences flow into night elves culturebuilding.
Not everything I like is universally inoffensive, but not everything offensive to me is objectively bad.
Because it was very much a on-the-nose “British Empire sacking Africa” metaphor but the Alliance didn’t get any guilt from it from the narrative.
The narrative doesn’t admonish or punish the Alliance player for BOD.
In fact, in the Alliance version of the Rastakhan fight, Genn is good and noble, while in the Horde version, Genn is bloodthirsty and racist.
It would’ve been better, and more clever, if in the Alliance version Genn was bloodthirsty and racist (which forces the Alliance player to grapple with following this bloodthirsty racist werewolf), and in the Horde version Genn was noble and chill (demonstrating ideological mercy by the locals).
that’s true, appropriation has come to be misinterpreted as well as racist in it’s intent but it doesn’t have to be that insidious either, it could be just as simple as worldbuilding your peaceful, patriarchal warrior society in war bonnets to be anthropomorphic cows (animals basically)
I still like Tauren, I just think we can afford to be a little skeptical that this is a good portrayal of Native American culture. But it is what it is, Baine visually is one of the coolest characters imo. So I’m not trying to put an axe in anyone’s fun, just asking you to be more aware of cultural stereotypes.
I do, because there is no game otherwise where my myths and culture is used for a playable race.
This is the only game where I can have both a phenotypic self insert and a cultural self insert.
I think you are exaggerating here. The subject of real colonialism is not even remotely comparable to this scene. The Zandalari were presented as equals to the Kul’Tirans until their fleet was destroyed, it was a presentation on equal footing and not like in reality, where the Europeans with absolutely superior weapons technology simply took most of the territory because they could and their opponents felt 100-200 years behind in terms of technology and warfare.
A) the narrative punish the player for bod, then…the zandalari joined the horde thereafter. And what punished would you further demand of this battle then the one thing comes true, the alliance wanted to avoid in the first place (The one reason they are there is…because they want to stop the horde and the zandalari to become allys)
B) and why should the narrativ admonish the …alliance?