Night Elves were so op they were their own faction in Wc3, standing as equals with Jaina’s Alliance and the entire Horde. They’re as civilised in their own way as the high elves, and as savage in their own ways as the trolls. All of northern kalimdor was theirs and most of it plus a chunk of feralas still could be unless stated otherwise.
Even after losing their immortality, their forests corrupted, cut down and burnt, their world tree destroyed and enough deaths to qualify as a genocide, they don’t play the victim game. They’re not refugees subsumed by their hosts like the gnomes and trolls were during classic or the worgen after cata. With the rest of the Alliance occupied elsewhere, they backed only by the worgen fought the Horde on its home continent and won.
Elune, a proper deity, loves the night elves even though she let them down at Teldrassil. The ancients and green dragons are their friends, and their leaders are so old and powerful they’re almost god-like (to the point where they have to be nerfed or distracted for the entire Horde to have a chance at defeating their people). No other race that went through what they did would have any hope of rapid recovery, but the night elves do.
They lost their world tree (not just a city but an island nation), lots of civilians died (realistically likely less than feared because they had time to evacuate but still enough so many as to make it a genocide), but the bulk of their army survived so their military power is almost as strong as it was before. Enough of their civilians survive to make their population sustainable. Decentralised, with their army intact + some proper support from their goddess and they’ve got a bright future.
(P.S: This doesn’t mean they can move on. Thrall promised to drop Sylvanas’ head at Tyrande’s feet. No redemption/forgiveness rubbish. Either she takes it herself or he better deliver. And considering how many grunts were cheering during the War of the Thorns, no night elf worth their salt should be happy with just that.)
Would you like to sing a duet with Elesana, Ethriel, Sorrowmoon?
This is not a duet, is it?
Anyway. In this future, is there the destruction of all who hurt them?
But they are though. Their civilians now have to live on the streets of Stormwind until the end of time.
They didn’t really win. The Horde got what they wanted by nearly wiping them out, then destroyed and blighted Darkshore and then got “defeated” there after harvesting its ressources, but they still have control over Ashenvale and nobody stops them.
Well, Blizzard recently said that the Night Elves are almost wiped out now.
So strong that they didn’t even reclaim Ashenvale…
They don’t really have the support of her goddess, we saw that first hand with Elune depowering Tyrande when she was about to achieve justice for her people.
We’ve been shown that in the most crucial moments, Elune sides with the enemy of the Night Elves.
The problem with that is that we’ve already seen that Thrall won’t keep his promise, and Tyrande was forced (by the writers) to forgive Sylvanas.
There are no Night Elves left alive on Azeroth to enforce something like the Horde leaving Ashenvale or Hyjal, so they also can’t get their zones back either and don’t have anywhere to go. The very worst part though is that the souls of all of those Night Elves that died ended up being obliterated in the maw. This was the only chance of the Night Elves making a comeback, if we actually freed their souls and Elune revived them or something, but Blizzard didn’t want to go into a positive direction with the Night Elves so they decided that the conclusion of the Shadowlands story will be the obliteration of the Night Elf souls and showing us that there can be neither a future nor justice for them, since Sylvanas got away with it and so did the Horde (also by keeping Ashenvale etc.).
Sorry OP, but Blizzard simply isn’t willing to let the Night Elves be part of the future. And they also aren’t willing to give the Night Elves any sort of positive development, nothing at all.
9.2 also has nothing Night Elf related, so that means that there can be no further resolution than what we’ve got, which is a resolution that made everything even worse.
I don’t know what their future is. I think the rest of the souls will be freed. What territory they will have is a different story. We need to see Exploring Kalimdor, or the next expansions’s story. Maiev will be in 9.2, so maybe she’ll have an answer.
I commend you for trying to have a positive Kaldorei thread, as they are rare. Usually its about how they are doomed and everyone hates them, which really gets wearisome.
I think the Kaldorei will do fine, really. They rebounded from the Sundering just fine, and if they can recover from 99% of their population dying and the collapse of most of the world’s land into the sea they can recover from this.
They can definitely bounce back given enough time. The problem is time.
The Sundering happened 10k years ago, sure the Night Elves still had couple of wars before the start of the games but the earliest one was the Satyr war which was 700 years after the sundering.
The situation now with Azeroth is that every 3 or 4 years there is a new world ending threat and the Horde is still a major threat on the NE door step. Thats not enough time or good conditions for a bounce back.
Nope, there is nothing of that in 9.2 and we also aren’t freeing any souls anymore. The Night Elf resolution is basically over with the obliteration of their souls and there’s nothing more in 9.2 either.
That’s how I see it. There’s no way Night Elves can recover from all this without a very long time. Most elves in general are very long lived. Night Elves especially have been stagnant since the War of the Ancients. They haven’t propagated their species since before the Sundering. When they resettled on the continent of Kalimdor after the sundering they chose to cede much of the continents to the wilds and kept mostly to Ashenvale, Hyjal, Felwood, Darkshore, and Teldrassil. Most those areas were destroyed by the Legion/Cataclysm/4th War.
So what’s left. They don’t have huge populations to begin with. I just wish people tempered their expectations with that fact.
Well if there is some god level magic that brings everyone back, restores the lands and rebuilds the cities almost instantly then there is not going to be a bounce back.
Unless we come back and there has been a timeskip where everyone for once left the Night Elves alone for a couple of thousand years.
I know that we don’t know that. I said that it was just what I thought will happen. Also, you’re wrong about us giving up on freeing the souls. We didn’t give up on it. There’s a weekly quest to free the souls.
Maiev was datamined. We know Tyrande will appear. We haven’t datamined everything either.
Shadowlands is full of dead night elves since the beginning of their race.
If a mass revive is necessary why are you limiting yourself to just the recent dead in WoT? They can just pull NEs souls from anytime that they died.
What if the mass revive included the entire NE population that died to the legion in war of the ancients? In one move the NEs go from nearly extinct to the world power all on their own.
I struggle to worry too much on populations. Somehow, inexplicably, the Sin’dorei managed a bounce back from Arthas, and they had the scourge remains on their doorstep. Populations in WoW are always exactly what the story requires, even if they have to make up a reason why its the case.
The Blood Elves were quietly rebuilding their lands since WC3 up to burning crusade (and still are apparently). And they still haven’t bounced back perfectly. The game changer was Velen restoring the Well for them.
Anyway you’re right, if Blizzard wants to pretend NEs have bounced back but also suffered near civilization ending event for the 4th time they definitely could and probably will. Has Blizzard been ever known for actually committing to something they did?
By the way anyone watched Arcane on Netflix? Not going to lie, it really makes me want to play an MMO or a single player game in the universe.
Where? I’ve never heard that, and yet there’s still nothing regarding the Night Elf souls, just like there wasn’t anything in 9.1 either to show us that freeing the Night Elf souls was an ongoing effort or that we’re working on it.
But not full of innocents and even children that were brutally murdered and tortured and obliterated while their abusers got away with everything
yeah its a tragedy about the dead innocents but thats why Sylvanas and the Horde have to be held accountable for their actions.
And the Night Elves can get mass rezzed because there are plenty of NE souls in Shadowlands if a mass rez is needed.