It’s worth noting that people complained about Blood elf villains too at the time. Kael’thas becoming a villain was an unpopular decision, so much so that they brought him back in SL to give him a ‘redemption arc’ when people would’ve rather he not become evil in the first place.
It’s kind of dumb that any perspective that isn’t the status quo, with any race, is not shown as anything other than a terroristic element. It is actually dumb that night elves who are like, wait a minute Elune is a dumbass and shamanism is based because it actually does things in the physical world shouldn’t just be one off mobs. They should be the dominant cultural expression going forward. It says more about the actual idiots still worshiping Elune than it does the primalists.
Did they though? I don’t recall folks complaining that Blood Elves were hostile, or that we’d have to fight Kael’thas, because anyone who played Warcraft 3 knew that Kael’thas and Lady Vashj were working with Illidan, so if Illidan was the bad guy that we’d have to put down, it would have been a fair call to assume that Kael’thas and Lady Vashj would also be bad guys that we’d have to put down.
Kael returning doesn’t make him less of a villain/erase what he did. At best this gives him a path to atone. Which is the entire point of SL, that everyone should be given a second chance.
also, Kael becoming a villain was telegraphed even back in Warcraft 3. It’s hard not to ignore the whole “don’t let your anger control you, I should know” line as anything but villain foreshadowing.
It was not at all foreshadowed. It came out of left field. You could see how he could become a villain from WC3 to TBC, but it was not at all telegraphed. That’s why it caught people by surprise.
Regardless, doesn’t matter. I’m not saying he should or shouldn’t have been a villain. I’m saying that this complaining about turning victims into villains isn’t isolated to the night elf playerbase.
I know people are turning it into their crusade to hunt down threads of people complaining about night elves and taking the contrarian stance because at this point we’ve had the better half of a decade or more of night elf fans being distressed about story events and people are tired of it at this point, but people did complain about BE villains, they’ve complained about Troll villains, they’ve complained about Orc villains in WoD, they’ve complained about all manner of things and night elf fans do not have a monopoly on this complaining.
Fair point that people complained about Kael’thas, but i don’t think? all perspectives outside of the status quo for the races have been seen as terroristic elements but i could be wrong with that (eg; farstriders with the sin’dorei’s more immoral behavior with the brainwashing and the blood knights, highborne with the mainstream kaldorei, etcera)
That being said while i do agree that more perspectives in the Kaldorei outside of the Sisterhood of Elune would be cool as it would dispel the idea that all night elves without any exception worship her, i don’t think they should be the dominant cultural expression going forward. Night Elves are extremely slow to change culturally, it was only just recently that they lifted the ban on arcane magic and sought to try and reintroduce the Shen’dralar Highborne back into society. If what was revealed in Ardenweald that Elune literally had a ‘whoopsie!’ moment with her being unaware of all the souls going to the Maw became public knowledge tomorrow, i don’t think that most Night Elves would acclimate this or accept it for a long time.
Besides, the ‘faith loss’ arc is dumb to begin with considering what the Night Elves have been through prior to BFA
“Man, the Horde really did a number on me. They’re MUCH worse than the War of the Ancients, the sundering, three separate burning legion invasions, the war against the satyr, the Nightmare, can’t forget about Ragnaros too! The Wars of the Shifting Sands also sucked, as did that Arthas fellow but they’re NOTHING compared to this green guy and his undead friends led by an undead elf reanimating my cousin at Darkshore after Elune didn’t turn on the sprinklers at Teldrassil.”
As I’ve said in another thread, all those events against the burning legion or much bigger threats it is conceivable that Elune couldn’t do much to stop it. But when she can’t do anything except put her followers to sleep peacefully so they don’t die in agony as they burn to death, maybe being conquered by the mundane threats is the eye opener that shows them that Elune was never worth worshiping anyway. There’s no point in worshiping her when she can’t even stop big burning rocks. If she can put people to sleep, why not put the invading army to sleep? Does she simply just not have power over people who don’t believe in her? No wonder she’s so useless.
At least with things like the Light there is baked in an uncertainty that relies on the person wielding those powers. If your faith wavers, you can lose your powers, if you don’t have enough faith, your power might not be enough to overcome your foes. But it works. And Light-wielders know that it works. If there’s uncertainty that Elune can do anything at all, maybe it’s better to go with more reliable methods. I mean, if the elementals can just merk their capital city and Elune can’t do anything to stop it, that automatically means that some random windy boye > Elune.
There is no precedent that Elune is expected to stop every mundane threat. Where did this expectation even come from?
No other religion in wow has these lofty expectations, so why is it on Elune?
Or it means a god isn’t allowed to interfere with Mortals in the way you expect them. Elune is the same rank as the Winter Queen. Do the gods of the shadowlands have a habit of strolling around in the mortal realm smiting the nonbelievers?
Since all gods in wow are robots maybe its not in her operating software to do anything more that soft interventions.
Because other religions are based around elemental powers or demi-gods.
If she’s not capable of interfering with mortal lives then she is not worth worshiping on the mortal plane. Up until recently the deities of the Shadowlands were not known to anyone, and are still not known. But actually it’s funny that you say that because apparently Maldraxxus has sent excursions into Legion controlled space so Maldraxxus is already automatically more powerful and effective than Elune.
Again. She is capable of effecting the mortal plane. She put her followers to sleep. Why is it inconceivable that a supposed deity could put the invading army to sleep? The answer is she didn’t want to. She sacrificed the Night elf souls because her sister said her realm was running out of juice and Elune said, well, let me just send some souls over from the recent genocide to help out.
Meanwhile a fire elemental is somewhere going If you just ask nicely, I’ll gladly light ALL your enemies on fire for ya. Extra crispy is free of charge
No wonder some of the Kaldorei switched over to the primalists
It caught some people by surpised. But really anyone who didn’t notice that the blood elves were being villain batted was not paying attention.
I can certainly agree to this up to a certain point, but that has always been part and parcel of Warcraft message. “don’t look too far into void, because it might stare back at you”. That we continue to get people who in a certain considered victims but they propagate the cycle of hatred instead of trying to solve it properly.
You might as well ask any religion in the world why they should they believe in their respective gods. Presumably there are rules of intervention and that there is only so much Elune can do.
This is probably more so considering the First Ones are clearly the most powerful beings in the Azerothian cosmos and they clearly made all sort of nonsensically rules the we can’t understand.
Because she empowers your priests, blesses your forests, resurects your wild gods and etc…
Who said she would be a guardian diety that would defend the NEs from any and all threats? She never intervened directly. No diety ever has… so again where does this expectation suddenly come from?
So to answer my own question nothing and no one. There is no precedent for it.
And that is up to the individual believer to decide their faith. But trying to convince players and readers on a meta level Elune somehow dropped the ball by not acting as a divine justice league for her believers is another matter entirely.
In the story the Night Elves have faced threats that far exceed the Horde and no one was watching their calendars on when Elune was going to show up. Your expectation is not founded on anything from the story before the events of BFA where Blizzard tried to force a Elune drama that simply does not work with existing lore.
Putting your followers to sleep is very different than erecting a force field around an entire subcontinent against none believers.
If she had done that then the Night Elves would probably be outraged she never pulled this trick out of her hat during the other invasions and world ending threats.
That is very wrong but don’t get me started on the Shadowlands.
Elune has never been the deity to intervene directly, she has never been meant to intervene directly. She doesn’t hand hold the Kaldorei and win every battle for them. There are no other deities that do such a thing either, none of them ever have. (read: actual deities, the Holy Light is not a sentient separate force like Elune is, there are beings OF light yet the Light itself is not an entity.)
Who says it’s a team effort? We canonically know all Wild Gods/Loa are resurrected in Ardeanweald via wild seeds and than sent back to their home world, if they still have one to return to. If not, than they stay in Ardenweald
The original lore about resurrecting Wild Gods was that they went to the Emerald Dream and recovered. Now they go to Ardenweald, where they recover/are reborn, once they are fully recovered they can go to [Insert Homeworld/location they want to go] if they so desire. Elune has never to my knowledge been involved in it.