Honestly I would say there is nothing in your characterization of Night Elves, their leaders or their issues right now that I could agree with probably the exact opposite if I am being honest.
What you propose isn’t much of a solution but rather more victim blaming and punishment. So pretty much the exact opposite of what is needed and probably what Blizzard would do.
Ugh I hate that seed but if Ysera comes out of it would be so god damn funny. I Agree.
No good will come from this almond tumor tree fertiliser.
I agree with your sentiment but I think that it only works if folks can fix the larger problem. Night Elf fans need to come to terms with the fact that they can’t be the RTS Night Elves.
That means Night Elves don’t get to wave their arms and have the “lesser races” vacate disputed territories. And it also means they have to join with all the other races in accepting human exceptionalism.
Blah.
Not a night elf fan. My ratings go something like… Gnomes, Zandalari, Dwarves, Tauren, Blood Elves. Night Elves are in the theoretical positives, but I’ve always found them lacking for the entirety of WoW.
The decision to make Arcane magic not dangerous at all rather than inherently dangerous really casts a lot of people in a very stupid light historically and it killed a lot of the flavor and edge to the blood elves too. Night Elves can have flaws, lots of races can have flaws. Having a bunch of cultures where we keep saying “everything you believed in for thousands of years was a lie” isn’t interesting.
Nightborne and the Blood Elves exhibit this elf superiority complex far, far more than Night Elves.
Night Elves have exhibited very liberal tendencies with other races and other people to the point that I think they are over doing it. They are like the UN assembly and write a strongly worded letter or statement if they think you are being a bad boy and are just as effective in putting a stop to it.
The main complaint about Tyrande seems to be she is rude, grumpy and too rash. Maybe thats a valid cricism but it never bothered me so meh I guess!
Hey don’t forget the Zandalari also have a massive superiority complex as well. They’ve waged world wars because of it. Even Talanji still looks down on the horde and other troll tribes.
The Night elves lost any aspect of the superiority complex when they had to join the Alliance sadly. Even to the point where they have started accepting mages back into their ranks after outlawing magic for 10,000 years. They were more interesting when they did see themselves superior. Atleast them taking he hits then would have knocked them down a peg but it hasn’t been a thing since warcraft 3.
Sorry if I was unclear but my comment was aimed at Night Elf fans solely. In game their role in the Alliance is another topic (along with every other race they’re subservient to human exceptionalism and it’s boring).
In the RTS though Night Elves were their own faction. That’s even emphasized in the BC Caverns of Time Mount Hyjal raid. But it just can’t be that way in WoW. There’s no real way functionally to make them both part of the Alliance and on par with the Horde (and also the rest of the Alliance) in power without making the faction divide laughable (and every other race laughable).
It means the power fantasy has to be toned down. The expectation can’t be one of faction-level power and that means their losses should be similar to those of other groups prominent in the story (except humans because … humans). It means some of their strengths may not be as strong relative to other races. Even with all that said, they still have arguably the second most prominent group of heroes, behind humans.
Before someone points out their heroes can’t seem to prevent things like Teldrassil - the whole point is that Night Elves (let alone their city guards plus Malfurion) cannot be greater than the entire Horde without them being their own faction.
//My comments may suggest I dislike humans in WoW and I don’t, I just dislike how so much of the narrative has made every race secondary (in role and power) to humans.
While there’s no good way back to what once was, that also relies heavily on the circa-Cata/MoP conception of the Horde and the Alliance as deeply unified things close to a federation with a strong shared identity rather than a political confederation of convenience – which was how the Forsaken and Night Elves were once viewed.
I also don’t think that militarily, it makes hardly any sense that Teldrassil or Lordaeron can be captured so easily, but especially Teldrassil. Defense of a fully self-sufficient island with impossibly high natural barriers that individuals can command against an offense rushing to not get pincered? And that’s granting that somehow they feinted the night elves out such that they had no warning, which is asking a lot. In an earlier era of WoW, you’d have some commander quietly snarking to you in the quest text about how impossible that ask is.
Now, Blizzard has long been the poster child for displaying that RTS games have virtually no relationship with actual strategy, but I don’t think you need to have gone to the Command & General Staff college to see the problems with this. (I mean, I certainly haven’t.)
Yeah the actual narrative was quite laughable.
The setup was … just … bad. They knew what they needed the end to have and they tried (poorly) to make a story that fit it. I don’t blame the author so much, because instead of having a story flow to a conclusion it somehow had to justify an end point. There was a similar issue in the Sylvanas story (which amazingly has to cause Sylvanas’ inner monologue in BTS literally lying to herself about her motivations) which basically ended up being “she’s dumb, really, really dumb.”
So, I realize that I haven’t contributed much to my own thread. I made this thread to start conversation about what the Night Elves could get for renewal, and it seems that many people want, well, anything.
I’m sorry. I do this thing where I tend to browse topics and respond to things within the topics rather than to the topic generally – it’s more frequent that I have nothing to say about the topic itself. Doesn’t mean the topic is bad, I just have the attention of a goldfish. Cracker or animal, not sure.
To re-rail a bit:
If the Night Elves get anything, it will either need to be off-screen or they’ll need to find a way to make it content for both. I think the best we can hope for is that somehow, a high-level version of Nextdrassil is a hub area for a coming expansion that can be abandoned for any purpose but roleplay and not divide new players once the expansion is over.
For me, renewal should be a renewal of purpose. Recognizing they’ve strayed from their path and refocusing their goals to not solely be with Stormwind but rather with Elune and nature. It doesn’t make much sense to me that their “military” seems subservient to the whims of Stormwind rather than their own beliefs.
That’s not to suggest they leave the Alliance or anything but realizing that Elune’s tear is granting them a new home and focusing on - honoring is the wrong word, but similar - should be their motivation.
I’d like to see less emphasis on militarism (generals and the like) and more on living harmoniously and protectively with nature. Less standing armies and more savagely free-form defending forests.
Even potentially revisiting ideas to “uncorrupt” the Naga and … something something regarding the plague.
It’s fine. I didn’t accuse anyone of derailing the thread. Your idea is good, too.
Could we also have the archer set as the heritage set?
I hate it, personally. Even if it becomes available, I don’t want it as the heritage set.
That is a fallacy pushed by certain fans honestly… typically Horde from my personal observations.
No one has said the Night Elf army can march down to Orgrimmar and alone defeat the Horde in its entirety.
What the Night Elves possess is supposed to be a really, really good defense because of the terrain. And it makes sense, they prepared their home territory for an eventual demon invasion that they knew would be coming.
If the power fantasy exist I fail to see how it has ever materialized in the game.
Ashenvale is on fire since cataclysm with 1/3 of it cut down by the Horde.
Darkshore is cracked like an china plate with Horde invading from the north and south.
Felwood is a demon corrupted hellscape
Winterspring is deserted
Hyjal is blasted by fire elementals and the remnants of WC3 invasion.
If this power fantasy is in the heroes then what achievements have Tyrande or Malfurion accomplished? Both together could not stop or defeat Nathanos at Darkshore.
it gets tiresome that community members are advocating that the problem is the players or their expectations based on conjecture and misunderstandings then reality.
Thats the exact opposite thing they need.
Night Elves are not safe… as demonstrated above they are 1 single attack away from the Horde to completely ending them as a species. What they need above all else is security from the Horde and other forces that would do them harm which means more militarization, more defenses and more security so they can survive and rebuild.
It’s a really good thing that Blizzard never followed through on that whole ‘our powers over nature will wane over time’ thing from WC3, huh?
???
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The only fantasy NE have is to suck and die.
I think you’re confusing Night elf action potential and the desires of the NE fanbase (the three of them still left) and what has ever actually been displayed in the game.
Why should a bunch of homeless people be stronger then an entire nation preparing for 10.000 years for an all ending war? Explain this to me?
The reason nightelf were so powerfull and kinda prepared against the legion was that tyrande had allways the lingering feel above her that the legion will return, in time, and thats the reason she prepared so much, you could say she prepared her entire people …build an army, made alliances or stopped threat with this one singular goal in mind…war against the legion.
The reason nightelfs are so militant is …now even more important then before, not only the legion want to wipe them out and take their stuff from them…it makes no sense to lower your guard after what happened to them.
Night Elves should, from the very beginning, been a playable neutral race that can stand toe to toe with the Alliance and Horde. Just like they were in Warcraft 3.
At this point, all of WoW should be retconned and restarted from scratch. Unfortunately, I am not confident the people at Blizzard could do any better than the absolutely mess of Lore we have already.