Night elves did NOT get their revenge, this is unacceptable!

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Lore post ahead, I know not everyone cares about the lore, but please hear me out, I really need your help to draw atleast some attention to this topic. If you want to support this post, leaving a comment helps a lot!

Short TLDR at the bottom

First off, I know that there have already been topics about this, but I just can’t let this be forgotten. So let me get into it:

From an interview with a wow dev: “I think she had her moment where we told some of her story and she got her revenge for the Night Elves.”

Source: https://www.wowhead.com/news=291733/tyrande-got-revenge-for-the-night-elves-mmorpg-interview-with-blizzard

So, where do I even start with this whole thing? Well, let’s see here:
Sylvanas has planned an attack on the night elves because “they could think about attacking the horde in the future”, so if the horde attacks first, this won’t be able to happen.
For this reason, Sylvanas took her whole horde army, marched from orgrimmar to Darkshore and slaughtered every Night elf they could find, not even civilians were spared and just brutally murdered.
To end the whole thing, she commited genocide against Night elves that were still in Teldrassil, knowing that only innocents/civilians remained in there.

She even made shamans empower the flames to make sure that those people all die, she didn’t want to destroy the tree, she wanted to destroy the race.

I can’t remember that such an atrocious event has ever happened in WoW.
She almost wiped out the Night elves, knowingly killed thousands of civilians and all that just to minimize the chance of getting attacked by the night elves in the future ? There are barely any night elves left in Azeroth now, the race is basically going extinct at this point (according to official lore).

This is not even the shocking part though. Sylvanas and her followers have commited a horrible atrocity and she must pay for it… right?

Well, apparently, the devs see it otherwise: Tyrande has gained new powers with the few people left of the night elves, but the only thing they managed to do is kill 1 of Sylvanas Val’kyrs.
They did not manage to kill Nathanos or even hurt him. He even mocked Tyrande for what happened with Teldrassil and him raising 2 of the Night elves former commanders as undeads.
They are so weak in numbers now that they did not even manage to conquer Darkshore (or what’s left of it) back. The horde hasn’t even gotten a slap on the wrist for what happened, and the devs call it revenge?

I find this sick, just awful hearing from a dev that Tyrande already avenged the thousands of innocents that were killed in Sylvanas genocide and that the story with the night elf (in relation to Teldrassil) is about over. Do they think that killing 1 Val’kyr makes up for the intentional murder of thousands of innocents and the loss of their home?
And before people come up with the battle for lordaeron, how many innocent civilians that had a life expectation of thousands of years were killed in the battle for lordaeron? If the answer is less than thousands, then it’s not revenge.

Why does Blizzard write a story that has horrible consequences for night elf fans, but then doesn’t finish it properly? We will probably end up siding with the horde and forget about the whole incident.

I think this is just wrong on so many levels I can’t even find the right words for it. If any Blizzard Story Devs stumbles upon this, please reconsider your decisions and give Night elves atleast some compensation for what happened, don’t just leave them to die out and pretend like it has never happened. Atleast in WoW, the night elves always seemed to be a pretty peaceful race to me (not in WC3 but let’s talk about WoW here) and they definitely deserved better than that.

Sorry for all the complaining, but I think it just had to be said. I hope I’m not the only one that sees it this way. I know that not everyone might not agree entirely, but even as a former horde main this questline just felt horrible and so wrong to do, killing innocents and being unable to act against sylvanas. It just felt like it’s so next level evil that even the savage horde should never get away with such an act.

What bothers me the most is that the devs already confirmed that they’re done with Tyrande as she “already got her revenge for the night elves”. This is also why I thought I should make this post. It’s not likely to change anything, but I just wanted to draw atleast some attention to this topic.

TLDR: Killing 1 Val’kyr is not revenge for aiming and succeeding to kill thousands of innocents, wiping out the majority of a race and making all of them die a slow, painful death. All of that completely unprovoked

Please Blizzard, atleast give us something, this was such a huge let down for night elf players. Maybe a new capital city with new children or something that shows that the race is not completely dead, if you won’t give us our revenge.

:arrow_right: If you want to help me draw attention to this topic, please make sure to leave a comment here. Every comment helps a lot to keep the post visible and if we are lucky we might get blizzard to see it and reconsider their decisions. The longer the post stays visible, the better our chances!

8.2.5 Update: So now the Night Elves aren’t even mentioned anymore. They are at peace with the horde now. With the very horde that genocided them and occupy their lands until this day.

8.3 Update: Anduin and Tyrande have a talk where Anduin spits on her by wanting to sign a peace treaty without demanding an apology or a return of night elf lands. Undead Night elves are also heavily hinted as a final spit in the face. Seems as Ashenvale and Darkshore are horde territory now.

Blizzcon Update: Seems like we actually got Darkshore back but 8.1 was even more pointless because Sylvanas can create more Val’kyr. Also they told us that every innocent that died in Teldrassil has to suffer in the maw (wow hell) forever to rub salt into the wound.

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They don’t need “compensation.”

They’re a bit underdeveloped in terms of what BFA is doing with them on the lore front, sure, but I take the Burning of Teldrassil and the subsequent Darkshore Warfront as a signal that the culture of the Night Elves is being irreparably changed. They no longer have the luxury of sitting passively atop a tree and letting the world happen around them. Night Elves were made toothless in vanilla, a far cry from their savage WC3 roots. And as a fan of how they used to be, I’m actually pretty pleased with where the expansion’s story beats are pushing them today.

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Tyrande killed one of the single most important beings in relation to Sylvanas.
Her extra lives, her new forsaken, the new dark rangers, all of it is tied to the val’kyr and Tyrande just denied her one of the very few she has left.
Sylvanas would’ve preferred it if you did conquer Darkshore.

Also the consequences don’t really exist, not when there’s a bronze right there to say “Hey wanna see Darnassus again?”

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I get that Nathanos’s author has a thing for Sylvanas, and manages the writers, so to that person killing one of the Valkyrie is a big deal…

But I’d only be satisfied once Ashenvale is reclaimed.

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Sadly also in life everything is not fair. I view it as both the opportunity to enrich the the Night Elves again as warriors and also help people realize that sometimes vengeance is not the fulfilling path

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That is unless the supposed leaks are true and Sylvanas gets to be some kinda death god. She wouldn’t need the Val’kyr anymore.

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But this just feels so severely underwhelming. 1 of Sylvanas 3 (?) death escape cards for thousands of innocent lives.

Well yeah, most of them don’t have the luxury of living anymore.

Well it would’ve been okay to me if the story was … continued. Sylvanas commited a horrible atrocity against the Night Elves and instead of the night elves actually standing their ground and fighting back, they are getting told that they have already gotten their revenge and that the devs will move away from night elves with the story now. It’s like I missed out on the whole part where the Night elves got their revenge?

I was talking about the consequences in the story, not the gameplay. The lore says that Night elves are almost entirely wiped out and possibly going extinct now after what has happened.

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If the Night Elves are canonically able to field an army capable of cleansing the Horde from Darkshore I wouldn’t exactly call their civilization “crippled” or “mostly wiped out.”

The Gilneans helped out, sure, but those guys have been in even worse shape than the Kaldorei since Cataclysm.

This only means the conflict between the night elves and the forsaken isn’t going to be resolved in BFA. That’s fine; there are about 20 different story threads that need to be resolved by 8.3, and I’m getting increasingly nervous that they’re not even going to be able to do that. The last thing we need is for Tyrande to throw additional wrenches into the works in what is already an overly convoluted storyline.

Major events don’t necessarily lead to clean resolutions in the course of a single expansion. The enmity between the forsaken and the worgen, for instance, stretches all the way back to Cataclysm, and we still have yet to see the worgen retake Gilneas (we just might in this expansion, but remember it’s taken about a decade just to get to this point).

The Burning of Teldrassil isn’t going to be swept under the rug or ignored. It has changed the night elven people drastically, and this will affect future story beats in future expansions. There’s absolutely no way the night elves will ever support peace with the Horde at this point; even Shandris so much as spells that out in Nazjatar.

Bottom line; the story will be continued, and it will continue to affect other storylines in either subtle or overt influences.

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But they weren’t. Darkshore is still mostly Horde territory and the land is mostly destroyed. The warfront and world quests just go back and forth and there is no clear winner of the conflict.

It rather means that there’s no need for revenge or redemption of the night elves because they have already “gotten their revenge”

I wish we could say that, but knowing blizzards writing it’s likely that we will just end siding with the horde and tyrande forgiving the horde. Not because it makes sense, but it’s more suitable for other stories going on.

This is only speculation and yet it’s highly unlikely since devs already said that the night elves are about even with the horde now.
I mean I wish you were right, but I highly doubt it

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What a pathetic joke. The devs are clueless about what constitutes “revenge”. In addition to actual revenge (defeating Sylvanas and Nathanos), night elves need to either 1) rebuild Darnassus or 2) build a new city for the night elves.

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Except Sylvanas still has three. If she had three left, and then Tyrande took her down to two, you would have a point, but leaving Sylvanas with three Val’kyr didn’t do anything to her in the long run. What is more, it did nothing to those who still carry out her orders.

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that would be the very least, and it still wouldn’t make up for the countless innocent lives lost. Knowing blizzard we won’t even get that, though.

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The Night Elves have an army, because that army was gone while their civilian population was wiped out. They are a tree without roots now. And that remainder of the Kaldorei race is throwing itself into the meat grinder against the Horde.

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You’re a little late to the party. :rainbow:

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I know, but I just didn’t want it to be forgotten

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Because Blizzard doesn’t want to actually kill off Sylvanas and probably will find some way to keep her alive regardless if it’s more bad writing or noyt.

You think if they loved Sylvanas so much, they wouldn’t have you know, made her into a villian. Don’t start something you can’t finish.

Of course it doesn’t help some horde players think hey it’s just war, who cares if Sylvanas killed a few children, a few adults, it’s just a tree. /eyeroll Garrosh didn’t get this much of a defense and plot armor.

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Yeah, it definitely does go back and forth. And what I’m saying is that if they have the military strength to wrest control of Darkshore away from the Horde, even for a moment, then they can’t be that crippled of a civilization.

Their new army even has a canonical name;
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Army_of_the_Black_Moon

There are multiple ways to interpret that, sure, but I think you’re leaning more towards the absolute worst possibility. Do you honestly believe the night elves will return to their peaceful ways after this? These kinds of events have massive ripples throughout WoW canon. The Stormheim attack wouldn’t have happened if Sylvanas never attacked GIlneas. Hell, the Burning of Teldrassil might not have happened if Genn hadn’t tried to assassinate Sylvanas during the Legion’s invasion.

That’s fine, I respect your position on that. I’m just fairly confident in my assessment of what’s going on with the night elves because, typically, that’s been the state of things in the WoW canon. The “cycle of hatred” that perpetuates the conflict between the Alliance and Horde is 100% based on justifications to wage war that are rooted in painful pasts.

  • The Blood Elves feel abandoned by the Alliance due to the Scourging of Lordaeron.
  • The tauren feel victimized by the attack on Camp Taurajo.
  • The Void Elves feel betrayed by their exile from Silvermoon.
  • The worgen will never forgive the forsaken after Gilneas.
  • And now we have the Night Elven city of Darnassus burned down by the Horde.

Contrary to popular belief I don’t necessarily believe this expansion will end with one big handshake between the factions, and if it doesn’t the rage of the night elves is something that will continue to affect future stories.

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Dude do you know how many leaks there are?
Everything from she dies in the final raid, sacrificing herself to seal n’zoth, pulling a Code Geas and dying so the faction war can finally and truly end now that the “evil warchief” has been put down, to just being beaten and imprisoned.

The first time Sylvanas died it only took one sacrifice to bring her back. The second time, two had to die.
It takes more every time, and the Alliance keeps killing them on top of that. Unless there’s been yet another damn retcon, she literally doesn’t have enough to save herself anymore. Just to raise new forsaken.

Well if two more val’kyr die the Forsaken are definitely going extinct.

9 to start
One bringing her back in Icecrown
Two bringing her back in gilneas
One KIA in Andorhol
One severely weakened giving Nathanos a model update
One KIA in Darkshore

Only two full strength val’kyr left. So either Sylvanas benefits from another retcon and gets one extra life at the cost of the entire Forsaken people, or she sacrificed her last life so a writer’s self-insert could look handsome but the Forsaken can continue on after she’s gone.

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That implies that the Army of the Black Moon is all that remains of the Night Elven military, which simply isn’t true. The sentinels comprise the bulk of the Night Elves’ forces, and they are led by Shandris at Feathermoon Stronghold. The sentinels, as a whole, are still active throughout Ashenvale and are the subject of multiple mission table quests.

The city that housed the largest civilian population was destroyed, sure, but the night elves are very far from the brink of extinction now.

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Way too much to read

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