Background is only one part of a character, and means nothing if you don’t do anything with it or them. And the wow devs haven’t done anything with the night elves worth anything since WC3. They had one zone story in legion that mostly involved Tyrande running around telling us how much she loves Malfurion, and one bit around a temple that was really more about the legion attacking it to obtain a pillar than it was about the night elves themselves.
That’s only part of it. Character development involves change. The movement from a place of comfort, to a place of discomfort, and then the transition back. It involves the reaction to stimuli from the character’s point of view so that we can learn more about them than we previously knew.
Nightelves have a background. Wonderful…
Everyone has a background!
The Horde has had things done with their background. They’ve gone so far as to go back in time to see how things could have been had they made one different choice somewhere along the line. We’ve seen how the horde reacts to losing leaders. We’ve seen how the Horde reacts to internal strife. We’ve seen how the Horde reacts to delicate situations AND not so delicate situations, and we’ve seen how they react to times of strife and times of peace.
That’s character development.
We’ve seen nearly nothing of the sort for the alliance. Not by comparison (unless you’re a Dwarf…but that’s somewhat counter-balanced by the Dwarves not really having any remaining noteworthy NPCs to their names that aren’t neutral)
We’ve seen how Anduin reacted to the death of his father. We’ve seen how Jainia handles to her homecoming (and that story was amazing). We got to see King Varian grow from berzerker-warrior to king to elder statesman to true hero (before he was exploded). We’ve seen the dwarves deal with their internal clan politics and try to reunite their entire race. And we’ve seen Genn be Genn.
We’ve seen how alliance NPCs get to deal with things. Now how The Alliance deals with things.
We haven’t seen the Night Elves really do anything other than their best imitation of kindling.
The only thing they’ve got going to them is that they’re not Gnomes…who have somehow managed to do even less than the night elves, in aggregate, since the game was released.
Look. Here’s the point I’m trying to make.
If we go into Ardenweald and see a story about Tyrande and Malfurion rather than a story about Night Elves, the devs aren’t doing their jobs because that story makes us observers rather than participants. Even if we get to take orders, run around, and kill half the zone all we’re doing is observing. Even if your character is a night elf all you get to do in that scenario is observe. It doesn’t actually involve you.
Look at WoD. For all its fault, it got this aspect correct (actually, most of the complaints about WoD are content-related. The only real story complaint involves Yrel’s story getting chopped). Horde players, and Orcs in particular, are all directly involved in the story as they get to walk around and go “My horde is better than your Horde!” the entire expansion (and this was also true for the Alliance to a lesser extent as any Draenei characters were in much the same situation).
Generally, when stories are told in WoW, the alliance get to observe as other people do things. It’s their #1 complaint when they complain that their story is bad, or is falling flat, or that they feel like a punching bag.
For as great as Varian’s story before his demise was, the alliance players just observed him do stuff.
For as great as Anduin’s journey from boy to man to king to leader has been (he ain’t done yet, IMO) alliance players are still just observers.
By contrast, when the Horde story is about Garrosh going bad, horde players get to do something about it. We get the siege of Oggrimar raid and you get to go in and take him down.
When we go back in time we get to see how the Horde might have been.
When Sylvanas goes bad (and is "totally not Garrosh"™), the observational storyline actually gives the player a choice to make and works to involve them by giving just a little bit of agency.
If I’m being honest, The Burning of Teldrassil was the single best piece of story the alliance has ever had since WoW launch. In almost every other piece of Alliance story, all they get to say is “look at that happen to them”. However, for night elf characters in the burning, they could say “Look at what’s happening to me!”
That is the difference, and why I hope Ardenweald is more than just story about Tyrande.
