Which really sets them apart from Nelfs
Burnt down gazebo was what motivated me to main Nelf in BfA and Shadowlands.
The revenge plot, personal ties to the narrative and the focus on expanding the roles of Malfurion and Tyrande to be more than they were before was a huge factor.
It basically combined my favorite race for actual lore/backstory and the faction conflict/hatred of the Worgen into one group.
Darkshore is still one of the hypest things in BfA, even if the rest of the patch/expansion is mediocre.
IMO the devs have troubles with being clear with what they want. And it causes a lot of problems. People get emotional, get at each other, and so on, but under all of it (as I see the thing) is lack of developersâ commitment and of clear message:
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is the âstory firstâ? Then ok, praise the peace-lovers as much as possible, but follow it up with the players doing the same. The horde and the alliance should cooperate? Let us team together and cooperate. Thrall touching causes magical curing effects? Let me make a dwarf in skimpy clothes and rub all over Thrall right in Orgrimmar. For the greater_goodâą, of course.
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if the âgameplay firstâ, and the factions are âcoreâ and the devs consider it to be something good to keep, follow it up with the story that says just that: factions are the core and it is good to keep them around (or better than alternative).
Middle ground is IMO not achievable. Itâs just a matter of recognizing that the development resources are finite, and thus the commitment to something would be necessary for a story with at least some depth and development.
Fair enough IMO. I would be personally fine with commitment to either of those outcomes. But the attempt to sit in between is like âJaina is an architect of peaceâ⊠that never bothered to address the Dalaran story. Or âtauren stand proudâ, says Baine while sitting in Oribos since the beginning of the expansion.
I mean, in a way, Baine sitting there is kind of good for the players, because we can see in practice what is the approach of the devs to put any story they touch, on the shelf. Like, killing Nightwatch, and then not trying to fix the place for 3 expansions. Sargerasâs sword is not that bad yet, but on its way. Or many other stories started and not continued.
Baine clearly captures how it feels to have such approach in the story. IMO at one point the devs (I guess a different team, if there will be one) might have to ask themselves about the tools they have available, and if it make sense to create stories that feel like that one, or to alter their approach.
There is more than 1 way to tell such stories. There is more than 1 planet in the Great Dark.
So many things came together in a single event, that highlighted to both the horde and the alliance how the devs treat the story.
So it happened that the current tension between the players and the devs is also happening on the story front. The question is, where will it go this time: to unite the community in dissecting the badness of the story, and that the narrative team is a contributor to the troubled state of the game, or will fall back into forum fighting between each other, which unfortunately drived some people away last time.
(I mean, some elf posters were over the top, but with them some gone from here, some good things are also gone; a bit sad it did not evolve into something productive back then).
IDK, I just dislike the approach of the current dev team to undermine what originally made the game something liked and appreciated. Eluneâs story up until recently was about an entity unlike the pantheon stuff. And now itâs moving into âactually she is a part of a pantheonâ. Some are ok with such approach. To me using ret-cons more than in extra rare cases, where itâs clearly explained why other methods are not usable at the time, just makes me lose interest and go play something else (or use money elsewhere).
She was not the âonlyâ, like, ever?
That might be one of ways to âresetâ the player power, remove âburrowed powersâ, make factions closer to each otherâs level, etc.
I do not think the current dev team can deliver that properly though. I would be happy to be proven wrong, but seems unlikely.
A random NPC and the players that embody someones fueled by the life force of Azeroth are not the same thing though. In a way, NPC portion of the factions might be widly disproportionate in power, which while in canon a vulpera rogue might be as strong as an orc one, or any other.
But all those things would need clarity and consistency in the story, and⊠thatâs not quite what we see in the story lately.
idk, not sure about Old God, when I did quests there I saw a bunch of satirs, fel things, like felcones. Plenty of that stuff. Old God stuff? Not sure. After all the Wraith of Elune is used against satyrs / fel things there iirc.
Donât. Having expectations harmed many good souls, when it comes to the story of WoW. Or so is my experience telling me.
Imagine if the devs actually would pay attention to it, and embraced what the story is, rather than hopping from 1 topic to another.
And no, I do not mean 1-shot the horde, but, say, commit to the horde being agile underdog, playing on political arena, and doing undercover stuff, while the alliance could be way more powerful, but consisting of the entities with different interests, that rarely come together, so there is a room for the horde to have some diplomatic ways and pressure 1 part of the alliance via another one, etc.
Instead the devs wanted to show hype moments, and sort of kind of equal levels in BfA, and IMO itâs both not too believable, and did not improve the story 1 bit.
Like, in the alliance (if I have to pick a side), my main interest is in draenei. And then Iâm being told that not only the race that has its military wing operating with âwe die without questionâ approach did not appear to help elves (night elves of all people! Those who first voted for including draenei in the alliance. And in TBC itâll be possible to see a mix of draenei and night elf quest givers and NPCs across Darkshore and Ashenvale); but also that it did not raise any eyebrows among the draenei about why Velen and his vision were worthless to help them prepare, or help evacuate, or do somethingâŠ
IMO WoW is atrocious with: consistency and clarity of the exact definition of âvengeanceâ, consistency and clarity of âmoralityâ.
And manages to tell one of the most morally bankrupt story Iâve seen in videogames.
I would expect that story turn to place WoW 1 step from being on last breath without any doomsaying mood or anti-dev bias. Like, literally telling a story of promoting fighting against justice and victims and favour those who started all that thing - there would be no return for the dev team, and no discussion about morality of the story past that.
gl hf
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Oh, sorry. Missed this but WOD was a mixed bag that was ultimately more positive for the Orcs too.
We saw more cultures, traditions, taboos, etc. Most Orc roleplay of the tribes comes from WOD, even if they donât 1:1 line up with the MU.
Darkshore was hype indeed but it didnât lead anywhere with a satisfactory resolution. Idk why they just didnt let us kill the valkyries and nathanos right there.
That would have been great.
Shadowlands and BFA seem to be slowly reducing the list of people that can resolve the issue satisfactorily.
Its like a bait and switch. Fills you with hope and then lets you down again.
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Uh, that sounds like an UNAPPROVED declaration of enjoying Night Elves to me, pal, Iâm going to have to see your signed Night Elf license, and youâd better hope everythingâs in order.
( From Reallyhappy again ).
Small, that doesnât change the fundemental point i was making. I was saying theyâre demanding people that have previously proven they canât write good nelf lore, to write good nelf lore. Moreover, theyâre telling them to change their plans to fix the nelf lore, so they gotta now squeeze a circle into a square hole. Blizzard writing the night elves poorly doesnât change that.
Furthermore, It does suck, but thats how wow works. Dev time and resources are limited, they can not make a story that is solely for the players of one race. Zandalar was barely about the Zandalari, and their city was ruined because it had to pull double duty as a raid. By demanding more dev time that is needed elsewhere, you are just making it so Night Elves get more crappy stories cause theyâre gonna have to be rushed and poorly thought out. Factions, as much as i hate them, makes blizzards jobs easier because it lowers them from 24 groups to appease to two, and they still have proven to be incapable of not making both sides miserable.
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Donât you have anything productive to add to the conversation or do you just want to poke fun?
Iâd think sparing Nathanos and the Valkyr was likely part of the rewrites that hit BfA. Everything from 8.1.5 and onward has a very different tone in he expansion.
Considering all the foreshadowing about Sylvanas working against the Maw stopped right after 8.1, Iâd assume Nathanos and the Valkyr being spared was presumably for that narrative.
Especially because them surviving after served no purpose to the new narrative of Sylvanas being Mawsworn.
Nathanos fled so he could die in a later scene in similar circumstances and the living Valkyr is joining the dead Valkyr in the boss fight.
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I mean, donât we know it? This is the second time they shoehorned a Despot into the drivers seat to use the Horde faction as a plot-device to settup future content and villains. Then bounced off to another dimension, rather than even attempt to rebuild the Faction Identity, Racial Fantasies, and Character Roster theyâve increasingly left in shambles. Hell, in both cases (with Garry And Sylvie) it required the death of a WC3 legacy character AND the silencing of the majority of our roster for years for them to pull off. Which tarnished the characterization of those silenced and forced to not have an opinion too! 
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What you say maybe true but its human nature to still shake your fist and ask for something better.
I just find it sad that rather than the community coming together and doing something productive all we do is throw snide comments at each other.
Just doing my best to match the thread quality.
Also if you want my attention that badly, donât be afraid to just ask. We all need a little affirmation sometimes, yâknow?
Thatâs simple. Before the Storm was already written by then. Writing and publishing a book is a multiple year affair, with all the editing passes. So Nathanos HAD to survive as he had already been written into it as being alive. They tried to compromise by letting us kill a Valâkyr and an army of redshirt horde NPCs but it felt a bit hollow.
TBH the better solution would of been to of let us kill him, and then have a Valâkyr carry off his body and sacrifice themselves to revive him. It would of been amusing if Tyrande had come and killed him AGAIN at his farm, and her final words had been âand stay dead this timeâ as she stalked off into the shadows.
I guess it is water under the bridge, at this point.
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See what I mean?
Does Felsteel feel like being edgy would make Blizzard Senpai notice them? We will never know.
Iâm gonna go against the grain a little bit and say that the hordeâs lack of cosmological importance wouldnât be AS bad of an issue if it was offset with more personal positive stories and interactions in some way. If the alliance gets to delve into intricacies of the light or Lifelands or whatever, then any horde reps should at least double down on the âhumanâ level, which is something that people often complain about missing during stories like this.
Instead, horde characters that interact seem to get killed off, villainized, or both. And Baineâs left sitting on the stairs with nothing to contribute. âAt leastâ Thrall gets to interact with his mother, but that sounds like itâs more of a secondary thing that half-happens off-screen. And sheâs kinda dead, so thereâs only so much of that to take with the faction after Shadowlands is over. Tyrande / Shandris interaction doesnât have this problem unless one of them doesnât come back.
âŠHaving said that, BFA frustrated me so much that Iâm not sure if I actually want to see horde story progression anymore because I feel utterly meh at the idea of it nowadays.
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I have a trio of problems with this.
- I find it entirely too defeatist. People can change.
- It ignores that feedback could be directed towards management, to change current writers.
- It ignores churn in the writersâ room.
Felsteel was here to provide Baal with a counterexample. Iâm convinced at this point that heâs an Alliance plant.
Thatâs largely because both presume motive on the other and it isnât âx should happen with yâ, itâs âyou commit genocide, thus x should happen to you.â
Thus the argument becomes defensive, and then you get got Elesa making stuff up to justify being upset, people calling each other shills and trolls, dismissing others as âhorde postersâ as if that means anything, etc.
I love this post, thereâs a little bit of everything in it, thinking that this is actually being âedgyâ and the weird random tangent about Blizzard noticing, as if anybody who disagrees with you is a hired shill.
Blizzard (Creates WoD): Look how much I love Orcs!
Blizzard (Creates BFA): Look how much I love Night Elves!
Inigo Montoya: That word you keep using. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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K-Kyalin-sama, please⊠donât blow my cover so soon⊠I prostrateâŠ