I honestly feel kind of bad for Blizzard’s writers. I mean, I’m assuming they have writers who are responsible for each area of the game – I know in some game studios, the programmers write the story. In any event, I’m sure they’re trying to do their best, but I’m guessing it’s a left hand-right hand thing, where maybe they don’t all get the same version of events to write off of, or a complete accounting. Maybe they just get tossed a scenario – Astranaar full of dead kaldorei, for instance, and a basic “the Forsaken attacked and caught them off guard, go write some quests” – and off they have to go.
I just really want to send them a slew of excerpts from their own canon regarding kaldorei and beg them to write that race. I mean. “These women fight with unmatched savagery! I’ve never seen their equal. They are… perfect warriors.” That was their beloved Grommash Hellscream. Give me THOSE kaldorei please and thank you.
Perhaps they’ve been pacifist for this long, right? And again, they got taken off guard. But the whole meta going on here is, you know, you poked the bear. You literally poked the bear. And for the first time, as we’ve said, since Warcraft III, their true face, the one we haven’t seen since the Night Elf armies with Sentinels of the Warcraft III encounter, they show that again, and we want it to be terrifying, and the whole setting of Darkshore, the whole setting of just like the terr- In fact, the name, “Terror of Darkshore,” was the name of the pitch. Because Malfurion is the Terror of Darkshore now, right? Everyone in the Horde army is probably talking like “Dude, you better not go out there by yourself, ‘cause this thing, this thing is going to just tear you limb from limb.”
Don’t because they’re the real enemy of the fans that care about the Lore. They don’t care about Night Elves. They’ve gone on record stating they’re only interested in humans because they’re easy to write. It gives them more time to focus on Horde story telling. As “lovely” as they’re doing with that. Kaldorei exist as a tool for the current writers. When they need an Alliance race to die horribly in mass then they make use of Night Elves. And you’ll never see any introspection from Tyrande or Malfurion. But you can bet you’ll know how sad it’s making Anduin.
The writers don’t care about the Night Elf Fanbase. If they did they’d have listened to us by 8.1 and they clearly haven’t. Some extra elites to kill isn’t listening. Shadowlands is probably going to be the death of Tyrande. Especially after they’ve had her go against Boy King of Peace and Unity twice now and propped up Shandris as Anduin’s puppet to replace her.
I think it’s not so much that they don’t care as they don’t really know what to do with it, especially if there’s another narrative they have to follow. I remember reading an article - it might have actually been that interview Amadis linked, actually - where they said something that boiled down to “canonically, because the night elves are so powerful, it was tricky to do”.
If we took away the players, for example? No, it’s ridiculous that orcs are even in those forests. Grommash, the guy who fought everything? He paused when dealing with night elves. And this is their territory, etc. But you have the directive “Hey, give us a good reason for the Horde to be here”, and it’s like…how?
But I’m an optimist, I suppose. I do have some genuine fears that they’re going to act like Tyrande is somehow the villain, like some people think of Genn as a villain (you know, people upset that their kingdoms were wiped out aggression from the other faction). But I want to believe - I have to believe - that the fact that Tyrande is going to find out what’s going on with Elune is going to override that.
I really, really hope that’s going to happen. Because I think Blizzard is grossly underestimating the impact it would have if they made Tyrande a villain and then killed her off. I know a lot of players would leave permanently, and I don’t think I could blame them. I don’t know if I could keep recommending this game to people, to be honest.
That would go a far way to assuage a lot of people. Seriously, there are people who think of night elves as those ones dancing on mailboxes. I would bet actual, real money that, for example, Tyrande Whisperwind could wipe the floor with almost any other humanoid on Azeroth, one-on-one. And yes, I mean in a physically contest. And this is before the god-infusion.
Another annoyance is how can night elf players “take pride” in a defeat when the story provided the horde players yet another meme-worthy insult at the players. You can’t look at anything surrounding Teldrassil or the night elves without someone bringing up how they only got “ashes” and whatever. Even blue posters were quick to show their bias by encouraging it in typical Blizzard toxicity.
I’ve thought about it some more, and realized a few more things from my earlier post that I thought I’d bring up.
What also made BfA’s story disappointing for me wasn’t the War of Thorns, any of the 8.0 pre-patch events, or even after reading Elegy/A Good War. What made it most disappointing for me was the announcement that 8.3 would be the last content patch for BfA and that we wouldn’t be getting any more story or closure for Teldrassil (at least until we get to Ardenweald/Shadowlands apparently).
Now I think everyone’s viewpoints on the story of BfA are valid regardless of whether you are Alliance or Horde. I can’t really think of a good way to accurately describe this roller-coaster of a story that has been BfA so I’ll just use comparisons to some of my favorite movies; Infinity War and Endgame:
Alliance viewpoint:
Imagine it’s the end of Infinity War, the snap, and genocide has just occurred. BUT now, instead of moving on to the story of Endgame, we are instead told the story of how sad Thanos is, in gorgeously rendered cinematic after gorgeously rendered cinematic.
Horde viewpoint:
Imagine you are Gamora. Regardless of how you came to be in the service of Thanos or how you came to realize this isn’t the show you signed up for, there you are on Vormir getting unceremoniously thrown off a cliff kicking and screaming the whole way down.
Ofc there are some who would have liked the story of how sad Thanos is. And then those who are fully onboard with Thanos and his mission. And all those are also perfectly valid viewpoints as well.
But now, I just feel like this story has me stuck in limbo. It almost said as much in-game with the whole armistice signing (not an actual peace treaty) and Genn/Tyrande’s skepticism that this cease-fire will hold. While things shift to Shadowlands for the time being, the Alliance/Horde conflict is stuck in limbo just as I am. So these story beats of sadness and loss still remain, and the way Shadowlands/Ardenweald addresses these issues will go a long way toward determining whether or not I keep hopping on this roller-coaster.
to be fair, Thanos WAS sad at the end of Infinity war and during Endgame. Cant go much further than that without getting into some serious spoiler territory. Also it would be more accurate if you said it was Nebula who we followed around being sad as Thanos = Sylvanus, not Sadfang.
It felt like blizzard smashed 3 partial incomplete expansions and tried to make an expansion abomination style.
The night elves are Alliance, for that one reason alone I would care more about them then plenty of other races in WoW. Also, while I wasn’t exactly fond of them at first(I had always hated the fact they were added as our elven race over the high elves) but they have been part and parcel of Alliance lore for long I am actually hoping each and ever time they managed to trounce the Horde and actually get a good ending.
As for mystery, WoW will presumably get new mysteries(well depends on how long WoW will last but that is another discussion entirely). My particular reason for the comment about Elune being connected to a Naaru is more of a belief in Chekhov’s gun. Blizzard literally teased the connection during a lore Q and A out of the blue and followed though with it by referencing it again with Xe’ra’s questline.
Lastly, as for Alliance uniqueness, I believe the Alliance is unique and realize every race manages to add something interesting to it. Hell, the gnomes and dwarves for example are distinct enough even though both are the “short races” and are “technologically focused”. However, I have always expunged the belief the Alliance is always at its best when it is united for a common cause. It is literally part of the name!
I count as my revenge every single Horde I kill on that warfront and battlefield, but especially every single Forsaken I send to their rest. And since Sylvannas failed in her enslavement of Eyeir, every Valk’kyr the Horde loses is a permanent reduction.
Not just that… every single victory that’s denied the Horde, wherever the battle takes place, whenever it takes place… Every arrow she looses is Drahliana’s revenge.
That’s your personal rp then. Horde players can also butcher their way through Night Elves and Worgen in Nazmir in their war campaign killing like… 100 of each? And everything we can do in Darkshore, the Horde player can do too in the warfront or the world quests.
For me, revenge means dealing atleast close to as much damage to the Horde as it did to the Alliance, and reconquering 1 of 3 zones while 1 is destroyed and the other one (Ashenvale) remaining a Horde zone is not acceptable for me.
Not that it matters though if I accept it or not because that’s the entire revenge plot.
The night elves are Alliance, for that one reason alone I would care more about them then plenty of other races in WoW. Also, while I wasn’t exactly fond of them at first(I had always hated the fact they were added as our elven race over the high elves) but they have been part and parcel of Alliance lore for long I am actually hoping each and ever time they managed to trounce the Horde and actually get a good ending.