Most likely they’ll have Alleria and Vereesa ‘humble’ the entire Quel’Thalassian leadership 
ugh …
Actually, come to think of it – They kind of already did that in the Alleria animation 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgY1YrAHYBI @ 30 seconds in.God I’m so tired & sick of the Horde + their heroes being either the shamed, the sidekick or the loot pinatas.
Nah, they can’t humble Lor’themar. Dude bagged a 10K year old cougar. He’s untouchable now. Halduron is fair game cuz he doesn’t have an equal feat.
“I’ll give it to ya, you got me there!”
But Halduron is also said to be the best-friend Lor’themar & even saved him in the war with the Scourge — So hopefully if anything, the cougar tries to help save the BFF for her hubby 
I see what you’re getting at…yet, Halduron is actually a terrible candidate for getting killed off to make the Void seem like a threat specifically because he hasn’t been visible enough in game. Alleria or Sylvanas (again) or Lor’themar (please no) or even Vereesa would be better candidates for showing off how dangerous the Void is because they’ve had more recent spotlight than him.
To use a Star Trek trope comparison, it’s the difference between killing off a redshirt crew member and beating up the chief security officer who’s a series regular (hi Worf). Halduron should be established enough to be noteworthy if he’s defeated in combat, but he’s gotten so little spotlight in game that killing him off wouldn’t be an effective way to raise the stakes. He’d have to be built up more in-game first to make players care about him. Khadgar’s apparent death had impact on raising the stakes because we’d seen him for years doing all sorts of amazing feats and had also formed an attachment to him through questing. We haven’t quested with Halduron since Legion, and that was only if the player was a hunter! Even then he barely said anything, and Vereesa had a more prominent role than him!
No, if the goal is raise the stakes or establish the Void threat, literally any Windrunner (including Turalyon since he’s part of the family) is a better narrative choice than Halduron. I’m not saying that I support such a move as good writing, just that Halduron as he is currently would not be an effective narrative tool to achieve that goal. Honestly, considering that Arator’s now living in Silvermoon for some reason, and that Alleria is often worried about his safety, and that she also considers him one of the tethers holding her back from the edge, I’d be much more concerned about him.
Hey now, Halduron should at least get credit along with Rommath for being excellent wingmen.
he will be the neutral character in midnight
I also hope the other elves are killing each other
That’s not, ‘establishing the Void as a threat,’ though. That’s emotional investment. I might add, it very much backfired hard. No one was screaming for Xal’atath’s head. She’s too well liked, for starters. People were just pissed off at the writers for using a played-out narrative trope, and how the writing was so poor it came off more like a set of first graders LARP’ing on the playground.
Khadgar: “I’m firing my laser!”
Xal’atath: “Too bad! I’ve got my pretty princess necklace which eats your laser!”
Halduron as a character dying off isn’t going to do much for emotional investment by players because, as you noted, we’ve hardly done anything with him. However, emotional investment was not the crux of my concern for him. It was killing him off to make the Void seem a threat. Now, although Halduron as an individual isn’t a god-tier character, the position of Ranger-General conveys an immense sense of individual and political power. One would also need to consider the circumstances of death.
In other words, were Halduron and most of the Sin’dorei’s soldiers to get wiped out by the Void, then yes, his death, the death of the Ranger-General and all his power (manpower and individual power), establishes the Void as a threat. Even worse, it gives an edge for why the Blood Elves would reverse their position on the exiled High/Void Elves.
The thing is, I can absolutely see him being removed from the picture one way or another to make room for a Windrunner Ranger-General once more. Again, that goes to some length to cement the, ‘Unification of the Elven Tribes.’ It is because that unification is inevitable that I think the Windrunners in general are going to be safe.
Turalyon might die though, I’ll grant you that. The Devs can’t help themselves and are dragging Anduin back, and room needs to be made on Stormwind’s throne for him.
Arator is the character I’m least concerned about in Midnight. The whole prophecy of the, ‘Child born of Light and Darkness,’ from Legion nonsense fits him far better than it ever fit Illidan.
That’s not even getting onto the topic of the Arathi Empire and how Arator as a character would/should be integral to future interactions with it.
If any of the old Dragonlance writers were still on the WoW team, I’d even go so far as to predict a rehash of that storyline. If you’re interested, spoilers below.
The part-elven son of two heroes becomes the king of his mother’s Kingdom by political machinations. Despite this he’s not a bad king. His kingdom is destroyed by a malevolent alien dragon. Leading the refugees to their sister kingdom seeking sanctuary and to unite, they arrive to find it conquered by another enemy. An all powerful, vindictive, and evil goddess whom hates the elves deceives them into leaving the conquered kingdom when they could retake it.
In the end, both kingdom’s peoples are refugees, led by that part-elf king.
No, altogether, the characters I’m most concerned about going into Midnight are Lor’themar, Rommath, and Halduron. To me, Halduron’s death is most likely because he’s in someone else’s seat. Rommath I think is going to die just because he’s not going to support reunification (and there is always that old datamined Cata stuff where he joined the Twilight Cult). As for Lor’themar, I think he’s the least likely of those three to get killed off, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard threw him into the retirement home with Genn and Tyrande/Malfurion.
Dredging up older Horde characters to kill off is certainly their calling card. Would probably be a final straw moment for me if that pans out.
This thread makes me ever more sure that the thunderous level of fireworks that will go off in the community when neutral Silvermoon likely really does become a thing is gonna go on and on for years.
If it is neutral the way Amirdrassil was neutral, it won’t be a big issue. If a Horde capital officially goes neutral, probably just a lot of vitriol and people quitting.
The issue is if they use it as the expansion capitol or not. If they do then, I do not see how they can do so given the city likely would have a neutral renown track. So… Alliance folks would be able to be revered by Silvermoon.
It would be akin to something like The Ashen Verdict. There is no reason it has to be Silvermoon.
If I were to bet, I think Silvermoon may not be the Capitol. Rather, I think it will be Suramar’d and taken over, requiring a prolonged story arc involving gathering up the other forms of Thalassian elves to liberate it.
Same honestly.
After Bel’ameth and Gilneas and now Telogrus, I think most people are resigned to a neutral Silvermoon. It’s the how that has me worried. Bel’ameth, for instance, wasn’t required to canonically withdraw from the Alliance and replace half its leaders with Horde elves to perform that function.
I disagree that it wasn’t meant to establish Xal’atath as a real threat in addition to the emotional investment; taking out Khadgar and Dalaran all in one showed that she was powerful while also removing two of the elements that the player characters would normally turn to for help in fighting her. Whether or not it was effective storytelling is a separate matter, but I do think it was meant to establish Xal’atath as more than just everyone’s favorite Knaifu.
That’s the problem, though. We haven’t seen him do anything impressive in-game to show that he’s actually a good fit for the role of Ranger-General of Silvermoon in comparison with the Windrunners, and that he isn’t just the Regent Lord’s BFF who got the job because everyone else had died. Most of the lore that establishes he’s competent is found outside of the game, so there’s no reason for players to assume that he wouldn’t be instantly destroyed if confronted by Xal’atath or some other Void baddie. If he were to be killed off right now, it would just confirm to the player base that he was only ever a seat warmer for the next Windrunner to take the job, and that would be terrible.
I really don’t see how fulfilling the Sin’dorei’s worst fears about the Void by having the Void take out most of their defenses would make them trust the Ren’dorei more. If anything, it would only reinforce Rommath’s position as correct. I also don’t see how a bunch of Sin’dorei dying would suddenly encourage the Alliance-aligned Thalassians to reconcile with them; it would have to be in addition to an attack on the Sunwell, and in that case the Sunwell alone is enough to show the threat that the Void poses.
I disagree that Halduron is more likely to die than Rommath. Unless Velonara suddenly gets a much bigger role, he’s the most prominent elven archer Horde-side now that Sylvanas is gone, and that’s a role that Alleria with her Space-Ranger-look doesn’t neatly fit anymore. Rommath, however, has plenty of competition for the mage spotlight, and Aethas has been getting more screen time recently.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what ends up happening. If the Sunwell goes Voidy, it may force the Thalassians to work together, since it would affect all of them. Well, all the living ones at least, but even the Dark Rangers could get in on the action as Horde allies to Silvermoon who know the landscape.
See, I’m imagining that role will belong to the Sunwell on the Isle of QD. I mean, that’s gotta be the obvious target the Void Brigade’s going after, and if we’re getting a fresh new version of those zones for the expac anyways, they could just make the island bigger, maybe take the Sunwell raid map and make it all outdoorsy-ish content for us to fight void monsters in.
The void taking over SMC is real bad, obviously, but not… Eh, not a dire existential threat we have to all face immediately. Not a threat that rallies the void elves, high elves and night elves to become some kind of All Elf Unity Party with the blood elves and nightborne.
The Sunwell though? That would certainly do it. The high elf-related elves have a sacred religious-ish reason, the nightborne have recent Corrupted Well-Related Trauma and a marriage to fall back on, and I’m sure Tyrande can think of a very good reason to want to band the elves together to stop a quasi-Well of Eternity from going corrupted by dark cosmic forces, knowing how things like that tend to go.
Just my two pennies worth of thoughts.
Oh no need to worry on that, given Tyrande retired. Shandris is the one making the calls now, and she is way more amiable given she somehow went and helped in the troll wars. Somehow.
Excuse me?
Excuse me sir?
Red portrait. Horde main. Y’know, the faction that has a whole Thrall? That guy who retired in 2011 yet has not missed one single expansion since then?
I know what Azerothian retirement actually means; "taking a break for a few patches until I must return for the good of the Horde/the Alliance Azeroth.
Until a character dies, they are always on-call.
Nah, I think they are really pushing for an anime style next generations thing. First it was Tyrande and Malfurion. Then Genn. Then Magni. Next I think is likely Khadgar. Wouldn’t surprise me if they did not stat pushing that idea Horde side also where applicable—I know a lot of team red’s leaders have not lead long enough to have reason to retire out, sadly.
I would believe that if Thrall didn’t come back out of retirement again-again-again to play Papa Figure to Anduin with this very expansion.
Retirement in WoW is less “anime-next-generation” and more “DC Comics”. Sure, the first Flash passes his mantle on to the second Flash who passes it on to the third Flash.
But in the end, we just get three still-active Flashes, which must be three times better!!
Tyrande will retire so Shandris can take over, then she can retire and pass the mantle over to Maiev. But then, in the end, we get all three!!
WoW characters only go all the way away when they die, and sometimes not even then.