Reason number one. The Moon Guard. The Moon Guard are everything the Nightborne should have been, and everything that the Night Elves could still be. They are perhaps history’s most responsible magic users. As far as i know, they’re the only Elven magic Order to go ten thousand years without mutating, causing an explosion, summoning a burning legion invasion, or some combination of the three. They were watching over Suramar Province for Ten Millennia whilst the Nightborne got drunk on Arcwine inside their safety bubble. They were waiting to reconnect with their estranged brethren. When the Dome finally did go down, the Moon Guard welcomed the Nightborne with open arms. They exchanged greeting and tomes and gifts of Arcane power. Then the Nightborne betrayed them and slaughtered them all, finally killing off one of the only remaining orders of the Kaldorei empire.
Reason number two. They abandoned the fight against the Legion. I dislike the Pandaren for the same reason as this. While the whole of Azeroth was rising up from Dragons to Demigods to Trolls and Titanforged, the Nightborne decided to hide. What makes this worse however is that the battle had not even been decided yet but they decided that no one but themselves was worth protecting. Suramar Province never fell to the Legion. The Moon Guard Stronghold never fell to the legion. The battle was ongoing. But the Nightborne decided to drop the shield, condemning any elves caught outside of it to death, desperately banging on the shield, begging to be let in, leaving them easy prey for the demons.
Reason number three. They betrayed the Night Elves. So, Thalyssra is just exiled, along with Valtois and Occuleth. They’re just getting set up in Shal’aran and who should decide to take pity on them but Valewalker Farodin. A Night Elf. He gifts them with an incredible gift. An Arcan’dor, a unique specimen that ultimately ends up saving their entire race and civilization from magic withdrawal. Farodin is eventually joined by Kaldorei Druids from Val’sharah and EVEN the Moon Guard! They display their amazing ability to focus on the bigger threat by lending the Nightfallen their aid, but it was Night Elves who are responsible for saving the Nightfallen rebellion while it was still in its infancy long before any Blood Elf ever turned up. They repaid their generosity by joining a genocidal war against their race.
Reason number four. They joined the Burning Legion. This one is unacceptable. Orcs are still paying off this debt decades after the Blood curse ended and they stopped being under the Legion’s direct control. I don’t care what their justifications were. They decided to throw their lot in with the very same Legion that worked so hard to destroy them during the War of the Ancients all because they were afraid of losing their pleasure barges and comfort pillows. They refused to even accept any possibility that there could be a united stand against the Legion. No timeline Elisande looked into was one where we stood together against the Legion, not just the Nightborne alone in their vanity and vaingloriousness. For this reason alone I find Tyrande’s caution when speaking with Thalyssra completely justified.
Nightborne have no honor, no decency. They only care about themselves and I wish they weren’t playable.
Elisande was a jerk, the entire race isn’t necessarily.
Fair. xD
Again, Elisande’s fault
Even if I disagree that all Nightborne are bad… To play devil’s advocate as it were, this might be why some people really ENJOY playing them. They’re not necessarily the good guys. They endured by making some tough choices, not necessarily good ones. But that can be a fascinating base from which to write a story.
Personally I don’t RP one but I really like that we CAN. xD
Wait, has this been retconned or something? Because in the War of the Ancients Trilogy, it’s clearly established that the fight against the Legion had ground to such a stalemate that Suramar (or rather the ruins there of) had become a constant sight on the battlefield.
I was under the impression that the Suramar we see in WoW was what had been a small district of the city proper (Since the Temple of Elune/Tomb of Sargeras WAS part of Suramar before the Legion invasion and now is viewable from modern Suramar’s coastline). It’s not so much they abandoned the fight as they were cut off from the principle forces of resistance and they had to protect themselves.
Same deal with the Pandaren, really. They’d already severed ties with Night Elves proper due to the obsession with the Well, and the Emperor opted to protect his lands and people. This was a major mistake on ShaoShao’s part, but the Legion and their motivations weren’t well understood at the time, and Pandaria was still reeling from the Zandalari Wars. You’ll notice the Zandalari didn’t exactly have much of a presence against the Legion either.
He’s a Night Elf, but he’s not a Darnassian Night Elf. Keep in mind the Val’sharah Druids are effectively Cenarion Circle - they’re neutral entities not affiliated with the geo-political powers as a whole.
That being said, I still say Blizzard gaffed up on those races. The Nightborne should have gone to the Alliance and the Lightbound Dranei should have gone to the Horde.
Pretty much, yeah. All that history was thrown out when Blizzard wanted to write them into Legion. Before that, canonically, Suramar and the entire Broken Isles were basically a coral reef which had been under the ocean until Gul’dan raised it so he could plunder the Tomb of Sargeras.
I do think OP is correct, lorewise, but for the reasons above I try to take it with a pinch of salt. Thalyssra betrayed the night elves over the pettiest of reasons not because she’s a petty or dishonorable person but because Blizzard wanted them to be Horde-playable and don’t care how characterization or lore consistency work. It’s frustrating as heck, but you kinda have to take this game’s story for what it is. Caring about the story will only bring you grief.
I always found it a little funny that it’s never pointed out that Thalyssra’s response to “how do we know you’re not just going to side with a murderous conqueror as soon as we leave?” was to immediately side with a murderous conqueror the moment everyone left.
Aw. That’s a shame. I played through Legion but I never noticed any major lore discrepancies. War of the Ancients Trilogy and Day of the Dragon were the only bits of WarCraft writing I hung on to after noping hard out of the whole thing with Night of the Dragon. I still like to dust off WotA every so often. It’s a fun romp.
Yeah, in the WC3 campaign Maiev and her forces land on the Broken Isles and are literally confused because there are no such islands on their maps. Then they find the ruins of Suramar and recognize what they are, to their amazement.
Now, because of Blizzard storytelling, it’s apparently the home of the Vrykul, a druidic order with their own world tree we’ve never heard about, a fancy offshoot breed of tauren, and whatever the heck is going on in Azsuna. And always was. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
I think Lightforged make sense because I feel like it’s a no-brainer to join up with the normal Draenei, and I can easily see them joining mid-war, especially a defensive war against a faction that has commited genocide on the Draenei in the past and has just done another one on the Draenei’s long-standing allies.
The nightborne (at least the average nightborne and those with power) were probably always going to like their blood elf cousins best, but the thing that really gets me about their inclusion is that they were joining a war immediately. They would’ve been served best by waiting for BfA to be over. Instead they look like complete goons, both physically and in the narrative sense.
Highmountain and Lightforged should have been unlockable customization options like the night warrior eyes, Nightborne should’ve been neutral like pandaren, and void elves were a ridiculous and unprompted asspull transparently jammed into the story to throw Alliance players a bone because they gave the popular elves to the Horde.
There’s a reason my ally main is a void elf to be honest - I think it’s one of the coolest and most unexpected things blizz has done in a while. Add to that the story development and the fact we can convincingly RP them as High Elves next expansion and void elves are a bit of a win win
Are you arguing ICly that nightborne suck or OOCly? Because OOCly sure, I’ve kinda accepted their involvement with the Horde is really strange and forced. But aside from that? It’s the flaws of a flawed people that are entirely understandable.
With the Burning Legion at your footstep, bearing down on your civilization, threatening to eradicate your entire species, would you want to keep up the fight? There is no global defense or resistance in sight. You’re only a few miles away from the heart of the Legion invasion and entirely alone. They were scared.
Elisande even looked through the timelines and found that odds were, the only way their people survived was siding with the Legion. And, from a meta perspective, I think it was the right call. They would have been obliterated before any help arrived. It wouldn’t have changed anything if they’d resisted, just gotten them all killed.
One could argue they should have all resisted in subtle ways. Say they’re working with the Legion, then work with the Kirin Tor in background channels. But in a way, a lot of the populace did just that. The rest were afraid. Not everyone is a brave, battle-hardened paragon of virtue ready to die opposing an enemy. Just people who want to live.
Now, if we’re arguing ICly the nightborne suck because they’re cowards, have at it. Altielle basically epitomizes this. She lets her fears dominate decisions all the time. It’s not noble nor a good thing, but I think it’s realistic.
Just coming back to point out, Blizzard ought to do more ridiculous and unprompted asspulls jammed into the story. Because not only are the Void Elves actually really neat (and brings the Blood Elf back into the Thalassian Elf story), but the Pandaren turned out to be the highlight of the post-Wrath era of WarCraft.