The entire problem with Asspull Elves was that they knew people would be upset Nightborne were going to the Horde and made them up to assuage the resentment. Which didn’t even work because the whole reason people are attached to the Nightborne was the Suramar questline, the most immersive and nuanced single story WoW has yet produced. Bless the lower-tier writers in BfA who’ve been giving the void elves what due they can; as far as the upper devs are concerned, just tossing them in was a job well done and they’re not gonna listen to any feedback on that. No negativity in the dojo.
2 Likes
I disagree.
I think the mistake a lot of people make when discussing the void elves is saying they came out of nowhere, while simultaneously ignoring the years of development given to the High and Blood Elves for most of Warcraft’s history.
The thing is, the Blood Elves development in Warcraft 3 and early World of Warcraft was all about survival - of curing the magical addiction that came about as a result of the Sunwell’s destruction. The Warcraft 3 and Burning Crusade Blood Elves had changed quickly and noticeably from the High Elves of Warcraft 2, making heavy compromises in order to endure. However, by the end of Burning Crusade we see the Blood Elves find “salvation” in the words of Velen - they redeemed themselves and restored the Sunwell as a fount of Light and Arcane energy both. Thus, from a purely survival standpoint, the Sin’dorei no longer needed fel energy to endure, and with a few notable exceptions, the Blood Elves more or less reverted to a more High Elven way of doing things (albeit with a generally more relaxed approach to fel energy going forward, even if it was no longer a dependence)
But the thing is, the Blood Elves once lost their fount of energy and had to risk everything to restore it. It makes sense (and Umbric explicitly says) that not everyone was willing to just say “all fixed now, let’s move on.” There’s all sorts of motives one could have for continuing to search for new and darker powers to “cure” the Sunwell addiction (which is still a threat if ever anything happens to it), but we’ll leave those aside for now. Suffice it to say, there WERE Blood Elves who were not content to merely rely on the Sunwell again, and these Blood Elves began actively looking into the teachings of Dar’khan Drathir (who was a brilliant, if evil, man) particularly surrounding the void. Umbric and his lot didn’t just go study the void because they were bored that day. It’s a very blatant pushback against the apparent complacency of the Sin’dorei to just re-embrace the status quo, to feed their addiction, rather than find a cure.
Then on the other side of it you’ve got Alleria, who as an individual, and the first “void elf”, received significant development on Argus, and in external lore like that audio short story about her and Turalyon. (I find Alleria especially intriguing because she probably would’ve been a Blood Elf if she were around in the Third War - she’s got a very pragmatic attitude towards seeking power). In any case, her motives are very clear.
Then you bring the two elements together - the elves who are pushing back against Sunwell reliance and Alleria who’s mastered the void… and in a terrible accident, you get the Void Elves. A race that, in my opinion, is fascinating and has had a lot of VERY interesting development this expansion.
Was it done perfectly? No. In an ideal world we’d have a longer period of time, with more hints. Perhaps we’d have encountered Umbric in the past as a Blood Elf, and seen the steps he was taking (although such a path is full of risk when it comes to the factions. Many people might always see him as Horde, or grow attached to him on Hordeside, thus causing tension. Idk people get tense about who belongs to what faction - so arguably a fresh character was the most fair). Ideally though, we’d also have more detail, more void elf characters, more explicit reasoning behind their choices.
But frankly I do not think Void Elves were an asspull. Rather I think they’re one of the most fascinating and unexpected twists of Warcraft history, and I think that actually makes them especially cool. We predicted the other allied races. Nobody saw Void Elves coming, and I think that’s awesome.
So, I’m going to address what is directly below, because your next two paragraphs are just summarizing the story of the High Elves, and then the Blood Elves more specifically. To put it simply, nothing about anything regarding Blood Elves or High Elves until the very end of Legion suggested they ever had any interest in the Void at all. The closest, one could argue, would’ve been a single raid boss in BC, which even the writers forgot existed when writing the Void Elf, “Story.”
You posit that there were elves who railed against the idea of becoming complacent with the Sunwell back. Unfortunately, we were never shown that. In other words, there wasn’t even that tiny bit of foundation laid for the Void Elves. We’ve not seen any internal division with the Blood Elves since Wrath gave us the Sunreavers, and even then they’re still Horde and cared more for Quel’Thalas than Dalaran anyways.
Regarding Alleria, everyone I knew back in the Argus patch felt the void thing was forced onto her. It didn’t mesh well with her character, her class, her history, her family, and that last part is the most damning thing about her being a Master of the Void and the first, ‘Void Elf.’ The core of Alleria’s character is her love for her family; her husband, her son, then her sisters. Everything she does, every battle she has fought, has been for her family. So, the idea of her delving into a power that is the antithesis of that of her husband, son, and her family, was pretty darn forced. Most people I knew, were just happy to have our WC2 hero back, and not turned into, “The Horde’s not so bad,” but properly remembering the monsters they were back then and not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but to remain wary of them.
The real way you know Alleria as the first, ‘Void Elf,’ is bad, is because you could practically substitute almost any other character and it wouldn’t change either her, or the story. It could’ve been Talthressar, her second-in-command. Nothing would’ve been any different.
Or, and this might sound crazy but…
If there was a group of Blood Elves exiled from Quel’Thalas for not wanting to rely on the power of the Sunwell, looking into alternative forms of power, and tapping into the Void, then maybe we could’ve seen them a whole lot sooner? Maybe in, say, Mists of Pandaria, they make contact with the Horde Rebellion and the Alliance, to help with the Sha and Garrosh’s whole deal with the Heart of Y’shaarj? Maybe we could’ve seen them in cloaks and hoods, hiding their identities, on AU Draenor, studying and combating the Shadowmoon Clan? Perhaps even studying the Dark Star?
Maybe, during Legion, we could’ve seen such hooded and cloaked individuals scattered about the Broken Isles, showing up in World Quests to give us tools and advice on how to combat void threats? I distinctly remember a WQ in Highmountain in a cave of Kobolds where you snuff out a giant candle and a Void Monster spawns.
No. None of that. No hint that these elves even existed until it was time to recruit them. No hint of division in Quel’Thalas until we learned another group of dissenters had been exiled. Not a single suggestion that Thalassian elves were studying the void or ever had any sort of interest in it.
This is why they’re an asspull, and forever will be an asspull.
But, I don’t care that they’re an asspull. I care that Blizzard has monumentally failed to develop them, to give them a story, to give them characters beyond Umbric, to make them different from arcane mages, etc… We got a bunch of purple elves who live on a bunch of slap-dash rocks out in space slapped together so badly Blizzard actually prevents you from exploring the rift because you’ll fall through the ground in some places. They took a bunch of legion floating rock assets, slapped them together, recycling the skybox from a fight in the Nighthold raid, and called it a day.
The Void Elves are an abject failure on Blizzard’s part, and they should be ashamed of themselves. At this point nothing short of an entire expansion featuring them, complete with an updated home and new heritage armor (seriously, it looks like they pulled that off of a Dreadlord’s corpse), introducing new characters and fleshing out their history, is going to make me forgive Blizzard for the absolute atrocity that is how they’ve handled this race.
2 Likes
Thalyssra played us.
What, you thought she was just a patriot that wanted to save her people from obliteration and tyranny? Oh, you wanted to believe that, because it implied there was something saving in her.
So did I.
How many families lost their father or mother because Thalyssra cruelly ordered the Daily Questening of the Suramar Couriers, thousands of mailmen brutally slain when they could’ve been robbed for their packages without violence?
And the Withered… You know why you can’t give the Arcandor fruit to Theryn when you’ve completed the quests, don’t you? It doesn’t work on them. The Nightwell and the arcane thirst they suffer is not understood, but Thalyssra destroyed the Nightwell anyway, and the only font of magic that might’ve been able to produce a cure quickly for their kind. She sent thousands-- nay, TRILLIONS of Withered in as cannon fodder against Suramar’s defenses despite knowing full well what the unimaginable hell of being Withered was like. She used them and, once their usefulness was expended, tossed them aside like a used rag.
I suppose you could say she did the same for the Alliance.
And the nobles… Yes, some of them were in support of the Legion, but just as many were guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, just standing around in the Court of Stars talking or at one of their safe areas enjoying a glass of Third Year Blue when all of a sudden a sociopath wearing skittles armor storms in and teleports Withered onto them and then they are physically and magically eaten alive? How many were just ducking their heads down and might’ve joined the resistance if given the chance?
The truth is that Thalyssra used us all as a way to gain absolute power over Suramar and then, when it came time to decide who she would send off the brightest of her city’s generations to die for, she chose the Horde…
Because her newborn government still had a lot of cleaning up to do, and the Banshee Queen would not ask questions if all of her remaining rivals turned up face-down in the bay after accidentally falling onto the blades of her most loyal servants. Yes, it makes sense that Thalyssra went to Nazjatar to face Azshara…
They have much in common.
1 Like
This isn’t wrong.
The Nightborne aren’t exactly innocent bystanders here. They’re still addicted to magic, and they don’t have the fount of holy power (fueled by the “purified” remains of a VOID GOD) to suckle.
I know the Nightborne arguments have been done to death but man, to this day I still cant help but laugh at how silly the entire thing is
Thalyssra: “We Nightborne want to return to the world, not as Conquerors, but saviors of Azeroth!”
Thalyssra proceeds to pledge her people’s service to an evil warmonger with goals of world domination
Plus the entire thing of like…Hey, The Blood Elves and Night elves helped liberate out city…but Tyrande said one mildly snarky remark, so Im going to join the horde and have zero moral quandaries with now trying to wipe them out.
And then you have the Night elves being the sole reason the Nightborne were saved from their addiction. And before anyone goes “Well they were from Darnassus!!!” That makes no difference as we see the Night elves of Val’sharrah seem to acknowledge and recognize Tyrande and Malfurion as their rulers/leaders in the leveling experience. (also since the Moon Guard mysteriously disappear after the Nightborne join the horde, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they got offed by them behind the scenes)
I like Nightborne because they have sparkly tattoos.
1 Like
I mean, the Tyrande thing didn’t help, but I always got the impression that it was because the Blood Elves understood their position and the night elves didn’t, it was more of a matter of empathy than who helped more. More or less the nightborne allied with the blood elves and the rest of the horde was baggage that came with them.
Mostly though Thalryssa just wanted in Lorthemar’s pants.
3 Likes
The issue is the scenario needn’t have mentioned Night Elves whatsoever.
That they did in the way they did makes Thalyssra and the Nightborne look excessively petty. Worse it literally proves Tyrande right since its Thalyssra eagerly signing up to serve a dictator just as bad (if not worse) than Elisande.
It makes sense that Nightborne have a presence in the Horde, if for no other reason than how much they have in common with Blood Elves.
The way Blizzard went about it was asinine
6 Likes
I feel like it’s less egregious than openly retconning what is shown within a game itself by changing Lothar being assassinated by Doomhammer into a honorable duel.
Because for whatever reason Blizzard has a vested interest in whitewashing what an absolutely irredeemable monster Ogrim Doomhammer was. Like seriously, Gul’dan had more morals then this guy.
Fair,
Blizzard and consistancy are not friends
Personally, while I also somewhat got that impression, I feel as though it was rather skewed. I’d be a bit more willing to accept it if it happened in a time before the return of Highborne Night Elves, and subsequently a culture who’ve suffered a comparable plight themselves (the Shen’dralar), was a thing. There wasn’t even an attempt to include that aspect of the race in the plot; a fact which I find as typical as I find it upsetting considering its potential, but I digress.
2 Likes
Maybe NEs should infiltrate and torch a certain mana tree…
Maybe NEs can double the favor by dropping a Void Heart into the Sunwell…
Why? The Draenei already dropped in one.
Because Draenei can be petty and be like, did you think we had forgotten, did you think we have forgiven?
With the Legion defeated, we need a new enemy for the next 10,000+ war.
NEs would probably be down with messing with BEs.
Imagine how pretty Silvermoon City would look all shadowy and purple
The story is bad. It’s a bad story.
We’re just helping our Void Elf allies reclaim their home and assisting with the painting.
Who decided that.
Nightborne suck? Who Decided that.
I only show mercy and respect to those who aren’t much of a threat within the Alliance. The War is Over. We have a another one going to happen instead of wasting time on Elf Wars.
Elf Wars sounds like the name of a competing MMO that’s a lot more honest with itself about what it’s doing than World of Warcraft.
4 Likes