While trying to look up if there were Night Elf Death Knights that might have had significant interaction with the living Darnassian Night Elves (I couldn’t remember or find any), I stumbled upon this from the Death Knight Legion Order Hall:
Now I wouldn’t have noticed this without the note on Wowhead that says:
So credit to whoever made that note there.
Plenty of Druids of the Flame died years before Legion. Makes me wonder if Eran Droll (also a Night Elf) was helping raise Druids of the Flame into Death Knights to bolster the Knights of the Ebon Blade’s forces.
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in the PTR Tyrande says something about this new Druids of the Flame not being like the ones from Cata like Fandral. Then there’s this conversation between 2 repentant Druids of the Flame wanting a second chance to return to Amirdrassil. These new DotF are a younger generation of NE who survived Teldrassil and are unable to tap into Nature Magic for some reason and taking advantage of this situation some other DotF started recruiting as much as possible.
What I didn’t understand is how they are creating new DotF. Who’s granting them Fire Powers.
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I also don’t get the difference between them and the night elf Primalists. Why did the Primalists not become druids of the flame?
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We know the answer Lord Smolderon is now an enemy boss in the new raid. He clearly is helping Fyrakk.
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Smolderon is a raid boss in the Amirdrassil raid, so he would be the most likely candidate for empowering the new generation of Druids of the Flame.
As for Primalist Night Elves, they’re probably like the Night Elves that joined the Twilight’s Hammer before Fandral started working with Ragnaros. Vyranoth also called the Druids of the Flame zealots, so they probably don’t match up with her Primalist ideals.
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It’s certainly possible that some flame Druids were raised to give them a shot at redemption - Sally Whitemane comes to mind as someone with a similar arc - but I fear the more realistic answer is that some random blizzard quest designer just picked the skin because he thought it looked neat and gave no thought to the wider implications.
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That is most likely the answer, yes. But still fun to think about.
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I don’t like that he is and is willingly being antagonistic towards us. Another character villain batted because Blizzard wants some nostalgia points without any proper build up. “Hey 'member when Ragnaros wanted to burn down a world tree? Now the new Firelord wants to do the same.” Just like Ysondre in Legion. She broke free from the Nightmare only to be corrupted once again in Legion with no set up.
Smolderon goes missing, a cult of Dark Irons try to bring back Ragnaros… and Smolderon returns only to be an antagonist for reasons…
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The Primalist Movement and the DotF have very different philosophical underpinnings. The primalists want to remove all titan meddling from the world, whereas the DotF are in the current incarnation basically an immortality cult which preyed on the vulnerable Kaldorei victims of the War of Thorns with promises of a renewed world. At the core the elders are corrupt and self serving just as much as Azashara’s old highborne court were, as they are willing to sacrifice their new recruits to gain their own immortality.
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I always found Smolderon to be super lame compared to Ragnaros, especially given he shared a model with Ragnaros’ doorman.
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I remain a proud member of #TeamOrdos
I mean from what I understand via the lore this time, they don’t want to burn the world tree down – They want to transform & imbue it with fire.
“We will remake this world in flame!”
But actually made manifest & kept to their word it seems. (Ragnaros was rather short sighted - burn stuff, it flickers out – Burn more stuff, confused at why he can’t remake the world in flame cause it keeps burning out)
That being said however, I’m with Amadis on this →
So … Yeah. 
I mean I should just expect this from Blizzard at this point. Why give a character that needs development… development when you can just kill them off and try again with the next Guinea pig.
It’s just that Smolderon didn’t seem like the guy who wanted jump into Ragnaros’ grave when we see him during Legion. We actually help him out against such a character. So it just seems out of character that he would randomly show up again after being MIA since BFA and side with the Primalists. Like what was he doing in the meantime?
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Honestly they should have more boss encounters like the Iridikron fight in the Dawn of the Infinite dungeon – Where you don’t defeat them, but more or less have a ‘To be continued’ situation. It helps utilise an enemy to greater potential, use and progress the story more instead of just another whackamole to shrug off.
Loved the end cinematic for the Azshara fight for instance, where she ended up living AND technically winning with her goal coming to fruition.
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It’s possible that he wants the power for Amirdrassil for himself over securing it for Fyrakk. Regardless, I am annoyed that I helped him become Firelord and he decided to reward me like tihs.
Sometimes people betray you. Especially giant fire monsters id think.