It’s a big forest with a night-time, starry aesthetic. Ysera, while technically neutral, is mostly involved in night-elf-centric campaigns: Mt. Hyjal, Val’Sharrah, Teldrassil, etc. She has domain over the Emerald Dream, which, while technically belonging to all druids, has always been more night-elf oriented. Hell, her death scene has Tyrande and Elune moving her into the stars. As a night elf fan, I felt pretty much right at home in Ardenweald.
But, in the interest of “content for both factions”, I gotta say… That’s pretty evenly balanced with Maldraxxus, where I arrived and was like, “please get me out.” Someone immediately started shouting at me about “glory through combat”. You’ve got the House of Constructs, the House of Rituals, the House of Plagues, necropoli: all very Forsaken vibes. Orcs come in two flavors: “Victory or Death!” and “Spirits be with you”, and let me tell you, House of the Chosen was very much the former. And that’s doubly true when you consider we’re literally following the mother of Thrall, founder of the modern Horde.
Like, I get wanting to make sure that there’s equal content for both factions, but it seems like, on the whole, that’s more-or-less achieved. Maybe not a full 50/50 split, but it’s ±10% of that, and that’s pretty close.
The problem with Maldraxxus is that its very Horde … but in the ways that we’ve been brow beaten to feel bad about for the last 10 years. A petty, unstable, violent, downright evil group of people who prosthelatize about honor … but there is no room for it in reality. Who have strength only when it comes to hurting those around them, and need help from others to clean up our own messes. A covenant of five houses that ripped eachother’s throats out the moment their pillar character disappeared. Then you coat all of that with a healthy coating of Scourge, to really sell home the message BfA had that the Horde was as bad as a force like the Legion.
There is truth that thematically Maldraxxus has a lot in common with the Horde, but in 9.0 they’re left in a similar dismal, hopeless, broken state as the Horde is currently.
I think in fairness it would be a stretch to say there is absolutely no Scourge theme in the Forsaken’s architecture design. If I remember right the Undercity at least had districts with certain buildings either being wedged in necropolis or designs inspired from them. I had always felt like they were a race designed to appeal to people that loved playing Scourge in WC3 although they share being spiritual successors to the Scourge with the Ebon Blade.
When I played Maldraxxus I did get a feeling that they represent the Forsaken as more of what I see people wish the Forsaken had been, a race that uses plagues, necromancy, dark magic, and lots of morbid humor but still maintaining a sympathetic and affable nature about them. They even have abomination factories and scientists that wear clothing that resembles the Forsaken cloth warfront stuff, the whole Plague Doctor look.
Certainly would have been nice to see Forsaken characters or spirits end up there, ones that embrace their undeath should go there. Really missed opportunity that was.
Darnassus, Vault of the Wardens, every moonwell being made of stone, druid dens for their bodies while they go to the dream.
Besides most night elven armor designs feature metals.
Ardenweald is like Nature in charge is in place, nothing is cut, everything seems to be formed that way, which is beautiful in its own way, i wish the plants in my backyard were naturally beautiful and organized.
Retroactive Horde content is not Horde content. Legion was written for the Alliance player. As Droite has repeatedly said, the Horde could’ve been written entirely out of Legion and you’d only have to change Broken Shore, Tyrande spitting on the Horde character, and Alleria whining about the Horde in Argus.
Shadowlands is also written for the Alliance character. Alliance Bolvar and Alliance Jaina command everything that’s going on. Alliance Tyrande and Alliance Ysera are the cornerstones of Ardenweald.
Draka has never been a member of any Horde. Alexandros Mograine has been a member of the Alliance.
Kael’thas has never been a member of any Horde. He has been its nemesis, however, as well as being a former member of the Alliance.
This whole expansion was written for the Alliance. Baine and Thrall are quietly sitting on the literal ground while the powerful, brilliant Alliance commands the entire scenario. While Alliance Night Elf cutscenes and themesongs play in Night-Elf focused and crafted Ardenweald, and no such thing happens for the Horde anywhere in Shadowlands.
So content that lead to the development of new horde characters isn’t horde content but content about the afterlife of someone that befriended night elves is alliance content?
Draka is 100% going to help Thrall with his powers. And then Thrall will go back to sitting on the floor again while Alliance Jaina and Alliance Bolvar lead the expansion with Alliance Tyrande.
Denial of Ysera being Alliance is … well, just that at this point. She flat out said she would’ve taken up the night elves’ side. She has broken her neutrality wholesale, for what precious little she had. (read: none, she bound only one race to the Emerald Dream and blessed only one race with immortality)
Kael’thas had literally nothing to do with the Blood Elves joining the Horde. Go read yonder lore. Lor’themar made that decision on his own. Kael’thas was no longer responding to Rommath.
If Draka, an actual Orc has no relation to the Horde because she never had allegiance to the same despite being thr mother of one of its Warchiefs, than Ysera, the green dragon aspect that bound the Night Elves to the Emerald dream because the sames were the ones that were willing to protect it and developed a friendship for 10 thousand years prior to the Alliance even existing, is not Alliance, simple as that.
Or any topic. The dude gets butt mad if the Alliance get anything and measures his enjoyment of the game as if it was a volleyball game of Alliance vs Horde content.
He literally said Cinematics were non canon… Because reasons? It was something along the lines of “Saurfang could have killed Anduin in the Courtyard” or something.
It’s funny because he’ll attack Night Elf fans for being upset with the content we receive, only because he feels he owns a monopoly on victimhood, despite playing an orc and human, the two races who get more attention than any other race in WoW.
I do find it a little that disingenuous people are discounting Ysera as Night Elf oriented when she chooses to appear as a Night Elf and generally becomes story relevant (excluding explicitly dragon-focused stories) in zones with druid focus such as Hyjal or Val’sharrah. Technically those stories can include non Night Elf Druids, but they generally focus on Night Elves.
w.r.t trolls, I would say trying to stop Hakkar the Soulflayer from coming to Azeroth by sinking the Temple of Atal’hakkar is something that can be counted as helping the trolls (it failed but it was still a try).
This, but I appreciate the scourge callbacks nonetheless. I loved the undead in WC3. Seeing those aesthetics again in Shadowlands- the acolytes, ziggurats, etc. makes me happy enough. I don’t need there to be another “forsaken” zone just like NE shouldn’t need another NE zone. Just appreciate the visual allusions and small lore nuggets here and there.
Also very funny to see some people in this forum distinguish Druid lore from NE lore when they’re essentially the same and inseparable from one another.
All the lore heads on the forum did actually play Warcraft 3, right?
