That would be Ravendreth.
Nah revendreth has trees, so its a nelf zone
Nope. Well, maybe, but it’s bigger than that.
First of all: I’m not saying “the Alliance are heroes because I skip all the parts where they’re not heroic.”
I’m saying “I play the game to feel heroic and see people do heroic things, so I prefer the saccharine heroics to just about all other content Blizzard pushes.” Blizzard has increasingly (but not solely) written in this direction for the Alliance, and I’ll take it over the other stuff they write. I would be displeased if they started moving away from that with key Alliance figures. If Alliance doesn’t make you feel that way, then fine, I’m just saying: leave the characters you don’t like for the people who do like them. I rarely have opinions on Forsaken because I dislike them and I try to leave their arcs to the people who do like them.
Unlike most of the lore board, I don’t really care too much about WoW’s continuity and attempting to analyze characters or factions as a whole, because I have never seen any indication that Blizzard actually writes in a way that cares about those things either. The significant schism in how they wrote the disappointment that was Garrosh – my last hope for morally complex characters in this game around Cata – told me that I shouldn’t care about incorporating deviations from the overall theme they write because they certainly don’t. They write by incoherent committee; generally doing exegesis only works if there’s either at least consistent unconscious bias at play for the author(s) or you can consistently differentiate the authors and filter.
They retcon left and right; I think it is healthier to think of Warcraft as a loose body of semi-canon but nothing is very definitely canon and matters if it’s not referenced in a plotline itself. Illidan is a straight-up villain now? Ok I guess. Illidan is a straight-up hero now? …Ok I guess. Kael’thas is a villain now? Ok I guess. Varian isn’t roid rage man now? Ok I guess. Heck, remember when it was canon humans evolved from slimes? Wrath threw that in the trash, that was another big sign they didn’t care about what happened in small sidequests. Or how about when Arcane Magic was inherently corrupting and dangerous and Malygos had a point? Yeah, now he just was power tripping.
When I moved to “OK I guess”, I overall got less stress from the story and more enjoyment. Loose canon isn’t how I write, but it seems to work best for how they do. To circle back to your quote I took issue with, it’s not just “never happened as I didn’t see them”, it’s “if it’s not in the spotlight, Blizzard doesn’t respect it, and I don’t see why it should matter to me.”
I snipped out the rest because we’ve both made our assertions about the rest of the playerbase and I don’t have anything constructive to add at this point to those, I’d just be repeating myself. We have overwhelmingly different community experiences.
The Alliance and Horde get kinda brutally colonialist as they assume proxies with the Jinyu and Hozen. It’s a race war that already existed but the attitudes you push there as part of the main faction were unpleasant. There’s also a ‘execute the other side’s helpless survivors’ quest, which makes a repeat in Aszuna. Not a fan of those either.
But in general stuff like that gets rarer and rarer which is good. MoP has the benefit that most of the time there’s a clear undertone that not only is this stuff definitely bad, the story implies consequence for it. I’d love to call it Blizzard’s best writing if I weren’t so uncomfortable with the bundle of stereotypes that is Pandaria.
1 Like
So the Barrens and Goldshire are Nelf zones… got it.
Put some purple sky in it and it will become one. Where’s that Void Totem?
1 Like
Going by the logic of this topic, anything NOT drowned underwater, has any sort of healthy looking trees, a few animals and at least one ruin, makes it night elf flavored zone?
So all land is night elf land? 
Sarcasm for those slow ones in the back
3 Likes
I don’t understand what reflex leads people to look at a large mass of dissent and go “ah, all of these people must be simply illogical”. Particularly when the reasoning has been laid out constructively multiple times throughout this topic.
You don’t have to share the association, and you don’t even have to agree that it’s necessarily representative of a problem, but the phenomenon testified to here is neither mass apophenia nor simple factional polarization.
14 Likes
The base questline for levelling perhaps not, but other than that you’re wrong.
“Aaaaand ~ Up next on the ‘Renown’ campaign for Ardenweald & the Nightfae - Find Shandris to save Tyrande leading to ultimately save the Night Elf Souls!”
Your ‘It hAs aBsOlUtElY NoThiNg to Do WiTh NiGhTeLvEs’ comment is looking rather like ignorant garbage.
1 Like
I’m still puzzling why this is the topic that brings out the insults from either side.
5 Likes
I have so many snarky remarks I could give here, but I’m going to try and give an actual, honest answer. Or rather a history lesson that leads to my theory.
Since at the very latest Cata (though I recall examples from as far back as Vanilla, though those were more few and far between), there have been active attempts to compare and contrast the faction content. For example, in Cata the devs openly admitted they ran out of time working on the Alliance intro to Twilight Highlands, which is why the Horde have this long (subjectively), story-based quest to even reach the area, with moments like Garrosh punching a dragon off his ship (or was it kicking? I know it was based on the movie 300, but I thought it was punching instead), dragons taking the airships down, so on and so forth. While the Alliance… A dwarf flies you in on his flying machine and it crashes. Or how most of the zones with faction conflict have the Horde winning the fight, or just a stand-off. Add to that while Thrall went neutral in Cata, Malfurion finally appeared in game… Also neutral. And in Hyjal, the home of the night elves post-Azshara. And that is also neutral. And while Thrall appeared throughout the rest of the expansion and even was present for the finale, Malfurion stayed in Hyjal, went to the Firelands, and must have taken another druid nap. So the Alliance playerbase interested in the story felt prety left out of the story, for understandable reasons.
Since then, the debate comes all the time. “New expansion favors X over Y”. MoP favored Horde because it was all focused on Garrosh. MoP favored Alliance because it was all focused on killing Garrosh. WoD favored Horde because it’s orcs, all the way down. WoD favored Alliance because it’s killing orcs, all the way down. Horde got better zones. Alliance got better zone. Legion favored Alliance because we’re following around a nelf, human and draenie. Legion was balanced because Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne.
And BfA turned that up to 1000. For obvious reasons.
And there’s a lot of emotional charge behind all of that. Cata, objectively, “favored” the Horde, but a lot of it you’d only know if you leveled a lowbie in specific zones. Alliance players had only recently been saddled with Varian, who had been described as the “anti-Thrall”, the Alliance counterpart to the warchief and undermining what made the Alliance so vastly different (politically) from the Horde; they were Allies in an Alliance. Alliance identity was dying in a lot of players’ eyes. And the developers just “didn’t have time” to write an Alliance story?
That wound never healed, because it was never attended to. And Horde-side, we just… Didn’t get it by and large. Garrosh was already a mixed bag. Some loved him, some hated him, and we just lost Thrall to neutrality. Our warchief was gone, replaced with everyone’s Earthwarden. Yeah, sure, we got a better intro to a zone. Who cares? (it was never about the better intro) We have a new leader too, and he called Sylvanas the B word (this was more offensive back then). So when the Alliance players demanded more attention in MoP and some snarky members of Blue Team maybe said to under-write the Horde in MoP to “make up the difference”?
Anyway. So yeah, this has been a thing for a long while. But it’s much more aggressive now.
BfA, obviously, hit both factions… Well, all three factions hard. Alliance, Honor Horde, Banshee Horde. Nobody got to really walk away happy. Alliance got to be victimized. Honor Horde got to be forced war criminals. Banshee Horde got to just be over in a cinematic.
But nobody got hit harder than the night elf fans. Who lost Darnassus to the Horde, were told the warfront would help alleviate their problems (which, spoiler alert, it didn’t), and rather than being able to get justice?
None of their leaders even showed up for the final fight with Sylvanas. On the continent they still lived on. Right down the road from Orgrimmar. And the climactic battle was between the leader of the forces that destroyed their home and the guy who “only” planned the slaughter out. Who felt bad about it. And got rallied to do something about it… By Anduin.
So. With the essay almost done, let me tell you one of the likely many reasons why certain members of the playerbase are so upset at the insinuation that the Shadowlands realm that is tied to the Emerald Dream, a place more closely tied to night elves than any other race combined, which resolves or leads to the resolution of the story of the night elf leader babe, which brought back a dragon with numerous ties to the night elves, which… I’m’a stop, because this post ain’t about that.
Why certain people might get offended that Ardenweald is being called “night elf-ish”.
Historically when Blizzard stomps a subsection of players into the mud and offers some token to make amends, it’s along the lines of “well, did you hear what Varian said to Vol’jin as he walked away?? Preeeeeety tough guy, ain’t it? Biiig fist pumping moment to have Varian low-key threaten the Horde, huh? Makes up for Cata/MoP, right?” It did not.
Or it’ll be something like “wait, there’s troll fans?? Oh, uh, ok. And they’re mad that when we made Vol’jin the new warchief, he did flux all besides gratsing them for level 3 garrisoning, then died like a punk to a felguard? Uhhh… Hey, in BfA, you can carry his ash urn around and find out there’s more to the story! How much more? Err… We’ll, uhh, tell you in Shadowlands. It’ll be boss, just wait and see.” It is not… As far as I know, because I have to wait like a month to find out the backstory to the dungeon I can do today.
So hearing this zone might be the “night elf zone”? It’s got to low-key trigger some worry that this, a zone with (clearly very, very, VERY arguably, heatedly so) a night elf flavor to it might be how Blizzard is “paying them back for what they went through”. A storyline about depowering the one thing that made Tyrande really relevant in-game as something other than “Malfurion’s wife” to the broader playerbase (I know she’s more than just that), and rescuing some of the dead nelf souls from the Maw. Fist pumping, yeah?
That Ardenweald is what Blizzard will point to as a way to say “no, see, we fixed the fact we took a giant, stinky dump all over the night elves… Because Ardenweald!” And it’ll be followed by “no, we did all the night elf stories. Tyrande lost her Night Warrior powers! Oh, what did she even do with them? Uhh… Moonfired some nameless orc NPCs and killed Nathanos a year and a half later? Yeah, so after that they’re just fine now.”
And I’m sure the fact most of the avatars saying “yup, nelf-like zone” have a red avatar behind them touches a very sensitive nerve. Because we all know that IRL we’re not “Horde” people or “Alliance” people, and just people playing a poorly written game that we love enough to fight over. But those red portraits don’t post on night elves, so they likely don’t main a night elf. So with raw nerves exposed, and the knowledge your favorite race will be as ignored as every other race who isn’t human or orc (and even those are debatable), and after having so many things that were part of your immersion fantasy taken out of the game…
Yeah. I’d probably be arguing with players too. Because we can’t get the devs here to let us argue with them.
This was long do not read it.
19 Likes
I was being rhetorical for the purposes of trying to encourage diplomacy, but I think that is an excellent summation of the damage done to the player base.
I still feel a lot of that personally. Every zone the Horde took in Cata didn’t feel like “my” Horde. My first warcraft game was WoW and I loved the natural part of the Horde. My very first character was a troll shaman. “Getting” Azshara by terraforming, entrenching in Ashenvale with clearcutting, blighting Hillsbrad, all were horrifying to me. Sure, flip possession, but why do… that? Why??? Why murder Taurajo, Ratchet was good enough for questing Alliance!
I headed to Azshara first thing when the expansion hit and the horror on my face… I think it’s why I have never ever been able to get behind goblins.
Theramore was my favorite Alliance city and the decision to nuke it in MOP affected me probably the way I imagine many night elf fans feel about Teldrassil. My attachment was purely just aesthetic and years of memories; i hated the EK so I sent literally all my Ally characters there to level up until MoP.
It is just… amazing to think about how callous Blizzard has been reshaping zones for cheap shock value that gets forgotten by the next plotline they want to write.
3 Likes
Since Vanilla, I’ve dabbled in both factions. I am, to be frank, not raiding material and most of my enjoyment comes from exploration (and fishing cuz I’m a weirdo), so the only natural thing for me to do was to try both sides.
It’s likely why I think back to Cataclysm when I think of the playerbase divide. I know there were out-of-game things, like events from a couple Blizzcons, that furthered that divide, but I never really think of them.
I think of my long since neglected night elf priest. Fishing in Auberdine. Fishing in the original Feathermoon Stronghold (and hitting my first 1k gold off the stonescale eel market!). Trying to survive in Azshara to get my dang prayer beads quest done. Fishing in Loch Modan on the Stonewrought Dam because I was certain there was something special I could fish up there (there wasn’t). Three quarters of my favorite fishing spots were destroyed in Cataclysm. Three quarters of my favorite Alliance landmarks gone.
My troll (now blood elf, HI!!) hunter? Shadowprey Village is still there. Booty Bay is still there. Ratchet is still there. My secret fishing spot inland from there? Still there. The Barrens changes upset me for all of five minutes until I realized how many flight paths were in the zone (now zoneS) which was awfully convenient. I hates Thousand Needles and couldn’t fish there anyway, and my hate was clearly made manifest when the zone flooded and became a single giant fishing spot, so that loss was still a win. Really the only change that affected me on Hordeside was Orgrimmar, and my feelings back then were just… Ambivalent.
So when I think of that fracturing, I felt it back in Cataclysm. I felt it hard. Not because the writers forgot to write an Alliance story, not because King Chin was a jerk, but because every landmark, every zone that I loved was gone. While on my Horde, they were still there, or changed for the better, or changed and left me uncaring.
And in the end, I started playing Alliance less and less as the years went on because losing the things I first connected to in the faction (I know, it’s kinda lame they were all just fishing spots, but you’d have to understand how much time I spent, and continue to spend, fishing) made me lose a connection to the faction itself.
Eh. Weird derail. Sorry.
3 Likes
They’re just attractive Trolls. So, yes.
2 Likes
Alynsa I liked almost all of your post. I disagree with one section of it, but out of respect for the time you put into it I’m not going to argue over it here.
But lord help me if you post it in another thread.
https://i.imgur.com/qUaUsDB.png
Oh, the poor Loch. Westfall. Auberdine. Menethil.
I really do think one of the big reasons for the decline in Alliance playerbase is that Alliance zones post-Cata are literally all trash. I may not have been fond of the overall EK experience beforehand but the starting zones still had their charm. After Cata and before Exile’s Reach, I ran every ally character to the Draenei islands just so I had something besides the absolute nightmare ally zones came to, or paid to faction change my old Horde rather than sit through the ugly scars all over the Loch and Auberdine and the less said about that nonsense in Westfall the better. The only upside I can really think of is that Gnomes got a bomb piece of music in Operation Gnomeregan, but the actual gnome starting area is terrible.
By contrast, I can still enjoy Durotar and Mulgore.
The fishing’s not weird at all. I liked to just find places to sit around and take screenshots of ‘nature’ and those are many of my memories of Azshara, Durotar, Mulgore, Theramore, the Barrens…
2 Likes
Oh boy, is it time to play a game of Who Has It Worst™?
Nelf Lore in Ardenweald:
- Ysera quests
- Hints at Ancients
(Spoiler) Night Fae Covenant quests:
- Learning about the Night Warrior / Rescuing Tyrande
Troll Lore in Ardenweald:
- The Other Side dungeon
- Hints at Loa
- Saving a Loa of Knowledge in Tirna Scithe
(Spoiler) Night Fae Covenant quests:
- Rescuing Loa from Mueh’zala & the Maw
- Vol’jin’s ascension
I wish everything weren’t a damn contest. We can’t just enjoy what we’re given without going, “MOM! THEIR TOY IS BETTER THAN MINE! I WANT A BETTER TOY TOO!”, ignoring what was received in the past.
9 Likes
That’s what we were talking about. The zone’s storyline, not the Night Fae covenant campaign. Of course the latter has night elf content since it deals with Tyrande, just like it has troll content since it deals with Vol’jin. Thanks for agreeing with me about the zone’s base storyline.
1 Like
To be fair, every expansion except maybe 2 (WoD and Legion) has had a troll patch in it so trolls are more than fleshed out.
This said I don’t think the night fae are night elf based I felt more like they are based in Celtic lore with nature themes. And Celtic lore is based in forests not open mains because, the Celtic lands that the mythology is based in is too far north and in an island so there really are no big open plains. On top of that to them in mythology the forests were the mysterious and wonder parts which is where stories like sleeping beauty (getting lost in the woods) and the winter queen (frozen the movie is based in this) come from. Blizzard stole the idea of the winter queen from Celtic mythology and shoved it into their lore just like they did with Norse mythology and Greek mythology and loveceaftian mythology. It also happens that they used forest and nature themes for Druidism (surprise Druidism comes from Celtic mythology too) and so it’s only natural (pun intended) that the Celtic themes of Druidismwould bleed into the main race associated with Druidism (the night elves)
Long rambling short I think that ardenweald did a good job of capturing Celtic mythological themes and is wonderful zone
2 Likes
IDK, maybe troll fans want something more than a new dungeon or raid where we kill the last remnants of a troll tribe.
Bunch’a haters if you ask me. Troll fans wanting to have their characters developed… Pft. Developed into a 5-man boss, amirite???
20 Likes
I really can’t get over how every single major part of Troll society is an instance
All major imperial cities:
- ZG
- ZA
- ZF
- ZD
- Dazaralor
The major “hall of fame tombs” and the afterlife
- Ataldazar
- Other Side
And even Echo Isles has been used for multiple scenarios over the years in various plot lines.
Tired!
16 Likes