No one is saying that. It’s simply Night Elven players not taking this serious. I mean ZA and ZG have some large trees too.
The thing is: There is nothing Troll in Ardenwald and the Other Side is inside a tree stomp.
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I was mocking the notion that if it’s a forest it must be night elf, full stop. And most refuse to see the how ridiculous that sounds
Even the one swamp zone (Shrouded Mire) is Drust lmao
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Yes, but this fits more for the ones arguing Ardenwald has “no Night elven themes”.
The question was: Are there any Troll themes in Ardenwald? No, not until you’re choosing their covenant and even then not much.
Edit:
I’m fine with that, more lore for different races. I see your point though.
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Oh and don’t forget, it’s only barely touched upon in the last quest of the Gossamer Cliffs (the silk one) sidechain and in the last quest of the Growthworks sidechain thst Mueh’zala is controlling the Spriggans and the Boggarts and possibly has ties to the Drust.
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Can’t forget Zul’Drak! A quest zone and a dungeon.
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Two chapters dealing with the night warrior and two dealing with vol’jin. The other chapters are Drust related, What exactly is the problem? The zone doesn’t heavily favore the Night elves at all
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One of the best Zones. But also very sad for Trolls indeed.
The Troll afterlife is a dungeon. We don’t see or learn anything about them. There isn’t even a little spot given to the troll afterlife and no interaction with it (well aside from killing some troll souls).
We could have learned something about their past, or how some of them are seeing things in death.
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Because between all 24 currently in-game story lines (Leveling, Sojourner/side quests, Covenant), only 2 are Troll-centered and only in the last quest via NPC box description is Mueh’zala mentions in 2 Sojourner storylines, never acknowledged by the NPCs themselves.
Point in fact, The Other Side and Spires of Ascension don’t have any context for players as to why we should go in there.
Sanguine Depths is gestured at during Revendreth leveling (that’s what Denathrius rips open into the Maw) and Theater of Pain doesn’t really have a lore point it’s just a battle royale.
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My butt-pull guess is that the troll dungeon stuff was a late concept addition or something since Bwonsamdi was allegedly not even meant to make an appearance at all in Shadowlands, so he’s shoved in a place where he might not have been intended to have any relevance in the first place.
I haven’t done the dungeon yet; does The Other Side actually have any function or relevance to Ardenweald’s afterlife system?
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Blizzard was supposed to kill off Bwom initially, but his popularity is why they kept him around. So you’re probably right, idea being to stuff him in a dungeon, give troll fans two convenant storylines involving him and vol’jin and hope you all go away so they can make more murder troll quests again 
No to both.
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The Other Side is not even part of the Shadowlands proper. It is a pocket dimension which is “Shadowlands Adjacent” and seems to have links to a lot of places. It likely was not even built by Bwon himself, but his boss. Though how a Loa got the power to make a pocket dimension is anyone’s guess.
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It kind of goes back to Ardenweald itself not being originally intended. Until the devs dug up some unused concept art for celestial trees for a scrapped idea of Bastion being evenly divided between bright, angelic day, and dark, somber night. (Edit: In double checking the interviews, the celestial tree concept art actually came from back in BfA, in ideas they tossed around for Thros. But it was found and the idea revisited in early concepts for Bastion, not as its own zone.)
Which colors my take on the matter. Ardenweald wasn’t made with Night Elves in mind. Or Trolls. Or Ysera. Certainly not previously established Emerald Dream lore and mechanics. Some dev just went “Hey, these swirly trees are neat. Let’s do a zone of that.” and tacked the Night Elves, Trolls, Wild Gods, and etc. on, after the fact.
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Other Side isn’t part of Ardenweald, it’s a pocket realm within the Shadowlands, allegedly made by Bwonsamdi, but the origin isn’t clear
Bwonsamdi is however helping Ardenweald survive by tending to the Azerothian Wildseeds
Nah in the original datamines, there was a Kyrian with Night Warrior dialogue that was removed once Gay Power Couple Icons were added.
Night Warrior/Tyrande stuff was part of the original plan, and more than like the Wild God stuff was part of the original zone concept, only that the night-forest was for Wild Gods and the day-plains was for non-WG
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It’s not supposed to be a Night Elf zone, Blizzard just doesn’t know how to demonstrate nature worship/paganism without them.
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It seems like the really early concept for Shadowlands had a Heaven (Bastion), Purgatory (Revendreth), and Hell (the Maw). Oribos was basically the proverbial “seat of god” where the arbiter judged all souls and sent them where they belonged.
Then the concept of a super metal rock and roll zombie warrior realm developed. And then the shadowy/fallen angel part of bastion was torn off and fleshed out into its own distinct zone. That is why in alpha and early beta there was a Kyrian Night Warrior, that later all evidence of got removed totally. It also showed the early concepts of bastion likely did not have the forgetting concept, as the night warrior remembered who they were but was a Kyrian.
It is sort of fascinating how organic their zone design process is. It is also why there can be a lot of confusion and contradictions; story lines often still hold relics of the first iterations of the zone design. These do not always work well with concepts added in later.
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If Bastion and Ardenweald had remained one zone, it at least would have helped diversify the look a bit instead of representing nature with a magic forest yet again. Make a small plain area here, a lake over there, and pull up the height of another section to make it more mountainous and snowy. Stuff like that.
Maybe that would have cramped the design too much, given the size of the zone. I dunno.
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Sorry if that’s how my point came across what I was meaning to say is more fleshed out by the paragraph below that. The ardenweald zone did not give me the impression of being particularly night elf, just particularly Druid which happens to stem from Celtic lore.
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it would’ve been one absolutely giant zone for levels 50-55, and then two smaller zones for levels 55-60.
But yeah the fact there are zero large bodies of water and zero swamp makes me wonder what happens to aquatic Wild Gods when their worlds are destroyed like Aliothe
Surely Aliothe’s world had a fish/shark/squid//etc Wild God
And who, within the lore, are the “core” Druids? Who, within the lore, are the first Druids (the devs having gone out of their way to tell the Tauren players their in-game myths are wrong)?
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It is a shame that no race in WoW is heavily influenced by their own druidic lore. That would be a fun race to play.
I bet they’d live in enchanted forests, full of fae-like beings, with some homes grown right into trees. Probably have some connection to the Emerald Dream, just like Ardenweald does. Some wild god stuff, maybe their home would have enemies themed off of “nature but corrupted”, might even have like a twilight aspect going on in the area. Maybe a thing for giant tree-like people walking around.
Shame no race like that exists in the game.
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