You know, I remember when people made a big stink when we heard about the soul algamation, and it ends up being like 6 souls changing into the thing, while we save 99% of the souls there, which were a ton
And the story hints dropped so far do suggest she’s going to keep her powers, but at level that won’t kill her eventually.
To be fair, it is yet another twist of the knife to really drive home the fact that the night elves hadn’t suffered enough. I can understand people getting annoyed with it, even if “only” a few souls get mulched in the process. I imagine it evokes a similar feeling of the game not letting you save everyone from Teldrassil’s burning by design, since the game reinforced only a minute before that you have a magical soul crystal that can ferry them out. And then the game has you permakill some anyway.
I think the idea is, we could not save them in teldrassil, let us at least get them to a good afterlife.
And ardenweald is probably the ideal afterlife for most night elves, and those that would preffer other place are probably glad to not be in the maw.
For me, personally that quested through shadowglen and the entirety of teldrassil a bunch of times, feels good to have some closure to those npcs.
I’ve played through ardenweald and am renown 6 with the night fae covenant. The heart of the forest has night elf vibes but that’s more because this is the first time non night elves have had wooden structures. I think the rest of the grown homes look very different and remind me more of the sylvar from gw2. Night elves don’t have a monopoly on grown forest homes anymore. Ysera is a night elf character and that’s ok, she’s pretty chill. She literally refers to the night elves as her children so pretty sure she is a night elf character. The rest of the zone really has nothing to do with night elves at all. They’re just seasoned in sporadically with ysera and what not but it’s not like they’re saying night elves are better. At least not that I’ve seen yet. Not much troll stuff questing through the zone, in fact I don’t recall any. I know it’s coming in the covenant storyline though. Plus we save the loa of knowledge in the mist dungeon.
Spoilers
Rescuing tyrande with shandris was ok. Not the best but that’s only because I don’t want to get told off for something I didn’t have decision making power over. (I joined the horde in burning crusade when they were still trying to be honorable and not genocidie.) I do like the fact that she said I can atone my saving night elf souls from torghast, for someone who hated teldrassil that’s pretty chill. (Also shandris attacked a night elf priest player I accidentally cleaved in the maw, I though that was funny)
So the early stuff in ardenweald and night fae covenant lean a little more night elf than troll but that’s ok. The story isn’t complete yet and there’s not that much. Also I kinda love sharing the zone. Night elves come from dark trolls, ardenweald makes sense to me.
I get the initial reaction. Already losing Teldrassil and (unknown number) of lives from that, I’m sure hearing “and then, even in death, it got to suck to be nelf because remember those soul monster dog things on Argus? Yeah, it’s like that but different and night elf-y” wasn’t exactly the happiest of news.
IDK about that. Ysera and Shandris both certainly seemed to think Tyrande keeping the power was an ultra-bad idea, it was clearly corrupting her in some fashion, and we needed a way to fix her.
Hey, maybe Blizzard will have her keep it. Maybe everything being told is some red herring, or the next part of the storyline is “nah, ‘s cool, Tyrande’s got this, we were just messin’”. IDK, it’s all good either way.
During the scenario, Tyrande has a buff, I can’t remember exactly what it says but i took an screenshot and once i’m at home i can confirm it, but the idea is that the Night Warrior is damaging her but healing her at the same time. You can see her health bar going all over the place.
I think based on how powerful the Night Warrior Power is and how unbeatable the Jailer is, that the night warrior will be used to defeat the jailer, or there will be an attempt at doing that.
That’s really interesting! I missed a bunch of the interviews leading up to SL. Do you remember which one this is in? I’d like to read it.
I miss Lordaeron threads.
It’s split across two, that I can find.
Even in the case of Ardenweald, one core concept was a celestial treescape with stars. That was an idea that was part of a brainstorming session back when we were thinking about Drustvar actually. We were thinking about Thros, and one thought was ‘let’s make a celestial canopy where it’s always night but the stars are actually within the canopy on the undersides of the trees.’
Q: What is the creative process when you choose an expansion theme? What did you do for Shadowlands?
A: Brainstorming a new expansion happens 2 expansions ahead - allows for story plot point making. Typically this happens with a large group and weekly sessions where we think of cool things, throwaway others. It’s a mix of things. We generally think about The World - the world is the main character that you explore and fill with your own story. The first question is where do we want to go next. The story sometimes has to twist and turn to get there i.e. WOD. Then you can add features that make sense alongside that world. Sometimes we put it off i.e. We could have done Legion after Mists but they put it off for 1 expansion. We gather a lot of reference i.e. images, old ideas, etc. For this one, we happened to find this image of a star specked forest and thought to pair it with bastion i.e. a heavenly side and a dark celestial forest side. We thought this deserved its own space.
Have you ever read War of the Ancients? The Aspects were only ever involved with the rebels and the Nightborne were never part of that. Likewise the BE’s ancestors only got involved directly with the rebels right at the end and never interacted with the Aspects.
Ysera doesn’t ‘allow’ the Tauren access. You don’t need her permission to access the emerald dream. The Zandalari can do it too and they have almost no connection to Ysera.
The Emerald Dream isn’t NE only but while Ysera is strongly connected to it, she doesn’t have complete dominion over it either. Likewise, it doesn’t change the fact that it was only through the NEs that the Tauren accessed the Emerald Dream. Tauren were taught Druidism by the NEs and frankly only pretty recently. I am pretty sure Hamuul is the first Tauren Arch Druid.
In the end, the Alliance has WAY more to do with Ysera than any of the Horde races.
I swear you guys like using the ‘neutral’ tag very selectively. Brann is apparently neutral even though he was literally in the Alliance War campaign but back in Cata apparently Thrall wasn’t because his distilled rage said mean things about the Alliance.
Wow. So basically the Tauren being completely wrong and never actually interacting with Elune, which the NEs have done frequently, puts them on the same level. You have a really strange idea of what counts as equivalents. That is like saying what happened at Teldrassil was no worse than what happened at camp Taurajo.
Elune is the NEs thing. Claiming it is a Tauren thing too is really stretching it. It is like saying Vulpara have as strong a connection to the Titans as Dwarves. Sure, go deep enough and some connection is there but its is pretty much front and center a Dwarven thing.
Your logic is kind of falling short. Your whole argument was that Naaru was different. Yet ‘usually’ whenever the green dragonflight turn up they are connected with NEs. Hell, most of them take NEs as their humanoid form, including Yesra.
Cdev’s lying. We’ve seen Drust trees as far back as BFA. They look nothing like what is being shown in Ardenweald.
They literally say it’s an idea they had, and obviously shelved, while just in the brainstorming process of designing Drustvar/Thros. Which would be early in the development of BfA.
Drust have nothing remaining of any star adoration.
Sus.
And Night Elves have nothing left of being a jungle dwelling race of giant-insect riders. That’s what happens during development, things change and… well, develop.
Query: What reason would they have to lie on this subject? I doubt they foresaw this exact thread or anything.
I think this is just as attributable to the flaws and biases in their committee writing process as (if not moreso than) lying straight-up.
Query: Why?
They completely uprooted almost two decades of lore to provide night elven wild gods a new afterlife in a night elven themed zone. Do you think that they thought that no one would be intelligent enough to see that for what it was?
Wild gods went to the ED when they died.
Night elves stayed on azeroth as wisps, went to the ED as wisps, and went to the stars if Elune super loved them.
There are only two questlines for trolls/loa at all in the entire zone.
Of course they have to dissuade the idea that this is a night elf theme park. They don’t want the Horde to react poorly to this new expansion launch.
Edit: And, again, the Horde has four races distinctly tied with death – but only one of them kind of gets a zone. Night Elves had no such tie prior. They don’t want the Horde to ask questions, just to consume product.
Chiefly because:
You don’t think a head-in-chief who is made aware of Twitter-Tirades would have told them to “make a night elf zone to assuage night elf players after they were blown up”?
I respect your opinion but I disagree with it. Even Taliesin, Blizzard’s shill-in-chief, has said that after BFA Blizzard had to make Shadowlands a win.
Still you’re a neat poster so I hope you don’t think that I’m like knocking you or anything.
I think they’re aware of nelf-player concerns, but I think Tyrande stuff specifically and Bwonsamdi not being the boss of his dungeon are more the scale of things the Devs do to assuage player concerns specifically.
Thanks for the kind words, but I didn’t take it as a knock. 
People can disagree, and I have been known to be too generous in assuming intention.
night elf have already gotten too much , much more than anyone else would have ever gotten
okay and what about the other races souls , why are only night elfs important ?
how about jaina for her crimes ?
and when did the horde ever got an apology for alliance crimes ?
the tauren deserve an apology from the night elfs for forsakening them when they needed their help the most , under the excuse of I quote “we can’t be bothered”
the orc deserve an apology for being used as slaves so do the trolls
the trolls deserve apologies for so much I couldnt even start
the blood elfs deserve an apology for garithos and for what jaina did in dalaran
the goblin deserve an apology for their ships being targeted unfairly by the alliance
the vulpera deserve an apology for being targeted in vuldun while being neutral