He means after the initial contact, when the Night Elves decided killing the orcs was a better idea than introducing themselves and going You’re in our sacred territory, what are you doing?
It was after that incident when Grom and Co had enough and went on the offensive. And killing the wisps were optional so I’m not sure how cannon that is.
No, I mean Tyrande literally seeing people chopping a tree and going “KILL THEM ALL!”
WC3 night elves were VERY different from WoW night elves. WC3 night elves were basically just the Kalimdor version of Gurubashi trolls; they were savage, dangerous, barbaric peoples who lived in an untamed forest and would not suffer trespassers to live.
For the MMO, the Night elves got beaten with the Generic Fantasy Elf Stick so that they could fit in with the Alliance better. Which IMO is a huge detriment to the Night Elves and the Alliance as a whole.
But yes, our introduction to the Night elves is Tyrande leading a massacre against peons without even the concept of going “scuse me green dudes uhhhh wtf u doin”
Tyrande only appears after Cenarius is killed in the Night Elf campaign.
Night Elves attack the Orcs after they start chopping trees and killing wisps first
They must have seriously retconned the reforged version then.
Picture a tiny fox making a gigantic eyeroll here.
No, they didn’t, you’re just remembering it wrong with a whole new set of biases. Tyrande never appeared in WC3 until the Night Elven campaign actually. She wasn’t involved in the Orc’s campaign which is when the tree chopping and orc slaying go down.
It also depends on which patch of War3 you played it at, because the game auto attacks nearby enemies and originally the wisps were red enemies so your grunts auto started attacking them as soon as the mission began. This is not the case now nor in reforged as they have been updated to yellow, thus not auto attacked.
The story beat remains the same; Orc peons attacked by nine foot tall mutant trolls for harvesting lumber.
The nelves didn’t care that the wisps were attacked. They weren’t offended about anything other than that another race dared to step foot in their sacred forest and for that alone they would kill them.
Go watch the cutscene. They were being as condescendingly jovial as possible.
I must play WoW very differently than you do. I don’t think of vendors when I go to a zone. I think of things like…
That first time in Vanilla when I walked into Orgrimmar, the raw visual identity of it.
That first time I came down a hill in Teldrassil and saw Lake Al’Ameth, surrounded by tigers and things that wanted to kill me, but beautiful nonetheless.
My first WC run and realizing I was entering a giant skull.
Things like that which I’d be typing an hour to describe the whole of them. Those places have memories. They have nostalgia. They have feelings attached.
But it’s cool you think of vendors first. Vendors are cool too.
I’m just poking fun at some design choices around Darnassus. Like the fact all the shops are named simply what they sell.
Like… say in Stormwind, you have the Pig and Whistle, and the Blue Recluse. In Orgrimmar you have Miwana’s Longhouse and The Wyvern’s Tail?
In Darnassus, you have “Darnassus Inn.”
So immersive
IDK, Darnassus and Teldrassil in general was never a place I cared about the naming conventions for. It was always pure visual spectacle, from the moment you logged in, to that dang spider cage of doom (moreso Vanilla), to Dolanar, to the gates of Teldrassil and so forth. I was far too busy just looking at all the things to bother asking what the name of the building was or to care that they weren’t creative enough.
Exactly. Players care about hero characters, places, and items. They don’t care about beer vendor jimbob.
I chalked it up to the fact that Darnassus is a hybrid temple city that functions as a capital, not an organic center of social trade and business. Most of the vendors aren’t business people, they’re fulfilling a task needed in the holy tree city, while the nelves mostly lived scattered lives outside of Teldrassil. This should have changed more with Cata shoving Night Elves out of much of Kalimdor, but…
Given how different Darn is from every other launch capital, seems deliberate.
TBH … I never understood this, at least not once the WotA expanded lore continued to come out.
The Orcs being savage I get. Draenor truly was a savage environment, where the Orcs were a small fish in a very large pond. The Trolls brutality I get considering their infighting, Loa, and above all their constant 10k years of losing territory to invaders. The Gobs ruthlessness I get, with their modern technological culture being very new, and very reflective of their 3000 years of slavery in toxic Heavy Metal mines. Life was cruel, so that cruelty is somewhat reflected in them.
The NEs “savagry” … I don’t get. Considering their history, and their longevity, they always kind of came off as the Racial Equivalent of that old sitcom Green Acres. Where rich privelaged people move off to the countryside to experience nature and live the simple life. Like, truly, what was pushing the NEs to be savage? Environmental factors, in their curtailed eden? Territorial factors, before the last 15 years with the Horde? Their cultural lineage? Anything?!
I 
% agree. Night Elves savagery has never made sense. There’s been no need for it. They’re the top of the ladder in a Pax Kaldorana. No one could challenge them with their god characters, so no one ever bothered them for ten thousand years. They’ve just been living in peace for foreverty.
As far as we’re aware, the Kaldorei lived in relative peace within the Kaldorei Empire until Azshara went nuts and started cavorting with the Legion. During this conflict, the NEs fostered gurilla warfare tactics to counter the Highborne might. However … they haven’t had much in the way of conflicts since. At least no until the 3rd War. With the War of the Satyr and the War of the Shifting Sand being the primary two exceptions. One which was simply fighting a corrupted version of the Kaldorei species again. The latter, a feral insectoid species they accidentally woke up.
What about this lifestyle and these conflicts would foster “savagry”?
And for ten thousand years they hadn’t used them.
Hm. Good points.
Sorry accidentally tapped the reply button before finishing the post.
But I agree. What exactly make an NE “savage”?
A direct genetic link to Trolls I assume
And a decision to eschew the grand society of the Highborne and all it entailed (until they randomly decided they wanted it back, in Cata). And to be one with nature, which is pretty savage, if the devs can break from their idealized “Colors of the Wind” notions of it. Even Elisande comments on it as such.