Well, yes and no. You are not wrong to feel the connection. But it you are wrong to assume it was designed that way. It is important to separate personal additions and design.
You have a connection in your mind. And that can add depth and resonance to the zone. This can be good or bad connections. But it can add to a feeling of immersion and depth to the story.
But you also have to separate what was actually put out and what is your personal addition. It is not accurate to say that Blizzard made the zone Night Elf (or in the case of Maldraxxus Forsaken/Orc). And it would be wrong for someone to feel slighted or maligned because their personal additions make it feel like imbalanced representation.
We all carry some biases and bring our own connections. It is just important to keep track of where they start and not let those pre-conceptions get the better of us.
To give my own personal experience with it:
I am in general not a fan of the Night Elf culture or look. The only Night Elf character I have is my Demon Hunter cause of lack of choices. When I first saw a small snipe of what Ardenweald was going to be (place of wild god/loa rebirth, connection to nature, etc) I did think probably going to be Night Elf. I expected I would probably not get into it. I fully expected it to be the bottom of the list for me. But, that was my preconception and I knew it. When I did go in, I set those aside and really looked at the zone. It didn’t have the Night Elf look. The characters and story didn’t line up with the Night Elf character. They humor and just fun of the zone created a whole different connection. It is hands down my favorite zone. None of the others even comes close. Setting aside preconceptions let me have a TON more fun and connect with the zone in a whole new way.
I have seen this around and I don’t agree with the premise. There are a few things that are being ignored.
*We don’t know that people are actually forced to. Only those who choose to seek to become the ascended. There is some indication that there may be at least a few who don’t. Certainly there are ones doing other jobs that don’t seem to be on that path.
*Only those inclined towards that direction are even sent to Bastion.
*They only go up through each step, including abandoning memory when they decide to. It is not really a forced event.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the structure they have. Though I can understand the reasoning. I personally think that kind of wipe would be a dangerous system and would not support it. But also, it should be noted it is pretty evident that after all this going forward, they will be changing that. The Archon is already shown to be rethinking it.
During the Vol’jin questline Bwon mentions “[he] hasn’t lost a soul since… [… Mueh’zala] isn’t going to be happy about this”, meaning he’s only lost one soul before now and it was a powerful soul like Vol’jin
So since Zul’jin is as of right now the only troll at all in any zone, stands to reason he was the soul Bwon lost, and he ended up in Revendreth.
Honestly at this point, I’m like good. I’d prefer Horde whinging about every zone not being about them to be considered an Alliance zone than night elf whinging if I’m perfectly honest.
So if Ardenweald is now night elf and therefore Alliance, then fantastic. If I’m never going to get a storyline actually about the Alliance as a whole, I’ll just take everything else unrelated to the cycle of war instead.
I don’t have a character in the covenant, but the leveling story is entirely about Ysera’s rebirth. They literally replay cutscenes from the Nelf parts of Legion. It’s silly to pretend that this isn’t primarily Nelf content.
Maybe, but having her express horror over Teldrassil and say she would have fought on the Night Elves’ side doesn’t exactly make me feel connected to her (even if I wasn’t totally onboard with Teldrassil myself).
Ardenweald is not really Night Elf… it is otherworldly fairy forest. Just compare it against Val Sharah for example and thematically the differences are pretty striking. Ironically there is more Troll and Tauren to the first section of Ardenweald end game campaign then there is Night Elf.
Uhm… Ursoc was destroyed forever, sacrificed in his entirety to keep Ardenweald operating. That wild god as was JUST told to you was Aliothe, the Droman of Hibernal Hollow. She is from a world the Legion destroyed, and so has no home world to go back to.
How did you expect the notably kind-hearted green aspect to react? The World trees are closely tied to the Dream, so of course she would want to act to defend them on principle alone. I do not know how any druid could of gotten behind the wholeslae destruction of Darkshore and burning the world tree… and neither did Blizzard, which is why they sent them all to Silithus for basically the whole expansion.
It makes perfect sense for her to react that way. It just doesn’t make me feel connected to her. Blizzard and/or some people on this thread seem to be trying to have both, and I don’t think you can have both with this character.
I feel you OP, the zone is just a huge apology to nelves playerbase which as we know it isn’t going to be enough.
Honestly I’m glad this expansion is starting to fall apart, if the game needs to fail twice to boot out most of the staff and the horrible management, so be it.
-The storyline is about Ysera a character associate with Nelves
-Compare these images https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e7/09/d5/e709d595ff9ac10185f12e90948fa650.jpg
Most important why are always the Alliance players so against proper spotlight for Horde races that isn’t about smashing some small and backwater Alliance town so they can whack a mole in Horde npcs?
Man the Alliance has the most petty and immature player-base in the game and at the same level as Dota and LoL
Nope, especially the Teldrassil one wasn’t even linked aside of being a conduit to corrupt the dream. After that said tree just stood there with a blessing of two aspects(Ysera and Alexstrasza) but never played a role and was ignored later on
Because at this point, unless it’s a neutral story that is Alliance by association, I no longer expect there to be any spotlight on any Alliance race that isn’t night elven or human, especially after another expansion that was explicitly about the Horde and not just individual races.
So if this is how Alliance focus has to be done, this is how it is to be done. I just hope when they pick up the Horde story time book again they pick something other than “smash puny Alliance!”.
That’s going to be the bane of this game as both races have been pushed to be nothing but background noise for the superheroes the writers are promoting(Jaina, Anduin and Shandris)
If seeing Horde being broken inside because Blizzard copy paste their own past plot in MoP was Horde focus then I can’t wait for when the Alliance get their fair share of spotlight and get Stormwind burned to the ground while Anduin gives a palm in our back congratulating us to overthrow Turalyon because he was too weak to do it himself
I pay the same money as you as part of my sub and the faction I picked deserve the same treatment, besides what even the Alliance does that is even remotely interesting?
They don’t have culture and only work as the toy soldiers of Anduin
What is worse is that they complain about ardenweald while applying the same logic, i could say maldraxxus is fully horde because there are undead everywhere (forsaken) and draka (orc) while i need to share MY zone with trolls.
So are we going tit for tat again? because i really feel my faction is being underrepresented by that faultly logic that “x zone belongs to X race”, why should i share my zone with trolls? why the heck we have an entire horde afterlife (maldraxxus) zone while i have to share?
Or maybe instead of all that, if you all stay with me for a second, we can just choose a zone that we can enjoy instead of beaching about who has it worse while bashing the other faction, AGAIN.
Honestly i get people want to see MORE of their races afterlives but come on this is ridiculous.
idga frick about maldraxxus, i hate the zone i just go there to make world quests, i went to ardenweald with my main for the record, i dont mind going to troll afterlife, honestly this feels like you guys are making a volcano from an anthill, lastly you guys should pick a covenant that makes you happy.
saddest thing is that if you pay attention there are infinite afterlives so there should be a night elf heaven, we dont even see night elf heaven ffs…
To you, anything the Night elves get is too much.
Anyways I can assure you, once the Night elf souls in the maw are restored to life, Sylvanas is defeated and sent to hell, and the Horde council issues a proper apology for their limp attitude until 8.2.5, the Night elf players will be more than happy. I’d say they’d even be ecstatic.
But apparently that’s about as good as it’s going to get on Team Blue. In a sad sort of way we’re lucky to have Anduin else all we’d have would be sad night elf stories about how they used to have an empire they exist only to be harrassed by a bunch of large green guys.
and to you, nothing Blizzard does counts as an apologies because if you admit the zone is a Nelf one, it would prove that Blizzard listen to your petty demands instead of your usual narrative “bLissar dUbPz iN uZ”
Get in line dude, others got worst and are still waiting someone throws a bone to them.
To be fair the zones are basically just core concepts of cosmic forces made manifest incarnate… Ardenweald is obviously Druidism across multiple races…as shown by the Drust, Ysera, De other side, etc all being present. If anything I would have expected De other side to be in Maldraxxus/Revendreth being the realms of death we’re exposed to and all… what with it being the realm of the
“Loa of graves”. Putting it in the most life centered zone is…“odd” to begin with…
