I’ll try to make this as short as I can. The Night Elves got a lot of screentime in Shadowlands, unfortunately it was everything but the screentime they actually needed.
I don’t want to speak for every Night Elf Player, but I personally just wanted Shadowlands to atleast somewhat make up for the damage caused to the race in BfA. For Shadowlands to give us some sort of resolution, positive moments, justice or similar things.
There were many possibilities that Blizzard could’ve made use of in Shadowlands;
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We could’ve gotten to free the innocent men, women and children that were brutally slaughtered by the Horde from the maw. That was such an easy opportunity, yet Blizzard somehow decided that it’s better when we only get to free a small fraction (<10%) of them from the maw so that the rest can be obliterated, because being slaughtered and tortured for a really long time apparently isn’t enough tragedy.
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We could’ve gotten a Night Warrior narrative that was actually meaningful. Tyrande really didn’t achieve anything with the Night Warrior at all. If Blizzard was going to whitewash Sylvanas anyway, why not let us bring her bad side to justice and then her good side appears or something. Now with Sylvanas being good, Nathanos’ death most likely won’t matter either since he can just come back whenever.
Tyrande could’ve also played a role in stopping the Jailer, but the entire Night Warrior narrative feels extremely disconnected from the rest of the story that’s about stopping the jailer. Or she could’ve atleast ensured that the souls of her people were saved. Now we have the bitter taste of the Night Elf souls that include children were obliterated in the maw.
In the end, the only thing she actually did was killing nameless disposable NPC’s in the maw -
Our justice arc shouldn’t have been treated as “vengeance”. It simply doesn’t apply here. Tyrande did not want to burn down a populated Horde city, she didn’t even want to be at war with the Horde. She only wanted to bring the one individual to justice that directly commited genocide against her people, burned their home, sent their souls to the maw and thus is also responsible for their permanent obliteration. Again, those included innocents and even children.
This was not about vengeance, this was about bringing a mass murderer to justice and the story (intentionally) framed it as vengeance. We defeat villains all the time, that doesn’t mean we’re taking revenge against them. It’s just like in the real world when murderers are imprisoned, it’s called justice. -
Elune should have not been revealed to be so apathetic towards the lives of her children. The story itself is very infuriating and insulting as a Night Elf Player generally. They could’ve made it so that Elune said that our souls are safe now and that she will ensure us a future, but instead we only got that she messed up and sent the Night Elf souls to the maw where they were obliterated instead of letting us save them. Her reaction to finding this out was also not appropriate. She found out that she condemned almost the entire race of her children to the maw and instead of being rightfully panicky and eager to fix this issue, she just kind of accepts the fact.
It has taken so long for us to get such a revelation of Elune, and this is just such a massive let down that I can’t describe it in words. It’s just a terrible feeling that our Elune turned out to be this… and the communities rightful reaction to this just sums up how well this was received not only by the Night Elf fanbase:
I just wanted to talk about Shadowlands, obviously the Night Elves could’ve also gotten a new home, their lands back, some rebuilding efforts or some victories against the Horde within their zones, but that ship has long sailed and is probably nothing that could’ve been addressed in Shadowlands anyway. I’m also willing to bet that the Night Elves will never receive their heritage armor, but that’s a whole different topic.
There’s no hope for the Night Elves left in any aspect now. Yes we got a decent amount of screentime in Shadowlands, but it’s not the screentime that we wanted or needed at all. We just wanted positive moments, some things to make up for all the tragedies and suffering that we went through in BfA, something to show us that maybe there could be a future for the race, yet our outcries went unheard, and the Night Elves are in an even worse state than before Shadowlands.
My personal once greatest hope was that we could save the souls from the maw and Elune could revive them so that, atleast population wise, the Night Elves could have a future if they somehow managed to get some of their zones back. But at this point, what is there even to hope for anymore? Nothing. At this point, it’s safe to say that this was our promised “resolution”, and that there will be nothing to make things better in any shape or form. We didn’t ask for any of this…
I know that making this post won’t change anything, but I just wanted to share a few thoughts about how Shadowlands wronged the Night Elves despite giving us a few cinematics and cutscenes, somehow making our situation way way worse than before even though there were so many possibilities to make things better. It feels like the whole point of our Shadowlands story was to make Sylvanas seem less evil by shifting the blame onto the Jailer and Elune, and framing our quest for justice as something negative called “vengeance”. Furthermore, I’m willing to bet that Sylvanas will also be absolved of the Burning with something along the lines of “She thought that Elune would protect their souls, or they’d stay on Azeroth as whisps”, anything that would make Elune the one to blame really. So we are supposed to hate our goddess now, and this is then supposed to prove Delaryn and Sira right?..
Well, this is the end for Night Elves, once and for all I guess… and for me personally there’s no reason to believe that the writers are trying to tell us anything different. It’s truly a shame, I love Night Elves and it makes me so sad to see that this is the end now.
