I too am sorely disappointed, not with the fact that so much tragedy has befallen elves in the course of WC/WoW lore. I’m disappointed in the horrible story telling and the unnecessary retcons to the lore.
But I’m not going to twist facts and move goal posts to say elves have been treated unfairly. One) its fiction. Two) Blood elves lost a greater % of their population to Arthas than the Kaldorei did at Teldrassil.
This person has so many facts wrong about WoW lore and I think it is symptomatic of an unhealthy obsession over it all.
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Blood Elf players didn’t have to experience it - which matters in a visual and interactive medium. Night Elf players did.
Tragedies in the backstory are just that - backstory. They are part of what got sold to you before you invested, not after.
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“Blood Elf” player. “Night Elf” player.
This is part of the problem for OP. They take these concepts seriously. It’s not good for them or anyone else. It doesn’t help that OP is very charismatic in their writing and is able to generate alot of affirming attention with their threads, here and on the story forums and on Reddit and elsewhere. People who have no idea the depths the OP is lost in this end up reaffirming it. No good.
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I’m not saying they did. But much earlier I used it to point out that other races have suffered as much if not more than the night elves did at Teldrassil have and this person denied it out of hand in spite of it being fact of lore.
I can also state that we can look at it in another sense. Blood elves do not exist. It’s merely a term coined by KT after Arthas’s assault on QT. Why then does the user have to single out only Teldrassil and things specifically Kaldorei rather than include all elves?
It’s an unhealthy obsession in my opinion. Hyper-subjective focus on her fictitious race. It’s not good.
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Let’s not start comparing which race Blizzard likes to kick in the teeth more. Ever since Cataclysm all the races have had their themes and narratives and nuance eroded by Blizzard’s weird fixation on rule of cool and metal things and their chronic allergy to worldbuilding.
Blood Elves did get a resolution to their loss of the Sunwell, it’s true, but arguably that was worse for their story as Blizzard has made them into fairly generic elves now.
While draenei and night elves specifically seem to be the perennial punching bags, the damage just takes different forms with other races. I don’t think anyone would argue that current orc lore, for instance, is better than what they had pre-Cata.
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This is precisely one way I was trying to assuage this persons illusion that night elves are unfairly treated by Blizzard. But to no avail. No amount of lore presentation to this person convinces him/her.
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Of course Blood Elves don’t exist. Night Elves don’t exist either - but their playerbases do - and what matters is how the experience is delivered to these different fanbases, nothing else.
That is why you are getting these threads and the responses that you would call hysterical - because the story has taken what was supposed to be an entertaining property through which a person could realize their investment in a given playable race through a playable avatar and made it an absolute misery that they have no control over - and this violates the central tenet of video games: that we have choices, and that we may influence the situation through our choices.
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I’m in agreement with them that night elves (and draenei, as I said) seem to have someone at Blizzard who hates them, honestly. I just like to point out that no races are in better places story wise than they were.
Edit: Except dwarves and goblins, weirdly.
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Sylvanas did the right thing; night elves are vermin.
You’re not understanding what I’m saying. There are no Blood Elves. sindorei is just a name given to high elves that survived ARthas’s assault on QT.
They suffered 90% population loss at QT. Yet this person gives no empathy for them yet they suffered a much greater loss of life than Kaldorei at Teldrassil.
She has empathy only for Kaldorie losses. It’s symptomatic of an unhealthy hyper-subjective focus on her particular class played in game so much that she can dismiss or outright deny any other races losses or tragedies.
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I understood what you meant, but I was pivoting to what I feel is more important:
The experience of the relative playerbases.
I recognize that we are not the only playerbase suffering - sure, and we can have those conversations, but we should not attempt to equate matters of backstory to matters that people who invested in an MMORPG had to experience personally.
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I think the difference between the two… elf variants is twofold.
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The vast majority of damage done to the night elves since… well, Cata, has been at the hands of the Horde, a player faction.
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Even when the main perpetrator of the worst action taken against them is no longer with the Horde, night elves still don’t get payback.
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Becoming invested in your toon or in the story is one thing. But to become so hypersensitive that you begin to deny factual presented lore and instead make absurd, factless lore based claims to support your unhealthy habit… that’s something entirely different.
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That won’t help, I don’t have the ability to implement anything you tell me. The only people who can fix it (the writers) are not going to fix it, they seem to think they are literary geniuses and don’t care what anyone wants. The only options left for a better story is fanfic or somebody’s Azeroth game mod. Or play WoW Classic I guess.
You don’t even have to twist the facts. They’ve definitely not been treated the same as they were in W3 especially post-Cataclysm. After this whole fiasco with redemption/forgiving the person who burned the tree or whatever crap they’re trying to pull any doubt I had that some writer hates night elves (or sees them as some sort of ‘butt monkey’ trope) went out the window.
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That depends - are we talking about lore that was well presented? Or lore that no one knows about because it was buried in a book?
I understand that Elesana exaggerates, but this is an issue with respect to the Night Elves in particular - our good moments get buried in books where general audiences just don’t see them - and they get deprioritized mentally because they are not visually delivered information.
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Should also note that anyone can sound obsessed and unhinged over text on the internet and still not be… that. Hyperbole and the internet go hand in hand, and even the most virulent and ragemongering wall of text was likely written by someone with a blank, slack-jawed look on their face who needs to fix their posture.
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I’m not trying to compare backstory to personal in game experience. I’m trying to illustrate that she cannot empathize with all elves, only her chosen characters race. What’s more, she refuses to even acknowledge the tragedies of other races. That’s my point.
Then she takes what happened at Teldrassil and makes it so much more than it was. Taking Teldrassil from being a Kaldorie city to being the only major Kaldorei city which it was not . Claiming all night elves in Darkshore and Ashenvale died, which they did not. It’s delusional.
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Silvermoon City and its lore are right here in game to this day for anyone to see. I don’t know personally how any one who can claim as this person does to know so much lore can NOT know about it.
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It’s late, I’m off to bed. Good discussion.
NN!