Takeaways on the Darkshore scenario?

Its eerie how similar Tyrande’s story beats and actions in more than a few ways wind up almost mirroring Grom’s back in WC3. In very loose senses but still.

  • Get butt kicked in the woods
  • Regroup, dig in and refuse to leave
  • Find spoopy magic in a moonwell
  • Become empowered by rage and visually change along with your kindred in proximity
5 Likes

I see just as many parallels between Tyrande and Illidan here, swapping Elune for Fel Magic.

1 Like

No it’s only Tyrande who performs it. Ancient incantation using an Elune artifact and then offering things severed head if an enemy to envoke Elune’s vengeance. That’s it in a nut shell.

1 Like

just completed it…
overall its quite nice and seeing Tyrande one-shot horde…
only 2 parts that I had issues with…

  • Sira and Delaryn…still the wtf moment…why they would join the horde who kill them and later kill their own kind…it need a huge mental gymnastic to make sense at all…
  • Nathanos…he should be crying with his limbs cut off by Tyrande and make the last valkyr carry him like a baby…him leaving in 1 piece is not satisfying…
4 Likes

Honestly, I felt like the entire Night Warrior storyline is setup as justification for giving Night Elves dark eyes in parity to the Blood Elf light eyes.

2 Likes

I have quite a few thoughts, both good and bad, on how Darkshore was handled. I’ll try to make a more comprehensive series of opinions on it tonight when I have more time (edit: Wait, scratch that. The company Christmas party is tonight and I’m gonna be SMASHED.), but here’s a brief breakdown of my thoughts.

Pros:

  1. The scale of retaliation.
  2. A return to many WC3 things, like chimeras.
  3. Maiev.
  4. Usage of highborne.
  5. Aesthetics.
  6. Base concept of the night warrior.

Cons:

  1. The execution of the night warrior and how it’s being used relative to Tyrande.
  2. Night elf undead. (I’m not inherently against the idea, mind you. But how they were implemented was downright atrocious.)
23 Likes

We already had amber eyes but they refuse to give them to us because???:upside_down_face:

1 Like

I’m still waiting for the human hairstyles to not be complete garbage.
Or for Night Elf males to have anything resembling an acceptable beard.
Or for Blood Elves to get goatees.

I mean, really. How can the people who did the absolutely amazing Dwarf hair also give such sub-par options elsewhere?

Oh man yeah the human pinecone beards are so bad. Its been a long time since I’ve thought about all the awful junk in the new models. Did Trolls ever get their weird hair stuff fixed?

Not sure, haven’t played one in a while. At the very least the Zandalari and Kul Tirans seem to be well enough, whenever they finally come out.

I think that’s what the whole Army of the Black Moon is about. Those who watched or choose to follow her path or something like that. It wasn’t entirely fleshed out.

Elaborate on that one please, I’m curious. I’ve heard about a few issue from different people.

1 Like

I’d love to at some point in the near future. Unfortunately, mobile does not lend itself well to large properly-formatted posts, especially not on this new forum.

Tldr, most of my issues are related to structure and story health. They can be broken down into roughly 3 categories; redundancy, sustainability, and stagnation. Most of these issues are in relation to Tyrande herself, but a few pertain to broader problems with the night elves in general, such as when you have the proverbial hand of god actively engaged in the same conflict as them. The strength and meaningful sacrifice of mere mortals tends to be overshadowed in this kind of situation, tends to become less personal and impactful. For this reason and others, it is often better for gods to use a light touch when getting directly involved in a story.

I also have a few other problems with the night warrior’s direction from a preferential standpoint, but this has more to do with my personal taste. On the whole, my issues are more based in structural flaws rather than any personal gripe. I look forward to sharing these thoughts in greater detail in the future.

1 Like

You know, one thing that I would have liked, and would have made much more sense than Kaldorei dark rangers is the Forsaken appealing to the Highborne ghosts, such as Athrikus Narassin, and gaining them as allies against the Kaldorei instead of this rule of cool-style writing. Imagine if the Dark Rangers were just Highborne-possessed Kaldorei?

Neat that Athrikus is standing near a bunch of dead, enslaved Forsaken spirits though.

I wish.

3 Likes

This is my takeaway as a Night Elf main (Warrior, DK, DH) from vanilla till now.

Overall I enjoyed it very much! if I had to grade it from 1-10 I’d give it an 8, which I will discuss.

Stormwind intro: Lots of things going on here. I especially liked how Genn reaffirms his commitment to the Night Elves here. I can’t remember the exact line but it was something like “…If I didn’t give the order Mia would charge off without me.” This is a nice throwback to Elegy, where Genn remarks that Sylvanas underestimates the living and their commitment. I think Anduin initially refusing to send support was more a plot device on the part of the writing to create narrative tension, so that when Tyrande leaves anyways it reinforces the point of vengeance driving her.

Darkshore: Shandris finally getting her own unique VO was great. It was also interesting to see the choice of NPC’s on the beach where you first search for Tyrande. The orcs dead along the beach are all named “Massacred Grunt” which I think was a deliberate decision to get the player to see that this is a darker side of Tyrande that we’ve never seen before. Even more so than her WC3 persona.

However here is the first of 2 things I have to dock from the scenario. It’s clear how Tyrande becomes the night warrior, but what about all the other night elves? (including the player character, if they so choose) What is the process for other night elves becoming night warriors?

And like others, the turning of Sira and Delaryn left me scratching my head. Again not that it was done in the first place, but the manner in which it was executed.

For example anyone reading Elegy could see right off the bat that Delaryn was coming back. However, her whole rejection of Elune and not going peacefully at the time of her death is never conveyed in-game. The vast majority of players literally go from:

  • Terrified NPC dying on the beach in Sylvanas: Warbringer

  • Corpse on the beach in empty Darkshore zone

  • Switching sides and working for Horde

Which is difficult to process even if it were explained fully, and would still probably be upsetting. Though if the whole point of raising them as Forsaken is to elicit that reaction in the player base then I guess it succeeded, lol

So overall, docked 2 points for not really being clear on the whole non-Tyrande night warrior transformation and the Sira/Delaryn thing.

Warfront
I figure I’d throw in my 2c on the actual Warfront itself. In a few when it flips and Horde goes into the assault phase it’ll be awesome to hear feedback from the other side as well!

Overall, the Darkshore Warfront has a narrative weight that Arathi just doesn’t have. Whether it’s from ties to War of Thorns, the pre-patch Darkshore 8.0 update, and the scenario it just feels way more meaningful. It’s really cool to see basically every important Night Elf from expansions past all in one zone fighting; Thisalee Crow, Jarod Shadowsong, Mordent Evenshade, Cordressa Briarbow, etc.

Intro: Taking the beach felt like cues from Saving Private Ryan =D TBH, Arathi feels like you’re jumping in as latecomers to a battle already in progress. Darkshore feels like you’re the ones initiating the action.
Running into battle alongside an Ancient of War and a Tree of Life is also awesome and something I think everyone who has rolled a NE has always wanted to do. As others have pointed out as well Maiev Shadowsong is also awesome here. She just sounds the part of a CO

Music: 10/10. I feel the composers really nailed this one. Anyone who’s leveled a Night Elf toon can instantly recognize the musical cues taken from the starting zones; Shadowglen, Dolanaar, etc. This nostalgia hook is then driven home in a big way, weaved into much more militaristic and serious tones signifying the heightened tension and war-torn state of Azeroth. Soaring vocals then weaved into big drum cues a la Nightsong make for a perfect soundtrack.

Gameplay: Functionally identical to Arathi. The mine placement is a little more awkward though; once you secure the mine it feels like you have to run further to get back to the action at either Gloomtide Strand/Forlorn Crossing/or Cinderfall. I also feel starved for Iron most of the time. Most of the time my cache is overflowing with wood and I’m left scrounging for Iron and hunting Goblin shredders.

3 Likes

I thought it would have been awesome if Jace Darkweaver came flying in out of nowhere and killed Belmont while he was taunting us.

God, this moment right here. They nailed it perfectly with the warfront. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one. The moment we touched down on the beach, everyone was rushing ashore and just fighting anything that was red. It was pretty great, my first moment in there I will definitely treasure in the coming days.

I might be cynical but I actually really liked everything that has happened since Teldrassil. It all feels so good, especially after the much-needed changes to Nightwarrior. Sira and Summermoon are my only sour notes but I can easily ignore them.

1 Like

What I took away from the scenario is that I made the right choice when I chose Horde as my main faction. Love being the bad, guy. I’m even more glad to see the Forsaken moving towards Scourge 2.0.

It was alright. Granted, in greater context I see no point of the Horde being here but that’s more to do with Teldrassil burning in the first place.

So, instead, by focusing solely on this event/campaign, it was alright. I enjoyed Nathanos being his snarky self. Look forward to Delaryn development, Sira is an added bonus I suppose.

My main takeaway was that the Horde, and especially the Forsaken have been hit with a huge villain bat. I knew about all of the Blight, and environmental destruction going into it. I was not expecting Belmont to be a literal cartoon villain (“Good help is so hard to find” or “You have won nothing!”) I wasn’t expecting to find Trolls torturing Night Elf prisoners. And I certainly wasn’t expecting the Forsaken to be the Scourge. I don’t know if I’m out of the loop, but I was very surprised when the Forsaken sent geists to fight us. I didn’t know the Forsaken had geists. When we were defending the ritual against a wave of geists and abominations, it felt like Northrend all over again. I’ve never liked the Forsaken, but this scenario was really something else. I don’t know how Blizzard plans to reel this faction back into some semblance of morality.

1 Like

I honestly didn’t feel villain batted throughout the entirety of Darkshore, to be honest. I mean the burning of Darnassus was pretty horrific prior to this, but that stuff in Darkshore is basically our M.O. Geists don’t bug me when necromantically we throw skeletons at our enemies constantly, abominations have always been more horrific then most minor forms of undead.

I would of preferred that these were aimed at Stormwind, but I actually greatly enjoyed how the Forsaken were portrayed. We terrorize and butcher whatever has angered us mercilessly, we deliberately choose our mounts and weapons based on what causes the most psychological damage to our enemies, we desecrate their dead and shatter their holy places to ensure they know we mean business.

The Alliance even got to get in on the action in Zul’dazar! using Void Elves to purposely desecrate their enemies corpses and psychologically traumatize the typically undead wary Zandalari was great. I’m glad the Alliance got to take the kid gloves off, it does a lot to minimize the guilt for returning the favor.

As of now at least, my major concern is the same as the previous patch, escalating us to a total war scenario via Darnassus when we didn’t need a total war story.

6 Likes