Your first sentence contradicts your second. If people want to see their faction win, that is a form of investment in the story, and it is just as valid as your investment.
As for the rest, I would argue that BFA seriously (and intentionally) was constructed in a way that pretended as though it was prioritizing the rivalry, while in reality demonizing and undermining it.
Enjoy your chains in your parade around Orgrimmar.
Enjoy your heads being put on pikes as a warning to all those who made the peace possible. Lok’tar! No mercy! No peace! No compromise!
Not invested in the story as in not caring about deeper meaning of things or ideas about what the faction should represent beyond “blood and thunder”. The people that will cheer on a genocide because they see it as “owning the Alliance”, not thinking in terms of “did these civilians deserve to die under remotely serious logic?”
Basically sports team like rivalry the marketing side of Blizzard loves.
next race we put on the slaughter will be humans. Then we take their lands and build Horde cities on top of it.
To be clear, I don’t agree anyone carrying water for a genocide for any reason, and I disagree that this is how faction pride ought to be framed, the disturbing tendency of people to defend these things now that they’ve happened notwithstanding. Again, the faction conflict should not have been expressed this way.
However, that they have a different vision of what the faction should be from you is not an indication that they are not invested in the story. You have a difference of opinion about what the Horde should be - one of you does not have a monopoly on story investment or claims to such.
You do realize that he’s trolling you?
He’s not trolling her!
No compromise! No mercy! No peace! Lok’tar!
I think the real frustration of it. Is that for the most part, I think wc3 nelf fans never wanted Teldrassil to even exist. A lot of us who actually stick to the race don’t care about this random tree that wasnt even 4 years old when Vanilla launched. In fact, it’s probably not even 3 or 2 years old by then. Metzen had a cool idea sure, the idea of a -true- tree zone was amazing. But the devs couldn’t do it, so the execution was a big rock with branches, that took away from the very heart of the Night Elves race. They’re the Kaldorei, a warrior culture that stewarded the foothills of Mount Hyjal for 10,000 years as ferocious guardians in reality and the dream.
But for MMO balancing, we had to be moved further from Org. Because Org had to be near our heartland from wc3. From the very beginning, who Nelves are has been compromised by the nature of the MMO. Or rather, what blizzard needed to do for the MMO to facilitate a ‘faction unity’ between races. Tauren have the same issue in how tolerant they are of the Horde’s magic that taints and kills aspects of the Earthmother. Our fangs were dulled to fit the Alliance, the uniqueness of our magic and connection to nature as well as our nature themed units from wc3 made neutral with the Cenarion Circle so Horde could use the themes unique to us in wc3.
For years, modern night elves didn’t get real lore. The Highborne Empire, whose values and traditions were cast off to create colloquial Kaldorei culture 10,000 years ago, became most of the world building we actually got. Everything else? “X town gets wiped out in Ashenvale, X town gets wiped out in Stonetalon, X land gets conquered while you’re occupied fighting a greater threat.” Teldrassil wasn’t even a new thing for us. Our powers being ignored so the Horde could beat us without major losses, then feel bad without ever actually facing tangible repercussions for what happened? It’s not new. But what lore have night elves gotten since Teldrassil? All of it focuses further on Teldrassil itself. The loss of population on a tree, that should never have even gained a large population considering vanilla itself openly said in your intro as a nelf player, that the tree was a controversial thing made by ‘wayward’ druids. To rub more salt into the wounds however, what have we actually done with any kind of relevance since Teldrassil burned? Spoiler, but killing the Val’kyr in Darkshore doesn’t actually matter in 9.1. What Tyrande does in 9.1 doesnt even work. More effort has been put into joke about how bad our story is, BY THE PEOPLE MAKING IT, than there is effort put into our story.
Or really, everyones story lately, because it’s not exactly good for any storyline atm. RIP Dreadlords having their own agency and the personality of Kel’thuzad. Or all Afterlife lore from 2004-2018.
Even as a Horde player, I admit I’ve also occasionally been bummed out over the total loss of Teldrassil and where that puts night elves.
In the meantime, I’ve played some FFXIV. There’s a city in that game’s second expansion called Ishgard - populated by elves, funnily enough - that ends up pretty well ravaged by war. A little while back the devs introduced a long event called “Ishgard Restoration” where players could come together and craft construction materials for the rebuilding of various city districts. Periodically there’d even be minigame-style events where they could participate directly in construction. Now the restoration is complete, and in the new expansion (I believe) the area players rebuilt will become a new district for player housing.
Since a lot of the WOW playerbase has clamored for housing for a long time, I say all this to say that I’d love to see something similar done with Teldrassil post-9.x. The tree may never come back, but I’d love to see the Alliance come together to rebuild what they can and create a new home for the remaining nelves. It’d give nelves at least one big win in the story, it’d be a chance to bring newer, crisper elf architecture models and textures to Kalimdor, it’d bring players together to get involved with rebuilding (especially if the end result was luxurious Teldrassil player housing), and, most importantly to Activision Blizzard, it’d probably bump up those playtime metrics if we had a continuously playable event like that.
Of course I’d also like to see something similar with the Undercity - we could pump that blight out, polish it up, bring it back to the glory days of Lordaeron but with the modern flair of its Horde occupants. “River”-side underground apartments, or lofts in the rebuilt towers overlooking Tirisfal Glades - what’s not to love?
None of this will ever happen, but I think the idea would be beneficial to nelves and to the game as a whole.
It’s good at home. But … is this really a victory?
And how will it be written? Noble human brought a mountain of building materials and now the elves bow at their feet, forgetting that the human refused them military assistance? Besides building materials … Wisps. No building materials. It could come as an unpleasant surprise when the night elf city turns out to be overgrown by Stormwind. Brick and cement into the abyss.
What happened to the War of Thorns wisps? They were just dispersed, not killed?
I’d rather see it be Gilneans as the main group aiding the night elves. Repaying the favor from Cata, ya know.
Idk how many resources they even have tbh
Apparently that’s happened but it’s entirely offscreen since it involves Hyjal.
They did t hat with their participation in the Army of the Black Moon.
If there’s one thing that WOW could use less of, it’s content not visible and consistently present in game lol
I personally thought the burning of Teldrassil was a surprisingly impactful story beat, especially with the last Alliance quest to save everyone, but now that’s permanently removed content. All that’s left is le epic contextless “lul tree burnt” memes. If something is happening to get the area fixed up, the least they could do is show us. And keep that showing in the game, obviously.
Hashtag Girlboss
That would suck