To this particular point, I think some of it also comes from said paywalled transmedia. Because right after it shows you those images of Night Elves inundating Stormwind, it hits you with either Tyrande’s (who, as leader, should have a grasp of her people’s population), or the omniscient narrator’s bleak musing: “How many night elves were elsewhere on Azeroth? Far too few. Now, they were all who remained of their people.”
Though, I’ve never had an issue with the Night Elves both swamping Stormwind, and still having most of Teldrassil’s civilians die. A city as populous as Stormwind would struggle to house a sudden influx of residents from even just a single other city, nevermind all of Teldrassil and those that managed to make it to Darnassus from Ashenvale and Darkshore (ontop of already taking in all the Gilnean refugees first). Which kind of ties in to me not seeing any particular reason for the Night Elves to not be a populous race; before Teldrassil, at least. With them decentralized across northern Kalimdor and parts of the Broken Isles, they should at the very least far outnumber the people of Suramar or Quel’thalas because the lower class always does (and most of the higher class are snake people or goat people, now), and Stormwind would realistically struggle to house even one of those two.
Yeah it’s really confusing but it’s also a percentage and not an actual population count, if we had a number of them before the scourge then we could do the math.
I want to point out, the narrator isn’t omniscient in that passage. In that passage it’s Anduin, who has no ability to know how many civilians continue to exist in Kalimdor (again, the Horde cut a straight line to Teldrassil, rather than stopping to secure territory), how many may have been evacuated to the Exodar, how many there were to be evacuated in the first place, or even how many - precisely, were evacuated into Stormwind at the time.
Other passages within Elegy also note that the sheer number of transported refugees was something that shocked and exasperated those in Stormwind, with it noting specifically that the refugees “just kept coming”.
Given this, there’s plenty of wiggle room for clarification that the evacuation was highly successful.
To present losses as pleasant? I didn’t seem to mean anything like that, I was only interested in the proportion of worgen / night elves rescued. Perhaps these are the consequences of an unedited translation via Google.
The evacuation was limited to Darnassus. There was more Teldrrassil besides Darnassus and that wasn’t even touched in the evacuation.
And that evacuation was far less than total.
Horde assistance became a non starter with the destruction of the Portal leading to the bay village. Teldrassil was a damm tall Tree. (Ask anyone who’s fallen off of it. )
IIRC, Elegy notes that refugees were coming into Darnassus from the rest of Teldrassil itself, which - if we go by the game, had only a handful of small settlements at any rate, with Dolanaar probably being the largest.
A thousand times this. It takes nothing but the stroke of a pen, and almost nothing needs to change. The Night Elves still get the same revenge plotline they do now, but now the main plot is allowed to believably move forward. Tyrande and the Alliance can get their satisfying payback, a new homeland is rebuilt, and the plot moves on. As long as so many Night Elves died, the Warcraft plot will never be able to move into a believable peace.
Partial genocide is just too dark of a storyline for Warcraft. I’m not mad about the (fictional) deaths like some posters, I just think it’s too much of a kink in the story Blizzard wants to tell. Take it out.
i would actually be fine with this if they own their mistake, call it a MISTAKE on big words and acknowledge they screwed up, metzen owned it after the draenei shebackle and people gave him flak but whatever we moved on and went to kill illidan.
We only got a half mention of it by ion about how they “know not everybody would like the story but whatever the show must go on”, such a corporate and non commital answer really feels bad and as a customer i didnt feel any kind of reassured.
The problem with a straight-up retcon is that it doesn’t undo the impression. Clarifications, if they’re amplified enough, can help, but even they are only part of the fix.
As I noted at the end of my first post, this technically wouldn’t be a retcon.
Though to Kyalin’s point, I think I should have put a stronger emphasis on the comparison to Bradensbrook, in that the proposal could be a location that we would actually visit, as that would probably have the most impact on people.
Teldrassil’s “official art” changed with every artist that did it. That tree bears no resemblance to the in game representation of how it was laid out and even less than the tree’s representation in the associated short nor how it was described in “Elegy”. The only evacuation described there is through the portal to Stormwind. Since you’re so fond of book sources, you should be noting that.
Beneath the mountains, on Darkshore, night elf civilians milled around the beaches. They had taken small boats from Darnassus, and they looked as if they were waiting for larger, passenger‐bearing vessels for a long journey.
Too late, Shadowlands just reaffirmed the 90% Thalassian death toll as canon by having Kael’thas mention it during the Venthyr campaign. If you’re a Blood Elf (or a Void Elf, I believe), at one point he says to you “Nine of every ten of us, -name-. Slain by Arthas Menethil to raise that lich. Our noble kingdom, all but erased.” If you aren’t Thalassian, he also says to you, “You still bleed, do you not? Cut your flesh and count the drops of blood. Let nine fall and soak the earth for every one you save. Tell me what that does to your heart, -name-. For I can tell you precisely what it did to mine.”
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