I can see the lead up to the Next Expac being a sort of “High Elf” expansion.
The Void Elves and the Alliance ROFLSTomp Quelthalas, and claim the Sunwell and Silvermoon. Only for the Void to seep through and claim the land.
In the aftermath, Gazlowe gives the Draenei 24 hours to take their belonging and GTFO of the Exodar before he uses Gallywix’s cannon to remove a vile enemy’s bastion from Kalimdor.
The Alliance gets Playable High Elves at the end of these intro scenarios. For the beginning of the next Expac, and to bolster their war effort.
The Alliance is being mean and wins nothing for it. The Horde extends mercy while being steadfast. The Alliance gets Playable High Elves. And the War continues.
I mean, I would dig it. So I can see it. Again, I know most people will gripe and moan either way. I am a big Blood Elf/High Elf fan, and I would not mind losing the whole of Quelthalas if it moved the Story and Game to a brighter day.
I mostly agree. Those huge cities were added and continue to be added as expansion specific player hubs. They’re mostly disposable once an expansion is over which is a terrible shame.
I think Blizzard sort of had the same feeling at some point which is why there was so much focus on having one hub per faction by way of Orgrimmar and Stormwind.
But with Battle for Azeroth they went right back to adding huge cities to each faction with Boralus and Zandalar. So I have no clue what their direction is.
From the perspective of reducing maintenance required per expansion, the destruction of any of the racial capitals (barring the aforementioned Stormwind and Orgrimmar) just seems rather pointless as those cities are mostly in stasis.
Last night I could play in some cities but not in Dazaralor or The Heart Chamber. My Alliance Characters in Boralus could not log in. Nor could my Alts in Garrisons.
Yet, my Alts in Uldum were accessible. I was raiding in the City of Nyalotha when they shut it all down around 10:30 PM or so. We had just killed H Xanesh in the midst of the yellow warnings of a server shutdown.
There is a tangible effect to everything being strung out. As far as maintenance.
I am surprised the Night Elves didn’t get renamed to Blood Ash Elves.
Technical note, as far as we know, Stonetalon wasn’t involved in the War of the Thorns or the Fourth War, and at the end of the Horde player’s questing in the Cataclysm revamp Garrosh dissolved and withdrew the Horde’s forces from Stonetalon, so for all we know the Night Elves still have their settlements there - besides the school that got blown up.
Another technical nitpick, but Tyrande did not say she was ceding Azshara to the Horde, merely that she was allowing them the use of its lumber in exchange for peace. Though, yes, the Horde invading Ashenvale any way does establish our current predicament of Genn’s statement on the Horde of “no scrap of parchment will hold them back.”
I think places likes Surumar, Drazar’alor and Boralus show them moving in a new direction.
Unlike Orgrimmar or Stormwind, most these areas are not rested areas. You only get rested status inside inns or the “core” of the city. They’re also have large populations of hostile creatures and hazards. And lots of quests and treasure chests. Utilities tend to be spread around, and they may have several flight paths inside the city itself.
In many ways -in most ways- they’re just as much adventuring zones as any area in Stormsong Valley or Voldun, only the terrain is more urban and less natural and there’s more humanoid NPCs than critters.
That makes them relevant content to the expansion and a place players want to be while doing expansion content, but as they’re lacking things like a proper Auction House, portal network, etc, they won’t supplant the actual capital cities in use.
To note, they do have portal networks, though. They’ll just probably remove most of the portals when the expansion isn’t current any more like they usually do.
Currently, however, for example, It’s actually easier to get to Ironforge by taking the portal to Boralus and then taking the portal to Ironforge than it is to take the Tram from Stormwind.
Does Teldrassil even matter anymore? I mean the reason why the writers are dragging on Sylvanas’ story for that long is that the longer they wait, the more people will forget and stop caring about Teldrassil.
Just submit to them and forget about it like they want you to
I don’t think people forget that easily. Generally, people require a stronger substitute to forget wrongdoings, for example, Theramore and Southshore are now forgotten because of Teldrassil, which was much greater in impact and cruelty.
The Horde tended to linger on Taurajo, but that was easily replaceable with Dalaran and now to an extent with Dazar’alor.
Teldrassil is here to stay, atleast in memory, until ofcourse Blizzard decides on its next big shock event.
That will be the next big bad that comes up and it turns out that Sylvanas was good all along and that teldrassil will be treated like an heroic act by her.
Trust me, most people already stopped caring about Teldrassil, both players and NPCs - it won’t be long until everyone has forgotten
I think characters can forget it, because blizzard tends to write them that way, such as blood elves after the Purge, or even after Dazar’alor (there is bias here, because Theramore isn’t forgotten easily by Jaina and still brought up, while the Purge and night elf events are forgotten). But players don’t forget so easily.
It was still the land the belonged to the people of the First Nations until the colonizers came over with their small pox, slaughtered thousands, and took all the land that they had no right too. Just stop. Your comment wasn’t even worth the necro.
Teldrassil had existed for fifteen years, most of those while it was being corrupted by Xavius. Night Elves are all ten thousand or so years old. The idea then that Teldrassil had any cultural significance is ludicrous.
How many died? It’s Schrodinger’s Elf. It’s a magical living tree in the sea, populated by squads of druids, priests, and mages. the idea that it “went up in flames” i nthe first place is absolutely ludicrous, but even if we accept that that happened, rapid access to infinite healing magic and teleportation probably meant most of the people there made it out okay.
How many people was it? Well, probably not that many. The entire military was in Feralas at the time. Night Elves are all over northern and western Kalimdor, plus however many are off on the other continents / outer space at a given time; given that they are consistently described as having a low population, we can kinda assume that the NPCs we find in Teldrassil… are probably exactly how many are really there. merchants, quest-givers, guards, trainers. Not insignificant, but surely the overwhelming majority of the Kal’dorei are somewhere else.
It’s dramatic, but its actual impact on how the night elves live or behave is going to be minimal. Oh, what, are they going to have to take another clipping off of Nordrassil to grow themselves another fabulous tree-fortress-city-by-the-sea in a matter of months? The travesty.
Teldrassil was the cradle of Darnassus, home of the Temple of Elune, the spiritual center of Night Elf culture. Age isn’t everything.
You can’t heal the dead. There was a limit to how many people could be gated out at once even with the Highborne mages doing their utmost and sacrificing themselves to do so. Also the Night Elves insisted on evacuating their guests… the Gilneans first.
Aside from Darnassus, you had the towns of Shadowglen and Dolanaar along with other small scattered settlements and the transplanted populations of firbolgs and Harpies… none of which were evacuated during that short period of time. Teldrassil as an inhabited region was larger than Darkshore it’s population rivaled that of Ashenvale. It’s pretty much a guarantee that every surving Kalimdor Night Elf lost someone they knew when the Tree was burned.
It’s pretty much a given that Fandral acheived what he did with a good helping of Old God mixed in. The Night Elves are highly unlikely to try that again given how Malfurion disapproved of the original Tree’s planting in the first place enough that Fandral had to put him out of commission to get it done.
The REAL impact of Teldrassil isn’t its effect on the Night Elves. I know this is the lore forum, but the whole reason we discuss it is because of its effect on the players.
The Night Elves, as a playable race, are not going anywhere. But the players are still upset and are likely going to be upset for a very long time, because no matter what the devs have in mind for Shadowlands, I doubt it’s going to satisfy a majority.