The Kaldorei Conundrum

Lore Story Forum
608

I enjoyed the cutscenes for Darkshore; to me that was an attempt to return to the roots of night elves being this wild, aggressive race, the fearsome predators of the night.

I think they went off the tracks all the way back when they decided night elves were going to be THE ELF for vanilla WoW. So they had to morph them into the wood elf and high elf lore that was popular for elves at the time, rather than letting them be their own creation as they were depicted in WC3. You can see this most especially when you compare them to the BC characterization of the “actual” high/wood elf race, the sin’dorei, in that…well, the sin’dorei are no longer that trope either. Even though WC2 lore solidly puts them as having Legolas-like rangers and Light-worshipping priests, the storylines in Outland were all about their aristocratic magical politics instead, and even the redemption of the paladins never reached back to those roots.

Especially now that Sylvanas is gone, Alleria is back, and the void elves are somewhat of a big question mark, I think they need to move that wood elf feel back into sin’dorei, or possibly ren’dorei (and quel’dorei, with the SLs customizations on the horizon? HYPE!). The War of the Thorns, whatever else it was, is a great excuse for the night elves to go well and truly feral.

I agree with what some of the other posters in here said though: I don’t think the nelves should be directing their ire at the rest of the Alliance. Internal faction strife and warfare is starting to feel really tiresome after what Sylvanas pulled. If they make a campaign like what Horde got, but more so, with players able to choose between being loyalists or not, with some different outcomes and rewards for doing so, well, MAYBE I could see the appeal of Alliance having a similar plotline of split loyalties too. I highly enjoyed played through the BFA storyline on a Forsaken character, but I wanted MORE of that kind of choice. (Also that at first, you were forced into being a bad guy; the choice between Sylvanas and Lorthremar should’ve come much earlier, because it didn’t make a whole lot of sense for anyone BUT a loyal Forsaken at first.)

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609

You saw some of that in “A Good War” with the signs of Kal’dorei torture of Forsaken prisoners for no reason other than revenge. Sylvannas makes this observation with approval for she is concluding that the night elves are finally starting to share her view of the world.

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610

The choice as presented to my blood elf character was more of a choice between Sylvannas and Saurfang, and given her disdain for orcs and her loyalty for a local girl making it big, and her general hatred for Night Elves, it was the more sensible choice for her to ally with Sylvannas.

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611

At this point, I’m just waiting for Garrosh 3.0, but now purple instead of red.

612

I can’t speak of the Alliance side, but Nazjatar was not a missed opportunity for lore for the Nightborne, who are highborn Night Elves, afterall.

Thalyssra really proved herself to be an equal mage to the Jaina, she was able to find common ground with Shandris, and her experiences in Nazjatar also allowed the romance between Lor’themar and Thalyssra to blossom. Overall, the night elves of Suramar made out pretty well. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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613

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614

One… I didn’t post to “bump” a thread. I posted because I saw a topic I wanted to comment on.

Two… If Blizzard really feels that way, they should set up threads to auto-lock after the last post. It’s not rocket science to implement.

615

Ah, good point. My Forsaken character is a belf death knight, so he had best of both worlds going on.

616

While she is a notorious necromancer, able to summon threads from even a year ago back to life, she makes a point here.

617

This is a very interesting query and one that I’m mulling over steadily. I recently returned after a ten year hiatus, and I played FERVENTLY from 2004-2011, and before that throughout the RTS. I adored the WC3 night elves, and when I created my first WoW character in 2004, I built her to resemble the Sentinels I had enjoyed so much before.
I spent the next seven years getting increasingly angry and miserable as my beloved race got wrecked more and more. I quite because I loathed the game, and I loathed what it had done to arguably one of the more interesting fantasy races, plotlines and even MMO mechanics (druids were so much fun to play…)

I think other posters are nailing it in identifying the savagery. I loved that the WC3 nelves were savage, mysterious and utterly unreasonable. You walk under the shadows of Ashenvale, you die. Simple as that. No discussion, no negotiation, no kindness. Just mocking laughter and arrows to the throat. That was awesome and it set the vibe for the race. They were feminine, but wild and terrifying. They embodied a lot of the scarier side of femininity as I understood it growing up.

When I came to WoW, I saw something radically unlike the nelves of WC3. It wasn’t just the loss of the Cenarion Circle, the suddenly ecumenical druidism… it was the misogyny.

Hear me out! I read your comment… but I respectfully disagree. The Kaldorei we saw on release in 2004 went from hardened warriors to vapid bimbos. The idle animation involved a sudden inane smile and bouncing their boobs. Their laughter, cheer and indeed, nearly every /emote you could find all combined to represent giggling ditzes. And trust me, a LOT of people played them like that. Naked dancing Alizee clones by every auction house…
Tyrande went from a hardened warrior priestess to someone moping in the Temple because she couldn’t have her man. It was shameful. The message from vanilla onward was that the WC3 night elves were an anomaly. I have often wondered over the past decade whether the schism that formed Arenenet took away some awesome writer whose idea the Kaldorei of WC3 originally were or something - heaven knows Guild Wars has had strong empowered female characters for ages, to my delight once I left WoW at last in disgust.

Rambling aside, where do I think it should go? Do I think it can be fixed? ironically… yes. Had you asked me a decade ago you’d have had cynical laughter. I’ve burned through levels, and played the Darkshore lines, and you know what? They were fabulous. Give me Malfurion with a snarl on his lips and his hand on the throat of an intruder. Give me Tyrande with her owl and blades ready and Elune behind her. Give me NIGHT ELVES, moving invisibly, slaughtering foes without any effort at talk.

If they actually run with this, Blizzard has a chance to finally redeem themselves and make it NOT an anomaly. Teldrassil was a crappy idea in 2004. We left the Night Elves at Nordrassil’s stump, determined to rebuild. How then to force plant a tree in violation of nature? That was a long way from the remnants of Archimonde’s attack. Get rid of that tainted place. Turn the night elves not into vengeful baddies but into the enigmatic, savage types they once were. Give us back Winterspring (the WS Frostsaber mount quest shows how long Kaldorei lived there before it inexplicably became neutral), give us a restored Hyjal, give us the core of the ancient lands of WC3. Have the nelves brutally push back the Horde from Darkshore and Ashenvale, using guerilla tactics, turning nature against them, and making them fear the shadows.
Give night elves back their teeth, and it could yet be fixed. The best thing they did was give Tyrande reason to return to her roots, and Malfurion a reason to be as scary as he always should have been.

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618

All I’m reading is “Give me an undefeatable power fantasy.”

621

Seriously!

It’s not enough that Night Elves held back the entirety of the Horde with nothing more than a few token Soldiers and a bunch of civilians.

It’s not enough that the Night elf resistance had a near 7:1 kill/death ratio in the WoT against the entirety of the Horde.

It’s not enough that (in game) Malfurion wiped the floor with Sylvanas.

It’s not enough that they retook Darkshore and, presumably, Ashenvale practically on their own.

No! Not enough. They “need their teeth back” and the only way they can apparently show that is … what? Who knows? Maybe if Tyrande conquers Orgrimmar with 6 wardens, 2 sentinels and a cat that’ll illustrate having their teeth back.

Probably not though.

:cactus:

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622

The night elf’s r the second race that gets the more lore in the game each exp,( good or bad) idk what will make ppl happy

625

Stop necro’ing threads for the love of god, the people here do not have the self-control to not post in them and start the debate anew.

This thread was made over a year ago. Bringing it back was bad, and you should feel bad.

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626

Quote the line saying the night elves had anywhere near that kill/death ratio in WoT. The only time a ratio is ever mentioned is to say the night elves were outnumbered 8 to 1.

Also Saurfang said they could have outnumbered them 12 to 1 if they waited for more soldiers but they were going in there fast, so it wasn’t the entirety of the horde either.

“We’ll have a few less soldiers ready for the fight, but we’ll still outnumber the night elves—eight-to-one instead of twelve-to-one.”

They didn’t hold them back, they slowed them down and that was only because of defenders advantage. If they held them back they wouldn’t have taken Ashenvale, Darkshore and destroyed Teldrassil.

In game Malfurion was ahead, he didn’t wipe the floor with her, her health was just lower. In the book it looked like he was losing. Then if we are going by in game the horde had no issue going into ashenvale, they even took out an entire town with one rogue and the pc with the rogue talking about how easy it was. So if we are going by in game the night elves looked like they didn’t even put up a fight.

The worgen were there, but the horde forces were not there in nearly the same numbers they had it secured and they were just confused that they were outnumbered so they were trying to reinforce it while they were fighting on other fronts.

’ www.wowhead.com/quest=54042/trouble-in-darkshore

But the status of Ashenvale is unknown, and we don’t even know if Darkshore was even won before the treaty was made. The only reason we know the night elves even have darkshore again was because a dev said the alliance won both warfronts at blizzcon.

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627

No one’s forcing you to acknowledge or post in them.

And again, if Blizzard really felt that this was a problem, they could have easily put code into the boards that locks threads after a given period of inactivity. The fact that they haven’t in over a decade means they don’t consider this a priority.

628

To be fair, they could easily program it in…but no guarantee it would actually work. It took them way too long just to add an ignore feature, and they chose to bury it in someone’s profile section instead of sticking it in the forum themselves. And supposedly the forum still has an issue with reports being character-based instead of account-based.

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629

That’s because they let people log in as characters instead of accounts. They had a chance to change this when they redid the forums from scratch.

630

They want people to argue, and ignore features stop that from happening (typically).

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631

Don’t forget “and playable”. The extreme savage amazons of WC3 were rather cardboard characters with more in the name of male titilation than character depth.

The Night Elves remain interesting in their part of elf trope inversion. For all their offputtedness the “dark skinned” elves are better people than their fair-skinned cousins.

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