The Kaldorei Conundrum

What last word? I find your premise faulty. You haven’t actually proven your idea is right. Whatever you think of my points does not actually prove your own correct. That you are avoid talking about your own points to focus on mine is you avoiding that you’re wrong.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The big problem with night elves is in the presentation.

They’re great when the “camera” isn’t focused on them. They retake Ashenvale solo after Cata, are at the very least contesting Ashenvale again after WOT (it is labelled as a front, Tyrande can safely land, and War Table), are presumably part of the “Horde losing on every front” post Zandalari incursion, the Silverwing Sentinels put up such a fight that Garrosh’s army just gives up and goes around their base…

But their resounding victories are usually a sentence, an off-hand comment by an NPC, or most egregiously, a tweet.

In the meantime, night elf defeats get major focus. War of Thorns vs. Darkshore is probably a great example. Two novellas and a multi-week quest chain up against “Well, Darkshore’s a front, so… Did we win? Yay?”

Honestly, to fix it, I would like to see a night elf victory, unambiguous, in Ashenvale. I want to have it bring together some elements of kaldorei society we haven’t seen much of. I want the gosh-danged night elf demon hunters to show. They’ve sacrificed everything to protect their people – Wouldn’t they have some opinions at this juncture? I want the night elf death knights to show, and be reacted to and have their opinions on Sylvanas’s new Dark Rangers. And I want the Shren’dalar to continue to have a presence… As well as the sentinels, druids, and civilians, and maybe some hippogryphs and chimera and stone giants and dryads. Let’s get a major Kalimdor Alliance party going in Ashenvale, and bring in the two groups night elves gave homes to – draenei (we haven’t seen much of our non-lightforged ones anyway) and worgen. And let’s have them win.

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I can’t plus +1 this enough times. I need a plus infinity option.

I read in a post somewhere that blizzard originally intended the Kaldorei ro be Horde. I can fathom this because the Chimera Roost in WC3 was literally a purple Tauren Totem; similar to the one where the flight masters are located in Thunder Bluff.

The night born may simply be Blizzard’s attempt to get night elves back into the horde and make at least most of Kalimdore a Horde Continent. Just like the eastern kingdoms are already a mostly alliance Continent.

I understand your point but I think what I was trying to say is that Nightborne story content overlaps more with Blood Elves than Night elves. I wouldn’t look at Val’sharah or Ashenvale and say “Yes. This is a Nightborne zone” any more than I would consider it a Blood elf zone.

I don’t really think Blizzard needed to give the Horde Nightborne just to justify involving them in ancient elf story, they could have done that with the Blood Elves it just would have required a bit of a different approach.

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The Horde already has this with the Blood Elves, though. The Nightborne don’t actually add anything new to the Horde.

As a tangent, the very least, Val’sharah should logically be a lot less neutral given Malfurion fighting against the Horde.

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Yeah It’s too bad they never used a Tauren arch Druid for the horde side of the coin. But when they created legion I doubt they had the Burning of teldrassil planned either??

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Oh sweet baby jesus give me strenght.

This will be my last reply to you regarding this topic.
Anything more we are going in circles.

Nightborne required more time to implement than Void Elf. This is undeniable fact.
Whether you want to only talk about the body OR the multiple raids, dungeons and frigging zones that was done prior to becoming an Allied race.

Even if we assume for years ago Blizzard decided to give the Alliance Void Elves and had to scramble to somehow deliver the Nightborne as recompense for it.
That would mean with years to plan and implement this plan Blizzard expressly decided to shaft the Alliance by giving them a model recolor and calling it a day while deciding to give the Horde all of Suramar, several instances and a compelety new and unique model for the Horde.

If anything your theory is much, much worse because it shows Blizzard cares so little about the Alliance that this is how they would choose to use their time.
Rather than… you know.

Blizzard decided to give Allied races. Nightborne were ready but needed a lot of work to get to the Horde. So they put a ton of time into them to make them player ready.
By delivery date they had lost too much time on Nightborne so rather than delivering anything more than the bare minimum they added the Void Elves with zero lore background.
Tied it to a place holder reputation called Argussian Reach that has NOTHING to do with the Void Elves and then deliver that for the Alliance.

This sort of thing is of course nothing new. Like adding the Worgen and giving them 1 tree in Darnassus while the Horde gets goblins, their starting zone, echo isles and of course an entire questing zone in perpetuity at Azshara as well as the continued Worgen storyline in Silverpine forest and Gilneas itself.
Why? Because Blizzard ran out of time and decided to develop for the Horde first.

Ultimately the Nightborne offer as much as the Night Elves do.
Blood Elves had some sort of ancestry to all things elves, but they are a different thing now.

Now both factions can look at Night Elf ruins and feel some sort of connection to it via the shared history.
So I would say yes that personal connection to Night Elf lore or Azshara or things of that nature would be incredibly important.

I would say Tyrande is missing now because Azshara has not finished with us just yet and when we confront her again Tyrande will be there.
Just as Thalyssra will.

If both of these Night Elves were there for the Alliance then all the Horde would have would be Lorthemar having a bare minimum connection that just feels off.
Now both Horde players and Alliance players feel represented.

Blizzard is trying to avoid another legion expansion where the Horde just tags along with no meaningful connection.
Sure they can change some stuff but it won’t have the same deep personal connection that NB or NEs do.
Lorthemar’s great, great, great, great grandfather being a blacksmith in Zin-Azshari is less meaningful than Thalyssra’s personal friend or Shandris’ family.

If you read a bit further you would have noticed I mentioned Shandris who offers the personal connection I mentioned. Tyrande or some other Night Elves would have been more meaningful but Jaina seems to be everywhere this expansion so I mentioned her.

What are you talking about? Nightborne and Night Elves share the same lore.
What kind of argument are you making?
Did I say Nightborne have replaced Night Elves? No.
Nor did their lack of presence in what the Horde has done to Night Elves negate the fact that they are both Night Elves who lived together from 10k years ago.

Its clear you have completely given up and just want to say something for the sake of saying it.

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I think it’s more likely that when Blizzard decided to make nightborne playable, they had to spend more time just making it work and it detracted from the model quality as a result. It may be true that they spent more time on the nightborne but that doesn’t necessarily mean the end result was more positive than the void elves.

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I would be fully on-board with the Kaldorei retaking Ashenvale in its entirety, aside from maybe Zoram’gar Outpost (so Horde has a flight path to BFD). Have this happen on screen and have it permanent.

This means Splintertree is gone, Warsong Lumber camp is under siege and cut off, and the blockade pushed back further into the Barrens. To note, there is a quest in Ashenvale Horde side, that illustrates the fear of the Night Elves. The lumberjacks are quaking at the thought of being snuck up on while cutting timber, and you have to protect them as they do it. More of this would be cool.

This should be a 100% Kaldorei endeavor.

I am not a Kaldorei lore buff by any stretch of the imagination, but after reading Destron’s Travels through Azeroth many times over, I believe he illustrated the wild savagery of the Night Elves quite well. The main character, as a Forsaken, was palpably fearful of traveling through Ashenvale after hearing stories of the legendary huntresses. It’s a great read – very long – but great.

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Regardless of how well it executed the effort is there and the lore is deep and rich.

Void Elves are just… just so odd. How are they even a people? How many Blood Elves wanted to study the void with Umbric? How sizable was this group?
Is there any history in Blood Lore that shows this prominent group before their split?

Not really.
I don’t know why but Blizzard could have certainly shown High Elves having difficulty adjusting without a power source and their descent into the Void (As Blood Elves did to the Fel).
We could put this into a framework of Blood Elves forbidding High Elf entry to the Sunwell.

There. Now you got a huge group of a people. With existing lore crossing over into an Allied Race in a meaningful and coherent manner.
Maybe we can see Alleria teaching her little sister the struggle with the Void and better customization for the Void Elves as I suggested earlier to make them really unique rather than just a recolor.

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No. This is what you said:

And this was my saying you’re wrong:

That you said the sun is blue, and my initial response was that I might think the sun is actually purple - and to be fair, you are correct that I do not actually have any evidence that the Void Elves were developed before the playable Nightborne, though I still do believe this was the case - your saying that I’m wrong about the sun being purple does not make it true that the sun is blue.

So I stand by saying that you are wrong that the Nightborne were given to the Horde to give them relevance to Night Elf lore, because the Nightborne at large have not been relevant to Night Elf lore. Jaina and the Unshackled have more presence in Nazjatar than the singular Thalyssra has, and neither Jaina or the Unshackled have any association with the Night Elves at all.

It’s ye ol’ Worf effect. Night elves are some of the heavier weights among the standing races, and some effort has been put into describing how tough they are to fight against. Even in the War of Thorns, you have unprepared night elf civilians and the Darnassus City Guard inflicting staggering losses on the Horde for every fallen night elf.

So of course, when we want to show how serious the threat is or how HARDCORE this iteration of EDGY HORDE is, there’s a tendency to punch the big guy in the room.

But when it happens repeatedly, it doesn’t look good for the big guy.

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You seriously do not consider the fact that now both factions have a race and characters that knew Azshara and the Night Elf Empire on a personal level and all the lore that implies not relevant?

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No, I do not find it to be relevant. Nazjatar did nothing to advance Night Elf lore. It didn’t even add anything new. The newest thing we learned was that Azshara cursed those who refused to turn into Naga to be ghosts. And even that’s not new, because we already saw she had the power to do that in Azsuna.

Nazjatar’s biggest fault is that it was a side story thats entire story purpose was to negate the fleets we spent all our time getting and then in the final fight in the Eternal Palace raid having Azshara successful trick the Champion of Azeroth to use the Heart of Azeroth to unlock the Titan device chaining N’zoth.

That Azshara mocked Thalyssra is irrelevant to any Night Elf lore that currently matters: Teldrassil, Darkshore, and Ashenvale.

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The real reason the Horde was given the Nightborne is so that we, too, can partake in the agony of a TERRIBLE character rig that has plagued Night Elves since Vanilla.

And now the Alliance can partake in the perfection that is the Blood Elf character rig, which makes every armor class look glorious.

Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

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Honestly the only thing stopping me from race changing this mage to Nightborne is how bad the shoulder rigging is… they like, levitate off the body it’s bizarre lmao

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Giant boulder shoulders and tiny twinkle toes.

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The Nightborne rig doesn’t even fully use the Night Elf rig. Playable Nightborne female rigs use like Draenei jumps and don’t stand in the same way Night Elf rigs do, either.

Void Elves indeed look great, though.

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Oh, I know, I’m simply stating they’re both awful and we can share in the misery.