I did make those points.
Would you like to clarify what your point is if what I think is your point is not your point?
Or would you like to hide behind feigned indignation and tell me to go read things again so you don’t actually have to make any effort? Because to give you a heads up, that won’t actually change what I think your point is.
I don’t think you care what anyone’s point is.
Just yours.
There is no discussion. Only a projection of what you think is right.
Scroll up and you can see my point plain as day.
I already addressed this:
If you’re fine with this, that’s what it is. I stand by that the Nightborne were not given to the Horde to give the Horde relevance to Night Elf lore. If you don’t want to defend that then you’re right, this isn’t a discussion, it’s just you avoiding one.
Define that.
What does relevance means to you.
Because it is obvious you have completely different ideas on what this implies and never forget this all started due to a Void Elf discussion that you have abandonned completely.
Just avoiding you.
I’ll be honest, on the heels of WC3, the Night Elves joining the Human Alliance for WoW was surprising to me. But when you consider the alternative it’s no choice at all.
Off-topic, but years later I’m still of the opinion Draenei should’ve been Horde and Blood Elves Alliance.
Who were the Night Elves supposed to join?
The Horde? lol.
I’ll do you one better. Zul’jin rejoins the Horde with the Amani, Blood Elves rejoin the Alliance. A new battleground located somewhere in Quel’thalas.
I define it as having a reason to be involved in Night Elf content, especially in the majority of Night Elf content that we were going to get involved with BfA. That being the War of the Thorns, the burning of Teldrassil, and Darkhore.
All of which the Horde has been involved with. But the Nightborne have not.
I do count Nazjatar at best as minor Night Elf content with even less significance to the Nightborne than even the Night Elves.
I did not abandon the Void Elf discussion. I merely admitted I do not have any evidence to support my idea:
Because you are right, I can admit when I am wrong, and I can admit when I do not actually have evidence to support something I believe.
You’ve been spending a lot of time with me. I don’t think that’s how avoiding works.
I read a few posts, and apparently only one touched a point I’d like to explore. It is clear to me that the Kaldorei are experiencing some kind of tragic narrative journey. I think that whining about what they lost is the wrong way to try to rebuild the race lore. Ideally now that all damage to the lore is done would be to radicalize this trajectory and show that the Kaldorei have lost all their lands in Kalimdor. Why? Simply because that would be the climax of this tragic journey.
After these events, we could make room for the race to reconstruct itself more closely than it was in warcraft 3. Let’s be honest here, it would be pathetic for the Kaldorei to reclaim their land in these circumstances and this would be considered justice. Only the complete dismantling of the Horde would be a response to a genocide, and we know this will never happen. In addition, the way the lore is being built, a final victory for the kaldorei would only be possible through Anduin’s “generosity” yielding large numbers of human soldiers, which for me would also be a humiliation for the race.
In my opinion, the race should be based on Val’sharah and Azsuna and hostile to the elves on the broken islands, since it would be consistent for the blood elves to also lose their lands in north of EK.
From this we would have a lore that would expose the decay of the elven races circumscribed to just one island, which would demonstrate the collapse of its empire, something similar to what happened to the Western Roman Empire after Rome was last plundered. This would make room for new narratives, perhaps with the elves realizing that their factional disputes were disastrous for their interests. Or perhaps by exploiting the fact that the Kaldorei would have no reason to obey the High King’s orders, immediately initiating terrorist actions on Kalimdor to destabilize the Horde.
This would also be the only way to make Cenarius aware of the Horde threat, as Ashenvale would not stand for a week if the goblins and orcs could freely exploit their resources. The logic here would be to make the Horde’s life hell in these lands, and it would be even more interesting if these events were dubbed by the blood elfs and nightbornes once they realized that the kaldorei are indeed right to act in such a way that we could even see individuals of these races militating in the Kaldorei military formations.
I think this way the lore could do the breed a fair bit of justice, because in any case, hoping for some kind of retreat from the Horde in Kalimdor after all that’s happened is actually tasting ashes in the mouth, and calling This a spectacular victory.
you’re hired.
I’m mostly just going to echo this sentiment and also tack on that Zandalari Trolls are basically what Night Elves should have been. Fiercely independant but begrudgingly seeking partnership to deal with a problem that might be too big to tackle on their own (i.e. the Horde).
Edit: Also with that mix of ancient culture and savagery that nelves lacked in WoW compared to WC3.
To be friends to the Alliance but separate, like how Zandalari trolls did not join the Horde- they are allies to it.
Likewise, it should’ve been the same for the Forsaken.
This one in particular irked the heck out of me, because my first and most loved character was a night elf druid. Druids were what made them Night Elves. No druids, and they’re tall, purple high elves without mages (at the time). It was their bond with nature that made them unique.
With every druid race they added, I felt Night Elf lore getting stripped away. Nothing is special about them now aside from worship in Elune who was an often-distant and rarely tangible force until BFA.
Unfortunately the Zandalari have really just been beaten down this entire expansion just short of losing their home, so definitely not something I want to see the Night Elves keep having to deal with in the same manner.
I still consider any Cenarion Circle content to be Night Elf content, especially with Malfurion finally squarely having a priority in the Night Elf people and their lands now. That the Tauren and Darkspear participated here and there after learning from the Night Elves doesn’t make Druid content any less Night Elf content. And the Worgen are full blown tied to the Night Elves in a good way.
The Zandalari and Kul’Tirans aren’t really Druids any more than Sunwalkers are actually Paladins, though. They’re their own unique thing that don’t really encroach upon Cenarion Druid content, and likely won’t be relevant to Cenarion Druid and/or Night Elf content if we get more of it in the future.
I would agree if not for the Cenarion Circle being staunchly neutral. Even while the orcs clear-cut forests and Forsaken blight the land, ruining it for generations to come, the Circle twiddles their thumbs and goes, “gosh I’d like to something about this but my hands are tied”.
It still feels like they’re stepping all over the Druid’s toes, given that there’s no separation between what either one is capable of. An example is the Worgen “harvest witches” only had very minor abilities, like predicting the weather and making crops be bountiful. Not stuff like making the crops grow in moments or actually controlling the weather-- until they were afflicted with the druid-based curse, and also taught more about druidism from the night elves.
If Thornspeakers, say, weren’t capable of all of the Druidic magics until they were taught by the Cenarion Circle, that’d be more palatable. Like if the Zandalari War-Druids could only shapeshift, thanks to Gonk, and not have this “Lun’alai Heretic” group and the ability to cast druidic healing magic.
This was the very case with Malfurion himself before now. And now it’s not.
Likewise, at the Darkshore Warfront we have Thisalee Crow and Celestine of the Harvest as former neutral Druids now on the side of the Night Elves, and, tangentially, likewise with Maiev and Jarod Shadowsong no longer neutral but on the Night Elves’ side again, too. Really, we’re just missing the Demon Hunters. Though this has strayed from Druids: Malfurion is still the leader of the Cenarion Circle, so I put stock in Cenarion content being Night Elf content now that Malfurion is more so prioritizing the Night Elves himself.
I don’t see it as stepping on the Night Elves’ toes specifically because the Tauren, Darkspear, and Worgen did learn from the Night Elves. That doesn’t make Cenarion Druid content less Night Elf. If anything, it just makes Taruen, Darkspear, and Worgen more culturally Night Elven (which fans of Tauren, Darkspear, and Worgen have complained about in contrast to my not seeing it as a negative).
I don’t see any issue with people finding their own ways to do similar magic like the Thornspeakers have. Just the same as I don’t think there’s any issue with the vast varieties of Priests we have being different from one another and not actually encroaching on any others’ Priest content (short of Velen suggesting Elune is a Naaru). Likewise with Sunwalkers finding their own way to wield the Light not encroaching on any other Paladins’ lore.
Zandalari Druids are pretty much just Dinomancers. We’ve already seen that, it’s not really new. And even if the Lun’alai do worship Elune that doesn’t make Elune any less present at Darkshore or take her away from the Night Elves.
I think the Horde fit their thematics at the time far better than the Alliance.
And the Blood Elves fit the thematic of the Alliance at the time far better than the Horde. But hey… That’s wrong speak on these forums to suggest that.
In Warcraft 3? Not so much.
The Night Elves in that game were presented as secretive and primal. They didn’t really have settlements in the same way as in WoW, their bases could pick up and move anywhere thanks to the ancients. They, like the Tauren, Orcs, and Trolls at the same time, were rootless, and seemed to live in nature almost totally. While Blood Elves didn’t have the nature connection, in WCIII they also had no homes to return to.
Orgrimmar was only created in preparation for WoW in TFT, the Blood Elves still residing in Quel’Thalas came later, and both Teldrassil and Thunder Bluff were inventions of the game as well. I think it would have been better if instead of making up all those new cities, the Horde on Kalimdor had been decentralized and had a stronger showing across the continent, and had included the Nelves, in contrast to the Alliance on EK with their big cities. Mechanically they could have more, smaller settlements with stuff like trainers and the AH being around a bunch of them, while the Alliance had everything in a few places while the world was more hostile.
The Blood Elves fit the AESTHETICS of the Alliance better, but the Thematics … I’m not too sure. They are a destitute people, forced to extremes for the sake of self preservation, who were forced to attempt to reinvent themselves due to recent major events (and seek out allies of survival and support). That’s … pretty much in line with the core themes of Thrall’s Horde wouldn’t you say?
Trivel, I’ve seen you make a LOT of threads; but at the end of the day its never really the THEMES of the Sin’dorei that seem to bother you (its their aesthetics and how they infringe upon the aesthetics of the original WC3 Horde). As for why the NEs would have never joined the Horde … there are many simple answers to THAT (those reasons do NOT however justify the NEs joining the Alliance, but they are sufficient enough that I just can’t see them joining the Horde).
The NEs would have never joined the Horde because if they did they would be subservient to its Warchief and when the Orcs come to cut down all of ashenvale they will stand alone against them.
Oh and no druidism for the Alliance.
Well … that and many other reasons. To say that the two races introduction was not the best would have been an understatement (with the Warsong harvesting the NEs sacred trees without realizing it, and Cenarius attempting an eradication campaign against the Orcs for their Fel Taint … resulting in his death). On top of this, the civilization that the Horde was developing into (and even more so now) isn’t particularly compatible with the Kaldorei’s (with population growth, and the subsequent ever increasing needs for natural resources from the Horde being a huge potential issue).
Long story short … not sure the Kaldorei/Alliance union ever made much sense beyond fostering the faction conflict in Vanilla; but no way the Kaldorei ever joined the Horde. As for Druidism … meh. There is the cultural term druid that holds IMMENSE cultural significance for the Kaldorei people, and the functional druid class that just seems to be used for ANY group that wields magic of the life domain. Zandalari, Darkspear, and Kul’Tiran druids are ONLY “druids” in a game mechanic sense. They aren’t the same brand of Cenarius Forest Druid culturally.