idk, I think Warcraft 3 is well done. It wasn’t super complex, but it was rich and cohesive.
The annoying thing is Warcraft has the foundation for complex story telling, they just don’t go far enough with it. Which sucks because it’s so much wasted potential.
For the Old Testament God, that’s his de rigor. And he’s the one where the word “good” comes from.
I disagree… They know their market, and they know that the vast majority simply doesn’t care. They want exciting cinematics, challenging raids, engaging gameplay, and phat loot.
I just want to say how much I appreciate this thread. I’ve read it nearly entirely and left a good number likes (less than was deserved, though).
I’m a new WoW player but my husband showed me W3 to prepare for WoW and I loved the Night Elves. Their lore and culture was just fascinating. I still love them as they were written and try to RP my Kaldorei characters in that light and also in light of good, recent lore development (such as the mages).
On the topic of perfect warriors vs tree-huggers… I’m open to the Kaldorei, at their height, representing both ferocious warriors and peaceful civilians who don’t know how to fight. When a society has enough resources to sustain itself, it moves away from strictly survival to allowing room for art, philosophy, etc. Surely some Kaldorei would be more peace-seeking than others. But I think the issue is that they, as far as I can tell, have been homogenized into just peace-seekers that don’t match up to the vigor of Maiev, Tyrande, Malfurion and even gag Illidan at his best.
But now that war has decimated them, they need to find their fangs again. Let them kick some serious “butt”. If Blizzard wants to stop the woobie trend (and I’m not certain they do), they’ll give them back their dignity by upsetting (but not leaving) the Alliance because Kaldorei interests need to come first. Heck, I’d like to see a whole Kaldorei-only quest line where players are called away from the Alliance to support their people in light of Teldrassil and the assaulted borders. And then, Stormwind-aligned players have to grind rep with the Kaldorei.
I’d also like to see a Kaldorei paladin class in the vein of Holy Warriors of the Moonlight. I would change my human paladin in a heartbeat. Give Elune some power that way. I’d also like to see the priest class less about the Light and more about Elune. The classes in general overall are too homogenized to be like everyone else. They should have refined and improved the NE models and classes before they added VEs. The NEs deserve that more. Casual players won’t care and the Kaldorei fans would be happier.
He’s ‘too neutral’, and they literally just ousted his brother from the plotline via making him the Warden of Sargeras. Malfurion is considered more neutral given he controls the Cenarion Enclave, which also has Tauren as members (and now, Trolls and Worgen, which makes the number of Druid-aligned races on both sides now at 2 races per - I know there’s three on each side, but Zandalari don’t seem to follow the same basis as Trolls, and neither do Kul Tirans; the latter are Sea/Drust aligned from what I gather). They could feasibly remove him from the storyline now and Tyrande would still be there as a hitch-pin to control the Kaldorei. They’ll never put Mal directly in charge because a.) Female-Dominated Society, and b.) He’s the aforementioned neutral party, for all he’s married to Tyrande.
[I apologize for multiple-posts - I’m replying to replies as I read them XD.]
This was never more obvious than that fiasco at Blizzcon they like to sweep under the rug all the time. The one where Cannibal Corpse basically called Alliance players every awful thing under the sun, stated they needed to do not-nice things to themselves, etc., and upper management pulled a ‘woops, lol /nervous laugh it was just a joke guys!’ and the collective Alliance playerbase went yeah, sure.
And then promptly started calling it World of Hordecraft/Hordecon. Because after that, they thought we weren’t intelligent enough to take it at face value. And then Metzen started wearing Alliance shirts to everything. It’s been known for a very long time that they favor the Horde (several members of upper eschelons have been on camera and audio notably saying they hate the Alliance, and it wasn’t in a ‘lol guys’ way, judging by the reactions from the interviewers and the like). It’s just never been so blatant from an in-game standpoint, really, until now. It’s been horrendous this Xpac. They could have bridged it so much better during Cataclysm, but that ended up being focused on Thrall being the Chosen One for so much of it, that any Kaldorei stuff ended up being drowned under that.
The only thing they did remotely well in that Xpac was Fandral Staghelm’s pain at his son being killed being turned into fighting for Ragnaros, but even that felt half-hearted. I would have liked to see a redemption storyline for him, because it felt like at the end of the day, he was a character who was suffering because of his grief, and he honestly didn’t think Tyrande was doing what could be done for their race.
It also doesn’t help that a LOT of lore is being put in books. Okay, people love to read, but honestly, they already pay 100+ bucks for expansions (if you get the Collector’s Editions for all of them like I do), plus 15/month (if you pay RL money for them - I know a LOT of people use gold for tokens now, myself included, but humor me here). That’s a LOT of extra money to shell out, and then you add in 15-25 bucks a book. Coupled with multiple different authors writing it, you end up with so many hands in the honey-pot that nothing ends up making sense.
And then that lore ends up being changed/completely ignored as far as in-game goes, so you have people who spent the money and read the book knowing something, and then someone who didn’t spend the money, playing the in-game and with no mention, there’s a LOT that gets lost in the shuffle. There needs to be lore points put in-game that coincide with the book releases, so people know wtf is going on.
There’s just so much that really needs to be nailed down. People aren’t psychic, they aren’t telepathic, so for them to just assume everyone is going to buy/read the novels and know what’s going on, in a game that people pay for, is ludicrous.
This is 100% what they would be, especially after a heyday of 10k years around the world. To pin them down as either specifically peace-loving hippies, and then suddenly revert them to purely savage warriors, with no median time (perceptively to most of those who don’t actively play them, and who only pay attention to major plot points) makes them look disjointed. It really, honestly, gives you the true way they’re seen to the masses, and that’s really sad. They’re one of the oldest races on Azeroth pre-Draenei, and it doesn’t make sense that a couple of races who are literal blips on the timeline radar are getting this much attention compared to them.
Take away Human’s bonus rep gain and Every-Man, and see how many people willingly play them. Night Elves have always been one of the more popular races beyond Orcs and Humans.
As for Nelfadins, those make sense, too. They already have ones in Well of Eternity who do consecrate and all of that. They’re already in the game, honestly, it’s just a matter of lore basis and implementing, and I think the ones via Queen Azshara use Elune-based/Moon-based Faith power anyway.
I don’t see why that would be an issue when he’s been fairly neutral the majority of WoW until just the recent conflict. And we’re supposedly just at the end of the war.
Illidan was ousted from the story in Burning Crusade when he died. He was absent the majority of Warcraft, his return was a brief stint. He was never leader of the Night Elves in any capacity like Malfurion.
Well they could always do that. I’m just not seeing how these aspects mean they would.
They did a good job of keeping it a big secret. Saurfang may have been the Big Dam Hero this expac (although Baine was more heroic), but it was at the expense of putting every Horde player as accomplices to the largest act of genocide since the War of the Ancients and the Draenei massacre on Draenor.
The devs don’t really favor the Horde as a whole, they just enjoy writing stories about specific Horde characters more than Alliance ones. Truth be told, those characters, Thrall, Saurfang, Baine, Sylvannas, Putress ARE a lot more interesting than their Alliance couterparts.
It has been a bit since I’ve posted on here… But considering at one point I was undoubtedly the largest voice on Night Elves in the community, I’ll pitch into this topic.
So, here’s the thing with Night Elves and their BFA progression. This is, almost point for point, following a path that I myself have asked for and ideas I’ve pitched on these forums.
-Abandoning Teldrassil. I have always felt that Teldrassil was more of a Druid thing than Night Elves, and that Moonglade and Teldrassil should swap faction HQ’s.
-A stronger focus on Sentinel/Warden characters over Druidic ones, as Druids represent a very limited, albeit major, aspect of NE culture.
-A Tyrande who is willing to rebel and buck against the constraints of the Alliance.
-Even the Night Elves relying less on Elune and more on their own actions. My original idea had them lose Elune, or lose faith in her.
In theory, all of this is great for me. Night Elves are moving in “exactly” the way I have asked for them if you go by the very broad strucks.
They have lost Teldrassil and moved into Hyjal, or at least leadership has, as indicated by 8.3. It is not exactly what I wanted, but the main thrust is there. No more Teldrassil.
The focal points of the story are certainly not Druid characters and are from Sentinel/Warden backgrounds. Now, of course, it’s about them railing against these organizations and abandoning the Night Elves to join Death… So once again, it’s not exactly what I asked, but its undoubtedly what was said.
Tyrande who is willing to rebel and buck, and that is certainly whats happening. Personally, this is the closest one to what I’ve asked for, and really, I don’t think Tyrande has done anything wrong. But there is a certain villainous overtone to her at this point that, while I certainly think the fanbase is blowing out of proportion, it is certainly there.
And finally, Tyrande and the Night Elves have certainly had their faith shaken. Tyrande is flat out questioning Elune and it’s easy to see why. But once again, the way it’s done… Not quite what I had suggested.
And, I get it. I am pretty certain the old school NE community had an influence on shaping the state they are in now, but the problem is, and I don’t mean to come off as…well, as kinda complainy…
All these changes and directions are fairly superficial in the way they are handled.
Teldrassil was burned, and it seems like a permanent thing… Except all the story related to it is largely off screen and we are left to assume, as in game shows Stormwind as the new plot. And Hyjal is still pretty heavily Druid dominated.
The Warden/Sentinel story focus is largely just window dressing and a vehicle for somebody elses story.
Tyrande is growing a spine, and going in the right direction, but it’s always with the implication that she’s failing, that she’s doing the wrong thing, that she’s being silly… From the questions of her people in Boralus saying things about her not being able to handle the power, to other Night Elves saying they give up and are tired of fighting. The point is, always, that Tyrande is not in the right here. That she should just forgive her peoples genocide. Add on to that basic Gameplay mechanic issues Like Tyrande not killing Nathanos and the general scenario in general… And look, I get it it. The Scenario showed Nathanos couldn’t even touch Tyrande. He could only run away, and it had to be done that way because you never want to take focus away from the players. But portrayal matters. And in this case, there’s just too much working against Tyrande’s attitude and mission to see it as as success.
This really ties into the same thing with Elune and Night Elves distancing themselves from her… The way it’s portrayed, I mean… It’s pretty silly right? Tyrande is (justifiably) wondering where Elune was, and yet, Elune is giving Tyrande massive amounts of power right now. Wondering why Elune isn’t helping vs Elune helping to the degree of Night Warrior are contradictory. And it is really something that throws off Tyrande’s characterization and the entire premise of No Elune.
All of these things are, straight down the line, close to what I, personally, many times, have advocated for on these forums. They are, undoubtedly, proof that Blizzard listens to and reads and responds to feedback…
And yet…
And yet they all lack the same thing.
Depth.
There is no emotional impact or even really acknowledgement on Alliance side over Teldrassil for Night Elves (hell, for the Alliance as a whole) to feed or grow from. Realistically, in game, it was more a story vehicle for Saurfang and the Horde.
There is no emotional impact or explanation for the Warden/Death characters switching sides, outside of minor “We feel abandoned!” things. These people who were, as the devs claim, supposed to represent different aspects of the NE culture are all…shallow. No reason for them, their anger is unexplained, and Callia, not a Night Elf, is going to be the one to fix them. That…defeats the purpose of using these characters and just makes them vehicles for other peoples story. And I get it, we still have all of Shadowlands. If they can move past the flaws of BFA, they have some hope.
Tyrande’s anger and the fractures between Night Elves and the Alliance are hollow in game. You have Maiev and Tyrande both railing against Anduin for not helping, for highlighting how much aide and how much blood Night Elves have spilled for the Alliance and how little Anduin is willing to give in return because of other war fronts (also a side note, this is EXACTLY , word for word one of the issues I’ve said needs to come up with High King, him focusing on human lands or other things at the direct expensive of a member of hte Alliance. So Kudos Blizzard), but it never really extends past that. In fact, you turn around and see Night Elves, swarms of them, contributing to the Alliance forces as a whole, instead of recalled to help take their home. Not just contributing, but put into roles as bait, specifically there knowing they are probably going to die. This not only cheapens the anger and betrayal that Maiev and Tyrande feel, it also cheapens the destruction of Teldrassil and near extinction of the Night Elves.
And it doesn’t get mentioned.
The Elune thing ties into a lot of that as well due to the nature of how Tyrande went Night Warrior… Is also never mentioned or expanded on, but as I said, Shadowlands. I will wait for that.
But right now it’s all skin deep.
You want to fix Night Elves? Add depth. Surface level stuff isn’t going to cut it.
This is you trying to be clever…
But both are true. Blizzard has openly said they like people being upset. IT, to them, is engagement. They read it as engagement. As investment.
Which is why you can’t write suggestions like you are upset. You have to lay it out, you have to explain why. You have to compare things.
Saying “I AM SO PISSED THAT BLIZZARD CRAPS ON NIGHT ELVES AND HOW DARE THE HORDE BURN TELDRASSIL HORDE BIASED” is… good to Blizzard.
Saying how you have watched Night Elves fall and get treated like the red headed step children is… good to blizzard.
It shows you care. It says you are invested.
Blizzard does bad things to Night Elves because it gets fans upset.
They do bad things to ALL races because it gets fans upset.
It’s just how Blizzard reads their forums.
You want to approach feedback, say “why” a story beat doesn’t work or land well. That is something they can use.
Saying “I’m so upset that Teldrassil got burned, screw you Blizzard” just tells them they did a good job
According to your premise, Blizzard intentionally makes people upset for engagement. Humoring your idea that they listened to you, under your premise they ran with your ideas that would upset the most amount of people. Under what way in this world view would you imagine Blizzard is looking to fix the Night Elves? Your positions are practically mutually exclusive.
You are taking two different things and trying to make them one.
The first A) That Blizzard writes their stories to get engagement, and thus makes big vocal fanbases.
The second B)That Night Elves are not having a great story and they don’t mesh well with their stated place in the world.
You can have A and B exist side by side without contradiction.
Blizzard engages in a method of story telling that is purposely there to make people emotional. They read emotion as engagement, and it’s not a mistake that they have turned to that method. It’s much easier to get people to feel connected when there are big emotional gut punches that really sell certain things. It’s an old, cheap, and well practiced method of story telling, and was a well worn trope even by Red Wedding hitting TV times. It’s why those old Spanish Soap Operas that Futurama likes to make fun of so much have beloved characters come back with amnesia, or evil twin brothers, or whatever.
It’s there to cheaply elicit an emotional response to help breed engagement and interaction.
It is vastly easier to do that with an upsetting moment than it is a happy one. Have a major disaster kill loved characters, have a long standing city get destroyed (Ala Theramore). Have old Characters get killed off to cement this new bad guy as super duper tough and evil.
Blizzard is not skilled at story telling. They are very good at world building. So they rely, heavy highhandedly, on tropes and set pieces to move their story forward. It will almost always be a big gut punch. Saurfangs death isn’t any really different. It was there to make people upset/emotional.
Because upset=engagement.
This isn’t to say that Blizzard only aims to make people upset. It is just the easiest emotion to trigger via standard tropes… And it works. Has worked throughout the history of story telling.
But that doesn’t make the subject getting gut punched work within a story.
And Night Elves have lost that place in the story. They aren’t really seen as aggressive and competent fighters even by Blizzard staff anymore. It was most notable seen in Cataclysm with multiple in game characters making jokes at their expense. It’s no longer a “This is a shock value moment” and “this is part of the world.”
They want Night Elf fans to be upset, want all their fans to be upset, because it is “how” they tell the story. They aren’t going to change how the story is told until people stop engaging.
But “fixing” Night Elves is not how the story is told.
It’s what the story is about.
You can’t conflate the two.
Which really shouldn’t be a surprise. Especially since you’ve looked through my ~10 post history since the forum revamp, and the other one in that thread is replying to somebody (to be fair, its just me saying I agree but that’s Blizzards policiy) making the point that it’s a heavy handed authorial trick and the difference between being mad at the character in the story, and not the author.
Sadly they finally removed the archived former forums. They were still accessible until recently.
“Fixing” the Night Elves is not the story. It never has been, and there’s no real indication that it is now. Night Elf content, like all content, is only ever the Red Wedding. Like with Cataclysm, what is presented is the difficulties the Night Elves, and everyone, goes through. Not the positive results of their efforts afterwards.
Same as Blizzard stated that they would not be making a revamped Ashenvale after the Cataclysm nor after the Siege of Orgrimmar to show the state of it regained by the Night Elves (though they finally did give a glimpse of it in Elegy) because it would not provide either gameplay nor engagement, the aftermath of the Night Elves reclaiming Darkshore and their lands now will not be shown for the same reason, despite the Alliance side Warfront proper itself showing Malfurion able to undo the damage the Horde had done.
Even the fates of the Undead Night Elves, as you pointed out, were not shown to Alliance players, and we’ve now been told the Undead Night Elves were not heading to rejoining the Alliance. Any “Night Elf story” being given to the Undead Night Elves at this point would be about as effectively shared as Silverpine’s storyline was with Worgen players.
Blizzard already has their plans laid out. Blizzard is not looking for your patient feedback. Blizzard is just looking for your patience.
They are looking for both.
It is our feedback that has drastically improved WoW’s story telling from a decade ago to now. In game cinematic, even books, are vasty better. It is our feedback that got things like Chronicles and I’d go so far as to even say it was our feedback that got large portions of the RPG recanonized with BFA (BFA is VERY PNP RGB book friendly. Even the description of the Spears of Sauramar match).
Open up your Night Elves character on the character sheet. You see the claws, instead of much neater hands? That was forum feedback. Dates back to Cataclysm Azshara, and Blizzard giving Night Elves claws is direct result from feedback.
Hell, Azshara’s entire Elf model is direct result from feedback in relation to an old piece of fan art.
Blizzard very much wants your patient feedback.
It doesn’t mean they will listen. It doesn’t even mean some of the stuff you give feedback on won’t take shape 5-10 years down the line. Or maybe it will be in next patch.
You should always have patience with Blizzard. Their devs and artists and quest writers and Cdev people are slow to react because they are a massive business and it’s no secret they aren’t very well organized or streamlined.
I’m not even saying they will get your feedback right a lot of the time. The infamous Alliance Robot Cat Quest response from MoP or Kosak’s Faction Imbalance blog post should be proof of that.
But as you yourself have said. Blizzard already has their plans laid out. They aren’t going to be adjusting those plans for you, but they might throw something in further down the line.
But they are still people, and artists and authors, and feedback is ALWAYS appreciated. It’s how they improve, its how they know they messed up. Its how they learn
I know he was never leader of the Night Elves. Malfurion has never technically been leader either, just Tyrande’s consort/boyfriend/mate/whatever word they use to define him as. He was in the Dream for 10k years, so any potential they had to consider him a leader was null and void because of that. And then they got married, and now it seems like they both seem to lead the Kaldorei, despite Tyrande being the ‘official’ leader. But being the partner to a distinctive lore figure hasn’t stopped them from axing that person and using it for angst for the other half before.
It seems like the next feasible step if their past history has been any indicator, is for them to write Mal out and use it as a Motivation reason for Tyrande to return to what Grom called ‘Savage Elves’. Given he’s the one in the relationship most prone to diplomacy (for obvious reasons), I honestly can see them using it to further antagonize the race as a whole. Which is garbage, tbh, because Kaldorei have lost enough as it is. It makes me really nervous that they’re going to shove him as some sort of Keeper into the Shadowlands and he’s going to end up being kept there, like Illidan being kept out of the storyline now with being Sargeras’ Warden. I dunno. I feel like the only focus Shadowlands is going to have on the Kaldorei, is going to end up being a bad point like it is in every other Xpac, seems to be.
Pretty much ALL of this.
Most of the people I talked to, when regarding Teldrassil’s destruction, weren’t angry that a 10ish yr old tree was burned.
They were pissed off at the cut-rate reason it was burned. Blizz says it’s because of a logistics standpoint, meanwhile you’re looking at Draenei lands like um…you guys just gonna ignore there’s a whole other set of islands there that could be used? Let alone Moonglade, or Hyjal? It just didn’t make sense. You don’t burn the locations furthest away from your home base, and THEN focus on the close-up ones, it’s just not sensible. I mean maybe it is, but honestly you’re going to run into a build-up of forces either way, which was promptly screwed over by Anduin going ‘lol sorry guys we can’t help you’. They didn’t come out and say it was ‘lol let’s kill their hopes guys’ until after the fanbase went ‘you really think that makes sense’, and then laid out the reasons it didn’t. Like you said, no emotions, just bunt force sense.
Horde have all this deeply-done lore, all this fully-involved stuff, and then when we complain about how dismissed and unconcerned Kaldorei stuff is, we get ‘lol but people just like the Horde chars more’ - okay, literally just confirmed what I said, so. I dunno.
You’re 100% right. It feels like all our stuff is ‘let’s just acknowledge them so they shut up’ and it’s never about writing engaging stuff when it comes to Alliance chars. It’s frustrating, people continue to beg them, continue to ask for stuff that’s involving the Blue side, even if it is Humans, and we get more books centered on Horde, more cutscenes better-developed for Horde, and more plotlines centered on Horde.
Malfurion has been co-leader for a long time in the lore. He wasn’t in the dream the entire time, periods where he came out such as the War of the Satyr. And more importantly, he’s been involved in the story (as in the game itself) for longer than not (WC3, Burning Crusade, Cataclysm, etc). Which is more important.
Being an important figure definitely makes a character less likely to get removed.
Seems like they already have that motivation in spades.
Anything is possible. I just see anything compelling making this a likely scenario.
If they had wanted to do that they would have killed Malfurion during the War of the Thorns. If it had been a plot hook Blizzard had been interested in they would have reeled it in already.