Just hoping we get some amazing heritage armor.
I am not sure that blizz is aware the NE fan base is a pretty good chuck of the alliance. For good reason too, they were baddd in wc3. They also have so much potential because of their vast history.
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If you did it on a high character sure, but the revamp is meant for low levels.
To echo the sentiments of others, I would argue that the greatest misstep with the night elves was forcing them to fit the Alliance mold. The Kaldorei went from a people that could benefit from joining the Alliance to one that absolutely needed their assistance. This requirement seeped into every aspect of their culture, dulling their competence considerably.
The situation for night elves is more dire than it has ever been, both in lore and on a narrative level. In my eyes, if the night elves won’t be given substantial development in the face of one of their darkest hours (as is warranted), then drastic measures would be necessary to salvage their story.
And… so long as they are auxiliary members of the Alliance, I don’t believe that will happen. In my opinion, for the Kaldorei to receive the developmental focus they desperately require, they would need to break away from the Alliance as we know it.
Considering how unlikely something like that is?
It isn’t looking good.
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Jaina had her city nuked because if was the only way to weaken the Alliance enough to focus on the night elves. Sylvanas is following her own predictions back in Tides of War to a tee.
What a twisted interpretation of lore. He sent the fleet out as soon as he could and opened the Stormwind coffer to the refugees. Hell, the people of Stormwind offered as much aid as they could.
Anduin justifies attack North because that was where Sylvanas was, you know the person responsible for the genocide.
Like Varian I dont think Anduin is as interested in power. They were both thrust into the limelight but out of circumstance.
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Reaching about nature resistance giving them better defenses isn’t a stretch. I could be mistaken but I think Tauren had their nature resistance for disease and poison resistance reasons.
Touche with the High Elves, you got me there. They were hit the hardest. Humans I wouldn’t say they were as bad. They lost Lordaeron which is I’d say the equivalent of America loosing Texas. It is the biggest state, but there are also other states.
My point being of the Horde being ahead is because while they didn’t have a home, they made a home. The reason I also believe it possible was the Legion only temporarily used them, and continued their focus on the Night Elves. Had they taken their time and were less cocky, if they focused on the rest of the Horde for even a few days there wouldn’t have been a Horde. They were ignored as the NEs were their main prize. Thus leading the NEs backed up to their World Tree and had to sacrafice the tree’s power to defeat the Legion, loosing their blessings in the process. That isn’t something to walk off or treat lightly. It is not that I am under estimating the NEs, it’s the fact that people under estimate what the Legion did. Which I can’t really blame people, WoW turned the Legion into a joke.
Anyone backed up in the corner and are the main target of an infinite legion don’t come out unscathed and not crippled. It could be the Scourge and friends vs the infinite Void, and the Scourge would still be crippled. That’s my point and it really confuses me that being told that’s not how it happened when I’m being shown that is exactly what happened. Another problem that Activision Blizzard needs fixing, show don’t tell. Because I was shown the Legion beating down the NEs badly, while being told that it was a minor convenience. If that is the case, then might aswell call WC3 Reforged into Warcraft 3: Merely a Setback.
Speaking of another thing to fix the Night Elves, I’m seeing a lot of their problems paralleled to Orcs. We have the WC1+2 Orcs and WC3 Orcs. While NEs have LotR Elves and Savage Drow Elves. Most other races are set in stone and players know what they’re signing up for. Forsaken serve the Dark Lady. Tauren are peaceful. Gnomes are tinkerers and inventors. NEs and Orcs get the double slam becuase their retcons making it more confusing, while NEs get a third bat because they’re on Orgrimmar’s door step, and thus sadly became our punching bag.
Activision Blizzard really need to get their heads together, unify, and change the Night Elves back to their Drow selves. LotR is old now and passed, they don’t need to hold onto it.
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I think that kind of underplays the signifance of losing Lordaeron. Lordaeron stretched from Silverpine, all the way to the Eastern Coast of the plague lands. It was a HUGE Kingdom, the most powerful human Kingdom, both in terms of natural resources, military might, and political influence, as it was the seat of power for the Alliance.
Also, at this time, the human Kingdoms were not entirely united, or capable of being united. When the Scourge rose, Most other kingdoms just locked themselves away, unwilling to meet the threat as one, and instead guard their holdings. the situation for humanity as a whole after the fall of Lordaeron. Imagine after the fall of France during WW2, the UK sued for peace with Germany. Then add the fall of Dalaran to that mix, along with the fall of Quel’thalas, and suddenly all arcane knowledge in the EK is gone.
Its interesting now that I think about it actually, Warcraft 3 really made things seem dire, that Blizzard would later reveal to be “Not as bad as originally believed.”
I don’t really buy the idea that building a civilization from the ground up is somehow more advantageous to healing an damaged but otherwise dug-in and long-standing civilization.
It all was happening in Night Elf Land, but the Horde was present for that fight. And in-fact, consequently had to briefly fight Night Elves as well.
I think you are isolating the night elves a bit too much here. They fought the Legion on their own land, and they masterminded the Legion’s defeat, but it wasn’t a threat they fought on their own. The Horde and Alliance were there, but as expeditionary forces and refugees fleeing a land that has already been ravaged by the Legion. The Alliance at least was already reeling from a major defeat at the hands of the Scourge, and yet they took whatever they had left, and stood in the defense of Nordrassil. Fast forward 5 years, and for some reason, humanity is the most powerful subgroup in the Alliance? And the Horde is capable of contending with an Alliance that has the Night Elves (Who I believe is more likely to recover than the other races in WC3) and the Dwarves who were sitting pretty and fresh for most of the 3rd war. Its odd to me, and clearly was a narrative decision made purely for the sake of aesthetics.
The thing is, it showed the Legion beating down everyone. Cut scenes with entire villages on fire, being slaughtered. Dalaran was reduces to dust, which by the time WotLK launched… wasn’t actually what happened? Or they rebuilt it? idk.
I agree with most everything else you’ve said. I think the biggest problem Blizzard made with WoW, and why the RTS come off as a more real, more complete and more rich world with more rich lore, is because is was so much less homogenized. Every race was distinct because they had to be, they were units in an RTS that did a very specific job, and each playable faction had to have a unique playstyle.
Wow took that, and balanced it out because they had to. They had to fit a square shape into a round hole by forcing races into a faction, homogenizing the races culturally and politically, making sure each faction share similar holdings, similar losses and victories. Essentially, Blizzard starting writing their stories backwards. It stopped being a strong, narratively driven story, and more along the lines of “Hey, this boss would be cool… how can we make that happen?” And manipulating the story however you can to have the desired outcome.
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He did this with the full approval of Mr. Expert Spymaster. as well as Old King Wolf and Old Queen Elf.
Stories don’t move forward if stuff doesn’t go wrong.
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Thats exactly the major problem of going from a single player game to a multiplayer game. This conversation we are having emphasises the problems that come along with it. We both experienced different angles in WC3 which is fine and dandy, it’s a single player game. Infact a single player game doing that shows how successful it is because for each player sees a different view and a different experience creating something epic and magical that is unqiue.
However WoW is not a single player, it is a multiplayer that is trying to take a single player story. Which as you said is exactly like putting a square block into a circle, it doesn’t fit, so cuts have to be made. Now those two different experiences we had get washed all over the place and makes it confusing. Add in the retcon after retcon to fix the mistakes and it just makes things from bad to worse. Now everyone is confused, things changed for the sake of change, fans are angry and problems escalate.
It might have been handled better too even, one thing that is problematic to both sides for example is how you say every race is basically the same eh? An example I can give is that the game shows 1 Tauren warrior = 1 human warrior. It should be 1 Tauren warrior = 5 human warriors, and say 5 tauren priests = 1 human priest. Shows each side strength and weaknesses and avoids every race being the same. Each race should have their racials emphasized, like how the Night Elves should have stayed nocturnal. It would have been nice that when night time came, all the guards in the Alliance were switched to NEs in their own armor and not Stormwind’s. Samething for the Horde but have it as the Forsaken instead, and this would show people that the Forsaken do help the Horde. That way each race’s strengths and uniqueness is shown, giving everyone that good satisfaction feeling. Little things like that matter.
But this wasn’t done, and while it was a great profit, hell WoW is still probably a net positive after 15 years, us fans are confused and feel nothing but betrayal. Did the Night Elves had to be turned into hippies? Why not add the Blood Elves, or what’s left of the High Elves at the start to cover that. Why change the Orcs back to their WC1+2 ways to confuse the WC3 fans? Why retcon the Draenei? Why are the Blood Elves not whiped out if they’re only 1/10th of what they once was left? I don’t want them whiped out but should have not been lower than 50%. Stuff like this only angers the fans and subscriptions would drop off completely at a certain point. Loads of people left because of all the story decisions and retcons.
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This “story” should get whoever came up with it fired. This “story” doesn’t deserve to move forward. Night Elves have had 9-10 years straight of nothing but things going wrong. When is it someone else’s turn?
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Kaldorei are nothing more than a story vehicle now.
They are there for Blizzard to exploit for some story and feels then promptly forget about them.
If Blizzard doesn’t care about them. Why should the player? Just write them off guys. You will be happier for it.
The Horde is responsible. Not just Sylvanas, she didn’t do this alone.
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The Humans lost all of their kingdoms and rebuilt one. The Gnomes lost their city and it’s still filled with radiation. The Draenei were hounded from star and massacred on Draenor, the Dwarves just settled a three corner civil war. And I haven’t even listed the history of Horde races.
The Night Elves are far from the only race that’s suffered.
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No we’re just the only race that’s suffered with next to nothing that serves to pick us back up in between those loses. Our loses are used as a wheel house for every other race’s victories. We are nothing more than damsels waiting to be rescued and it’s disgusting.
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Also not true… the Worgen have twice now been made homeless… the Gnomes still don’t have their city, the Draenei live in the broken wreck of a nethership.,
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Night Elves in so far the only race that has been so badly beaten by the playable Horde.
Humans come in second right behind them.
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Worgen stopped Sylvanas from enslaving a Demi-god. Gnomes are the most relevant they’ve ever been and their King even evaded death and got to make the Goblin’s leader look like a chump. The Draenei literally had an entire expansion of positive development. Two of them arguably. They got to go back in time and witness their heros in their prime and then got to go and finally cleanse their broken home world of the evil that broke it.
What have the Night Elves gotten to do?
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…grow pumpkins, I suppose?
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To quote Grommash Hellscream : “These women fight with unmatched savagery! I’ve never seen their equal. They are… perfect warriors.”
This is what I want. I want to fear Night Elves. I want to know that if I mess with them or invade their territory that most likely my head can easily end up chopped off by their warriors so that I’d rather just stay in Durotar and the Barrens and just not mess with them at all. They are the most respectable of all the Elvish races to me. It’s not fun as a Horde player that the Night Elves have just been turned into helpless victims from Horde destruction and invasion and it will never be repaid in full.
It’s one of the most unforgivable things from the Blizzard writers for me. And now I’m just stuck with their new race of Night Elves they practically made up called the “Nightborne” on the Horde and they are the most boring thing on the Horde on top of just being out of place. But Blizzard wants them to replace the Night Elves and their story. It couldn’t be more obvious in the Azshara raid.
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Yeah, but you gotta admit those are mighty fine pumpkins.
As far as my opinion on the subject goes, I’ve made a post in the past of what would be needed to even begin making me see the story positively.
A complete retaking of Kaldorei territory. An actual, shown on-screen, playable on both sides, complete victory for the Night elves in Ashenvale that results in the Horde being ousted for good. Not a pyrrhic victory. Not a “Sylvanas almost won but we had a Deus Ex to get us out of trouble” victory. Not a “Our merciful human overlords deigned to assist us” victory.
A victory by the Kaldorei, for the Kaldorei.
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I like you Orc. If the day ever comes that Kaldorei get to be a threat again. I will give you your Warrior’s death personally.
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Ironically dying a warriors death is absent from this Horde we have now these days. But present within the Alliance. Our “Warchief” is a coward who flees at the first sign of danger. It was Varian’s death that resembled a warriors death more than anything.
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