Eh… I sometimes worry that the War of the Thorns was in part done in overcompensation for Malfurion’s neutralness, beating down the Night Elves again, but this time having Malfurion stand up for them, and then making him the “Terror of Darkshore” so that people will finally stop calling for him to be killed off.
Conversely, I don’t think they consider the concerns, feelings, or opinions of the Night Elf playerbase to really care what anyone thinks about Malfurion.
Or anyone else, for that matter. No negativity in the dojo, and all that.
Eh, I don’t know. There was something that suck with them with the whole Leyara situation. At least it felt that way since they went out of their way to put the flavor text “The fire within Leyara enchants this signet. You can feel that she has finally found peace” on the Chatoyant Signet.
Your first mistake was thinking Blizzard actually cares about night elves.
The second was thinking Blizzard was every really going to use them as anything other than the stone to kick start someone else’s story.
True facts right there even more true as writters changed any love for them is long gone only the illusion remains. They get zones but those zones are dedicated to them being weak and losing or to how bad and arrogant they once were.
Void Elves was a single questline.
While Suramar and the Nightborne were an entire zone and several raids and dungeons.
Hardly what I would call a fair trade.
Plus, I seem to remember an interview or something where they said Nightborne weren’t originally going to be playable, hence why NPC Nightborne models are different from the PC versions, with their armor attached to their model, etc. But they got so much feedback on wanting them playable, that they built new models to make them an AR.
In that light, it becomes clearer that the Void Elves were just kind of cobbled together last minute, to help facilitate the Great Elf Swap.
You assume void elves won’t get their time to shine. Sooner or later the Void lords, and whatever minions they have, will take front and center stage. I expect the same from the void elves at that time.
As oppose to everyone else who has gotten a zone? You realize the Wildhammer clans got beaten badly, the orcs of AU Draenor, got their butt kicked. The mechagnomes got kicked out and are fighting right now. The nightborne, half their city got toasted by demons, the other half summited willingly.
Does it matter?
Their origin story barely makes any sense.
As far as we know they are nothing more than Umbric’s study group and yet somehow they include a caste of several classes and be enough to be included as whole regiments in an army.
It’s the worst piece lore and race we have ever gotten. And surprise. Surprise. Its an Alliance race.
Anything additional added will be built on quicksand.
Well I want high elves and for now I am quite ok settling for void elves. As for their origin. I assume said caste needex warriors/hunter/monks for protection and these guys probably got caught up in the whole thing.
And that is precisely the problem.
You wanted something else that actually makes sense.
Instead we got Umbric class of 2018 going void. That’s it.
How many Void Elves are there?
10? 30? maybe a hundred? It’s ludicrous.
The Horde with Nightborne got Night Elf lore, all high elf lore (even the pre-sundering one), they got an entire zone, several dungeons and raids.
Hours upon hours of content to introduce their race.
We got a single storyline about a naughty school project.
We have no idea who our characters are besides that they follow umbric.
How many they are. Their home is a floating rock. This is the most incomplete and rushed race in wow’s entire history.
And the only reason they are popular is useful racial and its the closest thing the Alliance will ever get to high elves.
The real kicker here is that for the preceding length of the book, Thrall waxes on how he and Drek’thar are on a continual regret-fest about those days on Draenor.
I remember the days when Night Elf Demon Hunters would stab themselves in the chest just before death so their enemy would not have the satisfaction of a killing blow.
We need those Night Elves back.

Once again, Nazjatar, where Thalyssra is convincing the leader of the Sin’dorei to be neutral with the Alliance and to work with them again.
One of these things is not like the other.
Working together vs the Old Gods is a strategic move. Do you believe that Jaina should be a member of the Horde because she suggested working with them?
Ridiculous.
Why should the Alliance even consider working with the Horde again?
Its lunacy.

Hardly what I would call a fair trade.
Void Elf models also look great and playable Nightborne models are hideous. Hell, Void Elves even get the Blood Elf spin jump while Nightborne females look like they got their jump from Draenei. Blizzard doesn’t actually end up with equivalent quality in any of the Allied Race counterparts.

Do you believe that Jaina should be a member of the Horde because she suggested working with them?
You’ve shown a lot of intentional misreading lately Treng. Why is it that you don’t want to be taken seriously?
Jaina is leading the Alliance movement towards neutrality just as much as Thalyssra is. We had a whole cinematic for it at Thunder Bluff. These two cases are exactly like each other.

Void Elf models also look great and playable Nightborne models are hideous. Hell, Void Elves even get the Blood Elf spin jump while Nightborne females look like they got their jump from Draenei. Blizzard doesn’t actually end up with equivalent quality in any of the Allied Race counterparts.
Void Elves are the Blood Elf models with a blue recolor.
Thats it.
An intern could have done this.
The Nightborne are a completely unique model that has Night Elf animations attached to it. Your subjective taste on whether they look good or not is irrelevant.

Jaina is leading the Alliance movement towards neutrality just as much as Thalyssra is. We had a whole cinematic for it at Thunder Bluff. These two cases are exactly like each other.
Jaina isn’t moving toward neutrality at all. She just killed a king. She’s working towards having the Alliance and the Horde fight together against … Sylvanas? Azshara 3.0? N’zoth?
Whoever.
But she’s pretty firmly Alliance. Wanting to work with another nation to defeat a more powerful threat doesn’t make you somehow want to join that other faction. Thalyssra doesn’t want to join the Alliance.

Why should the Alliance even consider working with the Horde again?
As someone who likes the “enemies forced to band together against the greater threat” trope, I have to agree that BfA threw things too far out of balance to easily end the war.
At this point, the Horde has done more visible damage to the Alliance than any other enemy in WoW’s lifetime - I get that they wanted to have big, flashy events happen for this expansion, and they probably didn’t have the ability to show things like the Burning of Teldrassil for the other villains, but it still ends up looking like the Horde is the most effective threat out there.
And, because no members of the Horde other than Saurfang were shown to have -any- reaction to the burning, it makes it look like the Horde isn’t even any better (no more ‘honorable’) than the other omnicidal villain groups out there. After all, this event showed the Horde to be apparently cool with burning civilians and children to death, so how is Horde victory any different for the Alliance than a Burning Legion victory? Now that Sylvanas raises the dead, it wouldn’t even be that different from a Scourge victory as far as the Alliance is concerned.
Now, I think that these points are caused by problems in storytelling, not problems in the Horde. The other threats should have felt more like threats (but without time travel, that couldn’t be easily portrayed in this expansion) and other Horde characters should have had a reaction to the Burning (which absolutely could have been done this expansion, no excuses for that). Even if some extra text revealed that every other Horde leader thought that the tree was full of soldiers, Azerite weaponry, and no civilians, then that would be a -huge- redeeming factor. Still bad, but a whole lot less so.
But unfortunately, it leads to a similar conclusion: Why would the Alliance work with the Horde to fight N’zoth instead of helping N’zoth fight the Horde? By this expansion’s presentation, it’s equal death and destruction for the Alliance either way.
Ugh. This story.

Why would the Alliance work with the Horde to fight N’zoth instead of helping N’zoth fight the Horde?
I don’t mean the Alliance should help Nzoth.
I mean Alliance should just ignore the Horde and confront Nzoth but don’t stand side by side with them. Don’t speak to them with anything less than open hostility and venom.
Jaina standing side by side with Lorthemar or Thalyssra? NO THANK YOU.
Have Jaina and Genn stand together in the Alliance version? YES.
Have Lorthemar and Thalyssra stand together in the Horde version? YES.
But never should they ever stand side by side again. Absolutely not.