The Long Vigil

Lore Story Forum
61

Why not? Stop judging things in Human terms. We’re not talking about a period that spans generations. It’s a period that spans exactly ONE generation as the same Night Elves that founded the forest empire are still the same Night Elves there today. You don’t have a comparable situation in Human history so we have good reason to throw those preconceptions off the branch.,

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62

Holy crap I’m agreeing with Drahliana. Hell has officially frozen over. :rofl:

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63

I kind of hate this narrative. I mean, what impact does this kind of backstory have on Kaldorei identity?

If the read isn’t that the Kaldorei were lucky and complacent–if we say they deserved all this–then the upshot seems to be that Night Elves literally solved politics. Theirs was a flawless, perfect society lost through no fault of the Kaldorei’s but only because of the injustice of lesser races and vagaries of fate. They are the arch-moral, long-suffering victims of a world less than themselves, less than what they deserve, which they nevertheless strive perhaps hopelessly to uplift.

Clutch chest, hand to forehead, collapse into a huff, a sob, and a faint.

I mean, yeah, it fits the scant evidence we have in the text, but it’s also boring as sin as backstory and does little for the current story other than to encourage this image of Night Elves as a cherubic, perhaps self-righteous victim-race.

Night Elves should be flawed. Their backstory should add layers and depths to their flaws. If the Vigil fails to do this, then I agree with Happy – it’s squandered potential.

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64

But they already had flaws and plenty of them. All those flaws led to invasion of the Burning Legion and the Sundering. Then the civil war between the remaining Highborne and the rest of the Kaldorei.
Those were the layers they had to peel off in order to reach that level of near Utopia they kept for over 10k years.
Kaldorei fought and died to achieve that and they were rewarded for it with all they blessings they got.

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65

If you solve your flaws before the real story even starts, then those aren’t proper flaws. WotA is backstory. It isn’t where characters or races should achieve maturity.

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66

They’ve built some megacyclopean cities pretty much by their own labor. They’ve built structures that not even Suramar would equal in height and complexity.

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67

WotA is what guided them to what they became during long vigil. The society was flawed as it was overly dependent to the point of addicted to the arcane. The hubris of the upper echelons of said society brought that empire to ruin. The society at large was also pretty arrogant. WotA is a significant part of their story not just a backstory, it’s not like that civilization started shortly before the war, it existed for thousands of years before.

The preceding years I’d even they stripped away what brought their society to ruin. They then fought 2 more wars and had a split when the former Highborne left. Is it possible that had some inner outer issue, sure, we know the Watcher sometimes dealt criminals with and the Sentinel kept their lands safe. But for a society that realized it’s flaws and the got rid of the outliers of the new society it’s more than possible that they lived in peace.

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68

Sure, it’s possible. But is it compelling?

Think of it this way – imagine I write a Mary Sue character in a novel. However, I indicate that in her backstory, she had interesting problems. She just solved them, so she’s perfect and flawless and infinitely desirable now. Is she still a Mary Sue?

Yes.

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69

Topic for another thread, this is unclear to me. Did the trolls build Dazar’Alor, Atul’nazman, Atul’Aman from scratch or did they just take up habitting in already-made titan structures?

One would think the latter since the Seals are titan creations.

(My personal headcanon, since I am enamored by Zandalari and trolls, is that the Seals were titan structures build into these massive mountains. And the trolls carved their cities around these Seals out of the mountainsides.)

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70

I dont see why they need anymore major conflicts. They had 2 major wars and the first cost them nearly everything. Why not give them a chance to rebuild and live peacefully away from the world. They are elves after all. Isn’t being reclusive part of the package?

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71

Because the main purpose of backstory isn’t to make the characters happy—it’s to make them more interesting in the present.

That said, I actually don’t take issue with the vigil. I think it develops NE flaws — xenophobia, complacency, rigidity, etc.

What I do take issue with is a read of the Vigil that claims NEs had no such flaws — that they were just the utopian Uber race, until these lower races came and effed it up. That’s the take I think is boring.

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72

Is that even a worthwhile question? Some people find playing the role of super hero that makes everything great and happy compelling. There is not a universal absolute of what compelling is.

I.e., all of this:

Was what enamored me to the Night Elves in the Cataclysm revamp.

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73

But that reclusive nature also makes them mysterious not just happy. If anything I think the long vigil incarnation of the Night Elves is a little more intresting than what that are presented as now.

Were used to be xenophobic prior to WotA bit thanks to Jarod that has ended. That age however still weary of outsiders but they will deal with them. There had been Tauren druids for a while during ther vigil, it’d just that Hamaul was the first in 20 generations. I don’t see then as complaint or rigid either. They had no reason to change until recently, it’s not that they were unwilling to they didn’t need to.

Ok but that’s just how it was. The Kaldorei empire was pretty much a utopia until the war and it was again during the vigil and then the orcs came. In fact rubber really started this constant warfare norm. Im sure the EK had its problems but there was a sense of stability, especially for the High Elves. The only people who benefited from their arrival was the Trolls and Tauren.

The Elves had all they needed, land, immortality, power, and safety. Makes for a pretty stable society.

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74

I’m not saying people have to agree with me; I’m just presenting the reasons for why I feel the way I do.

75

I’m completely aware. My point was more your question was odd, in that you were asking someone who was not you what they might think is compelling.

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76

It was a rhetorical question meant to communicate “yes, this is technically possible within the rules of the universe, but I want to focus on its storytelling merits, not its plausibility.”

77

That’s in the same boat, though. Storytelling merits is a thing that gets thrown around a lot, but like taste palate, what those merits are do not have an absolute. Obviously Kaileena has found storytelling merits in the Long Vigil as it was.

To say something is not your taste is one thing, but that doesn’t really change someone else’s taste.

In a sense, a rose by any other name still smells like a rose. Liking the smell of the rose or not does not actually change the intrinsic value of the smell, in that it doesn’t have one. Just whatever subjective value people get from the rose themselves.

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78

All that is true, but it overlooks the social component to taste and the way conversation can shape how people feel about stories. Discussions here have changed how I feel about different aspects of WoW’s story dramatically.

I don’t care about whether the vigil was plausible, but I do care about why other people enjoy something I don’t. When I ask them to focus on “storytelling merits,” I’m asking them to try to explain why they like it — not because I think they’re WRONG but because I don’t understand their perspective.

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80

taking the safe bet against the ToS lol

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81

Think everyone is forgetting bliz does not like NE so why would they work hard on anything for them

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