“Yeah you’re right Cata was pretty bad for a lot of races including Night Elves”
“Wow why do you hate women?”
The brain of a true intellectual
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I just did and honestly I can boil it down to a sentence. Fandral apparently should’ve acted emotionally.
Okay. Well. Maybe? It wouldn’t be the first time devs made a character take an action that seems like it’s out of character for the moment. But… maybe? is about as much as I can muster for it.
The author describes Thrall as Jesus Allegory Orc. Thrall is the world Shaman at this point - master of the elements (not the mopey guy on a stoop we see now). He’s a serious threat to the elemental Firelord, you know, with him being an elemental master and all. And Fandral kidnaps him and… splits him into pieces or whatever.
So… because Fandral took apart the target that was most threatening overall, instead of attacking Malfurion or a Dragon aspect… it diminishes the Night Elf aspect? If he had attacked Malfurion instead… or … maybe a Dragon? I’m not sure … it would’ve been Night Elf content?
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First off - thank you for your attention and the effort you put into this reply. I also apologize for having to block quote some of this out.
Regarding bias - I’m of the position that none of us are truly objective, and you see that in highly “partisan” fights and the refusal to accept information on the basis that it doesn’t help one’s side. I try not to let my own bias prevent me from empathizing with others or viewing their points fairly, but yes, like everyone else, I do have a bias and come at matters from a given perspective, and I try not to pretend that I don’t. That said, I would ask you to evaluate whether my premises are correct rather than use my perspective as a matter of dismissal itself - because again, we are all biased to one extent or another.
Regarding the canon that I mentioned - I am limited by space and time. I brought up the highlights that form my position on Cata and MOP in particular. Were I to dredge up every detail from the arguments from that period, we’d be here for days. That does not mean, however, that I am simply disregarding other content.
Regarding this:
As stated before, this is not the first time I’ve discussed this information. I am familiar with a good number of spurious arguments, but these three appear to explain the movement. I would add here, numbers 2 and 3 came out of those discussions - I did not initially consider them as strongly.
Regarding point 1: I am comparing WoW Vanilla populations to WoW classic to control for class changes, playable race mix, and racials changes. The Vanilla to Classic comparison was the best way to look at the effects of brand equity as they apply to the various races without the noise of gameplay changes confusing the analysis.
I also do not need to assume that the populations are similar - and the premise underlying the examination is that they are different. One population is coming at the game without about fifteen years of subsequent lore. The second population is making decisions with that information. I suspect that there will be differences, notably in who in the first population left the game, and in who the fifteen years of lore and marketing now attracts in the second.
My response to point #2 follows from my reply to point #1. People have left WoW since it was introduced, and for a variety of reasons. Among that population are people who left for reasons including lore - and that’s a subset that I am a part of (recall my limited purpose here - one month did extend to two, but my subscription is set to expire next month). Regarding the appeal to play in an environment where they are not suffering from that humiliation - that’s a factor, but when we consider especially that the numbers are down and that interest is down, I think the decline in the Night Elves’ brand equity is the far greater one. Myself - I can’t bring myself to play one, the notion feels like living a lie when I’m aware of retail’s developments. As for others, I suspect they just up and quit.
Regarding 3 - the search interest analysis does that over time, but I feel that a point-in-time analysis is inappropriate for the reasons stated earlier. There are way too many confounding factors to come to any real conclusion based on that.
Regarding 4 - I would expect in classic that the Night Elf numbers would have been the same on the basis that we’re fundamentally dealing with the same game as the one we had in 2004-2006. That interest in them in Classic was reduced as drastically as it was surprised me at the time.
Now, I have been starting to see the point emerge that this kind of disparity isn’t defensible, and that we should expect it to diminish as more content is added for other races. I agree to this to an extent, but there are two scenarios to consider.
- Positive redistribution: Make more content for other races.
We saw this in BC with the addition of the Blood Elves to the Horde, which is largely credited with solving the existing population imbalance. Blizzard didn’t make the Night Elf playable experience worse here, and we can see the effects of that in BC and Wrath, where rather than seeing a decrease in interest in NIght Elves in the search interest study, it actually increases until 2010. This move brought more players to the game, and increased the size of the pie - that’s a win-win for everyone.
- Negative redistribution: Make the overrepresented race worse
For the record, I don’t think this was their goal, and if it was, Shadowlands does display an attempt (if misfired) to bring people back. But there is this argument that it’s a good thing that Night Elf interest (and likely Night Elf players) declined because that rebalanced things, and we see that in Classic WoW these days. The error that I see in this argument is that it presumes that people, after watching what they invested in (in a medium that is all about choice in identity), get destroyed, will simply switch to the favored race. It ignores that a good number of them will simply leave, and I believe we’ve been seeing that since Cataclysm. This model isn’t just bad for the race, it’s bad for the health of the franchise - which at the end of the day is my ultimate point.
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Aki is the same fool who argued with a Vodou practitioner about what Vodou actually was and cited Hollywood/new age nonsense to back herself up…when they bothered to cite anything at all.
Besides, based on past interactions I think their religion is closer to Asatru Folk Assembly than anything else.
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I think, and I could be way off the mark here, is blizzard made the Night Elves a little too powerful in WC 3 and sadly had the NE take a few brutal beatings to bring them in line with everyone else.
Correct me if I’m wrong though.
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I am of that mind as well. They needed to be taken down several pegs to be even close to the other races.
It seems obvious.
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It’s more about Thrall than it is about Fandral or Malfuruion (Though I totally reject the idea that Thrall is somehow the greater threat, but that’s off topic).
“That’s how destructive Thrall has become to the fabric of the narrative of the game. He’s creeping into story arcs that don’t involve him, and ruining the endings. Characters are taking complete 180s to bow to the amazing Go’el.”
Bare in mind, this thread is meant to dismiss the claim the night elves have had a “Golden decade” of content.
This last decade, Night Elf “content” has primarily served as a catalyst for the development and story telling of non-Kaldorei characters. In Cata, Hyjal is suddenly not “The World Tree of the Night Elves” It’s Dragonic blessings have been gone since Warcraft 3. It’s not the source of any Strength or Vitality, or the source of their immortality. It is primarily “Thrall’s Wedding”, and it’s not even about Malfurion anymore (Even though at this time, Malfurion was so far removed from Darnassian Kaldorei, that he really had nothing to do with them), despite, as the blog pointed out, years of development between these two characters.
Hyjal, in Cata, was one big Mary Sue plot point for Thrall, and everyone else, night elf or otherwise, were side characters to whatever he was doing.
And that is a reoccurring theme when it comes to Nelf content for the last 10 years. Maybe you want to say “Well, it is still nelf content”. Then we will just have to agree to disagree. When Night Elf “Content” only serves the story of non-Nelves, then it’s not Nelf content.
Correct me if I’m wrong though.
You’re wrong. 
The Night Elves were relatively balanced in Warcraft 3, and come vanilla - they formed up one of the four “poles” of the world. It was a two factions in one faction model, which held up the Night Elves, the Forsaken, the Horde, and the Alliance as forces that could have conflicts with each other interfactionally, and provide diversity in the factions intrafactionally. The only big thing that was wrong with this model is that the Horde had a comparative lack of questing content in Vanilla, which is unrelated to this impulse, and later expansions demonstrated how new races could be bolted on to that framework.
The Night Elves otherwise were not gods. This is an impression that people took from Knaak’s books, which while in line with the canon, is not representative of how things were in Warcraft 3.
Further, sanding down this model has been bad for the franchise. It has driven people away from the game, and has made the lore intolerable compared with the state that existed before these attempts started rolling in.
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Actually if your goal is to determine the reason for the change in outcome, you need to have a similar (random sample) population in each group.
You’re assuming the branch that jumped from WoW retail to WoW Classic is fundamentally similar enough that you can attribute their differences in population values to your 3 points (for simplicity, since we are discussing the narrative I’m just focusing on that - but I do understand you don’t believe it is the sole driving factor).
As a purely hypothetical made-up example using real world selection issues:
- During Vanilla we had 100 players. 60 men, 40 women. Of the men 30 were of a racial or ethnic minority. Of the women 20 were of a racial or ethnic minority.
- Vanilla Night Elves (of which there were 25) were 15 men (10 minority) and 10 women (5 minority).
- WoW Classic appealed to primarily older white males. At launch it had 100 players as well. 80 men (15 minority) and 20 women (10 minority).
If the Night Elf underlying appeal stays the same proportionally, then they would only get interest from 5 male minorities. they would get 6.## (sure round to 7) white males. There would only be 2.5 minority women and 2.5 white women. So the Night Elf population drops from 25 to 17.
Just to reiterate - I’m not espousing these as true numbers (nor are they the only way to break this selection problem down), just pointing out why it does matter that these groups represent the same population.
Once you violate that - all comparisons are moot. You’re comparing apples and oranges.
You made mention of ceteris paribus in another thread and I want to point out the relevance here. If you’re trying to point out a causal relationship you need to explain why a unit change for one variable (Night Elf portrayal) leads to an outcome change (night elf characters) with all else being held constant or equal. But you’re literally looking at the population of a different game in a different time that is mostly made up of a particular subset of the original population.
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If you want to do the work to take such a sample, be my guest, but in the absence of a research staff, I feel that the population level analysis (or at least the closest as we can get to it with census numbers), particularly when trying to assess whether that population has changed, is more than appropriate for this study.
sounds like your scared of results
It’s more that I don’t have infinite time and money. If people want to dig deeper, I leave that to them. I’ve done my part.
I think this is part of my confusion - if Fandral had decided to attack Malfurion, would this have become Night Elf content? What if he had attacked a dragon?
Also I am a little confused and I apologize because I may not be disagreeing at all with folks in this thread. The title of the thread speaks of the Myth of the Golden Age of Night Elves - while the bolded topic in the OP is about a decade of humiliation.
I think in general the last decade of WoW writing quality has gone downhill. I think we’ve seen far too much human driven storylines and I think we’ve seen too many racist and sexist tropes reiterated (I know you’ve pointed out a few of the sexist ones, which - while I’m more sensitive to the race ones I absolutely do see and agree with your point). It’s especially egregious considering how progressive the company claims/tries to be (I don’t like to cast aspersions too heavily because there are some attempts - they just fall short a lot). In that sense, no it hasn’t been a Golden decade for Night Elves.
I just don’t agree that Night Elves in particular have suffered egregiously in comparison to any other race - especially so far as to call the last decade a decade of humiliation.
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I just don’t agree that Night Elves in particular have suffered egregiously in comparison to any other race - especially so far as to call the last decade a decade of humiliation.
I have to ask why you’re harping on this. Except in the classic analysis (which is necessarily about proportions), I’m not running around saying that Night Elf content is better or worse than any other playable race’s in this thread. You filled that in. Why?
You’re literally examining a subset of the original population that for some reason opted out of retail and joined Classic.
That is, by definition, a subgroup that self selected into your test population - thereby introducing bias.
But it still doesn’t explain why - in retail - we still see Night Elves make up roughly 1/4 of the Alliance. The same game where the supposed humiliation occurred. And the game where your initial statistics come from.
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This is not correct. People can play retail and classic at the same time, and many do.
But it still doesn’t explain why - in retail - we still see Night Elves make up roughly 1/4 of the Alliance. The same game where the supposed humiliation occurred. And the game where your initial statistics come from.
It doesn’t need to. The analysis demonstrates a decline when comparing the release of fundamentally the same game, but at different times - which is the best comparison I can make with the resources I have to account for the effects of lore, marketing, and other overall changes in player populations. Regarding the google search data - that supplements the analysis by showing us what has happened with interest in the race, after accounting for interest in WoW itself, and notably at which times - this gives us a window into when increases and declines occurred, which happens to line up with certain events in WoW’s history.
In my perspective, no, because I am so sick of CC content being the bread and butter of Kaldorei spotlight, I couldn’t care less that two Nelf male Diva’s have a beef. I want more Sisterhood content, which is the Nelf content that really matters to me and is woefully underrepresented, despite being THE MOST important aspect of Kaldorei culture.
But under Kya’s criteria, I guess she can answer that question better. I would think it could be Nelf content. It’s Drama between two major nelf characters that isn’t been sapped away by a nearby mary sue.
Before we can even say if something is or isn’t nelf content, Kaldorei need to be able to actually have SOMETHING that isn’t immediately serving non-Kaldorei storytelling, first.
I think a lot of people here in the forums don’t like it when Nelf players talk about the problems of Night Elves, for several reasons.
Some are just sexist and hate nelf Matriarchy.
Some (Most, in this case) think night elves deserving more of their own story means other races deserve or will receive less of their own. Which isn’t true.
Some think Night Elves winning will mean another loss for the Horde. Which certainly is a problem Blizzard has written themselves into.
And some think Night Elves are fine being represented by the Faction as a whole, and think as long as the Alliance has spotlight, so do Nelves.
is this what night elf brainrot looks like
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Not. The night elves are represented by a wide variety, from Katyra to Amadis.
Is your statement in the affirmative or interrogative?
Now I’m more than a bit confused.
Your methodology is flawed. You’ve failed to produce substantive evidence (and even said that it was up to other folks to do so to disprove your claim rather than for you to do so to back up your claim).
You claim Night Elves have been damaged - and by doing so bring up proportional population statistics. Unfortunately that means for Night Elves to drop as a proportion, it’s an increase to other races. Which (as far as I can guess) means they don’t care about their narratives (or their narratives are better than Night Elves) or there is a convoluted mess where the last decade has been roughly equally for races (so I’m not sure why it’s a decade of humiliation) - and therefore other factors (such as racial abilities) do more of the “explanatory work.”
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