I made peace with neutrality when I realized that basically all neutral content is Alliance content that the Horde is awkwardly stapled to and that this is one of the reasons I play Alliance.
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Not. Neutral content is one in which Alliance characters act for the benefit of everyone, not the Alliance. And sometimes Horde characters appear.
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Benefiting the Alliance and benefiting everyone has a tendency to be the same thing since the Alliance is the only faction wholly dedicated to stopping revisionist powers from ruining the planet.
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Can the Alliance destroy the Horde to “protect” the world? Or can we protect the world in a way that leaves the Horde unprotected?
I disagree that the methodology is flawed. I’m examining how the populations changed, looking at populations is a good way to do that. If you’re looking to see how things changed on a sample basis, presumably with an eye to determining how a representative sample of classic players changed, okay, you can do that, but I lack the resources to do it and again, I’ve done my part.
Regarding your confusion about me not making comparative statements other than the classic comparison - that point is more rhetorical. I try not to run around claiming that I’m the greatest victim to ever victim - I feel that such a stance is pointless and ignores that multiple people can have issues at once. Yet you seem focused on that - and I have to ask why.
None of what I presented in any way means that there aren’t other problems. I’m simply drawing a circle around this one.
It does seem to be the case that there’s a level of disinterest for Night Elves in the writing team, if not an outright disdain at times. In their case, every single win, if that, has been a pyrrhic(sp?) one. This was less so in the early era of WoW, but then Cata kind of… went overboard with it.
The Night Elves suffer from actual, story-based setbacks and deterioration while others suffer from theme deterioration and lore issues. It also doesn’t help that faction identity has subsumed race identity in the story.
In terms of Night Elves being damaged, being on an RP server I did in fact see a lot of people become disillusioned with kaldorei RP and thus shelve those characters. And many kaldorei guilds went into hiatus when 8.1 proved to be… less than ideal. To a similar effect, WoD basically crippled the drive of the majority of Draenei guilds.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that it does always seem to be the Night Elves who need to make a sacrifice for victory, nor has it escaped my notice that Stormwind has never been attacked by the modern Horde at all, barring the jailbreak, yet dictates the terms of peace with it.
This can be generalized to Blizzard having a bias for Horde, but not the Horde we consider as being the true version and interpretation (or at least what I consider true) while having no passion for the races that, due to their own issues, are more peaceful. Meanwhile, Stormwind is very safe to write, and easy, so that gets more attention.
Then they realize, after they have Orcs do things that goes against their original lore origins, and Forsaken do things that cripples their entire philosophy, that the Horde is supposed to be a heroic faction, and backtrack. This, coupled with years of lore threats hitting at Night Elf lands, causes… well, issues and damage more overt and easily seen.
At the same time, I can ask someone what a Kaldorei is, what their themes are, and what defines them outside of the faction war. I can ask the same thing about Orcs or Forsaken, and the answer would be much more vague and uncertain.
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I’m on board with that. I hate the Night Warrior story for a lot of reasons (mostly because it seemed needless and had no real payoff and you pointing out the emotionally unstable woman trope just adds to the list). But for a society that is a matriarchy I think Malfurion is far too prevalent.
Look I get why he’s going to go with Tyrande to fight Nathanos. I appreciate him staying as an owl. I don’t know why it bugs me but I just kinda wish he wasn’t there. They’re even co-leaders or whatever and I don’t understand that.
I’m not a woman and I’m guessing you are (but I don’t know so I apologize if that’s false) so your experiences/goals/frustrations may differ from my own. Personally I like fantasy games to portray different cultures and stick to them. Because the interactions are interesting and so are the stories. So if you’re a damned matriarchy put the women first second and third in the story. If you’re just open to men and women leading do that.
I wanted to see a story with Tyrande and Maiev beefing over pent up frustration between the Priestesses and the Wardens (partly due to Illidan). Not violence - but dig into the fact Illidan was there due to leadership decisions and people died due to Tyrande going rogue. And Tyrande can point out how she’s in charge and they didn’t stand down - but Maiev could point out Illidan was partly there for killing his own people too. And then … you know … the fact that she was right?
Maybe explore a bit more into some of these groups and what they entail. Oh and why exactly can Malfurion banish people?
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When isnt a win a pyrrhic win in wow, like seriously
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Legion had a fairly conclusive win, end of Cataclysm as well. TBC ended with a big win, Wrath you could argue was pyrrhic. Battle for Azeroth was pretty solid in terms of winning against the big bad.
You attempt to draw your circle by examining a proportional relationship between (different) populations. Ignoring the statistical error - you’re still comparing proportional representation. You’re showing your races change in population percentages to other races changes.
And your claims are already rebutted by the fact that the retail Alliance player base - who is still playing the game that you state has portrayed a decade of humiliation - is still about 1/4 Night Elves. They are still the second most popular Alliance race (even with 8 more races added).
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bfa says other wise
night elves ARE incompetent though
they are the only faction from Warcraft 3 to go from being its own fully functioning and operational kingdom able to rival the Horde and alliance on its own, to being alliance lackeys
you might like their aesthetic, but night elves have always been incompetent
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That claim isn’t rebutted - that’s where we stand after a decade of decline, as described earlier, and as demonstrated with the vanilla/classic population analysis and the search interest decline analysis.
Regarding the first point - I can see that you’re trying to mend what I see as the error here - and I’m not going to let you dodge this point. I am not providing this as some kind of proof that I’m the greatest victim to ever victim - I am providing this to demonstrate that this race’s stock has significantly declined. I acknowledge that there are other issues that are worthy of being fixed. So why are you fixated on trying to knock down the victim olympics argument when I’m not even making it?
Your argument is based on comparing changes in volumes to races. You are playing the victim olympics, even if you don’t want to be.
Correct. We stand with Night Elves as approximately 1/4 of the Alliance retail population, the second most selected Alliance race (behind humans still), out of now 12 Alliance races. it’s down from 1/3 in Vanilla but still pretty heavily slanted in their favor.
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If you want to discuss the slant, I once again point you to the questions of positive redistribution versus negative redistribution. Otherwise, my point here was to show a significant decline, and I have done that - and the search trend analysis gives us an idea as to what caused that decline, and that the decline may be seen in absolute terms.
Your argument is based on comparing changes in volumes to races. You are playing the victim olympics, even if you don’t want to be.
I’m sorry that you have pulled this conclusion from the data, but I’m not here to discuss that topic, regardless of how much you want to be. I again see no value in telling people that they don’t have problems or in trying to diminish what they’re upset about. I’ve told you that stance several times already, just as I’ve told you that the point here isn’t to somehow prove that I’m the greatest victim to ever victim. Again, that is a pointless discussion, and I’m not having it.
But you seem to REALLY want to, and I again am asking you why. Because I feel like no one is allowed to even discuss Night Elf issues without someone walking in and trying to explain how the Horde’s problems are worse. Do you feel that we both can’t hate the story at the same time? Do you feel that these forums aren’t big enough for the two of us? Is a statement that X has it bad necessarily a statement that Y doesn’t?
What is it? Explain this mentality.
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Comparing sets of data is not necessarily saying “I have it worse”. Again, the entire point of the data is to debunk the idea that there was a “Golden decade of nelf content”
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I’m just pointing out the inherent way you approached this. I have no desire to play the “who has it worse” game. I also don’t like to play the “who did what in response to what” game.
Mostly, I’m just pointing out that you’ve created a post-hoc hypothesis to match your theory, excluded any possible other hypotheses, discarded points of contention with your methodology, refused to substantiate any type of further analysis that might help solidify your point, and when faced with conflicting results that support a different hypothesis better than yours, you discarded it out of hand.
As I said:
Currently Night Elves are approximately 1/4 of the Alliance retail population. They are the second most selected Alliance race (behind humans still), out of now 12 Alliance races. It’s down from 1/3 in Vanilla. It’s more than double the next highest Alliance race (Draenei) and almost triple the race after them (Worgen). Humans and Night Elves make up ~53% of the retail Alliance population.
And that’s where I think I’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding. I was mostly responding to the “decade of humiliation” in the OP, as opposed to the title. I don’t believe it’s the Golden Age for Night Elves - just not a decade of humiliation either.
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Kyalin’s continued insistence that there is a causal relationship between the Night Elf player population and Teldrassil being burned down makes me wonder if they ever actually played the game with other players in a way that wasn’t RP.
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So you’re getting caught up on semantics to downplay the concerns of Nelf posters regarding nelf story issues?
No need to wonder, I have achievements and my profile isn’t hidden.
This also wasn’t to discuss Teldrassil. 
The Post-Hoc hypothesis is your assumption - I was actually surprised to see the red bands discussed when I first set out to do this.
I did not dismiss your hypothesis, I simply stated that the other factors are likely overwhelming its effects.
I discarded your desire for a random sample because population level analysis was appropriate here, and was actually feasible given that this all takes time.
I haven’t seen you present any conflicting study. If you have one, please share one.
I have addressed your present-state comments already as well.
Regarding the “inherent way” you claim that I approached this, I feel like you’re trying to graft motives onto the original analysis rather than answering my question about why you seem insistent to go after a victim olympics topic that I’m explicitly telling you I’m not interested in pursuing. Again, I don’t feel like people can discuss Night Elf issues without someone trying to play this game - I want to know why you are trying to harp on this point.