Lets clear up one thing that you seem to be confused about, I never objected to the Nightborne being in the horde. No idea where you’re even getting that from
That is the point I was originally making. People were complaining about the Nightborne. There have been complaints about the Earthen being neutral. All that is is bit rich after the whole “Highborne” debacle.
But if you don’t care about one side getting races from the other side, that’s consistent.
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I don’t, I’m one of those More options the better type of people. It also helps that I’m not a faction partisan type of player, I happen to like and often play both sides much as I can
I agree with Legion but the rest is completely untrue. Tell me what content the night elves had in BFA apart from warfront or in SL besides 1/3 story in Ardenweald. When the night elves characters directly fought against Azshara, N’zoth, Jailer, Denathrius, Raszageth? Enemies who really matter/the main plot revolved around them. Tyrande may have helped a lot in Emerald Dream but the final fight was between the Aspects and Fyrakk. Even when it was her tree. Before 10.2 they were not present except one quest where we plant this seed.
Bfa is the story about saving the Horde/stoped N’zoth with Anduin and Saurfang playing the main roles
SL is the story of stopping Jailer where the main characters are Anduin and Sylvanas. We literally spent the entire expansion trying to save Boy King. Everyone was worried about him. But Tyrande? Oh, I hope she’s okay nvm.
Night elves heroes never received as much dedication as these characters, they always disappear from the most important story moments to make room for Orcs, Humans or Forsaken. So instead of saying I’m bored with night elves, I’ll say I’m tired of them being constantly pushed aside.
Yes, but it was 10,000 years ago. NE architecture has changed since then, instead of being inspired by Rome, today’s night elves buildings are more in eastern style besides a few exception. This type of style in modern day is more likely to be seen in blood elves and Nightborne lands than in the NE territory
Ancient night elves are not the same as modern night elves. A large part of their philosophy is focused to not become what their ancestors once were.
however, I agree that night elves should take a break. They have no reason to appear in TWW, in Midnight let them get one small, task to help the BE fight the void, thats it. Elune is a specialist in this after all. Last Titan? We will probably learn more about Elune and Eonar relationship and find the roots of Elun’ahir, but nothing more.
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No disagreements there. Power fantasy just isn’t as successfully done in WoW as it could be, but it’s superfluous. I think there is a fundamental issue where Warcraft as a fantasy IP had roots in classic fantasy archetypes to such an extent that when the heads started creeping into Comic Book Super Hero tropes, it clashed and created a mess of a narrative.
It’s less about the world and more about the super heroes defending it. The problem is, World Building was always Blizzard’s strength, so ignoring it to focus on Supreme Sorceress Jaina or Dark Defender Sylvanas just detracts from Blizzard’s actual strengths.
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Again the Nightborne sided with the poor against Azshara. So it really doesnt fit all that well.
And even then the nightborne you meet and fight with were thrown out. According to your logic they are now poor.
The thing with privelege that people often forget is how quickly it can be taken away. And our first encounter with Thalysera is that shes gaunt and in rags. With no money, no nothing. We help her get her old life back.
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Wait, are you serious? This sounds so wrong it’s kinda funny. 
Now look on my ,version" how I see it.
You’re Nightborne, you return to the world after thousands of years of separation. You suddenly find that two groups are at your doorstep:
A group of elven elites following a path that almost destroyed the world and forced you to live in a bubble. They are smaller than you and have strange skin tones. They now worship Sun instead of Elune (wth!) Exciled because the abuse of magic and created the Sun Wells. Another great bait for the Legion. You heard that previous leader recently allied himself with the demons, almost summoning them to Azeorth.
The other group? The original rebels who managed to stop Azshara. Their leaders were from your city. Despite their distrust for Arcane, you heard how they recently started accepting mages in their society again. Still worshiped Elune, they are extremely similar to you. thanks to their druidic teachings you planted Arcan’dor who saved you from mana starvation.
I know I cut out a lot… I mean , A LOT OF, context and it doesn’t reflect what we really have in the story. However, this comment sounds the same as yours. And where did you get the idea of class conflict? War of the Ancients wasn’t about Rich vs Poor. Azshara literally summoned demons into our world.
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A group of elven elites following a path that almost destroyed the world and forced you to live in a bubble. They are smaller than you and have strange skin tones. They now worship Sun instead of Elune (wth!) Exciled because the abuse of magic and created the Sun Wells. Another great bait for the Legion. You heard that previous leader recently allied himself with the demons, almost summoning them to Azeorth.
Almost all of this is incorrect. No one forced the Shal’dorei to live in a bubble; they threw that up themselves and just assumed the world around them was dead. The Thalassians do -not- worship the Sun, they never have; their religion has always been the Holy Light which they adopted after the Humans had introduced them to it. The Sunwell -was- a great bait for the Legion, but this makes it seem like the Thalassians didn’t try and protect it from the Legion, which they did. The Runestones were built to -stop- the Legion from coming to Quel’thalas, which they succeeded in doing so until many of them were destroyed when the Scourge attacked the Sunwell. Kael’thas was long dead by the events of Battle for Azeroth, and the Nightborne have no moral high ground as Elisande -also- sided with the Legion.
The other group? The original rebels who managed to stop Azshara. Their leaders were from your city. Despite their distrust for Arcane, you heard how they recently started accepting mages in their society again. Still worshiped Elune, they are extremely similar to you. thanks to their druidic teachings you planted Arcan’dor who saved you from mana starvation.
It was not due to druidic teachings that caused the Arcan’dor to bloom, as Farodin is not even a full druid. The Arcan’dor is the perfect balance between arcane and nature; arcane plays no part in Cenarion teachings. The Sin’dorei -are- descendants of the first rebels; Dath’remar was part of the revolution. They have no similarities with Elune worship, not only did they not see the stars under that barrier, or anything resembling an actual sky, the closest Temple of Elune was underwater, not in the bubble and filled with demons. Besides, they had the Nightwell for power which had no stars or moon; they thought all was gone, what Goddess would save them? They’re among the closest examples WOW has of an atheist society.
Besides, it’s not like the Shal’dorei can say anything when it comes to magic abuse, either.
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Okay, but you were doing so in the context of giving an example of the sort of thing that Alliance players want and are denied for no logical reason. How is that different from feeling cheated, even if it doesn’t apply to you specifically?
I might give you the last one (though, Sylvanas wasn’t technically Horde at the time), but the first two examples weren’t about power or “flex” either. They were both presented as underhanded tricks that were only made possible with subterfuge and macguffins, that never could have gone off if the Alliance had been able to fight back fairly.
Once again: the Nightborne approached Tyrande about joining forces, and she said no. I don’t think the betrayal was on their part.
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Very well put, can say I hadn’t thought of it that way. Brings into perspective the writing with classic vs retail; Classic being about smaller, more personal stories spread throughout, with retail slamming them all together into big showy spectacles.
Doesn’t help that every big bad of an expansion had to have their power level buffed to exceed the previous one. At a certain point not having a team of god-like beings to take them on just shatters any form of immersion.
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I do not think this is as true as people wish to believe.
There is an undeniable ramping up from Vanilla to Cata, no doubt. The Vanilla end-game bosses outside of Cthun weren’t much of a planetary risk.
Kil’jaeden was also not a planetary risk, but could certainly be argued as a step up in power from Vanilla bosses, save maybe Cthun.
Arthas was a civilization-risk, but the world itself not quite.
But then Deathwing. He actually could kill the world, and we (Thrall) barely stopped him before he did the deed.
But then we go to Garrosh, who is probably below end-boss in terms of personal power outside Vanilla.
Archimonde is a big leap bigger than Garry, but certainly below Deathwing.
Then Legion is some massive planet-killer, and we save the whole world again.
N’zoth, repeat of the same. Yup, planet-killer.
Zovaal was the biggest yet, because he was gonna reformat the cosmos by hitting the buttons to turn everything off and back on again, once he wired the gizmozone into the Azeroth power battery. But his own power? Every other planet-threat before him, we needed big power-ups or special artifacts to kill. Dragon Soul on Deathwing, the Pantheon for Argus, Azeroth herself and a dagger used by Wrathion to end N’zoth. We just… His Zovaal a lot, no back-up juicing required. He’s gotta be weaker than the other planet-killers.
And now, Fyrakk, the only reason he’s a planet-threat at all is because world trees seem to be a planetary weakness if you bad magic them too much. Archimonde was gonna do it, now Fyrakk is just repeating his trick. Against past trends, rather than us getting powered up for the fight, killing Fyrakk powers up the aspects with some aspectralness (rofl) after.
Honestly, it looks more and more like rather than a constant scale upward, we’re seeing more of a wave that climbs and falls, and has been doing so for well over a decade now.
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The Nightborne made assumption that the Night Elves would simply welcome them back. There’s no indication the Nightborne attempted any further outreach to the Night Elves other than waiting with outstretched hands and then feeling spurred when generosity wasn’t given to them like unconditional love:
- First Arcanist Thalyssra says: I though our kin from Kalimdor would make obvious allies. But their arrogance and mistrust soon proved otherwise.
- Tyrande Whisperwind says: Arcanist Thalyssra. I remember where your order stood in the War of the Ancients. How do we know you won’t betray us and become the next Elisande… the next Azshara?
First Arcanist Thalyssra says: We do not intend to be slaves to the Nightwell. We seek to drive the Legion from Suramar and put an end to Elisande’s oppression.
Tyrande Whisperwind says: The kaldorei will fight to see the Legion defeated and the Nightwell destroyed. Beyond that… we shall see where Elune’s wisdom guides us.
The leadership of Suramar at no point sided with the rest of the Night Elves fighting against the Legion, and in fact threw up their protective bubble to leave the rest of the Night Elves for dead:
- Though they had thwarted the attempt to create a new portal, the rebellious Highborne had no plans to join the night elf resistance and continue fighting the Legion. Fearing calamity, Elisande and her followers worked to fortify their holdings in Suramar.
Chronicle: Volume I, Page 104.
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I will admit that after Cata, power scaling in the villains went topsy turvy. Have to remember Garrosh had Y’sharaaj juicing him up, though where that puts him exactly onthe scaling is hard to really pin down. We at least have an idea that he could have slaughtered the other leaders and razed Stormwind.
I think you give the Lich King far too little credit. Waking up from a nap was enough to send scores of undead to both Stormwind and Orgrimmar. He muscled out Yogg Saron in Northrend, and it took literal Deus Ex Machina to prevent him from doing the heros in and winning outright. That isn’t even mentioning the legions of undead that swells with each engagement.
As for Zovaal… it has been a minute since his fight, so I may be wrong, but he did require a new Helm cough Burger King crown cough to even face him, and I seem to recall Azeroth herself aiding players throughout the fight? Not to a huge degree but buffing and healing players.
Really, think its more the perceived power that Zovaal had. How Blizzard retroactively made him the reason behind the Burning Legion at all, behind Frostmourne and the Helm, all that. All in a bid to have him be taken more seriously when just having an otherwordly being stepping in who is strong but not some mastermind we’ve heard jack all of until that point.
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I put him more at civilization, because he would have easily killed off all life on Azeroth, but I’m not sure he’d be able to kill the planet itself (which nowadays is definitely a different level of power). But you could be right, him and Deathwing could easily be global elimination threats. But that really just adds to my point; villains aren’t scaling up as much as people think.
I mostly zero that out because Zovaal himself was actively also using Azeroth’s power. Basically, an Azerothian power-up cancels an Azerothian power-up.
I’ll grant you the crown McGuffin played a roll, but given it was just to keep him from MCing us, it’s not really a power scale issue.
Just gonna remind everyone that it’s a false dichotomy that they had to join the Horde even if presumably (evidence unclear/faulty) the night elves rejected an attempt of theirs to join the Alliance.
They could have simply remained neutral and not joined the one faction that regularly antagonises the night elves. Heck, they could have worked with the blood elves in a neutral capacity. It was very much betrayal when just a year later they participated in a war that began with a genocide on the night elven nation. No, it wasn’t “betrayal” when Tyrande (supposedly, evidence unclear) rejected them- at best it’s a rejection/being unwelcome. And I doubt they went to Anduin who would’ve welcomed them openly like the goody two-shoes he is/was.
Also, the same rehashed arguments from older threads: Thalyssra’s diplomatic skills aren’t great either if she viewed a simple question from Tyrande as being spurned. If you only extend diplomatic ties to people who are uncharacteristically nice to you or feeding you with lies to make themselves look good (see: Liadrin), you’re not very good at diplomacy.
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No it’s not. What you don’t realize is that there was no way for the Nightborne to even know about any treatment that the Horde gave the Night Elves as they were trapped in a bubble like shield for ten thousand years. They were so disconnected from the Night Elves at this point that it’s not even funny anymore.
Tyrande is one of Anduin’s advisors, something you forget. She could have very easily sent him a letter stating why the Nightborne shouldn’t be apart of the Alliance and he would have listened to her. He only lets certain groups in when his advisors suggest that he should.
You keep forgetting that Suramar fought on the side of the rebels during the War of the Ancients. When the going got tough Elisandre and a few of her closest mages used the Eye of Aman’Thal and the Nightwell to create a barrier hiding them. Likening Thalysera to Azshara is a big old slap in the face.
Liadrin didn’t offer them any lies. The Blood Elves went through similiar things when it came to arcane abuse and the desperate need to find another source since the Sunwell was destroyed by Kel’Thuzad’s resurrection. The Sunwell mind you contained waters from the second Well of Eternity that was brought over by Dath’remar Sunstrider’s highborne who was exiled by the Kaldorei. That water is imbued with the arcane.
And as seen with Dalaran, neutrality doesn’t really work.
Ah yes. So just go about joining a world power, without knowing anything about the history of the world you were so disconnected from.
And we have no evidence of this. People making up headcanon to understand a lore decision that has a faulty premise— nope.
As Amadis pointed out before, they didn’t.
She lied about the night elves. She also lied about her own people’s history, the high elves, who often sat back during wars until pushed to take part by Lordaeron.
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It would be no different than if she had joined the Alliance. You do realize how ironic that sounds and hypocritical you’re acting.
We have evidence of this actually with the mechagnomes being in the Alliance, Lightforged Draenei, Kul Tirans, Dark Iron Dwarves, Void Elves, Darkfallen Kaldorei and Void Elves, and the Man’ari. It is implied, it does not have to be said. Not to mention with the Illidari and the Death Knights.
They were not on the side of Azshara. They were against her. They didn’t like the demons being their in the first place. And in Azshara’s eyes, they were on the side of the rebels.
What did she lie about? The blood elves resigned themselves from being high elves. And were repaid by Arthas coming through Quel’thalas, slaughtering half if not most of their population and destroying their Sunwell to resurrect a Lich.
I think the other thing that people forget is that the only reason Suramar even survived the War of the Ancients is because the wild god Ashamane single handily defeated the legion forces sent to Suramar to gather the Eye of Aman’thul. She slew so many that the legion commander decided to face her alone and fought Ashamane for several days until both died on the battlefield
Kinda sad that Ashamanes sacrifice gets largely ignored in all this
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Being against Azshara does not mean being on the side of the resistance.
Azshara’s opinion on the matter, if she even had any, is unimportant to the opinion Suramar had of itself, which was never on the side of the rest of the Night Elves, even when they betrayed Azshara to save themselves, and no one else.
To be fair, this was what ultimately happened, as Thalyssra convinced Lor’themar to work with the Night Elves again after reminiscing at Nazjatar about the Night Elves and Blood Elves standing side by side to liberate Suramar. And both did show up to protect Amirdrassil as a start towards atonement.
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