I mean, if a war front is the focus of a very specific races territory, than it counts as content for that race. Unless we’re suddenly not counting Darkshore as night elven territory and a important one no less
Doesn’t have to be a main focus for it too count. Retaking Gilneas counts gilnean/worgen content……because it’s literally their capital. See what I’m getting at?
The problem is, by saying that 8.1 is a “night elf patch” we are basically ignoring everything else, and that includes the actual A plot of the patch. Which does not involve Night Elves in any major way.
Like an actual Night Elf patch would be something like 4.2.
Who said it was a night elven patch? It’s content involving night elves. Just like Gilneas is Worgen content, because we’re literally taking back their capital
So if a patch involves a Night elf in any way, whether major or minor it is a problem?
Sadly most of it is really bad content and we are supposed to be happy about it.
Normally not at all. But we been dealing with night elves and their issues through 3 back to back to back expansions now
You understand why some of us are sick of dealing with the kaldorei?
I think that it misses the point. I think the point isn’t about the minutia of what is and is not a “night elf patch” or what percentage of content qualifies something to be a “night elf patch”. I think the point is that night elves are very ever-present compared to other races not named human or orc. And night elves might even be the lead if we really need to get granular about this.
Which we shouldn’t when the actual point was about the abundance in general. Maybe you don’t feel there has been an abundance of night elf content compared to other races, maybe you do agree. I don’t know, because the argument quickly derailed to be about not-that.
That said, I’m out. I’ve said enough and do not wish to get drawn into this further.
I agree that the content mostly sucks. I don’t think anyone expects you to be happy about it. But, I wouldn’t mind if they sat out TWW at least
Know what I mean?
Honestly I do understand the fatigue. But I do honestly think we would not have this much “night elf content” if it was not for the burning of Teldrassil and Blizzard trying to save face from it.
Like nearly everything Night elf related has been trying to walk back on that in some way.
Even having a plotline of someone trying to burn down a world tree for the FOURTH TIME but we end up stopping it this time. I guess we are 3-1 when it comes to preventing forest fires.
There’s so much people here antagonizing every complain night elf fans express demanding us to enjoy what we have no matter how horrible the lore we get is.
I honestly feel like the reasoning the writers gave themselves to excuse the Burning is the abundance of prior night elf content which… Wasn’t as bad. Some was even good.
But to them, already deciding they were gonna burn a tree, they could look back and say “well, we did all this good stuff. For a story to work, they also have to suffer losses disproportionate to what they have gained, so they still have something to drive towards!!”
It’s crappy logic. It’s terrible world-building. A solution was right there; just shelve night elves for a little while and focus on other races, maybe blow up the Exodar if you need to murder a city. But they have this weird fetish for night elves, and that fetish inevitably turned darker and darker.
Can I be honest? It’s because of the people who made multiple night elf posting alts and than started making ridiculous over the top complaints and demands from blizzard.
Now it’s a knee jerk reaction to immediately dismiss the valid complaints that do exist. Sometimes it’s hard to stand back and realize other people are just as passionate about night elves as everyone else is about their favorite race
It is very obvious that Blizzard was writing at the seat of the their pants when it came to trying to reverse the damage done by the War of Thorns.
I mean nothing will showcase that better then Blizzard retconning the origins of the Stonewright a patch after her introduction. Where it was originally stated that she was one of the OG Venthyr, alongside Renethral and The Curator only to actually be one of the first mortals who was sired as a Venthyr and a former Night Warrior at that.
All because Blizzard got complaints that Ardenweald was too “night elf focused” since the only other Night Warrior we met prior to 9.1 was in Ardenweald.
And there is a bit of fallout from that retcon. The original Harvester of Wrath simply “disappeared” and no-one, not even Daddy D knows why.
Why didn’t Blizzard just make a new character for a Night Warrior in Revendreth? Who knows. Hell, we don’t even get replacements for the Harvesters of Fear and Envy. At least for the one in Maldraxxus they took a character that had no backstory. Plus is fairly ironic that a former Night Warrior would go on to serve Vashj, someone who rejected Elune in favour of N’zoth via Azshara.
I wish I could be as generous to think they did their switcharoo due to fan backlash, but I just don’t. Not when a more simple and (to me) obvious reason is right there.
Covid.
Covid caused a lot of plans to be dropped, rewritten and retconned because lockdown and remote working made things difficult. Establishing a new character requires model assets, questlines, etc. With everything becoming more difficult during Covid, maybe you take a shortcut, reimagine and retcon a pre-existing character to fit your needs and suddenly the Stonewright was a Night Warrior all along.
The big reason I think this is the fact Shadowlands is the sole expansion where we never learn the motivations of the bad guys within the game itself. Well, that and TBC, but nobody had motivations in TBC until much later or through dev statements because narrative didn’t matter in TBC.
Wrath? Arthas wanted to murder the world and make it his Scourge. We knew that.
Deathwing? He wanted to murder the world and… That was it, he wanted to murder it.
Garrosh? He wanted the strongest Horde to ever Horde across the entire face of Azeroth.
Garrosh again? Same plan, later co-opted by Gul’dan who wanted the Legion to make him cooler.
Sargeras? Yup, world-murdering because he wanted to end all life to avoid the void.
Sylvanas? Ehhhh… You’ll find out in Shadowlands. N’zoth? He wanted to Black Empire everything.
Sylvanas again? Ehhh… Screw motivation, she’ll never swerve. Read her book, on sale now!!
Zovaal? Ehhh… Something-something, something’s coming something. Read his- crap, uhh… Wait and see!!!
In-game, the two main antagonists still have never told us within the context of the game why they were doing what they did. Sure, other villains in other expansions only gave us vague ideas that needed books to flesh out. But we at least got a vague idea.
We still barely even have a vague idea of what Zovaal’s motivation was. Because the narrative that exists to give us that vague idea had to be rushed out, because deadlines have to be met. The whole expansion itself is a sprint to chase after Zovaal, the only expansion where we’re literally following the villain as they bop from place to place from the first patch to his death, because the content patches where he should have arrived at a place to start working towards his plan never seemed to happen.
He needs the sigils to open the library. He gets the keys, opens the library and quickly finds what he needs, then pops over to Zerde’s Modum, uses the keys to open the Deus Ex Machina Box and goes to turn it off and back on again. Never lingering in one place long enough to tell us why and what. And then he’s dead and his death cinematic implies he… Had a reason.
It’s all so rushed, yet it took as long as normal to come out. Everything’s rushed, nothing’s explained, and then it just ends.
Covid.
Not because they responded to feedback. Not because they cared about an outcry. Just because it was convenient and saved time.
That’s my take.
I can see where you are coming from and COVID19 is most likely the main factor. However the two theories do not have to be mutually exclusive in my eyes. Maybe it was mainly due to fan backlash, but because of COVID they had to cut some corners, which mainly includes retcons.
Hell we don’t even find out until we kill him and even then, he is vague about it. It is basically Murozond all over again, but Murozond was a minor antagonist in the grand scheme of things and was a time traveling dragon. Compared to the “ultimate big bad of the series”
I’ll argue we knew more about Murozond’s motivation immediately post-death than Zovaal’s; it’s an inevitability from Nozdormu seeing his eventual demise and wanting to change it. That’s it, that’s a motivation right there. He saw, he wanted to make different, in the future he will try, he will become his Infinite self, he will die. Simple. Understandable. Sure, it needed some expanding, but it’s more than
“A cosmos divided will not survive… What is coming…”
What does that even meeeeaaaan??? Just like talk to us my dude!! Were you trying to unify the cosmos? Because it looks like you just were trying to kill it, reformat it and make it dead. That’s not exactly surviving; by its definition, the cosmos didn’t survive because you killed it and it is dead!! Were you just trying to get the world first cosmos death before the other guild?!?
What was all of this even for?? Where is your motivation?!? Is that what’s coming?!???
Like, there’s vague hints that a mysterious “seventh force” exists, so maybe that’s the thing coming, but that still tells me nothing about the reason for the endgame here. I care less about the what than the why, and I never got an answer to why.
But there’s enough scattered bits where it looks like we were going to be given some kind of details for the why. Hense why I think the Stonewright also falls into the rushed development pile.
Why did it have to be Anduin that stabbed the Kyrian lady? We’re never told why Anduin had to be the puppet.
What was Helya going to get out of helping out here, and how does Sylvanas’s debt to her even factor into any of this if they were both working for the same team?
I’ll save us all some time reading my rambling thoughts. We all can go and make long as heck lists about the randomly unexplained and dropped stuiff from SL.
We could always just wait for Chronicles 4. Blizzard(or at least the writers they hire) has a decent ability of managing to patch up and weave something decent from all their vague world building and turn it into something decently cohesive.
Case in point, thanks to OW newest lore book we now have a good idea of how that mess of a story works and is actually quite entertaining.
battle for Dazar’alor wasnt A
For 8.1 it was. The main story for both factions led up to the raid. Even the patch notes highlights the raid over the warfront.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_8.1.0
Gnomes are not popular enough to give them content. While Mechagnome was somewhat nice content, the race itself is an absolute failure and the poster child of unwanted playable races.
Pandaren are popular enough and don’t enough content but a short one in BfA
Worgen are getting finally something with the next patch, but they still don’t have tails and claw animations