I think we can agree that most of us are definitely fatigued of having night elves constantly show up. They officially become worse than humans and their human potential meme
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Having a Night Elf show up is not objectionable.
It’s when we have to pay attention to them while they yell at us for not picking Alliance, that makes it grating.
We get it.
The attitude of the Night Elves used to make us Horde happy to kill them… and now we have to fight that urge more than we fight those yappy Night Elves, themselves. Because we have to feel sad for them for some reason.
The Night Elves can be there, but it is when they make it all about them that it gets grating.
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Our elf buildings are Horde too.
Maybe not like MY elf buildings but I just have some void tents in space so whatever.
You get the gist!
Suramar and Silvermoon are real Horde 
!
Actually a night elf fan wouldnt feel at all at home since they did away with that arcitecture style ages ago and dudnt live in large cities. Theyd be turned off from it.
Highborne are a different story.
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Ok, then why did the playable Nightborne result in such a massive outcry from Nelf fans, who spent the last 5 years crying about the Horde “stealing their stuff” ?
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I think the thing with night elf fatigue is they are omnipresent and inescapable. They were the superpower that made the world what it is now. Their empire spanned most of ancient Kalimdor, wiping prior trollish empires nearly off the map. They also sundered said supercontinent, setting things in motion with the Legion in the same stroke. All elves and elf adjacent creatures have roots in that same history.
If you want to touch history, you are going to end up in Kaldorei history unless you go back incredibly far like they did for the Dragon Isles.
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Because it was Suramar, Tyrande’s hometown, the story had the night elves be 50% of the factions’ relief forces helping the city, the faction choice (which was obvious from the beginning) was handled in an offhand way, and then immediately led into the story of the Nightbourne sticking with the faction that committed what Blizzard signed off as “genocide” against the faction that had helped them.
The main “stealing” complaint was at the beginning, in a “why is Tyrande’s hometown populated by tall blood elves?” way, plus some “is all the Nightbourne crescent moon iconography Elune-related or not?”, and some discussion of whether the Arcan’dor and the druids are more night elven or shal’dorei, but there wasn’t much of “these new Nightborne are night elves” at all that I remember.
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Such is the nature of the “Ultra powerful and advanced ancient civilization” idea; in pretty much every other piece of media they’ve been wiped out or something because if they stuck around, like the Night Elves, they’d be running the show with how good they are.
Though the reason they’ve been inescapable is cause everything Blizzard has done for the last few years equates to those episodes in cartoons, where one character wrongs another, and subsequent attmepts to make things right only makes things worse.
It’s actually kinda impressive, in a twisted sort of way
Oh that certainly helped, but I very clearly remember Nelf players making the point that they were entitled to Suramar and that they felt robbed by the Nightborne become playable as a Horde AR.
And I mean… why would they not ? Suramar is a night-themed Highborne city that’s the last standing remnant of the Kaldorei Empire, and it was both the epicenter of Elune worship pre-Sundering and the hometown of the near entirety of the A-list Nelf cast (Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Maiev, Jarod). It absolutely was going to speak to Nelf fans in particular.
(Now that I think about it, even Thalyssra acknowledged the Night Elves as her “kin”)
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In general I don’t get the idea of faction fatigue.
A good story is a good story. Despite spending years in Troll Town the highlight of SL for me was Bwomsamdi turning up in Ardenweald because he’s a great character I’m happy to see more of.
Likewise my issue with the Nelf story isn’t that they’re nelves, but that it kinda sucks. Seriously that whole Night Warrior arc was bizarre. This hitherto unmentioned super sayian level power-up wasn’t used for multiple apocalypse tier threats, but instead for the Forsaken’s occupation of Darkshore.
So Sargeras, Deathwing, the Lich King - meh. But some boney goth ravers and a sassy woodsman? That’s apparently worth busting out Elune’s ultimate wrath for.
And what really annoys me is that the big red soul that caused Mecha St.Peter to bluescreen wasn’t even Teldrassil.
I’ve crap writing fatigue. As long as the narrative is interesting and gives me an interesting world to explore I could care less who’s area I’m murdering things for shiny pants over.
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Planting ideas about how night elf players felt about Suramar while ignoring the actual context in which Suramar was introduced (ie, night elf- dissociated ultra-Highborne non- nature- aligned city with no current ties to Elune or night elven leadership) is not the best way to go about your argument…
After the exchange with Tyrande and Liadrin, noone was really expecting Suramar to go Alliance, but noone expected them to betray half of the people who aided them by allying with a polarly opposed faction. And that had nothing to do with their ties to the ancient Kaldorei empire, because culturally and aesthetically they were more similar to blood elves, save that very subtle night motif that made them look like night elf copycats.
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So here’s the thing.
I definitely do recall some nelf players crying out that the Nightborne “belonged” either Alliance or Neutral, because ultimately the Nightborne are just renamed and slightly physically different Highborne.
But… It wasn’t like a majority or anything.
Prior to them becoming an AR, most discourcse seemed to just assume that either Thalyssra and Tyrande would work things out (IIRC, at that point there was only one salty exchange between the two where Tyrande wanted to know what prevented Thalyssra from becoming the next Elisande or Azshara) and become very distant allies (think Reventusk trolls) or they wouldn’t and the Nightborne would just stay in Suramar.
Nobody was much talking about any kind of possibility of them going Horde, but nobody was also talking about them joining the Alliance as a whole thing.
Then when they did become a Horde AR, yes, there was a section of nelf players being all “they stole our elfs”. But mainly the post-AR discourse regarding Nightborne did tend to go with the whole “they are traitors because we helped too”.
Which come BfA became the entire Alliance-side issue with them because Teldrassil had to happen and the night elf cousin-race was on the side that went and did that. Which might be why some people don’t really recall the brief “they stole our elfs” period. It was rather short, was only part of the overall discourse and quickly got overwhelmed by… Yeah. You know.
So what I’m getting at is you’re all very pretty and wonderful and also right.
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We spent an entire year raiding Ogrimmar, then we would have to spend all of the intro of Tanaan Jungle and Shadowmoon Valley focused on killing orcs. I can see why Blizzard would have wanted Gorgrond to have slightly less focus on them and abit of focus on other enemy types.
While we might not have cared, Blizzard has always been gameplay first, story second. And yes, it wasn’t hard for me to think back in Legion “hmm for an expansion dedicated to the Legion, we seem to be forced to kill alot of other things too”. He just confirmed my suspicious about it.
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Reading between the lines, everything is indicative that Blizzard had no plans for the Night Elves past the burning of Teldrassil. The Darkshore Warfront was a bone thrown their way after massive outcry and backlash, and Blizzard tried the usual appeasement process of, “Give their characters some Badass Super Saiyan moments,” such as Malfurion burying Orcs alive in that patch cinematic. So, Tyrande getting this never-before-heard-of power-up was Blizzard trying to appease players with a power fantasy.
Which, unfortunately, fell into two problems.
- Power fantasy has been more popular for Horde players, than Alliance players. Saurfang got elevated from meme status to lore character all based on his cleaves. Zappy boi went from being a nameless, faceless troll shaman, to an actual character because he was throwing lightning the way Garrosh would throw fists.
This isn’t to say Alliance players don’t enjoy power fantasies as well, but rather there is a very consistent trend when it comes to the Alliance and their power houses, which brings us to the next point.
- Alliance power fantasy isn’t allowed. When you look at the Alliance’s cast of characters, you get a pantheon of Gods, Demi-Gods, and Titans. Velen is a 25,000+ year old Prophet of the Light capable of personally purifying Dark Naaru, and whom cleanses the decks of the Exodar of fel corruption so easily that Billy Mays is going to come back from the dead to make an infomercial about him. Malfurion surpassed Ysera expansions ago in terms of druidic potential. Jaina has repeatedly been referred to as the most powerful mortal sorceress of the planet, and that was before a power up at the Throne of Thunder. Turalyon is a 1,000 year old God-Tier Paladin whom lead the Army of the Light, Alleria is a budding Void Goddess, etc… But for how often these characters get used to any sort of effect, they may as well not exist.
So, when you get Tyrande with this power up, and Blizzard attempts to use her to appease Night Elf fans with power fantasy, of course they can’t carry through, because the Alliance isn’t allowed to have power fantasy. Tyrande has this super forbidden overwhelming power and struggles against Nathanos in a 2v1. Meanwhile, in the Siege of Dazar’alor, just one of Jaina’s Water Elementals is soloing that same Nathanos, as well as Talanji.
This whole arc for the Night Elves spanning across expansions has been them trying different lumps of coal to dangle in front of players instead of actual carrots. It started with power fantasy, moved into this teasing story about Tyrande getting to kill Sylvanas so everyone could breathe a collective sigh of relief, and then because they just couldn’t let Sylvanas go, it ends with, “New tree, we’re all best friends now.”
Keep in mind, this isn’t bashing against Blizzard as being biased. This is pointing out trends in their writing, trends they force themselves into, because if we’re honest? If the Night Warrior was as powerful as it should have been? Tyrande would have crab walked naked into Orgrimmar and moonfire nuked it off the face of Azeroth, and Azshara to boot.
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The problem is… the name Suramar does this.
The game’s Suramar does not.
The only night elf in-game making a big deal of Suramar’s past is Tyrande in her now-infamous line of not instantly accepting the Shal’dorei. I think it may have been mentioned offhandedly in a few other spots, but nothing major enough for me to remember.
The Shal’dorei are about as different from playable night elves as another elf race can be. They’re awesome, and they serve as a good foil for what the night elves consciously chose not to be, but they’re definitely not night elves. They’re tall, purple-themed blood elves, which is why everyone knew that ultimately they’d get closest to the blood elves - The anger was because they went so against the night elves right before and during some of the darkest anti-night-elf storylines.
It’s like saying the centaur in DF are Horde content because the Horde has a past with centaur, their aesthetics are pretty close to Kalimdor Horde aesthetics, and a Horde faction leader had a questline with them referencing their people’s past together.
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You don’t even need to read between the lines, they said clearly in an interview once Darkshore came out “Tyrande got her revenge this story is done”. There was no intent to follow it further
But because it wasn’t a good story at all and players were (rightfully) still angry, they scrambled to come up with something else. And that cycle repeated several more times, which is why this entire arc had had so much whiplash.
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The Nightborne were the price for the Void Elves. Blizzard stole a pieces of a Horde race to give the fans who were “holding their breath until they turned blue” and stole a piece of the Night Elves to give to the Horde.
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The Nightborne recruitment quests make it clear that Thalryssa actually asked to join the Night Elves and was turned down.
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I am so glad its at last over. At last.
It has felt like watching a train derail and slowly roll down a mountain for the past few years.
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Going back to Covington’s thread : let’s take a minute to appreciate the fact that the team was apparently worried about Primalist fatigue
Primalist fatigue
I guess that’s why their story was left completely unfinished and Kurog Grimtotem & Koroleth ended up being complete nothingburgers ??? Lmfao no really the disconnect between these devs and the playerbase is actually astounding
(I will only say that this is a very odd analogy since DF Centaur are strictly unrelated to Kalimdor Centaur + the latter’s relationship with the Horde only consists in both sides slaughtering each other any way, so absolutely nothing in common with the Kaldorei/Shal’dorei situation)
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