I definitely get where you’re coming from. I’ve complained at length how the history of the Eastern Kingdoms reads like propaganda from the Age of Expansion teaching how the barbaric natives aren’t smart enough to use the land properly and that it is up to the civilized folk to take it from them for their own good.
But I also feel you as a night elf fan.
I mained a night elf in Vanilla because in WC3 my main race of choice was the night elves. I almost always gravitate to the more foresty, nature themed factions so it was a natural fit for me. I loved the night elf aesthetic. I loved their druids and animal companions. I loved the giant sapient trees that doubled as housing.
So obviously when I finally got WoW as a wee little lad I rolled a night elf druid.
I loved questing through Teldrassil, Darkshore, and Ashenvale and developed a very special attachment to Astranaar especially as I spent huge amounts of time PVPing against Horde who’d attack it constantly. I was quite proud to be a night elf.
Unfortunately PVP around Ashenvale cooled down and I started using Ironforge more and more, since that is where the people were. I’d hang out in Goldshire dueling people and looking for groups in Stormwind. I soon realized… I wasn’t playing a night elf anymore. All the content around me was steeped in Eastern Kingdoms motifs. Motifs I am not particularly interested in as I don’t enjoy the aesthetic much.
That is ultimately why I drifted to Horde. I was immersed in my “noble savage” aesthetic rather than the cobblestone roads and big, stone arches that dominated much of Alliance content. My night elf left his night elven aesthetic when he left Ashenvale.
When BC rolled around the only night elf stuff in Outland were Cenarion Circle quest hubs. That is around the time I switched fully to my tauren.
I kind of lowkey subscribe to the belief that Xe’ra chose him not based on merit, but on his zeal and blind faith. Like I know everyone hates “I am my scars” but I actually like that cinematic because of the subtle ways Velen reacts versus Turalyon. Velen sees through her, but Turalyon’s completely blinded by his faith.
The Lightforged are literally almost mind-controlled to serve Xe’ra and have been serving alongside Xe’ra for thousands of years, even prior to Turalyon showing up. It makes no sense why a Human going “the light is good” is met with immediate promotion and praise.
I mean i know entirely why it played it out the way it did, it just so happens to unintentionally align with the Trope and it’s a failing on Blizzard that they couldn’t tell the story better or the same story in a more interesting way.
Effectively it’s actually really simple, they wanted Turalyon and Alleria to be cool. They’re fan favorites dating back 20 years now, people have been waiting for them forever, even in the story of Warcraft they’re big damn heroes. So the idea that they wouldn’t go on to do great things, would be unacceptable to the fans and writers. But this is where the writers failed, they elevated them both too much, to comical effect. It comes off as unrealistic and absurd, when you apply the trope too it and the… political themes of the Warcraft universe, that’s when it ends up looking racist.
It makes perfect sense. Humans are just “better” in regards to faith and plot-magic. Bonus points, said human paladin has a established trophy elf waifu as a bride.
All of this also ignores the fact that said human has a more reasonable claim to leading the Alliance’s military than Anduin “presented everything with a golden platter” Wrynn who has no justification for leadership outside of nepotism and blatant author fiat. Elune forbid we dispel this illusion that the Alliance is little more than a human empire with vassal races.
Nope, gotta cash in on that “human exceptionalism” instead of coming up with a coherent story anymore.
50/50 in one hand i understand the problems with other races but in the other, going to kultiras this expansion after people waiting years for me made sense to me.
Legion got a good chunk from others races as well.
we got gilneans in stormheilm, nelfs in valshara, more elfs in suramar, and velen story in argus, with a little from alleria. hell even gnomes got something in mechagnome.
i just hope that now, after kultiras arc is ended we can have our damn city back so we can focus more not only on gilneans, but others races in general.
anduin being the emperor is a serious problem though.
It’s disturbing because reading chronicles description on the first and second war one might think it’s written by some alt-right wehraboo.
For instance the Horde in their war with the humans are described similarly to WWII German propaganda of the Red Army. It’s where the Russians were an asiatic horde with no strategy and used superior numbers and war crimes to eventually defeat the noble and heroic German soldiers who were defending their homeland. We’re also given multiple tangents on the quality of humans compared to the orcs. This is similar to the racist meme in which Mr. Moustache’s followers are just naturally superior in skill by the virtue of their race that although each Mr. Moustache’s followers can individually kill a dozen Soviets, there a hundred more ready to take their place.
This contrast to the description we are given of the Orcs during their war with the Draenei. The Orcs under Blackhand actually used strategy during their war with a technologically and magically superior enemy.
I think I wrote about this before, but it’s nice to see that other posters share the same opinion.
To be fair, the Trolls attacked first in that war. The Elves moved into a ruin the trolls claimed was sacred (why was it in ruins if its sacred?) But this happened about 4000 years prior to the troll wars. At some point your claims have to expire, you cant hold a claim to land for that long and expect to have some kind of moral high ground for initiating a conflict.
Except that we know that the “clean Wehrmacht” meme applies to the Horde currently in BfA. Please pay attention to the noble “savages” and their honorable fight for a “good war.” Ignore the blatant Auschwitz comparisons in Darkshore, and the absolute LACK OF ANY FACTION PRIDE CHEAP SHOTS TO THE HORDE compared to the typical smooth-brain insult about “ashes” or some other low-brow insult always derived to the night elves or the draenei portion of the Alliance.
Its so easy to poke at the night elves recent defeats and rub in their losses. The fact that they will never get an opportunity to poke back at the Horde showcases the developer’s clear and apparent bias.
This is what happens when your games morality revolves around World War II. It inherits the unfortunate implications behind the “morally grey” morality system implied by the shallow comparisons.
Both are true. The message is that violence and genocide is kind of metal, but also it’s always savage lesser third worldy easily duped people who start it, and noble blue eyes must end it. Warcraft is pretty sick when you think about it.
The meme is further amplified when one just looks at the arguments further pushed by Wehraboo apologist. It was Sylvanas and her inner circle’s fault = Mr. Moustache and his inner circle’s fault.
I do think that serious Horde lore fans are disgusted by the current faction conflict storyline. When I read their replies to me they site the constant reminder of Horde faction pride being equivalent to shame considering that they’re always told what they’re doing is wrong. Horde posters’ defeatist attitude to the direction of the Horde story might only be prevalent in this forum though.
Consider that those jabs are only applied to unreasonable posters who seem to think they are Nelfs or Draenei irl. It’s similar to insults people like to throw at the Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls for being mudhuts. My personal favorite is the she-elf worship of the BIG HUMAN POTENTIAL compared to tiny, servile elven “men.” I do not think those are serious insults as any serious lore follower will not think in those patterns. Except the elf part. It’s totally true.
That comes entirely from the fact Elves tend to be portrayed as lithe and thin, as well as carrying traditionally Asian themes (Especially in warcraft.) To many people actually buy into size charts, “Adult Videos” and well just good ol’ fashioned racism.
You sound exactly like a European colonist justifying their invasion and mass extermination of the indigenous peoples so you can feel good about living on their land.
Your comparison is a moot point, because nearly everyone in the world (both Earth, and Azeroth) has done this. Are you so foolish as to think wars of conquest only started happening when the Europeans showed up? Tribes of all continents were know to wipe each other out for land and resources. Before the Elves showed up, the Amani and Gurubashi were killing each other for land. The only difference is, the Elves moved into what appeared to be an abandoned ruin, they didnt wipe out a troll city to make Silvermoon.
Also, as I said, the Trolls attacked first. No amount of your propaganda can whitewash that. The trolls started attacking the Elves even when they were just in Tirisfal, which is not troll land.
Europeans weren’t colonizing the rest of the world for 4000 years. In terms of time scale it’s more along the lines of declaring war on Iraq because Badghdad was built on a Babylonian holy site.
Which I’m actually fine ignoring for the sake of there being an argument, Warcraft’s timeline is slapdash, lazy and unrealistically static.