Due to a certain spoiler from the TWW alpha about Elun’Ahir, I started hearing more and more often about , so-called Elune fatigue. Namely, people say that Elune takes up too much screen time and she’s almost everywhere in the story right now.
I don’t understand it at all.
For me, Elune is a welcome and Very Needed break from the endless cycle of Titans/Void/Light mythology. She has been with us since Warcraft 3. She is one of the oldest pillars of Wow cosmology, but her presence is hardly noticeable and even less used.
No matter where we go, we always come across some titan facilities or remains of the Old Gods, of course Light always follow them. However, people are annoyed by the small amount of Elune compared to the huge attention Blizzard gives to the three above? At first let’s analyze how often the Real content of Elune actually came up in the game itself.
- Legion
Elune’s first bigger activity was cinametic in Val’sharah, which is the point from I think we should start follow Elune’s activity.
In Legion we have zone of Val’sharah, two raids and dungeons, pillars of creation and Artifact Weapon storyline focused on her. Which is quite a lot of content. In subsequent patches she doesn’t appear at all, the narrative focuses mainly on titans, demons and the army of the light. I don’t think Suramar counts as mainly Elune zone. Yes, we have a lot of things related to the moon goddess there, but numerous other threads and conflicts kinda hide her presence.
- Battle for Azeroth
After the Teldrassil fall we see the night warrior quest with is very heavy Elune focus. The army of the black moon fights on warfront for retaking Darkshore. But after that we have nothing. No dungeons or raids. In 8.2 and 8.3 we had zero Elune stuff. Tyrande appears shortly in the epilogue refusing to sign the peace treaty.
- Shadowlands.
The most obvious thing is Ardenwelad where, like in Legion, we get a questline with Ysera. People say this is Elune’s zone only because the Winter Queen turns out to be her sister. Which is strange logic to me. Of course Ardenwelad is related to the night elves and Elune, but call it Elune or night elves dimension? No. I can’t imagine anyone from the NE cast, outside Malfurion ending up there after death. Tyrande and Shandris would be fits much better in Bastion. Maiev, after some time in Revendreth, would definitely end up in Maldraxxus.
Besides, Maldraxxus is literally the place of origin of Forsaken. Bastion gives you a human body no matter what race you were in life, but a few Elune quests proving the zone’s bias?
Elune isn’t even the main plotline there. Zone story is divided into three acts. Defeating Drust, helping Bwonsamdi and search for former night warriors. Elune takes up 1/3 of the zone’s lore, she doesn’t have it exclusively. Outside of this forest you won’t see any mention of Elune. If you don’t choose Ardenwelad as your covenant, you’ll see Elune content 2 maye 3 times throughout the entire expansion. We have zero Elune-centric dungeons and raids. Nothing in Korthia or Zereth mortis.
- Dragonflight
In Dragonflight, we finally have decent Elune content in the form of patch 10.2 and one quest in Valdrakken. She doesn’t have any dungeon. Almost all content of Ohn’ahran Plains is focused solely on centaurs. Nothing to do with Elune in 10.1.
This may be hot take but Amirdrassil raid has a similar situation to Suramar. The whole concept of the raid at first glance was focused on duidistic/Elune the ending spoiled it for me by completely focusing on Azeroth and Aspects. Wellspring of life where raid started was another Titan outpost.
- The War Within !Spoiler!
In TWW we discover the roots Elun’Ahir which are mentioned in Emerald dream book. And apparently that made people angry. The roots. With whom we spent maybe a few minutes.
I mean, we have a colossal light/shadow crystal above us. The most numerous NPC groups here are Earthen (Order), Nerubians (void) and Arathi (light), the main theme of this expansion is Void vs Light. A topic that has been going on since the very beginning of WoW. We know that the titans will return in the worldsoul saga. We learn here about the new empire of light, Xal’atath preparing another Void invasion, but small subplot about Elune is something people are tired of?
( I also want to mention the books where we touched Elune lore. Although these are just extra content outside the game and 80% of players have no idea about them, I want to be fair and mention them.
Before Bfa we got short story Elegy where Tyrande and Elune are extremely important to the story of Teldrassil fall.
Before SL, Elune and Tyrande arc is a secondary topic in Shadow Rising.)
I get it, people are worried that Elune content is gonna be reserved only for night elves. But when Blizz finally give us neutral Elune content without a single NE people are still angry. So what if Night Elves are Elune’s favorite race? The Horde druids can still use her power. The Draenei were the chosen race of Sargeras and then Na’ru. So I can say that the Na’ru/Light content is just a Draenei story?
Knowing Blizzard with all this criticism, they will sooner stop writing about Elune and we will be only left with Titan stuff forever.
For the last 4 exspansion Elune doesn’t get a huge amount of attention and is never related to the main plot outside of creating Amirdrassil. She and her champions never fight directly with Zoval, Legion, N’zoth or even Fyrrak. But why do so many people think otherwise?
In my opinion, the cinematics are to blame for this. Since it’s the most eye-catching way of conveying content, not surprising that people look at it the most. Since her debut in Val’sharah in each expansion we get cinematic related to Elune.
- Legion: Ysera Death
- Bfa: terror of darkshore
- SL: For Teldrassil, Ysera reborn, Sylavans vs Tyrande, By our hands.
4: Dragonflight: seed of hope.
As we can see, the largest number of Elune-related cutscenes took place in Shadowlands. At that time, criticism regarding the excessive use of this character also began to grow. However, ironically, Elune herself has zero influence on the main story. She never took part in the war against Jailer apart from Tyrande vs Sylvanas. Let’s be real she’s useless. Which is surprising compared to how many cutscenes she got in this expansion. More often I saw Jaina and Thrall helped us in Maw/Oribos/Korthia, and fought against Jailer in Zereth, than Tyrande. It looks like the writing team didn’t communicate with the cinematic team at all. Interestingly in SL we don’t have any Titan, Light or Void content, which helped Elune shine even more, but she’s still unnecessary to the overall story.
So my question is why are people so negative towards Elune presence? Why they say she takes up too much space?
I’ve heard some comments about people being bored with Void due to Ny’alotha terrible ending. Or titans due to their omnipresent on the dragon ilses. But none of them receive such harsh words from playerbase as Elune which, compared to them, gets so little attention.
. But, I’m still glad we don’t have any night elves in The war within
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