Who even gives a crap about Darkshore - sentimentality, aside I mean. On a meta level, Darkshore will be very close to my NE character’s heart since it was the first non-Teldrassil zone he ran around in.
But the Catcalysm happened 9 years ago, the zone was wrecked then and has been a mess since. There is very little of value to that land.
IC, my character doesn’t really give a fig about Darkshore. He cares about what had become his peoples’ refuge after years of waging wars and maintaining a waning grip on Kalimdor.
Actuallly Illidan left Maiev and herWardens to die by drowning in the Tomb of Sargeras. Maiev was the only one to escape thanks to a teleportation artifact she posessed.
Needless to say this pretty much added to Maiev’s already deep obsession with hunting him down.
As Galenorn pointed out, I meant in Legion, after Maiev allied with Illidan. To be fair, the real reason was Maiev’s voice actress, Debi Mae West, needed throat surgery. It was surprising to hear her again for Darkshore, and nice to find out she recovered so well.
She must be doing a lot of work. Which is a good thing for any actor.
Mark Hamill recently put out a tweet where slept with the entire cast ofa Justice League Short animation short. That’s because he voiced every single character in that episode… including Mark Hamill… Famous Actor. I can’t post the link here but it’s worth the effort to look it up on YouTube.
But Illidan literally sacrificed everything he had and anyone he ever loved in his pursuit of going after Sargares. I don’t think he will need to go through the herculean efforts to topple Sylvanas as I believe he is a master tactician and I am sure an army of demon hunters would wreck the horde.
Despite what’s gone down in BFA I don’t believe so. Legion had a major amount of Night Elf lore adn callbacks as did the underwater zone in Cataclysm and the resurrection of the entire Night Elf pantheon in Hyjal. Those aren’t the creations of a franchise that has the hostility you would ascribe to them. I do think however that they have a very different view of the playerbase then is reflected in your perspective though.
I already concede from a meta-perspective it matters. But Night Elves hail from all of Kalimdor. Most RPers I’ve come across, people who care about the story, people attached to their characters have their night elves native to various parts of Kalimdor - Feralas, Ashenvale, Winterspring, Azshara, etc.
So again, I don;'t care that they’ve won Darkshore - it is, and has been for a while, a shattered husk of a land. I care about Ashenvale, Astranaar, and Kalimdor as a whole - and even that doesn’t make up for the utter destruction of what looked to be their new, forever home.
I care about the whole package. Darkshore has particular value because it’s the place where I finally got around to defining this character. It was where she was inducted into the Rangers and where she was chosen to lead them. Auberdine is where her father died during Deathwing’s flyby. Darkshore and Teldrassil are the key defining places for her.
I see. Thanks for the insight into your character.
Would you say though that Night Elves as a whole have got a satisfying conclusion to the War of Thorns as it stands now?
I also disagree with your point about Legion being a Night Elf expansion. I have made this point elsewhere in detail in other threads, but to sum it up - all that night elf lore has literally nothing to do with the playable faction. Farondis, Valewalker, the druids in Valsharah might as well be kumquats to Darnassian elves. It’s if I said Harry Potter is an American story.
Absolutely not. First, from a sheer fan service perspective, I want the Night Elves to definitively win something in-game and on-screen. Cataclysm, the Night Elves got some wins, but we never actually got to see any of them, and that’s a big problem I have with the nelf story telling as a whole since Vanilla WoW. Blizzard is always really quick to show Night Elves as victims, and hardly never as a strong people. While it puts people off (and I understand why) I can’t help but feel there is a misogynistic element to the way Night Elves have been portrayed in a post-WC3 era.
Second of all, from a narrative perspective, its just bad to take a race with its own fan base, and use them as a plot device for another race with a totally different fan base. War of Thorns served more for Saurfang and his three beautifully crafted cinematics, than it did for the Night Elves.
Thank you for this. While I do enjoy the lore elements that came with Val’sharah and Farondis, there is a distinction between Cenarion lore and Night Elf lore. Cenarion lore certainly has a lot of nelf elements, it also has a lot of Tauren, Troll and Worgen elements as well. The highlights of Legion was the Ysera Death scene heavily involving Elune, and the Sentinel Army outside Suramar… That is really it.
The druids of Valsharah have a lot of tie in to the druidic culture of Night Elves. And some of the surronding zones in touching on the lore of Night Elven history. Obviously some relates more than others. I agree they aren’t all as connected as others. But it still seems like a lot of Night Elf lore.
You either didn`t read or totally misunderstood what I wrote. They have no connection beyond a genetic one to Kalimdor Night Elves that went on to became the playable faction because druidic culture has very little to do with said faction.
Now if NPCs like Koda Steelclaw are enraged at the fate of the Kalimdor Night Elves, and publicly throw their lot in with the playable faction, I’ll agree that that’s them related to the Night Elf story.
If the druids of Valsharah establish a haven for Teldrassil refugees, then that’s the Night Elf story getting development. Extending the lore by establishing a vague historical connection (literally 10k years ago in-universe time) and not doing anything else does not constitute good or even acceptable development.
Legion was heavy on class lore, and I am glad for that. But to say it was beneficial to the races is so wrong.
I feel like I got what you were saying after reading it. You are saying there isn’t much of a connection between the two groups (or the lore of Legion in general) with playable Night Elves, correct?
I disagree with this assertion. The heavy tie in of druidism between both groups certainly ties them together. It is central to both groups. As well as a connection to Elune. Especially with their racial leaders (Tyrande and Malfurion) being involved with both.
This might have held water in Vanilla, but by Legion, druidism has become its own entity, independent from the identity of the Night Elf (playable) faction. The problem mostly stems from the fact that the playable faction has got very little meaningful development over the years… and we’ve come full circle.
As someone who’s mained NE (and only NE since '08, never played any other Alliance race), I am hypersensitive to it. I would recognize if we got development. We haven’t. By contrast, the Forsaken and Orcish nations have had tonnes of development, though the quality leaves a lot to be desired, I guess.