Tyrande got her revenge

Lore Story Forum
163

Because you’re supposed to only care about the human characters, duh. Anduin and Jaina feeling sad is all that Blizzard expects you to care about.

164

I completely agree with the sentiment in this thread. Tyrande and the Night Elves need more. I would love for Tyrande to kill Saurfang, or even Thrall, and really ramp up the war. She should have a huge presence against Azshara. It seems totally wrong that Blizz destroyed Teldrassil, used its destruction to motivate Anduin, Jaina, and Saurfang, and then left the Night Elves in the ashes as an after thought.

Having said that… It would be funny to use this in arguments down the line.

Me-in-future-arguments : “Blizz Devs have already stated Tyrande and the Night Elves have gotten their revenge. Any lingering feelings for revenge are spawning from player head canon, and not supported by the statements of the Devs. The Night Elves and Tyrande have gotten their revenge -according to the Devs.”

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165

Saw the writing on the wall and checked out. The Night Elves’ story was never going to end well or satisfying.

All that’s left is watching the Night Elves stand side by side with Saurfang, the Butcher of Darkshore, as they help him save his beloved Horde again.

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166

First paragraph I was like OMG I can’t believe you agreed with NE fans.
Last paragraph… oh yeah back to being you :joy::joy::joy:

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167

Tyrande needs to perform some ethnic cleansing. I wonder if Maiev’s threats during WC3 actually held any credibility.

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168

Yes it is… because outside of a few exceptions like Jaina Proudmoore and Arthas, the Alliance are mind-numblingly boring characters to write about. It’s not really hard to see why the cinematics are predominantly Horde-centric… their stories are more interesting. Whether its Old Warrior Saurfang or the Forsaken Warlock who kills grass just by walking on it. Or the Blood Elf choking the life out of that mana wyrm and then raising a fallen Orc warrior scenes later.

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169

dont really think its fair how a huge section of the player base was tossed in a garbage bin for literally nothing

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170

It shouldn’t have to be though. Part of being a designer is making something interesting, even milquetoast things. It really shows just how stagnate their creative team is when they cannot make the Alliance interesting, especially when they have amazonian Elves and pre-corruption demons to utilize.

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171

blue woman bad

purple woman boring

kill purple people

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172

It isn’t inherent to them being Alliance, though. That’s on the writers. They make Alliance characters boring because they’re more interested in writing for Horde characters.

Take any interesting Horde character you can think of.
Okay, now pretend WoW is a fantasy setting with only humans, and that character’s race is now just a human from a different nation.

Off the top of my head, here’s some random things that could add some spice to the Alliance.

  1. Make Anduin conflicted about letting the Void Elves into the fold, or at least let us see that he’s conflicted about it. He seems less enthused about it than the Lightforged, but has otherwise placed an altogether unwarranted amount of trust in them based on Alleria’s vouching.
  2. Make the Lightforged conflicted with the Void Elves, for crying out loud. Form some cracks of division there with more senior Alliance races having to play Nanny to these two at one another’s throats.
  3. Let Tyrande and Maiev do some bad stuff in the name of vengeance. I’d suggest destroying a town with a civilian population but pretty much everything in their reach is a military outpost (i.e. Zoram’gar). This would get Anduin’s feathers ruffled while Tyrande would just point at Teldrassil’s husk and go, “They let this happen. They still support her.”
  4. Dark Irons are more or less getting along with the other two dwarf clans, but let their morals and sensibilities rub Alliance brass the wrong way (such as unleashing magma elementals and corehounds to scorch civvies in Dazar’alor). Instead, we get nothing on that.
  5. Kul Tirans butt heads with Pandaren in who could win a pie-eating contest. /s
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173

Wow.

I mean, I’m no NE fan, or fans of elves in general, but Blizz is doing ya’ll NE fans seriously wrong here. I think I’d rather sit on my neglected content Gobbo than get the attention of Blizzard if this NE dumpsterfire of a story is what that content actually looks like.

You have my condolences.

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174

It’s the same thing it usually is.

TECHNICALLY, the night elves (and worgen) are part of the Horde being weeks from total collapse and losing hard on every front.

So, you know, the night elves are winning. With minimal alliance support. The army and Tyrande show up, and suddenly the Horde’s in trouble and the night elves’ real combatants are taking the field instead of civilians and the noob-sentinel brigade.

BUT THAT’S NOT VERY INTERESTING, SO LET’S FOCUS SOMEWHERE ELSE

And in the meantime, the night elf defeat got a multiweek quest chain and two novellas.

I’ve been saying for a while that night elves are presented as very strong. And on paper, they’re possibly the most formidable playable race. But when we focus on them, it’s predominately on the failures, whereas the victories are behind the scenes and delegated to one or two lines.

…This is just a really, really good example of that.

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175

Physically speaking the two most formidable would be the Orcs and Tauren. If you put all of the Horde and Alliance races naked and locked them into a room, pretty much only the Orcs, Tauren, and Trolls would be walking out of it. The Trolls would only be third because they regenerate.

Night Elves used to be the most magically adept race but between WOTA and the present, they pretty much either threw away or nuked most of their potential. So most of their war ability was based on their talent for guerrilla tactics. The Horde, especially the Orcs pretty much spent Two Wars demolishing the Humans, and the High Elves, by perfecting guerrilla tactics. The fact that the Night Elves hung on as long as they did speaks to their skill, but it was not enough to make up for the difference in raw physical power. The bulk of the power that the Night Elves had after WOTA was sacrificed defeating Archimonde in Hyjal and they’ve never recovered from that loss.

176

I’d ship that.

Edit: I did!

Here’s an excerpt:

…“Stop,” cried Wallurian softly, pushing Grandblade gently but firmly away. “You know that this is…forbidden. You believe in an Alliance that includes Night Elves, Worgen, cuddly bear-people, and glowing space aliens. I believe in the old ways, the just ways, the ways only known to regular humans, and short hairy humans, and even shorter, smarter humans. What is between us…what we desire…can never be!” Wallurian cried out in anguish and dropped his helm between his hands, deep sobs wracking his boulder-like shoulders.

“Shhh…shhh…” Grandblade slowly wrapped his pythonesque arms around the other paladin. “You cannot let the past dictate your future. Our future.” He lowered his head towards Wallurian. Their visors met with a soft, seductive “clang” as the metal of their helms gently kissed. “Open your mind to the New Alliance, just as you open your heart to me.”

Wallurion brought his gaze up to meet the eyes of the other knight, which he could just make out from within his helmet. He head told him that this was still wrong…but how could something wrong feel so right? Would the Light let him do something if it was wrong? He was resolved. He placed his gauntlets over Grandblades’. “I cannot fight this any longer. I will trust you.” At his belt, his hammer started to glow…

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177

I’m not talking just one thing, but as a whole.

Here’s the thing.

The way night elves are presented in WoW, they’re usually very good generalists. With occasional awesome powers. They’re not the strongest, or the most magical, or whatever. Buuuuuuut all together, Garrosh’s entire army just goes around the Silverwing Sentinels because they can’t take the lodge.

The entire Horde army, in a sneak attack, can barely match Malfurion, the Darnassus City Guard, and some civilians.

Heck, night elves actually retake Ashenvale WITHOUT the player character post-Cata, since they send us on when the zone is very not secure. And doing ANYTHING in WoW without the player character is a pretty big feat.

Maybe that’s just the guerilla thing, but on the occasions where we see night elves on the front line and they’re not suffering from plot-focus-inspired loss, they’re fairly effective.

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179

Still better than Thrall meets Agraa or even BFA as a whole.

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180

I am authentically and unironically disgusted.

Edit: Not actually, :heart: u

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181

They’re so good the rest of the Alliance threw them away on a suicide mission to get rid of them.

All for an attack they later got cold feet about.

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182

Heh.

I do think one narrative goal was to continue the work of knocking the night elves down to the level of the other playable races, because on paper they’re still widespread and mostly more skilled than the average civilian.

Buuuuut this being WoW, that’s not going to work without killing a few heroes, of which the night elves have a massive amount (especially in the B list category). So honestly, I kind of fear for Shandris.

Edit: But seriously. There’s so many night elves OR they’re so good that some of their combatants can just up and not go to Darkshore. And the night elves still win. The mindset of one of the volunteers for the suicide mission would have been interesting to explore. And yet.

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183

No one better touch the Bebe elf General.

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