I do go for the Southfury in part because it’s not just a river, but a river with a gorge that acts as an impressive geopolitical border - but I also believe that the Horde should have the Stonetalon mountain range, if that helps.
Regarding the fate of the Darkspear - I wouldn’t want you to exhaust yourself screaming. You’re absolutely right and they deserve far better than what they’ve been given.
Nothing bad is going to happen to Tyrande.
I’m not a gambler and I’d stake a bet on that.
She’s going through Grom’s story, beat for beat, but rather than having it explode in her face at the end, it’ll straighten itself.
I strongly doubt she’ll even become a raid boss.
I’m noticing this - this sort of dismissive attitude towards concerns about the worst case scenario coming true. To that I have to mention that Night Elf fans have been conditioned to expect the worst for a decade now.
I made this post in an attempt at replying to that kind of cynicism regarding Tyrande, but I would ask that you respect where it comes from.
Although my red avatar seems pretty convincing that I have a deadshot bias and nothing will dissuade me from it, I actually care an extreme amount of the Night Elf Story.
Which is why you can imagine why I have such an inflammatory, venom-in-my-veins response to anything BFA related, when it destroyed both of my favorite aspects in the story in a double whammy. They beat Sylvanas with the villain bat to jump her up from pragmatic sociopath who did bad things for the right reasons and turned her into something unrecognizable, then dumpstered second fiddle Nathanos, who, while at times a loathsome mule, was still important for the Forsaken story, when they hadn’t made any substitutes or other characters to explore the story. So now, the Forsaken story is getting two new characters - one who’s life more or less represents the Forsaken story but by no means is actually Forsaken after literally leaving them after character creation (Lilian Voss) and a character who shouldn’t be there at all (Calia Menethil). And with that same bat, they lame-tailed the Night Elves and even had the gall to call it a genocide in their book.
But, with my fingers in so many parts of WoW’s pie, and a lot of stakes and hopes in everything not being a miserable cesspit, I can tell you with where I stand- nothing is going to happen to Tyrande. I am confident based off of these stakes.
1: Think of the message that would send. “Genocide is wrong but trying to even the odds is also wrong?”. At best it might say “Hatred is a self-destructive, endless cycle.” or “Be mindful of short term gain for long term consequences.” but the latter two can end without so much as a raid boss.
2: The community would go nuclear. I mean seriously. The noise WOT generated drew news articles outside of the WoW bubble and sparked criticisms from otherwise normally quiet selection of people, including Red Shirt Guy, who takes any sort of criticism towards Blizzard as unfair and toxic.
Context is important here, because when the same noise was made about them taking the Horde story for a joyride and making them commit wanton war crimes, it was met with deafening silence. No effort, whatsoever, except for Brennadam, who was going to revert the war crimes and make it a strategic target, but, when the expansion went live, they just made it unabashedly evil again.
They cared enough to try and patch the problem (and still came up short), but, they do really care about the Night Elf story, they will nurse it and Tyrande, being the center piece of the Night Elf story, will not catch mud in her face whilst they’re walking on eggshells.
I’m not scared about it. I usually have an axe to grind about these things and will be quick to jump to “are you about to screw me over again?” but, really, I’m not worried, because it seems the safe corporate option to not endanger anything that makes money.
Alternatively, if Endscrivener isn’t a familiar name to anyone on Moon Guard, I used to go by Havelera and still go as Bansheeborn. They’re not just alts on hand. I’d go as far to say that I played them more than Gladwell for much of WOD and Legion. (You might remember me from such guilds as Dor Serrar, Thera na Shalla and, before I put more attention on Gladwell, The Umbral Glaive, that petered out somewhere before Legion ended.)
If that commitment doesn’t convince anyone, I’ve nothing else to prove that I have a horse in this race, and am not worried in the slightest that they’re going to do Tyrande dirty.
I was totally afraid for Sylvanas, given that Kosak loved her as a character and during his stay he trashed Garrosh, which could’ve feasibly started an office dispute where Afrasiabi destroys Sylvanas’ character back as petty retribution, but, that’s come to pass and now I don’t care anymore, because nothing they can do would fix the damage done to Sylvanas.
To those of you saying Tyrande isn’t going to die:
Her story arc is nearly over. This is the high point of her character arc. After this, they don’t really have anything to explore with Tyrande, and they have already been grooming Shandris to take over.
Her voice actor is old and likely about to retire from the work.
There is no moral compulsion for them to keep her alive in response to Teldrassil, Blizzard doesn’t care about it. Even if you think there is, they could easily give her a heroic sacrifice to somehow save her people.
They seriously struggle to write Tyrande and have no clue how to fit her into the same faction as Anduin and his bootlickers in a manner that keeps the Alliance intact.
They cannot write for multiple characters at a time for a race, and offing her is a practical solution.
I can absolutely see where you’re coming from and with that context to work with I’d definitely feel some concern, but, given that they wrapped up Velen’s story without killing him off, I genuinely think they’ll do the same for Tyrande.
I do think there is a moral angle to consider, though. While Metzen might have had an eye for the in-between and could differentiate pragmatism from evil, the current team has a serious stripe for Good vs Evil and doesn’t know how to write anything as a born product of necessity. I don’t think they’d ever try to explore Tyrande as an evil character, because to imply fault for her grievances would be extremely weird and could even be considered victim blaming.
More likely, she will complete her current arc and if they wanted to retire Tyrande as a character, it’s as easy as putting her on the back burner and putting another character on the fore.
Maybe my cynicism is extreme and I can only see what would be a safe, corporate decision and not a risky decision that could put their franchise in jeopardy again, but, I genuinely could not envision it from a soulless corporation.
It’s the classic I want my NE power fantasy and damn how everyone else feels and blizzard needs to cater to only NE fans
Because you know…no one else has been done dirty by blizzards terrible writing decisions. Some races have legit been neglected since Vanilla(looking at you gnomes and dwarves)
I could be massively misremembering a quote but in an interview, didn’t Blizzard pitch the idea about retiring older characters without necessarily killing them off anymore?
Really showing that you’re not even reading Kyalin’s posts and just hunting for affirmations of your own bias.
If you were reading them you’d see that she has been advocating that both sides get what they need to enjoy the game again.
But instead it’s just more senseless baseless insults.
Having one person single handily beat up on the horde, is not going to get horde players to enjoy the game. After they just got the snot kicked out of them in BfA. Sorry no one wants to deal with your guys power fantasy.
My power fantasy is being called out for the baseless BS that it is and I don’t like it is all you just alluded to.
Gods if only.
I still want a wow where we have actual characters and not mouth pieces for entire races.
That would be nice. Most races, like the humans, have so much screen time, yet we know virtually nothing about the various cultures that make up humanity in this setting. Goes for a lot races and characters, most are blank states that you can replace with Generic character #39383 and nobody would blink an eye
I get OP’s point, but I genuinely don’t understand where is this “powerful horde” they’re supposedly seeing on the screen.
If you can find it, let us know okay? 
It’s right there in WoT. You didn’t enjoy it and that’s fair. But it still exists.
Can you give an example of what feels like a powerful horde moment?
Looks at the WoT and how the majority of the Horde were stalled by mere civilians and than proceeded to get embarrassed the rest of the expac
Hmm…someone didn’t play the same game as the rest of us.
All the official art the Horde conquering Darkshore and standing before their next target for starters. An arrow riddled night elf slumped over in the corner.
The entire event itself up until they revealed that the big mystery of who burned it was Sylvanas and made her as evil as possible while doing it.
I genuinely don’t understand. Maybe I’m just putting value on different things.
Most of flashy “screentime” moments were of Saurfang wanting to die because the horde sucks so much. Brennadam wasn’t even present in Horde questing.