I consider that its only saving grace. Just imagine if every new generation of players was “radicalized” by the “Save everyone from Teldrassil oh hahahaha you can’t” quest. The salt would NEVER end.
I have a feeling future updates will be a few zones per expansion (like what they’ve done with Silithus, for example), rather than a whole-world revamp all at once.
I’m just trying to figure out what the thought process was.
Like, yeah it would be amazing if you nuke entire zones, kill off major characters, and delete Night Elves.
Was there even the slightest consideration for what happens next? With how grandiose this was, the burning of Teldrassil, the Jailer and his 500 IQ 12D chess, the game should have ended. No more expansions, servers go offline because they destroyed not just the world, not just the universe, not even the multiverse. But the quantum fabric of reality itself. The end to all endings.
It’s so goofy.
They didn’t kill any major night elf characters.
Night elves weren’t deleted. And not a single major character died. Lordaeron, Dalaran and Quel’thalas had it much worse when Arthas sacked them.
Missing the point.
I’m not ranking them on a tier list.
There’s death in Warcraft all the time. The problem is how that death is depicted.
Delaryn was created to die. None of the actual major night elf plebs are gone.
Jarod
Tyrande
Malfurion
Mordent
Shandris
Maiev
Salts already never ending. Alliance gets to replay defeating the horde in sum totality forever. I should be able to clown nelves forever.
Wow, I did not expect so many responses. I will try to read through them all at some point to get a full capture of everyone’s perspective, but in the meantime, something happened which I thought was really interesting. (almost like a miracle I was alluding to)
The fact is, I thought I had covered all of BFA and SL lore regarding Sylvannas, but I guess I missed some stuff, I still don’t know where it came from but I never played through the entirety of SL so that’s maybe why I missed it.
Anyway, there were two justifications given for Sylvannas’s actions, one, that she needed to kill hope for the Alliance and Saurfang was to do that by getting rid of Malfurion. I just don’t buy this at all, that seems patently absurd, demoralizing is one thing, outright burning the whole tree full of non-combatant night elves wasn’t demoralizing, it was galvanizing, as proved by the battle for darkshore right after. Even in the speech with the elf she talks about grieving for Sylvannas, and whatever reaction can be gleaned from the burning of Teldrassil is mostly that of shock, maybe, but not a loss of hope.
The second justification, was that Sylvannas started the 4th war to get as many people dead as possible to feed the maw to empower her and the jailer. Presumably then that so both could help re-calibrate or re-fix death itself and dramatically change the the nature of Death in Azeroth (a presumably noble goal)
Ok whoa, still don’t know where that was, I just found it on fandom, but to me, that means Sylvannas falls into the classic Horde trope of trusting the wrong guy that was selling snake oil, and arguably reorients her character to make sense. They could of gone further in the end scene where the arbiter offers the idea that she was being controlled, but even with her being trenchant and saying her actions were her own, then maybe this is Sylvannas pulling another Sylvannas stunt, and just being really reckless and crazy.
There are a number of problems that come to mind, one which the youtuber Lorerunner brought up in general which is Warcraft is getting so flimsy with death it’s losing it’s inherent meaning. The second is that I don’t understand the details of Sylvannas’s solve death plan with the Jailer (the original one, where they work together), like, even in the best case scenario, giving Sylvannas the full benefit of the doubt, those Night Elves might have theoretically been the unwilling subjects of a mass experiment to sort of “save Azeroth from the machine of death” but like helping them find their way doesn’t bring them back to life, they’re still dead. So it was still, intensely reckless and easily morally questionable in my view, but at least it became deeply problematic and not as I was saying in my original post “Hatred: the RPG”
I still stand by the idea that it was game breaking, in a way, because without Shadowlands, how on EARTH could anyone find a way to play Horde in BFA? Or I would say even Alliance, given how much they helped Sylvannas through the years (Siege of Orgrimmar, whatever) It just seems impossible, but with SL, BFA is actually a good expansion. I mean Jaina with her “Is he the bomb now!” line gosh that was the perfect recalibration of Jaina’s character to modern times given all that she’s experienced she’s had to change. The Horde questing is par for the roll through and champion the local people course and doesn’t have any glaring issues.
So what can I say, I guess maybe Warcraft can survive, although some people might think it shouldn’t, this whole, “But I was trying to save us all from death” I guess has some legs, even though the means were borderline insanity.
It’s weird, I had given up and was installing Everquest 2 and was pondering if Everquest Next was really going to be a thing, and then I found out it almost could of been but now both the lead writer and one of the main producers at Daybreak are both at Blizzard doing writing and producing for WoW, well if anyone can make a good MMORPG it’s probably them because I think the Everquest franchise is pretty top tier.
So yeah a lot happened in 72 hours, but wow, they really should be more careful with how they throw things at the players because the War of the Thorns, with no additions, from Shadowlands or elsewhere, just was virtually unprecedented in Warcraft lore.
Not reading through the whole thread.
The situation with War of Thorns really comes down to the game being an MMORPG, and there being a “loser” within the playerbase. Nobody wants to play the loser, and the narrative, no matter how hard they’ve tried to “fix” things, has pretty much been exhausting to the group of players that had to play through a genocide.
The “mirror” for the whole situation was evacuated, and while there’s an argument they didn’t get much focus, that was a plus in that situation, and feels somewhat intentional as to not infuriate that playerbase to the level the Night Elf playerbase did.
You do not take things away from players and make them feel like they lost on the character selection screen. At no point in the game’s history, win or lose, was somethign done this drastic, and while it’s a success because people are still talking about it, how many people quit the game permanently over it? How much did an entire faction’s morale get destroyed? (…and then add the BFA AR’s ontop of it all.)
We’ve been waiting half a decade for any sort of boon from all this, and that’s just far too long to wait. Any attempt to make good out of the situation has fallen flat, with the most notable being Tyrande losing her powers in the middle of the fight with Sylv, and then telling people playing an IP based around war “na, it’s fine now, renewal lol” when the initial conflict that started this was lopsided in the first place.
And has been lopsided for a while; Cataclysm leveling questing in particular was atrocious for Night Elves - which is a new player’s experience with the race, which is a poster race for the game at that.
I expect bad things to happen in an IP based around war. I expect tragedy in RPGs in general, but this whole situation was - and still is - being handled awfully. I half expect the Horde to be right there aiding with whatever resolution there is, when as somebody who dabbles with Night Elves, I want them nowhere near my questing experience, and don’t want peace in regards to all that.
Dazar’alor was handled much better than Teldrassil, and should be the standard for how city attacks and invasions work in an MMO in the future. (…besides the ??? writing of the assaulter just leaving, they just need to be driven out.) Especially if they’re going to be tackling Gilneas (or, social media insanity be danged, Quel’thalas.) at some point, that vibe works so much better. There’s tragedy and conflict, both sides get their emotions from it, but nobody actually loses out in the end entirely. (Hell, the Horde got one of their most popular race quests out of it. Night Elves? Well, Nightborne and Suramar went Horde right before the burning.)
I love faction conflicts and the tensions and scuffles between the Horde and Alliance.
War of Thorns did permanant damage to the conflict.
Those of us into it were looking for another Landfall style conflict. 5.1 was literally perfect. BFA may have actually been fine if they didn’t do the capital assaults to the level they did, but they did, and I worry about this game’s identity and future because of it.
You don’t “clown” them. What glory is there in slaughtering enemies who just react with pathos?
Though this is comparatively laconic.
I find that the game has indelibly suffered. Especially the roleplaying Nelf population. After there were no conclusion to BfA, a good chunk of them disappeared from being roleplayed around Stormwind and the like.
The fact that the Horde has committed something that every single one of it’s races have suffered, is kind of asinine and insane respectively. The Horde’s absolutely, utterly broken on it’s way forward; there can never be any peace or any tangential peace between factions. Why would the Alliance trust the Horde after what they’ve did? Why would the Alliance even allow the faction of the Horde to exist uncontested?
It just makes the ‘armistice’ and ‘quasi-state of peace’ more lackluster and overall inane.
I wish the War of Thorn’s ending was done differently.
Percent - This 
Like there was heaps of fan-fiction on the forums that were loads better than what we got (Same for Shadowlands too, lol) – which was just … depressing. 
Ever since they teased it at Blizzcon I kept on wondering, what if it had been Malfurion? That he chose to evacuate everyone (obviously) before sacrificing the tree, all to deny Sylvanas her victory?
Then we journey with Malfurion in the Shadowlands where he journeys to Revendreth to learn how to forgive himself of the sacrifice, he goes to Bastion to learn how to move on, meets up with the Winter Queen for how to heal the damage, and then pay a visit to Maldraxxus to better understand what it means to fight for what matters.
all of this would be under the guise of Malfurion making a controversial choice, but doing so in a significantly less destructive way. Thinking back to MoP-era story telling like how Ji and Ayssa disagreed for how they can heal the turtle, but in the end they work together to fix the damage they caused.
I fully admit the scenario above is probably not that good of an idea let’s be real here. but, I think I would have enjoyed that more than the decision to turn Sylvanas into the sacrificial lamb, doing something unforgivable, but then forgiving her later anyway.
That would’ve still been way better than what we actually got.
Especially how they made a ‘Spiritual Plane / Symbolic Land of Eternity’ extremely entropic, robotic and just … ugh, I can’t even begin to emphasise how much of a disappointment it actually was.
Ah yes the 3D Printed Gods.
If they went ahead and turned Elune into a robot I probably would have unsubbed. Best not to dwell on that too long, we dodged a bullet there
3D printed afterlives too … Which is just … Unimaginatively boring & mundane 
“The collective will of the first spirits pooled together with the cosmos of this reality and these realms were created in their wake. Each providing a purpose to troubled souls, each providing a purpose to the cycle of death, protection of souls and continuity of their stay – Or in rare cases, the nurturing of their return. Those who return after being here once are often … Traumatised. You will be speaking to a few of them, to assist in discovering what burdens the Shadowlands.”
Then introduce a few known characters like Ursoc in Ardenweald, Zeliek the former horseman in Bastion (Having his memories mysteriously reappear, despite shedding them - Becoming an enigma, and an exception), and in Revendreth perhaps have a character who’s shrouded in mystery before revealing it’s Sindragosa … For meme purposes, have Maldraxxus have quite a few eligible for such positions 
lol
At the very least after the Jailor defeat cinematic, I was hoping they’d reveal that the ‘Eternals’ despite their forms being robotic – The essence of who they are, and their souls were entirely different beings handpicked by ‘The First Ones’ after heroic deeds in their life and infused into the vessels to be caretakers of the realms, as a similar dynamic to that of the aspects being granted an audience with the Titans via the keepers & elevated.
The eternal ones should’ve been their realms.
This is a take I like to see. Acknowledging that there are different issues that need to be addressed for different parties. I’ve long been a champion of this. If you have one side making baby stew out of the other side’s babies? Then you need to address both the fact that you’re taking away someone’s babies to one group, and you’re forcing other people to make baby stew.
While I get where you’re coming from? I have to disagree with this particular take. The issue here is that without this victory, it is openly saying that night elves are completely useless.
Night elves are supposed to be good at fighting, and they’re supposed to be unmatched in the forest. They borrow heavily from D&D’s wood elves (and a fair bit from drow worshippers of Eilistraee).
This is…literally a case of dark wood elves fighting in the dark in the woods - in their woods - that they have lived and fought in for thousands of years WHILE LITERALLY HAVING DIVINE INTERVENTION ON THEIR SIDE.
If they can’t have a clear cut victory with all of the things they are supposed to be good at (according to the people who wrote the game), with the actual hand of God helping them, then…what’s the point?
This isn’t about the kind of ‘edgy’ content you write when you’re 15, and think ‘man, I’m so hardcore, with civilians being killed’. That’s the kind of thing you can address. Saurfang, back in Wrath, had a powerful moment when he expressed remorse about…well, there’s a reason he doesn’t eat pork. That resonated with a lot of the playerbase.
It was grim business, but it showed some actual consequence and was a place to move forward from. To create a story, that explained one reason Saurfang - and the other orcs, including the playerbase - would have stood up to Garrosh.
The draenei - victims of genocide at the hands of the orcs - could at least acknowledge that this was some way the orcs were addressing what they had done under the influence of demon blood. “It was horrible, but they were corrupted, and they seem to at least recognize that was wrong.”
That’s the kind of gray that I find narratively satisfying, because it’s complex and layered.
This?
This is literally “Your elves can’t do the only thing we say they can really do, and now they’re all going to die”.
Yes, there absolutely needs to be a case where there is a clear cut, decisive victory for night elf players in their forests with their forces against an enemy encroaching on their territory.
I suppose…I agree with what you say about no way to make both sides happy. But I don’t think this is so much about making both sides happy as it is redressing a grievance. That whole event invalidated everything we as players have been told about the kaldorei’s strengths while still making them the punching bag of whatever event needs to happen.
And to top it off, people are acting like Tyrande is being overly emotional because she’s still bitter about that whole “genocide” thing. Dames, right? Always letting some little thing like the loss of their people and their home ruin a good thing.
I apologize if it seems I am upset with you, as I am not. I meant it when I said I found your perspective on this reasonable, and can see where you’re coming from. Both sides have been put in a bad situation, but I would argue that one side has been put through an objectively worse one. That’s why I agree with Aviala about the need for some kind of victory…especially after the actual writers said there would be something.
If you’re referring to the events during the War of Thorns? That is because Elune was something that had existed and everyone knew about this entire time. There was a history there. I remember one of the first times I went “Whoa, don’t mess with her” was when I first walked up to Tyrande, and she said “The goddess is my shield.”
Elune has a whole history, and we have consistently seen and known about it.
Zooval was someone introduced in an expansion that had not existed for the player base at the time. Meanwhile, there had been no buildup of it before hand. Even something as simple as Malfurion commenting Sylvanas was stronger then he remembered after he fought her the first time, or little hints that Sylvanas was getting stronger peppered throught BFA.
Instead, we get “wow, she had this super secret hidden magic power that was magically hidden from everyone and gives her super powers and she can rival a goddess and she’s a super genius and everyone likes her even my crush who totally doesn’t know what they’re missing and she’s the prettiest girl ever and–”
It’s narratively lazy. It’s more than a bit disrespectful to the people who have invested their time and passion into your project. You might think a different way when you find out that all death knights area actually made an empowered by a giant tomato based sentience that you have never heard, but is able to break the Ebon Blade just by bestowing its blessings upon those people in Karazhan who throw tomatoes at bad performers.
Which will be revealed in World of Warcraft: Sensible Dinner.
I…am not exactly proud at how much I chortled at ‘floaty goth-girls’.
I know actual goths in real life.
I agree with your points. “My life…for hers” had such potential, and was delivered so perfectly, but…right.
Look, you’ve only had that baby for like a couple of weeks. You couldn’t be that attached. Meanwhile, I had a hankerin’ for baby stew.
__
I think we might share a similar quality in that what’s bugging us a lot is trying to understand why. Why. Did. You. Think. This. Would. Work?
What possible–
Co-signed. I agree with your post, just…this stood out.
I literally perked up and said “Holy s—, that would be awesome and in line with something a druid might do.”
Malfurion: I am Malfurion Stormrage, thero’shan of Cenarius. You are an abomination, as much a blight on this land as that filth you spew on the fields. There is a balance to all things in nature. I stopped Archimonde from destroying a World Tree. So it’s time to even the ledger. You want this tree? Take instead our ashes, Banshee!
…
…it would do a better job of explaining how a tree large enough to hold mountains in its branches could somehow be ignited by catapults.
The last few expansions kind of showcased that the Orcs and by extension the Horde doesn’t have any Honor™. It’s just something a group of murderers tell themselves to cope with or something a human boy has to describe for them.
