Though, how would they react if Arator invites his aunt to visit his officially-owned lands, and her childhood home? Or if he invites his cousins, Vereesa’s twins, innocents of her actions, and she comes along as their only living parent and guardian? I could perhaps see Vereesa being just barely tolerated in Windrunner lands only and required to be under heavy guard - as much for her own protection as anything else, seeing as there are a lot of grudges now against her for what she’s done.
Edit (2): I suppose her appearance in Ghostlands for the Amani patch was in Cata and thus after the Purge, so there’s a precedent for her being in Quel’thalas for short stretches if granted permission by Silvermoon authorities (Halduron), though only when there was a pressing enemy for her to fight. Never mind, I somehow confused the Purge being in WotLK-era Dalaran with the Purge happening during WotLK. So Vereesa hasn’t been back to Quel’thalas since then, other than her brief portal hop in the Three Sisters comic(?).
Hm. I wonder if her twins will get any story focus alongside Arator as incorporating half-elves into the elven reunification story, either alongside or in preparation for visiting Avaloren as the nation of all half-elves?
If they want to stay in-line with how she’s been written nearly every time she’s gotten focus outside of the purge, they are 100% using her kids in some way to force the face-turn.
The lazy way would be Alleria harming/abducting them, but that’s way too generic and boring. I think the best way to kick off her face-turn would be to have her kids go to Silvermoon in the prepatch, and have a tour of the rebuilt silvermoon where nothing goes wrong outside of being confronted by an angry, but harmless magister.
Her kids being perfectly fine after touring the homes of the people she’s held such rage for, and her having no answers when they ask her about what really went down in Dalaran could definitely force her to self reflect.
And hell, I just like the idea of her sending the alliance PC with them as a bodyguard out of paranoia,going full mama bear, with nothing happening beyond one brief dialog. It could give the player a preview of the redesigned Silvermoon before it gets broken again, and the Horde version could be also doing the same thing to prevent a diplomatic incident if they’re attacked.
They aren’t even the entire set of Dalaran based high elves either. There’s a bunch of high elf NPCs in Dalaran who are not part of the Silver Covenant.
I don’t know why people cling to the Silver Covenant so hard when it’s literally just a militant group of high elves formed to oppose blood elves. It’s not like it’s some long standing organization with lots of history or anything.
I don’t know where Blizzard is going with high elves or why there are so many high elves in TWW. I hope it doesn’t end up being like MoP again where high elves got more development than the actually playable Alliance races except humans.
That Aethas and Jaina are questing in the same zones, under the same banner, with zero tension or evidence they’ve resolved the quarrel between them - you know, the one that still dominates 80% of MoP discourse - certainly doesn’t fill me with hope.
Maybe the expansion in which Dalaran purged all its Horde members was the wrong one to remix when its imminent destruction is intended to “unite both factions’ players in tragedy.” I wasn’t fond of returning in Legion either, but I’d rather have gone into TWW with those memories fresher in my mind. Alas.
No they don’t. The high elves betrayed Quel’thalas for human apporoval. They have no reason to allow them back after everything they did to harm the blood elves.
That ship sailed when they had one of her victims, who had a friend murdered in front of him by Jaina just to prove a point, out shopping for an apology gift for her.
If Vereesa left Dalaran to go live somewhere, does that mean she’s no longer leader of the Silver Covenant?
I suppose that’s one way to get the elves to reconcile, just ship off the worst high elf to a random undisclosed location and have her no longer in a leadership position.
Working through the Island of Dorn on the beta, and the Earthen are absolutely not what I was expecting, but in a good way.
All around, they seem like a pretty solemn people. Even the commoners, or at least those among the Unbound, are gripped by a firm sense of existentialism in the face of the complete destruction of their people, where “excitement is rare for an Earthen” but even feeling strong emotions runs the risk of causing their cores to run out of power sooner.
All of the Earthen that near their final shutdown experience the effects of dementia, which was frankly a pretty difficult quest chain to work through. Even the Kobolds that are antagonizing the Earthen “gravesites” weren’t played for any kind of laughs.
The writing for the smaller quests feels way different in this expansion compared to Dragonflight. Hopefully the main story quests can keep it up.
There is not one. There is a named ‘representative’ npc that talks to you a moment when you arrive from Dorn, but then they disappear and that’s that.
The Earthen are foremost still loyal to their fellow Earthen and Dornogal’s leadership. Being on either side is a matter of gathering experiences to add to the memory archives that enrich their entire people.
That’s an interesting choice and I wonder if that will just remain or if as the War Within develops, we’ll get the specific factions. Like say the Horde Earthen gathering together and deciding to make a name for themselves, with the Alliance Earthen doing the same.
The drakthyr division is paper thin as it was. It felt like they did not want to divide them but did not have the internal conviction to go full out with it like they did the Earthen.
The Wing Commanders are all friends and seem to have no real desire to fight one another. The division literally came down to Nozdormu saying “you guys go with Wrathion, you guys go with Ebyssian”. There was no deep philosophical division like the Panderan were given.
Faction conflict isn’t War Within’s thing. Notably, I saw the description of the new battleground, and it’s explicitly a conflict between the Earthen, not the Alliance and Horde.
Deephaul Ravine is themed in The Ringing Deeps where the Foreman Uzjax and Architect Ruffious are tasked with collecting as much valuable ore, gems, and crystals for their respective priorities. Ruffious the Unbound Earthen has big plans for the ore and gems found in the Deephaul Ravine, but the Machine Speakers of the Earthenworks are quite possessive of such precious materials. Uzjax and his team plan to secure these materials before Ruffious and his band of misfits get their hands on it.
Even the Dracthyr are sorta grey. We have Azurathel and Cindrethresh, and they moved to Alliance and Horde respectively, but they are still very much allied and hang out together as good friends. Arguably they are just representatives too. The closest to a racial leader for the Dracthyr would prolly be Emberthal, and she is not Horde or Alliance.
Edit: Whoops, sorry Kaileath. Responded soon as I saw the post. Should have actually read the posts below first. Didn’t mean to step on your toes.