The Heritage Storyline didn’t really try to do anything. On one hand, that is less offensive than butchering NE lore again (which it kinda still did in some ways but not that overtly). But on the other hand, it is extremely frustrating because Heritage questlines are the only chances in modern WoW for a race to get a story just about it’s own developments and culture and allow those things to be explored. One of the biggest hurdles with Kaldorei lore is that it’s so inaccessible due to how spread it is among so many different sources. Warcraft 3, WoW, Comics, Books and even more platforms, to a greater extent than some of the other races due to the most defining events in their cultural history being further back than the recorded history of multiple other races.
The only real cultural exploration was in acknowledging the long-established lore that facial markings are given in a ceremony. The only other things that stood out was acknowledging (and promptly forgetting later) that the Wardens are part of the Watchers, and the organization isn’t called ‘the Wardens.’
Lysander isn’t a terrible concept. Just an incredibly lazy execution. Fledgling Kaldorei coming of age is a good prompt to show their race moving on and passing duties down. The problem is that his character, despite talking about not being defined by tragedies in an attempt to live up to the oft repeated statement that NEs arent defined by losing in itself, is that he is basically solely defined by tragedies throughout the entire story. He’s QQing for almost the entire questline. This would be fine on it’s own, especially for a person who could -only- be 20 years old at most due to when he was born. But this isn’t contradicted by any other Kaldorei whose more reflective of their mindset being there.
There simply wasn’t a meaningful exploration of their culture, or really a resolution to anything in their history. They don’t make the Sentinels or the Wardens look at competent. It is just another ‘everyone is dying, come in and save the day too late’ tragedy.
From what i hear, the Forsaken one likewise has a similar issue with feeling too much like another ‘focus on antagonist or threat of the week’ story than a ‘focus on exploring their culture’ storyline, like Orcs got in .5. Which feels like the complete WRONG direction to take the heritage storylines.
15 Likes
I like how it’s happening in Felwood so Blizz can pretend the green elephant isn’t in the room at all and totally didn’t make a mess out of every other night elf zone.
13 Likes
It being in Kalimdor was great, but it’s not a high bar given the questline had to be available for lower levels than DF… but no exploration of culture at all despite being in Kalimdor is honestly insane.
8 Likes
I thought the quest was overall completely underwhelming.
The charitable portion of me assumes that it was so simplistic and, frankly bad, because they have other Night elf content upcoming. However the realistic part of me that has played the game for the past 17 years knows that it is out of negligence at best and petty spite at worst.
The difference between the Undead heritage and the Night elf one is pretty staggering. I could feel there was an effort to give Forsaken fans what they want while skirting around Sylvanas. There is more ‘cool moments’ in the Forsaken one than the Nelf one. With the Nelf one being that men can have facial tattoos now and some SoCal pablum that feels wooden.
No exploration about the Night elven culture, no information about how Night elves are doing in general and what direction they’re going in. Their lands are in ruins, their culture is a husk. But men can get face tattoos now.
Overall I would rate it a 3/10. Stop making Night elf content. It’s embarrassing.
15 Likes
OF course, Alliance gets the underwhelming quest chain while the passion is sent to the horde stuff.
6 Likes
I have no idea what you’re talking about w/r/t the Forsaken line. Some of the dialogue is pretty good, I guess, but literally nothing happens. The Scarlets pop up for the hundredth time and they get put down for the hundredth time. That’s it.
This is what most Heritage quests are. A pretty boring sequence of events related to the home zone, culminating in some okay-ish armor. The Orc quest was the only one that actually feels like it means anything.
4 Likes
I’m legitimately surprised they didn’t bring up Teldrassil every few minutes. Good job! Guess they are finally understanding constant reminders of the worst expansions in game history is not good.
I like the questline simply because the goddess of pain Maiev is in it. Best girl, always.
4 Likes
The nelf quest is so underwhelmingly and straight up BAD
Regardless of your thoughts on the quest quality itself, at least the forsaken one had more to it; a big scarlet army laying siege to the back of Lordaeron city, multiple cutscenes. A stealth mission to infiltrate the island followed by another cutscene and a climactic battle. Afterwards you then track down the Scarlet leader for a final boss fight confrontation. You return to undercity with a big speech, fanfare, tons of old and fan fav forsaken NPCs making a reappearance and some speeches from notable characters.
Nelf quest is you, Maeiv and two random new nelf character go to felwood. You kill a handful of Satyr, you go into the barrow, destroy 6 braziers, destroy 4 portals. Kill a generic dreadlord. Then Maeiv then tells a guy he can get face tattoos and then you just port back to Stormwind.
One of the biggest disappointments in recent times for sure
18 Likes
I actually… kind of enjoyed it. As a former night elf main and still an enthusiast, it was nice to track through a barrow den, beating the snot out of demons and restoring life to the forest without it being a complete angst train (though Bliz couldn’t resist some MUH TRAGEDY, as usual).
Seeing Maiev was nice, and it’s cool that the dialogue is different depending on your Felwood experience or lack thereof.
My big objection remains that it would be incredibly great to see the night elf perspective on death knights (dark rangers) and demon hunters, and this felt like yet another opportunity to get a few lines on that that slid completely past.
Oh well. I enjoyed doing night elf stuff. The armor is… Uh… one color that matches almost nothing… And it’s a bit annoying that the glaives are only one handed swords, which means a lot of my night elves can’t use them thanks to their classes. But at least it wasn’t another wallow in pathos, and it was on Kalimdor, and dadgumit, at this point, that’s pretty good for Blizzard on night elves.
5 Likes
I thought it was nice, but yeah compared to the other heritage quests its kind of just bland
9 Likes
The set itself is pretty nice, the warglavies are just reused BFA PvP ones, if I’m not mistaken, so there wasn’t a lot of excitement there.
The quest to me felt pretty shallow given the circumstances revolving around the burning of Teldrassil, Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, and whatever becomes of this new World Tree.
The pieces were there to create something great, but it ended up feeling just like any other Felwood quest revolving that cave: go kill demons–leave.
The heritage of the Night Elves didn’t feel respected as the outcome was “Times change, so must we…” and it just kindof left it there. We don’t care (or know, lol) what happened in the past, things will be whatever we want from here on out. At least that was the impression I got.
5 Likes
As long as it’s an improvement over. "You showed up name we’re proud of you, here’s your armor. – Complete Quest
The Human and Orc heritage quests were really good. The Forsaken wasn’t as good as the former two, but it wasn’t as bad as the Night elf one was.
Forsaken got to be Forsaken. You blight stuff, you see a mass of zombies walking across the lake to Fenris and waylaying the Scarlets. It feels cool. It makes you think “Forsaken are pretty cool”. Night elves got some new-age “We need to change our old society” shpiel so men can have face tattoos now. Because that’s what’s important while Teldrassil remains a smoldering ruin, Darkshore a polluted dump, and Ashenvale a contested warzone. “We don’t hate mages anymore :)” a plotline that was resolved in Cataclysm. Give me a break.
6 Likes
To be honest, I would’ve preferred this. I’m actually more mad that they tried and failed what should’ve been such an easy win. I would say “We all love you CHAMPEEON here’s your armor” would’ve been an improvement over Maeiv points to a nearby felflame brazier for 10 minutes.
3 Likes
which is wierd because we’ve seen men with face tattoos since WC3.
15 Likes
I’m just glad it wasn’t the hand-wringing festival I was honestly expecting.
2 Likes
I really don’t give Blizzard credit when they set the bar for themselves on Orc and Human heritage armor.
Just because a thousand Night elves didn’t die isn’t enough for me to give them a little poorly drawn golden star with “there was an attempt” written on it. I’m not giving them bonus points for doing the bare minimum.
They just really do not know what Night elf fans want, because they don’t care. They don’t like Night elves. They don’t want them. They probably hate their fans, and I’m certain that quite a few fans have done their share of harassing developers so it may not be entirely without merit in some instances.
But they really looked at the absolute tatters that is the Nelf fandom, after Platinum WoW made a video that has almost a million views (which is insane for Warcraft content in this day and age) about how embarrassing it is being a Night elf these days and thought “Men being able to have face tattoos and being able to be Sentinels. That’s what will get them excited”.
Males were already in the Night elf military. They died in droves in Darkshore and Nazmir. Night elves already got over hating mages. That is a several decades old plotpoint that Night elf players do not care about anymore.
It’s so woefully out of touch, that I would’ve preferred nothing.
11 Likes
Like I said, kicking in some demonic teeth was great, and so was getting lost in a barrow like old times. I enjoyed the background and yes, it’s terrible that Maeiv still uses blood elf animations with that hip thrust and whatnot. But it at least felt a little better to my salty old heart than a lot of the night elf stuff has lately.
I mean, it was nice to be the vigilant force in the forest instead of just stoically suffering.
But I am very salty about the weapons, if I’m honest. And yeah, tattoos were weird when Malfurion has had them for… forever? But at least they’re trying to put some lore on the customizations.
1 Like
Night Elf story was wack. I felt the personal catharsis the writer was trying to accomplish with whatever that was…
Goodness
*The armor looks pretty good though.
I would not say it was BAD, it didn’t go way into left field and have us off in Ardenweald or some such. I have a suspicion they dodged some topics because they are tied to the new world tree so they are kinda 10.2 material.
It make sense to me if they did another kaldorei specific plot line and gave us the blue coloration of the heritage armor when Amirdrassil arrives and becomes a new Kaldorei home.
1 Like