Well I have no choice but accept that the writers are a bunch of talentless hacks. Doesn’t mean I can’t rage about that however, or how badly they have written this story so far.
I suspect this is the real answer. It’s eye candy for players and a hopeful distraction for a story they never had a proper ending or conclusion to after they wrote themselves into a no win situation. In other words, it was ultimately pointless yes. It accomplished nothing.
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Except it did not accomplish nothing. The questions in your second post were completely different from the questions in your first post.
I think it sets up the Night Elves to abandon their worthless Goddess quite well.
Not even her supposedly chosen priestess can claim vengeance.
Better to turn to entities that have weight and power…like those that might still lurk in the Emerald Nightmare.
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Alright, what has the Night warrior acomplished during these two years that it has existed? Not “what did we learn during the cinematic”, what has the night warrior actually managed to do, that is of actual substance. Kill mawsworn? Irrelevant, there’s as many as needed. Protect ardenweald? Could have been done by the rest easily with the slightest alteration. Defeat Sylvanas? Absolutely not. So tell me, how exactly has it not been pointless?
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this!
Tyrande specially told that, Blizzard specially highlighted that.
“My life for hers”.
So, Tyrande was planning to die after killing Sylvanas. And in that moment she loses powers. Elune cancels the bargain.
So, its clear that Elune cares! And I’m glad that in the end Tyrande survived and we have evidence that Elune really cares about Night Elves.
I didn’t care if Sylvanas would survive in that case… so did the Elune. =)
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You don’t get to set arbitrary limitations. You don’t get to say “except for A, B, and C”.
Also the story isn’t finished.
I don’t know who on this forum needs to hear this:
TYRANDE IS STILL THE NIGHT WARRIOR AFTER 9.1
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Yes I do, because we’re talking about what the Night warrior acomplished. That is a limiation, but not an arbitrary one. What we learn in the cinematic is completely separate from what Tyrande actaully acomplishes, and if you can’t even see that, then there is little point discussing anything with you.
Doesn’t excuse a thing. What might happen is not as important as what has. Perhaps Tyrande will curbstomp Sylvanas later in the expac, but that isn’t something we know will ever happen. What we do know, is that so far the Night warrior has acomplished nothing.
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Honestly it accomplished Sylvanas being rattled for a few seconds, and not much else, but the fight was still more than I expected. The time to truly showcase the Night Warrior’s power was in BfA, but they didn’t do that. They seem to be, as I think they’ve been for a while, working off the chunks and pieces of a story they’d originally expected to loosely happen over a longer period and with a larger budget.
A recent interview seems to indicate they’ve been sort of flying by the seat of their pants with the story, so they can ‘adapt to feedback’ but I don’t think that’s entirely true. I think that they’ve had to sort of be haphazard with it because they had what they assumed they’d be working with taken away, at least since BfA. And whichever writer seems to have a thing against night elves was able to run wild (I’m mostly kidding with that. Mostly).
The result is that a cutscene that was supposed to be the waning of the Night Warrior power originally instead became the only real showcase of that power. The actual moment that was meant to be Tyrande showing what a scary magic it is was meant for BfA, and was cut for the sake of Azshara and N’zoth.
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I could almost believe this take as well, if it wasn’t for the devs claiming Tyrande got her revenge in 8.1 and her story was over. Only to immediately back track and suddenly claim there is more when they got huge amounts of backlash from that.
I 100% honestly think they thought 8.1 was good enough and when their customers pointed out, en mass, how it obviously wasn’t, they then scrambled to give her some filler nothing story, just to give the players something and string them along, while not actually changing any of the plans for the story they had. Which is why the Night Warrior has had literal 0 consequence on the story as a whole.
It’s that bad.
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That is a sticking point, I’ll admit. Kind of goes back to my almost not quite a joke about whichever writer hates night elves running wild. Of course, I’ve talked about night elves and their state in the story ad nauseum over the last 2+ years, and I feel it’s a mix of apathy towards them as a race (draenei get it too, just not as bad) and my theory of Legion and BfA originally being intended as four expansions, not two.
It’s 2am here so I’m going to sleep, but I’ll part by saying that I’ve felt for a while that the writers have such a detachment from the players when it comes to the story, especially night elves, is because they see it through the lens of the big original story they had, as opposed to the execution we got, and are getting.
Well it could’ve shown Tyrande perhaps said something Elune didn’t like.
Perhaps
Arguably the night warrior sotry is the best representation of blizz writing. The thing that makes jokes about small indie company rather bland, because small indie games, like Hades, for example, have way better stories to say the least (and it’s not even a RPG).
It had so much potential on Azeroth and beyond, tied to one of biggest mysteries, and with the character motivation (Tyrande) simple, yet easy to empathize one. And here we are.
No conistency. No resolution (and the Danuser did point out that 9.1 is the resolution for Tyrande’s power). The veil of mystery, all the hyping up - it was spent on this. [I guess now they need to hurry up and present the mysterious 1st Ones to occupy the vacant speculation spot now]
IMO it’s better to do nothing than do like that.
gl hf
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OP, have you considered that sense of futility is intentional?
That they want to show you that no matter what power is on our side or how we rally together that’s not going to stop Zovaal from getting what he wants?
That now is not the time in the story for resolutions (as far as Blizz is concerned) but a further ramping up of tension?
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I think the reason the Night Warrior power waned is because Elune took it away on account of how deadly it is to the wielder - we know that eventually each Night Warrior is consumed by Elune’s power and dies unless its removed. Before Tyrande flies after Sylvanas like a meteor, she says “my life for hers”, as if saying to Elune she’s okay with dying as long as Sylvanas dies too.
I think Elune withdrew the power because she didn’t want Tyrande to die - faced with a “punish the innocent to get the guilty too” or “spare the guilty to save the innocent scenario”, Elune chose the latter.
Otherwise, the only point I think that cinematic had was to reveal Nathanos’ fate to Sylvanas.
Of course that is what Blizzard intends, that much is obvious. Is it a good call, when everyone has waited two damned years for the Night warrior to do anything of value? Absolutely not. This was the second worst thing that could have happened, shortly before Sylvanas killing Tyrande and flying away unscathed. You can only build something up for so long before people demand a resolution, and they have built it for too long.
Well that’s not the resolution Blizzard wants. It’s a bad call for you but it might be a good call for whatever larger story they are wanting to tell. Not everyone wants Sylvanas to get snuffed out in a cutscene by Tyrande - and it seems like that was never the story they wanted to tell with the Night Warrior anyways.
What story it is that they want to tell remains to be seen, and I think that’s the larger problem over the two years of build up - it’s the constant bait and switch that’s the problem. It’s a shell game where the players know that the game is rigged, but they keep playing anyways - picking the ‘wrong’ shell over and over. Making narrative promises that have little to no pay off is a problem the writers have had for years, it’s not a new phenomenon. At this point you kind of have to accept the shell game doesn’t end unless you walk away.
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The why grant her the Team Rocket levels of power not 5 seconds before? Why not just let Sylvanas continue to smoke away? How does that make any sense? Oh you want the power to kill yourself and her? Sure here it is. WAIT you are actually going to kill yourself and her? I cant have that lemme take it back. All in the span of 30 seconds.
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Darkshore must not account for much, then.
