Why don't Tauren join the Alliance?

Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord · September 8, 2020, 4:31pm

Akiyass:

Dreadmoore:

but the person you’re arguing with won’t debate with you honestly.

Well, your idea of “debating honestly” is just taking everything you say for face value, and not denying a single claim. Which, at that point, it’s not a debate. It’s just you complaining about people not seeing things the way you see them.

…I haven’t denied everything. We have found common ground that Blizzard has a human bias. We disagree on the reasons why that bias is in place. We also disagree on the role Night Elves play in that bias.

Tamanii:

I’ve listed examples . I’ve actually posted links. Images. References to pages in Chronicle.

Hey, you’re repeating yourself again, lovely. I guess I will repeat myself too. None of what you have shared actually proves what you say it proves.

I have refuted it at every turn.

Mine full of references and links and explanations. Yours consisting largely of out of context quotes and snippy one liners and lacking in any references. You can barely even properly quote the people you directly reply to.

There is no actually engaging in an honest debate with you, as has already been pointed out by several posters in this thread. Anyone can look at our post histories. And the more we go back and forth, the more people will see it manifested here.

Tamanii:

I provide them for others.

Sure, Horde players who want to believe your bias perspective. You don’t need to convince them. They already want to believe you. Objective people are just going to see you repeat your failed arguments over and over again.

Why would I need to provide references to try and convince people who already agree with me? I do it for the benefit of those who don’t.

Tamanii:

when Cairne heard that Garrosh had done some even more terrible stuff to Night Elves (which turned out to be people even more evil) he challenged him for Warchief.

It wasn’t just to Night Elves. It was a peace summit between Tauren and Night Elves. It is just that Night Elves were killed, and every Tauren made it out okay, save for Hamuul Runetotem, who took an arrow to the back.

So again, your claim this is somehow Night Elf favoritism is baseless. It is just the typical slaughter of Night Elves for the sake of Horde story telling. This event did nothing for the story of Night Elves.

Tamanii:

Blizzard could stand not to use Night Elf pain and suffering as some sort of moral lesson for the rest of us.

We can agree here. But I argue that War of Thorns was really they only time they have done it. Before war of thorns, they were just the obvious damsels in distress to be saved by the rest of the burly, hairy-chested Alliance.

It’s an example of Night Elves being used to garner sympathy and make the people doing the attacking (or getting accused of it) look bad. Of being used, as you put it, “Damsels in Distress”. Again, I never said that Night Elves don’t get killed. Just that when they do, Blizzard makes a deal about how it’s terrible in a way they don’t do with many other races- namely trolls.

Wrathion’s adult human body is not his real body because he’s a dragon, not a human… And the Frostmane whelps weren’t fully grown either. They were half the size of adult models and ⅔ the size of the next smallest Frostmane model.

The amount of people actively RP’ing Night Elves isn’t the same as people playing Night Elves.RP’ers, to say nothing of those who are active in community discords, are already sliver of the population on RP servers. Night Elves remain an extremely popular race that Blizzard still releases stuff for.

Tamanii:

all relevant parts of Kaldorei lore.

Relevant that it is an aspect of Kaldorei life that has been completely abandoned 10k years ago, and any practicing Highborne was killed on sight throughout that time.

If you want to say all that is Kaldorei story telling, then it’s Blood Elf story telling too. Somehow I don’t think you believe that, but it is relevant of their history, and it is more connected to Blood Elf culture than it is to Kaldorei. So, if you want to say Legion was a Night Elf expansion, it was a Blood Elf expansion too.

I know people like to forget Tauren exist, but there was a lot of Tauren in Legion too….

LOL, they hated Illidan. They teamed up with him because their world was literally about to be torn in half by a Dark Titan. There several big moments where they were appalled by Illidans actions! Illidan wasn’t made to be a good guy in the slightest.

Demon hunters is not Night Elf pandering. They are a caste all their own. They are the outliers of night elf society. They as specifically the anti-thesis to nelf culture.

You have all these examples of Blizzard favoring Night Elves, and every single one of them is Blizzard deviating from the Long-vigil and Elune aspects of Night Elf identity. Which has been the core of Night Elf cultural identity for the last 10k years, and ultimately the version of the Night Elves we meet in WC3 and Vanilla WoW.

….Saying Highborne and Demon Hunters is Nelf pandering is like saying Void Elves are Blood Elf pandering.

As pointed out before, Blizzard brings all Night Elf stuff right back to the Kaldorei Empire/War of the Ancients and what Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Azharara - and others who were living participants- did, how it impacted them, and how they reacted.

It is indeed part of the history of Highborne, but Lothemar, Liadrin, and Rommath didn’t personally grow up in Surumar. They didn’t serve in the Moon Guard. They didn’t visit to Black Rook Hold. They didn’t live under Azshara’s rule. They didn’t fight in the War of the Ancients. They only know of it through stories. For Night Elves, particularly the main Night Elf characters of the franchise, this was their actual life.

It’d be awesome if Blizzard expanded more on what Night Elves stuff to things that’ve happened since then, but all that stuff involving Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan, Azshara, the War of the Ancients (or its repeats), the Kaldorei Empire, Cenarius, the Emerald Nightmare, Ysera, etc is absolutely Night Elf related content. Now whether it’s GOOD content or not is definitely up for debate, and I’m not going to argue with people who say it’s bad. I think plenty of it is bad too. But I will argue that it’s lore with a Night Elf focus.

Afterall, the main reason why so many people thought the Nightborne were coming to Alliance and why so many considered them going Horde to be a betrayal was because of their affiliation with Night Elves.

And, yes Void Elves are absolutely part of Blizzard’s clumsy attempt to pander to fans of Blood Elves- particularly those who wanted to play them on Alliance rather than on the Horde. I mean as far as many people are concerned, they’re still not enough like Blood/High Elves. And if Blizzard decided to have Void Elf content that’s all about Quel’thalas, Kaelthas, the Troll Wars, and Magister Umbric’s family, that’d totally double as Blood Elf content and pandering alongside High/Void Elves.

That was Turalyan’s initial response. He got over it pretty quick. The story vindicated Illidan in the end and through his actions, he earned the begrudging respect of the other heroes.

Tamanii:

which isn’t described as happening until Night Elves showed up, as we can see from their fighting on page 95 and the map on page 96 of Warcraft Chronicle Vol 1.

We can’t see that. These events are many years apart, and Chronicle makes a point to say that Azshara is uninterest in War with the Zandalari, and went out of her way for a diplomatic (albeit via outright extortion) solution. Chronicle may not say the Empire of Zul was declining, but it doesn’t say the Night Elves were expanding into their territory either. It describes expeditionary forces, and the “Openly hostile trolls”

Now if this was from the perspective of the Kaldorei, then maybe you would have a leg to stand on. However, Chronicle is not written with that perspective. It is supposed to be a mostly objective recount of history (I think Blizzard say it is from the perspective of the Titans? ). So, when it says Azshara was not interested in conquest, it means she was not interested in conquest. When it says the Trolls were openly hostile, it means they were openly hostile.

Yes, the events are many years apart. The Titans, from their point of view, state that Azshara (who I suppose interviewed her and received honest answers?) had no interest in conquest. Yet their accounts mention her expeditionary forces travelling into other lands before Trolls attack her. And the maps over the years show her empire expanding across others’ lands.

The fact that Trolls are repeatedly presented as being totally unreasonable and that this is as good a reason as any to genocide/displace them- and how Blizzard tries to whitewash it and justify it is kind of how this whole exchange began. Blizzards decides that what the Titans say is the unbiased truth.

For Night Elves to remain useful to Blizzard as damsels in distress and victims, they have to be regularly framed as being pretty/good/right. Because it’s harder to garner sympathy for a race that’s framed as just as flawed as any other, and even harder to do for a race regularly framed as being ugly/bad/wrong.

Tamanii:

when Cairne heard that Garrosh had done some even more terrible stuff to Night Elves (which turned out to be people even more evil) he challenged him for Warchief.

It wasn’t just to Night Elves. It was a peace summit between Tauren and Night Elves. It is just that Night Elves were killed, and every Tauren made it out okay, save for Hamuul Runetotem, who took an arrow to the back.

So again, your claim this is somehow Night Elf favoritism is baseless. It is just the typical slaughter of Night Elves for the sake of Horde story telling. This event did nothing for the story of Night Elves.

Tamanii:

Blizzard could stand not to use Night Elf pain and suffering as some sort of moral lesson for the rest of us.

We can agree here. But I argue that War of Thorns was really they only time they have done it. Before war of thorns, they were just the obvious damsels in distress to be saved by the rest of the burly, hairy-chested Alliance.

Tamanii:

the OP’s complaint was that bad things shouldn’t happen to Night Elves because they’re so powerful.

No, that wasn’t the complaint at all. He was expressing the feeling a lot of Nelf players have. Which is that the Night Elves are so often used as the scapegoat for story telling that never involves them, that it is starting to feel like active malice from Blizzard. Their power level has nothing to do with it, it’s the frequency in which bad things happen, and the Kaldorei’s inability to do anything on their own.

Tamanii:

Night Elves shouldn’t be able to be ambushed at night

If a human out-engineered a Goblin, or a Dwarf was a stronger Voodoo priest than a Troll, you would be complaining here on the forums.

The OP discusses that, as well as the use of Night Elf suffering by Blizzard, for the sake of making us feel bad for them. You talk about them serving as ”Damsels in Distress”.

[“But it serves no purpose other than to say how sad and beaten Night Elves are and then they do nothing about it. I can understand the use of tragedy as a rallying point – but not when it leads to nothing. “

](To Writers: From a nelf fan)I agree that Night Elves are used by Blizzard in an attempt to try and frame what’s happening as very bad and they’re using the Night Elves as Damsels in Distress.

But for that to work, the narrative has to express concern about the fate of the Damsel or the individual being used. Using Damsels in Distress and treating death as a tragedy are narrative tools to define the victim, the villain, and spur the hero. You can’t do it if the narrative is indifferent or even supportive of their distress and suffering.

If a character’s suffering is constantly played up for tragedy and an attempt to invoke pity/pathos/heroics, it’s bad writing, but it’s not the narrative and writers hating the character.

I’ve liked your posts before too. Heck, I’ve agreed with some of those same points when you brought them up- like how Night Elves are damsels in distress and how their history should be expanded beyond just what happened during and in direct response to the Kaldorei Empire/War of the Ancients and the characters that experienced it. Or how Blizzard shouldn’t have the one society with the most matriarchal always being saved by dudebros.

But the post I liked also isn’t arguing that trolls aren’t ever used as vehicle for racist stereotypes. It’s not trying to argue that models half the size of adult models called whelps are adults.