I’d like to remind that blood elves did not get a significant non-enemy warlock character until warlords (even Kael’thas is mechanically mostly a pure mage prior to Magister’s Terrace)
The “bite” that blood elves got in the pile of retcons that was TBC was a brief illusion made to soothe insecure players - they had bite enough in Frozen Throne without having to do this fake edgy nonsense. TFT’s blood elves were desperate survivors led by one of the most gentle heroes of WC3 and were fine on their own.
I’m hoping so. This nonsense about the blood elves being redeemed right out of what made them so neat in the first place is boring. Bring back blood elves who would do the most questionable things out of pragmatism and goals.
There was 0 pragmatism to TBC doing a 180 on Kael’thas’s characterization to make him a moustache twirling villain (and no it’s not a patch retcon, everyone knows Kael’thas is hostile by the time you’re through with Hellfire questlines).
Otherwise the only real edge has always been in paladins, who were a tacked on, last minute addition and honestly whether that edge stayed or not I’d rather not a different excuse for Liadrin to hog all the screentime.
You are assuming I’m discussing TBC blood elves. I was more so discussing MOP blood elves. Lor’themar was the first to join the revolution, we were the ones who fought back and took the shores, the blood elves lead the charge during Throne of Thunder, etc.
Let’s be clear, I enjoyed mana vampire blood elves much more too, but I wasn’t talking at all about Kael’thas’ reign. The last time we did anything cool was Legion, but everyone was cool back in Legion. Suramar was a good moment for blood elves too but I’m talking that slightly darker angle we had in MoP.
I hope we see some cool politics in Midnight, but I’m not holding my breath. I’d like for there to be some chafing between red-blooded nationalistic authoritarian sin’dorei in camp Lor’themar versus sin’dorei who perhaps question that route and would like to see more progressive change, but are likely very careful about that since they don’t want to risk exile. It would make for a much more interesting political climate for high/void elves to have to navigate when attempting to return home to Quel’Thalas.
Unfortunately it’s probably just going to be more along the lines of “Lor’themar feels Really Bad about the whole exile thing, oopsie, he’s a Good Guy now so he teams up with the void elves/high elves with very little reservation, and the Evil Villain Dissenters are those awful no-good authoritarian sin’dorei who are being so mean to Lor’themar for trying to be a friendly nice guy ”
I wish the game wasn’t so quick to forget Lor’themar’s behavior. Quel’Thalas shouldn’t just randomly be a bastion of freedom/etc; it should have to come face-to-face with its authoritarian policies/history. The game also should not assume that all blood elves are a monolith who support Lor’themar (or that if they don’t support Lor’themar, it’s because they’re worse than him and don’t think he’s evil enough). But that would require more nuance than I think we’ll see, alas.
TLDR: I’m honestly quite excited for Midnight for a lot of reasons, but I’m not getting my hopes up about Thalassian politics being portrayed in a satisfactory way.
I jumped the gun, fair, usually when people talk about pragmatism it’s stuff like warlock mains who actually want the turbo edge rpg stuff that was clearly written by people who knew nothing about Frozen Throne.
So you’d like to see the same story blizzard has been telling with every race so far?
They just did exactly what you said with Goblins in Undermine
It seems like every time we encounter a new race or even an old race receives lore development it’s the same old boring junk
Earthen - we’ve got the earthen who do their duty and the earthen who broke their oath cause they wanted to be progressive.
Goblins - we’ve got the goblins that live like goblins making money and being shiesty and now we have the goblins who say there’s limits to money making and Undermine needs to be free
Nightborn - We’ve got the status quo nightborne and the ones who rebel for a “better tomorrow”
At some points it gets exhausted hearing the same story over and over again but maybe I shouldn’t expect anything different from blizzard who just finished their third or fourth iteration of the Arthas Arc (Arthas Garrosh Sylvannas and Kerrigan)
Yeah it’d be boring as hell. We have to admit we were wrong about something we were right about. And even if it were some flaw to think the well was in danger, when it was, when have flaws become this thing that needs sanitized?
See this is exactly the type of blood elves I want to see in Midnight. Unapologetic about everything Lor’themar has done. Unfortunately it’s more likely to be all about how sorry he is, and anyone who says “he did nothing wrong” are just written as one-dimensional villain types whose entire purpose is just to give Lor’themar a hard time for making peace.
I don’t agree with Lor’themar’s decisions, and I want to see groups that also disagree with them. But I want him to stick by them, and I want to see the blood elves who also stick by them not get just automatically villain-batted. The opposite is likely to happen.
so you think that Lor’themar was wrong to keep Void Elves away from the Sunwell, when their mere presence literally threatens its safety and by extension the safety of all Blood Elves?
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