The Forsaken-led Horde is literally the reason they’re dead. I’m also partial to the Forsaken as a conglomerate of undead races but it does not, and has never, made sense for their population to be shored up by victims of their own making.
Idiotic as it was, I wouldn’t even rank it among the top 5 terrible narrative decisions in BfA. That expansion was an utter disaster for this game’s lore.
Okay in all seriousness, this, I have serious disagreements on. I think people really misunderstand how the Elune faith is supposed to work, and that is why so many people dont understand why this is such garbage.
It makes sense that people’s perception of religion is colored by the Abrahamic concepts that dominates the modern world. How could an all good, all benevolent god allow bad things to happen such as this? In that context, a crisis of faith is totally reasonable.
That doesn’t really apply here though. Elune isn’t the all powerful, all benevolent God we see in the three main Abrahamic faiths. A more pagan perspective is far more reasonable, and that is very important worldbuilding distinction when it comes gauging the Night Elves would respond to tragedy.
Though, Blizzard has not too well defined what all the Elunite faith entails or preaches, but I think we can make some assumptions given Elune’s real life influences to make a suitable head canon that makes sense. Those influences primarily being Hecate and Odin. I have talked about it at length before, but I will spare the long winded explanation of my headcanon for now.
And I understand we can’t really write off lore with head canon, and we need something more cemented in lore. I argue that we have pre-existing examples of the Kaldorei’s reaction to tragedy, and every time their faith has been emboldened, not weakened.
The Sundering we see them turn towards a Theocratic State in the wake of the collapse of their Empire. And in Warcraft 3, we see the Kaldorei willingly sacrifice their immortality can command over nature in the face of great adversity. The conviction that takes should not be understated.
In many ways, the cultural identity of the Kaldorei is defined by their religious conviction. A Crisis of Faith in the wake of tragedy is only the double down on the Kaldorei culture erasure that was the War of Thorns.
So I completely reject the idea that Undead Kaldorei would lose faith in Elune and turn their back on their own people. It is not something that would happen, and as far as I am concerned, it didn’t.
Does it not ? I feel like this is a bit of a tricky subject, because the Forsaken were killed by Undeads in the first place, and they decided to forge themselves a new identity through that very same Undeath… The way I see things, the line between ennemies and kinship is quite thin in Forsaken history
Good points all around. I admit my knowledge about how the worship of Elune actually works is very limited, so I guess I just didn’t question the reaction of the Undead Kaldorei who mentioned losing faith in Elune because of her passivity in the face of the horrors they suffered. Also, Tyrande did get active help from Elune eventually with the Night Warrior stuff, so this adds to the confusion
Not all of them. I don’t even know about most of them.
Coming back to this thread…
Elune could’ve put the fires out and saved her people. She didn’t. It is wholly natural that some of the victims of her decision would find her in contempt.
Elune gets held to a weirdly high standard compared to other divine forces, or other focuses of worship. The Light has failed to stop all sorts of disasters despite having far more followers, the ancestor spirits of various races have rarely if ever been able to intervene in much at all, the elements need to be cajoled and groveled to for even a crumb of salvation, same for a lot of the loa.
Granted, none of the undead kaldorei with the exception of Delaryn were victims of the Burning Elune didn’t stop, though I still wouldn’t blame them for losing faith given they were likely confronted with a very different afterlife than what they believed in, before being brought back. The only weird sticking point is them immediately aligning with the Horde/Forsaken after being raised, but Blizzard’s always been all over the place when it comes to what happens when the Forsaken val’kyr raise someone. Sometimes it’s free will, other times it seems more like mind control.
I think you can make the argument that the Light isn’t a sentient/sapient force.
You can be evil as all get out, and it will still empower you because you believe in the Heart of the Cards™.
Indeed, they aren’t even treated as a real religion by Blizzard. New books have flat out side that Shamans are completely wrong about everything they believe. And that isn’t touching on the nearly two decades of gameplay that have proved that to be completely accurate.
Ye. Elementals tend to be jerks, and thus aren’t held with the same reverence as a monolithic monodeity of a monorace.
Loa are infinitely lesser than all night elf gods, who are all infinitely lesser than Elune herself.
Agreed there, but the caveat is that the people worshipping the Light aren’t implied to know this. The Light has never directly communicated with them, same as Elune, but the prayers to both are generally fairly identical, as if something or someone is assumed to be listening, so to speak.
On Loa being lesser, I’ll disagree to a point. While not as strong as the power Elune’s been able to manifest, depending on the loa there have been some pretty insane feats of power. I honestly should have said Wild Gods, not just Loa, since that’s the catch-all term, but Loa in particular are able to empower many followers, and many of them are seemingly impossible to kill outside of what amount to ritualistic cheat codes.
Granted it’s all Rule of Cool power levels, but we’re not really made aware of how powerful Elune is when it comes to manifesting her influence. Which is always annoying.
Probably because (as we noted on the “morally grey light” thread) it’s been established since Vanilla the the Light isn’t even able to stop the Scarlets from using it for their own twisted purposes.
Also, Elune was once said to be the only true deity in the Warcraft universe. I kinda doubt that is still canon, though.
It does not really make much sense that people would suddenly loose faith, no. The Sundering killed a thousand times as many people and it did not result in that. Elune has never been depicted as a Goddess who solves your problems. She provides her faithful the tools to do so, yes. But she rarely has ever made true divine interventions unless things have gone absolutely wrong.
Tbh? As the Light responds to conviction you can make a good argument she does not provide any Light-granted clergy powers to her faithful. Their own faith in her would actually invoke the Light, and be indistinguishable to the faithful. There are some unique higher level powers of the sisterhood she for sure likely does directly grant her most favored priestesses, but the majority? Nah, that is pure faith at work.
Honestly, compared to the Sundering and say, the Qiraj, the War of Thorns isn’t all THAT bad.
And then there’s never really a satisfactory explanation why the risen night elves would take out their hypothetical loss of faith on other night elves in the same boat.
I didn’t phrase that well and I know it’s a thing from Androhal, but it’s still not particularly well-explained.
Actually unironically #goodjob Blizzard 
You wouldn’t be wrong.
She does in fact think that, yes. I know this from personal experience. She doesn’t understand that players can emotionally divest themselves from the story enough to play both factions, and enjoy both stories seperately.
She doesn’t understand that people can be both entertained and horrified by the story simultaneously as they are not mutually exclusive.
Aki sees “I really like Sylvanas, but I hate what they did to the Night Elves” as proof of fascism and racism among the playerbase.
There’s a lot of that going around. Manufactured racism and fascism where there actually isn’t any. And that applies to both the game and the community.
I can actually point to areas in WoW lore where there is racism, such as Lord Garithos being racist towards elves, and Danath Trollbane being racist against Orcs. But apparently to some people in this community it’s ‘everywhere’ and you can’t swing a bat around your character without hitting some.
Utter lunacy.
It’s like anything else in life, when you see everything thing through a certain lense, everything looks like a agenda when it’s not. We’re too quick as a society to crucify people instead of asking questions
Racism towards Harpies, Centaurs. Quillboar, Kobolds, Ogres, etc. is very common in Cata zones.
That’s not what I’m referring to, and I think you know that.
The difference is that the players have to “live through” the WoT, as opposed to it being a non-playable event in the distant past. Even visiting events through the Caverns of Time doesn’t have the same impact on the PC’s life and story.