About Midnight reveal cinematic

Lore Story
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I watched the cinematic. I watched the gameplay reveal too. Nice. Player housing, dungeons, and so on. Cool. Props to Blizzard’s CGI team. Now let’s get to the thing that’s been bothering me for a long time: I know it bothers a lot of players too.
Not a single Horde reference in the whole cinematic. They’re attacking one of the Horde’s most important allies. I expected Lor’themar to at least say something like “send word to the Horde.” Or maybe catch a glimpse of ships in the distance. But nothing happens. Liadrin is just praying there, and then the ones who show up are once again human-like Alliance-flavored figures — most likely Arathi, but still. Meanwhile, what’s Daddy Thrall even doing? Sitting in Orgrimmar popping corn out of his a…?

So is this going to be another Alliance-flavored expansion where the Horde doesn’t even get acknowledged? I’m sick of my faction being sidelined this much. They’ve completely destroyed any sense of Faction Pride. Playing the red side doesn’t seem to have any meaning left. Well, good luck keeping your game afloat with the subscriptions of Alliance players then.

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You found the CGI good? I feel they are regressing with each expansion. Garrosh was way better than Liadrin or Lor’themar are and WoD cinematic released 11 years ago. Cinematics used to look great with good action and something beyond being movie trailer.

The problem of the cinematic does not come from the lack of Horde but the obvious problem of transportation. It’s Quel’thalas, home of the high now blood elves, allied in a politic and love marriage with the nightborne, who are experts at telemancy. Why does they need to pray the Sunwell to teleport anyone in QT? Why can’t they just open portals to the Horde as a whole?

Answer is, portals works only when it’s convenient to the writting. So they have to pull a prayer that can teleport a light army out of their butt. The Vindicaar with the Army of the Light would have make so much more sense. But they wanted to push the Arathi narrative. And the Harronir too, for whatever reasons, in the gameplay reveal (I’m salted that we get them as an allied race but not the forest trolls, yes).

I don’t know if it will be another Alliance expansion. I’m… quite surprised to see that there was not one Alliance main character in it, even if they are pushing too hard with Liadrin who is as close to humans as you can be (and my opinion is not popular but she is the worst important protag of the blood elves cause she is basically human paladin with long ears). What is sure is that I’m done with the Light. I hope this uninteresting cosmic force will take vacations after Midnight.

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I don’t know man, at least Forsaken could come to help, also Nightborne can do some trick aswell since Lor’themar is husband of Nightborne’s leader.
What kind of stupid writing is this? It does not pass in anyways.
I hate Blizzard attitude when they were forcing something into your eyen meanwhile ignoring rest of universe. Just imagine aliens invade some part of world. Rest of world grabs popcorm and watch the situtation.
Even though some place like Azeroth where has highly advance magical, some hyper futuristic crazy tech and possibilities.
It is obvious Void did not come for only Quel’thalas. It seeks to wipe entire Azeroth. First Horde as their ally. Second Alliance has to come for help. Like you stated portaling there must be walking into park ilto Horde and Alliance in second. And there is no chance to rest of world has no information about this invasion. We got Khadgar,Jaina,Thalsyra tons of crazy prophet like heroes. Also our characters have crazy amount of power. Yet crucial place like Sunwell is defended by only Lor’themar and Liadrin. Even Halduron and Rommath is no where to find.
Maybe I think too complex for a game. But this game used to care about story. Nowadays they write story like 80’s cheap American blockbuster movies. Game wants me to so stupid to amazed by story.

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To be clear I’m not saying that the Horde absence isn’t an issue, but I look deeper at the fact they are using a stupid plot hole as big as “we can’t TP people even if we are the most suited race for it, fortunately prayers works because Light can do whatever the hell it wants in this stupid cosmic wheel”. It’s the fact they are again focusing so much about Light instead of more grounded things that bore me. Light was already the main weapon against the Fel in TBC, then Death in WotlK, now it is too for the Void in MN. I hope they will make an expansion about the Light fighting life, order (cough TLT) and hopefully… the Light itself when the time for the Arathi empire comes. The light is so boring, it’s terrible. Just hopeful prayers with good people everywhere and sometimes, only sometimes, comically evil stupid incompetent factions. Can heal, rez, make undeads, teleport, destroy evil. Pretty sure it can also make coffee fitting your taste and prevent wounds made by walking on a lego block. Heh.

But yes, adding diversity in this cinematic was complicated for Blizzard it seems. I’m curious to know if they are getting less budget over time for them. Because we have Thalyssra, Xal, Lor’themar with unique look, and then all the supposed Arathi looks the same, same goes for the Spellbreakers. I was expecting archers and mages at least, something that feels like Quel’thalas. Of course asking a tauren or a forsaken was a bit much, so it was to be expected.

The most egregious absent character to me has to be Thalyssra. It was the moment to play the duo with Lor’themar and do a bit more than just swinging swords at clouds that disperses because it is what clouds do when hit by a sword (I’m a bit silly I know but whatever). When you look at the BFA cinematic and the absurd number of different character and this one, it’s a bit underwhelming.

We will see for the Alliance schtick, but one thing is sure, WoD had a cinematic about Grommash, Garrosh and the Iron Horde, TWW about Thrall and Anduin dealing with the Radiant Song and Sargeras’ sword, so whatever happens in them, it doesn’t mean anything for the real story of the expansion.

But damn those haronir feels out of place, like they are a scrap content from an expansion, hmmmm. Suspicious I am.

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I thought the gameplay trailer was a lot more interesting than the cinematic.

Lor’themar and Liadrin should have glowing eyes, which were largely absent. I also did not find the former taunting Xal’atath to be satisfying when - much like when Sylvanas was provoked prior to the Burning of Teldrassil - it just led to a whole bunch of people being killed.

Furthermore the Blood Elves are so much more than the Light. Magic is deeply tied to their identity but there’s no Rommath. Or Aethas. Or any other mage.

If anything, it just pushed me deeper towards the Alliance on the basis that Void Elves are closer to the original iteration of Blood Elves.

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They are just making clearer the fact that the elves are Horde humans with the Light the more content they have.

Remember them being proeminent warlocks due to their natural affinity with magic once they started working alongside Illidan?

Remember when they gathered Lei Shen researches during Throne of Thunder in order to make anima constructs just like the mogu did?

I do.

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Sorry man , but your faction is dead .
We are all friends now . It serves no purpose .
Actually Alliance will probably also be reimaged and we will turn in Allied Champions of Azeroth or some such nonsense .

And for the cinematic .
Not a fan . I didn’t get what is going on .
If I was a new player and didn’t know this as Silvermoon , it would just be some random anime style battle happening .

Why not show how the city looks in it’s grandeur . It is all peaceful , beautiful , farming , studying , learning magic ( you can showcase the classes here) , praying , children playing .
Than the sky tears open and hell rains down on everything ?
They desperately try to stop it , but are pushed back . At the precipice of oblivion Liadrin calls down a Miracle and the defenders renewed fight back ?

Nope ? Nadda ? Nothing .

She just sits there praying . The guy comes and says “yo girl we need help” , she comes out looks for a bit doing nothing and than just runs away again , while her comrades are falling and Xal is gloating as usual.
So great …

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I actually liked the cinematic more than expected. Mostly for showing the faith in the light as a religious thing instead of just another type of magic.

Yes, my expectations for Warcraft story are very low by now.
Yes, Light worship is very much an alliance theme.
Bur I’ll take what I can get, I guess.

Though shouldn’t Xal have world-devouring power levels by now?

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The Light bearers are religious worshippers, this was portrayed accurately, though they took so much time from the cinematic action.

Watching it several times, I understand that the point of this cinematic was to evoke the light versus void battle. It was a cosmic battle above everything. The Army of the Light is probably a must in this context.

As far as Horde presence is concerned, I think that we will probably be involved in the prepatch. Not because they weren’t in the cinematic it means they won’t be there at all. I’m trying to be optimistic. Alleria wasn’t in the cinematic either but she will surely be a central figure.

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Yeah, I also hate this current trend (in gaming, not just in wow) of having cinematics that are super slow, where nothing happens, and where each second feels like the scenarists are screaming “LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL OUR ART IS” because that’s all there is to it, all visuals and no depth. On that 4 minutes trailer, you see Liadrin praying with nothing else happening for more than a minute in total.

Heck even the visuals were not that great, just compared it to TWW cinematic, the elves look like they have plastic faces.

Other than that, yeah, once again we seem to be going in a character-centered expansion, despite seemingly being about Silvermoon. Blood Elves were supposed to have the spotlight, but here, the central point was Liadrin and her connection to the Light.

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There’s a worldwide Void invasion going on. The Horde are defending everywhere they hold, not just Quel’thalas.

Also the Blood Elves ARE Horde, so it is represented.

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Then they needed to show that, let us see that everyone is in danger and defending their city. It would be more impactful like that, we really sense the danger in that way. But Xal’atath only shows up there because of the Sunwell.

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It’s just laziness. There is two paladin models at the end, Liadrin, Lor’themar, spellbreakers, Xal, and voidwalkers. There is no more Horde depicted because the cinematic is not at the level Blizzard is known for

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Liadrin, Lor’themar and the blood elves are Horde.

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Yeah but the idea of when blood elves have been working for so many years with other horde races now and in an introduction cinematic where they are protecting silvermoon there isnt any, it is really like blizzard wants to forget horde races exist.

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It wouldn’t be much of a problem, if “have they forgotten about the Horde?” wasn’t a prominent TWW problem. Elves defending their home is totally fine. “Here, see these pious, light-wielding, morally upstanding knights? That’s your Horde representation” isn’t.

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I never said the opposite, in fact, I specifically said “there is no more Horde”. The blood elves are part of the Horde but that doesn’t mean putting an orc or a forsaken, at the very least, one nightborne, their best friends and allies now, in the fray, would not have been a good thing.

It’s just laziness because this cinematic is clearly made with not too much character models. And the wax skin of the characters are screaming that something is off compared to the regular CGI cinematics this time.

If like some theorized this isn’t the arathi that are coming to help us but an “army of the Light” including the players, no putting something that feels like Horde is even worst.

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It feels kind of betrayal at the point if example forsaken who have been in close contact with blood elves and they aren’t in the frontlines helping blood elves protecting their main city. Same comes with the other horde races there were helping blood elves going trough so many problems in wow’s history

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Outside of using magic to portal in a bunch of horde from Kalimdor, it’s probably down to logistics why we don’t see any of them in the cinematic. If Xal’atath just decided to launch a surprise attack on the Sunwell, then it would logically take some time to ship over a relief force to break the siege from halfway across Azeroth. So in a way it sort of makes sense why you just see blood elf defenders until those mystery paladins show up.

Also, if Ghostlands has been confirmed to no longer be a security issue for the blood elves (Dead Scar, Deathholm etc…) then there is no real reason for any undead forces to still be stationed there at Tranquillien to support them.

The undead as a whole might still be somewhat recovering from BFA depending on how much time has passed lore wise or dealing with their own problems like a resurgent Scarlet Crusade/ Red Dawn.

The only other horde race I can think of that could be there already in some numbers would be the Nightborne.

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I hope Aponi and Rata will show up.