But if you look at their lore you’ll see why this kind of makes perfect sense. The night elves suffered such heavy losses during the Third War that they had to ease up on their previously very strict limitations on men joining the Priesthood of Elune and the Sentinels. Those experienced and near perfect veterans Grom and the Warsong fought were replaced with hordes of fresh recruits, many of them men. Even then the last conflict they fought in prior to the Third War was the Satyr War six thousand years ago, they had lived in peace since then.
They are also a one-trick pony that’s easily countered, like when Garrosh invaded Ashenvale and just burnt the forests as they marched on because it kept the night elves from fighting as they generally do.
It was five years from the end of the Third War til start of WoW, nevermind the 13-14 between then and BFA.
No, I don’t think its unreasonable to expect a quite combat-familiar people/group to be able to adapt over that space of time, especially with cooperation/experience with allies etc.
War of the Ancients had them quite literally change their tactics on the spot to counter the unlimited numbered Demonic Legions and fighting them to a standstill, with Jarod using the different races to the best of their ability.
Before that, they fought and won fron 3 different Troll Empires, afterwards they fought and won the War of the Satyrs and the War of the Shifting Sands.
It is only in WoW they started losing left and right, and then Blizzard decided to make their Druids neutral, and their ancient Allies of Nature were all of a sudden allies of convience.
So no, it makes no sense if you look at their lore imho
I am not saying they should easily roflstomp every enemy they encounter, but them being roflstomped by every new enemy they encounter because it makes sense in their lore is such a cop out.
And I will never a cept the fact Kur’thalos and Jarod were the sole 2 Night Elves who were even halfway decent commanders
It was in Warcraft 3 where they explicitly needed the help of the Alliance and the Horde to defeat the Burning Legion’s second invasion. The entire plot point of that game was that nobody was strong enough to fight them on their own for one reason or another; with the night elves’ one being that they were a shadow of their former selves for several reasons that weren’t fleshed out until World of Warcraft came out.
This isn’t even some deep plot point you need to have played Warcraft 3 several times to get. It’s literally the entire motif of the Warcraft 3 intro.
It is only in WoW that they were fleshed out. Their lore in the RTS barely included any lore about their backstory beyond the War of the Ancients. Yes, WoW does include all the wars where they were getting beaten, such as the War of the Shifting Sands, but they also added all the lore where in the
and how
World of Warcraft introduced all the lore where Night Elves ‘lose’ because World of Warcraft introduced about 95% of all the lore about Night Elves. It’s a storyline written about a fictional world by real writers; they’re didn’t grab a documented historical record and then decided to make everything go wrong for them like some ‘new god on the job’ where all the stories where they’re winning were all already magically written like they’re historians for some world that doesn’t exist - especially considering that most of the lore about these wars which they won were introduced in WoW as a retroactive backstory piece.
Night elves were once strong because their entire motif as a fantasy race is being remnants of a bygone era, with them struggling to come to terms with everything. Some of the wars you mentioned, like the Wars of the Shifting Sands, did not come without a cost even if they won it, just like they won the Fourth War even though it came at a great cost.
If anything, it was World of Warcraft that fleshed them out to have done more than just lose constantly.
I kinda disagree here. The NE of WC3 were fleshed out pretty well. It’s the other way around, I would say: WoW deeply relied on the WC3 characterization, even if it watered it down a little.
In WC3 they had plenty of lore already, and their fighting prowess was established to be quite high, as per Grommash comment, who mentions how they fight with unmatched savagery.
I think there is no problem with NE losing the war of thorns, but in general we have never seen an army pushing into 2 regions and obliterating a third (with freaking catapults LOL!) in the matter of a dungeon run, so it felt very underwhelming and even repercussions were kinda meh? In general all the war of thorns felt like something they wanted to do, therefore kinda chopped all stuff that was problematic (ie. druids calling forth storms of lightning to obliterate entire armies of black drakes etc) and rolled with a simple “yeah we’re doing it, how? doesn’t matter”.
The druids of the Horde don’t even protest, the demigods of Hyjal don’t seem to care, etc., and this is part of BFA’s pov: everything has to fit a pre-established narrative, so it feels like all what night elves are doing is just putting up a bit of a fight, but not really much, so that they can fail.
So it seems that all Horde druids and shamans suddenly don’t care anymore about the spiritual world towards which they have sworn fealty to, despite often trying to mediate in previous conflicts but hey, see that shiny metal? Yep, that’s the explanation for tossing away ten years of character development. Demigods defending a world tree? What’s even that?
Also in what, 20+ years of game this is the only time in which such a move happens: three regions destroyed in a scenario run.
All of which could have been sidestepped neatly if it had been dealt with by ‘Yeah, Sargaras’ sword rent a big ol’ hole in the Old Gods prison, and BFA was a direct result of Old God Whispers going into overdrive, leading to the weaponisation and mining of azerite that gave them both a weakene prison AND blood/soul sacrifice. Oops, all Black Empire!’
Instead we got FailDeath expansion with god robots ._.
It might have made sense if the Horde had false-flagged Hyjal or somewhere, urging the Wild Gods / others protectors of nature to sprint off on a wild goose chase, because I do agree that the night elves have historically had some very overpowered friends to call on during defensive wars.
Or, given Sylvanas’ temporary alliance of convenience with N’Zoth, he might have afflicted their allies with madness for the duration of the invasion, during which time Malfurion and Tyrande are baffled as to why their clarrion call has gone unanswered. He has a connection to the Dream, so he could even have used the final gasp of Xavius’ power to set off a distraction there.
If anything the War of Thorns showed how powerful the night elves still were by the time of BfA. It’s mentioned in the novella’s that the Horde would not have been able to get anywhere near as far without allowing the Alliance to reinforce the Night Elves if the Sentinel Army had been in northern Kalimdor.
Even without the Sentinels being there, the night elves defending Ashenvale managed to delay the Horde forces for such a time that it took weeks to reach Astranaar from the Ramparts (it’s been a while since I read these, but I think it was mentioned in the Horde side novella).
Wait wtf, I always preferred the Talons to the Bear druids! Maybe because they resembled the Druids from HoMM5 the most and those guys were hot + cool af…
I guess this is the crux of the problem. It’s not really about losing or winning, it’s that every time there is a win, it’s always with a ‘but…’, and several of the losses feel really… dumb, given how the Night Elves have been presented in the past. Yes, I know Tyrande started out being dumb in WC3, but narratively it simply doesn’t make sense when she’s also the leader with supposedly thousands of years of experience.
The second problem is that the dumbness is not actually mentioned. The only time it got mentioned was from Varian’s point of view during MoP, which felt very weird. If Tyrande is actually meant to be a really bad general/tactician, I wish there were some self-reflections on Tyrande’s part or acknowledgement that doesn’t come from patronizing figures that aren’t even Night Elves.
But we don’t really get that, we’re still led to believe that Tyrande’s a good tactician. And it’s not even just Tyrande, but other Night Elves similarly get hit with the dumb bat over and over even though they’re meant to be the tactical geniuses! Shandris playing a second fiddle to Keeshan was just… lowkey gross. It was textbook 101 how to completely flush down any character growth and development for a potentially new main character for Night Elves (so it wouldn’t be just Tyrande and Malfurion!) by making her a sidekick to a bad meme.
I think also back in BFA, it would’ve helped narratively, if both sides had a Fel Reaver-esque character running around in Darkshore. Night Warrior Tyrande hunting down the Horde would’ve been perfect and kind of make the players feel threatened by her newfound power. Similarly, Nathanos powered up by the Val’kyr could’ve been the Horde’s character of choice. Perhaps Tyrande could’ve even been alone whereas Nathanos is with a hunting party (or dogs) so the result is still same - you die if you meet them, but it’ll show that Tyrande’s on a demigod status and Nathanos isn’t.
But it’s not the men making tactical decisions, it’s the experienced perfect war veterans.
And y’know, Starshade’s Law - if moonlight can just put out fires, why didn’t the Priestesses stop Garrosh from burning the trees? I find this argument really annoying anyway, you’re telling me Night Elves who know their flammable weakness don’t have any countermeasures developed for it? Nothing from Druids, Mages, Priestesses (apparently)?
At this point, Night Elves actually having a flawless win would be something new and interesting. Or actually shown as a tactical geniuses as they’re narratively made out to be somewhere.
Yeah, and then the actual main force gets Ctrl + F and Deleted, because they’re all on ships that get nuked.
They did. And Garrosh predicted they would, revealing the Priestess’ locations which were then bombarded with demolisher fire, killing a bunch of them.
Turns out putting a literal spotlight on your squishy casters ends poorly.
And with Elegy we actually see the tactical stuff being made, it’s just simply recruits not being a match for Horde’s full power. And that was fine - in Elegy it’s specifically mentioned how they managed to ambush all the leadership so Delaryn’s left trying to control and make plans on her own while knowing she’s outclasses and outmatched.
That was really good storytelling!
Okay, fair concession, I forgot that tidbit. I don’t know if the same tactic was used again in War of Thorns (you’d expect both sides to adapt anyway, also Tyrande being tactical failure again yay).
If we talk about Teldrassil going up in flames though, I’d still stand by that - Night Elves living atop an apparently really flammable tree and there’s no countermeasures for that? If moonlight puts out flames, why didn’t it get magiced away this time since the demolisher fire isn’t directly hitting them there, it’s just fire spreading itself!
I mean, I guess the answer would be because Elune wanted the souls to go to Ardenweald and thought it’d be fun+cool for that to play out, but if that’s the answer then f- that answer. The entire Elune lore we got with Ardenweald was gross.
Too many flames too fast, I guess, plus they were hitting the exterior first, and everyone was inside the tree so they didn’t have line of sight for spellcasting (or already evacuating, iirc?)
As an extra gross addition on top of the obvious, it appears that Tyrande has full control over the Night Warrior powers still (given the spell effects used in her 10.2 appearance) without being at risk of dying from them anymore.
Guess all the previous loyal Night Warriors who did die from power overload must feel pretty salty about that.
Well, most were evacuating, but the Priestesses were organizing the evacuation and healing/tending whoever nearby, and they also took the stance of ‘I will die here’, so… dunno?
Maybe the mechanics of praying to Elune are complicated, but surely just a blanket moonlight on the tree would suffice, if it’s enough to put out fires from other trees immediately.
I’d also say that a tree of that size is likely not that combustible, especially when surrounded by ocean. When pics of Teldrassil going up in flames was first released, most though ‘oh, it’s the Azerite fuel, I guess that explains why!’… but wasn’t it said that the payloads were actually really ordinary and only helped along with Shamans?
Teldrassil would have been infinitely more palatable if BFA was started by the Alliance, with Undercity falling first. Shaman enraging/letting loose powerful fire elementals or something would have been better too over the intercontinental ballistic demolishers.
Or Gallywix coming up with Azerite Annihilation Armaments V4 (Pat. Pending).
And 100% Alliance should have started things, with Genn encouraging the ‘get them before they get us’ attack on Undercity. They even showed up first in the Expansion Trailer/Cinematic, for heaven sakes
I don’t agree. It would have been quite jarring if the Horde managed to reach Teldrassil after Lordaeron, cause the Alliance would have fortified it. I think the entire Silithus ruse is more satisfying than that outcome.
