This patch is looking good and I hope it remains that way.
I remember when 8.1 looked like it would be a return to form for the Night Elves with the amazing Terror of Darkshore cinematic, only for the storyline to completely stumble and crash in spectacular fashion with Tyrande’s humiliating failure of stopping the Horde from raising Sira and Delaryn.
Fingers crossed Blizzard restrains itself from making this another pyrrhic Night Elf victory and gives them something to feel good about. It does not even have to be a victory, really, just something to feel good about.
Forsaken power fantasy except Nathanos only survived because he was empowered by two val’kyr, fought Tyrande with an army of Forsaken soldiers and still lost with one of Sylvanas’ increasingly precious val’kyr (at the time) dying to boot.
When it does, Acheleus will write 50 incendiary pamphlets calling the Kaldorei a gaggle of white-livered, pearl-clutching, abecedarian trouts for effectively abandoning their sovereignty and their ancestral lands by letting their new capital be planted in dragonland
Val’Kyr deaths are meaningless, especially seeing as Sylvanas stopped needing them by the next patch. In hindsight, Darkshore was just a general failure. Darkshore is still a ruined lifeless zone, but the Forsaken still have Delaryn and the Night Elf Dark Rangers.
I don´t think that would be a problem post-Lordaeron, since it would create a situation where Alliance is more stretched (by conquering some of Forsaken territory and focusing on EK) while Horde would be left with huge portion of Forsaken army in Orgrimmar, ready to be used.
And the whole “night elves by themselves can fight off the Horde” thing is BfA addition, so all Blizzard would need to do is to just not invent that plot point and they´d be good to go with Teldrassil destruction.
Ultimately it was bad for the Forsaken too; having the character whose entire arc was ‘I will preserve these people who everyone else has rejected, and in turn find it in myself to care about things and lead once again, moving on since Revenge has been achieved’ go “Actually, I just really like kicking puppies lol” was really, really stupid.
Insult to injury that BFA was just SoO Round 2, only worse.
Edit: Also, uuuuh, Blizz; having the woman who was killed and then corrupted by the prince be Evil, Actually, given your track record irl is uuuuhhh…
I also remember how this, to date, was still never the case in WoD and is one hundred percent based on player-manufactured headcanon that has no basis in the story of the expansion.
Also I apologise for late drip-posting, catching up now after my tomatoes got aaked this weekend
Night elves were this close to extinction before Jarod stepped up. Every night elf commander before Jarod was specifically incompetent, and Jarod was their saving grace and even then they almost died off as a race if not for Elisande’s betrayal of Azshara giving Jarod the time to un-frick the war, because Suramar was supposed to wipe out the Resistance by opening a second front.
The Resistance was by and large not functional before Jarod and was plagued with its commanders being Azshara’s cronies who fell out of favour with her rather than skilled tacticians who joined because they believed in the cause. They were nepo-babies who got their followers killed and then finally themselves.
Jarod is the single greatest tactician of the night elven people, but his predecessors were not.
No, they had him pull a Cincinnatus and retire with his wife in peace after relinquishing his war time power, thus allowing Tyrande to become his successor.
He only came back after his wife died from old age and he heard his sister was causing a ruckus
I think the tonal whiplash over how ruthlessly evil the orcs were with just encouragement from another guy felt pretty sour for many people. Like, again, one of the the first things you see when you step through the dark portal in WoD are orcs pushing naked draenei civilians into giant, literal grinders en masse and the man in charge is never brought to any sort of justice until Yrel and her fascist Light brigade shows up in the future for entirely different reasons. And this is after 12 months of Siege of Orgrimmar showing us the hilariously cruel methods of Garrosh’s Horde. Not technically any retcons occurring, but the writers went hard on making the majority of orcs unforgivable monsters in any way, shape and form.
A prophet who showed them the future of their race’s doom who they believed was speaking the truth as far as they were capable of deciphering*
The events leading up to this didn’t start in a vacuum. Garrosh was lying to them, but every indication of him being a liar was covered up by him murdering those who could expose him. And after he filled their hearts with despair, he told them that the only way to prevent their race’s destruction was to do what he says without question. This is very specifically spelled out.
And also their own people for refusing to follow this same Garrosh:
Let’s be fair though, many of them (most?) take to the act of genocide with absolute glee. The Warsong and Blackrock especially are having a litty time doing war crimes.
The clan that in main timeline was considered so brutal that even Blackhand had to exile them from the Horde (but also the clan that is the new Warchief’s own base of loyalists), and the clan that Literally Kills Their Own Children. Other clans were coerced into joining by threat of being wiped out.
The events of the freely available short story are also explained in game, but that would require you to do the main campaign of WoD.
It does not even have to be a victory, really, just something to feel good about. 
to extinction before Jarod stepped up. Every night elf commander before Jarod was specifically incompetent, and Jarod was their saving grace and even then they almost died off as a race if not for Elisande’s betrayal of Azshara giving Jarod the time to un-frick the war, because Suramar was supposed to wipe out the Resistance by opening a second front.