Fall From Grace: A Thesis on Night Elf Defeatism, Redux

Argent Dawn
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The old thread regarding this topic from the old forums got lost over in the transition to the new forum layout and I feel like people need to hear the message once again in light of discussions in recent threads about the nature of night elves and their story development over the years, and how to spin it in a less cynical matter.

Instead of quoting the old thread into other threads, I feel it’s better to remake it as a whole for ease of linking when the topic (inevitably) becomes relevant.

So ever since Cataclysm, vocal members of the racial community have gotten increasingly agitated over the state of night elves. That for such a great and savage warrior race from Warcraft 3, they’re always getting shafted over by Blizzard’s story writing. But what if there’s actually an overarching point to the setbacks and calamities they suffer seemingly (at first) random? What if the “human potential” comment by Shandris is actually a self reflection on what the night elves have become?

To elaborate on what I mean, let’s look at the history of the night elves first. They were the pinnacle of civilization on the planet. By all intents and purposes, they basically conquered it. They mastered the arcane arts and if Aluneth is to be believed, at the height of their power had the potential to rival the Titans.

Then it all changed. They got too arrogant and reached too far. The Sundering came, splitting the world and the Highborne got banished. The night elves traded that arcane and royal aesthetic for a humble woodland theme, but the overarching theme of arrogance and pride continued, as events of Warcraft 3 showed us.

Losing their immortality should have been the turning point for them as a race, but instead of embracing destiny and adapting to the new world they find themselves inhabiting, Fandral planted Teldrassil and sought to reclaim their immortality – effectively stagnating the progress that the end of Warcraft 3 heralded and regress back to their old ideology. With Malfurion out of the picture, Fandral grew to be a very influential figure head of their society and even other key figures like Maiev (as per Wolfheart) bought Fandral’s message of immortality being their birth right. The arrogance and pride continued to fester, giving the night elves no reason to change. They clung to an idea of a world that no longer existed.

So along comes these younger races, orcs and humans who quickly rise to become the new power houses of the world’s shifting political landscape. The humans are malleable and quick to adapt to the harshest of atrocities and still thrive.
The orcs brought a lot of destruction to the night elven ancestral lands, but instead of adapting to the new threat and their technology, they remained adamant about their old ways. This cost them at first the life of Cenarius, then later a lot of innocent lives as the Horde began deforesting Ashenvale under Garrosh’s rule, and now the race hangs on the brink of extinction due to the burning of Teldrassil.

The one constant in all these losses is the night elves holding on to old tactics and never adapting.

With Teldrassil, the symbol of the regressive progress Fandral represented gone, the night elves must come to terms with their fall from grace and their own mortality. They’re greeted with the harsh truth that there is no going back to the world they once knew and in order to survive as a race, they must adapt and accept some ugly, but necessary truths - a story mirroring TBC blood elves, which some argue was some particularly good story writing for its time.

Along comes 8.1 and its story developments. Many are up in arms over how Tyrande doesn’t oneshot Nathanos and that’s a can of worms for another time, but the important story element many gloss over is the approach the night elves and their Army of the Black Moon takes. Instead of revering Elune out of love, they demand retribution from her or else. The first signs of a cultural shift are already there as they remove the silk glove and equip the metaphorical steel gauntlet. As Tyrande states, she doesn’t come as a priestess and will only serve Elune if she grants her power.

Though Fandral’s actions delayed it by years, the night elves are finally embracing the change that Warcraft 3’s ending and their loss of immortality should have brought. They’re adapting for the sake of their survival, and in light of that Shandris’s comments about human potential - to me - tell of a shift in attitude from their old conservatism towards accepting progression. Because the humans have in every sense of the word the greatest potential due to their malleable nature.

Personally I’ve never liked the night elves very much but the BFA story hooks they’re going through makes me for the first time really interested in them and I might actually consider devoting time to playing one to explore these themes of survival and change, as I never got the chance in TBC with blood elves.

or you can just hate 8.1 as the worst pile of !@#$ blizzard ever wrote because the intro to the warfront didn’t match your expectations. whatever you think is healthy for you.

Let’s be excellent to each other.

28 Likes
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They use to be my favourite race, personally I feel 8.1 has made them worst.

Tyrande made an odd decision to retake Darkshore without the full support of the Alliance?

The gilneans and gnomes have waited patiently for there respected capitals to be liberated.

Serves her right her people are now getting raised into undeath, if she had only waited till the war was over instead of being rash and Impudent, she might have succeeded completely without too many casualties.

Seeing some incredibly stupid decisions by them recently, for a race meant to be guiding the younger races and making up for horrible mistakes in the past, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job.

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Honestly Teldrassil wasn’t enough.

I never liked the Night Elves from the start in WC3 and they have consistently come across as essentially the Alliance equal to the Forsaken in terms of isolationism, general :poop: attitude to their allies and ridiculous behaviour of their members (both NPC and player).

I have never been able to bring myself to playing a (proper) Night Elf, Cataclysm allowed me to play a Highborne (which acceptably worked to a point) but now that we have both Void Elves and Nightborne I have the niches I want for my elf roleplay filled.

BFA will rank higher than WoD always for me because Blizzard neutered the two -worst- races in the game.

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I assume anyone who still complains about the human potential line just read it in early datamining and never played the war campaign because it’s completely fine. Shandris’ age, experience and position had already been acknowledged as it is (which is what the night elf RPers always seem to feel is lacking) and then she says the line to stick up for her ally who’s getting trash talked by a Dark Ranger. Don’t know what else anyone would want short of Shandris joining in with her enemy in insulting someone on her own team, and showing no humility in return for his respect or whatever.

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Speaking as a fan of WC3 NElves, BfA is good for them. There’s no lie in saying that over the years, they’ve been written badly and suffered as a result, with only one or two “stand-out” moments that are notable (the descriptions of Pained and Shandris in Tides of War - the novel not the patch - are some personal favourites).

BfA continued in the long line of knockdowns, this is true, with NElves getting beaten on their own turf. Again, the out-of-game stories alleviated some of that, so despite there being some musing over the idea of NElves getting ambushed in the forests they’ve been training to ambush in for thousands of years, we saw that they held their own remarkably well despite the disparity in force.

8.1 continues on the latter theme, with the NElves and Gilneans “going it alone”, but still managing to - if temporarily - undo the Horde’s hard work and retake Darkshore. We see Tyrande stop moping around and actually doing something for a change, and that involved wiping out an entire outpost on her own before making a mess of Nathanos and the Val’kyr (with MooseBear). It’s a little bit annoying that the writers decided that the way to return NElves to any semblance of former “perfect warriors” glory was a magical black-eyes macguffin, but to me that speaks of them realising just how far down the rabbit hole they’d been written. There wouldn’t have been time to write them back up there on a natural path.

Most of my NElf characters have been fairly diplomatic. Part of this is that at least 1 is old enough to remember the War of the Ancients, so the concept of working with other races for a better future isn’t exactly novel anyway. One of the best things about Night Elf roleplay is how your character deals with change, and where they draw a line (do they accept Night Elf mages? If so, what about them using magic in the forests? What about Warlocks? Would they fight alongside them, would they stop them from using Fel even in defence of the forest?), but this has definitely been taken too far over the years and the number of ‘xenophobes’ was/is probably higher than it sensibly should be.

And finally, I quite enjoyed working with Shandris in the War Campaign. Showing her as open-minded when it comes to getting the war won is a sensible move, and we really didn’t need another “ugh disgusting lesser races messing with bad magic and ugh technology why would you use -bombs-”. I get enough of that from Kerillian in Vermintide.

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I think this statement needs a little more backing up.

An argument could be made, that the Night Elves lost Teldrassil because they sent their entire fleet south to Silithus in order to defeat an anticipated Horde attack there, based on intelligence gathered by the human intelligence agency SI:7, and possibly on orders from the human High King Anduin Wrynn.
That would indeed point to the Night Elves actually having adapted to their role in the Alliance military, and losing because of that, rather than due to “holding on to old tactics and never adapting”.

I’d even go so far as to say, that this claim is backed up by the MoP scenario “A Little Patience” in which High King Varian Wrynn (and in extention; humanity) earns the respect and admiration of the night elven leader Tyrande.

That would put the night elven paradigm shift you claim to have happened with the fall of Teldrassil much earlier (in MoP) and indeed, the logical outcome of the Fall of Teldrassil would be for the Night Elves to question this paradigm shift and perhaps regress to older, more savage and isolationist ways (which one could argue we do see portrayed in game with Tyrande’s war meeting with Anduin in 8.1 and her subsequent conversion to Night Warrior).

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Good observation, entirely possible.

Also worth noting is that since WC3, the NElves have mostly lost the assistance of their allies and replaced them with the Alliance. We don’t see Mountain Giants or Chimaera helping them out (at least, nowhere near as much), or the various other Forest Spirits (Keepers, Dryads, etc). Battle for Darkshore is another regression in this regard, one which I’ve looked forward to for some time.

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That’s mostly an RP thing, honestly. Night elves are commonly roleplayed in this way, but if you look at their NPCs, they’re generally polite and respectful.

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I was planning to make myself a Night Elf before 8.0 but then it just went downhill. Their entire lore has devolved into Tyrande and Malfurion in their romance bubble and fighting together with caring for their people being a side objective. The lore surrounding what happened in Kalimdor between the Burning of Teldrassil and now is shaky at best, conflicting sources stating that the Night Elves now control Ashenvale again yet don’t, and generally they’ve somehow stomped out the Night Elves being a powerful race whilst simultaneously making the idea that the Night Elf resistance in Kalimdor is all about hiding in the last strongholds of Night Elf power and guerrilla warfare hard to pull off.

They just need to write a book or do a patch which explains EVERYTHING about the Night Elves after the Burning of Teldrassil as right now it’s all a bit of a mess. A world update outside of Darkshore wouldn’t go amiss either.

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That’s a fair assessment and not something I disagree with. Good post :thumbsup:

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