Guess she’ll have to visit Ardenweald to see him from now on. What a huge and tragic inconvenience.
After that dialogue I’m actually not totally certain who of them dies. No matter, any of the supra powerful “main characters” that leaves the stage without wrecking it behind them is welcome to. And Nelves can only do drama, I guess.
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The price to pay to bring Ysera back but also for getting a new tree I guess (on the Dragon Isles? some youtubers insist on that and ALSO say there are datamined hints that it won’t be in Kalimdor indeed), since the Forsaken also lost Sylvanas as a character…
But I guess it’s the only way to make him die as he’s too powerful…and Illidan will at least have a chance now when he returns I guess 
Pretty sure it’s him…if Tyrande dies, Malfurion would stay with her 100% of the times, while the opposite is not always true…after all she’s used to lead the Kaldorei society alone for a long time already, Malfurion wouldn’t be able to lead them alone as he’s not really competent as a single leader for all the Night Elves (not just the druids), and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to do it alone for a very long time unlike her
That’s if he has a choice. Since we don’t know the situation, that’s not a given. We likely will get a cinematic for this one, so there might even be additional dialogue. We only know that both are willing, and neither has accepted the other side’s argument.
Since when has Blizzard ever cared about that? That’s less convincing to me than the idea that they’d rather cull male characters than more females right now.
In either case, I don’t really see anything interesting happening with this. No matter who dies, if any character arc comes of it, it will be more depressive, brooding drama. Which seems to be the only thing the Night Elves are allowed to do. Didn’t you know that they sacrificed EVERYTHING?!
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Not really because of their gender, but simply because Tyrande is way more liked by the playerbase than Malfurion who for a long time was considered a passive and almost useless character (even by Night Elf fans, a lot of them complained he did not even protect Tyrande against Horde pvp raids in Darnassus for example), so yeah…they know this and they would prefer to get rid of him rather than her simply for this reason alone…
Well, the first advantage I can see it’s that we would have Ysera back as leader of the green flight, so we don’t have to suffer Merithra taking her place all of a sudden…surely, in a DRAGON expansion, you would prefer to have an important Aspect like Ysera back as leader of the greens over a “minor” dragon character , right? I know I would…
About the Night Elf thing, It’s a bit of a racial theme for the Kaldorei (and a theme for the whole Alliance faction, too) that a character can choose to immolate himself for the greater good and justice, and to make the world a better place with his sacrifice after all… so I’m not against it, if a Horde druid did this I would find it more out of place, unless it’s a Tauren maybe…
If we’re inventing statistics, he is also much less hated than her. shrug
That’s not looking at it from the writers’ perspective, though. They are inventing the way to bring back Ysera, they didn’t have to kill anyone off to do that. They decided to. So no, that’s not an advantage to the consumer.
Sure, I just hate to be subjected to it all the time. I can only hope that this ends the night elf plot for quite a while, if all we can get out of them is whining, whining and more whining. That’s not a critique of the characters, by the way, they have reason to whine. That’s a critique of the story experience, which is just no fun.
Basically this. I guess I can feel for the Kaldorei fans losing one of their leaders here (if you could really call Malfurion a leader, or even a character), but ultimately that’s one faction demigod going out, and that’ll always be a good thing for the setting
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They are not really inventing it; it’s a famous trope in fantasy universes. In order to bring a very powerful entity back to life, you need an equally powerful entity to take his/her place in death.
This is also a Warlock/demon trope, for example a Warlock who is not sufficiently powerful and capable, he/she should not be able to summon a very powerful demon and if he/she still does it, the demon will kill her (I’m talking about fantasy universes in general here, not just WoW, but we have seen this in WoW quite a lot of times after all)
So the Winter Queen, despite being a benign entity unlike a Demon, is just applying the same concept…she will have what she is owed to her in Ardenweald in order to save and bring Ysera back to life…and what she needs in exchange is Malfurion, who is powerful enough to be a replacement…
(also Night Elf fans should not be too sad, after all, there’s nothing implying Malfurion will stay dead and/or in Ardenweald forever, just like Sylvanas he could be able to return to Azeroth, or anyway he could still be relevant to the plot later in the future, hardly anyone stays dead anymore, and especially after the Shadowlands expansions, death has lost even more gravitas for important lore characters like him…)
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They are deciding it. There is nothing forcing that trope unto them. There are a lot of alternative ressurection tropes they might have used, and a lot of other potential sources for the sacrifice, if they wanted to use this trope, so the specifics are always on them, and they have to justify their choices by having them make the story more enjoyable.
I’m not convinced tjhat this qualifies as making anything feel better, since it feels like another narrative dead end they are walking into.
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Resurrection is already very rare in lore, then if you add the fact that it’s a very powerful character and dragon, it’s clear certain special conditions have to be met.
Yes, they could have made a Naaru intervene just like in the case of Calia, but since she is not from the same realm of a Naaru anyway, only a powerful entity bound to life and nature could bring her back…
and the datamined lines do imply it has to be Malfurion, specifically:
“When she gave her life for mine in Val’sharah, it was not her time. And now…the balance may be restored”.
This implies that event created a special connection between the two and only him is the one who can be her replacement in order to bring her back immediately…but as I said, even for Malfurion this could be temporary as well and he could be brought back later as well into the story with another narrative arc maybe…
You’re still looking within the world instead of through the perspective of the one creating it. And thus, you are still missing my point.
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I’m a little for and against this in some ways.
For it - as the Horde has lost a lot of heroes in recent times.
Against it - Night Elf fans just can’t catch a break.
Although, we don’t have full context here. It could even involve another Green Dragon, taking Ysera’s place. It could be an unfinished / not a full script.
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Not really a loss if we see him later in the sotry anyway - basically, just like Sylvanas. Thanks to the Shadowlands expansion the consequences for death or going into a realm of death are even less now… so he could very well still be relevant for the story even in Ardenweald…
plus, I almost consider Ysera as a Night Elf character (she isn’t, but as the aspect of the green flight she could be considered almost a Kaldorei, at least because of the same thematics and relationship between her and the green dragons and the Night Elves), so it’s basically a 1 for 1 trade of Night Elf characters if Malfurion goes and she comes back…
Does the Alliance losing characters without any Horde involvement really make Horde players happy, though? I kinda doubt that. We could argue that some might care about the lessened faction imbalance between “main characters”, when Malfu is gone, but I find it hard to imagine it making much of a difference to the players. Most people have played both sides of the divide for some time by now, and the Erevien’s of the world certainly won’t be happy about the situation… well, ever.
More importantly, this is a purely substractive point. If you made people happy by taking something away, you still made the world poorer. Usually I’d expect some justification about how it actually adds to the world and the story. The death of a character can make other characters go through something, which becomes an interesting character arc. I’m not seeing that here, since the only relationship of Malfurion’s they really build on was the one with Tyrande, and she just finished a story arc about dealing with her grief and anger. I guess this could be used to do some grand character arc for Ysera, who could be deeply affected by this sacrifice, but they’d need a lot of work to sell that. Ysera hasn’t exactly been a very developed and relatable character, most of the time.
The death of a powerful figure might also lead to strife to fill the power vacuum that they left, which can lead to cool plot threads… but in this case? Does anyone expect there to be a power struggle within the cenarion circle or even just the nelvish druids? I certainly don’t.
And, of course, the character death could be the final realization of the character’s own arc, which makes it feel complete. A character fulfilling its final purpose in a story, and presenting the lessons they went through (or were meant to teach) with the kind of death they are taking on. Well… I’m no expert on Malfurion, but I’ve seen very little of him in the last years, and kind of doubt there was some grand lesson he learned or taught here. They certainly didn’t present a clear finish to some tens of thousands of years spanning character arc.
I mean, like I said, as far as I’m concerned the current crop of characters could all die, and I wouldn’t care, and I care about Malfu less than some, but randomly killing off characters doesn’t make me trust that Blizzard’s story telling capabilities are getting better… And after Shadowlands that’s what I need to see. That’s why I see more red flags than good signs here.
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Erevien could indeed be very happy now (if he’s not banned again?), although he probably would have preferred Tyrande…or just both of them
for me, I’m mildly excited not really because I hate Malfurion (I still think Blood Elves who hate him at all costs for the hardships of the exile like Lorash are in the wrong overall, or hate him for the wrong reasons, even with the retcon that Lorash was born when the High Elves first landed in Tirisfal), but personally I’m more excited about the fact that MAYBE for once Blizzard have the guts of offing a major and powerful Alliance character without offing a major Horde one “for story compensation and gameplay balance” (basically that APPARENTLY even with the death of Malfurion, an Horde character isn’t dying as well, at least for what we know right now, similar to the situation of Varian and Vol’jin basically, with the death of Vol’jin clearly done just for mirroring reasons)
There is no reason to brag here. Alliance characters are pretty much invincible. Nobody is gonna die. Calm yo breasts.
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Do we really need more nelf drama or personal suffering for Tyrande in the story?
Also if the writers wanted him to die then why did he survive the war of thorns?
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Why now? There have been a number of times, when his death would have been more impactful and he just kept going. Out of context it just seems a bit meh
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The authors probably thought that Saurfang killing Malfurion AND then Sylvanas burning Teldrassil too was just a bit too much for Night Elf fans to endure (or too much Horde bias), so they chose to spare him at least for a while…and make him die for a honorable reason like bringing Ysera back probably.
In this regard the Night Elves had it easy compared to the Blood Elves, being the Scourge invason in WC3 and not in WoW, Blizzard felt no restrain back then about killing a lot of High Elf characters like the King Anasterian and others, and a lot of population too, and the Sunwell TOO…if the Scourge invasion of Quel’thalas happened in WoW instead, the damage would have never been so big I think, just like the burning of Teldrassil where the Night Elf leadership was left alone despite they lost the capital
Im not bragging nor I am too excited, he didn’t die because of the Horde after all…but I thought you would still be happy about this…and then you would say there are still other 19 Alliance characters who have to go after Malfurion anyway
Should have died in Val’sharah, when Tyrande chose to leave him anyway… Even then this makes me think that dead Malfurion and captured Teldrassil would have made for a better story surrounding Tyrande’s whole going off alone to make a suicide pact, because it’s vastly more personal, while there are other established people that can lead in her stead.
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