Bel’Ameth - New capital - Night Elves - we are now a village people
Night elf resolution closed up.
- No new capital city - you get an encampment grade village
- No empowerments from Amirdrassil y- you remain the same
- No lands and zones - you get a small section in the Dragon Isles
Night elves the only race in warcraft that keeps getting cut down further and furhter repeatedly - new updates, models come out worse than before ( remember how somehow 6.0 model updates came out uglier than the original despite their higher fidelity? Then all the genocides, now look at the dryad models]
When they do something impressive for night elves like Suramar or Demon hunters - they are either destroyed, go horde, neutral, or just never included in stuff related to the playable night elves later.
The night elf peoples get no replacement for:
Darnassus
[Note - this is old architecture for night elf cities - it was updated in Legion]
Suramar
Zin’Azshari
Nar’thalas
[in-game ruined version]
Eldre’thalas
[Edited in-game image by Eopox]
[edited in-game image by Eopox]
Cathedral of Eternal Night
So with all this credited to night elves, the main playable faction get a village instead of a city.
Happy? No - If this is it, then the epic Night Elves we were sold, are DEAD - they will be nothing more than this. Beware void elves, , Draenei etc etc you will be diminished - only humans and the horde races get justice.
How can what has come before simply be all round less impressive than what is now given ? This truly is decline - at least for NElves.
Conclusion: Amirdrassil is beautiful, but Bel’Ameth is disappointing:
What It Could Be
Proposal - make it more magical: Maybe a city in the tree? Arden weald forest has been the most thematic rendition on what a NIGHT forest would look like while Suramar fits a night city perfectly… we should incorporate both of these into the new night elf home. Maybe half the time (at night) it can shift into the Arden weald and becomes one of those constellation trees with the city atop? The colouring changes from daylight green to Ardenweald colours and some of their plants and trees showing in too. We could even have denizens of Ardenweald can cross into Azeroth?
Meanwhile, Suramar is the perfect version of what the new Darnassian city should be, since it is the original home of the night elf faction - their new city built with both Highborne and ancient and priests involved would look similar and perhaps even more enjewelled given the tributes brought to the night elves by all the citizens and denizens of Azeroth - dragons and earth giants, loamm bringing in precious jewels of all sorts, contributions from the different races in either thanks or apologies (horde)
Also you need to add how the tree helps the world, and the life-death balance. Azeroth herself is greatly involved here as well as Elune - there will be Well of Eternity-esque vibes too and better than Nordrassil enhancements.
----EDIT ADD —
What they Shouldn’t Be
What I don’t like are the insistence on a very few group of players that night elves should have no civilization or magic - this is not elven, their reasoning is because blood elves have this - but blood elves who were revitalised in TBC are not mutually exclusive with night elves, so neither blood elves getting their revamp in their introduction or Nightborne going horde should be used as some sort of excuse to puncture or deflate night elves robbing them of the long expectation from fans or the things in their lore about them.
Night elves do do cities, they are different in some ways from blood elves, but they are cities.
- These are nocturnal -a night city - this has some differences in ambience but also culture that would be noticeable (as Suramar shows in part though it’s kaldorei attitude is based on a particular period of the race)
- Night elven cities are traditionally very green too, not the colour green (no colours are white shining like the moon and stars, with purples, blues and pinks, but green as in plants and gardens - roof top gardens, parks and groves, lots of gardens. [they don’t necessarily have to be green trees as Suramar, Teldrassil and Ardenweald show]
Night elf cities are not rural shanties or caves - those are rural areas for elves, not cities for night elves - sometimes I think these people think of night elves as an entirely different species rather than just nocturnal elves that actually have cities and varying degrees of civilization from rural to urban, or rather pristine forest to advanced civilization city. Shocking that you can tell this by reading a novel on them, but not by playing the game for 20 years.
- Their scale is bigger than the blood elves and less connected and influenced by humanity - and this shows itself traditionally in how extreme they are in their arcane dedication and nature dedication - this shows in the sharp contrast between rural and urban -urban is beautifully developed on quite a scale, rural is almost like you’re in an -untouched forest by human hands.
Night elves are not going to want to have wooden towns, and a tree shanti at all as a city and a capital. In a forest they want it undisturbed…and I’d imagine prefer to have the city on a hill fixed area - let all the elven activity happen there not disturbing the forest… (see Druids dram of a perfect firest is modelled on the emerald dream - i.e. undistrubed] better not to use wood either, trees are living after all, , they’d be beautiful because it’s their character, out of love for Elune (that’s why the temples are so gorgeous and the homes sorta mimic that standard) and replicating nature they love with stone is important too.
This is why night elven cities would be art masterpieces - whereas blood elven ones would be less artistic and likely more gilded and grand more in a human way like we see the tall buildings of Silvermoon vs those of Suramar. Silvermoon having more blocks with gold gilding, Suramar having more artistic flair, with jewels sure highlighting a greater more extreme degree of magic and accomplishment but also of nature too. This is how they were presented to us from the novels.
The point is, it isn’t fitting to expect huge differences between blood elves and night elves - night elves are just a lot deeper into what makes elves, elves than blood elves, their extreme focuses and contrasts are the highlight - their arcane is more extreme as seen in both the pre-sundering era and the current Highborne (which blizzard needs to show) they just do more, so is their nature love more extreme as seen in the druidic side of things, both in the long vigil and in the druids around today. their religious devotion is also far more intense, much more religious Elune language in their speech and their love devotion is easily notable there. The magic is more intense, the typical elven characteristics are more intense, compared to a more humanised blood elf, that’s less fanatical, less intense both with their nature and magic. More open and involved with other people around them - relative to the night elf.
A New Type of Race - night elf related
What the horde belf fans are wanting night elves to be by their insistence on only the forest part, no magic and a far more of a feral/savage caste to them is not the elven type set, bush forest and shanti town would be better suited to a night elf sub-race that is more animalistic and not the night elves.
Like a race built around worgen night elves that are night elven in one form but worgen or were-elf as their main state. They can still be intelligent but mostly feral, have magical capacity but that won’t have any major focus or significance like it does for the night elves.
They will have forest/tree homes made of wood like a city in the trees like - since that pure nature love philosophy of the kaldorei druids isn’t as sacred there, nor is the arcane and civilization side that would produce new night elven marble cities there either.
This is where you carry out the fantasy, because they’re not really elf mainly, though that is their half form and heritage, you can depart more significantly from the elf race type set, fitting more into the Worgen or half-man/half animal set.
The Wereen
[Proposal] The Weeren are a race of half night elven, half animal people who were once night elven druids transformed into worgen and trapped in the emerald dream. During their time their they underwent many changes, gaining new were forms such as were-bear, were-cat, were-bird forms. Though cunning and highly intelligent they are feral and savage in nature, though they remember their time as elves. Many of them when in night elven form sport animal features correlating to their were-form. optional antlers, optional leaves for hair, optional gnarled branch on one forearm and hand, optional goats feet (like Sylvar and satyr) optional feathered arms) are all customisations centred around their highly nature orientated part.
Their main forms players can choose between a harpy like bird -elf, a were-bear (that the best night elven druids have learnt to shapeshift into), were-cat a form that was also discovered during the events of Pandaria (and very similar to Saberon).
They prefer living high up in gigantic trees, and have made Shaldrassil the site of their imprisonment in the emerald dream, their main home Their dominant mastery is druidism, though many have taken to other fields ranging from mage to warlock, shaman, priest, demon hunter, alongside the more dominant druid, hunter, rogue and warrior classes.
— EDIT ADD — 13/01/2024
Understand the Player base, PLEASE!
People of our generation generally don’t want to play primitives, losers and savages.
And while the Night elves are not those overall in the lore, in the game this is what they largely come off as.
They look primitive with no evidence of civilization in game though they are reported in books to have developed the best one.
They come off as losers the vast majority of the time, either toothless, magic powerless or damsel in distress types, stack contrast to how they were launched in wc3 and written about in their 6 novels- nothing close to
That calibre in game existed up to Legion where it appeared briefly to be replaced by genocide number 2.
They were never savage though we got the impression demon hunters, sentinels, wardens could fight with a ferocity akin to savage - but never in game , and if their fighting style was savage, they would have been expected to come off badass there but also display an opposite side to themselves. A side with a level of dignity and sophistication their history has shown us.
Which lest you forget is the main beauty of the night elves - that visible contrast.
— EDIT ADD – 13/01/2024
The Epic Levels of Disappointment
And off course we are going to be disappointed by this … I mean really! Who wants an entire epic race to just be savages in a forest…? Even for the actually designed to be savage races - like orcs, trolls and later worgen - blizzard gave them decent enough urban infrastructure… and look how popular they are.
And yet somehow an elven race, an elven race! and the one that is supposed to be the genesis of the entire line, with the past that has exceeded everything done by the mortal races according to their own lore, is suddenly a pure hippy race. Almost as if half or 3/4 of the time writers forget the lore put the original as the apex. Did so with night elves and di so with trolls. And the night elves haven’t devolved - yet show nothing in game akin to their original greatness - this is disappointing.
Like the concept of versatility and diversity with and within the arcane cannot exist, or is totally lost…
Thrown away are the gems they had, -
- That incredible civilization that was supposed to be amazing in every regard until the Highborne and queen fell to hubris and addiction - is a huge asset, every much as is the pristine forests and nature concept.
- Who didn’t like the powerful night elven wizards taking on Eredar magicians in the War of the Ancients, wielding devastating magic the likes of which the current world including the exiled high elves lost most of that knowledge - I mean who wouldn’t want to see that?
- The fabled Moonguard, the original Highborne the high elves come from, the Shen’dralar who are the most revered arcanists of an entire and very excellent magical civilization?
- or the moon Priestesses and Moonguard who’s magical mastery conquered an entire world
- the combination of mage+druid+priest that inflicted the legions’ first ever defeat.
I mean these are great concept - so why aren’t they a part of the night elves in game? why only hippie druids and damsels in distress sentinels? Weak - and monotonous becoming boring and losing interest.
-
Demon hunters - fel empowered, with corruption marring their bodies but arcane tattoos and and a fiery determination keeping their soul intact so they can destroy the Legion with their cool war glaives and magical skills…
-
Wardens secretive order of special police using the powers of the night and arcane light of he goddess to do incredible feats.
-
Then there is the whole star and moon culture centred concept, trees that reach tot he heavens, cities with tall spires and towers that reach to the heavens as this star obsessed culture looks upwards to gain it’s power.
I mean, these are interesting and exciting concepts… and they’ll trash all of it… save the cool druid stuff… which they instead focus far too much on being peaceful but without the other side to contrast and balance it.
The thing is I wouldn’t mind the peaceful tones and portrayals, it’s the right of the racial character profile of the people - but it’s that we see them RUBBISH in wow, only the peaceful and soft, and the noobie-seeming writers who know nothing of the earlier stuff go “oh, they must be all this…” and compound the problem by writing them further into this - almost as if they don’t really care about integrity and consistency of lore or don’t know. I mean if you were going to ignore or change something cool, surely you’d have a great reason like something much cooler and better right? but no, they don’t which means it’s forgotten which means ignorance (lack of diligence) or don’t care, lack of passion. neither is good
Druids
- Where is the PRIMAL rage of the bear or the cat? surely Thaon Mooncaller and Asha’mane cannot be the ONLY presentations in game of how ferocious and dangerous a druid can be?
- With one quick short cinematic of Malfurion in bear form the only ever time I’ve seen a druid bear look and feel dangerous -
- And what about the zero times I’ve seen a balance druid look dangerous - I mean you could say Tindrall Sageswift in Amirdrassil looks dangerous…but I’m talking about the likes of Naralax and Rensar Greathoof showing up and pulverising people with Moonfire, starsurge and stellar flare.
Priestesses
When have we ever seen Priestesses of the moon do anything but look soft… up till 10.2, the only time I had seen them look even remotely battle ready in wow w was the Priestess patrolling the road from Dolonaar to Darnassus for furbolg attacks, if you follow the NPC around, when the furbolgs come in she suddenly goes from that sweet serene benevolent voice when you poke her to a commanding “Warriors of the night” assemble.
And that’s it… none of the Starfall from Warcraft 3, or the moon and star spells that are supposed to typify the Order of the Elune
In 10.2. they just stand there with bows in quiver looking more like fancy dress hunters doing nothing really, than Priestess of Elune, in battle, using the stars and the moon like their mage and druid kin, but in a dazzling way as these are the Elune experts, not the druids, not the mages… with the bow as only a back up, a thing more useful during the long vigil when arcane usage was underwraps.
It is shocking how the concept of the night elves has shifted from some really interesting things they have had, to now just being so monotone.
No demon hunters showed up, no mages either, no priestesses wielding their power… and the druid cast we know? while there, did nothing remarkable or dangerous…nothing.
Amirdrassil
Then Amirdrassil appears, blesses the aspects, but not the night elves, , the night elves camp there - fine I can expect a retreat… but where is the news of taking back their lands, healing Shaladrassil, Highborne restoring Eldre’thalas, Nar’thalas, building a new capital, enquiring about Suramar and the Cathedral of eternal night?
Are these people serious? or jokers? on the brink of extinction, wielding power like THE Well of Eternity, Moonwells, Amirdrassil and the goddess Elune, and we see more of them taking a chill break than doing anything powerful
Where is the Excitement?
And this is what players are supposed to get excited about and happy about? Amirdrassil all but handed to the night elves… literally where is Tyrande and her Moon Priestess leadership coming in wielding the arcane power of the stars and moon or the Highborne, Shen’drlaar+Farondis+ Moonguard wielding all that mage magic and star and moon magic we saw on display in the Nighthold? Where? or demon hunters going to a task against Fyrakk using the rage and terror they are use to to tear up enemies?
I mean I get adventurers do it, but we see no powerful instances of night elves doing anything
I mean it’s just MEH MEH MEH MEH MEH …
The only thing I’m grateful for is that Amirdrassil looks beautiful and like a nature paradise, and that’s it? Where’s the rest… nature paradise is just a part of the night elves not the whole, where is the city? and where are the night forest like we saw in Ardenweald? where is the star and moon concept??? the Night ??? Where is the empowering and going forward to reclaim their lives, and lands, 10,000 years lost to watching against the legion, now they’ve emerged, weak, but with lots of power sources, lots of knowledge, and skill - and yet do we see that employed? Oh no… cause they are suffering from night elf lore amnesia.
I mean seriously??
Coherent and Consistent Theme
Night Elves - you know Night, Stars, Moon!!!
These are NIGHT elves - not green or tree elves… their concept is dark elf + wood elf… not wood elf hippie. They were meant to bring the best of the dark elf trope and the wood elf one, not just a weak arsed wood elf fantasy. You don’t make a wood elf purple, with arcane wielding powers and origin, and magical sources, and arcane colours and firmly define them as green forest types. I mean you could have at least made the forest purple. I mean we had to wait till Suramar to see a visual concept of a NIGHT city… good job by the way, but where is the translation to the night elves it actually belongs too? [instead they carter that section away from them…with? With no equal or better substitute? and think fans will be happy ? Shows how very little in regard they held those fans and then demand and expect loyalty for extending subs and buying books and merch] Why is the Ardenweald the only place we experience an actual night forest? - this should be the major hallmark of a night elf forest, with the green forest being something more attributed to druids and their work for the wider world or the other Eastern Kingdom and maybe Tauren lands.
… GRRR…
Blizzard Please Review Your Work Properly
Your work, what you’ve done, and have in your notes, not opinions and comments from youTUbers and personalities even if they are famous like Bellular or Taliesen, you should be informing them on what is correct, not they you.
Please stop making night elves totally druidic. they are not a class… they are a race. Druid is a class… druid has green fields and forests and the emerald dream - not the night elves. *
Night elves have the night, Night forests, Night cities, stars and moon, Night goddess. Night elf depictions, imagery and presentation should be the majority night… and they should have fair balance of arcane and nature, of night elven civilization and night elven forests
Which should be night - like the Ardenweald was. when you swap into druid territory exclusively then it becomes a lot more green, with daylight and sunlight , nature in it’s full bloom… sure, nothing wrong with the majority of them being night elves, … the druids I mean, but it’s separate from the night elves themselves and the majority of night elves aren’t druids, even if the majority of druids ARE night elves. there was a time when the majority of mages and demon hunters were all night elves. in the lore, we must keep the race as having it’s balance of nature and arcane, urban and rural, civilization and non-civilization etc, themed around the night, the moon, the stars, the arcane, and night time nature. This is night elf - children of the stars… not the sun nor the trees. I repeat the night elves are not the druids. The night elves are not the druid race. You need to fix this. Don’t distort your own superior vision for a severely reduced one…costs you nothing to maintain the original one… well ,little more than you spend on this reduced version and it woudl be immensely more popular.
Please go and read your own lore blizzard, and bring back what you had epic about these night elves. Go back to the war of the ancients trilogy and Wc3, and bring back the epic things form both these eras - let us have a true night elven race, complete with both night elven civilization and night elven forest wilds. arcane and nature, Elune and wild gods - polar opposites but yet co-existing in a balance, and you can see the line form one extreme to another. male and female distinct… they don’t have to be unequal, but they can be distinct. - females dominating the warrior, hunter, priest classes, males dominating the druid, demon hunter and mage classes - and yes you have males in all and females in all but you can notice where the majority lies and how each arena is dominated by the characteristics of the gender that are in it.
This is not controversial it is distinctive and can be special, with character. These are all the unique things of the night elves.
Really we’d like to see you take time to show mages from the night elf place - at the level that fits their lore - top of the game - these are the inventors of the mage class and the race that has taken it the furthest - create situations for it, even if you have to show Night elves alongside Nightborne taking charge of arcane affairs which you should (great mage characters like Prince Farondis from Legion’s Azsuna is so good, Mordant Evenshade, and for more great mages, now druids like Rensar Greathoof]- not always showing Dalaran and the Blue flight or Silvermoon as the only ones that can do magic decently (you’ve totally forgotten the draenei too, and don’t ignore the void elves), people should be able to also automatically associate highest level magecraft with night elves and their unique star/moon versions, not just druids. same with priests - and this is an exposure thing. If you showed night elves solving impossible arcane problems or the priesthood from time to time being exactly that on a larger scale, then then you help break the 1-dimensional feel the all forest presentation has super imposed on a far more diverse group.
Please, exactly the same goes to the priesthood of the night elves who so far in game you’ve only largely shown as hunters not priests, despite that great priest lore and novel depiction. It’s the only priesthood that uses the arcane, this immediately makes it unique, and also the only priesthood that has a martial wing. we’ve just seen the martial wing only but without the caster side, they don’t feel like a priesthood, they feel like hunters - with no reinforcement of the main fantasy, that makes the unique bits feel special rather than inconsistent or incoherent… you’ve not shown this race in balance.
—EDIT ADD 16/02/24—
Honest Questions Developers should Ask Themselves
Anyway, there are several things whoever decided to do this have totally forgotten or not thought through
1. Who night elves really are
2. Where they are
- Remember they are a race and not just one faction. Multiple classes and ways, not just one. And several vibes, not just one. They are not JUST a forest elf race , in fact, this is the second, not first part of them, and it’s like the lesser has become the major because they have enough cities galore and arcane magic galore in other races - so they ignore the vital part of the night elves and the unique nocturnal and star/moon version of both arcane magic and cities they bring, and the grand lore they have that defined them.
Purple elves, the colour of the arcane, born from the arcane, because the legacy of the race is from magic. An arcane goddess, with lunar and stellar magic also from the arcane, Moonwells and Well of Eternity, silver eyes and a name called the children of the stars.
Forest love is another wing, it was taught, and because their nature is benevolent, intelligent and curious, - they love nature too, but they also love magic.
Focusing only on the forest part is detrimental and antithetical to a race designed to have both an arcane magical civilization part and nature part.
Like the druid class, in classic, who only catered to the resto spec. It kills much of the attractive ness of the class to only focus on resto spec, and ignore balance and feral (which is what happened in classic) - people loved the original wider fantasy of the class a lot.
Same with the night elves, their initial attraction was magic, difference is you saw forest aesthetic and read about city aesthetics, but the heavier lore with their civilization, and it fit their mould. you understood how they go to forest, but you k new their core, and you loved both.
People LOVE night elves dark elf high society aspect, as well as their forest elf gritty but sexy sentinel side with the hippie druid, and then the dark , gritty anti-hero cool demon hunter
These 3 aspects, all 3, not just the forest elf side are greatly loved, but blizzard have largely ignored 2 highly popular bits, and only largely showed one.
But night elves aren’t green, they are not born from the trees, their base is arcane magic, and we love this about them. the Moonguard, the grand civilization, the Highborne, the arcane stuff, is loved as is the forest part, the walking trees, the sexy hunter chicks, the Lunar arcane women - it fits right.
So night elf is the wrong race for a full on forest niche - and it is the wrong race for a full on arcane niche - this is why Nightborne is a sub-race is a good idea, and I think necessitates a second forest elf niche race like night elf worgen or a night elf connected Sylvar race or even the quadruped Cenarians as playable
But converting night elves, with their origin and diversity funnelled only into one aspect, destroys this race, reduces it, and makes it boring, Forest humble druid life and hunter chick becomes a lot more interesting when contrasted along a haughty or high society type night elf - it gives the race far greater depth and each, and when you get to the demon hunter you get another contrast because you get the benevolent type, high on ideals and morals contrasted with an anti-hero type, that’s not exactly evil, but will cross lines in order to destroy an even greater evil - it’s a moral contrast that the Illidari demon hunter has the priest/mage/druid kaldorei types who are noble, good or lawful good. A demon hunter is willing to get their hands very dirty to stop evil often at cost to himself, something a normal night elf will find horrific and never risk or inflict on themselves.
Can you not see blizzard how both the civilization arcane side of the night elves and the demon hunter side actually make the Night elves far more interesting than just hte forest side?
Can you not see how making night elves only forest elven based or majorly so, at odds with their arcane origin , Moon goddess, civilization foundation and development? It’s one thing to have been forced into nature state for the long vigil (this is the main group here) it’s another thing that the race has oved on and now can be broader but instead is locked inn. Notice I said at odds rather than contrast. contrast can only exist if the contrast
- Where they are: A nature paradise for a race, is foolish and unrealistic. It may have made sense in a pre-civilization era, when they were the only peoples around and no one else was much developed. when there was no magic, and few tools that could chop down wood.
in a world, where there is strong magic, fire, , clever and advanced races around, you are foolish to to ignore a city you are more than capable of building, and then to make it out of something as fragile as wood. you’d have marble and stone re-inforced with magic and spell work to the best of your ability.
This is no longer an isolation period where you are a race entirely dedicated to hunting threats to bring down Azeroth. That faction is gone, so also is the faction that could afford to stay secluded in an advanced city and be untouched by events around them, advanced enough to say hidden - that too is also gone.
You will now need everything, all the power you can muster - whether it’s arcane through the Well of Eternity and Moonwellls, Elune your goddess or the world trees/great trees and the power through the emerald dream
You are on the brink of extinction, your civilization destroyed 10k years ago, and you’ve lost your lands and frosts too. in the Long vigil you had to restrict your magical usage and your purpose could dictate another path because you were isolated. this is not the case any more
You have allies, , lands to reclaim and defend, but also a civilization to build… you have enough of a variety to do so. you have your Highborne and city civilization types, that thrive of that, and you have your forest restoring types that thrive of that.
You are night elven you have both, you also need both, you should be seeing both available.
.
lets not forget under metzen the helpless night elves needed big strong human potential varian to help them beat the horde