I really enjoy the whole “dragons and Night L’s are allies” thing…yeah…well what did the Dragons do when Night L’s needed help the most?..nothing.
If the horde decided to comepletely whipe Night L’s of the face of Azeroth, all they need to do is ensure the World Tree isnt harmed and they can Hang and quarter Finel right infront of Alexstrasa and they wouldnt bother…Night L’s are joke and Tyrabdumb is the poster girl of Night Re… i mean L’s
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They have not touched IF in ages… they just abandoned the arguably best city in the game in favour for stormwind… 
Be happy they did anything at all for you night elf players
Not to mention that IF still looks damned good to date. The amount of work it would require to bring it up to date would be much less than Stormwind. But to be honest it’s one of the places that really feels like a racial capital city. Stormwind isn’t it any more after they tried to reflect the diversity of the Alliance in it, with all the alien creatures walking around like it’s stuck on Halloween.
Tbh, i think it was a bad idea to just focus on org/stormwind - every city has some unique feels to it.
Stormwind = your classic fantasy medieval castle type city - there are people who love htis.
Ironforge/Thaurassian City/Grim Batol = a unique mountain inside type city - it was quite unique, and wes ee what the best of itcould be like whenTHe Hoobbit trilogy did ERebor.
Darnassus/Suramar/Eldre’thalas = the Greco Roman architectural style which has been the night elf city style - which surprisingly few have relaised - not like they didn’t pass through 100s of ruins and didn’t see Darnasus or Suramar - yet think night elf capital should be a rual village tree - rather than a night city version
Undercity/Lordaeron/Dalaran - Forsaken has been also human but different style that gained a proper goth vibe for the rural type homes.
Shattrath/Auchindouin/Exodar/Tempest keep - Dreanei - has been your magical hi-tech alien type city, advanced tech - Wo
Silvermoon - has been a mix between the night elf greo-roman and modern day city with a magical unique flair in the floating towers. with a unique red-gold theme, sun colours compared to the moon/night colours of the kaldorei cities [despite the name Silvermoon - irony huh]
Kezan - Goblins have been a modern type city, think industrial era, turn of the last century - New YOrk type.
Gilneas city has been - WOrgen get the London industrial era.
Zul’Gurub/Echo Isle/Dazar’alor - Aztec type classical city
Mechagon/Gnomeragan - The Gnomes underground industrial era grade hi-tech city cross between sci fi and fantasy industrial era mechanical
shrine of the 7 stars etc - more Chinese/Korean style architecture
Notable non-player race mentions include
Each of these cities has a very unique style, that I’m sure players love. W hich is why they were all worth developing and were a delight to see. SHame they left hem in the ditch. ANd I would actively look at ways of making them useful above been the latest raid tier
In the long Vigil, and even before as Azsuna shows, they’ve been around dragons and worked with em a lot. IT’s not that surprising - but what was weird is that they were not that intimately connected with them throughout the expansion.
Elf-players be like whenever something happens:
I would worry too much. All the cities may as well be burned down except valdrakken everyone one is empty except this place.
Blizzard hates us - well at last the alliance fans.
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Considering what the attention of the developers meant for the Night elves, i think the Dwarves are better off being ignored, with Blizzard’s track record, “Touching IF” means caving the place in to make a baddie seem powerful, the focus on SW is part of Blizzard’s “Humans and Orcs, the rest are secondary”-attitude, which isn’t the NE’s fault.
I know i’m hoping for the Night elves to be left alone for a good long time after the past six years of the writers’ attention, almost all of the changes Blizz makes to existing content (Except their precious Orc and Human capitals) have been destruction, there’s safety in being ignored.
Exactly, after they turned the Nightborne horde and gave the home city of the ngiht elf heroes, and the bastion of the pre-sundering civilziaiton also HQ of the Order of ELune to the horde, I knew these people were never going to be serious or treat the vast majority of their content properly.
And did it get better with the announcement of the Nightborne going horde? No! We didn’t get restored to night elves nightfallen for capital share or Nightborne happening on the horde but in Silvermoon while Void elves came , also exiled form their home - would we get such parity no… they gave everything horde, then butchered the night elves the very next expansion all over again, - - and yay the quality writing that has Malfurion not even bother to help his wife or play a role in nature heaven afterlife, just continued to reek of quick fix writing rather than lets really do something properly decent that would restore the dignity and wholeness of this race.
It was clear, the night elves were better off been left alone till someone who cared started the project again.
Fat chance of nelfs being left alone with so many nelf fans crying their eyes out that they got the short end of the stick constantly, which I’m not arguing, but since people still seem to think they are getting the short end of the stick for the … what? 5th time? Maybe it’s time to shut up and let others take a turn at being blasted by the lore.
Oh, a small, spiteful part of me is almost hoping for another race to take it in the shorts for the next 6 years (Possibly the Blood elves, Blizzard’s idea of “Revamp” is “Make things worse”, after all), just so i can sit back and see how they like it, after years of, besides being told in the story that seeking revenge is wrong, having players lambast NE-fans for feeling hard done by as well.
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But they actually like the blood elves, so they’ll probably try really hard. But then they actually liked Sylvanas too, and look at what trying hard for them got them?
The night elves were just after thought - when you actually delve into everything from 7.3 onwards - it’s just second rate, small parts, minor involvement.
Sure, but we’ll be facing void baddies, probably looking for the Sunwell, it’s not too far-fetched to imagine Blizz will cover at least part of Quel’thalas with purple void puke and tentacles, just to make the void seem like a big threat, and then leave it that way for the foreseeable future once they move on to the next expansion.
I’ll gladly stand corrected if i turn out to be mistaken, but past trends sure point in that direction.
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Indeed, I would be glad too if it doesn’t turn out that way, but face it, this is blizz.
Same with the night elves, recent Shandris election to leader, this Shandris has not measured up in anyway to the Shandris that is mentioned in the lore., we have instead a b_tier rate Shandris in game to be leader, again. night elves not been fully portrayed, but she gets a mention because now she is the leader.
20 years of showing the hippie side of the night elves, with only occasional glimpses of the Priestesses, the mages, the civilization and all the cool bits… and still blizzard don’t realise what is more popular to their players. Don’t realise why we liked night elves so much - THEY WERE INTERESTING - because they were diverse, had contrasts, you had cool deep forest and you had intelligent high night civilization… arcane wielding priestesses and nature wielding druids, then you had the demon hunters, it was dynamic and varied, and off course half of it was in books, so you were looking forward to it coming into the game.
There is another thing that makes me wonder if the current writing team understand the night elves at all.
The Moon Goddess - Elune - is linked to the arcane, in the druid class, lunar, the moon and stellar the stars are all arcane, they hearken back to the night elves arcane origin and arcane base - because the race is dual arcnae and nature - the blood elves , high elves and the other get that incredible arcane aptitude from the Night elves, that’s why they have it - so to erase that part or somehow convert it into nature misses the point entirely.
the druid’s main tree balance is to show the balance between nature and arcane - because that was the biggest Achilles heels for the night elves at the end of the pre-sundering era, not that their civilization was great, it was that hey lost balance, and so their most acclaimed nobles got addicted and arrogant - refusing help.
Druidism in this way ties into all things to do with the arcane for the night elves - but it it doesn’t mean the arcnae has nature elements or that nature has arcane elements, it just means that the night elves are in both fields and different classes, wield them accordingly to maximise them.
Entre the priesthood. where druidism combines arcane with nature, but separately and in balance, the priesthood fuses arcane and the light - because Elune the Moon goddess is thought to have dwelt within the well because it is through study of the well they gained knowledge of her, and the spells they cast are arcane and light.
This directly feeds into the night elves name - as children of the stars (not the trees) and their sacred regard for the Well of Eternity and the waters of the Moonwells that come from them - it also is easy to extrapolate their mage class and dynasty, and how/why they become so accomplished… because it’s all linked.
But in different ways. You don’t suddenly make Elune a life /nature goddess - that’s not “Moon goddess” how Warcraft has defined it, and it further diminishes the Dark elf and arcane side to the night elves which is VITAL for the contrast it gives to the nature, wood elf side.
the dark elf side, and arcane is the branch with Elune the Moon Goddess, the Highborne and Moonguard, the Night elf civilization, cities and temples - the culture. The druid side is totally different way off life but also night elven, where it’s peace and tranquillity, rest, and nurture rather than progress, drive, development.
You cut out the arcane, you handicap the race, they lose their drive and their cutting edge, with only rest and respite being to them, they lose their importance and relevance to the other elven groups and their status as both leaders and founders which undermines their entire lore and purpose.
Furthermore you erase the contrast that makes the interesting, arcnae v nature, Elune v Wild gods, civilization v savagery , urban v rural obscurity. Progress v rest. Fierce v peaceful
Their wonder and intrigue is that these contrasts exists side by side, in harmony, yet separate from each other - it’s a juxtaposition and the contrast is sharp - high type civilziation city like Suramar then not a living soul, no development nature forest like Val’sharah that is there as if no body has ever lived there and is pre-historic, pre sapiens of any form.
This is the contrast that is delightful about them. And while you have druids that are balance and will sleep in barrow dens, you have feral/and resto druids too, then you have mages and priests in tall towers and temples in great cities.
The attraction of the night elves to bring this to game was the challenge… but instead you have a conflation of themes, Tyrande is now casting emerald dream nature spells - but Malfurion can’t be used? Elune is being shunted to a life /nature goddess despite being a “moon goddess” - with a long history of arcane spells that were to be the contrast tot he nature wild gods. The night elves who are night elves, children o the stars, with moon and star - arcane themes, purple arcane skin colour, silver & azure arcane eye colours [they still don’t even have the green eye colour of nature and the emerald dream] - you night, where nature isn’t necessarily strongest, because it requires the sun to grow green - which is what made the druids interesting -
It’s at odds so stressing this primitive life, and that all you see is the back water side… it gets boring and it isn’t interesting. It is only interesting when you have the contrast in the great city and temples, the arcane wielding Highborne and unstoppable Moonguard, the Moon Priestesses with their stars and elegant sharp 15k knowledge of the well and their goddess contrasted with the benevolent, sane chilled druid, but who is powerful yet in a totally different way, relaxed compose, wise unhurried, like nature seems deceptively simple but is anything but in contrast to the top arcnae ones that seem so hifoluting and complicated but actually it’s quite superficial.
And so we get this farce - we get Bel’Ameth a settlement prioritised over Suramar or a Suramar replacement - worthy of a new Darnassus, we get Tyrande showing nature powers instead of coming in as high priestesses, we bench the Highborne and Moonguard, the Demon Hunters and DKs, Ravencrest and Farondis entirely, so only use the sentinels, druids and Moon Priestesses, but the Priestesses don’t use their goddess powers, they instead seem to only shoot bows and arrows.
?
Why ? do they understand night elves I wonder??
have they realised they are NIGHT elves, children of the stars - not forest elves, children of the trees,. Why is their main essence and main culture so suppressed?
Where is the Night? or the stars? the night city? the night forest? Why are all their forests like a day time druid heaven and no representation of a night forest ? At least Suramar hinted at this and Ardneweald showed this - but yet typical night elven forests should be distinguished from druidic forest by their “nightness”
The theme of the night is linked heavily to the arcane , the stars and moon and their arcane civilization and state - and it is what makes them distinctive, far more so than a generic forest elf group…
Should I even mention the racist connotations of making the main dark elves the primitive elven group? Yet this is what it looks like without showing the counter balance.
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That’s been my conclusion. Just wrap it up, even if I don’t enjoy the process, I’m so over it 
Go harass someone else! Preferably with better and more satisfying writing.
I know this was posted months ago but its never a bad time to restate that belfs are only horde becuase Chinese players only like playing human like races so blizz put them on the horde to balance out the factions in on Chinese servers.
Are You referring to Tyrande & Malfurion outlowing the use of arcane magic in Night Elven society after the Sundering?
As stated in the lore, built quickly and rashly by Elisande’s Loyalists and they were easily dispatched by the Nightfallen and Sunreaver Blood Elves.
Arcane Golems are just a more Blood Elf and High Elf thing and I am a traditionalist. I prefer to keep them firmly with those pure Thalassians. Night Elves and Nightborne do their own things.
Silvermoon is still a pure Arcane society so, it makes sense that extra mage things are in that city, than in Bel’ameth.