That sounds awful. Nightborne need to be as far away from the Night Elves as possible and remain with the Horde races.
Nightborne hinder Shen’dralar lore development. Keep the Nightborne on the Horde. Keep Suramar on the Horde. No Night Elves in Suramar please. Short term upset for long term gain of Eldre’Thalas is what we need. Play the long game and it’ll be better for you.
You don’t seem to like Night Elves then…Night Elf Druids are just the crux of the race. Night Elf Druids are everywhere. Night Elf Druids are the Night Elves. Everything else just falls in behind.
Bel’ameth is a clear indicator that Night Elf Druids won’t be sidelined to prop up Night Elf Mages or Night Elf Warlocks. (Forget Night Elf Warlock lore, period. Throw away NPC’s are your best bet, thank god. Fel/Warlock lore should return to the Blood Elves, in Midnight.)
Night Elf Mages as always, get Easter Egg small quest chains. Just like Blood Elf Warlocks…Midnight is the opportunity for Blood Elf Warlocks to make a stunning return, where we see Blood Elves controlling Fel Magic, incinerate a Night Elf Felsworn / Voidswarn Demon Hunter if he loses himself and become Azeroth’s Elven Warlock fighting force.
I do like night elves, and the night elf druid IS NOT the crux of the race… this is exactly the type of bad development I spoke up. and I’m certainly not calling for the removal of it, but for the other aspect of the race that are either equally or even more important.
Night elves were known in WC3 as FEMALE warrior priestesses, hunters, in WotA trilogy in particular as dark elf wizards, Druids and demon hunter. How did the druid then become thought of as the “crux” of the race?
This sudden, “druids is the crux of the night elves” is a wow development that comes out of poor development for the race.
they basically went, um, night elf is the only class on the alliance that can be druid, so the race will be the alliance druids.
So outside their starting zones, you almost never saw any other class form night elves except druids.
Did the lore ever tell you druids was the only thing to night elves?
It was an important part, but it was a part of a bigger whole that has Moon Priestesses, Demon hunters and Highborne mages - that has forests, temples and cities. that has arcane magic and nature magic.
The problem is the lacklustre poor portrayal, it’s almost lazy, can’t be bothered to think of them or do them justice, so we’ll just lump them into this category, and move on to Sylvanas and more interesting races and peoples.
this is an excellent example of the importance of in-game presentation and visibility. Who’d have thought the night elves, such a dual and broad race, would come to be considered a purely druidic race - even though by lore it is far more than that. - as we pointed out, forest, druid and tree is not in their name, their skin colour or appearance, or main religion. Where it was always a part of half of a pair, it now is considered to be their sole purpose and thing?
Distortion from unbalanced presentation. Or representation.
and you do realise I play a druid, and it’s been my longest main since classic right?
As a druid primarily, it’s the race I like. I like the druid lore, but it is much better when i have the contrasting mages,. it’s funny, while I have loved the forest vibe , I have also been very excited about the arcane civilization , the great one and their incredible night cities.
Their powerful mages that created the mage class and are at such an advanced level of the craft. I wanna see them.
I don’t only want to see them however humans would be boring if they were only ever mages, or only ever priest or only ever warrior… or if Stormwind was all they had or Elwyn forest was all they had… how boring.
yet blizzard seems to think that night elves only having a forest and ruins is fun. that only being druids mainly with only that vibe to them is fun. I don’t find it fun at all, and I like that vibe, yet I also loved the arcane vibe and the fel demon hunter vibe.
While I do sympathise with you, the issue is worse in the night elves, because of how integral a part said mages and the arcane are of the race.
Now the arcane doesn’t need to be a huge part of the Darnassian faction, but the night elf race has to have a huge arcane element… as big as the druid part, this can come in developing their Highborne faction separately. This is what the Nightborne were originally created for. They were created for the Nightfallen to become night elves and that civilization side of the night elves to be available with a larger base or presentation.
So whether the Darnassian Highborne wing grows into a powerful force again on par with the the druids - which face it, given the recent genocide, , and the growth the caste had when it opened up, given the talent in the people this is entirely possible. they can show this.
Alternatively they could go on to focus on developing those very Highborne as their own faction. I mean they actually were before, in Wolfheart, they are phrased as allied with the Darnassians rather than absorbed into them after all. the Illidari themselves are a faction, so when we play a Demon hunter, we aren’t playing a Darnassian night elf, but an Illidari, so effecting the player character creation for a Highborne faction is a matter of doing so in lore with exposure and better by adding some additional customisations like glowy Elune type arcane star tattoos similar to Tyrande’s avatar of Elune, and an understanding that this is a Highborne and priestess thing - so while available to both night elf factions, it’s the one more typified of the Highborne branch.
likewise I’d love the warlock to have access to the Illidari customisation and the night elf warlock associated with Illidari faction- not the Darnassian or Highborne.
I agree here, , but must note there is a difference. Development as warlocks is a new thing for the high elf race, while mage for night elf is not a new thing, it’s been huge part of the lore.
yet, the TFT/TBC blood elf, did begin a warlock branch to blood elves which, let’s be honest, that branch is one of the biggest distinguishing factors between a blood elf and a high elf. and is worth pursuing.
See for night elves, the distinctions have always been very clear form day one, the arcane and mage with civilization, the druid and nature with the forests and hunters, the demon hunter and fel have always been 3 distinct characteristics and parts the night elves have been involved with. The priesthood has operated in both the civilization and forest settings equally, in the former more as casters and traditional priests and in the latter as an armed force.
yet blizzard seems to only show the latter, where the race needs both the former and the latter to be very prominent. yes, VERY prominent.
Easter egg portrayals are totally insufficient. So I hope they fix that.
You want people to try and visualise a book, in comparison to a game, where the night elves were getting complimented, even by their advisories.
It’s impossible to make people do that because a book will never compete with the visuals of a game and I’m sorry, even I accept that night elf mage doesn’t fit the W3 visualisation. Night Elf Demon Hunters do, hence why my main Demon Hunter is a Highborne Kaldorei, but as far as mages and warlocks, they’re not part of that and they can’t compete with W3’s visualisation. The wota books just can’t compete.
None of this is relevant to the present day. Blizzard chooses the core aspects to focus on for each race. No basket is completely full. Feralas and Felwood gave us some Night Elf Mage Easter Egg Quests. Talador gave us a Blood Elf Demonology Warlock Quest.
Night Elf Mage are in the EXACT same boat as Blood Elf Warlocks. They’re used on occasion - I’m surprised they had a Blood Elf Warlock be part of the Black Harvest Elite Council - but, they just don’t match to the stories Blizzard want to tell now.
Again, they do hate the Shen’dralar. They don’t like their inclusion. Why put them in then? I don’t know, but it’s clear that if the Shen’dralar can’t even catch a moment on the Broken Isles in Azsuna and instead, it’s Kirin Tor serving Night Elf Mages, then it’s all very telling on their thoughts regarding night elf magi and the Alliance. They’re either Kirin Tor or 7th Legion, Human Commanded.
It’s a recent return for the Darnassians and many were born after the Sundering, so to say that it’s not a new thing for the Darnassians under Tyrande isn’t accurate, because many night elves weren’t even born before the Sundering.
And fel magic isn’t all that new the Blood Elves or the Thalassians. They were very much aware of it’s magic and in the early days of Dalaran, Silvermoon led the charge in order to defeat the Demons, summoned in by the Humans - this was when the Convocation of Silvermoon was formed.
Because they care about the W3 version. That’s it. They care about the version from W3 that joined the Alliance and that primarily is Druids, Sentinels and Priests. Mages joined later, but when established orders and other creations have already been made by Blood Elves and High Elves, then the Shen’dralar introduction doesn’t seem to add anything cool. I mean, look at Mana Bombs that had the power to destroy all of Outland.
I don’t foresee a huge Night Elf Mage uprising in the lore. The long game is the Easter Egg small questline of reclaiming Eldre’Thalas…even if that’s on the cards now, because Mordent’s lines seem to express something else/
It’s all we’ve ever had for night elf mages and blood elf warlocks. I don’t expect big change…perhaps a questline with Shinfel Blightsworn who leads the new order of Blood Elf Warlocks, but more of an Easter Egg to help get over the loss of the Sunwell.
That is part of our complaint against blizzard, the game doesn’t reflect the lore well… and is an example of how development is skewed by playability demands, when something isn’t focused on correctly, or just left in neglect.
Druids are not more central to night elves than priests, Wardens, Sentinels, Highborne, demon hunters etc, but they had much greater visibility in WoW then the lore indicates… and we can see exactly why.
Blizzard stopped developing races. after the level 30 zones which were largely racial centred, plot lines of the high levels drifted away, we know from later interviews that race stories were meant to resume at 60, but wow’s incredible success had development push for more raids, rather than questing experiences, they were ditched… the updates we got in cataclysm were partial continuations of storylines and development of races that were going to take places.
Blizzard in abandoning race development instead started writing the horde and alliance sort of as races themselves… where the member races would play a specific class unit, and they literally lumped. Draenei were now the alliance priests - although humans are known for their light religion, humans instead became alliance paladins and warriors, night elves shoehorned into alliance druids - not because druid is the crux of the night elves but because only night elves could be druids - and so that’s the development we got
note we only ever saw night elves when we saw druids, otherwise they were just listless npcs in Stormwind
Night elf and alliance race neglect, - a lot of alliance races suffered from a development freeze. In other words, the faction was too popular and they wanted you to play horde. So they didn’t give cool developments to night elves, dwarves and other races… all the cool things in the lore and in Wc3 disappeared. How much cool Highborne magic or night elf city did you see? where were the cool wardens ? how much of the cool demon hunters did you get to see? When were night elf sentinels ever as cool as they were in WC3? And how often did you see them outside night elf zones?
This was Exactly like what happened to the druid class… people in classic who didn’t know the lore, didn’t care about it, hadn’t read the looks, and barely concerned about lore in Wc3, would tell you to your face that druids were healers. You would tell them, no druids are more than healers, they are casters first, then ferals and restos, you would point out to them all the cases in the lore and the presentation of the druids, Malfurion , you would point out these things were cool - but blizzard only developed the resto spec, and until they started paying attention to the fantasy of the class and their various specs, all thought druid was a healer class except those who knew the lore and were crying out.
Sound familiar? this is exactly the case with night elves now and being druids, it’s the resto druid thing. Where many cool parts are underplayed and not presented properly. And just like the druid became really cool once we had a cool Balance spec, Feral spec and guardian spec alongside a still cool resto spec, so too the night elves will be a lot cooler if they show them in game as they are in lore…which means a good development and presentation of their arcane, civilization, Illidari, caster priestesses, Warden and sentinel parts and not just the forested druid.
I don’t think that’s the case. it’s neglect. We didn’t even see the night elves of warcraft 3 till 8.0 in those outfits, but we saw them. Wardens didn’t show up till 7.0, Suramar didn’t show up till 7.0, Moonguard didn’t show up till 7.0, and while we did have Highborne, druids and sentinels in classic… we didn’t see them effective or powerful in those classes until Legion too.
We saw lots of druids, but druids were not the biggest part of Wc3… an influential piece, but a 1 out o3 part where the sentinels and priests female wing was another 1 out of 3 and Illidan and the demon hunters were another 1 out of 3.
The Highborne and arcane side of the night elves not playing a role there, but obviously the arcane playing a huge part, it’s just that the arcane wielder’s were not there, coming in the next game, but already part of the story from the outset.
I don’t think they were, because they didn’t really play any role in the next game - it wasn’t until 2011, did they actually bring in a bit of lore for night elf mages and made them playable.
Until all other races get this, this will never happen.
Night Elves are just as special as the Forsaken or the Worgen or the Orcs or the Blood Elves or the Nightborne or the Humans…we’re not playing World of NightElfCraft, where everything is centred around night elf build up…it’s either everyone get their full basket and full range of eggs or we have what we have now, where elements from W3 are what we primarily get.
And at the end of the day, players will always want something that isn’t central to the race they want. So, Blood Elves using Arcane Magic to summon forth Arcane Fire Phoenixes, which is pretty central to Blood Elves…I can guarantee you, night elf fans and void elf fans would also want that, because it looks cool.
You kind of are, the vast majority of the world setting revolves around the Night Elves and their roles. They are in everything from the first encounter with the legion, Elune, the well of eternity, the world trees, the naga and the old gods, the wargon curse, the wild gods, druidism, arcane magic etc. They are the main native Azerothian race at this point. Almost every other race apart from the Dreanai is mediocre compared to them. It’s just not a competition to compare Night Elves to cursed humans.
You’re talking about how cool blood elves are but they are just a devolved form of Night Elf and a worse version of the Nightborne who are high elves but closer to being actual Night Elves.
So many stories across Azeroth don’t involve Night Elves, so no - we’re not playing “World of NightElfCraft” that everything must revolve around them and their needs. The First War, Second War, the main bulk of the Third War, the Outland Destruction, the Dreadlords of Northrend and Ner’zhul, Pandaria, Zandalar…so many more that have no involvement of night elves.
You either let every playable race have their full basket of awesomeness with all the eggs or we continue in the same light as now. You can’t have select races look good and others look lousy because your crying that your favourites don’t look good. You can have your favourites look good, but you don’t have a right to tear someone else’s favourites down at the same time.
The choice is simple…it’s either everyone gets everything or we remain as we are and Night Elves are primarily involved with Druidic matters, but have some Sentinel, Warden and Priest stuff as well. Just like Blood Elves are primarily involved with Light and Arcane matters, but with a bit of Farstrider stuff. No Fel Magic or anything…just the aforementioned 3.
The choice is whatever the developer decides, and yes the vast majority of events in wow contain night elves as the cause of the world’s problems. You wouldn’t have had any of the events you describe without night elves.
No one is tearing your favourite race down but it is similar to saying you like Neanderthal over a Gorrila at this point. When it comes to the Nightborne and Blood Elves. they can’t go 5 minutes without being a junkie. The blood elf racial might as well be called “ better call Saul.” because you need the hit.
The destruction of Outland and the events of the whole 1st, 2nd and 3rd Wars exist without the involvement of the Night Elves.
They aren’t needed in every story because if that’s the case, then the Zandalari, the Old Gods, the Titans, the Pandaren…they would be needed in every story.
And at the moment, Blizzard are choosing a more W3 showcase, whether any of us like it or not.
It is better than living in tents, Now they have whole small island forthemselves. Which is actualy pretty big if you fly around it. They can hunt/grow food there too, its much better than relying on some kind of wellfare from SW city, which i doubt they even got in the first place as SW/aliance must have been spending Ton of Gold on 4th war.
It’s a big reach to claim I don’t like the current narrative.
The fact is; night elf lore from post BFA has primarily revolved around the tree getting burned and looking towards the future. Yes we had Zin-Azshari that was just…thrown in, because -reasons- for 8.2, but the actual city itself wasn’t all that important, in the grand scheme of things. It was primarily used to locate the Javelins of Suramar and for Thalyssra/Shandris to take small trips down memory lane.
Give it time? We’ve been saying this for night elves for ages, either waiting incredibly long for anything and/or when it comes, it been far more often poor/crappy instead of good.
How can a race be introduced so spot on and well crafted as we witnessed in both the war of the ancients trilogy and Wc3, but then suck so bad n game?
It’s 100% developing issue for the game, because in the novels, the night elves continued to be cool and quite broad incorporating much of the general sphere of the night elves and not in a crappy way.
So why wait? Because it’s not realistic for night elves to have built a city ? I can guarantee you that it is highly unlikely this is a reason. it is far more likely we get a settlement because they want to give a settlement, can’t be bothered or don’t care enough to give a city.
And if they believe that night elves should instead be in a settlement to fit their theme… then it’s worse than I thought, because now it shows that the new developers have completely missed much of what the night elves are and have either relied on mis-informed youtubers rather than gone back and enjoyed/researched the race that was presented in released material according to the vision the race was meant to fulfil.
IF they really wanted to have city, we could have had night elves already established something in the area that the tree would fill and thus have a city.
They could have had the Night elves use their legendary - above the current age - magical knowledge people like the Shen’dralar and their ancient Highborne , Ancients (tree people) have and magically build a city rapidly
Building a city could use time bubbles too that’s another way
They could have created all manner of things.
it could be that they already have a city in the works or intend to share Suramar or something and wanted to give Bel’ameth as a nod to the night elves forest elf side true.
Still, it’s not the forest elf side that has lacked exposure in the game, it’s everyone else. Especially the civilization side, the cities, the temples, the Moon Priestesses, Demon Hunters, Highborne/Moonguard - night elves shown as great priests and mages, and great at civilization - just as much as they are great at being druids.
This is what has been missing a lot more. However, whiles I feel that they need urgent attention in the other areas, it is worth noticing how poorly presented the druid side was too, and hadn’t had any serious update since Legion’s Val’sharah portion. Still I do stand by what I said, the other areas of the night elves especially the Mon Priestesses the most, followed by the Highborne, followed by the Demon hunters - have had far less relatively speaking and the fantasy of the race needs those properly established in game.
They are clearly and equally seen in the lore novels and books, if you read the stories, you wouldn’t think night elves are mostly druids than anything else. You wouldn’t. You’d have a great sense of them as incredible mages, also as demon hunters of incredible power, as mystical Priests/Priestesses. It is far more balanced.
But in game, it’s only the druid identity they showed night elves in most of the times - part of the reason is because only night elves could be druids, but once the Highborne returned and the demon hunters, we should have seen a lot more of the night elves involved in those roles and changes too to their living conditions in game.
Bel’ameth gets disappointing because this is the first time since Legion we get to see new night elf stuff. And even with more forests, and a new tree, you’d have expected a replacement for Darnassus. We just got Teldrassil 2.0 minus a capital city, skewing the night elves, who are purple , night and arcane birthed to be even more green as if they are all druids. And that’s the only class the race knows decently.
they can’t go 5 minutes without being a junkie. The blood elf racial might as well be called “ better call Saul.” because you need the hit.