Zandalari monks using pandaren animations is so god damn attrocious it is unreal. These races literally fought themselves two expansions earlier, yet somehow part of them became enlightened enough to look past that and become pandaren monks?
I can suspend my disbelief to an extent, but it is a give and take situation: If you make the argument that monk should be available to all races and they are all pandaren taught, then you should only pick races that fit into that part (being willing to learn being a monk).
Same for every non-pandaren monk actually. Also the fact that we had non pandaren monk masters at peak of serenity from day 1.
Monk should have been pandaren only class. Period.
Otherwise we should have pandaren demon hunters too (pandaren are more agile than elves are in canon and also more altruistic, perfect DH race).
Firstly, there are several night elf societies which we play, which one are you referring to?
Secondly changes happen for a reason, which night elf society changed and why? If you can understand why, you can udnerstand why civilziaiton is expected to return to those who lived without it.
So because it’s the past it’s not valid right? Night elf dark elf wizard casters have always been a part of the fantasy of the race, If there was no origin story based on the arcnae, no pre-sundering era, no Shen’dralar you meet in classic, no Farondis, no Nightborne, no Well of Eternity, no need to stop using arcane magic to hide from the legion, or to start using again when the legion weren’t i’d agree.
But this clearly isn’t the lore. You seem to be imagining night elves as a different name for forest elves, rather than night elves just having a forest elf aspect…
Than you are either blind or arrogant, I’m not sure what you consider a world ending alien invasion that destroys your civilization and cataclysmic size sundering event that breaks your world… I’m not sure what you call the vast amount of territories filled with ruins of ancient cities and civilizations of your race…
or perhaps your only view of post apocalypse is a desert land , or ones with hellish monsters still in them, but even if it was, you still have those as well on Azeroth in night elf lands as well as the other.
You mean the alliance that is home to both the night elves (and their diverse factions) and high elves and every developed race in game, should go to the horde to experience night elven civilization and high elven one - but shouldn’t expect it on the alliance. - because some high elves and night elves went horde…right.
I see, so you are of the opinion that elven cities and forests are horde thing, but elven ruins and desolate forests and landscapes - that’s an alliance thing.
And then you have the nerve to have a go at those who feel this isn’t good or want what they read about the night elves to visislbe and available to them in game. Right.
Which is why night elves are buidling cities, arcane magic and the highborne faction who never stopped using it are back, and why we expect cities and temples and normal life like it was before the sudnering to return.
Yet you think this is somehow taboo despite all the evidence you are shown in books and lore? So expecting decent portrayals of that you feel is unreasonable or wrong… so the fans of the race should go play horde and accept all the better showings there…right?
You keep advocating that, I’ll keep advocating this.
I see, so I imagined the entire night elf lore, the night elf wizard, druid, priest, civilization, post apocalypse, ancient and new era night elven stories.
I was the one that wrote all that lore, and imagined night elves in coming from a great civilization and having great capability in far more than the game shows on the actual race… right.
Says the blood elf player, who has picked his race, and could care litlte to nothing bout the night elves. - why is this a mistake? It is part of the fantasy of the race, just becuase you were ignorant of it and thought it only belonged to the blood elves because you only accepted what you saw but ignored what was written, doesn’t mean it is mistake.
Night elves were never designed just to be forest elves, nor to be primitive elves.
And they were certainly not designed so that blood elves could have everything better and brighter while they languished in ruins and forest in a constant state of alert and war. The story has taken many turns for them and if you can’t see the wider fantasy, then that’s on you, not on me and not on blizzard.
Please do share what these other night elf societies are, since I don´t recall any besides the one that´s under Tyrande and Malfurion.
Exactly, as night elves have abandoned that culture.
You really seem to be one of the people who see the word “Kaldorei” and automatically assumes it´s something that modern night elves should be. No, them having huge Arcane empire 10k years ago does not mean they should be like that now.
If your criteria for post-apocalyptic world is “10 000 years ago the society collapsed”, then literally everything is post-apocalyptic.
By “some” you mean 90% of all high elves and Highborne group that is no longer night elves?
Because yes, that´s exactly what I mean. If you want to experience the Arcane elven empire, you really should play the faction that has two elven factions that resemble that empire the most.
You mean all 50 or so surviving Shen´dralar?
Also, it´s really showing how your view of normal night elf life isn´t the life they´ve lived for 10 000 years, but something from before Sundering.
Yes, you did imagine the parts where night elves now are meant to be some dark elf wizards as core part of their culture and story.
And we´ve got the “Your forum avatar is of another race, so you don´t care about mine”. We really should make the nelfposter bingo for this thread and see how quickly it gets filled.
Also, it´s telling that your go-to response to people is assuming they say something because they only want epic things for their race. Projection seems to be very strong within you.
Do you know what the fun part is? I don´t have to advocate for anything as I got what I wanted out of Bel´Ameth (well, mostly, I´d prefer if it wasn´t available to Horde to visit, but that´s a minor thing).
Ah, the elf player that had no real interest in night elves, because they don’t have any of the things he likes visible in game - so won’t play them and expects them to continue having none so that the group he plays can continue to be better in his eyes so he can look down at the other elf group and take pleasure from being better in his own eyes.
How easily he ignores most of the night elf lore. Arcane magic is a mistake for night elves, but not for the elves he plays, night elves can’t and shouldn’t have cities, only the elves he plays should. He is totally fine with ruins. As long as they are unattractive.
And to the fans who remind him what the lore attributes to night elves he has sudden amnesia. These fans just want what isn’t there for all he sees is night elves in forests and ruins. Feral and savage and nothing more to them.
One minute it’s the night elf fans headcanon and imagination, the next minute , all the things blizzard put in that back up and prove the point are a mistake and not the night elves. Only the things he sees, that he doesn’t like and doesn’t care about are what are night elves and he is happy for it to stay that way.
Hate how they removed Church/Light monks in favout of Pandaren-style monks tho.
I would, without a doubt, change Mithralles monk magic from Pandaren to Elunite/Zandalari/Wild God magic if they ever add class customisations.
Cenarion Circle are a different (night elf) society from the Darnassian one.
The Shen’dralar have been allowed to keep their own culture and way of living, seperate but allied to the Darnassian night elves (per Wolfheart), so Mordent could call himself Prince and it should be ok.
There’s some cultural and societal difference between Shen’dralar, Darnassian and Cenarion societies. (And I assume the Moonguard was different culture until the nightborne wiped 'em out too, what happened to the 3 survivors anyway?).
(In general I dont agree with our local nelfposter tho).
I just love how you are the book definition of night elf stan. Thank you, genuinely.
Really, in hindsight, Blizzard not creating new name for night elves post-Sundering separate from Kaldorei has been a mistake, as it just constantly leads to some people believing the pre-Sundering night elves and modern night elves are the same people, while the other elven races aren´t.
I don´t really agree here, as the leader of Cenarion Circle has historically always been one of night elven leaders. Their neutrality is something I´d attribute more towards the presence of tauren (who joined only after Third War) and Vanilla´s overall approach to less defined faction differences. Other than that, they´re the same night elves as those from Darnassus were.
Shen´dralar have by now pretty much rejoined the other night elves. Besides that, they went through event where majority of their population got killed off by the Shen´dralar, then most of Shen´dralar were killed off in Vanilla. I wouldn´t call them a separate society, but rather a new, minor aspect of mainstream night elven society.
Who knows, honestly. I doubt they´re going to be revisited, unless they get added to Bel´Ameth.
I mean, yea, that has been a thing since Cataclysm when the Mage class became available for Night Elves, but that still does not mean thr Shen’dralar are not working to keep their own culture alive, which is really not that strange since it is what they have known for the past 10.000 years.
It might evolve to incorporate more of mainstream Night Elven culture, it might loose some of the ancient aspects of their culture, but the Shen’dralar Highborne have always been a sub-society within the greater Kaldorei society, as was confirmed by Wolfheart, and I see no reason why they would drop that in favor of a culture that does not support their focus on Arcane magic. One could even argue they would try to keep it alive even harder, especially with how little of them are still around after the War of Thorns.
And lets not forget that Kaldorei who choose to follow the path of Arcane magic are changed physically aswell, with their hair turning white and their skin pastier and appearing more like the Highborne(if that is still a thing?)
Acrona, Nerathion and Lintian doing Elune’s work by trying to make people see not all NElfposters are that bad, and then we have Starstride writing TLDR responses which make no sense what so ever😩
I get were you’re coming from, but until Cataclysm Tyrande was the sole leader of the Darnassian people and Malfurion was the sole leader of the Cenarion people.
One is more Elunite focussed with a druidic influence, the other is druidic focussed with a Elunite influence.
And yeah, the neutrality is the taurens fault (even if Cenarion druids fought for the Alliance in BFA!)
This is a fair stance, tho the fact that Mordent and the mage trainers are in the Outcast tower in Bel’amath is kinda telling (unless I misremember their location??)
Hope they are part of the nightborne tbf, and not the Darnassians!
I always just go by the characters gender, so Kayt’s a she! (Dunno about irl, but just going by characters here!)
Between Vanilla and Wrath, Fandral Staghelm was leader of Cenarion Circle. He resided in Darnassus.
But they´re still only two aspects of the same society. You wouldn´t call Farstriders and Magisters two distinct blood elf societies, as they are at the end of the day both parts of Quel´Thalas, just like night elves, whether from Darnassus (during the 12 or so years that city existed) or Nighthaven, are at the end of the day the same people.
They´re not, they´re in the city proper.
I think at the end of the day, the mages will be one (minor, for a loooooong time) aspect of night elf society. Just like the ordinary night elves will be more accepting of the Arcane, the few night elf Highborne will become closer to the rest of their people. There will still be distinctions, but I think the Magisters and Farstriders comparison is apt in this area. They won´t be two separate people, but just two subgroups of the same society.
But, one small addition: I´d exercise caution when using Wolfheart as lore source in this matter because it takes place right after they rejoined. The differences and hostility between Highborne and other night elves were at their greatest during that time and we´ve since then seen even Maiev become more accepting of them, while Shen´dralar aren´t in some separate section of Bel´Ameth, which shows they´re different from the outcasts of night elf society.
Pandaren, with an entire culture that is built around resisting negative emotions such as anger and hatred, seem uniquely suited to moving beyond the sins of the past and teaching any penitent Zandalari who might regret their actions and wish to learn from the people that they had wronged.
I’m not going to say that it’s an extremely common race-class combination, and both the player representation and NPC representation of Zandalari Monks reflects this. However, there are still ways to make it work if you’re willing to put in a little effort and think about it.
At the end of the day, characters are allowed to deviate from their racial stereotype. Look at your own character, for example. I’m quite sure that you’ll agree that Atahalni is not anything like a typical tauren. Should tauren be locked out of being able to be shadow priests because that class-spec doesn’t fit the traditional fantasy of the tauren race?
I’d argue that every non-pandaren monk is probably an outlier among their people. They aren’t monks because their race are inherently willing to learn from the pandaren, they are monks because of their personal inclinations and because of what makes them different from the rest of their people.
As the demon hunters were taken from the ranks of Illidan’s Illidari, it only makes sense for a character to be a demon hunter if it belonged to one of the races that were found among the Illidari. This includes:
Night elves
Blood elves
Naga
(Fel) Orcs
(Broken) Draenei
But based on the composition of the Illidari, I’d personally be okay with orc and draenei demon hunters. But in the end, demon hunters are limited to two flavours of elf, so maybe there’s an unknown prerequisite of elvishness, or maybe Illidan is just an elf supremacist, who knows.
Like monks though, demon hunters represent outliers rather than the norms among their people.
I probably misremember it but weren’t the Zandalari in MoP Zul’s servants rather than Rastakhan’s (now Talanji) followers? Considering thse two groups fighting was a central part of the BFA Zandalar storyline it doesn’t look that silly they’d allow Pandaren trainers to teach aspirants.
Yes, however in MoP (I am unsure if this is still canon) Rastakhan directly offered Zul his forces as a “harbinger” of sorts, the Zandalari as a Kingdom were in on it with Lei-Shen.
Edit: This was also at the time of MoP why you saw entire warbeast fleets from Zandalar invading Pandaria, all of that under the will of Rastakhan and, at the time, Zul as his Hand.
It’s true, but for the Pandaren it’s quite hard to distinguish one from another, and sometimes even harder to care. When a half of your province is burned to ash by trolls of all colours and looks, the forgiveness extends only to not killing them on sight.
Thanks for the correction, that’s something that I didn’t recall. I didn’t consider Loramus or Altruis to be members of the Illidari prior to Legion, which is why I didn’t list them. I’ll edit the original post accordingly.
This can be used to justify every single race/class combination in the game.
Mecha gnome/dwarf druids, undead paladins etc.
Yes, you can do it. Should you though? I don’t think so.
The loosening of race/class restrictions is something I absolutely am not a fan of. Restrictions and shackles force you to think inside the box with limited tools at hand, and I find that infinitely more intriquing than I do this blender mess of modern wow writing where every part is interchangeable and mutually inclusive.
I hate it.
And let’s be honest here Shogganosh, Demon hunters are not available to Pandaren or for the other races for the simple reason that it takes time and effort to make unique animations and forms for each race, and thus they picked two of the most popular from each faction. It was just a convenient thing that lorewise DH’s had so far been elves, even if you suspended your disbelief the same way you do for monks, you could make a perfectly solid argument that post legion there is no reason why DH should not be available to all the races.
Turn the tables and ask the same about a monk, and you and I know 100% that Monk aesthwtically and lorewise fits only the pandaren in the form that it currently exists. But they expanded it from day 1 to all the other races because they knew for sure people would not play pandaren.
And that is my main gripe. They didn’t make the decision with monks or DH’s with the setting binding their arms behind their back, as any good established lore in a game should, but rather based on popularity.
I have always hated it and will always hate it. Compromising some parts of lore in favour of gameplay is justifiable when it interferes with a significant game mechanic, but races do not interfere with them in any way shape or form.
It’s the easy and despicable way. And that’s that.
