Worst part, apparently the Army of the Black Moon controls it, but the Horde are the only faction with a non-neutral town in the zone!
I wouldn’t dislike it as much if it wouldn’t be contradicting so much.
The Horde wants peace, pulled out of Gilneas, southern Silverpine, Stromgarde and Southshore to cleanse and rebuild, but in the same breath they occupy Shatterspear Vale, Zoram’gar Outpost, Splintertree Post and the Warsong Lumber Camp in Darkshore and Ashenvale.
Like, they could just say that the Horde feels they have a right to those lands because they fairly compensate what they lost in EK, or they rightfully conquered those and the Alliance conquered those in the EK, or they want to keep those lands for the resources, but instead its all “we chose peace, so we gave up the EK lands to the humans why are the elves angry at us for occupying parts of their lands??”
Honestly liked how Bel’amath looked from the beginning and am quite neutral to it’s location cuz the perk is that the Alliance now surround the the Horde elves and Forsaken.
It’s far enough away that they can rebuild in peace if they want.
Downsides, literally other side of the world from their core territories. (Night elf capital is closer to Quel’thalas and the Sunwell than Ashenvale and the Second Well of Eternity).
Wish it was an updated Hyjal
Think its not fair to consider Darkshore gear as “heritage” gear, by that logic the orcs, humans and Forsaken have a million heritage armours too!
Their history is a long and convoluted one, but Exploring Kalimdor makes it clear that the Shatterspear are an isolationist and borderline independent tribe at this point with very faint connections to the Horde. After the Fourth War, they have returned to their old ways of honouring their pact with the night elves and refuse to leave the Vale.
I wouldn’t exactly call that place a dedicated Horde base of operations at this point.
Also, are we counting the Grove of the Ancients as a neutral location solely because Onu didn’t have Zekhan and Rexxar killed on sight, even though it’s been affiliated with the night elves for as long as it’s existed? If the Vale counts as a Horde town, the Grove counts as an Alliance town.
Factions ultimately aren’t monoliths. The Forsaken have Calia pushing for reconciliation and reparations to the Alliance at every opportunity, while the orcs seem a little more reluctant to abandon their primary source of fuel and building materials that is a stone’s throw away from their capital.
Also, I wouldn’t take naive young Zekhan’s commentary as being representative of how the entire Horde feels.
Upsides, it’s connected to almost every single core night elf territory all over the planet by portals, so it’s even more accessible to night elves than it would be if it was in Hyjal.
If you dislike using portals when you’re in-character and don’t want to acknowledge that they exist IC, that’s on you.
Yes, those races have lots of excellent choices that are perfect for them, and so do night elves.
Still pissed off on how they handled the Shatterspear in BFA, and then afterwards decided on a easy cop out, just so they wouldn’t have to think about how the whole Shatterspear joining the Horde invasion of Darkshore did not make sense at all.
Especially since they were fine in their Vale and had a proper, peacefull, relationship/agreement with the Night Elves
Anyways I hope that one day my NElves get to make the Shatterspear pay for their treachery!
Pandas too, a whole island of their own filled with all sorts of flavourful item looks. Yet they insist they desperately need a heritage set so they can all look like clones. Pandas already lack customisation. I will never be able to tell them apart.
Look, the Shatterspear deserved to have their home burned down, their people and leaders killed, and forced into being refugees. They sided with a faction hostile to the Night Elves and started making aggressive moves against them.
There’s no way they should be allowed to simply move back to their ancestral home they’ve lived in for over 10000 years. That’s just not okay.
Any descriptive resemblance to the events of Teldrassil is purely coincidental.
The only things i’m excited about is HD assets and an upscaled QT. I know full well the rest of it is going to be an utter trashfire that will leave me seething.
Joking aside, I´m a bit worried that high elves and void elves are going to “win” in Midnight by being allowed back into Quel´Thalas. The epic Empire of the Sun with all aspects of The Cooler Highborne (also known as Thalassian) society represented within it, powered by the great font of magic that is Sunwell, is exactly something I don´t want.
It´s why I genuinely hope we get some big loss to kick off the expansion. Void shouldn´t just be attacking Quel´Thalas, it should succeed to an extent, forcing the whole aspect of elven cooperation. Otherwise, we´ll just get pretty much the exact same thing our visiting nelfposter wants, except for the Thalassian elves.
Conflict and failure are the driving forces behind good narratives, if instead we get peace and epic victory, the story will be worse for it.
It’s one of the reasons Legion hooked me in right away. Broken Shore was supposed to be the moment Horde and Alliance repeated the victory at Hyjal… and instead it went pear-shaped, with both Varian and Vol’jin dying for their trouble.
(All the while Gul’dan cemented his status as one of the all-time greats of WoW’s villain roster in my books.)
So the Broken Shore upset the status quo to some extent, and had pretty much everyone invested in dealing with the Burning Legion IC. I wish we had seen more invasion points around the world rather than be told they were there, but it did feel like a tangible threat that needed a resolution.
I dearly wish we at the minimum have a similar sort of stakes-establishing narrative early on in Midnight. Seeing as we’re entering a trilogy saga, I’m actually optimistic.
Utterly fictional, infallible my foot, you say that in mockery, yet the desire of the fans is to see a powerful portrayal, not 10,000 year old sentinels always as dmasels in distress, either barely surviving and unable eto actually pull out convincing or decent wins on their own - as is fittign thier lore.
Then oyu come on and twist a desire and stated want to see dcent portrayals and call it an always win… well given how often nighte lves lose and are weakly portrayed, they are in for a string of wins that will restore a more fitting portrayal of the race.
I don’t care whether htey have to power them up to make it feasible - they have the means, Elune, Amirdrassil, the WEll of Eternity, the EMerald dream, - al l sources of power connected to them… we want to see this…
Well you come across as amusing to me, and also condescending, you fail to grasp what the night elves are about then when it’s pointed out to you, you just retort with snide and sarcastic remarks or gross over interpretations of what you are being told.
You have little to no grasp of night elf lore or the race, and when it’s pointed out to you, you simply ignore it and then dig at the individual instead as if that would make your rhetoric somehow true rather than expose how blind and ignorant of the subject matter you are or playing malignant if you know yet you twist.
You and your cronies harp on about “the Nightborne are for you” when ever matters of showing night elf arcane mastery or civilization prop up, then go on to mock fans as being stans for wanting victorious and powerful portrayals for night elves in response to the abysmal number of losses, always slithering around the point like a snake.
Regarding Nightborne, do you not realise that your allied race is a night elven race right? They aren’t blood elves, they are playable night elves on the horde. It’s kaldorei culture - of the legion invasion period specifically of the pre-sundering era - but kaldorei all the same. They are kaldorei in appearance, minor alteration in ears, and thinner bodies - minor variations like all the other allied races.
Yes, there is a model swap, but we have no illusions that void elves are blood elf kind (i.e. high elf kind) and that Nightborne are night elf kind - that high elf race and culture only accessible by players on the horde is now on the alliance via the void elves, and the kaldorei, also only related to the alliance.
Tbh, the horde should be happy, because both the High elves and the night elves are alliance centred races, and making them accessible to the horde gives a chance to enjoy 2 of the most advanced alliance races.
But you must note, that night elves without their dark side element are boring and disappointing. Forest alone in rural settings is not interesting enough to the player population, not only that it is deceitful because many of us became night elf fans on the back of their dual introduction as ad ark elf advanced race and a remote forest/wood elf race - both aspects were appealing. Expecting night elves to lose their civilization wing because the Nightborne are available now and so those who like that aspect must play Nightborne is both a kick in the teeth and isn’t the spirit or concept of allied races.
You should enjoy Nightborne as a a particular kaldorei community with its unique story that is friendly with the horde, and blood elves, that likes them (unlike the main group) and allows you to have kaldorei based content on the horde. it is not meant to replace the Highborne on the night elves or remove any further development or presentation of the civilization of the night elves on the night elf race.
It doesn’t matter if the majority of the Night elves are forest folk living in rural areas, and most of the lands is forested, players and the night elf lore still have night elven civilization aspects to them and we want to see them. Furthermore the night elf arcane caster, the Highborne and the Moonguard are legendary favourites as is the demon hunters, it doesn’t matter that their numbers are relatively few to the rest of the playable night elves, nor does it matter that this wing of the night elves doesn’t dominate the larger culture of the wider population, the lore has still presented a kaldorei civilization culture, and made it incredible - players want to see this, they want their forest customisations as well as their arcane Highborne customisations, as they wanted their demon hunter Illidari ones.
And this does not remain at just customisations, it also extends to having beautiful forests and a cool night elf cities that represent what they read about the race.
Does it stop there? No, players also want to see night eves ben as badass and legendary in the game as they read in the books. Which means we gotta see night elf mages doing extraordinary acts o f magic that fit their lore descriptions, as well as night elven Moonguard being the legendary deadly arcane combat force. This also extends to druids, While we did get Teldrassil as a feat, what great feats in game have night elven druids had? Where is great power of the balance druid or the deadly grace and power in the feral cat or powerful bear seen? It isn’t
Just like we don’t see night elves in civilization cities (only ruins) and we also don’t see customisations that reflect their star/moon powers that are arcane and Elune centred , so to we don’t see them coming out as powerful sentinels, priests, mages, demon hunters and druids. The worse showing are the sentinels, druids and mage - they are disgraceful. at last the Demon hunters and Wardens have got some relatively powerful portrayals every time we see them… mages are still marred by the Azshara zone nonsense, druids have just been kumbaya hippie sops for most of wow - which is only half of their identity - where is the fierce, savage animal forms they use -side? Where is the power in them? Or these humble beings portrayed as fully knowledgeable of the heights of civilization and wise beyond the trappings of superficial wonders that easily lead astray (@shadowferal)? and sentinels have just been damsels in distress always needing the brave hairy chested human male to rescue them, none of the heroics that capture these are 10k year old warriors empowered by Elune who’ve fought the legion and and - this is not the presentation of the night elves in the lore. Can you not see this is a race of two sides? you can’t show the humble without the sophisticated, the benevolent without the vengeful, forest without the city, nature without the arcane, , serenity without the tempest, , savage without the cultured, passive without the active.
And night elf fans are livid that they have waited 20 years in wow, only to get a sub-par an partial visualization of the race blizzard drew them too with their grand vision. Don’t tell me night elf fans would not be offended when this fails to materialise
Yes, it has been annoying with some of the constant L’s that Danuser handed out at the night elves, or some of the writing which has made them just seem incompetent. I had and have particular gripes with BfA and the darkshore arc.
But I don’t think going with even more storylines will be better, especially as there is a sense of fatigue set in both among night elf enjoyers and those who don’t care for the race. Amirdrassil seems like atleast a decent stop and break in the latest narrative and leaves the elves at a good open-ended spot.
I doubt it will get much better than that, so…it’s better to leave it there, get peace and quiet, let the RP community do its thing.
While hoping that the next race in Blizzard’s targeting system gets a better treatment.
I’m not usually the kind of person to say such things, but…
Please take a break from your computer, go outside, and spend some time in the company of real nature, like the fictional culture you apparently idolize.
Hear the song of unseen birds in the branches, beautiful and relaxing to us, but to them, having meaning whose subtleties are lost to all of us but the scholars who made it their quest to decipher it.
Feel the warmth of the sun and the touch of wind in your hair. Do not hide — embrace it, and turn to it with a smile as a gust of air flows past your face.
Think about our place in the universe, about everything that brought us to this point. Wait until the night descends, and gaze upon the innumerable stars scattered across the unfathomably immense cosmos, among which there is our little blue planet where we, literal children of the stars, dwell and bring the cold universe a gift of empathy, joy, and knowledge.
Then, perhaps, some grievances that weigh upon your spirit will seem insignificant in comparison, and the question of which group of pretend elves in a make-believe world gets which land will not be that important in the long run compared to all the things we can do, perhaps right now, to make the world around us a slightly better place.
