I think that in combination with other things that happened to the race in general it’s a continuous trent to deconstruct what made the race in it’s earlier days.
Given the praise I see from narrative people, like Danuser, Golden, Copeland, (to a degree) Gregory, for themes and directions of where Anduin goes, Saurfang, new horde identity search, that direction is pretty clear - be a background for selected few characters, until the narrative will conveniently could pull the elves out for an event or 2, then forget that the concept of a “follow up” even exists.
Same general theme was with Sylvanas. With Yrel. To a degree with Garrosh (and by the extension the whole WoD effect on the orc lore and identity). Be a tool to tell a certain message, regardless of how it fits the things.
That is how I see it. It might be wrong. It might be incomplete. Blizz writers might be secretly geniuses, etc.
Elune story started to crumble IMO when the devs decided to push the Night Warrior + undead night elves story. Which was a big WTF moment for seemingly quite a few players. And the current story progression does not make an effort to neither mitigate the damage continued in BfA, nor to at least tell properly and in details the story behind all of what is going on, and re-establish connection to the known older lore elements.
How does it improve the downfall trajectory of turning the race into something it was not?
Does it give a new meaningful trade off for what was taken? Does it bring explanation for why those things happened? Does it give new meaning for why the old lore made sense?
I do not see any of that. What I see is the total backpedaling from the idea of distancing Elune from known pantheons / naaru / old gods, etc., ties her to Death magic despite her having ties to all cosmo forces (except disorder) before, in one way or the other, throwing away some things that were considered true (Elune-related afterlife), and bashes a bunch of things in the process (be it mentioned actions and reactions of undead night elves, Amalgamation of souls claiming being betrayed, etc.)
Things do not exist in the vacuum. Problem is not in “let’s imagine there is no story of the night elves, no story touching Elune, and let’s create a new cool thing”.
Problem is how does it fit what is there. And it does not. It takes what is damaged and continues to warp it, placing some things as lie, some things as contradictory, and not doing anything to address the problems.
The whole things was terribly foreshadowed, poorly executed, barely accomplished anything, it’s once again “tell instead of showing”, and it fits the trend “and now what about night elves is wrong / bad / fake”.
If that thing would’ve happen in the context of Classic or TBC - there would not be anywhere near as many question to this story direction. But now it’s a part of other troublesome narrative elements, related to the said race and beyond, it’s a yet another “1 step from the ret-con territory”. And to neither of them it helps.
It’s just adds more confusion and dilutes things in the narrative part that was shaky / in troubles before it. Thus it won’t (nor it should) be viewed as a thing in and of itself, but in combination with other stories and events unfolding around topic of Elune, and role / place of night elves in the warcraft universe.
offtop
We had similar discussion about Yrel and the new direction with the Light. I get that for some there is nothing special in pulling the rug from under feet and tell “ha, actully it had a different meaning all along!”. To me inability to stay consistent is a really bad sign when it comes to the execution. It just throws away bits of what people liked, and offer the things in exchange that were neither wanted nor are interesting as it does not follow what made them interesting in a first place.
gl hf
