Originally Posted by
Super Dickmann
But screentime isn't everything, it could be that it's implied in other works how they're treated or it's the subject of out of game information - once more not the case for playable night elf mages. You can speculate that huge numbers are being taught or that they're now reinvolved in whatever plots there might be, ditto that the night elves are reassessing their role towards them to view them positively. You could just as easily argue that given how Maiev and the Wardens going on a killing spree of them went completely unpunished and she's now in charge of her armies with nary a mention that nobody really gives a shit and considers them a fringe group of barely trustworthy participants. Indeed, their lack of screentime would make the latter more compelling evidence-wise. But both are pure speculation - they have no basis in the text. You have a hard time differentiating what you would like to happen, what might even make sense to happen with what has in fact happened. You operate from the conclusion - you've already decided that the playable night elves are intensely arcane, and work backwards from that point to push your points - that's why, even after being called out on bringing up that dev interview with the drow by multiple people, you responded to me, as you did to them, by simply doing your entire spiel verbatim a second time, bringing no new arguments to counter this. I suspect it's because you genuinely can't understand the point we're making - namely that you read the document in that fashion because you've already made your mind up and repeat yourself because you think we don't grasp the obvious rather than considering the opposite. This flows in turn to the issue of the wishlist of this entire project.
3. Elf Questing Content and Projection - A sizable focus and undercurrent of all of these topics is that the overlap of elves is not actually a downside - if anything, that there isn't enough overlap is the flaw. Much like with your reasoning for night elf mage integration being a combination of overstatement, a purposeful overlap of playable and unplayable night elf groups and an over-emphasis on arcane content and the overwhelming weight put on what constitute miniscule amounts of the total playable night elf quests. I don't think you're being disingenuous when you say that you genuinely believe that the Night Elf and Blood Elves are meant to fill the same niche. I think that you are so deep down the rabbit hole you can't look out. Where the arcane addiction and use of arcane elements is a recurring motif among the Blood Elves, as is their decadence, relationship with the Horde and so forth, 99% of playable night elf quests, whih is to say quests tied with the Darnassian faction of Night Elves, center on the defense of nature, the fighting of invaders and so forth. This extends even to 'neutral' content - in Cataclysm, the breach that produced the druids of the Flame was based not on magic, but on the Malfurion's lax behaviour towards the Horde and a feeling that the night elves were being let down by their choice in allies, Farondis' story, unlike the Nightborne one, has arcane as an incidental element, casually practiced, but ultimately about his personal relationship and dealing with death. There is simply a very, very sparse amount of quests that deal with the playable Night Elves' view of the arcane in their society. I brought up the Azshara quest before, but it's one of the only times we actually see such mages appear and even then, it's part of quest content for the Horde. It's a moment that characterizes the blood elf gimmick of arcane elves while undercutting these new elves. You don't see any of it as a Night Elf. Ditto the tonal change in Night Elf vs. Blood Elf involvement in Suramar, where the differences and similarities are emphasized respectively.
This is not an argument in favour of Horde Nightborne - to be entirely honest with you, I don't really like the Nightborne despite still liking night elves quite a bit and having liked blood elves before they were reverted to red high elves. I love the aesthetic, to be sure, its' well made, the quests are well crafted, but they are simply a redundant element of the setting - the story of reintegration of mages into night elves and how they handle it already ahd an angle with the Shen'dralar, the Horde already had arcane elves in the blood elves, with a functionally identical backstory, niche and even plot pertaining to the Legion. I'd have preferred for them to, were they to exist, remain neutral, because while they'd arguably have more of a story in the Alliance than the Horde, they would always be doing something another race already can. Rather I bring them up because far from Blizzrad having a grand design regarding the reintroduction of arcane to the night elves, every single time they've had the chance to show playable night elves interact with arcane magic using elves, there is either simply nothing there or there is hostility. Not hostility to the point of war, since they're generally not that kind of people, but cultural distance and alienation. Which leads neatly into the last part I'd like to address, which is the purpose of races in the game in general and the importance of definition and variety.
4. Conflict, Variety and Racial Identity - I've told you and ravenmoon several times that you're more Highborne fans than Night elf fans, and while I stand by that, I think the bigger issue and what is likely closer to the truth is that you are simply elf fans in general, and while to different degrees, you like all aspects of elves and consider the night elves to be progenitor elves that should have all these traits. While in the above three I've explained how that's simply not born out by the game, here I'm addressing how that goal is antithetical to the purpose of the game and the enabling of conflict, as well to cultural variety.
I've often seen you bring up the Zandalari vis a vis Darkspear and other trolls, to get across what you're after - a gestalt entity holding all racial aspects. That is, to whit, my greatest problem with the Zandalari - by existing, they nullify one of the main playable races, because they subsume most of its aspects. That is why I hope that future stories will emphasize the differences and separation - in the troll case - that being an established, if decaying empire with a strict caste system and monarchy, opulent and rich compared to the more savage, down to earth approach of the Darkspear, and in turn how these things address other matters - like how Bwonsamdi is viewed skeptically by the Zandalari, but is liked by the Darkspear, and how anyone with enouhg competence can rise in one tribe while another has a more strict division. Ditto, having Darkspear appear more in subtler roles while the Zandalari have their grandeur in proper formations. What I'm getting at here is that more is sometimes less - and more is definitely less when it's based around undermining aspects of other races or its own race. Bringing that to the night elves and other elves, you can already see what I'm getting at with the Nightborne and Blood Elves. The two have a lot in common - too much, in fact, because they are interchangable in just about any story except ones about the Light, grievances with the Alliance, Horde, Legion or so forth, where the blood elves have more going for them. The Nightborne are low-rent blood elves, and to function, they need to take over the arcane niche, which leaves one race with less, and another race superfluous since the aspect it's been grafted onto could easily be given to someone else and thus leave more room to focus on that character.
Multiply this by a thousand in a case where the Night Elves have all aspects of the Kaldorei Empire and every splinter group we've seen hanging around, as well as its cousin states. The Nightborne would remain pointless in such a setup, whereas the blood elves would be a palette swap who remain on the wrong faction, but it's the night elves themselves who'd lose out the most. Warcraft is not a game of extremely internal cultures - rather, cultures are blocs where certain aspects all match. The Draenor Orc Clans are a sign of this done right - they're all recognizably orcs who's gimmicks are spins on core orcish values and positions. The playable night elves have this - the priesthood of Elune, the sentinels, wardens, their ties with the ancients, and to my personal chagrin, but your approval, the arcane reintegration. Through their variety they enable more internal and external stories and points of conflict, but they don't step on the toes of any other race. This would not be the case for a hypothetical Kaldorei Empire - for one, the bulk of current night elf content, focused on sentinels and nature and the like would, by your own admission, fall to the wayside. You don't want playable night elves to be forest elves, but disregarding that that is the niche they exist to fill and as emphasized above constitutes just about every aspect of their content, the focus away from that towards other aspects taht are already covered elsewhere, be it religiosity in blood elves, arcane with Nightborne or what have you would not produce any new stories. All those stories can already be told. But other stories - stories based on friction and cultural incompatibility leading to conflict, which is the crux of the game, could not be told. You can no longer have night elves taking issue with arcane use, or at least in no fashion different from what blood elves and nightborne can already do by taking issue with irresponsibility, but not the core choices that they already hold.
The preservation of nature as such, the nightly predator aspect would also be pushed into the forefront in favor of stories that already exist. You can alraedy see how much of the night elf function, much like the Horde pre-Cataclysm, had its races overlap culturally and functionally, to the point where a tauren was often an objectively worse story choice to include than an orc, because an orc had far more story tied up with that issue. The same will be true of night elves and their adjoining races. Less is often more - the elements not part of a race and that in trun bring it into conflict with other races are crucial to defining it - a group that is everything is in turn nothing. A story route that limits the overall amount of stories that can be told - as such a story inevitably would, much like an undifferentiated Zandalari and Darkspear is one that should not be taken.
To conclude - variety, difference and gaps in any race are essential. The past as characterization of the present is fine, but the two aren't the same, wishful thinking and speculation - even interesting speculation of the kind you've produced isn't evidence, but changes that seek to reduce racial difference and deemphasize the main value of the races as products are inherently bad.