[Spoilers] Elune talks!!! We finally hear/interact with Elune directly.

[Sondrelk]

-snipper for brevity-

The business with Elune does make some sense, but it also requires you to make a whole bunch of assumptions the game has not told oyu about.

The let Teldrassil burn because she did not realize Sylvanas was allied with the Jailer. She sent the souls to Ardenweald not realizing the Jailer was already active.

She didnt let Tyrande kill Sylvanas because it would kill her, and therefore prevent Elune from contacting the Winter Queen.

The game really should not require this many assumptions without at least giving us something substantial to work with.

[sighy]

The business with Elune does make some sense, but it also requires you to make a whole bunch of assumptions the game has not told oyu about.

The let Teldrassil burn because she did not realize Sylvanas was allied with the Jailer. She sent the souls to Ardenweald not realizing the Jailer was already active.

She didnt let Tyrande kill Sylvanas because it would kill her, and therefore prevent Elune from contacting the Winter Queen.

The game really should not require this many assumptions without at least giving us something substantial to work with.

It's likely elune knew something is up, but not the details so she sacrificed her followers to try and help her sister. The Maw or any real insights into it were very scarse before our arrival and a big nono topic for those who did know things. Not ideal explanation, but ptobably as good as we are going to get.

(And yes Teldrassil 100% was for shock value)

[Th3Scourge]

You mean simple dumb shit like the world being crafted by giant stone and metal people who built robots that were cursed to turn into humans, dwarfs and gnomes. Meanwhile orcs invaded because demons infiltrated their magic mountain (which was really a space ship with an angel wind-chime thing) and persuaded them to become genocidal maniacs as part of an interstellar space war?

Yeah exactly. Instead now we have some ancient death god playing 900D chess chasing after infinity stones with no clear backstory or motivations and his angsty elf follower who realised that the evil guy is evil after all and doesnt want a part of it after setting fire to a tree and sending millions of souls to hell

[Hellspawn]

The business with Elune does make some sense, but it also requires you to make a whole bunch of assumptions the game has not told oyu about.

The let Teldrassil burn because she did not realize Sylvanas was allied with the Jailer. She sent the souls to Ardenweald not realizing the Jailer was already active.

She didnt let Tyrande kill Sylvanas because it would kill her, and therefore prevent Elune from contacting the Winter Queen.

The game really should not require this many assumptions without at least giving us something substantial to work with.

Agreed, it kind of works with a lot of assumptions but that's really not good, most people get it wrong on already a very simple level and I can't blame them.

The let Teldrassil burn because she did not realize Sylvanas was allied with the Jailer. She sent the souls to Ardenweald not realizing the Jailer was already active.

I think its more likely she was not able to stop it for some reason...

only wild spirits and gods get resurrected and returned to their realm. Pretty sure we don't see any 'normal' mortals being reincarnated. Only turned into spirits to maintain Ardenweald.

Yes but I think they may change that for nelfs to undo BfA in a way. There is no reason why they could not resurrect mortals.

[Guyviroth]

I love how people are bitching about Elune not knowing about the whole "everyone getting yeeted into the maw" deal, when even the Shadowlands' own Eternal Ones didn't have a fucking clue about it until after we got there.

Use your brains, people.

[Sondrelk]

It's likely elune knew something is up, but not the details so she sacrificed her followers to try and help her sister. The Maw or any real insights into it were very scarse before our arrival and a big nono topic for those who did know things. Not ideal explanation, but ptobably as good as we are going to get.

(And yes Teldrassil 100% was for shock value)

It's certainly an explanation, but it comes across like extremely flimsy and ad-hoc, and more importantly is boils down the entire grand mystery of why Elune didnt intervene against Sylvanas into a simple misunderstanding.

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Hasn't that always been obvious though? Blizzard has mastered the art of pretending they have more than they actually do. Primarily because it's a marketing technique.

"Come be invested in this fantasy product! We promise it has a whole lot of depth and amazing stories just waiting to be told!"

I didnt expect the entire expansion to be planned out in detail. I just expected more than an entire expansion being made seemingly just for an extremely shallow villain batting.
I mean, the entire Sylvanas plotline in BfA in hindsight is really just there to make it abundantly clear that Sylvanas is the villain in SL, and the amount of work they had to put into it was entirely nullified simply because they seemingly forgot that they also wanted to have a redemption arc.

I would have at least expected enough planning by the writers to know not that they wanted Sylvanas to have a redemption arc, and to therefore not oversell her evil deeds to this extent.
As it is it seems like Blizzard decided to go for a redemption arc only after they had alredy set in stone how evil Sylvanas would seem.

[Kumorii]

I don't think Elune denying Tyrande her revenge during the defense to be weird at all. It's Tyrandes choice, but to make a choice she has to know what choices she has and the impact of them. She didn't at that point, thus it would be terrible to let her go through with it. To make a choice you need to know you have one.

[Dhrizzle]

It's really only been established as a fact in Legion.

It was quite well established in Vanilla when dead Night Elf players turned into wisps

[kiramon]

they'd all be flushed down the toilet instead. .

How funny. I described the image I had in my head of Elune flushing the souls of Night Elves thinking they were going to Fish-heaven and instead they end up in the sewers.

[Super Dickmann]

Here's the thing: if she has the power to circumvent the Arbiter, then she likely also has knowledge of the Arbiter and can peer into the Shadowlands. If that's the case then why doesn't she see that the souls are all going into the Maw instead of being judged by the Arbiter? Furthermore, if the souls are going into the Maw because of the Arbiter being disabled and Elune circumvents the Arbiter to begin with to overwrite the destination, then why are the Night Elves still landing in the Maw?

This is where I think this can only possibly tie into the Legion retcon about all Night Elves turning into wisps at the point of their death (which is retarded for different reasons) and that Elune merely switched off this procedure to send them into the Shadowlands instead (hence me asking about Night Elf NPCs in the Shadowlands that got there prior to BfA).

While writing up a reply I found that this stuff is both explained, needlessly elaborate and also still requires everyone involved to be a moron, so bear with me here, links included for posterity. Oribos is like an airport lobby in more ways than one. When your average soul dies it's brought before the Arbiter and the Arbiter decides where it goes. But it still takes anima to open up one of the many doorways we see and to send it to its given destination. The Arbiter doesn't magic that person that way herself, but sends the soul through one of those doorways. This is because, per the Korthia lore, the Shadowlands is a whole lot of weird space and traversing the In-Between requires charts and follows set routes. It's why when you show up all the gates are closed and the robots have to spend the last of their anima to open the way to Bastion for you to visit. It's an ad-hoc way to travel as without the Arbiter all the regular routes are closed. Otherwise, crossing that is unfeasible.

Elune can skip the selection process of the Arbiter's work, but so the soul doesn't get punted into nowhere, those souls would still go through Oribos as the hub area and then through the passage into Ardenweald. With Ysera, this works as wrote since Oribos as a whole is still functioning. With Teldrassil though she still soothes the fallen and sends them on, but when they end up in the hub area, all the doors are closed and the only thing having its own pull is the Maw, per Shadows Rising and Bwonsamdi having to put an effort not to have the souls slip his grasp and go to hell. Elune is attempting to do something she's been able to do for a while on behalf of the Winter Queen's plea for help but because of the change of circumstances it doesn't go as she intended. She's working off of information from the Winter Queen who herself doesn't know that the drought is as a result of all souls going to hell and can't access Oribos because the robots pull the plug to keep what anima they have and keep this place functioning so Elune who isn't even there not knowing is reasonable.

Why didn't the head robot try to set up a zoom call with the Eternal Ones? Why does no Kyrian tell Kyrestia so she can tell the robots to set up a zoom call? Why don't the Kyrian, who're the only ones who get to skip the whole door business I spent paragraphs on end going on about, stop dropping souls into hell? Why is there no contingency for if the Arbiter shuts down considering she's obviously artificial and the other Eternal Ones know it? Why is the Winter Queen's first assumption that her sister is a bitch who cares about bailing out her pet dragon but can't be bothered with her calls otherwise? Okay, you got me on those, I've got nothing. They're all idiots.

Re: wisps - The Legion retcon seems to have been ditched already and it's back to the original lore, per the new Grimoire book, thank fuck for that. Some might still end up as wisps, but the Broker giving the info in the book reverts to the WC3 manual position of it being ambiguous. I'm fairly sure that there's night elf aspirants in Bastion but I could just be confusing it because they're blue. I'll give it a look around in-game at some stage but I think in general night elves aren't guaranteed a spot in Ardenweald.

It's also especially funny that Tyrande's Night Warrior arc basically boils down to becoming an avatar of Elune's vengeance in order to rectify a crime that Elune herself willingly exploited only to then take away that vengeance-fuled power when she was close to actually achieving her goal.

Elune screwing up then setting her chosen up for failure so she could maneuver the now puppet body into chatting with her sister and help restore their relationship is such a staggeringly awful beat I can't even be mad about it. It's the peak of unintentional storytelling.

This is a case of a writer misunderstanding the spirit of the original story.

I don't know what you mean, the OG writers definitely intended for Malfurion to sound a horn to command a relativistic amount of the night elf ancestors to commit mass suicide on Archimonde to bring him down. Much like they intended for the afterlife to have to be explained in terms of obtuse mechanics and logistical exercises.

[sighy]

Spoiler: 

It's certainly an explanation, but it comes across like extremely flimsy and ad-hoc, and more importantly is boils down the entire grand mystery of why Elune didnt intervene against Sylvanas into a simple misunderstanding.

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I didnt expect the entire expansion to be planned out in detail. I just expected more than an entire expansion being made seemingly just for an extremely shallow villain batting.
I mean, the entire Sylvanas plotline in BfA in hindsight is really just there to make it abundantly clear that Sylvanas is the villain in SL, and the amount of work they had to put into it was entirely nullified simply because they seemingly forgot that they also wanted to have a redemption arc.

I would have at least expected enough planning by the writers to know not that they wanted Sylvanas to have a redemption arc, and to therefore not oversell her evil deeds to this extent.
As it is it seems like Blizzard decided to go for a redemption arc only after they had alredy set in stone how evil Sylvanas would seem.

It kind of hinges on Sylvanas's in story reasoning, for burning it, because i don't believe we have an on record, in game 100% confirmation of what it was so it's not impossible to salvage necessarily. (Just like the served Jailer since EoN, even tho the Helya deal would likely be a more organic place to start active cooperation) At this point they're not gonna be able to give us back the 2 expansions of dumb shit, even if the ending is absolutely perfect and somehow manages to reconcile the whole clusterfuck, in a satisfying fashion.

[vaeevictiss]

[Super Dickmann]

It's a symptom of the underlying problem of the plot of BfA seemingly being hastily rewritten to make Sylvanas less evil now that she is getting a redemption arc.

In BfA there was no question. Sylvanas was evil for burning down Teldrassil, and Elune had a reason to not interven despite seemingly being able to. Directly interfering on a large scale might not be something she would do, or even be capable of doing. But A Good War seems to all but state that if Elune wanted she could have stopped Sylvanas...

I can only assume that when the writers talked about planning expansions at least 2 years ahead they only meant in the most broad terms possible. Sylvanas was going to be an antagonist in 9.0, so we should have her be a complete monster in the beginning of BfA.

When the BFA that we saw, intro cinematic aside, was put out it was intended for Sylvanas to be an unambiguous mustache-twirling villain who wants to kill everyone out of spite. BTS likely also went through rewrites as it was delayed twice with each subsequent description emphasizing that Sylvanas was meant to be the main antagonist, but the book itself is a huge oddity in its presentation of the character, her goals and the world as it was after they'd decided she'd be Garrosh 2.0 but before they invented the Jailer.

There is no depth put into any aspect of what she does within that expansion, every beat with her exists to tell you she hates the smiles on little children's faces and she'd also jaywalk and ignore 'stay out the grass' signs, she's that committed to taking only the negative karma options whenever they're presented. The initial bits of Shadowlands we got in the beta were the same, with Sylvanas going on about how the Maw would destroy Anduin and with Shadows Rising casting her as not caring about Nathanos, her followers and and wanting to feed the Maw.

Then their plans changed, which I'd chalk up to Afrasiabi, the architect of her BFA story, being replaced with Danuser in the lead writer role, so you see the huge pivot in Sylvanas's story direciton and the purposeful repetition of certain plot beats done in a way the new writer prefers. The scenes with Delaryn and Anduin are both riffs on Arthas's raising of Sylvanas, but they're vastly different in how they present the character and her mindset, in line with one writer wanting Sylvanas to be a puppy eater and another wanting her to be a well-intentioned moron. But BFA still happened and the night elves and Sylvanas are the biggest remnants of this. The current writers are trying and failing to make these things work and in the process only dig themselves continually deeper as one explanation seals up a plot hole only to open an even bigger chasm next to them. They only plan in the broad strokes and it bit them in the ass critically.

Case in point, the first part you mention re: Elune not saving the Night Elves from Teldrassil. Never before in the entire lore has it been implied that Elune was capable of this and she had only a slight role when much bigger calamities went on. Even in the story as now presented, it's not that Elune let them die since she couldn't have prevented it, but she capitalized on their deaths to help the drought. It's just so poorly told and has taken so long to resolve that at best you have to piece together this nonsense after the fact like this cinematic, at worst, it's like the end cinematic and it just collapses under even the most miniscule inspection due to how it's built upon layers of contradiction, retcons and writer disagreements.

[geco]

Instead of claiming the souls for herself as wisps, she let them go into the Shadowlands, intending for them to help Ardenweald in the drought... but then she finds out they were sent into the Maw instead, thus thinking she's condemned them.

Not that hard to follow really.

That isn't under debate, it's just some people are daft enough to think Elune somehow orchestrated the attack on Teldrassil when it looks more like she sent their souls to Ardenweald instead of keeping them on Azeroth as wisps. They are condemned because Elune didn't know the Jailer was intercepting those souls.

Which is the equivalent of a doctor who decided not to heal thousands of legs because his brother who works in the palatial acylus lacks people.

PD: Anyway, keep in mind that Naisha is not yet wisp so either Elune is a real wretch and baga or she does not mean that it is her duty to make them wisp

The War of the Ancients and the Sundering, the War of the Shifting Sands, the Third War (in which Cennarius was killed,) the War of the Shifting Sands redux, Undead Invasion - Naxx edition, Undead Invasion - Arthas is back, the Cataclysm, Horde-Alliance War - Panda edition, Burning Legion Invasion...

Lots of Elves dying in those wars, why did you not expect Elune to squish Azshara as soon as she started talking to Sargeras, kill all the orcs in Ashenvale then punch out Archimonde, flatten Ahn-Qiraj, incinerate the hordes of Scourge, slap down Deathwing, squish Garrosh and swat the Legion ships from the sky? Why is her inaction only an issue in Horde-Alliance war - boat edition?

And in none of these conflicts Tyrande questioned her faith in Elune only in BFA Tyrande accuses Elune of seeing them abandoned.

Which leads us to think that in all those conflicts Elune played his part and this time he didn't. The writers may not even have thought about what that part was. But being that with just a vision or a message he could have prevented Teldrazzil. I think "his part" of him was to give Tyrande visions

Not only did you kill wardens. You also released criminal archers being held there, along with Brolidan.

And lets not forget the best gem - Goblin Land mines.
Tyrande mentions "Goblins must have left them when they where here."
Makes you wonder, did the Goblins build the jail ten thousand years ago?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think in older stories they told us that a warden and a gobling were friends.

she HASNT, not ingame not in any other lore, she protected FEW individuals, never shitloads of people...
if you want to ignore books and all other lore bcs it doesnt support your narrow view fine, but Dhrizzle is right and you are wrong, simple as that...
throughout whole nelf history Elune helped like 5 people, despite wars and other shit, but somehow this one single war where she didnt help LIKE IN EVERY WAR BEFORE, is different, bcs you decided so...

She only had to Protect Malfurion for 1 attack. Not a lot of people.

Elune not acting is fine and good but this cinematic basically implies that she could have acted but instead chose not to because she wanted her children to be fertilizer for her sister, not knowing they'd all be flushed down the toilet instead. She can't claim "sending the cascade of souls" as her action without allowing them to die, since passing over into the Shadowlands seems to be the natural procedure unless this is somehow tied into the stupid Legion retcon about Night Elves turning into wisps but that should be easy enough to check. Are there any Night Elf NPCs in the Shadowlands that got there prior to the Burning of Teldrassil?

This

[Aucald]

PD: Anyway, keep in mind that Naisha is not yet wisp so either Elune is a real wretch and baga or she does not mean that it is her duty to make them wisp

Naisha and the rest of Maiev's dead compatriots were trapped in the Tomb of Sargeras and became banshees and specters. While they were again laid to rest in Legion at Maiev's behest, we don't know what their time as undead means for their chances at becoming Wisps or how it will affect their chances. Given the time of their death, they may well have been inadvertently caught up in the Maw.

[geco]

Naisha and the rest of Maiev's dead compatriots were trapped in the Tomb of Sargeras and became banshees and specters. While they were again laid to rest in Legion at Maiev's behest, we don't know what their time as undead means for their chances at becoming Wisps or how it will affect their chances. Given the time of their death, they may well have been inadvertently caught up in the Maw.

Maiev visits that place often as she lets Legion understand. So Elune should know about Naisha's condition. Moreover, Maiev herself was not surprised to see her or to see any of her spirits.

What I am going to is that it is a Proof that Elune is not dedicated to "turning all the souls into Wisp". Or if that's her job, she does it really bad. Which implies that it still makes sense to call her a Useless goddess.

[StillMcfuu]

I don't know if this has been discussed but Elune basically says she sends the Night Elves to aid ardenweald. She's admitting complicity to the Attack on Teldrassil.

Or to put it in a way people can understand, Elune is ACTUALLY guilty of genocide.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

When I thought that they couldn't do worse than the War of Thorns (including the burning of Teldrassil) and Derek Proudmoore's return they magnificently surpassed my expectations in terms of awful and nonsensical writing.

[Super Dickmann]

To be fair, that does sound like a fairly typical corporate-fiasco-before-bankruptcy / disfunctional-political-bureaucracy scenario. I guess that in essence the Maw Walker is a corporate consultant, huh?

Sargeras was right. Burn it all down.

Pretty much. As a commentary on bureaucracy and the irrelevance of mortal life in the scope of an uncaring cosmos and the machinations of fickle gods it's pretty successful. As a Warcraft story it leaves a bit to be desired. Or in other words:

The problem is the cosmic soap opera that treats the mortal races as background actors who can be freely bullied into making the "right" choice.

[Aucald]

Maiev visits that place often as she lets Legion understand. So Elune should know about Naisha's condition. Moreover, Maiev herself was not surprised to see her or to see any of her spirits.

What I am going to is that it is a Proof that Elune is not dedicated to "turning all the souls into Wisp". Or if that's her job, she does it really bad. Which implies that it still makes sense to call her a Useless goddess.

We have no idea if Maiev visits that place often - considering the immense danger and its previous inaccessibility (it suffered multiple cave-ins during WC3: TFT) it seems very unlikely. Not to mention that Maiev was imprisoned in Outland until TBC and shortly after returning to Azeroth went MIA for years it is doubly so. I also don't think it's Elune's "job" to turn Night Elves into Wisps, and there are plenty of Night Elves who don't become Wisps at all (given the sheer number of Night Elven Banshees, the entire Night Elven populace of Aszuna, etc.) Having limits doesn't make her "useless," either; unless you want to make the claim of everyone in existence.