We Forgot How METAL Night Elves Used To Be...

I remember. It was truly iconic watching my brother play the night elf campaign in Warcraft III as a little girl.

we forgot how metal night elves were because metzen would retcon many of the NE lore. sadly he would do that to every thing in warcraft
wasnt there old lore that night elves got captured during there first meeting and graped?

WE never forgot how metal the nelves were. Activision/Blizzard did. WE still remember the ferocity and primal savagery of the nelves that made the orcs fear trees. Fuck blizz for destroying the legacy of the nelves.

I would like to add also that druidism in general has also been kind of turned cutesy and soft in Warcraft. With the sole exception of Malfurion Stormrage's cutscene in BfA, it feels to me like there's a significant lack of badassery when it comes to the druid class. Like even in Legion you had world quests where you were tasked with the saving the cute little critters from the meanie demons by a cutesy night elf druidess, and the order hall itself wasn't much different. It's not a bad thing that the druid class CAN be soft and sweet, but if that's all there is, then I feel like that's doing the class a disservice. Same with the night elves; BfA did certainly try, but then Shadowlands fumbled the ball BIG time with the Elune subplot, like the writers were trying to course-correct and steer the kaldorei back to being peace-keeping bush hippies and nothing else. I'm totally down for variety when it comes to night elves, especially considering how ingrained they've become with the Alliance as opposed to being aggressive isolationists in their own homeland, but Blizzard's current writing policy seems to call for races and characters to be either one extreme or the other. Because when they try to write ambiguity these days, you get cases like Sylvanas "Genocide Is Morally Gray" Windrunner.

It's important to remember that get the Night Elves started as a more kid friendly version of the Drukhari from Warhammer 40k. They just filed off the serial numbers and replaced the sadism and flesh craft with nature magic and shape-shifting.

Night elves should have been a neutral faction, along with forsaken, pandaren and goblins. The alliance has done fuck all in assisting them in anything.

Blizzard's butchering of night elves is one of the reasons I play on a vanilla private server now. They're straight up ruined in retail.

It's not true that night elves were the first to introduce us to dark skinned elves. Dritzz and the dark elves of menzoberanzzen was written in the late 80s and has been in games like ballers gate

And you edge closer and closer to realizing the modern developers who write your old games now, do not care for your lore and do not care for your old games. They will change it to suit how they want it.

They did malfurion dirty and I do not forgive them for it. This guy was a force of nature and they reduced him to a whiny breadcrumb quest.

Back then everything Warcraft was metal ngl.

that warcraft 3 poster with the group of night elves in the middle of a vast army of undead making a last stand was one of the coolest things ive seen. one of the main reasons they became my favorite WoW race.

Making Night Elves Alliance and Forsaken Horde was the first big misstep WoW made imo. They should have been their own thing.

Giving the female NE females pig tails and the 'bewb bounce' animation really killed that from the first time logging into WoW after coming from WarCraft 3. Oh and NE now live in a pumpkin patch in SW. So...

I remember them as the savage beings they're supposed to be. It's how I roleplay mine. I get grief from people for being too harsh sometimes, but eh, I'm going to play them how they should be. It's a bloody shame Blizzard gives no fucks about them anymore. WC3 NE is why I bought WoW. It's what I've played since Vanilla. I cannot stand the state they're in at this point. I hate SL. Hate how they shat all over Elune in it. Hate how they keep making Tyrande an idiot. How they neglect Malfurion. So.. I just rp how they should be and make up my own stories for my guild and just ignore canon at this point.

I still get goosebumps remembering how beautiful, graceful and strong that female Night Elf druid from the old trailers looked... Their old attire as well. Just perfection.

Yeah, all I've ever seen of night elves (and in general all the nature weirdos in the game) is that they're overly gentle and stupid.

I want "Terror of Darkshore" Malfurion back. Its a shame they destroyed WC 3 so people are advised not to play it and get to experience some truly great lore and gameplay

To be fair to Taurens, the totems and Earthmother stories were more Polynesian-inspired and the Minotaur is Greek to begin with

They cut the balls of the night elves in sacrifice to shitty story telling.

They used be to absolute savages.
Remember Warcraft 3 and what the Orcs said about them.

I wish Wow had grown up with its players. Instead, it feels like it devolved into a kids' book. It used to be savage and gruelling and violent. Now all the characters are throwing around modern real-world slang and acting like prats.

Remember folks REAL Celtic Druidism was metal AF. You want a spell of protection, did you bring the bones of your enemy? Oh you did well let me grind that up into blue paint to cover your body to protect you.

New night elves are gay

You do see Malfurion be cool in-game once, and it's during the BFA "Tyrande's Vengeance" storyline. That cutscene was badass and single-handedly reminded me how druids can be awesome and also fucking terrifying.

likely everything with blizzard now... it has to be pussie rainbow wimp

In the series for War of the Ancients I feel you can also especially appreciate the differences used through the eyes of Illidan/Broxigar, as on one side you have those in the Night Elf battalions as a lot of "yes men". Whilst, on Ravencrest' side you have warriors that are charging into demons & accepting the fact they have advantages the other races don't (particularly their vision at night lol, superb hearing, heightened senses amongst the trees/groves/basically nature but in almost an instinctual way. etc.) but enough so that even the other races embrace the Night elves as warriors to fight beside with (Tauren, can't remember his name at this second) tells him He will add a marking to his weapon in memory of Ravencrest' so as to have all Tauren after him remember basically how badass they/he were as fighters.
Edit: You've also got the druid side of the Night elves. and in the same storyline in those novels you have pretty gnarly stuff happen like him usually grabbing innocuous-enough seeming seeds from his pouch only to have them go into an enemy's respiratory system & explode lol. Or, toss them like sprinkles only to have them grow sharp spikes like a torrent of heavy, cannonball-like missiles hurdling towards the skin/flesh.
I'm fuzzy on some details, apologies. Those with a fresher memory feel free to add to this! :) I haven't the 3 novels in quite a while but those were points that most stuck out to me because it was just cool & different from what the game would otherwise present the avg. player with.
That said, yes- in legion we do have a moment of Illidan being shown in a vision calling Ravencrest a fool lol. and saying something akin to, "would you rather put down your weapons and ask them for mercy?" - in response to the demons; but that's a different context which in itself is still also fun and cool to hear the in-game *narration/voice acting*.

@Bullular Please watch Kimbah 2 on my channel /bow

The Alliance was the worst thing to happen to night elves.

Blizzard ruined them with their stupid stories.

Night Elves used to be scary as hell in the original WC3. They were the monsters under the proverbial bed. They’re the reason you don’t wander the woods alone. They barely tolerated others in their woods only because there was a bigger threat; otherwise they would have not batted an eye about murdering interlopers.

Back in the day, Night Elves used to be such ferocious warriors that even the Grom Hellscream paid them respect. Now they have basically become "Oh no, not my trees!"

Some of us didn't forget they were fierce xenophobic traditionalists not a bunch of hippies.

scottish people are dwarves though arent they? jk

I think we all DO remember those elves. I certainly do and roleplay my nighht elves to match that same ferocity they had in WC3. But in WoW, every single time thy become narratively relevant, they get Thor'd or Worf'd where they exist to be strong on paper but are always beaten down bloody because their opponent needs to be shown to be cooler and stronger starting up with Cataclysm and again in BFA and again in Shadowlands. It's built up a huge amount of resentment in myself over hhow they treated a race I really do love and enjoy.

I just think it's blizzard trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator and the faction has suffered for it. Quite differenty for the elves of atheloren from warhammer where everyone still takes them just as seriously as they had 20+ years ago.

Night elven music in warcraft 3 is very Indian classical actually.. the instruments used are clearly Indian. The sitar, tabla, Indian flute or bansuri, jal tarang, santoor, payal or leg bells all are very apparent. Also there are clear Indian arrangements or ragas in the music, definitely. At least my ears hear mostly that.. even the Naga that they turn into are part of Indian mythology

Didn't they use to be cannibals? It would be cool if there was a reckoning of Night Elf culture of traditionalist being like "What is Night Elf anymore? It use to be we'd eat our enemies and our druids lived in the dream. And now we have mages?"

It was in the other video, but a rebuilding Azeroth theme would be awesome. Building is harder than destroying. And could lead to a lot of conflict over different parties wanting trying to decide what to do over a spit of land.

The part that really gets me about Night Elves, particularly sentinels, is how hesitant blizzard have been to accurately portray them. The Night Elf archers in BfA were a welcome rarity, but even the 'iconic' Warfront gear Night Elves get and the equipment ancient Night Elves in legion used is all comparatively heavy armor, or the cloth set. Let Night Elves be Night Elves and let them look different - and looking different for Night Elves has always been about bear-chested men (spelling intended), plate bikinis, curved blades and exotic warglaives. I understand Blizzard is hesitant to add anything 'sexy' to WoW, but sending the message that women can either be sexy OR badass and not both isn't a good message to send EITHER (meanwhile us men have been getting away with it without controversy in video games since video games began pretty much).

The combo of Druidism, classic Roman and Greek architecture, plus Japanese themes is truly great. The teldrassil starting zone was fabulous.

the issue was how the nelf were portraid in vanilla wow. They moved away too much from the agressivly territorial amazon like society they had in warcraft 3, but that was to open up class to every gender, despite it being very much the opposite lorewise due to the way the dreams worked. Plus, if the nelf were warlike, it wouldnt have made the alliance seems noble compared to the savage horde. Its shitty wrriting and its still going on to this day.

I knew their was a reason why Night elves “Were” my favorite race back in Warcraft3.Then i did a complete shift to Horde for Orcs &Taurens in WoW.

I just forgot how different they were back then to now. I think they just want to play on the trope that Alliance = Good guys & Horde = Bad guys

Why do people keep giving Malfurion such a hard time because of that whole yelling for Tyrande thing in Val'sharah? That wasn't even Malfurion that was Xavius disguised as him.

You get a brief glimpse of the old malfurion in the battle for darkshore cutscene. He is powerful and terrifying. Then blizzard says "nope, we can't have night elves be cool again. Especially malfurion! Send him to the shadowlands for ysera."

Grom Hellscream, upon first encountering the night elves said that they fought with "unmatched savagery" and called them "perfect warriors". I wish the current Blizz would remember those night elves.

My experience playing WC3: "That Orc campaign was a blast! I really want to finish the game now." and then the Night Elf campaign is almost a blur even though it was fun.
In WOW it was like "the Alliance needs some kinda foothold in Kalimdor, and Jaina has no reason to fight the Horde, so... here you go." Not quite as tenuously part of the faction as the Forsaken with the horde, but close.

I remember, probably because I never played WoW.

Tyrande never got retribution of that tree, not even Sylvanas' head on a pike, despite having faithfully supported each Alliance campaign in the past.
I think she should leave the Alliance, take whatever forces she has left and push the ogres out of Dire Maul and rebuild it as the old-made-new night elf capital.