The Night Elves in World of Warcraft are being overlooked. The most important quest is just mocking the traditions of the people.
In World of Warcraft, each race gradually gets a special quest line to unlock the so-called ‘Heritage Armor’. This quest usually revolves around the origin of the race and the history of how that race became what it is today. Blood Elves have a flashback to the Sunwell and the Scourge invasion, while Humans from Stormwind talk about dragon attacks and the Defias Brotherhood.
But Blizzard seems to have slacked off when it comes to the Night Elves. Because the quest is simply not what it should be. Sure, there’s the great Heritage Armor of the Night Elves at the end, but the quest just feels ‘wrong’ in the context of the Night Elves.
There’s no need to discuss that quests in World of Warcraft are a bit outdated in their design. At its core, it’s always ‘Go there, kill X or collect Y’.
The pure gameplay design of the quest line is also extremely simple: Together with Maiev and the two siblings Lysander and Arko’narin, we infiltrate the underground complex of Jaedanar, uncover the return of some demons, and thwart a ritual that is supposed to bring even more of them into our world.
Basically, it’s a classic Warcraft quest – so classic that it’s an exact gameplay repeat of the old missions from the Demon Forest.
That’s not particularly exciting, but certainly solid. It’s just a somewhat nostalgic nod to one of the better-known Classic quests.
In the current patch, the Night Elves are also worried about their future:
Legendary Heroes – Outshone by Children
The problem with this quest line is how World of Warcraft treats the Night Elves as a race, and specifically how it handles Maiev Shadowsong.
Maiev Shadowsong is one of the truly great personalities of the Night Elves. She is over ten thousand years old. She is a warden who is skilled in hunting demons, imprisoning demons, and knows all about Fel magic and its dangers. This is knowledge she has accumulated over many millennia. In this area, Maiev is a somewhat fanatical authority. She knows her stuff because it has defined her entire life.
But Maiev is more than that. She hates mages. She secretly kills mages whenever she gets the chance. From her perspective, arcane magic and Fel magic have led to the downfall of her people, and her entire life’s work is to combat it.
In contrast, we have Lysander. He is literally ‘just grown up’. In fact, during Classic, he was still a baby. He is so young that he has never consciously experienced the ‘immortality’ of the Night Elves. Additionally, he is a young mage – something that was frowned upon among Night Elves until Cataclysm and is now reintegrated into society.
And what does such a newly adult Night Elf mage do when he comes into contact with Fel magic on a large scale?
Exactly. He knows it perfectly, can dispel any magical Fel problem, and outshines the ancient and wise Maiev, who has done nothing else her entire life.
Honestly, I found that hard to bear. It was the same level of ‘unpleasant’ that only invincible wonder-child RP characters usually evoke in me.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, by the end, Lysander even receives tattoos that are traditionally reserved for (female) sentinels.
Of course, I understand what the quest is trying to convey. It wants to express that the Night Elves are evolving. That old traditions are being broken. That the previously matriarchal structures of the Night Elves are disappearing and that mages are being accepted again. After all, the race is on the brink of extinction, and compromises must be made.
Still, everything feels wrong. It feels like putting the so-important character Maiev in a wheelchair and sending her off to a nursing home. It doesn’t help much that the second theme of the quest line is primarily ‘trauma management’, and Lysander’s views and tips can casually be summarized as ‘Just don’t be so negative and overcome your problems, lol’ – but applied to the whole race.
The quest line would be fine if Maiev weren’t present and it weren’t about the Heritage Armor. Because the quest related to it actually tries to capture the essence of what defines a race. And what was shown here just doesn’t represent the Night Elves.
A similar view is expressed by the YouTuber and WoW analyst Bellular. He released a video on this quest line a few hours ago and comes to some similar observations – he also finds the handling of the Night Elves’ tradition to be difficult.
That it can be done significantly better is surprisingly demonstrated by WoW in the same patch with the Undead. The quest line about the Forsaken is praised from all sides. It is interesting, pretty brutal, and essentially says: This is the Forsaken.
All Races Become Humans
For Bellular, the quest line is also a prime example that some races in World of Warcraft are becoming increasingly ‘watered down’ and evolving into ‘Humans 2.0’. In a fantasy world with different species, these should have different cultures and views. Sure, there can be compromises, but it’s precisely these differences between the races that make a story interesting.
Especially the grand quest lines revolving around the legacy armor of Orcs, Humans, and Undead show how well one can capture the essence of a race when one knows what defines the races in Warcraft.
With the Night Elves, this has failed miserably.
Or what do you think?
At least: At least in Patch 10.2 Guardians of the Dream, things look good for the Night Elves and their story.
