We have to face a hard truth.
Night Elves were always bad.
âmaddie you love night elvesâ
you bet your ass I do, I love them for the same reason almost everyone else does - their character design, their aesthetic, their lore, their concept, their entire being on paper
they have always been good on paper. tyrande whisperwind is GREAT on paper and looks even better as a recognizable brand character like sylvanas windrunner, slapped on the cover of books and game boxes and posters.
but even in Warcraft 3, aside from telling Malfurion to fuck off she was never good. she made horrible decisions, she killed her own people in the warden dens. the most prominent image of grommash hellscream, featured on his wiki page and the second image in a google search of him, is him standing over a tattered sentinel banner with the corpses of dead sentinels hanging from the trees above him and their severed heads on his belt.
from vanilla through wrath, tyrande and the night elves were a passive presence in game. in cataclysm many of their lands were destroyed by deathwing or clear-cut, bombed, or invaded by the horde. in quests or dungeons she was outshone by malfurion, even told to hush. she allowed the night elf mages from dire maul to join the kaldorei again, which was supposed to be a good decision that was painted instead as controversial and was criticized by malfurion and maiev.
in mists of pandaria, tyrande was used in an alliance scenario not to show her battle prowess in a jungle - an environment akin to the jungles and forests her people fought in for thousands of years effectively - but to make rushed decisions and get schooled by varian, who shows that his tactics are superior, in a scene to illustrate his leadership and wisdom, not tyrandeâs. the sentinels are given the task of protecting the bell from garroshâs horde - it is stolen from under their noses in their own capital city without any difficulty.
in warlords of draenor, wardens retain the weirdly neutral stance they had in cataclysm during the firelands campaign, and go to draenor to protect khadgar. they fail on multiple occasions, khadgar often needing to protect himself with his own magic. cordana, a supposedly powerful and disciplined warden, easily falls sway to demonic influence and betrays khadgar and the player. she is killed in the next expansion in a dungeon.
in legion, tyrande spends her time chasing malfurion around val'sharah. her attempts to save the temple there are punctuated by the loss of ysera, an important dragon to night elves. in the suramar campaign, tyrande openly insults and sneers at thalyssra - something that is criticized, and was written in deliberately to close off the nightborne from joining the alliance so they could join the horde in the next expansion. this follows tyrandeâs decision some years ago in cataclysm to let the shen'dralar rejoin the night elves, feeling that now was the time to welcome magic and mages back. this was criticized. now she suddenly sneers at the nightborne. this was also criticized. the majority of legion night elves that arenât cenarion circle neutral druids, are ghosts. maiev and the wardens play a trifling role in the expansion, mainly as daily quest givers. shandris is moved from being parked in feathermoon stronghold doing nothing to parked in the hunter class hall doing nothing.
in battle for azeroth, teldrassil is burned, darnassus destroyed with it, kalimdor is taken for the horde. the night elves are left completely stranded among the alliance on the eastern kingdoms, assuming there are even any left at this point.
hard truth: blizzard has never known what to do with night elves or how to utilize them effectively outside of neutral parties in other existing factions (cenarion circle), and instead routinely uses them and their flagship characters as confusing props for other character developments, brand merchandising, and easy story fodder. for every one WoW player who likes night elves, five or ten more despise them, and with such a track record for no productivity to the story and no draw outside their surface aesthetic or lore itâs not hard to see WHY so many people dislike night elves.
weâre sort of kidding ourselves. the WoW community has done more good for night elves with theories, fan characters, writing and roleplay, art and fan-canon/fan-world building than blizzard ever have. the best thing thatâs happened for night elves wasnât even for them - it was the outstanding suramar/nightborne campaign in legion - something that will become irrelevant in battle for azeroth when the nightborne and thalyssra stand beside the horde and watch teldrassil burn down.
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