Oh No, ‘World of Warcraft’ Is Getting Me Elf-Pilled Once more

As somebody who has performed World of Warcraft on and off for what now qualifies as a good portion of my life over the past 21 years, I’ve come to be taught that there are two issues that I deeply respect about Blizzard’s long-running fantasy MMO. The primary is the best way Warcraft has sat with, and dealt with, the evolution of its world and characters over these twenty years as an ongoing entity.

Nicely, that’s probably not the primary. As a result of the precise first is that I simply actually love Warcraft‘s elves. I do respect World of Warcraft‘s strategy to the passage of time, however actually, I’m right here for the elves.

And at Gamescom this week, Blizzard supplied elves by the bucketload with the disclosing of World of Warcraft‘s next expansion, Midnight. The center chapter of what the developer is asking a three-part “Worldsoul Saga,” Midnight is World of Warcraft‘s eleventh growth and opens with the forces of the Alliance and the Horde alike teaming to carry again an invasion of void creatures engineered by the sinister historic entity Xal’atath, who has been menacing the sport’s narrative actively and passively for some time now. The invasion will heart on the area of Quel’Thalas, the dominion of the Blood Elves first launched into World of Warcraft with the arrival of its first growth pack, The Burning Campaign, again in 2006.

Naturally, that meant Midnight‘s conventional opening cinematic divulge to kick issues off was Elf Metropolis, inhabitants me and a bunch of elves. We received to see essential Blood Elf characters like Lor’themar Theron and Girl Liadrin combating again towards Xal’atath’s forces proper on the partitions of the Blood Elf capital, Silvermoon Metropolis. We received Xal’atah herself, who takes an elven kind, being all imply and ominous.

After Battle Inside put a concentrate on Azeroth’s underground areas and dwarven legacy, amongst different issues, Midnight is shaping as much as be a really elven-forward narrative, specializing in characters just like the Blood Elves or Alleria Windrunner’s quest for vengeance towards Xal’atath. Quel’Thalas is being revitalized and reworked as one of many 4 main zones that can be a part of the growth’s marketing campaign expertise. Void Elves, a sub-race of former Blood Elves who had been shunned for experimenting with the void and joined the Alliance, will change into the third race that may play as Demon Hunters (an elven-specific class for narrative causes, with solely Evening Elves and Blood Elves beforehand in a position to play), who will get a brand new void-themed class specialization for the primary time since they had been launched in Legion in 2016.

As somebody who ended up largely skipping Battle Inside, all this pricked my would-be-pointy ears with intrigue. I liked the tragic story of the Excessive Elves and their transformation into the Blood Elves in Warcraft 3, watching it play out over my older brother’s shoulder as a toddler. My very first World of Warcraft character was a Evening Elf Druid—partially why I mourned Battle for Azeroth‘s sundering of their very own dwelling of Teldrassil—however solely as a result of the sport didn’t have Blood Elves as a playable race when it launched in 2004. Burning Campaign’s addition of the Blood Elves and their lands was the actual begin of my love affair with the sport. I’ve performed many, many characters over the past twenty years of World of Warcraft, and the overwhelming majority of them have been one taste or one other of elf. Should you’re one of many World of Warcraft followers that has complained when a brand new race has been added to the sport over time and it’s “simply one other elf,” sorry! They did that for me.

However refocusing Warcraft‘s present story on elven settings and characters is simply a part of my renewed curiosity. A lot of that curiosity is wrapped up within the aforementioned concentrate on Quel’Thalas itself as an overhauled area for Midnight‘s marketing campaign. The variations of Quel’Thalas—really three zones in present World of Warcraft, within the type of Eversong Woods, the Ghostlands, and the Isle of Quel’Danas, reworked into one singular, large zone encompassing all of them in Midnight—and Silvermoon Metropolis that presently exist in World of Warcraft have largely been untouched since they had been added in The Burning Campaign 20 years previous to Midnight‘s launch subsequent 12 months. After Cataclysm overhauled vanilla World of Warcraft‘s zones in 2010, these areas remained a number of the oldest in the whole recreation (that doubtful honor will, after subsequent 12 months, fall to the Dranei beginning space of Azuremyst Isle and its capital—my apologies to the goat alien players amongst us).

This doesn’t simply imply that they don’t look as graphically detailed as fashionable World of Warcraft zones or that they’re affected by the type of charmingly obtuse quest designs that Warcraft has distanced itself from over time. Because of this the lands of the Blood Elves have been narratively frozen in time to the purpose they had been after they had been first launched in 2006. The Burning Campaign was set simply a few years after the occasions of Warcraft 3, which noticed the fallen prince Arthas Menethil lead an undead scourge to ravage the then-Excessive Elf kingdom of Quel’Thalas, killing untold numbers of them, laying waste to Silvermoon, and corrupting the Sunwell, the Excessive Elves’ font of magical energy.

A lot of the Burning Campaign‘s narrative for the Blood Elves was about their reclamation and restoration from this horrifying trauma—their reliance on demonic powers to maintain their starvation for magic (and the eventual therapeutic of the Sunwell), the scope of the injury finished to their once-beautiful lands, and the rebuilding of Silvermoon Metropolis—however whereas they had been finally allowed a second of peace and to maneuver on, these zones within the recreation have remained locked in that state of time for 2 complete a long time. There are nonetheless employees futilely, nearly memetically at this level, engaged on reconstructing Silvermoon’s partitions. There’s nonetheless a large, unhealed scar of lifeless and decaying land that marks Arthas’ highway into the guts of Excessive Elf civilization. For a world that’s outlined and celebrated as a residing entity, that has used its longevity to let main modifications influence upon it and to let characters develop previous with it, Quel’Thalas and the Blood Elves felt like they had been trapped in amber.

Till now, that’s. Midnight‘s revamp doesn’t simply give these areas a brand new coat of paint; it wrenches them ahead in time within the blink of a watch. From what little we all know, there’ll nonetheless be battle in these lands—Xal’atath and her void armies are fairly actually on the gates—however Midnight will give us a model of those lands which have really healed within the time since we final noticed them. Silvermoon hasn’t simply been rebuilt in Midnight; because the epicenter of the present grand risk to Azeroth, it’s going to change into the first participant hub of Midnight, an area the place members of the Horde and the Alliance can coexist (some areas will, not less than, stay Horde-only). However for probably the most half, we can see Silvermoon, and Eversong, and the Ghostlands, and Quel’Danas as we should always’ve been in a position to see them for 20 years.

And that’s even earlier than we think about the implications of what’s going to come after Midnight for these lands. Presumably when Xal’atath’s risk is answered, Silvermoon will as soon as once more change into a Horde capital, if it’s nonetheless standing, that’s (it could be very impolite of Blizzard to destroy it after ready to see it rebuilt this lengthy!). What is going to Quel’Thalas appear to be going ahead? World of Warcraft has beforehand answered the mechanical problem of gamers needing to entry older variations of sure places after set narrative occasions in a phased course of, a metanarrative defined to gamers as them being transported again in time by a member of the timeline-guarding Bronze Dragonflight. Will three variations of Quel’Thalas concurrently exist within the recreation—the Burning Campaign unique, Midnight‘s overhaul, and a possible model afterwards—or will we’ve got to attend one other 20 years earlier than the area is allowed to technically “transfer on” from Midnight?

Earlier than we get to that query, for now, I’m simply comfortable to care about World of Warcraft once more for a bit. I’m already leveling a brand new character now (an elf, in fact—a Void Elf mage, this time), with plans to have a Blood Elf Demon Hunter able to play Midnight with when it releases someday subsequent 12 months. Blizzard is aware of the best way to my coronary heart is an limitless sea of pointy-eared heroes and villains, however the factor that has saved me coming again time and time once more for these previous few a long time is the possibility to see simply what’s going to change and develop concerning the world of Warcraft subsequent and add to its residing historical past within the course of.

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