Crown of the Earth

Alliance Zone Review: Teldrassil
Night Elf Starting Experience 

Character: Prince Danothen, night elf arcane mage.
Level Span: 1-10
Theme: Enchanted treetop woodland

Aside from the cataclysm, night elven society has been going through severe upheavals in the wake of Wrath of the Lich King. The novel Stormrage told the story of Malfurion's return from the Emerald Dream, and the subsequent ousting of Fandral Staghelm from the Cenarion Enclave when he was revealed as the source of Malfurion's imprisonment in the first place (that's what all that morrowgrain was for). Meanwhile, ancient highborne magi have come out of hiding and rejoined the civilization who exiled them. In Cataclysm, it is these highborne whom you play as when you start a mage. Additionally, night elven druids have traveled to Gilneas to deal with what was essentially a problem they created - the worgen - and have given shelter to the Gilneans who were forced to flee their homeland.

The night elves have suffered a very tumultuous period following a ten thousand year status quo, and just as things started to settle down, these changes shifted things again. Unfortunately, the night elf starting experience reflects these changes in absolutely no capacity. I touched on this briefly in my earlier Cataclysm review: Shadowglen and Teldrassil have exactly the same narrative they had when the game first came out five years ago. A bunch of quests have been removed, and several have been improved with mechanics to make them less annoying or easier, but the goals are all the same. The same problems, the same villains, the same outcomes. It's like no time has passed at all. The sole new quest is the last one of the zone, but at that point it's really too little too late, and it smacks of being a very last ditch effort to make the questline seem meaningful.

I think it's ridiculous to ask players to repeat the same material over again when they had to revisit it anyway. But that principle aside, there's a ton of new lore to go over and it isn't even touched on. As a night elf mage, my character should be possessed of a history fundamentally different than any other night elf class, but the play experience is identical, aside from a sentence or two from the mage trainer that actually tells him nothing. And the reasons why the highborne have been accepted back into the fold aren't explained at all. We're made to assume that Mordent Evenshade appealed to Tyrande to allow the highborne to return, but that's based on "A Cautious Return," a quest we would've had to do on other characters, which doesn't even show that hypothetical meeting. We just witness Mordent's conversation with Sentinel Stillbough, and then after Cataclysm, there are highborne everywhere so... I guess he made a good case?

There's a whole lot of new material to work with, and Teldrassil was the perfect opportunity to exploit it. Had Teldrassil been used as a vehicle to relate it to the players or even involve them in it, it would be a much more interesting zone. And that some of those chances are actually going to good use elsewhere somehow makes it more frustrating. Why not use the return of the highborne to create, say, a splinter group of night elf radicals, perhaps loyal to Staghelm? Or as a chance to elaborate on the harpies as potential powers? Or use Malfurion's return to focus on the Nightmare in the Emerald Dream as a possible source of evil (beyond the very tangential extent that it does)? For an expansion that seems to be blowing all its remaining villains in one go I really hope at least one guy is thinking ahead. But it always seems that if it's not about humans or orcs, it doesn't really require any attention.

Teldrassil did not fill me with confidence about approaching the other beginner zones. I was looking forward to starting a new gnome and troll, and now I feel like I shouldn't get my hopes up. From everything I'm reading and everything I'm feeling, Warcraft fans spend a lot of time these days feeling stupid for being Warcraft fans. Beating the final quest of Teldrassil on my night elf mage was one of those times.