The Night Warrior

Again, more 8.1 PTR spoilers coming.

To preface: The Night Elves have had a rough go of it the past few decades. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to live for ten thousand years, especially when you consider the pace of events on Azeroth for the past, like 40. For a human, orc, or other race with similar longevity (even doubled or tripled, like a dwarf,) that's a decent chunk of time to fit all sorts of events and turns into.

Many Night Elves remember the War of the Ancients. They only started aging again after the Third War, and despite holding off the Burning Legion in that conflict, they've suffered a great deal since, losing territory to the Horde and eventually losing a massive portion of their population (some places I've seen say roughly half) with the burning of Teldrassil.

The Night Elves had the largest empire Azeroth had ever seen (barring perhaps the Black Empire or the original Titanforged civilization,) and even after its disastrous collapse, Malfurion and Tyrande led their people for the next ten millennia. During that time they were pretty isolationist - though they did have relations with the Furbolg and Tauren.

But once the Horde came to Kalimdor and started trying to log the Night Elves' forests, conflict arose. And it's that conflict that ultimately led to the disaster of Teldrassil.

The Night Elves are demoralized and reeling in devastation after this loss. So what are they to do?


What we're talking about here is apparently a new customization feature for Night Elf characters that will be unlocked with a quest chain and scenario. We're piecing together fragments from the PTR, and as usual, if it's not live, there's no guarantee this will actually happen. But it's likely to.

Elune is a goddess of peace, but she is also a goddess of warriors who protect that peace. One of her aspects is apparently the Night Warrior, and Tyrande, as her head priestess, opts to undergo a ritual to imbue herself with that aspect of her beloved goddess.

The ultimate result is that Night Elves who go for this Night Warrior aspect will no longer have glowing eyes, but will instead have pure black eyes. It's super-creepy.

Beyond this cosmetic change, we have yet to really understand what this entails, but it certainly seems to imply that the Night Elves, and Tyrande in particular, are taking the gloves off. Teldrassil's burning was unexpected even seconds before it began, with Alliance and most of the Horde both thinking that they were looking at a protracted occupation and hostage crisis rather than a massacre.

There was a time, of course, when the Sentinels would shoot first and ask questions later, and the Horde's first pushes into Ashenvale were plagued with guerrilla strikes from an unseen and omnipresent adversary.

In more recent years, the Night Elves have certainly fought the Horde, but they haven't used particularly brutal tactics like those times in the Third War.

I wonder what we're going to be seeing from Tyrande and her followers after this change. What does it mean to become a Night Warrior?

Also, what does this mean of Elune? As one of the most enigmatic figures in the Warcraft cosmos, we've in recent years been told that she is the creator of the Naaru - though whether that's confirmed canon or just and in-world theory is open to debate. But seeing this dark aspect of Elune is kind of fascinating. Is Elune herself embracing her dark aspect to avenge her chosen people? And is this dark aspect like the Dark Naaru?

Ever since Malfurion's return in Cataclysm, I've wanted to see Tyrande as more than just his wife. She's really the true leader of the Night Elf people, leading them while Malfurion and his druids were all in the Emerald Dream. The blood, sweat, and tears of keeping their civilization alive was her responsibility, and I think it's time for her to shine.