Tyrande becomes an avatar of Elune's vengeance after tossing a severed Orc head into a Moonwell.
The Night Elves lost big at the outset of this expansion - bigger than just about anyone. While the Forsaken lost Undercity, they had had plenty of time to prepare and evacuate the city, ensuring that most of their civilians were safe in Orgrimmar before the Alliance carved a path directly through Brill and up to the gates of Lordaeron City. The Night Elves have endured massive loss of life, as the civilian population taking shelter from the Horde's attack burned when Teldrassil was set aflame.
In the Terror of Darkshore cinematic, which plays after the quests that introduce the Darkshore warfront but feel like they ought to take place either well after or in some kind of alternate continuity, we get to see the Night Elves actually striking fear into the hearts of the Horde for a change. A Horde convoy is torn apart in moments by a furious Malfurion - bonus points to Mal for the Orc who is swallowed by the earth as grasping roots choke the life out of him.
The Horde has had some opportunities to turn to the Alliance and say "now who are the real bad guys here?" even if the answer is usually someone else. But it's very rare for the Alliance to actually come off not as self-righteous but truly scary in a monstrous way. Since Cataclysm came out eight years ago, I've always felt the Worgen were underserved because we never really got to see that side of them. Having played an Undead character starting in Vanilla, I can tell you that the Worgen felt like a huge threat in the early levels, but Blizzard's emphasis on Gilneas as a fundamentally human kingdom, even if some of those humans were afflicted with the curse, always undercut it.
The other thing that undercut the monstrousness of the Worgen was the presence of the Forsaken, who always seem to be able to go lower and more cruel.
And that, unfortunately, is also in effect in Darkshore.
Because ultimately, what the Night Elf "change" amounts to so far is simply that they are willing to fight back. Tossing Orc heads into a Moonwell is creepy, sure, but it's not as if they weren't willing to kill Orcs before, and given what they went through, it doesn't seem like that much of a violation of norms in Azeroth.
Because what we see on the other side of things is that the Forsaken are raising Night Elves to serve as Dark Rangers (or Dark Wardens.) There's a continuity issue here given that a big part of the plot in Silverpine was that the Val'kyr could only raise humans - giving the remaining humans in the area the incentive to willingly become Worgen and encouraging the 7th Legion to send only non-human troops to assist the Gilneans. The notion that the Val'kyr can, in fact, raise Night Elves contradicts this - but hey, it's 8-year-old lore and sometimes you need to change things to make it more dramatic.
The problem, though, is that we are once again faced with the problem we had then - the Forsaken, sort of by definition, are supposed to have free will. Yet we see both Sira Moonwarden and Delaryn Summermoon immediately declare their allegiance to the Forsaken upon their raising - Sira mere moments after she died fighting the Horde.
It could be an interesting plot point to show that Sylvanas has been lying about giving her people free will, but this has been a plot problem for so long that it seems as if it's just something Blizzard doesn't really feel like addressing.
And to me that feels particularly galling as someone who really likes playing Forsaken characters. The Scourge faded to the background long ago, but the Forsaken felt like they were meant to exist as a contrast against the Scourge. When you played through Tirisfal Glades prior to Cataclysm, you more or less began in a dizzied haze, suddenly aware of your undead nature, with the Scourge on one side and the Scarlet Crusade on the other, both trying to murder you. The Forsaken were the normal people who just happened to have been cursed with undeath, and you banded together to preserve your freedom.
The Will of the Forsaken racial ability, for example, suggested that the Forsaken valued that free will above all else, and were better than most at resisting mental manipulation because they had suffered so long under the very worst kind of domination.
The Alliance has plenty of potential to go dark with its populations. The Worgen are literal monsters. The Night Elves can be remorseless feral guerillas. The Dark Iron Dwarves can be chaotic madmen. The Void Elves can literally erase you from existence. Even the Lightforged Draenei, seemingly empowered by one of the "good" primal forces, seem poised to be zealous inquisitor-types with a "kill them all and let the Light sort them out" philosophy.
But if: A: we don't see a more sympathetic side to the Forsaken and B: we don't see the Alliance unleashing their worst violence upon the more sympathetic Horde races, like the Tauren, Trolls, or Blood Elves, it's always going to feel as if the moral authority within the conflict belongs only to one side.
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