I got you covered.
For the link to the reddit, you can find it in this topic:
the actual quote:
They were distinct pretty early on - the Blood Elf starting zone was one of the earliest pieces of BC content and was highly polished by the time we rolled into testing.
I do remember a certain poor 3d artist having to chop the Silvermoon city into pieces because it was so overloaded many GPUs would overheat just loading it.
OH - one thing I vaguely remember was that Blood Elves were based on a STRONG request from a poll of asian players (either korean or chinese - I can’t remember which was live at that point) - where many remarked on the horde side that they and their girlfriends wanted a non-creepy femme race to play.
What many people don’t know: Blizzard tried to cater to the Asian market, which is why the original races for TBC were Pandaren and Blood Elves.