Nah, we are told that the orcs was nearing famine. We are not told what they could have done differently, but we do know that the trade blockade that the Night Elves put up as a result of the Wrath Gate incident, caused the orcs a lot of trouble. So it seems the orcs overall, were just barely surviving with trade. We also know that the Catalysm caused a lot of problems.
The Night Elves blaming the Horde for what happened at the Wrath Gate, is what caused further strife. It is what resulted in orcs killing Night Elves.
The druids of Cenarion also took time to negotiate, but were attacked by twillight’s hammer agents, an attack that was sadly blamed on Garrosh and resulted in the death of Cairne.
This is incorrect, though I understand why you might easily think this the case. The quest that ends in the Sin’dorei officially joining the Horde as full members has (rather confusingly) been changed and updated several times to be turned in to whomever the top leader in Orgrimmar (Garrosh, Vol’jin, and now Saurfang) is in the current expansion, which is why the quest you link ends in a turn in to Saurfang, but that quest originally was turned in directly to Thrall in Orgrimmar during Burning Crusade:
`https://tbc.wowhead.com/quest=9626/meeting-the-warchief
Thrall hadn’t left for Outland yet when Lor’themar sends the player with his message requesting full membership for the Sin’dorei. For some reason Blizzard decided to keep changing who this quest was turned in to, because there wasn’t already enough weird time travel between expansions involved in leveling a Blood Elf under the old system, but only the original Burning Crusade version is canon.
I only started playing WoW at the beginning of Legion, and it was still like that at the time, the level scaling came later. I tried to understand the lore by reading everything in game as I was leveling Vandraeda, and it was incredibly confusing. Start in Burning Crusade content that references Vanilla and Warcraft III content, move on to Cataclysm content which references the events of Wrath, then back to Burning Crusade again, then Wrath, then Cataclysm again, then MoP, WoD, and finally Legion. It was a mess, and I had no idea what was going on, or when something was taking place relative to everything else.
I started in early WotLK on a pirat… *ahem, I mean, “private” server. Reason why it still wasn´t terrible, Thrall after all stayed the canon Warchief of the Horde up until ICC. But yes, for you guys after Cata the lore stuff probably became a disgrace.
So many lore that was lost when Cata launched omg.
The questlines between the Draenei and the Blood Elves stories were meant to run simultaneously, with each starting at the same time and running for the course of a couple in-lore days.
News apparently travels very quickly in Azeroth, with the Draenei landing, going through the story, meeting and joining the Alliance and Thrall getting his message all in the course of two days.
Likewise, The Blood elves also go through all of their story, prove themselves to Thrall and Joins the Horde in the same time frame.
We can assume that the Blood Elves are probably joining the Horde at the same time as Thrall is hearing the Message. Thrall might of just met the Blood Elf player earlier that day.
Honestly, the timeline doesn’t really add up and the only thing we can assume is that the Lore doesn’t line up with the game quests, and that the PC characters most likely have a concurrent storyline that might extend beyond the lore. What I mean by that is not all events happen for the Draenei in the same time scale as the Blood Elves.
But I will note this. The Draenei meet the Night Elves VERY early in their story. Which means that by the time the Draenei encounter the Blood Elves on Bloodmyst Isle, the Night Elves would of been well aware of the happenings going on. So, assuming that the stories are meant to be in lock-step with each other chronologically, the Draenei would of met the Night Elves right around (if not just before) the Events of the Night Elves sending Spies to Eversong. News travels fast on Azeroth but it’s debatable as to whether it travels THAT fast. But there is a margin that MIGHT of allowed it.
But it’s also possible that the two stories are meant to run like chapters in a book, where events can be happening at the same time, one after another, or they can be happening hours, days or weeks apart. It’s all how the Writer intends it.
Funny fact is that Thrall founds out about Draenei landing, from his spies (so there were Horde spies in Night Elves lands). Saying, that he has spies, because Jaina has hers. So spying was pretty normal routine in those days.
Yes, sorry for that. It seams retconned since tBC…
Technically even allies spy on each other to a degree. It’s usually less invasive and not driven by malign intent, but spying on allies to varying degrees allows you to potentially expose hostile subversion of their interests and personnel that they might miss.
For example, technically the Uncrowned aren’t an enemy state; in fact they’re staffed by loyal members of multiple groups and factions, but their espionage of the Alliance and Horde (as well as other political bodies around Azeroth) allowed them to uncover and expose the Legion’s subversion of SI:7 while Stormwind itself was poorly positioned to recognize and address the problem.
Faelia, please don´t go the Christie Golden route to say such long questchains take a couple of hours just to try one last attempt at Nelf white washing…
I have another “lore issue” wth this take: it´s called “Lordship”. On that story, thrall ends up killing his Chief warrior Burx because his actions were putting Thrall´s and Jaina´s attempts at keeping peace between the factions at risk -ergo, Thrall would NOT let people that threatened his goals as a Warchief come and go as they pleased, they would pay with their blood if this was required-. In which universe this same Thrall would be all “oh, the Belves were harrasing and killing Velen too? no worries, let them join!!”… he wouldn´t have allowed this. And Jaina -as the novel establishes- pretty much could have contacted him with this info asuming the Belves haven´t already joined the Horde before the Draenei crashed on Azeroth.
No Faelia, the timeline is quite clear here: Belves joined the Horde first; it is literally IMPOSSIBLE for the news to travel BEFORE the Draenei arrive on the planet. even assuming questing takes two “days” (timeline established between Draenei dropping like an Infernal and Trhall getting the info), this would mean the Nelves still harrased the Belves before this timeline, after all the documents imply the Dwarf ambassador had spent awhile in Eversong. And no matter how quick, if Thrall accepted the Belves as members of the Horde an hour before getting the news, this still means the Nelves somehow mounted a whole spying operatioon in conjuction with the rest of the Alliance in what, a day?
Personally, I think the idea implied by the notion that the Blood Elves joined the Horde that much earlier in comparison to the Draenei, which also would require Alliance questing in Draenor to take place much later, a little ridiculous and likely evidence of an oversight in the book itself. This would not, however, be an appropriate response to Ariel’s claim because it would just be me asserting that something that very clearly is canon isn’t on the sole basis of “I think this is kind of ridiculous” - and Blizzard has never shied away from doing ridiculous things before.
At that point it occurred to me that the idea that the Night Elves were there in response to Kael’thas is itself committing an error that I very much like to call out in other situations:
More specifically - it would not make sense for Tyrande to greenlight a hostile spying force to land in Eversong because one fine Sunday she just decided to. Tyrande after all was cordial to Kael’thas and wished that his people would see their way to a brighter future. It doesn’t make sense that Tyrande would turn around and do this.
But it doesn’t matter whether it would make sense or not. Look to the authorial intent.
The authorial intent was to throw out some red meat to Blood Elf players, who nominally don’t like Night Elves. You’ve got the faction enemy right there - the situation paints you as justified, and this can be used as one of several reasons for why you support the Horde and not the Alliance. The humans were already covered, this pins down another large pillar in the Alliance. We’re good to go. So why are the Night Elves there? That’s a question that doesn’t really matter. They are there to be the bad guys to the Blood Elves’ good guys. Period.
So why am I back in this thread talking about this then? I think ultimately because this episode is part of a trend. Horde players like to complain that they are often hit with the role of the villain, aggressively asking Alliance players how they would like it, and hunting for any scrap of justification which leads them to do things like turning Taurajo into a meme. What I think gets missed in this conversation is that even if the hits don’t always land, the writers do intend to paint at least a certain part of the Alliance as the bad guys to the Horde’s good guys as justification for the Horde’s actions against them.
This is certainly not the only instance of that - and the trend might be something that I put into a different thread.
No, you misunderstood. I’m not saying it did take a couple hours, just that the timeline of the questing doesn’t add up to the timeline of the lore. Because time just doesn’t pass while doing quests and events you encounter doing quests don’t indicate when anything actually happened. Today, yesterday, a week ago… It’s all the same.
The problem with that is Thrall only learned of the Draenei landing and shortly after joining the Alliance. That isn’t to say he learned of the Blood Elves there nor would assume they were the same Blood Elves who joined the Horde.
Because by your own statement, if he knew of them, he’d take issue with it and bring it up with Lor’thamar (at the very least.)
The Night Elves, on the other hand, wouldn’t of cared to make that distinction. All they knew was there were Blood Elves in their lands performing hostile actions.
No, the Timeline says no such thing. And you have no proof that either happened first.
The Documents imply no such thing. The quest line just says he took a tour of the Sanctums. Doesn’t say anything about how long he’s been there or how long it took, whether a day or a couple hours.
But it wasn’t “in conjuction with the rest of the Alliance.” It had ONE Dwarf who claimed to be from Ironforge. No evidence he had any affiliation with the Alliance, nor was acting on orders from the Alliance.
This is probably the truth. The Author probably wasn’t thinking and just haphazardly threw in “two days” without knowing much about those events.
Two days doesn’t make sense, because when doing the Draenei starter zone, you start off in the smoldering weckage of a piece of the ship but by time to make it to the main islands, towns are constucted, well worn paths lined with lanturns running between them and operations set up as far north as Bloodmyst isle.
And the Alliance crew that lands there has been there for AT LEAST 2 days, and they land sometime AFTER the Draenei took up residency on Azuremyst.
In the quest: Medicinal Purpose, it’s stated that a Night Elven Priestess was found the day before. So the Dreanei were out exploring the island at least a day before you start.
Also, the Draenei CLEARLY have been on the islands long enough to investigate and catalog the flora and Fauna of the Islands, enough to know about the medicinal properties of a plant so rare that they heard rumors about it.
Daedal also speaks of Velen’s prophecy, in which he expressly states that Velen had told him that they’ll find Allies on the island.
Not to mention, the most important part, the Draenei were there long enough for Kael’thas and Overgrind to hire the Venture Company to divert Admiral Odesyus’s ships to Azuremyst Island (from god knows where) to spy on and attempt to exploit them. They HAD to be there for a long while to get the Alliance there.
Yeah, most of the novels (particularly Golden’s) are only tenuously consistent with the minutiae of what’s shown in the game itself. Golden’s understanding of Gilneas’ current state, for one, is completely at odds with how quests present it and developers talk about it.
Not asking for night elves to be angels, but come on, I would like them to have consistency and reasoning when being asses:
First of all, the Wardens attack her first, telling her this:
Your quest is foolhardy! Even your goddess has condemned the one you seek to free!"
after which they proceed to attack her even before she moves forward.
Madness! You would doom us all by freeing the Betrayer!
A rampage was inevitable there, but people like to pretend she had other options in that emergency scenario.
x-x
Anyway, regarding her attitude towards Kael and the BEs:
Maiev Shadowsong: *We are wasting our time here, Tyrande. We should be looking for Illidan.
Tyrande Whisperwind: These people need our help, Maiev! Their brethren aided us against the Legion. We will honor that debt now.
I grieve for your people, Kael. But you must not allow rage and despair to poison your heart. You may lead your people to a brighter future.
Maiev: Something doesn’t feel right.
Tyrande Whisperwind: Yes. Perhaps we should keep the caravan moving?
Kael, get your caravan moving across the river! I will stay behind and hold the bridge!
It seems like we played a different game if you think she was only “cordial” out of convenience. She clearly treated the blood elves as allies whom she respected and was indebted to, even trying to keep the caravan safe when she could easily make her own way through without risking herself. Nothing in that scenario even reeks of malice towards them, and to go from that to what we have in TBC makes no sense, with a span of just 3-4 years. It is not like the TBC event is ever explained anyway (who and why), so why should we be content with that?
She was the leader of the Kaldorei. What the Wardens “allow” her is of no consequence to her. Even Chronicles establishes that it was dissent.
Two forces made up their minds in that scenario, both set in their ways to the point of killing the other if they refused. The wardens were the force that dissented against Tyrande and clung to holding Illidan despite him serving 10000 years in prison and almost forgotten by the one who put him there (Malfurion).
Tyrande was the force that had Tichondrius and the Legion on her mind. She was also the force that accomplished her mission when Illidan killed Tichondrius and prevented the further corruption of her lands with the Skull of Gul’dan. And do remember that it was her magic that held Illidan there in the first place- not Maiev’s and not Malfurion’s.
Yet people place expectations on her that they do not place on the other side, who were frankly far more unreasonable than her.
I place the blame on that situation with Maiev. Still given how much tolerance she’d given to orcs who had already established themselves as enemies of her people, I would have thought that she would have put more effort into finding a third way around or not have neglected the Wardens so much that Maiev was able to form a cult of personality with them.
No worries! It’s not even a retcon, it’s just a weird quest change that I assume was initially made as part of the Cataclysm changes to Orgrimmar. It makes no sense from a narrative or timeline standpoint, and most other quests that have a similar step of going and talking to an NPC whose role has since changed just make use of phasing instead.
