Randomly gathered some ideas about the original possible story about night elves and blood elves among other stuff, and why it changes the trajectory so much. Maybe you saw those sources already, then feel free to skip the thing.
How dare you!
Honestly if you listen about the original comment from Metzen about night elves and blood elves, their presence does make a lot of sense. But… (a little more in the mentioned post).
Could blood elves deliver M’uru faster than draenei go to here? Idk, maybe.
[M’uru was captured before draenei got to Exodar, that’s I’m aware of]
There isn’t much room for “much”, since vanilla was “done” it 1 year (year 25), and TBC too (year 26). So, whatever is the difference in time, I am not sure it would be more than a month difference. Events are extremely packed in the WoW story.
There are many Dwarves besides the Dark Iron who were not aligned with the Alliance, or agreed with the current politics of it’s leaders. Plenty of rogue agents, mercenaries and opportunists as well. And a Dark Iron Agent passed unnoticed in IronForge for years, until heroes uncovered his ruse and took him out.
Point taken, but by Occam’s Razor it’s a fair cop to assume the most likely scenario that he was an Alliance agent until proven otherwise, especially since he was working with Night Elves.
In fairness, whether assuming the dwarf’s full intentions was a rash conclusion to jump to or not, it always seemed questionable that what amounted to a low/mid-tier local army captain was unilaterally giving the order to summarily assassinate a foreign dignitary.
The questgiver comers across as personally offended and enraged, and deliberately had the player keep the retaliation on the down-low. Probably because had the proper channels been observed and the player’s findings been taken to his superiors first, the blood elf government would have more likely pursued a diplomatic resolution to avoid further escalating things rather than started lopping ambassadors’ heads off to satisfy revenge and make some kind of arbitrary point. Or at the very least, they’d have preferred capturing the ambassador and finding out what else he might know.
Oh cool, we’re at the “Well it’s actually the Blood elves who are evil for being invaded and assaulted by the precious night elves, who can never do anything wrong” part of the discussion.
Funnily enough, when Sylvanas became Warchief the quest title changed from “Meeting the Warchief” to “Meeting the Orcs,” since the previous step in the quest chain involved going to Undercity first to get Sylvanas’ endorsement on Lor’themar’s letter to the Warchief, and the quest to meet her wasn’t changed to reflect her new position as Warchief. As far as I know Blizzard hasn’t changed the quest since it was updated in Legion to be turned in to Saurfang, so hopefully they’re done messing with it. If they ever do decide to change the quest text yet again, I’d rather they implement phasing and just have it be turned in to BC-era Warchief Thrall like the original version.
I always felt like the local officer, Aeldon Sunbrand, who makes the decision to have the dwarf killed felt ashamed or embarrassed that a spy had gotten so far under his watch. One of his other quests indicates that he wants to avoid any damage to his or his subordinates’ reputation, and in regards to the dwarf, he says “we don’t want word to spread that we allowed a spy into our city.” He also mentions that he doesn’t think attempting to capture the dwarf instead is possible, as the risk of escape is too great in his view. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to make sure that the situation was completely under control before giving a report to Halduron. You might be right that the government would have preferred capturing and questioning Anvilward instead. Yet, I can’t help thinking of the fact that Halduron is the Ranger-General, and Halduron famously had Zul’jin escape from him and his company after Halduron insisted on keeping him alive as a prisoner for personal reasons rather than just executing him, so I don’t think Halduron would be too upset with Sunbrand’s given reasoning for just killing Anvilward.
It’s very possible that he was a Alliance operative, but not actually working on Orders of the Alliance either. At least, known to him.
It’s wouldn’t be the first time someone is manipulated into doing a job from someone with an ulterior motive. Hell, we the Heroes get duped into it way too often, and the lore’s full of instances of NPCs falling for “word from up high” that turned out to be lies.
Fandral likely duped this dwarf into it, probably by enlisting the help of Ironforge under false pretenses. He did the same thing to the Heroes in procuring Marrowgrain.
Is it really that hard to entertain the idea that the Alliance or at least one of it’s leaders decided to go pre-emptive on a possible addition to the Horde before the latter could make use of it’s talent and resources?
The game of geopolitics is an ugly business and very seldom are White Hats worn in it.
Yes, because it wouldn’t have made sense in the context of Warcraft 3. If Tyrande had such a dislike of the blood elves, she wouldn’t have bothered to help them. Not to mention, I think spying is not in and of itself a reason for people to go to war, Thrall and Jaina were apparently spying on each other afterall.
The Blood Elves of Warcraft 3 were elves who ad only changed their name.
The Blood Elves of WOW however stink of the Legion.
And they weren’t just spying… they were conducting sabotage. of the power source keeping many of the survivors from going Wretched. That’s an act of war.
They would certainly have a fel-smell about them. Not sure if it would ‘stink of the Legion’ so to speak though, it was not THAT bad.
Maybe the Blood Elves in Outland. Most Blood Elves even in Outland thrived more on mana still, since Netherstorm had mana in abundance that the Blood Elves could feed on. But some were turned to Felblood Elves, as they gorged on demonic blood, and others were trained to become Demon Hunters.
Allegedly. While I agree that the evidence we are given is very much for the Night Elves having sabotaged the Arcane Sanctum, the evidence is still circumstancial.
Regardless, the Night Elves infiltrated the land, one could argue they invaded the lands as they sent an armed force of a fair size to a foreign nation without having been invited.
the difference is that neither the United States nor China create armed bases with military personnel in foreign territory. Imagine that we discovered that China has bases with soldiers in California sabotaging the electricity grid and killing American citizens.
The thing is, to be truly comparable they’d have to be setting up those bases in a large swathe of California that had been overrun and depopulated by a zombie apocalypse.
Silvermoon was still laboring to secure its lands at the time, so to the night elves setting up shop there to observe the situation it might have seemed as legit as doing so in the Western Plaguelands.
It’s easy to expect the assumption that everything that was Quel’thalas is still Quel’thalas, but to the observer at the time it looked an awful lot like much of Western and Southern Eversong was still basically Scourge land, and neither faction tends to ask anyone’s permission before reconnoitering places that have been taken by the Scourge.
To a Night Elf… it would be. They’re not exactly tolerant when it comes to the abuse of magic. As the handling of the only known Night Elf warlock in lore would suggest.
Your opinion is irrelevant in regards to tyhe validity of the canon lore, Kyalin. Until something more concrete regarding the timeline is said by Blizzard, we won´t have anything else to use to retconn it, period.
“Blood of the Highnborne” has Mu´ru ALREADY in Quel´thalas mere 5 years AFTER Arthas decimated the kingdom. And this happens AFTER the Sunwell Trilogy comics, waaay before TBC.
The WoT for example is probably the most stupid and ridiculous plot ever done and executed in this game, but regardless of this, is a CANON event, and we all WILL have to accept it happened, period. Same principle here.
As I pointed to Faelia before -it doesn´t even have to be Tyrande-. It could have perfectly been the orders of some mid tier member of the Sentinel organization.
I´m NOT saying Tyrande IS 100% the proven intellectual author, I´m saying the way the timeline is constructed she could have either order the spying OR she basically got dealt an “Aethas-esque” turn at the distracted incompetent leader trope. And I just said the story proves the Nelves AS A FREAKING WHOLE are NOT 100% martyr angelic goodie two shoes whose only purpose in the story is to get abused by the “Horde”, I said both Ghostlands AND the timeline in the novel simply prove there are some socipathic a-holes inside the Nelf population, no more and no less.
Sorry 100% of your fav race aren´t 100% Lawful Good White Knights and SOME are a-holes to other races regardless of their allegiance (I mean, fact is, the Nelves acted BEFORE the Belves join the Horde. Ergo, you can´t use the “they did it cause they were Hurde!!” excuse either.
Also, just to ciment this nonsense once and for all: where did the Exodar came from? Think about it.
The text in “Rise of the Horde” explicitly establishes Jaina had decided to offer her complete support to Velen et al -meaning, that she had first hand communication channels evidencing the Sunfury´s amoral behaviour-.
In “Lordship”, it was Jaina herself the one who contacted “Thrall” to basically tell him “buddy, we have a problem here. You better come and collect your Chief Warrior cause he´s in dealings with the Burning Blade” -and who was the puppeteer of the Burning Blade? The demon Zmodlor, of course-. When he confronted Brux and the chief warrior used the “I just acted in the interest of the Horde” card, Thrall´s answer was to smash his skull.
Soooo… you guys still believe that had Jaina contacted Thrall with the very glaring info regarding “hey, those Blood elves harrasing Velen are using Fel magics” he would have STILL let them join? -remember, the Belves IN Outland DID use Fel, the ones in Azeroth? Poor b@ stards had no idea their Prince was making pacts with demons-. Cause I doubt so… heck, Thrall basically put Sylvanas in the dog house in WotLK thanks to his unexpected discovery of the gross experiments she had stashed hidden deep in Undercity and those were NOT demon stuff, he sure as hell would have NOT allowed no “Demon agreeable” Belves near the Horde.
Which means he had had to travel from Ironforge to Silvermoon (he´s NOT a Wildhammer nor a Dar Iron, ergo he MUST be an Ironforge individual considering there were NO Dwarves in Lordaeron after WC3 ended), take time visiting, take time organizing the whole spying shaenanigans… it certainly didn´t happen in ONE day -which is what your original comment implied… according to you and Kyalin, the Belves managed to fulfill all the task in TWO day tops. Why two days? Simple, Thrall mentions he SAW Velen crash 2 nights ago… ergo the Draenei questing takes what… half a day? The Nelves take another half a day to organize the whole spying and during the second day (another half day I guess) the Belves fulfill everything and manage to join the Horde just in time to avoid the Human Spy bringing Thrall the news?.
Pffff… indeed a “Golden´s” take on the lore.
Well… in “Blood of the Highborne” Rommath basically teleports from Quel´thalas to Outland (apparently once they created roots in Outland is quite easy for the mages to travel back and fort. And it was Rommath et al the ones who delivered Mu´ru.
Mu´ru is officially delivered 5 years AFTER the Arthas destroyes Quel´thalas as per “Blood of the Highborne”. Those were the years Liadrin had spent as a “rookie” warrior in the Ghostlands hunting Dar´khan… and the time Rommath approached her to propose the whole “Balance” stuff. Also the moment he introduced dear Mu´ru to Liadrin.
After this another time skip is presented and we get to see the baby Blood Knights (who certainly weren´t created in half a day, people).
The conversations between the Belves ANd the Horde started in year 25, a whole year BEFORE TBC.
Did these comments go anywhere? Cause if they didn´t go anywhere, they very well may be anecdotes and certainly NOT canon lore.
Is like devs saying back before BfA that “Sylvanas was NOT the one responsible for Teldrassil on fire”… where did that “comment” ended up, again?
There is no evidence that he was an Ironforge Dwarf, or that he was there on orders from the Alliance at all. There’s no evidence of anything.
And if you read further, I pointed out that there have been Darkiron spies within Ironforge that have gone unnoticed. And that’s not counting one of several other Organizations with Dwarves who have worked against the Alliance and/or sought to drive Azeroth to War. Twightlight’s Hammer and Venture Company, for example.
And knowing now, that at the same time as the events in Eversong, the Venture Company were working on Kael’thas’ orders against the Draenei, it’s highly likely Anvilward was probably one of his agents as well, as the contemporary of Overgrind.
Again, if you actually read closer, you’d know that isn’t what either of us were saying.
As I pointed out, that statement of Thrall’s doesn’t align with facts in the game.
The Draenei were there much longer then two days.
Best case explanation is that the two stories run concurrently, but the events in questing don’t line up with the Story. If going by the timeline of the events in each zone, the Draenei befriends the Alliance early in their questing, while the Blood Elves don’t prove themselves to the horde until the end of theirs.
So, if we are to take Thrall’s “Two days” at face value, we can assume it takes the Draenei two days from the starting zone to helping the crew of Odesyus’ Landing, which is where the Alliance offers their help and when Thrall learns about it.
But even that’s not taking into account most of the facts and assuming the Writer didn’t just make a blunder.