Right back at you—your take is subjective too.
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Some, I’m sure.
Still, it does make for an interesting bit of discussion for anyone interested in the lore, to see how the Lore was changed and shaped, what factors lead to different developments. In this case, there’s always been a question about why the Blood Elves joined the Horde.
At the time, the Horde didn’t really have anything to offer the Blood Elves. They had no notable sources of magic to help sate the Sin’dorei’s addiction, and where Outland was concerned, the Dark Portal was on Stormwind’s front doorstep, not Orgrimmar’s, meaning access to Outland would’ve been infinitely easier with the Alliance. Meanwhile the Alliance still had the Kirin Tor back then, and the Night Elves had their Moonwells, meaning there were two sources for which the Sin’dorei could’ve sated their addiction.
What Blizzard tried to sell us on was this idea of the Blood Elves hating the Alliance so much that they’d rather join the Horde, and that the proximity of the Forsaken meant the Blood Elves could rely on reinforcements and supplies. This of course ignores that the Night Elves somehow managed to send an army to the Ghostlands just fine. Meanwhile the Blood Elves apparently weren’t so mad that they weren’t above getting friendly with the Kirin Tor again in Wrath.
Meanwhile, certain factors had to be completely ignored, such as the Horde’s alliance with the Revantusk Forest Trolls, questing slaughtering elven lodges in Vanilla, and the sheer negative history the elves had with 3/4 of the Horde’s races. Granted this isn’t entirely new. The Zandalari join the Horde and the Blood Elves are acting like tourists while the Pandaren just wanna punch dinosaurs for the lulz. The Darkspear apparently never had anything to say about the Nightborne, and the Nightborne and Zandalari never really interact that much.
I suppose it’s small wonder internal conflict storylines pop up in the Horde, but it’s rarely about these sort of ancestral grudges.
Anyways, my point is, for people who’ve been scratching their heads about the Blood Elves joining the Horde, receiving confirmation of an Asian Poll being the reason rather than anything relating to story continuity or logic is kind of the only answer that makes sense.
In short, the Blood Elves didn’t make sense joining the Horde at the time, and they did anyways for factors beyond the story. Not the first time Blizzard had the story take a backseat to marketing, and not the last.
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did you play the starter zone?
The Horde reached out and helped them in their time of need while the Alliance was sending spies and possibly sabotaging their infrastructure. Also, the nearest horde faction to the blood elves was lead at the time by a hero of Silvermoon.
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I did.
It was clearly a product of the decision to make the Blood Elves join the Horde. Much of the starting zones didn’t make sense.
Imagine for a moment that they were going to join the Alliance, for example. Would there even have been Horde ambassadors there? Pretty sure the answer is no. The inclusion of the Alliance presence was intended to set up that theme of hating the Alliance. The quests in Eversong and the Ghostlands were designed to the give the player a sense of justification in killing every Human, Dwarf, and Night Elf they come across as the game’s PvP system would demand, while ignoring questions about why the Blood Elves should trust the Orcs, the Trolls, and especially the Forsaken.
We had Blood Elves blindly trusting the Forsaken after they pinky-swore they weren’t like the Scourge. Well, we see how well that worked out. Look at the War of Thorns and it’s 1-to-1 parallel of the Fall of Quel’Thalas.
But the presence of the Alliance in Quel’Thalas, and acting in a malicious manner, was necessary to ignore those questions about why Quel’Thalas would want to work together with a faction 75% of which had been trying to commit genocide against them at some point or other in Azeroth’s history.
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I’m just surprised at this point in the train-wreck of a story that people don’t take marketing decisions into account when they wonder about these things. Blizzard has justified much worse in the 15+ years that Blood Elves have been red-side to appease the market. At the end of the day, it’s a company. They don’t care about story beats unless they’re ones that pull in the cash.
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There are some folks who genuinely like Blood Elves on the Horde, how it reverses the trope of the Tolkien Elves fighting alongside Humans and Dwarves. The idea that the only reason their race is on the Horde was not because of some ingenious and rebellious streak by the writers, but because it was deemed profitable by the bean counters, is (understandably) a depressing thought, that their race doesn’t belong on the faction they like, and is only there because of $$$.
Conversely, there are absolutely people who like to think that the writers had more control and authority over story-making decisions, whether to laud them or blame them varying by the individual.
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That’s fair, but regardless of why the decision was made all those years ago, it’s pretty clear that the Blood Elves have been long established members of the Horde at this point so why they were put there in the first place doesn’t really matter anymore. They even had a whole story-arc in MoP about it and everything.
Plus, the blue side received Void Elves after YEARS of fans asking for a High Elf equivalent on Alliance. It’s come full circle IMO.
In a perfect world, I think High/Blood Elves should’ve been the first neutral race instead of Pandaren, but it’s already been put to bed. Apart from a full re-write of the narrative, I’m not sure what would make it ‘right’, and at this point a re-write wouldn’t appease everyone anyway.
The way Blood Elves were portrayed in Classic, people would have still found reasons for Blood Elves to be Horde even if they hadn’t been. They really could’ve gone either way but marketing in favor of the Horde prevailed.
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Oh certainly it’s not going to change anything.
I don’t think anyone is expecting Blizzard to wave a magic wand and on the next patch the Blood Elves are suddenly on the Blue side of character creation or anything. Years and years of content isn’t going to be deleted and re-made to retroactively put the Blood Elves on the Alliance.
I think they would’ve worked far better than the Pandaren as a neutral faction, given the conflict storylines between the Horde and Alliance. The story of conflict between the Blood Elves and High Elves was always fascinating, and had a certain juxtaposition to the Horde and Alliance, showing off both how similar the two factions were, and how different as well.
Anyways, at this point, outside of a WoW 2 completely resetting the franchise back to Post WC3:TFT, I don’t see Blood Elves on the Alliance (unless Blizzard just lets players pick their faction at character creation).
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Well they got their Blood Money for their Blood Elves.
What ever it takes.
Blood Elves should have been playable in WoW from the start.
Learn your lesson Blizzard. Get it right from the start, and you won’t have to grovel to Red China later.
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This, honestly.
I think the problem is, it would’ve been way more work to the Eastern Kingdoms, which was already much more developed than Kalimdor had been. It makes some sense why they waited until Burning Crusade, since it made sense for Kael’thas to still be in Outland, but they still dropped the ball there by making him into a loot pinata.
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The flip side of this now is I wonder if the draenei had just been given to the Horde while the Alliance got the blood elves. I mean, the females are relatively “pretty”. Could it have been enough to satisfy the demand of said asian market/try to help rebalance the population? What would have happened to the story?
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It is also odd that the Night Elves would send spies to Quel’thalas given that the Night Elves and Blood Elves left on good terms. I mean Kael’thas and the Blood Elves helped stop Illidan, then Kael’thas informed Malfurion that Tyrande might still be alive. Afterwards the Night Elves left to go back to Kalimdor, so they would not know about Kael’thas’ alliance with Vashj and Illidan. Outside of those that followed Maiev to Outland anyway.
I still reckon that the Draenei Starting zone should have happened first chronologically. So that way the spies sent were simply to see if the Blood Elves in Quel’thalas have any implied ties to the Legion. Since a Man’ari Eredar was leading the Blood Elves over in the Azuremyst and bloodmyst Isles. But alas the Blood Elf starting zones happen first.
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Blood elves on Horde was absolutely a marketing stragey. Even before this I’d read before that it was done to balance faction population since Alliance was the majority in vanilla.
That doesnt mean it was solely due to marketing though, nor does it mean it was a bad decision. It was still the right choice in the long run for them to be Horde (even if they did have to stretch things with hostile night elves randomly in Ghostlands when they didnt have an issue with belves before or after).
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My guess is it’d depend on when the alliance got blood elves. If it was a vanilla race, I’d think alliance would still get draenei and horde might get goblins early, then I’m guessing the Cata pair would be alliance worgen and horde ogres.
It was a good decision for the health of the game, as the Horde definitely needed a population boost. Storywise… I can’t agree it was a good decision, and Blizzard failed to address the elephants in the room at the time. About the best that could’ve come from it was the Blood Elf-High Elf conflicts, but Blizzard failed to deliver on that properly by never making the High Elves a playable race in the Alliance. As a result, the High Elven side of any conflict with the Blood Elves felt like little more than narrative foil.
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I feel like I’ve always heard a big or the main reason blood elves joined the horde was because the horde needed a pretty race. I could see it also trying to appeal to the asian market since a lot of those MMOs you always have a lot of choices for pretty races. And it worked out, by far the most played race on the horde (and in the game) are blood elves.
That tends to be a player theory, or tossed out vaguely by a certain dungeon designer who is probably remembering the office scuttlebutt.
But the head story people have always listed a number of reason, and yes, the pretty races for the horde was a part, but just a part. I linked a quote from Metzen at the pre-BC blizzcon about how they wanted to follow up the night elf take on wood elves with a similar subversion of the high elf trope with the blood elves. There’s plenty of story reasons that went into it as well, and at least personally, blood elves were much more interesting a take than another high elf race in a game.
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That subversion certainly didn’t last very long. Just about 1 expansion, really.
Metzen’s also been on recording saying Blood Elves don’t fit into the Horde, although to be very specific, that it was intentionally the case.
I think it’s also important to keep in mind that whenever the Developers tell us anything, they’ll be focusing on making sure nothing they say invites speculation towards any sort of disagreement within the team. To remain professional, a united front is necessary, no matter how they may personally feel about a decision.
Case in point, Ion and his comments about High Elves/Void Elves. He’s clearly not a lore person, and if I’m honest… he didn’t strike me as caring about the whole thing one way or another. But it was important to appear to defend the direction that had been taken. There is no reality in which he would’ve said, “Yeah, Void Elves were a mistake, our bad, really should’ve just added High Elves…”
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I don’t think that’s the point made in the quote. More that they stand out on the horde compared to the other races.
If this is the waiting for you comment, that’s nothing to do with lore, everything to do with availability of cosmetic features in the game at that time.
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It was more like a “we need a pretty race on the Horde for the asian market. Which one can we add that does at least make some sense?”
And it turned out to be blood elves since as you pointed out, their whole wc3 arc was about being alienated from the Alliance and willing to do anything to keep going. And they were considered by Metzen to be a villain race before they decided to have them join the Horde.
They never fully explain if they learned of them teaming up with Illidan, but I’d imagine they would know about it as they learned of blood elves researching fel all the way back in vanilla
"Foolish blood elves toil with demonic magic. Have they not witnessed what happened with the naga and with the satyrs of Kalimdor?
I fear that the blood elves will meet a similar deformation. Azeroth cannot afford to give birth to another vile race of monsters".
Either way, Blizzard went with the reasoning for the Alliance hostilities were they learned that the blood elves were using fel as confirmed by chronicle too. This would explain the heavy night elf response as they don’t really have the best history of highborne using fel as well as the rest of the Alliance not wanting to help them.