Basically they were being “controlled” by Ragnaros and the Twilight Cultists. In vanilla you can even kill (non-canonically) Princess Moira cause she’s being mind controlled by Dagran. Canonically you save her of course.
Moira turned out to be pregnant with a Dark Iron (Dagran was the baby daddy) and so her kid ends up being the heir to both the Bronzebeard and Dark Iron thrones.
Naturally, this being a terrible thing for the Dwarf power struggle, Moira does some sketchy things to maintain power like kidnap Anduin which greatly pisses off Varian.
Varian almost kills her but Anduin intervenes, and Moira being grateful promises to be better. The Dwarfs then form a triumvirate of Dark Iron, Bronzebeard, and Wildhammer.
They had basically been on our side already til BFA where they were thrust front and center. The recruitment involved getting rid of the last vestiges of resistance and fully recruiting them into the Alliance.
The best part is that the Alliance player was present the entire time, making this one of the most rewarding experiences a player who paid attention to the story might have if they’re invested in the Dwarfs.
Man you can underplay it all you want to try to win an argument. Fact is the Horde got six allied races in one with the Maghar as you basically can play as multiple orc variations with entirely different contexts.
They’re not just brown skin…did you even look at them?
If you care about the story, you win cause you can play a different orc with different RP context.
If you don’t care about the story, you still win cause you get to pick from a very diverse set of options.
It’s actually funny that they went SO HARD out of their way to make the 6 in 1 a reality by employing some crazy time twisting nonsense. They could have just brought the basic brown Maghar from Outland but nooo…
It’s actually funny that the Maghar made an alternate universe High Elf AR with Kael’thas as their leader as a legitimate possibility if Blizz was so inclined. Bring uncorrupted Arthas with Jaina as his waifu along with them.
Thaurissan and his Dark Irons moved south to Redridge Mountains and founded the new kingdom of Thaurissan. They too prospered in their new home, but for their leader the humiliation of defeat was unbearable. After years of secretly forging a new army, Thaurissan launched a brazen two-pronged assault against the Bronzebeard and Wildhammer clans. He himself lead the assault against the Bronzebeards pushing all the way to the very heart of the city before the Bronzebeards finally rallied and pushed the Dark Irons back, all the way back to Redridge. Meanwhile, his wife Modgud led their second attack against Grim Batol with the blade Xal’atath in hand. They brought Grim Batol’s shadows to life, falling upon the Wildhammers with blades forged of night. By some feat of courage, Khardros rallied his remaining warriors and launched a desperate counterattack. The sorceress unleashed her dark power on Khardros, but he pressed his attack. Then Modgud reached for her black blade – the weapon that had turned Grim Batol into a den of nightmare, but it was no longer there. She had lost her cherished weapon or as some would claim, the weapon had abandoned her. Khardros mortally wounded Modgud and secured victory for the WIldhammers.
With Modgud’s death, the remaining Dark Irons retreated south only to find themselves face to face with the armies of Ironforge. Madoran had caught wind of the attack and brought his forces north. Together, Bronzebeard and Wildhammer crushed the Dark Irons from both sides, utterly annihilating them. In the Dark Irons, the two other clans had found a common enemy and decided to put their rivalry to the side to focus on purging Thaurissan and his treacherous Dark Irons from the face of the world. As their armies drew near, Thaurissan scrambled for a way to defeat his enemies. He decided to draw upon the fiery power from deep within the world and use it as a weapon.
He wove a great spell to save his kingdom, yet during his conjuration, his mind turned to the death of his wife and his recent defeats. Anger roiled through Thaurissan’s heart. His rage grew so absolute that his spellwork breached the Elemental Plane and tapped into Ragnaros the Firelord. Unwittingly he ripped Ragnaros from his elemental prison and summoned him to the surface of the world. The violent rebirth sparked a series of apocalyptic explosions that instantly killed the sorcerer-thane and shattered the surrounding mountains. From a safe distance, Madoran and Khardros watched in horror as the world was torn asunder and firestorms engulfed the area. They knew in that instant that Thaurissan had doomed himself and his people. Frightened for their own safety, the Wildhammers and Bronzebeards turned north and fled.
sounds like we made friends with our version of sylvannas
We killed Thaurissan in BRD a long time ago though.
But yea… the Dark Iron are definitely sketchy overall but that’s the appeal right? The Dark Iron have the potential to be the shady part of the Alliance, and that’s fine.
Of course Moira is doing the exact opposite lately… which is concerning. They’re basically neutering their whole appeal by making them so willing to have peace.
the dark iron are like horde dwarves. the wildhammers are more like alliance dwarves.
i mean isnt it the dark irons who have imprisoned people in torture chambers in BRD? you can hear their prisoners wailing in pain and sorrow. its like making friends with n az is
I mean I don’t necessarily agree with your arguments, but I do agree that the Wildhammer were the much more natural fit to join the Alliance at the moment.
Same thing for High Elves and Void Broken in Argus… who we just ditched… randomly…without explanation… obviously pointing to some seriously damaged Alliance world building at some point in development
Void Broken and High Elves being the original plan is so obvious the signs had signs.
We spent the entirety of Argus helping the Void Krokuul overcome the void with the help of Velen and Alleria. You had to grind reputation with them.
There were more High Elves than Horde on the Vindicaar with a couple of vendors and the quintessential High Elf family reunion.
I had totally expected them to make the High Elves representative of the Lightforged faction. The Army of the Light was presumably this group of people from many races and origins but apparently they ended up being just 220 Watt Draenei, so something was scrapped there.
The Void Broken would obviously be the Argussian Reach faction.
Void Elves being randomly associated with that faction is just so damn random that there’s absolutely no way this was originally planned. The fact that they come from random Blood Elves with absolutely zero historical context, and not from the High Elves on the very same ship, means that there was some change of plans that did not affect the originally planned High Elves.
The fact that Blood Elves mysteriously get golden eyes at some point makes it all the more evident. It’s glaringly obvious that this was originally work done for Lightforged High Elves on the Alliance but at some point was scrapped.
i didnt make the connection. only thing that i noticed was that of all the ARs in legion, void elves were the only ones without a zone, story or quest chains associated with them, till you unlocked them and then it was go to rock in space, fight a couple bad guys, congrats.
Lightforged Draenei brought absolutely nothing new to the table. They are basically just Draenei with holy infusion. They’re not some new race, as you have to do some ritual to get to that point. They don’t even have a new aesthetic. 220 Watt Dranei, more holy than your already holy 110 Watt Draenei? Come now.
They look a bit different, but that’s entirely arbitrary as they are presumably the same Draenei that ran away whatever years ago and have been fighting ever since. It’s not like they’ve been reproducing either. It’s not like you can even see the tattoos so it ends up just being the hair and skin tone color.
Right… they were obviously a last minute creation with zero context planned.
The fact that they received very little contextual development in BFA makes it all the more obvious that they weren’t a part of the original development timeline. You can replace Void Elves with Dalaran High Elf mages and they’d have the same effect on the story in being a glorified taxi service.
i like you. i just dont like the idea of making a race we fought because they did evil things, our buddies. its like the blood elves embracing the horde. with the argument that because garithos and his lordaeron pals were vengeful to blood elves, all alliance are bad. (ignoring the fact he did it cause he thought they had let the scourge kill his entire family). therefore, they should form an alliance with the very same people who, while living, had joined forces with garithos and make people who werent even involved or even aware of what garithos was up to in lordaeron, their enemies, like wildhammers, bronzebeards, stormwind humans and night elves. not sure what dark irons were doing at that point.
Army of the Light ending up being a couple of Draenei is already funny enough considering they’re supposed to be this cosmic hodgepodge of races.
And you can’t, in absolutely no way, envision a way to Lightforge the High Elves as opposed to the Draenei? Not with the High Elves already being present there with Alleria, Vereesa, and Arator just waddling around the ship?
And it’s not like the stars matter… when the actual faction that starred in Legion (the Void Krokuul) were turned down in favor of a random new faction in Void Elves… yet you still have to grind their reputation to unlock Void Elves…
