The Warcraft III game manual clearly states that the Priest and Sorcerer units were High Elves acting in their own accord, disobeying orders from Anasterian in order to assist Lordaeron.
Considering Anasterian was perfectly fine with letting former allies get clobbered by the undead because he assumed it wouldnât affect Quelâthalas, Iâd say some of the blame lays with him, and the rest with Arthas considering the humans of Lordaeron were mostly wiped out.
Maybe if he hadnât made assumptions and did stuff to prepare, quelâthalas wouldâve had a better chance.
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Let us be honest, the only reason the scourge broke in was because they were betrayed from the inside. Otherwise, they would have held the scourge off long enough for the alliance to regroup.
They definitely had a darker side there, and the whole Naaru thing was part of it, and it was pretty cool when there was the event when Kael went and stole it from Silvermoon. I think most of the BC Belf story was more focused on survival than being evil. And I may have jumped the gun a bit as thereâs too many times I see evil tossed around more to attack the other factionâs players than to actually discuss the story.
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Doesnât matter if you think itâs nonsense, itâs still the case. The very prince of the humans led the assault on their lands and murdered their people, that seems like a very reasonable thing to be angry about, especially toward the humans.
All the Blood elves saw was the human prince bulldozing through their lands slaughtering all their people, it wasnât like the scourge was being led by some blood elf, to which Quelâthalas would have likely felt more obligated to intercede. We have to remember that we the players have more knowledge of the events that took place than the average npc in-game, so while we have a full understanding of had happened, all the blood elves saw was a human nearly committing genocide of their people and destroying their most sacred site.
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That was a factor, yes, but Sylvanas believed that sacrificing troops would buy them enough time to secure the sunwell. So maybe if Anasterian hadnât assumed they were peachy they still could have fortified their defenses further.
Especially since while still in the alliance, he sent the smallest force he could get away with and then got mad that some of quelâthalas got burned. It was another situation where he could have done more to protect his lands but assumed they wouldnât be in danger so did next to nothing.
I have no idea how you equate a 90% casualty rate, and the death of the King, with âdid next to nothingâ. I really donât. Do you imply that he, and the rest of the armed forces of QuelâThalas just hung out and did nothing while the slaughter took place?
And what about the army he was leading? All those Undead serving the Lich King, nah, itâs irrelevant, Human man bad.
It was just Arthas, 100% living Human acting totally in favor of the Alliance.
Itâs like saying the Pantheon is to blame for the countless worlds destroyed by Legion because it was a Titan who was leading them⊠Imagine the Army of the Light doing a Crusade to kill all the Titans in the universe in order to avenge the Eredar who fell to the Legion because a Titan was leading the demons.
When the scourge invaded Anastarian did everything possible to keep them at bay, and they were succeeding until they had been betrayed. Everything fell to pieces as a result of that betrayal. If it were not for that, they would have certainly survived. let alone Anasterian was old, and still marched out to face the lichking. I do not believe it would be accurate to say he did nothing in this situation.
In terms of dealing with everyone else, it is not surprising. The high elves are isolationist because they had been burned by pretty much everyone outside of the humans in Dalaran, and that was done out of necessity.
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I am talking about before that, while they were still in the alliance. He sent a token force very reluctantly, and then blamed the humans when part of quelâthalas was clobbered by the horde.
And then again, he found out Lordaeron was being attacked by undead, made no moves to help his former allies, and assumed Quelâthalas wouldnât be affected.
Itâs like watching your neighbor getting robbed, and then not locking your door, and then getting mad at your neighbor because they didnât have enough valuables to keep them from robbing your place too.
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And the Elves knew what we know about how Arthas got his army, who controlled them, and what his motives were? Come on, all they knew - all they could possibly know - was that they were being cut down in wholesale genocidal slaughter by a force led by him.
Youâre acting like someone reading a book and yelling at the characters for not know what you knew when you flipped to the last chapter.
And another note, despite all you speculate how the Blood Elves saw and remember the event, they didnât directed their revenge and anger towards the Humans and the Alliance, it was against Arthas and the Scourge, their real bane. They were even negotiating to rejoin the Alliance in MoP.
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Until, once again, a human turned that on its ear.
Anasterian knew about the Scourge way before Arthas invaded Quelâthalas.
A neighbor Kingdom is entirely destroyed by a army of Undead, how you thinkthey didnât knew anything about it?
I wish Kaelâthas werenât given such a raw deal.
If anyone deserved a redemption arc it was that guy.
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even that video i linked above has the devs sweating bullets on how theyâre gonna pull off putting the helfs on the horde haha.
He did what he thought was best for his people, he was ultimately corrupted and went down a horrible path, but yes - I canât disagree with that. Another Horde leader tossed into the fire for the sake of âthe storyâ.
You mean the mindless undead serving under him? How does that undermine the fact that he was indeed human, and clearly still retained his personality as he very cruelly raised their own people to kill them, including Sylvanas herself?
Yes Arthas, the renowned prince of all the humans. One of the biggest symbols of the Alliance at that time. The very face of the Alliance walks into Quelâthalas, slaughters their people and youâre surprised that the Blood Elves blame them for it?
This is assuming that the races know everything from a meta perspective, when most Blood Elves werenât even aware that Kaelâthas had defected, or had even been killed for quite some time. Itâs easy for us as players to cast blame when we have full awareness of the context, and circumstances in hindsight, but for the Blood Elves all they saw was the leader of the humans charging into their homes and slaughtering their people.
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poor kaelâthas. 
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He was raid bossed for doing way less than some characters.
Illidans redemption arc will always bug me.
Just adding, that sometime itâs fine to just let villains be villains. They donât need a redemption arc just because people like them. In fact some people like them as villains and sweeping that under the rug can be disappointing to fans.
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