Why didn’t the Tauren convince the NE to join the Horde way back in WoW classic? Kinda odd that Horde didn’t have first dibbs on getting NE on their side considering Kalimdor is majority Horde.
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Horde killed Cenarius.
Drank demonblood.
Chopped down Ashenvale.
I don’t see how NEs could have joined the Horde.
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Because blizzard did not want each faction to dominate their respective continents.
There is no canon reason for the night elves joining the Alliance outside of conjecture or fan head-canon.
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Geographic dominance has zero bearing on racial allegiance, nor is there any kind of “dibs” on them. The Eastern Kingdoms are largely Alliance-controlled, yet we have the Forsaken and Blood Elves on Hordeside. Likewise, even if Kalimdor is largely controlled by the Horde, that doesn’t mean that the Night Elves should or would join them - especially considering the very hostile relationship they had in Warcraft III.
It’s almost like Blue Eastern Kingdoms and Red Kalimdor is a terrible idea that they should scrap as soon as possible.
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To be honest, I believe the whole “Blue EK/Red Kalimdor” thing is something the community blew cartoonishly out of proportion.
All I thought it was was a loose description of the starting state of BfA to help explain why both factions were simultaneously interested in strengthening their navies. Nothing less and nothing more.
And since the start of BfA, nothing in the story has really indicated we are headed in that direction anyways. There’s been no meaningful talk of an Alliance offensive towards Silvermoon, nor has the Horde really discussed pushing towards the Exodar or Feathermoon.
If anything we’ve gone in the opposite direction with the opening of the Darkshore Warfront.
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I certainly hope that’s the case. I’d love to be told I overreacted and misinterpreted things.
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I always liked the idea. I’m not sure if the developers ever said. But I think it was because they wanted the Alliance to have a city in Kalimdor?
Well, Cenarius also came back. They eventually overcame the bloodlust to kill Mannoroth. Managing to join forces to help stop the Burning Legion from getting to the Well of Eternity. And it didn’t seem like they chopped down an unforgivable amount of trees (the humans having cut down some as well).
Whereas the story could have focused on the Orcs (who were trying to reconnect with their shamanistic roots), Darkspear Trolls, and Tauren coming together with their somewhat similar nature related cultures.
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Ultimately that’s the real reason. We can speculate on the lore reasons, which admittedly have been left frustratingly vague (not even Chronicle Volume 3 really clarifies the matter), but the real reason is that Blizzard envisioned World of Warcraft as a two faction game and wanted both factions to have races based on both continents.
The Night Elves were unaffiliated going out of WC3:TFT, and could therefore serve as the Alliance’s “Kalimdor Race”. Same deal with the Forsaken and the Horde having an EK race.
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Were not Forsaken going to be Alliance and NE going to be Horde originally?
I just typed and deleted about eight snarky comments about about this, basically summed up as "thank god they never did that! or “each faction having their own content is a great idea that surely ends very well for everyone”, but I just can’t with this faction conflict stuff anymore.
But yeah, that was the ultimate reason.
Where exactly did you get this information?
Also, note that the shared cultural ties between the Night Elves and Tauren were something worked into the story with WoW’s release, in part to explain Tauren druids (back when only one race on each side had druds.)
While we can look at the current state, lore, and developed backgrounds and say “How did these nature tied groups align with different factions?”, that lore was not nearly developed, and that which was developed was not particularly well known, at the time of release.
To speculate, I’d imagine the faction distribution was decided significantly before that Tauren lore was developed.
I’m sure Blizzard considered all sorts of options for classic races before settling on the Alliance Night Elves and Horde Forsaken. I’d be shocked if they didn’t at least think about doing it the other way around.
However I’ve never heard of them actually sinking a meaningful amount of dev time into the Horde NE/Alliance Forsaken option before backtracking.
This seems evidenced by one of the earliest screenshots we’ve got of the races in Warcraft, seen here:
i.redd(dot)it/fzg3bu13v5j11(dot)png
Both Forsaken and Night Elves are on Horde and Alliance respectively - this tells me that during the earliest stages of development, they were meant to be where they ended up. Any word on Horde Kaldorei or Alliance Forsaken was probably just a musing in a devs head, never actually put on paper.
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For non-meta reasons, I’d say the closeness between the Night Elves and the Tauren is very recent, and almost exclusive to Druids.
Despite both of their reverence for Nature, past with Cenarius, and shared history of WotA, they don’t seem that close in general. I mean, the Tauren, as far as we know, never even bothered to ask them for help with their whole going-extinct-at-the-hands-of-the-Centaur thing.
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I ask myself every day why the savage, nature obsessed Night Elves of WC3 chose not to ally themselves with the coalition of druidic and shamanistic people they share their continent with, and instead chose to ally with the highly civilized and mechanically inclined alliance living on the opposite side of the planet.
Their biggest problem with the Horde, the fact that they cut down the NE’s forests, even stops being a problem if they join the Horde. As they have the ability to create lumber at will, and could simply provide what the Horde needs, removing the need for them to cut down anymore trees.
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From a recent interview, I think they were saying that Night Elves almost weren’t added as a playable race at all.
Watch when Anduin sells away the last of Night Elven territory in Kalimdor in order to buy “world peace.” This is MoP 2.0 afterall.
And all the Deus Vult fans will lap that up. Because they now have the toxic dump formerly known as Lorderon, and lost nothing significant for it. As the nelves paid the blood price.
Same with the Forsaken: