“Four races comprise the Horde: the brutal orcs, the shadowy undead, the spiritual tauren, and the quick witted trolls. Beset by enemies on all sides, these outcasts have forged a union they hope will ensure their mutual survival.”
That’s the classic description of the Horde. What’s villainous about that?
Ya, the Night elves denied them their culture so some practiced in secret and it went wrong. I do find it interesting that when an alliance race does something to a group who “provoked” them it’s justified for them to act, but when the alliance provokes someone else and then gets hit back it’s not justified.
Because the culture they were embracing had nearly destroyed the world. Why would you want someone to continue to embrace such extreme ideals?
The alliance was always a lighter shade than the horde even back then. You had the forsaken being evil in Vanilla and then the blood elves enslaving a naaru in BC. The only expansion where the horde was really good was wrath.
The immense power of the Well of Eternity and Azshara’s abuse of it is what almost destroyed the world. Arcane magic itself is not going to destroy the world if practiced safely. By forcing such practices underground via outlawing the Highborne’s culture, the ability to practice it in ideal safe conditions was removed. Thats how you get the Ashenvale fiasco.
I would say the High Elves doing fine for seven thousand or so years is proof enough of that. But I’ve had a common complaint, why couldn’t they just make more runestones for Dalaran?
The Highborne weren’t just random night elves who missed having magic though; they were the former ruling class seeking to reclaim the very power by which they used to rule.
So yeah, “denying their culture” is an extremely naive and biased description. The Highborne didn’t just miss being able to have animated brooms do their sweeping for them; they missed being powerful. And in Highborne culture, being powerful meant being in charge.
And note that the only ones who played around with magic and courted disaster were those who used to rule over the rest of the kaldorei with said magic. We don’t see night elf history rife with normal night elves delving into the arcane because they yearned for the old days; there’s just the one big, glaring example of the specific caste of night elves who were shortsighted and reckless in ruling the world with that power trying to use it again and courting disaster.
It entirely reeks of the exact same “well, they knew better” attitude that led to catastrophe in the first place. The Highborne weren’t Highborne because they proved they were responsible and qualified. They were Highborne because they happened to be born into the right families. So the only group of night elves who wanted arcane magic brought back were those who felt entitled to its power by deign of noble birth. To the Highborne, magic was their birthright for the same reasons that they considered the power to rule their birthright.
Arcane magic use was outlawed, and the only segment of the populace that objected were those whose prior eminence was proof positive that their elite society’s culture in particular wasn’t responsible enough to use it safely. Not even the old non-Highborne mages refused; the noble-born Moonguard and similar mage groups willingly gave it up and became druids.
But hey, forget the rest of their people, right? Who do the night elves think they are, denying their Highborne lords and masters what’s rightfully theirs? What worth is the will of the people next to the will of their betters?
I’m aware that the Highborne were the ruling caste. Fortunately the ruling caste are still people and people aren’t a hive mind as seen by the Highborne of Suramar, the Highborne of Eldre’thalas, and the Highborne who saw Azshara for what she was and turned on her (i.e the ones you are talking about).
We don’t have much information on the time between the fall of Azshara and when the Highborne were exiled. As far as I know, there is nothing canon that says they were trying to return to the glory days of the old empire and return to ruling the world so most of what you’ve said it pure speculation on your part.
The very people who were exiled because of this became the high elves and they seemed very concerned with the safety of their magical practices. They also seemed content to establish a safe home for themselves and not continue on to world domination. I find your argument that the Highborne wanting to hold onto their culture and traditions was morally wrong unconvincing.
Kind of irrelevant. The Quel’doreis kingdom sat upon the sacred lands of the Amani. But to answer the question I’m not sure. There was fighting on the outskirts I think. And also yeah, they had to teach the humans magic to finally fully defeat the trolls. They did not have the same power that Azsharas empire had at it’s height which would be required for the kind of expansion you’re speaking of. Then Arthas came, so we can’t really know what directions they could’ve taken.
I don’t recall the High Elves attacking the human kingdoms ever… they seemed fine with Quel’Thalas and had no intentions on expanding forward.
I’m aware. It is kind of scummy how they took the trolls lands but ultimately, said land had exactly the conditions they needed, the trolls and elves already hated each other from their time in Trisfal and the trolls weren’t strong enough to stop them. Apparently, the elves unknowingly settled on their sacred lands and then the Amani started attacking them all over…
They had like 7,000ish years to attack if they wanted before the human kingdoms even popped up properly. They preferred to stay in Quel’thalas.
Really that’s just historically consistent with elves in general, though. Even at the height of their power, the Highborne were only really interested in ruling other night elves. They were content to just keep all the other races out, to the point that even though with the Well’s power they could have utterly crushed and subjugated any of their contemporary nations, they left Pandaria alone and Azshara made a deal with the Zandalari to stop expanding her own borders as long as they reined in the other tribes’ retaliations over what had already been taken. Even their one known conflict with the vrykul amounted to them being driven out of Stormheim by the returning vrykul and never going back once it had been resettled by its original denizens.
The high elves were still traditionally Highborne enough that they wouldn’t have been looking to conquer their neighbors and build an empire full of non-elf subjects. As soon as the trolls weren’t an active threat any more, they were fine with just shoring up their borders and mostly keeping to themselves.
She froze both sides solid.
She could have frozen them and teleported everyone in the middle of Stormwind. Thrall or Sylvanas would have been dead upon arrival.
You say that as if the High King of the Alliance didn’t just deny aid to a nigh extinct, refugee race in their hour of need, just because it didn’t fit his agenda. Or as if Jaina hadn’t just got back from palling around with Varok Saurfang, the Thrice Genocidal.
But he did, officially. He didn’t just went away without saying nothing.
he made it clear.
No the same expansion.
Still a win, it doesn’t matter if you like it or not, like you said.
The whole cinematic was about Varian relation with Anduin. Sylvanas didn’t even said a word. We can also add the Val’sharah cinematic, the Stormhein one that was about Genn screwing up Sylvanas plan. The Anduin one and all the Velen cinematic.
No, it does not. The very fact that the description of the trolls said they were suspicious of the forsaken meant, in canon, they didn’t know what the forsaken were doing but were waiting for a chance to expose them.
We didn’t officially find out until Wrath, and we were told that was a splinter group of radicals that we had to deal with. At the time, that seemed to be true, and Sylvanas was still one-hundred percent committed to taking down Arthas, the greater threat. Our moral integrity was still in tact. It wasn’t until Cata that things really took a turn for the worse, but the Darkspear lost political influence when Garrosh was put in charge. We can only deal with so many problems at once, and Zul and Garrosh took priority.
If the Horde is complicit for allying with the Forsaken against greater threats like Arthas, then the Alliance is complicit in allying with the Horde every time we team up to save the world. Nuance, people. It’s a thing. I get that boiling down the story makes it easier to put characters you don’t like in the boxes you want them to be in, but speaking in absolute terms like “Saurfang is a traitor!” and “Every single member of the Horde is complicit!” strips the game of any nuance that actually does exist and makes an already clumsily written story even worse.
Saurfang doesn’t have the political capital to challenge Sylvanas, and he knows he would lose in a Mak’gora. He was backed into a corner, and maybe he was being a coward, but he’s trying now. Characters are allowed to struggle and fail. Good stories often demand it. That’s not the part of BfA’s story that’s wrong.
The Horde is only “evil” when the Warchief is. The problem with the Horde is not the people as a whole, it’s that the Warchief position has too much power. The Horde needs political reform, not to be dismantled.