The language of your text seems to think that we’re talking about an Alliance race going Horde.
The Nightborne were never Kal’dorei which was the “lowborne” segment of the old Night Elf empire. Lowborne is the gravest insult they can hurl and Kal’dorei feel the same way about them.
In that context it’s no surprise that Tyrande wasn’t ready to throw out the welcome mat.
On the other hand the Sin’dorei are practically blood brothers in caste and attitude. It takes a major effort of willful blindness to ignore these two pieces of context.
“Jumping ship” was the wrong term for me to use but I’m aware of the highborne / lowborne split and why the sin’dorei bonded with them more in the story.
Some of it’s also just how much of a timesink Suramar is. Unlike the Lightforged some people bring up, where you show up, run a linear questline, and do a raid tier, Suramar is an absolute slog of a somewhat timegated grind, that you need for anything from your Order Hall set to Pathfinder. And as of late Legion-early BfA, all Alliance players get out of it is a knock-off store mount.
There’s also some of this. Especially the fact that Tyrande’s home town is now Horde. Can you imagine the outrage if Silvermoon, or Quel’danas, Tranquillien, or some such was given to Umbric and/or Vareesa?
There’s more to it than just simple “Red Team bad!”. Though, of course, the Red Team being as vile as they are certainly doesn’t help.
I don’t want the Nightborne for the Alliance, I definitely think they belong in the Horde. I’m just explaining why it was a bigger middle finger for them to go Horde than it was for the Lightforged to go Alliance. A closer comparison to the Lightforged would be the Highmountain; no one in the Alliance was annoyed by the Highmountain joining the Horde. It was expected and sensible.
None of the other allied races had such an involved and lengthy storyline for both factions prior to becoming an allied race. It would’ve sucked for either one and had they joined the Alliance I’d be just as peeved as someone who also plays Horde.
It feels like the Nightborne we encountered and played alongside in Legion are an entirely different Nightborne than the allied race we play today.
The rest of the allied races were created specifically to be allied races and already had faction alignments. The Nightborne were not (or if they were, it sure was well hidden over the Suramar campaign.)
Just as a note, had they gone the way of Pandaren, which I really do think they likely originally intended (cause again, SUCH a lot of questing omfg), it would have made sense for the really commoner Nightborne to potentially consider trying a new way to live their lives… while the more elite classes would naturally align with their Sin’dorei distant kin.
Ah well. 'twas not to be.
Not comparable. It might have been Tyrande’s home town, but never a home base for player characters of the game. Quel’danas is not a good example because it was taken from the Sin’dorei and made ffaction neutral.
One part of the community sees them as magic night elves. But the other sees them as purple blood elves. Picking a faction would have inevitably piss someone off.
The Nightborne are from the same arcane magic using faction that the Sin’dorei are. If they had not sealed themselves off, they would have been exiles along with the rest of the Quel’dorei. Tyrande even calls them “mana addicts” for the being in the same situation the Sin’dorei were. Clearly this was a factor in her rejecting them.
6 days later, sorry for the bump: But wc3 Tyrande was willing to help the mana addicted Blood Elf refugees survive. She is a harsh person, but I would say even Warcraft 3 tried to show that she did have some compassion.
As for this overall discussion: I think some of the Tyrande writing was played up. But her initial distrust for them makes sense in the context of the world. I think it’s out of character for Tyrande to not stay in Suramar after the Nightborne chose to actually let the Nightwell die off. Because that is a moment where Tyrande, someone who has also shown the ability to forgive and accept Highborne back into society and try to help them reintegrate after over 10,000 years of tension, would understand that they made a choice that the blood elves never would.
Edit: Ultimately, I think the middle finger feeling from Suramar going Horde is because of it’s place in Night Elf lore, but Legion is an xpac that didn’t really care for the night elf side of Elf lore. It included it, but stuff like the post-Empire Kaldorei were almost like a bad joke of themselves in Val’sharah. But if we want to stick to when they were an interesting race, I think we have to be willing to have them not really care who owns Suramar. It’s a relic of an Empire they rebuke. Old traditions they cast off when committing themselves to becoming a new people.
Ah, ffs, this is why the Nightborne should not have become a playable race, unless they were available for both factions like the Pandaren.
In the name of Jesus, I rebuke this discourse! Splashes holy water ¡En el nombre de Jesús! ¡En el nombre de Jesús! ¡Fuera de aquí! Smoke cleanses this thread