I like that. Especially the part about the green eyes/skin taking a long time to wear off.
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I don’t think this is even meant to be a retcon. It’s just the writer not knowing the lore.
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I think you are remembering it wrong. The Mana Tap quest is still there, but I don’t think the Fel Crystal one ever existed. I couldn’t find it online.
The Blood Elf and Draenei starting zones are the same as they were in TBC for the most part (aside from class quests and the intro cinematic), so I doubt Blizzard would’ve removed that Fel Crystal quest if it existed.
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You need to remember that this book is written (in universe) by Shaw and Flynn.
So there will be details that would be wrong due to bias or misinformation.
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There never was a fel crystal quest. There was mana tap 3 times and arcane torrent. The only reference to us using Fel was siphoning the fel crystals Kael’thas brought back from Outland along with the Naaru Mu’ru. We were never addicted to using Fel, it was just being used in place of arcane because of the destruction of the Sunwell. It’s why we had no real fel corruption other than our eyes turning green. We also learned to siphon arcane magics from magically enchanted objects as well, other than the Fel Crystals. You see those who became very fel corrupted in Draenor and in Sunwell Plateau.
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Just backing up that there was no fel crystal siphon quest. You mana tapped mana wyrms.
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No your not crazy. But they are just regular hookahs for smoking bloodthistle out of. I’ve never tried it but I heard it similar to a body buzz of shrooms with the headspace of oxy. Not that I know anything about any of that stuff.
As a hard core Belf player that has played thru the starting zone literally over 50 times, I can tell you that the quests are exactly the same except you used to have to Mana tap three times as opposed to the one time now.
Also there was never a quest dealing with fel-crystals or syphoning fel magic. Maybe you’re misremembering.
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Blood Elves not using Fel, and instead “only” siphoning Arcane was a retcon to begin with, heh. If you get mad at retcons (which you should, btw, retcons suck), you should be angry at that one, too.
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As evidenced by their BC racial called ‘arcane torrent’, that was an arcane school spell and the BC commentary track where it was explicitly stated that they tapped arcane and not fel.
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Fel is basically the polar opposite of arcane. Arcane is control, and the high elves used it. But they dabbled in fel magic when the Sunwell was destroyed, and they certainly got addicted to it.
There is no retcon. Mathias thinks blood elves were addicted to fel. The man is entitled to his opinion.
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and he isn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the belt
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If this was supposed to be written by Shaw, there’s every possibility he was conflating what he knew about Kael’thas with Silvermoon as a whole, since the former was the militaristic threat…and Shaw isn’t exactly a historian.
Or it could just be a mistake. Or it could just be an intentional retcon, if they think “addicted to fel magic following the corruption of the Sunwell” sounds better than “tainted by fel magic following the corruption of the Sunwell” to explain why they once had green eyes.
/shrug
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As others have said, the book is written from the perspective of Shaw and Flynn, so in this case it seems likely Shaw is simply mistaken, or he’s intentionally put down wrong information, perhaps to support a slightly more favorable view in the Alliance perspective; certainly the idea of Fel-Addicted elves joining the Horde, while they’re basically borderline corrupted and not in their rights minds, is more palatable than the reality that the Blood Elves joined the Horde because Garithos was a thing.
I’m more inclined to think this is that propaganda angle to be honest. One of Shaw’s closer allies this expansion has been Valeera Sanguinar, who still feels plenty of loyalty/connection to Silvermoon and her people despite being loyal to the House of Wrynn. I’m very certain she would’ve told Shaw the actual facts if he’d ask, and she wouldn’t have had reason to lie or mislead him.
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Can confirm there is no such quest.
I got curious so watched a video of someone levelling a blood elf in TBC.
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Even just looking at her wiki page it says that her magic addiction was exacerbated by the fel energy of a demon that possessed her. So it’s clear that fel magic screws these people up something fierce, even if they aren’t/weren’t technically addicted to it.
“Addictive Magic” has to be one of the most unfun fantasy concepts I’ve ever experienced. To my knowledge it started with an episode of buffy the vampire slayer where her witch friend OD’d on magic or something.
Social drug war commentary doesn’t belong in fantasy, or anywhere for that matter. I’ve talked to AA people, they don’t even care about the science just their notion of “addiction.” I have more respect for the addict who puts himself into an early grave than the one who becomes one of those soul-dead cultists. Sounds callous, but I have a rather alcoholic brother, and if he turned into one of those, I might just think of him as already dead, at least inside.
Blizzard retcons stuff all the time and fel magic is magic so you its not exactly wrong to say they were addicted to fel magic. Sunwell goes ka boom and they had the trade 1 source to feed the addiction for another.
They siphoned magic from lots of things though not just fel related things.
I’d credit magic in Warcraft being addictive to some of the early writers and authors having also worked on the Dragonlance novels. In Dragonlance, magic was described as addictive, that casting a spell was a euphoric sensation, and that once the spell was cast the mage was weakened by the sudden loss of that sensation. Only the disciplined could resist the urge to cast a spell again to get back that feeling.
It’s also where the old infamous, “Mages go to Hell,” thinking came from in WoW that’s never been a thing since it was line-dropped. Priests and Mages in Dragonlance did NOT like one another at all, so Priests spread rumors that mage souls were doomed to what was basically hell.
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It seems like she’s referencing the blood elves as a whole. Some of the elves that followed Kael to Outland became fel addicted. They’re considered enemies in game but they’re still blood elves.
