I’m pissed.
I’m irrationally pissed.
It’s my favorite thing to be pissed about.
No one will ever convince me not to be pissed.
Once a week, I remember that I’m pissed about this and send my friends a message, “Hey, have I ever told you that I hate the NB joined the Horde?” To which they inevitably reply, “Ye, last week.” Then they get just a little bit closer to smashing that “Block” button on my profile.
I’m vocally an elf fan, specifically a night elf fan.
It's not the aesthetic thing - though, that is admittedly part of it.
The Nightborne (and subsequently the Horde) get the most modern-rendered, beautifully-and-lovingly crafted city in the whole game. But, do the other elven races get a similar upgrade or treatment? Negatory. Now, I can travel almost anywhere and find outdated, ugly Kaldorei ruins or Sin’dorei holds. Mostly, I don’t care. I didn’t expect them to upgrade old content. No one else got or will get the same treatment, but it’s salt in the wound.
The thing that really drives me up a wall? Just how flimsy an excuse it was for the Nightborne, not to join the Horde, but to actively campaign against the same people that not six months prior liberated their entire culture and kingdom.
In reality, a lot of this is a problem with all the 7.3.5 Allied Races and the Mechagnomes, but for me personally it stung especially with the Nightborne. They don’t even have the begrudging aesthetic reasoning of the Highmountain Tauren, Lightforged Draenei, and Mechagnomes, where at least they were allying with fellow members of their race. The Nightborne straight up betrayed their kaldorei cousins.
You have to complete the associated storyline quests and get to exalted, but you can do this on any character regardless of faction. Imagine my emotional and narrative whiplash when I worked my night elf’s butt off saving Suramar, when I go through arguably the best storytelling we’ve ever seen in WoW, when I really and truly feel attached to the city, it’s people, and their plight, only to unlock the Nightborne, so they can proceed to kill my night elf?
Suramar is a Horde city now? Like Orgrimmar? Canonically, my character that saved Suramar isn’t allowed in the city because it’s now “hostile”? Didn’t I just liberate them? Why couldn’t Suramar (as well as the whole NB race while we’re at it) be left as a neutral city?
Did I do this story on the wrong faction? Nope! Because both the Kaldorei army and the Silver Covenant are there! That’s right. The Alliance sent two armies to help, and the Horde sent one. Though Dalaran is technically a neutral city, it’s historically a human city lead by an entirely human council and largely occupied by humans and gnomes and high elves. Then, Thalryssa goes pissing on the Alliance with Dalaran floating within sight.
Then, there’s the crapshow that was the War Campaign.
You know what? I get it. They had a ton of similarities with the Blood Elves. That makes so much sense. The parallels are impossible not to draw. If they’d joined the Horde, and that was it, and nothing came of it - “Horde in name only” - I’d be bitter, but that’s it. Just because they had something in common with one Horde race doesn’t mean that they would go and attack their very recent allies who have literally never done anything except aide you.
Why would the Nightborne aide in the war campaign? Why would they assist in an attack on kaldorei lands? Did they think they might get part of their old kingdom back - Nope! That part belongs to the goblins. Why did they stay in the Horde for a single moment after Teldrassil was burned? Were they afraid? The proud elves who just overthrew a murderous tyrant are totally 100% okay with supporting a new one? For what reason? For the Horde? Screw that.
Nightborne were the sole reason I was convinced that Blizzard would loosen faction restrictions at the end of BfA. Because, their actions made so little sense that I held to the hope that it was only because they were side-characters in a story that was going to open them up to both factions, where they should have been in the first place.
Nightborne are the prime example of the garbage fire that was BfA Storytelling. “Why do the characters make this decision?” “Cinematics! Engagement metrics! Ride the Blizzard Hype Train! WOOO! High Elves are Horde!”
Screw everything about the Nightborne being Horde.
TL;DR: I get siding with the blood elves over the night elves, but that doesn’t mean they’d attack the people that just helped save them. Cash me outside.