And then the Nightborne realized that the Horde under Sylvanas they joined was not the same goods that the Blood Elves sold them on, to the point where in Nazjatar Thalyssra was reminiscing about how the Night Elves and Blood Elves worked together to liberate Suramar and talks Lor’themar into working with the Alliance again to overthrow Sylvanas.
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Gotta love that BfA was such a miserable situation for the Horde Faction that the literal only good thing we got out of it, our ARs, have our AR leaders regretting even joining us. Mayla, Thalyssra, even Talanji to some extent. BfA just screams that Faction Pride when the writers go out of their way to make one of the selling points of this expansion ashamed in their choice.
Jeez … I will never be convinced that Blizz ever likes the Horde outside of them feeling like they have more freedom to do what they want with the faction as a plot device than the Alliance.
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They used to limit arcane practices inside Darnassus, but they have incorporated arcane magic in night elf culture a lot, mage portals, Mordent being part of the darkshore warfront, they just are super cautious about it, which is something that the highborne weren’t, they used to be reckless.
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Anyaceltica and Drahliana were debating the idea of the Eastern Kingdom Alliance cultures suppressing the Night Elves’ culture, not whether the Night Elves were suppressing Highborne culture.
Of which the Shen’dralar did not have the same culture as the Highborne from Suramar, as the Shen’dralar were scholars and lorekeepers, more interested in building their libraries and tomes than high fashion and ethnic cleansing.
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Where is my shillelagh…
The Kaldorei encompassed the entirety of their race. It was called the Kaldorei Empire.
I think Liadrin was correct. So was Tyrande. And Thalyssra interpreted it in a manner that was best for her people.
But I disagree with the notion that the last intact city of the Kaldorei Empire is somehow not Kaldorei.
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From the perspective of someone whose knowledge of the Warcraft games came from reading WoWpedia:
“Suramar? The place Tyrande was from? That’ll be fun to explore on my night elf!”
“Why is this place full of purple blood elves? I love it, but it’s not what I was expecting. Was it always like this and I just missed some earlier lore?”
“…Is Tyrande this hostile to the current batch of Highborne who live there because they’re nothing like what she remembers, or because they are still exactly like what she remembers? Will we get some night elf reminiscing on their former lives in this city, or is it going to be entirely Highborne-focused?”
“Nightbourne are going Horde? Makes total sense, they share more of a culture. They’re probably bonding over how similar they aaaa- No, wait, they’re bonding over badmouthing that lady who used to live here. Er, not what I expected. But I guess at least they both still like magic pools? Oh, wait, are they supposed to be bonding over both being catty about their former kin: nightbourne dissing night elves while blood elves are dissing Alleria/high elves? I don’t think this is the lesson Blizzard is trying to present…”
I like where the story/factions ended up, but I had been looking forward to seeing the journey there instead of cutting straight to the end.
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For those into reading the books these are not news.
There are many of these exchanges in human and elven politics.
Sometimes I get really bored reading the books with all the “bureaucracy” they add.
That is why I like Pandaria. lol
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.
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I disagree they are very much Night elves. Brighteyes the D.E.H.T.A member even says so. I remember in Legion working to upgrade their base for the resistance and having Night Elves helping along the way. Moonguard elves and Val’sharah refugees.
When Darnassian elves came with Tyrande I was hoping for Mordent Evenshade to be by their side. The Endre’thelas Highborne should of been helping Tyrande convince the Shal’dorei to reunite the Kal’dorei Empire and remind them that Suramar was the home of Tyrande and she was born there. Illidan and Malfurion were born in Val’sharah and many Night Elves who joined them in the resistance came from the Suramar province.
It was a shame in writing that they forgot that Kal’dorei have since accepted mages and have loosened up since their self-imposed exile from the world.
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This is the Warhammer Dwarf lover in me, but I love that Tyrande held a grudge.
FETCH THE DAMMAZ KRON!
Seriously, she was a leader of a revolt of the lower class, who fought a massive war against a deeply corrupt and oppressive ruling class who was consorting with demons. If there were a Pelinal Whitestrake equivalent in WoW history, they’d probably have been knocking the hell out of the Highborne.
Can I drag another franchise into this for comparison? Yes. Yes I can. This is like if Aragorn somehow smacked right into a bunch of direct descendants of Ar-Pharazôn’s court, a whole bunch of whom were like “hey guys, lets try and invade Valinor again!”
If anything, Tyrande not just mowing them down on sight is a testament to her restraint, the extent of the dire situation, or some combination thereof (I mean, also, obviously, plot and game structure demands.)
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Technically in name you were correct. But even when it was the “Kal’dorei Empire” the Highborne considered the lowborn to be a sub-elven species to the extent that most of them did not bat an eye when Azshara unleashed the Legion to exterminate them.
Cultural divides are far more important than the sharing of nouns. The divide between the former commoners and the ex-Highborne was so severe that it would lead to the latter’s exile which was a commutation from putting them all to death.
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That only happened after the ex-Highborne violated the no arcane law by unleashing an arcane storm over Ashenvale. Which happened over two THOUSAND years after the Sundering. The ex-Highborne lived with the commoners for a longer period of time than has passed between us and biblical times.
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A long time for us… BUT THE SAME GENERATION for them. The ones who were exiled were the same individuals that once heaped scorn on the Kal’dorei during the pre-Sundering period.
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Right, but that’s not the same as the point you were arguing, which is that the Highborne and the non-Highborne were culturally incompatible, which led to the former’s exile. That’s not the case though, seeing as how they lived together for literal millennia. It’s also not the case since they were living together pre-Sundering, too. The Highborne weren’t some massive population that dominated all the developed areas of the Kaldorei Empire. They were the elite upper class. Even in Zin-Azshari they only comprised a small portion of the city’s population. That directly contradicts your earlier argument that cities in the Kaldorei Empire have no relation to night elves.
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I suggest you do a case study of the nation of South Africa. I never said that the Highborne were an overwhelming majority. Like South Africa they were a minority that oppressed the “lowborn” majority population who did the bulk of the menial work. Even among the present-day Suramrese, “low-born” is the heaviest insult that one of them can give.
They literally were a different culture and the time they lived among the Kal’dorei between the Sundering and the Exile was not happy one. They continued to hold the “lowborn” they once lorded over in contempt… to the point of unleashing an arcane plague in Ashenvale in order to force a change in the Kal’dorei attitude towards magic.
That act earned a death sentence for the entire caste… which was commuted to exile by Malfurion.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but I deliberately decided to do Surumar with an Alliance toon and Horde toon once I noticed the subtle tonal differences between both group’s interactions with the NBs. Hell, go talk to the opposing Faction’s leader outside the gates of Surumar and its quite an interesting tail. With Liadrin simply complaining that the troops Tyrande brought with her weren’t the best used for sustained city sieges; and Tyrande spitting about how much disgust she feels about “these mana-addicts on the threshold of the city of her birth”.
There are individual differences between some of the dialogue for some of the dailies too, with all of them subtly hammering home a simple truth. The NEs under Tyrande were not there to support or aid the NBs, they were there to fight the Legion … and helping the NBs was merely a means to do that. In contrast, Liadrin is very clear on her empathy for the NBs and wanting to build them up. She’s even nearly recruiting them as early as Argus, she wants a relationship between their peoples. It makes sense for the BEs to want one, and the NEs to not.
Honestly, if Sylvanas hadn’t been shoehorned into the drivers seat of the Horde, simply to settup BfA and Shadowlands, and Vol’jin were still warchief … there would be very little ground to argue against the Nightborne joining their BE cousins in the Horde. But, since Sylvie was Warchief … it does make the situation very much a bit of a miasma. With all but the Vulpera joining a specific race within the Horde, and making assumptions on the whole based off their relations with a single part. The Zandalari, Highmountain, AU Mag’har, and Nightborne are all this way.
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I found this line a bit amusing. I completely agree, Sentinels and night elf military in general were in no way designed to siege cities. There really weren’t any walled cities on their entire continent (besides Dire Maul, maybe) to practice on, and no hints of a desire to expand their territory into their neighbors to require siege equipment.
Of course, this then led me to the thought… why would the blood elves have siege equipment? They also seemed like an isolationist culture, and the only enemy they’ve been fighting for a while are the forest-based and guerilla-fighting Amani - who I suppose have a single city, but it doesn’t seem like siege warfare would be something the blood elves would have had regular practice with. Unless, of course, they were running training exercises just on the off-chance they had to go to war with those humans building large cities near-ish to their border…
That’s probably not at all what Blizzard intended with those lines, but I find it fun to conjecture anyway. 
I agree - I think there are some people who’d still grumble, but I think the complaints really spiked when it was learned that one of the first joint Horde actions was… genociding the night elves.
What I expected from the nightbourne going Horde: “You know, thanks for the save and all, but I think I’ll go drink some mana crystal martinis with my blood elf besties instead of going on your no-magic nature yoga retreat. I’ll send you a postcard. Maybe.”
What Blizzard gave me on the nightbourne going Horde: “You didn’t smile and give me a lolly as you saved my life, so I stood by and let/helped my new friends burn your family to death.”
Just… I didn’t expect hugs, but Thalyssra at least needed to have an immediate reaction to Teldrassil and some sort of comment on her previous teamwork with the night elves.
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The Forest trolls in general have quite a few cities, and the High Elves invasion of their lands ultimately led them to their current local. They kind of went on a war fest prior to that, all along Northern EK. Like people forget, but much of the Lordaeron territories and Hinterlands were once all the Forest Troll’s domain. On top of that, I would assume that HEs and BEs would have some respect for Seige Equipment when they started working cooperatively with Humans and Dwarves to the South. Sort of a cross contamination of cultures sort of thing.
But … yes, the issue isn’t so much the NBs joining the BEs in the Horde. The issue is who they joined under, and when they joined. God, Blizz’s fixation on Sylvie just makes everything so much worse on so many levels.
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Anything the Horde did to recruit failed. The NB actually chose Alliance and were rejected, only joining the Horde as second best (go Horde!).
One of the most major aspects of the NEs is that they reject arcane magic. They even exiles a significant portion of their population over this. I find it perfectly reasonable they rejected the NB, the problem I have is with the Shen’dralar. Humbled or not, it made no sense and I think it was shoehorned in there to allow NE mages (which also makes little sense to me).
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The thing is, there was absolutely no reason to Hit the entire Horde with the villian bat to make her a cartoon villian. I think that was Blizzard thinking that redoing Garrosh, but with a heavy dose of Horde evil, so they could “examine themselves” (again).
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