Orcs lost that Great War and were in interment camps. Can’t be too many left. Humans been getting dunked on for decades. Night elves, well we get that.
Basically should anyone even be left at this point
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No nobody should be left
In fact let’s do that, kill off the remaining people on Azeroth, and restart the storyline starting from the end of WC3
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Eh they’ve never really mattered or made sense. The Blood Elves lost 90% of their population and are doing just fine now. I mean hey they never went into Elf physiology maybe they reproduce in litters and mature extremely fast who knows. But it’s certainly not an issue anymore.
It only becomes an issue when the writers decide for whatever reason it needs to be. Take the Forsaken and the Valkyr. Until Cata there was no reason to not just assume there were enough Forsaken. Lordaeron is a huge place and most of the population became undead. How many are there? Just - enough. I assume with the Valkyr gone that’s going to be the case again until Blizz decides it has to be a plot point.
The populations are as large or small as the story needs them to be. There’s never been any strict consistency to it.
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It’s a common fantasy trope. “There’s always enough elves” was an old saying of Game Workshop about their apparently dying off elven race.
I’ve always though the blood elf situation is exactly why Blizzard never gives us numbers on losses anymore, as people keep bringing it up.
I’m not even convinced 90% of high elves dying off is even canon anymore.
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Dwarves are pretty well off I think. The Bronzbeard clan has never suffered any huge disasters, calamities or population declining event. The last major one was the War of three hammers 250 years ago.
Even during the 2nd war the dwarves just held up in Ironforge and were mostly safe with no major loss to their people. Easily the single ‘strongest’ race of teh two factions imo but I may be biased. And with the Wildhammer clans and Dark Irons joining them, this now united Khaz’Modan/Kingdom of Ironforge is probably a major powerhouse.
That would be the case anyways if we look at facts realistically, but we know Blizz wont acknowledge that any race in the alliance can be stronger than human potential.
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I have to disagree, it’s all about perceptive.
Only Ironforge survived the Second War, all other dwarven cities across Khaz Modan fell to the Horde.
Even if most of the Bronzebeard lived in Ironforge, that’s a lot of cities and territories the dwarves lived across that fell to the Horde.
The Ironforge dwarves suffered greatly by the Second War.
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I mean to be honest I at least have never heard what the population pre Scourge was. 90% is alot but if there were like, 6 billion of them than yeah you would still have a hefty amount left over.
Which they evidently did seeing as the Velves are just a banished cult but apparently had enough to field a standing army.
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What’s the remaining 10% of their population? 200,000?
There arent any ‘other’ cities. Ironforge is the only city. The rest of the kingdom is a total of what…4 or 5 small villages and a couple small guard outposts and thats it? Ironforge is a massive city, probably one of the biggest on Azeroth, with miles upon miles of tunnels and halls. Remember, it was once big enough to house all three clans at the height of their power.
There was maybe the few hundred dwarves who lived in the numerous villages, or if we’re generous, lets say 1000 if we really upscale the size of those towns. Even then that would be a tiny tiny minuscule percent of the amount of dwarves that live in Ironforge proper.
Unlike Wildhammers who like and prefer to live aboveground, Bronzbeards do not, so the majority of their people most likely still prefer to live under the mountain.
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Tinfoil Hat Theory:
Population numbers DO matter. Blizzard has been systematically wiping out massive swaths of in-game populations to reduce the army sizes of the Horde and Alliance to something the game engine can accurately show.
So when we fight in a battle and there’s only like 20 enemy NPCs? That is now to proper scale.
It was a genius move, really. They just need to have the mountain Ironforge is built into turn out to be a volcano!
Then the playerbase will stop bugging them about armies being too small in-game.
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(Query): What sources state that population numbers now matter?
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Maybe a quarter of that. Silvermoon is supposed to be fairly empty.
Don’t forget that a portion of that remaining 10% went to Outland and either began Demon Hunters or stayed with Kael’Thas and the latter group all died with him.
Are we supposed to pretend they matter? Because they don’t. Azerothian children are born fully formed and ready to fight.
There’s also all those windowed stone structures peeking out from the mountainsides overlooking the Ironforge-held territories. Makes it seem like the quest hub towns we see in Loch Modan and Dun Morogh may be only comprise small part of the Ironforge dwarves’ residences, and the entire mountain range might be honeycombed with underground settlements full of dwarves that we just don’t get to visit in-game.
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When it comes to the Elves, I like to imagine the 90% that died off were only of the Elves in Quel’Thalas. Either that or they had a population of 10 Billion + which would explain how Blood Elves, Void Elves and High Elves are all able to field armies still lol.
Void Elves are harder to explain, but in the case of High Elves I like to imagine that places like Stormwind and Dalaran had sizeable populations of elves living there post Second War to current day.
The last time I remember seeing a specific population number was in The Shattering, which stated an estimated 40,000-50,000 Alliance soldiers died in WotLK, and that the Horde lost a similar number.
Dwarves. Pandaren. Gilneans (they managed to evacuate from the worst of it). Kul tirans. Tauren, both kinds. Nightborne. Zandalari. Vulpera.
Don’t think those races ever got the full smack down.
RE: Dwarves, second war.
I agree with the assessment that they weathered the second war very well. They took casualties, but fought pretty much how you’d expect dwarves and gnomes to fight. Doomhammer occupied the land and left Kilrogg (O.G. Kilrogg. The cool one.) to maintain siege on both capitals- and when he passed it going south in retreat, the Dwarves poured out ready to fight.
That isn’t to say there isn’t a limited population of dwarves. They did what dwarves do, and dug too greedily and too deep (or rather, summoned to greedily and deep) and blew up a mountain range many of them happened to be living in a while back after all.
The reunification of the clans is to their great benefit, but really- it isn’t as if we see large formations of dwarves in story or game. They are almost auxiliary forces at times- squads of riflemen, a squadron of gryphon riders, steam tank engineers- while we certainly see armored up, axe-swinging dwarves, we don’t see a great deal of it- something that makes Mountain Kings all the more impressive.
Hence why I didn’t list the Dark Irons.
I know it would probably never be mentioned or shown in game (since no other nation can outshine the mighty Wrynn Empire of Stormwind) but Kul Tiras I could see having a population equal or close to Stormwind. Before BFA I wouldn’t have but the sub continent that it is ingame could make it believable. Boralus alone is a pretty massive city.