Can I just take a moment to say it still makes zero sense that the Nightborne joined the Horde and not the Alliance?
They cite their ancestry and tradition and insist the Alliance would never let them practice it. This at the exact same time the Blood Elves are Garithos’ing void elves for being void elves, who are then welcomed and embraced by that same mean alliance.
Meaning that as far as we can tell the Nightborne joined the Horde because Tyrande was a mean bully who said absolutely nothing untrue when she was telling off the Nightborne.
Remember, the remnants of the highborne- Night Elves who didn’t throw their lot in with the High Elves who migrated east after the Sundering- had already been reintegrated into Night Elf society during the Cataclysm.
Not to be confused with Sethekk. The sethrak are a race of serpent people living in Vol’dun on Zandalar. The sethrak are an empire on the rise and throwing a wrench in everyone’s plans.
I would love Sethrak on the alliance, though I’m not sure how the lore would support it at this point.
Back in BFA, the Alliance helped Vorrik, the current leader of the Sethrak, as their breadcrumb to get to introduce them to Sethrak and the Temple of Sethraliss. The story could have easily gone–
Alliance saves Vorrik
Sylvanas learns of Sethrak temple and how close it is to the Alliance stronghold in Voldun, and insists the sethrak let the horde use their temple as a staging ground for an assault, maybe insists they join the horde
Vorrik asks to remain neutral, since both sides have helped him and does not want to betray either side
Sylvanas warns “Join us or be crushed under our heel”
Vorrik reaches out to the Alliance, and ends up joining their side instead
Too late for that now, though I’m still hoping they become playable somewhere. I really like their design.
Random Vulpera representative: Vorrik, I remember where your kind stood these last years. How do we know you won’t betray us and become the next Korthek… the next Sylvanas?
Vorrik: gasps That is so offensive. I’m joining the Alliance.
I always thought a good pairing with alliance sethrak would be horde drust. This would have given the forsaken and worgen their allied races (based on their models) and access to the other factions special bfa druid forms. Not to mention these recruitments would have given the factions a foothold in enemy territory during the faction war expansion.
Yeah, it makes no sense for a faction made up of one of the two major groups of highborne to join the faction with the other major group of highborne in it.
If you missed the fact that the nightborne story in Legion was almost a shot for shot remake of the blood elf story in BC that’s on you.
tbf you can pretty safely ignore that graphic. Besides the fact that there’s nothing in lore suggesting the Argent Crusade (Tirion left the Alliance after he realised that humans could be evil and orcs could be good in the book he was introduced in after meeting his best friend who was an orc) or Argussian Reach (who make their utter hatred of Velen pretty well known while simultaneously have a shrine dedicated to an orc) have any bias towards the Alliance it claims the Blackrock orcs have a “slight” Horde bias despite the Blackrock Clan officially re-joining the Horde in MoP.
And that’s before I get really anal and point out that there were mission table missions in BFA (both the Alliance and Horde versions were called ‘Steamwheedle Alliance’) where the Alliance version was like “we think the Steamwheedle Cartel says they’re neutral, but actually that goes out the window during war-time” while the Horde version was like “hey, the Steamwheedle Cartel is definitely helping us even though they’re not supposed to; don’t tell the Alliance, shh!”.
Or that the claim regarding the Kirin Tor favouring the Alliance was based on quest text from a quest set before the blood elves rejoined the Kirin Tor in Legion who have always been the Horde’s main advocates within the Kirin Tor.
Oh yeah not to mention there’s nothing suggesting the Cenarion Circle favours either faction. During BFA they were pretty clearly neutral during the faction war. The only reason I could see someone claiming that they had some kind of faction bias is because Malfurion is a night elf. Even thought he actually doesn’t outrank Hamuul Runetotem, who is a tauren.
AND the fogsail freebooters are humans, but the graphic has a picture of an orc.
Anyway, this has been my ted talk on why that’s a terrible graphic and whoever made it was just making stuff up.
Well I would agree with that the Kirin Tor is Alliance leaning, while neutral they have a long history and closer relationship to the Alliance as a whole compared to the Horde, see the vanilla and cata quests involving the forsaken, then the MoP fiesta, and the symbol of the Kirin Tor being more often showcased with the Alliance. Also, some members of the Kirin Tor decided to fight for the Alliance during the fourth war (despite Dalaran not officially joining) , not something we even saw sunreavers do.
Still Dalaran is as neutral it can be, preferring to stay out of the faction conflicts as much as possible. But if they had to pick one, it would not be the Horde.
Otherwise it’s as you say in the post about that graph not being great.
The blood elf didn’t ‘‘garithos’’ the void elf. They only kick them out because of the danger they represented for the sunwell. Alleria prove them right just after that. The nightborn are very capable to understand them since they have the same kind of relation with fel being for their arcane well and they also don’t accept fel user anymore.
It was more than just Tyrande being mean with them but if you want to believe that the 10 barely accepted highborn are more important than the entire highborn kingdom that the blood elf are…
If anything, the only thing that would make more sense would be them not joining anyone. Joining both faction like some people ask for is just even more insane as it would also mean going at war with themself.
Their relationship with the Horde is actually older. The humans of Lordaeron and the elves of Quel’thalas are the two oldest groups in Dalaran, both groups are dispersed on both factions but an overwhelming majority of both are members of the Horde.
A Sunreaver in Sunreaver colours tried to kill Jaina for Sylvanas. As far as I’m aware the only Kirin Tor member who helped the Alliance in BFA did so after having removed their Kirin Tor tabard.
Ultimately I just don’t think the Kirin Tor as it stands now would ever join one side over the other. They joined up in MoP, but they had to ethnically cleanse the city of blood elves first. I doubt Khadgar would do that.
The Nightborne aren’t fair skinned narcissists and they didn’t genocide the Jewish coded race to appease literal demons to ultimately try and summon the anti-christ through their sun toilet, so no, it’s not.
They were planning to execute them, re-watch the recruitment quest. The Blood Elves had realized that even void elves merely existing was a hazard for their precious sunwell.
The high elves were kicked out because they refused to give up the exact thing that had just caused the Sundering.
The void elves were blatantly conceived of because Ion or someone else didn’t want high elves in the alliance, to the point that they actively retconned established lore and acted like it had always been that way- Blood Elves were always a faction of high elves who followed Kael’thas until they weren’t and suddenly all high elves agreed to call themselves Blood Elves because…reasons.
becauase they are horde aligned. we have a couple easter eggs sure but lore wise high elves dont even have a quantifiable existence among the alliance. their kingdom is horde aligned and there is a small expatriate community in dalaran. its still canon alliance races assume high elves are blood elves when they do actually see one
and because horde were getting nightborne
just playing with the void is too risky. it makes sense the high elves banned it. i just wish we got something else instead of void elves. nightborne could have still gone horde with hmt deciding to go with alliance instead of an elf swap or both neutral. or blizzard actually not be lazy and give us new races instead of ARs that are effectively customizations
