In a technical sense maybe because a pangaea broke up into continents, but recall where Zin’Ashari is and recall who was exiled from where. It’s not as though they all went their separate ways at first. They cohabitated, and then the Kaldorei kicked the Quel’dorei out after the latter group had unleashed a magical storm as a protest over Kalimdor.
Not that Pangea broke up. Most of it drowned.
That’s one way of looking at it I suppose, and has some merit. Still I think the core of the argument remains: High elf culture was not replaced by Kaldorei. Elven society was factioned with the Kaldorei becoming the most influential and prominent of them.
Ma’am, this is the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand upon Twenty-One.
Zin-Azshari was everywhere that elves were. It was one large city-state. Whether you are in Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Broken Isles, or the bottom of the Veiled Sea… if you are standing in elven ruins you are standing in Zin-Azshari. Eldrethelas (Dire Maul) was the only real, separate city established outside of Zin-Azshari.
Just as I am about to go to bed…
Oh well I am happy I made peace with valko and co.
Replacement does not mean destruction. In this case replacement is displacement - and the Kaldorei very clearly displaced Azshara and the Highborne, and had control over society to the extent that they were able to exile the Quel’dorei.
Yet the titular city itself existed in Azshara - on Kalimdor, which was controlled by the Kaldorei after the war.
This is absolutely not true. The elves in the zone called Azshara are high elves, not Night Elves in Vanilla WoW. There is a FP with night elves next to the Ashenvale zone. And Zin-Azshari is not exclusively in Kalimdor. Zin-Azshari spans all the major continents. Zin-Azshari was one large city state that covered 1/4 of the known world. When split by the Sundering remnants of the city were scattered across all major land masses.
Well … It was unlikely that the city was so big that it reached the mountains of Gben’Ralore, Suramar, Zuldazar and Azjol-Nerub.
…
The empire is full of mountains. Huge chunks of territory are mountains.
Mda.
Every elven ruin you come across on Azeroth with the exception of those in Feralas were part of one huge city, Zin-Azshari.
Don’t you have a map of the current state of the world?
Stop. So you’re claiming that the ruins on Darkshore are the ruins of Zin’Azshari?
…
There were very big problems with the city planning.
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As I recall, those high elves were part of a post Third-War expedition. They were not residents. Again, the High Elves in general were exiled from Kalimdor and ended up settling in Quel’thalas - an entire continent away. Further, again, the only city referred to as Zin’Azshari after the war resides in Kalimdor.
And if we really want to continue this, I’m going to note that the High Elves, not the Night Elves, were the ones who had to go somewhere else and build their civilization from scratch. Silvermoon is not an old inhabited Night Elf ruin - it’s in comparative terms a new thing - so is Quel’thalas in general. The only exceptions to this rule are the Shal’dorei - who were trapped in an undersea bubble and had dominion over only that, and the Shen’drelar, who are not shown to have had control of much other than the ruin of Eldre’thalas.
I regard this as pretty firm basis to state what I thought was universally accepted up until today - that the Kaldorei again overthrew and replaced Azshara and the ruling Highborne caste, who either had to accept their government or face exile.
Yes, all post Sundering elven ruins in Azeroth aside from those located in Feralas were once part of the city-state of Zin-Azshari.
Take the map above, and squish the land masses back together, remove many of the mountains created by the upheaval caused by the Sundering, and you see the layout of Zin-Azshari perfectly.
They could have settled in any part of Zin-Azshari they chose, however they decided to start anew in Quelthelas. They weren’t exiled from Zin-Azshari, they were exiled from the Hyjal area settled by the those that chose to follow Tyrande and Malfurion. This is another case of semantics really as they weren’t actually exiled by Malfurion in the proper sense of the word. They simply weren’t allowed to remain within the Night Elf ruled portion of Zin-Azshari, which was a relatively small part considering the sheer size of Zin-Azshari.
Could it be the ruins of Latbar’Lazal?
I don’t know … I can imagine that Zin’Azshari is completely underwater, but that the city stretches from Darkshore to Gilnes (?), From Azjol’Nerub to the bottom of Pandaria. There must be at least a division into regions.
No one has a Zin’Azshari card?
Zin-Azshari is not completely under water. Only parts of it. From Azshara to Hyjal to Darkshore… from Valsharah on and on and on you find Zin-Azshari above water.
Why? Kalimdor and EK are in the same place they were 10,000 years ago. It’s the places between them that sunk.
Vashj’ir, Suramar, Ameth’aran, etc. A variety of cities and towns existed and there was much wilderness between them. The idea that the Night Elf empire was some sort of fantasy Coruscant, an urban megacity stretching across half a planet, is pretty absurd on the face of it.
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I mean, yes, this has fallen into semantics. If you reply to my comment as to where the ruins of the capitol are with “well, the whole world was Zin’Azshari, so it’s not really an exile unless they were shot out into space and therefore they weren’t replaced” - you’re certainly playing against common understandings of what things mean until they no longer represent any kind of understandable reality.