WOTA pretty much makes it clear that they were jerks to start with.
In fact, lowborn is still the nastiest epithet that a Suramar Nightborne can give to those they despise.
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Imagine making natives looks back against actual full scale colonizers. Ask the gnolls. Ask the Drust. This is just more sugar coated alliance bias that reeks from every rotting inch of this disgusting blue team loving mess of a story. That canāt shut up about how awesome the alliance is and makes horde leaders worship Tyrande and the human potential every time they do something. Oh if you havenāt noticed it yet I want all the alliance go to hell with their two faced self rigthoussnes.
Just in your alliance biased power fantasy.
Alliance massacres a tauren village to colonize the south barrens for themselves, Blizzard doesnāt even pretend to cast them in a bad light for it.
Alliance then continues their colonization efforts in the South Barrens years later, and Blizzard has to wring itās hands and paint the Alliance general as so deeply sowwy that he killed all those civillians, gosh heās still such a good guy. And they have Baine defend his own people getting slaughtered.
But then when the Horde strikes back at Theramore for being the source of these massacres? Killing literally two people who werenāt soldiers (and chose to be there?) Suddenly itās the crime of the GD century.
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There literally wasnāt when the war first started all the nelves believed that the demons kidnapped azshara and the highborne, this was the case literally the first part half of the war
communism isnt a utopia and it sure isnāt the only type of possible utopia
I mean, itās hard to say the Kaldorei were truly oppressed by the Highborne. Like, are we to assume oppression exists because their is a ruling caste? The Sisterhood of Elune is the ruling caste for Nelves now, are we to believe they are oppressive? The Nelf society now is oppressive against men because of religious beliefs that elevate women to a higher degree of reverence and respect?
If we want to believe that Azsharaās goal for an ethnic cleansing of all lowborne Kaldorei was already taking shape before the Burning Legion, then okay, then that would make sense. That would imply that some form of genocide was taking place before, and the Kaldorei did nothing until there was a Demon invasion.
That doesnāt seem to be the case though. Azshara seemed to be universally loved by a wide majority of her people. My guess it because she was, truly, a very effective leader. The only power on Azeroth that could rival the Kaldorei at that time, the Troll Empire, wasnāt just defeated, but politically castrated in a way that was so embarrassing, it resulted in thousands of years and resentment and grudges.
It is easy to see how even a lowborne in that society could get caught up in a swelling sense of Nationalism after something like that. That is always how I saw it. Illidan Stormrage was a lowborn, and he become a prominent figure in Highborne society in the Moon Guardā¦ So I am not sure there was any significant oppression taking place here. Just that there were some families more privileged than others, which seems to be evident in every society on Azerothā¦.
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But Spuddy, in this specific instance this was always the case?
As for the overall nature of your post, donāt get me wrong, I actually really like your allegorical reading and I wish we got more exploration/confirmation on that either on a subtext or overt plane. I like the reasoning that another factor of the societal upheaval post Sundering was dissatisfaction of the masses at the ruling classes.
But Warcraft has never been that nuanced. There have been glimpses of it, and there is certainly ample potential for it, but Blizzard has shown - since WoW I would say - that that is not a story they are interested to tell. Itās about comic book moments and rule of cool.
Otherwise, weād get an amazing Aztec/Maya-like rendition of Zandalari society. Or themes heavily featuring meritocratic societies with Forsaken, for instance.
I mean, I want this. I think it would actually give the story realism and additional believability for a faction system as well as faction conflict to have economic and political differences between the H and A. As opposed to nebulous concepts like āhonourā (newsflash: Alliance is just as āhonorableā as honor Horde; thereās no monopoly over it).
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This is a weird thread.
On the topic at hand, there isnāt much of a leg to stand on lorewise in terms of class oppression themes between the two classes of Night Elves simply because we donāt know too much about what things were like before Azshara, and the only history we have is āDark Trolls became Night Elves, existed for centuries, and then Azshara happenedā. Azshara made the Highborne caste, that wasnāt a thing before, and it clearly didnāt seem to be based on class initially, so much as if she liked you or not.
An example of this would be Lord Ravencrest, who wasnāt Highborne but was in fact a lord and had a whole mess of land and followers. As far as Iām aware, heās one of the only examples of an actual feudal lord weāve seen for Night Elves, which indicates that there was in fact such a system before Azshara came to power and completely upended it, and allowed her Highborne to exist alongside it. Now, thatās not to say that there wasnāt a large portion of Highborne who were nobles, of course. Nor am I trying to say there wasnāt a level of mistreatment that occurred, between Highborne and their servants, though how much is suspect given how adoring they were to Azshara, indicating that many would have followed her example of being nice to their underlings, if only on the surface.
Thereās certainly inference, however, that Azshara probably made the Highborne a thing purely to help cultivate that adoration of her, but that seems to have purely translated to envy and jealousy, for the Lowborne and Highborne respectively. Any actual oppression seems to have only cropped up when the Legion invaded, and via influence from old Sargeras. How quickly this happened is also up for debate, as the War of the Ancients exists currently in this dubious canon in terms of what happened. The Knaak version takes place over a pretty short period of time, while the original version took place over the course of years, maybe even decades. And it should be noted that in both version, our only example of the ruling class that wasnāt Highborne, Ravencrest, immediately rallied to protect his people and gathered all his family to do so as well, and promoted and listened to people based on merit, not social standing.
Basically what Iām trying to say is that Blizzardās ārevolutionaryā stuff seems to be purely āEverything was fine until the Fire Nation attackedā levels of stuff. Not necessarily equal or perfect, but fine. Stormwind was chugging along until that evil dragoness showed up, the Kaldorei Empire was nice (for anyone who was Kaldorei) until the Legion showed up, Lordaeron was a bastion of good feels until the Scourge hit, etc, etc.
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What do you mean? Yeah, I mean, the arcane arts are outlawed if I remember correctly because theyāre associated with what brought the Legion to Azeroth in the first place. I am just saying that if we look at it though, we can see that logically it also makes sense from the perspective that, if Malfurion and Tyrande represent a new order or whatever you want to call it, they would of course by necessity want to repress the older ruling class and aspects of their culture to prevent them from returning to power.
Yeah I know we arenāt gonna get much of this, but itās just another one of those things that holds the game back to me. I also am quite sick of the whole game being rigidly split among two factions to begin with.
And btw to every one else saying :
I am not saying to get rid of any āfantasyā elements. You donāt have to get rid of your magic or your elves or your demons to have more depth.
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I believe that is more the fault of Blizzard trying to paint things in a better light recently. Blood Elves, Highborne in general, have lost a lot of the darker edges that made them slightly more distinctive from traditional fantasy elves. But I believe there is still a clear intent that Highborne were a garbage group of people who at the very least consolidated immense power to put themselves above the masses.
I do agree that the reasons behind night elves banishing the Arcane could go further if blizzard ever really wanted to delve into the Elven schism. Although it is worth noting in older lore like the RPGs, it was implied the Night Elf empire had at least two civil wars before the War of the Ancients, and that Malorne interfered to prevent too much bloodshed. There is certainly a basis for deep seeded cultural conflict, beyond simply āSpiritual Magic vs Physical Magic.ā But I do not think tying it into the Burning Legion is a problem, because that sort of always was the case even before the War of the Ancients novels.
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I think part of the fantasy that appeals to a lot of people might not actually be the magic, elves, or demons so much as the deliberate absence of ādepth.ā People want a world where class tensions donāt exist; all the foreigners really are fundamentally-and-biologically stereotypes who arenāt even the same species as you; the natives your ancestors took your land from actually DID unjustly start the fight first and didnāt deserve it anyways; empires really can acquire magically empty land without conquest; the fate of the world provably revolves around the existence of your people; history shows that problems canāt exist in a āgoodā society save for those brought upon it by malevolent outsiders; and your leaders are most certainly Great (Wo)Men who are inherently and profoundly superior to the common nameless grunts.
Which as far as fantasies go is all a lot weirder and more disturbing than dragons.
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I think most people donāt want to deal with in real life issues in a fantasy game. Stick with dragons, demons and magicā¦If people wanted to deal with that crap, they wouldnāt be playing a fantasy game.
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I would like to see more nuance and politics in WoW. I just think the notion that just because there is a ruling class within a society, that there -must- be oppression is a bit silly.
There are hierarchies in every aspect of construction with social life. Historically, we see a lower caste of people socially elevating the higher caste completely by their own choice, be it for cultural, religious or other ideological purpose.
I just donāt understand what Spud is viewing as problematic here. It just seems like he would of rathered there to have been an āEat the Richā plotline with the Kaldorei empire rather than what we gotā¦ As if to imply it is impossible that anyone considered lowborne in a society could have any sense of national prideā¦ Which is fundamentally not true.
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Only someone whoās never played the Suramar storyline on either Horde or Alliance should be saying that.
Everyone adored Azsharaā¦ and I mean EVERYONEā¦ even Malfurion had to struggle to process the idea that Azshara would admit the Legion, much less set them on her own people.
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They didnt hate magic, they where just afraid of the legion returning that was it
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Eh, that isnāt so clear in the lore.
We are told magic was banned because the Highborne, which isnāt really an answer. We are left with assumptions after that.
Certainly the risk of the Legions return was present, but itās not like Magic was solely responsible for the Legionās arrival in the first place. So it make sense they would be more afraid of people using magic for evil ends.
So why ban the Arcane and not just regulate it? They were on good terms with the Dragonflights. The Green Dragonflight enlisted their aid with the Emerald Dream, so why not have the Blue Dragonflight regulate magic use the same way? Why was Arcane magic banned altogether?
Again, Blizzard doesnāt give many answers. Here is what we know is confirmed lore.
Magic was a status symbol for the Highborne. To this day, I doubt any Caster could hold a flame to Azshara from back then. All her handmaidens were capable mages in their own right. All the nobles who served in her court were powerful mages. Illidan, despite being a lowborne, become a prominent figure in the old Empire based upon his magical talents.
So using that as a base to speculate from. Maybe vanity was the worry. Consider yourself, if you had the ability to command the very laws of the universe, with a few hand gestures, how quickly would that go to your head? With just a taste of that, how more attractive does the lure for more power become? Say not only that, but your magical power was unrivaled by anyone else on earth. How quickly might you begin to think that maybe, you are a worthy love interest to a Titan?
I find that is a far more believable line of reasoning when it comes magic.
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I mean, one, that kind of makes for boring art if there is a total absence of human elements with which to relate to or be inspired by in a story, and two, āreal lifeā issues still exist in the world they just present themselves in odd disturbing ways which express and reaffirm different ideological sentiments already existent in the audience.
I just find it kind of weird to imply that a society can be rigidly divided between classes without there ever being tension between them unless Demons from Elsewhere corrupt the ones in charge. I think it sends a certain message. Not sure what that message is though. Maybe someone else can figure it out better 
Not what I am implying. I understand that nationalist sentiment can effect people of different class backgrounds. There is still a clear difference in class relations between Azsharas Empire and the current Darnassian society lead by Tyrande and Malfurion that we see in places like Ashenvale, which implies revolutionary change, only without saying or detailing it
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literally happens in some society tho lol
That is not that weird. If anything, that might be the norm throughout human history. Even in a theoretically purely equal and fair society, classes will develop naturally. Itās just how society works. Any species builds itās social structure on some form of hierarchy.
I mean, not really. In this case, Azshara was such an effective and beloved ruler, that no one wanted to accept that she could have sold her own people out to do the demons. The War of the Ancients was only a revolution by technicality, no one wanted to overthrow Azshara, they were forced too. There was no political ideology or promise of reform that was stoking the fires of rebellionā¦ If anything, the rebellion was trying to put out a much more literal fire.
The reform came much after, and it was mostly just the institution of the Sisterhood coming in a seizing control. Really just a matter of a pre-existing organization that came in to fill the massive void left in the wake of Azsharaās power vacuum.
Instead of a system based upon the dealings and words of a noble and royal court, it is now based upon religious dogma. Dogma that elevated Naturalism, individual wisdom , and worship of the feminine as core pillars of the society.
Malfurion would have no truck with the arcane. From his viewpoint, watching the cultural decline of the Highborne and his own brotherās addiction, he and many others felt that the arcane was the path to ruin.
The arcane was also the mark of the Highborne and it was heavily associated with them since proficiency with the arcane determined your caste within Azsharaās empire.
So just as the Sinādorei would reject the Night oriented culture of the Kalādorei. The Kalādorei rejected the Highborne culture of the Empire.
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