That dialogue would have happened way before that
Sunwells and the vials that create them are subject to the Rule of Ninjas.
Theoretically, there could’ve some history book in a Silvermoon library that Nathanos read, which explained the origin of the High Elves. It doesn’t seem likely he would’ve been around to read it.
dang whats going on with ulduar? no wonder it was a big raid in wrath
also there are blasted lands in Northrend
Everyone in Lordearon knew about the night elves/Kalimdor however they consdiered them a legend. Probably until Khadgar confirmed it and likely spread it to everyone in the Alliance that it is in fact true.
It was effectively an old legend. Which allows this scene to make more sense:
Medivh knew people knew what Kalimdor was and even a rough idea of what the night elves were, but for most people it was “forgotten” because it is effectively a legend.
Lol to be fair, they did once actually say it was- and it’s likely why that sea is called the Veiled Sea. They mentioned it again in Exploring Kalimdor I think- because somehow they remembered that but not which demon invasion was on which continent haha
Warcraft Lore in full display tbh.
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I think someone alluded this earlier but in pre-WoW lore from the Warcraft 3 era the Maelstrom was also treated as being a bigger deal to navigate around.
The isolation between EK and Kalimdor was heavily emphasized in a lot of lore material from the Warcraft 3 era. The Warcraft RPG mentions how the amount of successful ship voyages to the other continent can be counted on a single hand (Page 213 of the Sourcebook). They also mention how there’s no contact at all between EK and Kalimdor and that Jaina and Thrall’s voyages to Kalimdor barely made the journey themselves.
This was of course entirely dropped by WoW lol, along with the ability to go between Kalimdor and EK being made entirely trivial which might’ve contributed to the storytellers not really caring about actually remembering there wasn’t any knowledge of Kalimdor from people in the EK prior to WC3 (aside from a vague cultural memory from the High Elves, maybe).
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WoW not only dropped it, Golden made it so you could muster a fleet and move both from Northrend to Pandaria, and from Stormwind to Theramore, in less than a week’s time in universe just from where we were in MoP.
Before we got a spaceship that actually works.
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Yeah…
The writers clearly don’t care about portraying any realistic travel times and have made travel within Warcraft’s universe so trivial it’s almost a joke.
Doesn’t help that portals have also become extremely trivial to create and maintain both in-lore and in-game.
Like, I get why they did it for gameplay purposes but…
Damn does it make the world feel so much smaller lol.
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And yet it took around 2 months before the Horde and Alliances ‘invasion’ fleets arrived to Pandaria after the scouting parties reported their findings. Which was very early into the Pandaria campaign.
Sending a fleet from Teldrassil to Silithus and back took about a week. But sending a fleet from SW to Pandaria is about 2 months. Go figure.
The only way I can think to justify it is that the waters from Teldrassil to Silithus are more or less totally charted and well known, and combined with the fact that we know at least the Zandalari use magic users for at least some of their ships mean the fleet could maybe be pushed to make the trip in that time if they need to, whereas the Pandaria fleet was going into uncharted waters which still had some of the magical mist covering it. I’d even go so far as say that might be why the Malstrom isn’t as big a threat anymore, it’s been years since Jaina and Thrall made their trips and maybe we know the safest course to take near it. Mind you, that’s the creative writer in me that enjoys trying to find explanations for stuff like this and I’m probably putting more thought into it than Blizzard does.
That’s like saying everyone knows who Peter Pan is and Neverland. Doesn’t mean anyone takes it serious.’
Yes, you’re wrong. The existence of Night Elves might have been esoteric, obscure knowledge to orcs and humans, but High Elves absolutely would have known about them and Nathanos was sent to them as an envoy. For all we know he read about them in Silvermoon at some point.
The idea people have about high elves not knowing about Kalimdor and the Night Elves is nonsensical.
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You realize that Night Elves were a sophisticated culture before the Highborne broke off and became the High Elves, correct? Meaning they had the capacity to retain historical knowledge rather easily. So, no. It wouldn’t have been a “vague cultural memory” for the High Elves. It would have been well-known and documented history. Yes, the space of time was massive, but High Elves live at minimum for centuries, so while generations had passed, it would not have been enough generations for that history to be forgotten. Humans not really knowing is due to High Elves barely interacting with the human kingdoms outside of necessity. Orcs like Grom would have definitely been clueless about night elves.
Nathanos, who actually had reason to look into High Elves, could have had a reasonable chance of knowing enough about Night Elves to know High Elves are descended from them.
Its far less of a plot hole than people on this forum seem to think.
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There was some knowledge about Kalimdor and the night elves pre-WC3 but I doubt it was common knowledge.
In The Last Guardian (written alongside WC3 and actually released shortly before it) Medivh gives a brief/abridged recounting of the Highborne and Sundering to Khadgar and Khadgar recognizes it as a tale he heard as a child but he had assumed it was a fable that was only meant to make apprentice mages take caution, and not literal.
Both of these characters being mages, and therefore had closer interactions with high elves than other humans would, also may skew perspective on how much was even vaguely known among the general populace.
Their entire civilization was destroyed. The Highborne were exiled after the destruction of that civilization. It was also originally depicted that several generations of High Elves had come and gone during their time in the EK (something that was changed in BfA). Anasterian, father of Kael’thas was said to be the great-grandson of Dath’remar, implying that the High Elves had been on Quel’thalas for a long time over the course of several generations (with Anasterian mentioned as being particularly old at the age of around 2k).
Also, I’m not saying that the High Elves would have lost all knowledge of their origins, just that it was probably not as well documented considering how chaotic their initial years on the EK were. Initially they landed in Tirisfal before needing to wander north into what would eventually become Quel’thalas. Once they reached there it took them a while before they were able to start building civilization (and likely were able to properly begin creating and writing down history).
It isn’t a massive plot hole, I never claimed it to be. I largely meant that the entire isolation of Kalimdor from EK has been inconsistently portrayed, and things like Night Elves and so on appear to have greater knowledge surrounding them pre-War3 than what would be expected.
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Nevermind the weird tactics of sending your fleet south to try to cut the Horde off rather than just taking all the location’s they’d need to actually process and distribute Azerite weaponry that would’ve been minimally defended… especially since with the Vindicaar, they could’ve planned to just trap the Horde in Un’goro by blowing out the only actual exits once they were inside.
They never really went out of their way to share much of anything about themselves though. The High Elves were pompous and likely wouldn’t go about blabbing about being exiled by an ancestral race to people they largely didn’t view as intellectual equals. The Kirin Tor are likely the only group who would’ve known, and Medivh with all his resources just knew of them as a rumored ancient thing.
And again, I gave an explanation as to why people would be more willing to take it seriously, Medivh literally told Khadgar all of it was true and he could have spread said information at the very least to the higher ups of the Alliance.