This I can somewhat excuse, as the firelands were the guardians of Hyjal/Cenarions so they could pull the, still stupid but somewhat plausible, excuse of “that took druids from both factions/all druidic races to pull off”. Another possibility would be the idea that the Guardians/Cenarions are NOT the same Night elves as the ones at Teldrassil. Sure, at the time, the Cenarions/Guardians were likely lead by Malfurion but that does not mean that all who were in those splinter groups were also at Teldrassil.
I was not excusing it, merely offering a plausible explanation for the mistake they made. And it was a mistake.
I have no idea how introspective Blizz’s writers are but it is important to understand when one has made a mistake not just how, but also why. This helps avoid a similar mistake from occurring in the future.
And Blizz needs a continuity editor.
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Malfurion is the one that planted and grew the Sentinel Tree. Surprisingly, the only named Tauren at the Sentinel Tree is Tholo Whitehoof, best friend of Anren Shadowseeker.
The military forces at the Molten Front were also lead by Jarod Shadowsong, who came to serve at the Darkshore Warfront as well.
To note, also, as the surviving Night Elves relocated to Nordrassil and the Hyjal Tauren are still there as mentioned in Shadows Rising as well (and Tholo Whitehoof and Anren Shadowseeker we even saw together still during the Heart of Azeroth questchain), Malfurion is still leading them.
I’ve said it before I’ll say it again: Blizzard thinks in terms of big set pieces. They just envisioned Sylvanas burning down Teldrassil and thought 'Woah, that’s so cool. How do we get to that point?", and completely bend the story in order to make that happen. They don’t think about the consequences of what they want to write. If they did, Undercity would have been flattened well before Sylvanas could’ve gotten back to defend it. The fact that she was able to and almost won is a testament to their poor storytelling decisions.
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They already have one, CDev. They just ignore him.
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They treat continuity as a crutch, not a guide.
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I want a job with that much security.
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The problem is, I don’t think Blizzard knows what continuity means. Explains why they’re always ham fisting changes to old lore 
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Oh, they know what continuity is. It’s just they don’t want continuity to tie their hands when they create the next phase of the story. A ridiculous mindset to have when you’re creating a saga such as this one.
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Talentless hacks destroying the setting because their corporate overlords tell them to make a product that’ll provoke knee jerks?
I’m shocked. SHOCKED!
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It is a ridiculous mindset to have and with the recent ham fisted retcons they done concerning Sylvanas, it’s starting to show just how disconnect managment at Activision/Blizzard is from their player base. I mean we’ve always known, I just don’t think anyone knew it was This bad.
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Thats just it. I’m sure allies will be working with the horde again in the near future to save azeroth and completely ignoring this.
Why even write anything, blizz, if your just going to ignore the previous story?
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h ttps://www.gameinformer.com/2018/08/14/a-look-inside-how-blizzard-maintains-world-of-warcrafts-lore
I just wanted to share this link, since it’s relevant for the conversation at hand, so no-one walks away from reading that thinking it’s just hyperbole. This is something they actually said.
“Continuity is a shackle on our creativity.”
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I mean…I guess I’m still shocked that they would actually put their foot in their mouth so publicly and they still don’t realize how foolish those comments sound
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This still just baffles me. If anything, it takes more creativity to take what you want to do, and try to work it into an already existing framework, than to just steamroll everything with an “I’mma do what I want” attitude.
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It’s like taking a sledge hammer to something, smashing it to dust and calling it a masterpiece afterwards. It’s a stupid way to handle the existing lore. I’m not sure if I want to call it laziness or sheer incompetence at this point.
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Yeah the writers are extremely incompetent, that was never out of the question :).
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Given there are still good elements to the story, especially on the smaller scale stories, I’m inclined to say it’s just sheer ego.
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Blizzard usually handles the simple stuff really well but want to have the galaxy brain stuff. Aside from that Massive ego isnt something that is just tied to the writers, in blizzards case. If that is the problem.
I mean it has been quite obvious for some time that they dont really care much about where the story is going etc or about characters, they just want reactions, but nothing humane about the characters.
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Yeah, you’re right. The smaller self contained stories are soo much better. And they should stick to that model if they don’t want have a over arching story.
Have enough smaller stories that set up the next expac. This way you don’t feel like your beholden to those stories in the next one. It’s the only solution I can think that works for their style of writing. If that makes any sense