I don’t believe either side of this conflict can necessarily be considered “good”. Neither the Highborne nor the Amani were of the character to break the cycle of violence. There wasn’t a chance for any kind of diplomatic inroad here, no alternative to bloodshed where one group would go unscathed and unconquered.
For the elves it was a matter of survival. Their situation in the EK was incredibly desperate, it’s important to note that what happened to the Amani nearly happened to the human tribes within Tirisfal Glades:
They began to argue that the humans had built their settlements atop the most potent ley lines in the region. Therefore, the Highborne should force them to relocate . . . or even conquer the primitive beings outright.
Page 118, Chronicle 1.
Admittedly, this attitude was also credited as the influence of the darker magics within Tirisfal Glades. But they would soon after depart from the area to take up the exact same stance towards the Amani within Eversong, but without any moral qualms. It’s a classic case of elven supremacy in the sense that they were always intent to conquer, it was just the careful question of when, where, and who would be driven out…
But there also remains the fact that the Amani attacked the elves on sight. The Elves arrived in the Quel’thalas region 6,800 years before the Dark Portal. That’s roughly 3,200 years without Elven contact, but between old racial tensions and their own war-like nature, this was still an incredible amount of aggression. This was BEFORE Dar’themar and co. reached the leylines that Quel’thalas would be founded on.
This is, undoubtedly, an instance where one group is conquered by another. That the Amani Trolls, a much shorter-lived race, are continuously born into a cycle of extreme violence at the hands of Elves who live long enough where an individual can have a hand in exterminating entire generations. It’s extraordinarily cruel.
But suffering does not automatically mean virtue. The Amani had their own inclination towards bloodshed, and their relationship with the early human tribes are proof enough of this. I understand why some would sympathize with the Amani trolls in terms of “Colonist vs Colonized/Conquered vs Conqueror”, or even just in terms of WC2 nostalgia, but painting them in a purely positive, underdog light seems disingenuous.