Stupid, no, but certainly desperate and ignorant. Kael’s “promised land” was a con job; slavery to the Burning Legion was all that awaited blood elf pilgrims in Netherstorm. His endgame was to swell his forces with dupes from Quel’Thalas, harvest as much mana as possible, and then return home to pump it into the Sunwell, per Kil’jaeden’s instruction.
I don’t believe they did. Kael tried and failed to harness the Nether’s ambient arcane magics, which were too “fickle and chaotic” even for him, and the manaforges he constructed to bottle it both rendered the land uninhabitable and accelerated the shattering of Outland. Even if he’d been serious about the migration, sooner or later - probably sooner - it would’ve been home to QT with a note of apology for pulling a Ner’zhul.
Pretty sure this is a complete retcon. At the very least, it wasn’t meant to be a “con-job” from the start and I’d be curious to see you prove that. Kael certainly wasn’t planning on selling his people out to the Legion when he first got there in WC3. He was die-hard loyal to Illidan and his people at the time.
Being desperate doesn’t mean you conquer a planet and start to relocate your people to it when that planet is going to be destroyed within a few decades, even if that planet is suffused with arcane energy. That’s objective stupidity. It’s not like they didn’t know the planet was falling apart just by looking at it.
How is that even a desperate decision? If they knew they couldn’t live there, why would a desperate person stay there? There was no indication that Outland was just a temporary rest-stop. The Blood Elves made no attempt to use the Outland portals to find a safer world.
So either we’re arguing that Kael was a moron (pretty insulting since he was one of the PLAYER characters in WC3, which people seem to forget) along with all his followers, and wanted to move his people to a dying world for…reasons? Or there was a plan to stabilize the planet.
Zangarmarsh getting crazy slept-on here if you ask me.
And Thrall was sad-dad farming in Nagrand for the past several years before Saurfang showed up to let him know he’d be sacrificing himself, heroically, in a patch cycle or two.
Now granted, I do know that in the very same cinematic Saurfang mentions that Nagrand is “wrong”, “broken”, “falling apart”.
Just saying, it’s held together for the past 15 years hahahaha.
The very faction of blood elves we play is the product of a retcon: from TFT through vanilla, it was understood, or at least assumed, that Quel’Thalas was scourged of all living elves.
Sunwell - The Fall of Quel’Thalas
By the time Arthas and his army of the dead turned southward, not one living elf remained in Quel’Thalas. The glorious homeland of the high elves, which had stood for more than nine thousand years, was no more.
The “pilgrimage” of blood elf civilians from Azeroth to Outland was an invention of TBC, by which point Kael was already sold out to the Legion. The pilgrims who made it to Netherstorm explicitly called out the con.
I’ve come to realize our pilgrimage from Quel’Thalas to Outland was all a lie. A lie perpetrated by Kael’thas to strengthen his forces here in the Netherstorm!
We have no idea what Kael’s long-term plan was before he signed on with Kil’jaeden and relocated to Netherstorm. I’d be surprised if he had one at all. He didn’t voluntarily abandon Azeroth - an Alliance army literally chased him off the planet. Outland struck him as a “dismal wasteland” in TFT, not the magical paradise he’d later propagate on his pilgrim recruitment drive.
No, I’m arguing that Kael’thas became a villain, and never earnestly intended to resettle the blood elves left behind in Quel’Thalas (who didn’t exist in TFT) on Outland. And that even if he’d been a good boy, or the blood elves had gone ahead without him, the resettlement would have ended in failure. The sources below - Chronicles and Netherstorm questing - make a pretty strong case for that IMO.
While Illidan Stormrage was focused on his demon hunters, Kael’thas Sunstrider and most of his followers quietly left the Black Temple. The prince promised he would return, but it was a lie. He sought out a distant corner of Outland known as the Netherstorm, where he established his own base. Only much later would Illidan realize that Kael’thas had no intention of rejoining his forces at the Black Temple.
Kael’thas had journeyed to the Netherstorm before and had tried to harness the latent energies that suffused the region. Even for a sorcerer as skilled as Kael’thas, it had been an impossible task. The Twisting Nether’s magics were chaotic and fickle, and the prince’s efforts had resulted in little more than frustration.
Tempest Keep’s energy-recharging mechanisms were never supposed to be used this close to the land. The warp energies are capable of destroying this very land, even when contained within Kael’s pipelines. (…) The warp energies emanating from the pipelines are dangerously high. We must find a way to shut down the manaforges or what little remains of Outland will be shattered into pieces.
Kael’thas convinced Illidan to show him how to feed on fel energies. The prince proceeded cautiously, only drawing on small portions of the magic. Before long, he grew hopelessly addicted to it. The more he fed on the dark energy, the more it ate away at his mind, body, and soul. His reliance on fel magic frayed the bonds between him and his people.
Though he was desperate to save the blood elves, he secretly became paranoid of them. He was convinced that they saw him as a failure. The truth was that Kael’thas’s journey to Outland had not helped his people; it had only made their suffering worse. The wise option would have been to cut his losses and return home, but the thought of marching into Quel’Thalas without a lasting solution for the blood elves filled him with shame and anger. It was this pride, this inability to admit defeat, that sealed his fate.
Netherstorm seems like a source of unlimited magic. I feel that was his actual final plan. To harvest enough power from there after Illidan failed to hold his promise.
Actually his return to Outland would have been after the battle of Icecrown, even. So running away from the scourge, even when he was following Illidan the plan always seemed to be to destroy the Frozen Throne and I doubt he was looking much further than vengeance.
I’ll do you the courtesy of not clogging your thread with off-topic block quotes, but read those in my post again. Kael’thas tried and failed to tap into the Twisting Nether, and his manaforge workaround would’ve destroyed Outland in time. There was no long-term solution there.
The blood elves would’ve been far worse off on Outland than in Quel’Thalas, whose sanctum malfunctions were somewhat more manageable than the shattering of the planet.
A helpful trick for discussing Kael’thas is remember that every time he shows up after TFT, whether it be a novel (even if the novel is chronologically before TFT) or game, it is a different doppelganger with the exact same abilities and appearance as Kael.
Then why are you assuming your interpretation has more merit than mine? Ultimately, it’s Blizzard’s choice whether to completely erase Outland from existence or to find a narrative reason to save an extremely important part of the setting, the site of their first expansion, with a unique space fantasy aesthetic no other mmo has, and the homeworld of several prominent species. I dont like how disposable the vast majority of the warcraft universe has become.
You seem to prefer the former idea. I can’t relate to this at all.
Literally every other Blizzard game(Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm) treat Kael so much better and with proper respect, the WOW dev team is a bunch of talentless hacks.