Because they didn’t what a faction imbalance?
Is this correct?
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It was to correct a faction imbalance.
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It was somewhat for faction imbalance but also the desire to give the Horde a pretty race and the Alliance an ugly race to spice things up visually between the two.
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Ok but lore wise should they have been Alliance originally?
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No, WoW sets up clearly why they joined the Horde.
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They only really managed one of those things though. Exodar became a disco with mood lights, grooves, and a glitter ball. Everyone grabbed a space goat and got out on the (dance) floor.
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No. Lorewise the blood elves abandoned the Alliance during TFT and there were blood elf NPCs in horde settlements before TBC. The blood elves joining the horde was not a random thing and was somewhat planned by Blizzard
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Yeah, this. The entire starter zone for the blood elves covers why they join the Horde. It’s literally the story of them joining the Horde. By all technicality when you make a new blood elf, you’re basically not faction affiliated when we’re discussing canonical story because the blood elves didn’t go through the motions in the Ghostlands yet.
All of Eversong is to illustrate why the blood elves dislike the Alliance. Dwarves and night elves are all infiltrating Eversong and spying, among other unsavory things. Then the Ghostlands illustrates how the Forsaken and the Blood Elves join forces to ensure Quel’thalas is safe from the undead, including the defeat of Darkhan Drathir, who is responsible for so much of the blood elves’ misfortune.
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Supposedly, according to things said by devs on Reddit and in The WoW Diary, part of the reason for adding blood elves into the game might’ve been because Korean players didn’t really like the Horde races, or they had girlfriends and their girlfriends didn’t really like the Horde races, or something like that
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Not to get off topic, but how great is the Blood Elf starting zone? Easily one of the best in WoW to this day.
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because blood elves were in the game and lore before TBC, I don’t think that’s the case. however, out of all the races the Horde’s new race could’ve been, Blood Elves were chosen because the devs wanted the Horde to have a ‘pretty’ race because players, including the devs, experienced a dilemma between choosing a faction that you empathize with more vs. a character race you actually like looking at all day
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Blood Elves; aka High Elves, were a part of Azeroth before the Orcs and only joined the Horde because of their mistreatment and lack of support by the Alliance. The Alliance forced their hand and we thank them for that.
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Not really no, if anything I don’t think blizzard planned for blood elves to be playable at all when they first made WoW. They made very clear attempts to envision them as neutral in vanilla and even before TFT the blood elves were not very happy with the alliance. Since they basically left them out to dry with the orcs. And then after that, a human prince comes in and kills 90% of their population and then after that a racist human gives them even more problems. They had bones to pick with the alliance and the horde. I believe that the original idea behind “high elves”/blood elves was that they would be a rare race that both factions would encounter throughout the world and have interactions with but nothing more.
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People don’t fully understand the Lore of the Blood Elves of Silvermoon compared to the High Elves as a whole race.
First off after the second War, it was the Elves of Silvermoon aka our future Blood Elves who left the Alliance first because they wanted to Wipe out the Orcs instead of the camps. It’s also why Gilneas left as well and it was more because of Lorderan.
The High Elves from other nations still supported the Alliance, we see this in the Arthas story among the Kirin Tor and Dalaran forces. After Lorderan fell, did the Elves of Silvermoon fall and became the Blood Elves, named by Kael Sunstrider.
Kael asked for Alliance support on reclaiming Silvermoon and the only commander in the area was Garthios who was shoe horned into the situation. I’ve always speculated a theoy when Garthios makes the comment to Kael about working with the Naga that set’s up the whole reason the Blood Elves join the Horde in TBC. When the Naga are introduced in a cutscene, Garthios is pulled away from the campaign, the theory is that he engaged the Naga when he was off screen. Seeing the Blood Elves with the Naga in his eyes was a betrayal on why he was even there.
Blizzard shoe horned that he was racist towards non-humans yet he had dwarves and gnomes in his command which makes no sense to use that comment and it was an easy out for the writers.
In Chronicles, the Blood Elves wouldn’t even except the Forsaken nor Sylvanas. Again it show cases that the Blood Elves weren’t in the plans for the Horde before TBC. Yes there were npc’s in Stonetalon Peaks for the Horde but they only showed up during the pre-patch.
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Lack of support? The Silvermoon elves left the Alliance before Warcraft 3. And while Garithos was a racist idiot the Horde were not better considering two of your former Warchief set you up for failure(Sylvanas forced Lothermar to help with the Northrend campaign and Garrosh setup the whole divine bell fiasco). Heck, the blood elves were ready to jump ship if for Garrosh making the blood elves the fall guys for the divine bell theft.
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Honestly under Thrall the Blood Elves were fine but as power has shifted between warchiefs they’ve been getting a bad deal every time. Now that it’s a war council and Lortheomar has a say and with Thalyssras backing they can act in the best interest of the Sin’dorei and Shal’dorei.
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To back this posting up:
How far into development of bc did the team decide on blood elfs. At the time you where there, did they consider blood elfs as high elfs, or think of them as 2 different races?
They were distinct pretty early on - the Blood Elf starting zone was one of the earliest pieces of BC content and was highly polished by the time we rolled into testing.
I do remember a certain poor 3d artist having to chop the Silvermoon city into pieces because it was so overloaded many GPUs would overheat just loading it.
OH - one thing I vaguely remember was that Blood Elves were based on a STRONG request from a poll of asian players (either korean or chinese - I can’t remember which was live at that point) - where many remarked on the horde side that they and their girlfriends wanted a non-creepy femme race to play
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Iunno if i’d say the blood elves abandoned the alliance so much as they were escaping their captors who were actively moving to wipe them out for the crime of not dying to the scourge.
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This! and you are talking about stuff that occurred long after Blood Elves already were Horde.
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That lore is in the Blood Elf campaign of Warcraft 3 IIRC.
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