Un, what about pre-TBC Blood elves are you saying was retconned exactly? I’m having trouble understanding what you’re referencing here.
Pre-TBC, there are almost no High Elves in the game, with the ones who did exist being either neutral or just prop pieces (the ones in the lodges are Alliance friendly, but offer no quests or talk or anything).
Coming off Warcraft 3: TFT, there’s no indication there are even any “High elves” left aside from those who were lost through the Dark Portal.
I’m inclined to agree with the bulk of what you’ve just stated.
I’m also inclined to believe that Blizzard almost immediately decided to shift the Blood Elves away from what was originally announced (BlizzCon 2005), towards something more ostensibly tolerable by the angry masses who protested against the Blood Elves joining the Horde.
(In addition to appeasing the vocal group that were somewhat peeved with BE’s going Horde, quickly re-adjusting the BE’s to something “less dark” in TBC also served to attract more fans of High Elves – thus, assisting in balancing the factions.)
It’s quite possible that in the absence of this loud and aggressive disapproval for Horde-aligned Blood Elves, Blizzard might’ve felt little/no pressure to appease anybody – which means we might, today, have Blood Elves who continue to utilize their varied magic(s) in reckless and self-serving ways.
They still became a “villian race”. Kael’thas and his fel draining elite went on their path with Illidan and the Legion, and the player Blood Elves are the Azerothian citizens who go on the journey of discovering the sinister workings of their Prince and eventually confront him and his forces (Sunfury, Dawnguard and Eclipson) in Outland, after the Scryers tell us what’s up. The player Blood Elf experience is a redemption story.
If anything is at a retcon level it would be Kael. He had a genuine desire to help his people and they shoved him down an Arthas-lite path of corrupting himself to a greater master in the name of saving the High Elves. I think they just needed villians to fill out TBC and separated Kael from the Blood Elves left on Azeroth to rationalize him as killable by his own people.
I don’t really call that a retcon of Blood Elves. The player race merely doesn’t represent that faction, similarly to how the player human doesn’t represent the Defias despite both being groups of Stormwind humans, or the player Dark Iron not representing those still aligned to Ragnaros.
I’m on the phone, so I’ll be brief:
That said, I think the disapproval of Blood Elves in the Horde was more about Horde wanting to stay the ugly, monstrous, misfits, the Alliance wanting their pretty elves to stay with the good guys, and less about Blood Elves being pretty reckless and borderline evil.
It’s still a lot of speculation. As with any race there’s a lot of stuff that gets left on the cutting room floor. I still see the eventual path the Blood Elves took to become pretty elves among the more monstrous Horde one of the more interesting things about this franchise, and being very much underdogs after Quel’thalas’ sacking in WC3, I think they fit just fine.
Kael aside, I’m not upset with how they pulled it off.
I just made an amazing Chocolate (Protein) Cheesecake and it smells amazing.
Maybe one day I’ll be able to have a High Elf.
I wonder what High Elf smells like.
summons BioWare Tali fans
The faction that was negotiating to switch to the Alliance?
The faction that had two splinter subfactions, one of which is currently playable on Alliance.
Jaina ruined that, just like Garithos before her, and similar to Tyrande after her.
Alliance characters seem to have problems with getting in the way of delivering elven races to their people.
Though I am curious how inverted Veressa or Alleria’s face would contort if the Stormwind crown ever allowed Blood Elves into the Alliance. They’d lose it.
I’m pretty sure Lor’themar said that Garrosh is just as much to blame as Jaina was for the Purge of Dalaran. It was Garrosh’s spy that led Jaina to think the Sunreavers were to blame.
And Blood Elves seem to have memory issues, being unable to remember who assaulted their kingdom in the Second War and who gave their lives to protect it. Or that dealing with demons and fel leads to bad ends.
Aethas could’ve prevented it, but he was too cowardly for that. Not sure if he ever told Lor’themar the truth.
Really? I’ll have to look that up.
The Amani assaulted Quel’thalas in the Second War, with Orgrim’s Horde (again, not the current one under Thrall at all), only joining the assault to gain the Amani as allies against Lordaeron.
When the High Elves [laughed in Ban’doriel] and the Horde couldn’t breach Silvermoon they left, securing a path to Lordaeron through Alteraci human lands through their betrayal, while the Amani kept at Silvermoon in futility.
I imagine Veressa’s reaction if the Blood Elves ever joined the Alliance would go something like this:
I agree, and that was the point.
Their decision to align the Blood Elves with the Horde was met with an enormous amount of hostility, and seeing just how quickly they were shifted away from being on a “reckless quest” to acquire any source of power that was apparently putting them on “a collision course with the Horde”, it seems quite likely that pressure from the playerbase convinced Blizzard to try and appease as many people as possible – and making the Blood Elves considerably less edgy was like a magic wand that appeased both sides to a large degree.
Though, of course, I much prefer the current aesthetic and cultural underpinnings of Blood Elves to anything previously seen. I really almost hope that the Blood Knights begin to train “battle priests”, just to drive to town how focused they are on using the Light and/or the Sunwell to defend what is theirs.
There’s a missing scene where Aethas finds out about the theft and opposes it, but is threatened by an orc to keep quiet. Which he does, he was more afraid of Garrosh than Jaina
Apparently there’s still signs of this in Isle of Thunder, with Aethas reacting weirdly when Lor’themar defends him.
Quel’thalas is not only Silvermoon though. People living outside the city didn’t have super-duper-magical protection.
Thrall’s Horde was not only the successor to Orgrim’s (Thrall being made Warchief by Orgrim himself), it also contained the remnants of Lordaeron, the kingdom Garithos hailed from.
This is really why Silvermoon, and the Sunwell, need a proper update, to better reflect the current organization and values of all parts of the Sin’dorei, that are only pieces referenced in other material since TBC, where Silvermoon stands in limbo space.
That’s pretty interesting! Do you have a source for it?
Those cut down by the scourge and eventually becoming the forsaken had zero affiliation with Garithos’s leadership: they were already dead. Garithos only had a position of power because of these dead.
Sylvanas is the reason the Forsaken and Blood Elves worked together and joined the Horde.
There was a tumblr post by Sarah Pine but it’s gone now.
We still have Dave Kosak’s tweet
Which is funny because for the first time ever Aethas chose the Horde over the Kirin Tor… despite the fact that Lor’themar was negotiating to leave the Horde right at that moment.