Yeah, that was dumb. Stuff like this is why I usually hate game novelization.
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Which is fair. I understand my reply wasn’t within the parameters of the thought experiment, but I felt the need to share them regardless. I understand your perspective, even if I don’t agree with it. If I were a Blood Elf, burning every walking corpse so that it can never rise again would be my priority, and I would not differentiate between the mindless ones that destroyed my home, family, friends, and neighbors, and the ones that pinky-swear (those that still have pinkies) that they aren’t like the Scourge, despite acting like the Scourge.
It’s a weird topic to be certain. I wouldn’t mind if it was ultimately dismissed as Kael’thas contemplating politics. The matter of a marriage for him has been discussed several times in books, so it seems as if it was a hot topic in Quel’Thalas (in the Sylvanas novel, she herself was considered a potential wife for him if I recall, an arrangement Lirath supported I believe).
I never saw Kael’thas are being romantically inclined towards anyone. Granted, we only really knew him during times where romance is the last matter on anyone’s mind.
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It was present in WC3: TFT itself. When you assaulted Kael’s base in the final undead mission in the expansion, Arthas gloats that he managed to “steal” Jaina from Kael’thas.
King Arthas: Are you still upset that I stole Jaina from you, Kael?
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/A_Symphony_of_Frost_and_Flame_(WC3_Undead)
So why are you hating on game novelizations for something said novelization didn’t even originally create?
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It is the incel energy that annoys me, not the mere notion that he and Jaina were ever involved.
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That always felt very random to me.
Instead of gloating over how he had destroyed Quel’Thalas, when it wasn’t even his goal, nearly wiping out the High Elves, or killing Kael’s father, Arthas chooses to gloat that Jaina had picked him.
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I think the way the blood elf story played out in the end was fine. We can fault Illidan for not holding up his bargain but that was not a good reason to have Kael becoming evil. I would do anything to get him back and swear fealty to House Sunstrider again.
Have you done Ghostlands questing recently? They don’t, not really. Almost every Tranquilien NPC is constantly suspicious of the forsaken with maybe one exception, and the relationship between Sylvanas and Lor’themar deteriorates from “allies of convenience” to “slinging death threats at each other in public” between BC and Mists. And it’s not a sudden deterioration, it’s gradually there in writing the whole way.
Hell after Ghostlands interactions between the Blood Elves and Forsaken drop to not much (and it’s not hard to guess that Lor’themar hating Nathanos’s guts even more after Quel’lithien is part of that).
Arthas chooses to gloat that Jaina had picked him.
Arthas was always weirdly narcissistic for a paladin. Like when he pulls rank on Uther as crown prince to dissolve the silver hand.
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Arthas screams incel to me so his behavior is fitting. Which makes it easier to hate him.
Undead start at friendly with Silvermoon while the other races start as neutral.
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worse is better
we give them the iconic horde hunch™
silvermoon isnt recovered, its actually ruins still
(srsly how did they get it back so fast lol)
think dire maul basically with warlocks hanging out and doing experiments with imps and shiznits
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Magic. Remember playing WC3 and seeing how the Scourge 3d print buildings with magic? I imagine it was like that, using magic siphoned from Outland.
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Magic best. Honor the Magisters.
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People that say this can’t see the bigger picture. Their story fit into the outcasts that had nowhere else to go thing.
They could have kept them as power vampires. But that’s not what would have helped them fit into the Horde. Thrall’s Horde wasn’t really about that.
I just want runic tattoos and phoenix related things. The body jewelry they teased but never released. Over the years there have been suggestions for customizations. Some of those of Felblood Elves, which I would like. But also things more in line with just celebrating Blood Elves.
Maybe if they one-day did wretched. But otherwise doesn’t fall in line with how most Blood Elves were about mana.
A lot of the wretched had been cured in lore.
I may have fever dreamed this. Can’t find the source. But I remember it for some reason. 
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Is there citation for this? The last I saw was a Magistrix in Cata researching a cure in Thousand Needles and failing.
There was some sometime ago but I can’t remember where.
The wiki is not forthcoming.
Maybe my memory is bad too. But I remember something on the fel crystals already are removed and some of the Wretched cured.
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I do recall a Dev tweet (or maybe it was an AskDev answer) that stated the demonic crystals had lore-wise been removed from Silvermoon. I don’t recall anything about a cure for the Wretched, though. Always felt weird there had never been any resolution to that narrative. I wonder if the Wretched will feature in Midnight?
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I certainly hope so. I hope they don’t whiff on a lot of things to just focus on the void invading. But I’m guessing we would get such a thing in some local stories maybe.
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I think power vampires fits the Horde in the same way the Forsaken did. In my mind, they were both always meant to be the edgier, darker, more “pragmatic” factions of the Horde. I like to imagine that the Western Horde’s influence would temper the Blood Elves and keep them from going full evil.
As for the addiction, I think that’s core to them, and I want to see more of the “monster on the inside” themes expressed through their behavior. I don’t like the idea that the addiction was just a suggestion, or wasn’t really affecting them. I like the idea that they wear a mask of sophistication, but it hides the predator within. Overall, I’m trying to find a way to make them distinct from traditional High Elves in every other setting, while re-framing the typical tropes associated with them.
So, overall, you’d keep them largely the same? How do we address the goals in the thought exercise?
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When the Tauren brought in the Forsaken. It wasn’t because the Horde was full of people like that. It was because they believed the Forsaken when they told them they were searching for a cure for undeath and thought Shamanism could help them. The Tauren wanted to give them a second chance. The Forsaken did not fit into that Horde. Most of what they end up doing is hidden from the Horde until later on.
It hasn’t been for longer than it was. Now I’m not saying that they should not give Belves back their edge. But I would say that they’ve done the threat to the well stuff too much. At this point it’s getting ridiculous. It was Arthas and Kel’thuzad, then it was Kil’jaeden and Kael’thas, then it was Alleria and her void toes, now it’s gonna be the void themselves. And that’s not counting the sundering to begin with that had to do with the well.
I think you can figure out flaws for certain characters without going through the whole magic addiction thing yet again. That too has been done to death with both Belves and Nightborne.
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