Blood Elves and Night Elves have old beefs with each other. But most of that is centuries old. (Though admittedly the Nelves have some of the actual individuals around, but they were to ones causing the Belf to go into exile, rather than being the victims). Now I think it is weird that that a group that exiled their fellows to suffer and die over arcane magic don’t seem to care anymore. But I think Blizzard doesn’t.
And for the Belfs, the people who have been keen to kill and purge them just for being Blood Elves have been human. Which I can see, if they Nelves left the Alliance, might overshadow the old stuff.
These same Magi were also giving their lives to fight the War of Thorns. They bridged that gap with their own blood.
And again… because that same mage made extraordinary efforts to do so and impressed a person WHO WAS THERE TO WITNESS them, both extraordinary factors.
Actually it pretty much exemplifies that the Night Elves can’t go it alone. That when a Champion comes to help… it doesn’t matter what race they are… but Champions stand apart from the races they come from. Taking help from an Orc champion doesn’t go that far to change how Night Elves relate to Orcs … or the Horde in general.
It’s just another pause in Faction animosity while we once again… band together to face a badder bad than each other.
No political unification of Elven races/nations in any shape or form because their respective fanbases are entitled to autonomous development & lore focus and did not sign up for pan-Elven BS that would further dilute everyone’s cultural identity
Maybe in World of Warcraft 2. Though I do suspect that some form of accordance will be birthed by the end of Midnight where the elves unite if for no other reason just to keep tabs on each other and repopulate. Lor’themar and Thalyssra are doing their part to bring together their races and maybe even propagate the species. I think the elves uniting is a neat idea, and I think they will have their own faction similar to what we’ve seen when the Horde and Alliance worked together. A neutral faction to save elvenkind.
We see in Veldrakkan spa the Night Elf and Void Elf relationship (LGBT) and if anything, mixing of the elves may have some unique results. I wonder what a Darnassian/Shalassian elf mixed with a Thalassian would look like? Do they revert to Kaldorei form? Pinker version of a Kaldorei or dark hue on a Thalassian, sorta like a Void Elf?
You made my case for me. They are looking past the race of a Blood Elf to see the champion that they are. Letting go of old hatreds for a common cause. I don’t see why people seem to be so against this inevitable change from the mouth of Metzen himself. It’s happening what will result and how or why has yet to be revealed.
If the fan bases had any way of actually influencing the narrative WOW would be a very different game. That said. Fanbases get over it. Elves are bordering extinction, especially the Thalassian/Darnassian varieties and there aren’t enough to propagate the species for their distinct flavors and peace among the elves doesn’t mean complete unity, but like I said earlier, “A United Nations of Elves.” working together to ensure the mutual survival of all mortals, but especially the elves!
If it’s a collaborative thing (not necessarily striking the ledger of all past wrongs) And gives us cool things like Blood Elf mages hypercharging Sentinel Glaive throwers, I’m down to clown.
I’ve been giving this matter some thought for a while.
In my opinion, speaking only for myself, what probably works best is something that falls between a military alliance, and an organization which functions similarly to how the Zandalari did for all trollkind. That is to say, what Midnight should do is treat this, ‘unification of the elven tribes,’ in a manner similar to, say, what the Shattered Sun Offensive did with the Scryers and Aldor in BC. The Scryers and Aldor still exist, after all, and act independently of the Shattered Sun Offensive.
Where the Shattered Sun Offensive only existed in it’s capacity as a military union, this order of elves from across the various, ‘tribes,’ would take on a similar function in a diplomatic role with it’s express intent being to safeguard and advance the cause elvenkind on Azeroth. Disputes between, say, the Night Elves and Blood Elves could be mediated through them until an agreement can be reached, and were the Amani to rise up again, this organization would organize a concentrated force to defend and counter-attack with.
A new, ‘neutral,’ faction that is not over-reaching in terms of authority, or usurping the individual racial narratives of any race or faction, is what I think is the best outcome.
Fanbases have been effectively influencing some narrative decisions as of late (Calia not being the sole Forsaken leader, Orc Priests lore and the Orc Heritage questline in general, the DF sequence with Alexstrasza in Grim Batol, etc). Always for the best btw
Elves are absolutely not bordering extinction, both because nothing in the lore supports this idea and also because numbers and demographics historically don’t exist in WoW
Fanbases have gotten over their fair share of things already over the last couple of expansions and it’s about damn time the content they are invested into gets treated with care and respect
Factions still exist and many people still care about them and how they shape the races, characters and narratives you engage with
90% of High Elves killed off during the Scourge Invasion and the succeeding wars have whittled down Thalassian populations.
Kaldorei lost so many lives at Teldrassil the Blood War story described them to being nearly wiped out. The Broken Isles lost a huge amount of Night Elves in their area, and we also see the Night Elves losing huge numbers in Astranaar.
Nightborne might now be the most populous considering what occurred during the Fourth War and how they really didn’t lose the same amount as Thalassians and Darnassians did.
When a population is constantly attacked you inevitably get to the situation, we are in. Night Elves and Blood Elves should only now slowly grow their numbers. We shall see if the population will rebound, but I doubt in 10-20 years they’ll be back to the numbers they had pre Third War.
90% of Quel’Thalas. We have no statistics for how that relates to the number of High Elves whom were not in Quel’Thalas as of the time of the Third War. Dalaran has always had a sizable elven population, and wasn’t even known to be the smallest of the seven kingdoms.
We also have no numbers for how many elves outside of Quel’Thalas returned in the aftermath and would go on to become Blood Elves. For all we know, 90% of Quel’Thalas was wiped out, but then returning elves elevated that population to 20%, 30%, etc… whatever Blizzard decides, regardless of how plausible it sounds.
The trouble is that Blizzard will handwave more numbers whenever they need to. For example, it’s long been considered that Strom and the Arathi were virtually wiped out, a position only strengthened when it was the Alliance which rebuilt Stromgarde, and manned it during BFA.
Now, in War Within, we’ve got an entire second kingdom of Arathi Humans whom have been living underground for thousands of years.
Basically, at any time Blizzard could go, “Oh, there’s a sizable isle off the coast of Quel’Thalas that’s been phased shifted out of reality for thousands of years, which is populated by so many elves all the other elves combined don’t even come close to 1% of this island’s population. How does an island sustain millions of elves? Pocket dimensions.”
To be clear, I’m not saying you’re wrong, only that while the decimation of elven populations is a possible narrative route Blizzard may choose to explore, it’s also one they may choose to ignore, or even handwave away with more elves out of nowhere (kind of like the Nightborne, whom we didn’t even knew existed until Legion).
Having percentages without having actual numbers means nothing…
And the scourge destroying quel’thalas was 20 years prior to the current point in timeline, a lot of the remaining high elves and blood elves probably did a lot of “bonding” in that period if you catch my meaning.
We have a lot of younger night elves in recent storylines, and honestly, it makes sense that the first response of a population after just losing their immortality would be finding another way to keep their legacy alive…
Considering that magic withdrawal was fatal to the very young and very old, any children born prior to the Sunwell’s restoration likely did not survive. That throw’s a wrench into this assumption, to say nothing of how mass death and destruction is probably not the atmosphere to set the mood for procreation. On top of that, you’d have further concerns, particularly among the Blood Elves. Would that gorgeous girl you’re interested in sooner suck your mana than get in bed?
I’d honestly be surprised if there had been any baby booms among any population in WoW’s lifetime. A world wracked by constant wars and cataclysms is not one in which people tend to be interested in having progeny.
I can agree to that, but the trope since Tolkien is that elves are a long lived people and not prone to reproducing as quickly as the younger races, but in WoW they’ve handwaved so much of the lore that now elves reach maturity at the same rate as humans than remain “ageless” for thousands of years (potentially), but the way Metzen described the elves he didn’t call them nations or factions he called them, “tribes” which has a connotation of less than a nation and more of small factions aka tribes. I think that implies the elves have certainly been humbled by the last 20 years and reduced substantially to even be “uniting.”
It was certainly an unusual choice of word, but I’d hardly call the Blood Elves a, ‘tribe.’
Rather, I think the term was used more in the sense of tribalism, the idea of deep-rooted division between various groups, nations, philosophies, religions, loyalties, etc…
Yeah, that is the hope I want to lean on. He meant it in the sense of factionalization, but something feels wrong. I suspect when Quel’thelas is integrated into the Eastern Kingdoms they’ll overhaul the map and keep BC era Quel’thelas phased in its own area. While the new Quel’thelas zone will be supplanted and put in where the old portal to Quel’thelas entrance is in Northern Eastern Plaguelands.
I can see them redoing the whole part of the Northern Eastern Kingdoms while they’re adding it to provide us seamless transition and update the whole area. I also suspect they’ll make Quel’thelas a lot larger in the game for us to explore. Since they basically have to remake the kingdom to no longer need it being in its own bubble like they originally did in BC.
By doing so, they can make Quel’thelas a lot larger than what we currently have and add in Northeron as well as new islands off the coast if they really wanted to even a whole new area for Zul’Aman. One that is lore consistent. Making the new areas of Midnight be as large as Dragon Isles. Meaning big phasing and changes to the old Eastern Kingdoms to an updated look worthy of being the area of a new expansion.
If they add new islands or zones, maybe new Elves will be discovered untouch by the Scourging of Quel’thelas. Maybe an enclave for the Night Elf Sentinels that were spying on Quel’thelas and another for the Void Elves.
It’s not so much letting go but a pause in extreme circumstances.
The United States and the Soviet Union hated each others guts to the core… Theystill do. yet they united to defeat the Axis for one war and then went back to hating each other.
In fact, the primary reasons for Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an intimidation demonstration for our “ally” the real target of those attacks, so it was important that Japan not surrender too soon and our negotiations were carefully nuanced so that the Japanese would surrender… when we wanted them to and not before.
