I don’t cringe so much as consider it a pet peeve, though I understand why this claim is made, as it’s not an obvious distinction: the claim that Blood Elves have green eyes because they are all corrupted from directly feeding on fel magic, and relatedly, that High Elves split off from the Blood Elves because of a refusal to feed on fel. Most Blood Elves did not feed on fel, their eyes are green from indirect exposure to fel, such as living in Silvermoon while fel crystals were used to accelerate the rebuilding of the city. There are Blood Elves that fed on fel in the game, but they tend to be the felbood elves associated with Kael’thas’ forces, and they sometimes have horns and wings like demon hunters as a result of their direct feeding. The High Elves that were exiled from Silvermoon were sent away because they disagreed with the government-sanctioned practice of mana tapping living creatures to sate their magic addiction (ex: the Blood Elf and the manawyrm in the Burning Crusade trailer).
I guess another blood elf related one here but when people say ‘blood elfs are only horde to balance out faction population’, I cringe. I thought it was pretty clear way before TBC that there were rifts between the blood elfs and the alliance, and it makes perfect sense on why they went horde. The alliance commander literally tried to execute the heir to the blood elf throne and the token force sent to help.
The events of TBC, really just solidified the blood elfs going horde, and did not seem out of place at all. It actually makes perfect lore sense on why blood elfs went horde.
Like I said, this isn’t a small one time; we’re talking about abandoning the world to destruction at the hands of the biggest bad guys Azeroth had ever faced. That’s definitely an important factor to consider.
Well, for starters this is an entirely separate issue and I’m not eager to derail to it, but since you’re asking… to go on record, I’m not a fan of the Void Elves being brought into the Alliance. Plain and simple.
I feel the same way about that to which I do regarding the Blood Elves joining the Horde. Orcs, Trolls, and Undead have been the enemies of the Thalassian people since they each encountered one another.
The Blood Elves hate the old Alliance (run by entirely separate individuals than the current Alliance) for what Arthas did, and what Garrithos did. And yet, they’re willing to abandon their hatred for Trolls, Orcs, and Undead, and join them in murdering their own blood (Quel’dorei).
WoW’s lore is built on the system of “rule of cool”; things get forgiven and suddenly remembered at random. I don’t like it. I think the justification for why the factions do the crap they do is ridiculous.
Tyrande had one line of dialogue in which she (justifiably so) questioned the trustworthiness of a race that abandoned her people to die once before.
If a single line of dialogue in a camp after first meeting each other is enough for a whole race to support the Horde on a genocidal war campaign, that speaks volumes about the Nightborne.
Shouldn’t ever factor into an argument; I think it’s ridiculously foolish when people make presumptions based on character choice.
I think chalking up Tyrande’s very personal decision to be skeptical of the NIghtborne (because of their willingness to abandon Azeroth to the Legion) to just being poor judgement is a tad unreasonable.
She had exceptionally sound motives to be untrusting.
It’s sort of like, I don’t know, the Alliance has a history of being betrayed and abandoned by their supposed allies. Sort of like during WoTLK at the Wrathgate, and then again at the Broken Front, and years later at the Broken Shore, and all the other instances.
Tyrande, and every member of the Alliance for that matter, have very good reasons to be untrusting of people, whether that be the Horde, the Nightborne, the gnolls, w/e.
Sadly, this is true.
The scenario was playing out almost exactly again. Why would Tyrande trust the Nightborne wouldn’t choose themselves over anyone else again?
I don’t think there’s anything to support this statement.
They were welcomed by Anduin, not Tyrande. Anduin gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. Hell, he was actively trying to recruit the Blood Elves as a whole at the time, despite everything you and we have pointed out.
This is true, but ultimately the Nightborne never did anything directly against the Night Elves any way, and once again offered cooperation out of shared interests, so Tyrande being snippy at them isn’t even really relevant any more after Nazjatar.
Though you make a story point, most people aren’t making a story point out of this, as making sense for them to join the Alliance wasn’t the reason why the Blood Elves were given to the Horde by Blizzard.
I think calling it poor judgment is exactly the right term.
It wasn’t a mistake to call out Thalyssra. Her reasons were sound. I don’t think it’s wrong to distrust new allies. Those reasons are sound. The part where her judgment could be improved upon are doing so before the alliance with the nightborne is even a real thing. At that point, she’s discussing whether to help the nightborne or not, has seen Thalyssra already sacrifice for her beliefs and has a lay of the situation at hand. The wise choice is to work with the nightborne, which is why she’s there to aid them.
Nothing is gained by questioning Thalyssra’s loyalty at that time. Nothing is gained by asking what’s different between Thalyssra and Azshara and Ellisande. Because that difference is already shown; Thalyssra’s willing to endanger herself for her people; those others never were.
Calling it more than a moment of poor judgment, as some would do, is when it’s unfair. But saying there are better times and places to bring up old wounds, to voice mistrust in a new ally? I think that is more than fair.
I cringe mostly when I read people taking the game too seriously and blame the players for a bad BAD story.
And in game, everytime an enemy taunts me. I know you are the bad guy ok?
Or worse “MY DEATH CHANGES NOTHING!”
So sick of EVERY enemy pretending to be smarter than you.
Not solely Ellisande, but her and her direct cadre of followers made the choice for all the people. I paraphased, and probably should have been more specific. It’s in Chronicles though, if you need a reference.
I agree with you on most of your point here, except for this. Tyrande isn’t doubting what Thalyssra has done since the shield went down; there is no disputing that Thalyssra is working against the Legion.
Tyrande’s skepticism is based on what could happen after. Can Tyrande and the Alliance/Horde (whatever, really) trust the Nightborne, who betrayed everyone once before.
With this logic though? The Horde were willing to show themselves about conflict by joining with the Alliance at the Broken shore, and we saw how that was twisted up in the end. Just because people are willing to endanger themselves “now” doesn’t mean that a day, a week, or a month later they won’t turn on you.
And given what Tyrande has been through in her life, I find it very reasonable to be untrusting of people’s motives, regardless of how they behave in the moment. WoW is full of erratic twists and turns; everyone should be paranoid as hell right now.
Chronicle is why I said I don’t think there’s anything to support your statement:
- Though they had thwarted the attempt to create a new portal, the rebellious Highborne had no plans to join the night elf resistance and continue fighting the Legion.
No worries, soon enough Shadowlands will reveal that Sylvanas was responsible for Camp T! It was step 475 in her 92,385 step plan.
…she was also secretly the rock that was used to kill Tiffin Wrynn. Not ‘she threw the rock’ because that would be too simple. She WAS the rock. She’s a disguise genius, always 3 disguises ahead. It was step 52.
They were also the exact same people who ran and hid back then, not descendants of the people who did. And Tyrande was one of the people they did it to, not a descendant who grew up hearing tales of what happened.
Tyrande was not in a “first contact” diplomacy situation like Liadrin was or even Vereesa. Tyrande had history with these people.
And ultimately, I think where we disagree is I feel the proper time, especially given the present threat of the Legion, would be to discuss the after-effect later. Not necessarily when the dust has all settled, but when the alliance has had some time to take effect. Doing so during the discussion phase is poor judgment.
You disagree, and I see the merit in laying all cards on the table right from the get-go. I don’t think doing so when infernals just rained down from the sky and you have a force ready to help you get one of the five McGuffins to stop the invasion is the proper time… But I can see why you might. I can think of a few good arguments for it.
I mean… Ahem. I could go for hot takes here and a few unfair ones, but I’d rather give you the respectful response you deserve.
Neither the Horde nor the Alliance should base their responses or interactions with other groups on how those two factions treat each other. There are decades of bad blood, active war, betrayals, manipulations, invasions and so on between them. The length of time they aren’t actively at war is significantly shorter than the times they are, made worse because the Horde is a recent invention. Using each other as a template for how to approach diplomatic situations just sounds poorly thought out.
I’d like to point out the number of times she has been betrayed directly isn’t that large, given over ten thousand years of life. There’s Azshara and Fandrel… I’ve got to be forgetting a few others there. Not bad for a woman who will murder her prison guards when they won’t release a prisoner who had been labelled a high risk threat by his own twin brother.
Did Sylvanas also Corrupt Archimonde and Kil’Jaden? Has Sargeras been mooching off her deeds like a fraud? 
WHY ARE YOU GIVING THE DEVS IDEAS!!! DAMMIT JULIA!!!
Well clearly Sylvanas’ aim with non-bow projectiles needs a lot of work cause she missed Stormwind pretty bad with that Giant Sword…so of course she blamed someone else for that one… 
As if she were aiming for Stormwind. Obviously she hit her target square. The master plan is always perfect after all. To cause the most death ever, she had to target a depopulated zone. It’ll all make sense in Shadowlands after we find out that she was secretly behind suggesting to Aman’thul putting Saggybutt in charge of fighting for the pantheon.
Some horde players when the nightborne debate was up in the air.
“yeah tyrande was mean to the nightborne!!” and of course i have seen that term applied.
hell , even alynsa in this very post said it.
well the idea is that you hate them precisely because they feel that are better than you so is more satisfying when you kill them!.
it seems like it worked!
Only issue with this one it also presumes that Genn had Meta knowledge that the Horde had no choice to retreat at broken shore and hadn’t done so maliciously to get him and the Alliance killed.
Either he knew the Horde had no choice and shouldn’t have attacked. Or he didn’t know and Alliance side it was a Justified attack against someone that had attempted to get them killed.
Either way Ultimately he ended up being Vindicated for his actions as now we know Sylvanas was upto no good the whole time.
I mean yeah, to not discuss it would be to invite a repeat of both the WoTA, and the Broken Shore. So - discussion is always good lol.
Regardless, we’re both SOL because Blizzard tends to spin decisions without any justification or reason given in the game. So really, we’re all just spinning our wheels.
I mean, there’s nothing else to base their futures on; they fight big bad guys together occasionally but that’s it. And even in those instances, there is still betrayal. All they have is a history of fighting each other.
For instance, this:
It’s often overlooked, but I like to bring this one up because it’s pretty clear cut. Post Battle of the Undercity in WoTLK, the introduction to the Icecrown zone is the Alliance players responding to an all out defeat at the Broken Front.
The Alliance forces were assaulting the front entrance to Icecrown, battling back the scourge, and then the Horde comes in from behind and decimates the Alliance forces, costing both factions the opportunity to gain a foot hold.
Even when the factions are unified, they’re still at each other’s throats. There should be no peace or trust, because it just doesn’t make sense the way it’s been written.
There is absolutely no way to build up that relationship while at the same time maintaining the integrity of a sensible narrative. This is especially true since Blizzard never gives us a good view of what’s happening outside of the main cast.
How do farmers feel about the armistice? Are they furious and viewing it as a betrayal? Are they happy to be done with the war? What about the families who lost everything at Teldrassil? What about the families of farmers who went to Andorhal, only to be butchered and forcibly raised against their will?
These perspectives have become entirely worthless, even though they should be the driving factor behind the main characters’ decisions.
Magnitude certainly outweighs occurrences. The fate of the world is a lot different than if someone told Tyrande she couldn’t sit with them at the cafeteria.
Here is a thought. What if Genn was being guided by an unseen hand?