Where do people get their blood elf lore from?

Community General Discussion
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I keep hearing people think that the “blood” in “blood elf” or “blood knight” refers to literal blood.

I have heard everything from them being vampires to them using blood “magic” as their source of power.

The term “blood elf” in warcraft three was explained in lore to refer to two things:
1a) in elf language, the word used for “elf” means child.
1b) in elf language, ALL royal high elves were called “blood elf” or “children of the blood” to refer to royal heritage.
2) after arthas destroyed the sunwell, the rapidly maddening kael’thas declared that ALL high elves would call themselves “children of the blood” because while their royal family was all murdered they are still of the same “master race” as their fallen kings.

“blood elf” was therefore (narrowly) used originally to refer to the royal family, and then widely to refer to a group of racial supremacist high elves who followed kael’thas after arthas blew up the sunwell. the name just stuck from there because it was the name they went with when they joined “the red worldwide superpower.”

“blood knight” refers to a fringe group of ex-spellbreakers and ex-priests who were corrupted by the sunwell exploding, and decided to be the vanguard of this new “communal royalty” of the “supreme people.” they captured a naa’ru and tried to use it to “power” their new order, then fashioned their order after human paladins for aesthetic purposes.

most of the blood elves ended up being the enemies you killed during the sunwell plateau war, which is why there are lore paintings of lady liadrin (the leader of the blood knights) tearing apart her blood knight tabard after putting on the “shattered sun” tabard as a sign that she abandoned her racial supremacy to try to be a real paladin. the shattered sun soldiers were a mix of draenei helping ex blood knights to be real paladins instead of the corrupt stormtroopers they were before; each of them broken, guilty, and looking for redemption in the light though unworthy of it.

once the sunwell plateau war ended, lady liadrin then renamed her half of the shattered sun as “blood knights” again; this time being the literal royal guard of the new king lor’themar.

none of them drink blood, none of them really have anything to do with blood (that I know of). so where did people get this idea from? maybe confuse them with the scourge elves in northrend who DO drink blood, as arthas’ direct insult against the entire blood elf race for opposing him and building themselves back up?

the whole blood elf / blood knight story arc in tbc is to show all the blood elves as irredeemable, corrupt addicts and mass murderers; who then try to be redeemed anyways and succeed.

the whole blood elf starter zone is full of degenerate nonsense and evil; so that when you get to ghostlands they smack face first into what arthas did, you start to realize that you might have just become just as evil as arthas in your attempt to get revenge against him.

then eventually everything about the blood elves is challenged throughout the story, and eventually all blood elves basically become (somewhat) high elves again after sunwell plateau.

this is never really told well in game, because of how zones do not change as you level up (therefore the blood elf starter areas never actually reform like they do in lore, and stay forever as scum), and ESPECIALLY because blood elves were made into a horde race (for real life business reasons) so their redemption has been soured by taking part in every atrocity azeroth has faced since tbc.

I think in lore, the blood elves mostly keep to themselves and are only allied with the horde for political reasons, with only a small part of their royal family (and therefore the blood knights) and a mercenary-staffed military apparatus (like a foreign legion) even having the slightest interaction with the horde. this is not at all reflected in game, because well over half the horde players are blood elves; and silvermoon might as well not exist outside of tbc.

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The bathroom stall in Goldshire, mostly. Seems pretty realistic tbh

Also helps when I forget to bring in a newspaper

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reality is people most anti blood elves no little to nothing about the lore itself let alone blood elf lore. the blood elves lore is extremly detailed and some of it is shared with the night elves and now nightborne going back to the sundering.

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Blood Elves are High Elves. They are the remaining few leftover from the attack from Arthas. They were nearly exterminated because they are weak and superficial. Of course they were slaughtered.

Why they joined the horde, I do not know. But they are not horde.

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well you can thank Garithos for us joining the horde

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one more thing the people who are pro high elf for alliance have no legit lore reasons to have it other than wanting it which they now have their high elves in void elves. infact people dont even realize there was some cultural aspects the high elves had before most of the nation was destroyed by the scourge( no one had a chance against that army it was quite litterally a superior version of the maldraxxi army which was supposed to be the best there is) also blood elves banished the void elves not only because of them using void but whos teachings they used.

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if you play the starting quests you will realized the night elves and dwarves kinda forced them into the horde with their actions.

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No, blood elves were the racial supremacist sect that followed kael’thas. There are other high elves, but they were considered race traitors and so live elsewhere.

void elves were high elves that were kicked out for being dangerous heretics and got sucked into a void portal, only getting spit out later.

high elves mostly live in stormwind or dalaran (though most of the dalaran ones were eagerly murdered by the horde during mop).

Nonsense, all actual high elves are not only alliance but live in stormwind.

first expansion races were horde ogres and blood elf (then high elf) alliance.

this was changed last minute because chinese players demanded a pretty race for the horde so they would get their girlfriends to play. much of the blood elf lore even copies a lot of communist chinese rhetoric to boot; no idea how their reformation out of racial supremacy and totalitarianism made it through though.

this is why the whole blood elf redemption story during tbc makes zero sense at all with them as horde.

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Blood Elves are High elves. Stop.

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After the Dark Animus we do see blood elves experiment with blood magic. Such an example is in the alliance Nazmir invasion event they see a lot of blood elves utilize blood magic.

The only blood elves that drink blood that I know about are either undead or fel blood.

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that was in mists of pandaria thats titan tech well titan construct tech.

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I was under the impression that it was because of the blood spilt during the Scourge invasion, an “in memoriam” sort of thing? Not a bloodline/eliitist thing

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I write a lot of my own. I’m too impatient to wait for Blizzard.

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Not whatsoever.

they were a part of (I already said this so many times why bother), and high elves live in Human lands.

Most of the alliance mages in their military are all high elves.

blizzard’s staff cannot allow anything valuable for alliance, so the lore and their prejudices smack face first over and over again.

that probably is just third string blizzard writers getting their lore from the forums. not the first time.

we are both right.

it’s a memory of the magesty of their people and the total wiping out of their whole royal family. therefore without a royal family, nad just being superior than everyone else, they are all “royal” now.

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Pure edge.

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ya thing is they were always just high elves ( aka the highborne ) and the racism thing was an all elf thing night elves included. and the name blood elves or children of the blood was in honor of those who fell against the scourge nothing to do with royalty that part the guy made up or is some part of the role playing realms fan cannon story they made that has gone around.

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It’s from warcraft 3.

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rename them Boujee Elves imo.

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[quote=“Iandore-thrall, post:14, topic:1238793”]

reality is this part you are wrong and just added your fan cannon to it.

nothing to do with your answer it was a part of the games story in mists of pandaria .

[quote=“Iandore-thrall, post:14, topic:1238793”]

that probably is just third string blizzard writers getting their lore from the forums. not the first time.

it was never about royal family the other part about being a name in honor of was the lore correct one you were wrong on that part.

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high elves live where they always have, in quel’thalas and dalaran

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