Absolutley not. It destroyed the Blood Elves and made them in to light loving humans with long ears. It was a desaster and it made the belves rather boring.
Lorthemar had good moments, yes. But every time Liadrin is Leasing their story you could replace the Belves with humans. It’s sad.
That’s not canon. Some fan made it up.
Pretty sure it was in a book or something.
It came from a ‘AskCdev Q&A’ the third one if I remember correctly.
Garithos blamed the elves because he believed that troops used to defend Quel’thalas could instead have been used to defend ‘Blackwood’ which was the village he grew up in. Blackwood was burned down by the Horde during the Second War.
Oh please.
The majority of non Sunfury Blood Elves were not these grim, edgy Blood Knights. I wish people stopped stopped acting like not dripping with edge means being a human.
It was Blizzard’s choice to not put much effort into characterizing Blood Knights and making it a binary of “Naaru torturer, 40k Space Marine death trial runners” and “generic commander personality”.
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True. It was also Blizzard’s decision to ensure that Blood Elves literally owe their sanity and well-being to the Draenai faction leader.
Neither decision seemed good.
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I would not go nearly as far as to say it destroyed the Blood Elves. Its a great arc in which there is a problem for their entire people, the loss of the Sunwell the remainders afflicted with withdrawal and deterioration into Wretched, that does get resolved through some, mildly, coherent questing and end game content.
Is the whole ‘this was M’uru’s plan all along’ out of place? Sure. Is the sudden epiphany and dedication to the light also out of place? Sure. But is it a bad story that destroyed the Blood Elves? Not at all. Elves are still pulling from the Sunwell as they have. Its just a mix of Light and Arcane now. It hasn’t destroyed the Magisters, Rangers, Spell Breakers, or even Blood Knights. It hasn’t changed their culture, theme, or world outlook. The only thing that was truly changed was Liadrin’s devotion to the light.
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The Blood Elves owe the Draenei nothing.
The Blood Elves personally joined in on the fight against Kael’thas and the Legion, and Velen cleansed the Sunwell for his own and the naaru’s benefit.
Deterioration into wretched was not a result of the Sunwell lacking… atleast not directly. It is just the over-consumption of magic which lead to them becoming wretched. A small detail.
Fair. But as one of my thesis advisors dismissively says, “Details…” 
Also Velen is a genuinely really nice guy. He knows very well the way the Legion can corrupt a people.
If the faction conflict wasn’t about people turning their brain off and wanting to mass murder the other side until they remember the mutual threat (which twice has included an obviously evil Warchief), members of the factions helping each other out wouldn’t be a big deal. Fits Warcraft 3 themes.
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Yeah… it is a minor thing. Then again, differing the withered from the wretched might be a nice thing.
The worst is when people believe the wretched state is a result of fel.
Yeah. It was more of a brief overview. The conditions that bring elves to a withered or wretched state is kinda inconsequential to the overall narrative presented. In either case, lack of Sunwell makes bad things happen to elves, which can bring them to such a state.
To express my idea on the topic I have to rely on the information I can’t confirm / check, as the original source is not available.
First of all, I’d point out the original concepts of the blood elves. They were a lot more of a subversion of the usual ideas about the elves. Just like the original night elves supposedly to be “not just a yet another wood elves”, similarly blood elves supposed to take a different and darker turn, the one that would create a serious divide with the alliance and solidify their presence in the horde. For story enthusiasts more info could be found in:
But the follow up seems to be that the owners of the company, vivendy at the time, had a different idea on the topic. And a bunch of developers were fired. So, whatever was going on after the original assets for TBC were created, resulted in the slowly but surely shifting in the direction that started to be apparet in the next expansion, WotLK, but fully start to blossom in Cata.
A bit more wordy description:
Shortly after WOW had launched, the game had become a huge success, performing much better than Blizzard had anticipated. In the years leading up to launch, Blizzard had hired many new employees. Top executives now wanted to do a mass firing of these hires.
Kern was opposed to the firing, saying “we told them that we were like a family.” The team spent the last 2 years in crunch time and didn’t deserve to lose their jobs. He also didn’t believe that the firings were necessary because WOW was a huge financial success. Instead, he proposed normal performance reviews and firing only those hires who weren’t performing up to standards.
In a closed-door meeting of 4 or 5 top Blizzard executives, Kern was told that with WOW’s success “we’re a real business now.” Kern says this was the moment when “big corporate gaming” thinking similar to Electronic Arts began to take over at Blizzard. He quit shortly thereafter. Blizzard went ahead with the firings and they were hugely unpopular and damaging to team morale.
Although, I am unable to find the actual interview with M. Kern to confirm or deny any of the claims, so, here is the source I used:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/9z1y57/mark_kern_lead_developer_on_wow_tells_the_story/
Whether or not it’s correct about the events unfolding shortly after the release of WoW, I can’t tell.
But it seems like that would fit. If indeed they cut the development after the basics were implemented, that would have affect of the story and execution. TBC stuff was mostly clear, WotLK was a mix, and later - we know what happened later.
Plus, likely Metzen and other original creators had to work on a bunch of other projects other than refining and iterating WoW, which did not really help. And could be a reason for gradual shift from what supposed to be there, to a mix of bits we have after.
gl hf
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Exactly.
Potentially.
The only real negative effects we see are heavy withdrawals, mostly those who dealt with some kind of magic before, thus rangers were hardly affected by these withdrawals.
The only direct and extremely harmful thing, was supposedly the death of the youngest, the oldest and the ill - which appearantly was what lead Kael’thas to believe that the High Elves would die without a magical source.
We are not entirely sure what the long-reaching consequences of a lack of such a source would mean for the High Elves, as they only went a couple of years… maybe… without.
Blood Elves still don’t owe the draenei anything.
As said, he did it for his own and the naaru’s gain.
Like a nation paying you to go to a gym, to workout and get fit, only to then have you join the army.
Garithos hate was never explained in any book.
Hm it’s possible I missed that, but I would have to see it.
More and more we simply see some Blood elves as “light hippies” and nothing more. Or at least a good part of their representation has become that. Before they were more interesting to me, deeper and they had something to archive.
Even the pre-WoW versions were more interesting than the light knights they are now.
I agree with you. Destroying was a bit over the top and they had a god role in MoP. As you say however, this light cult and how they are portrayed nowadays seems… out of place. The Velen and Sunwell thing was also strange, but oh well.
True.
It is kinda annoying how much only the Blood Knights are used.
The only time they had some kind of variety was in MoP during the Thunder Isle campaign and Siege of Orgrimmar.
Other expansions turned them into Liadrin and co.
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Personally, I’d love to see the Blood Knights take a turn back. Not a complete twist to the edgy fandom want of commanding the light and sucking it from Light sources like a stolen Naaru, but calling upon it/commanding it like Arcane magic from the Sunwell. Tone it down from the ‘typical’ devotion to the light to use it, what you see with humans, draenei, and even tauren. To actually tap into it as a source of power. Blizzard has said that the light is more so will power than actual morality or devotion, hence like Scarlets using the light. So to make it just ‘different colored arcane magic but can also heal you’ with Elves would be a-okay in my book.
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