I can’t see any reason, lore wise, why demon hunter’s would care about the Horde vs Alliance.
We let them out to help us with the Legion threat, that is their entire reason for existing. That threat is gone, the legion is largely eradicated and it’s leader is locked up. If anything it would make the most sense for the demon hunters to stay with Illidan, or maybe roam around hunting down the remaining demons scattered around the world. The idea that these elves, who gave up their sight and sanity for the sake of great power to take down the Legion, would upon the Legions demise all of a sudden join in the faction war and start killing their fellow Illidari because they have on a blue shirt is pretty ridiculous.
Is there any explanation for this in the game that I have missed?
How many Demon Hunters have you seen in the lore in Battle for Azeroth? I don’t know where you get the idea many are even taking part at all.
Personally, I would say a character could be motivated by wanting to help their people (the Night Elves or Blood Elves) in spite of everything. But again, I don’t see much evidence many are doing anything with us.
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Most Night Elf Demon Hunters are men and women who swore psychotic oaths of eternal vengeance against an enemy for attacking Kalimdor. What makes you think that this sort of person wouldn’t respond with equal vigor to Sylvanas?
Blood Elves have less motivation (in the same way that the entire Horde has no motivation for this expac) but the basic principle of “I swore to protect Silvermoon at ANY cost” applies.
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Yeah that’s a fair point, I suppose I was coming from mainly a gameplay perspective, obviously demon hunters are still a thing and participating in the faction war from that point of view. But yeah you’re right, now that I think about it, they haven’t really been a bit part of the story.
But that is still problematic IMO. If they aren’t participating that should be addressed somewhere, it wouldn’t be hard to throw a line in somewhere about how the Illidari as a whole want no part of this faction war as they have other goals or something like that. They could still leave the door open for the PCs to be outliers who choose to join in, or even rebels who split apart from the rest. I don’t know… just the idea of the Illidari as a whole turning on eachother and slaughtering one another over Horde vs Alliance just seems super weak to me.
My guess is that the whole reason they became Illidari to begin with was to protect their homeland. Just because they all hung out with Illidan together doesn’t make them best friends. It makes even more sense for them to turn on each other now that Sargeras and the Legion are neutralized.
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tbh I think night elves have tons of reason to be invested. Their whole thing is that they cry and whine and snivel about how much they sacrificed to save their people. If their people are being burned to death, why wouldn’t they care?
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If only Tyrande and Malfurion had used their demon hunters in full force, perhaps the night elves MIGHT have stood a better chance against the Horde invasion. As for the Legion class orders, they seem likely to splinter anyway, the Silver Hand has already.
With the Legion gone, they have nothing better to do.
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Why do you think either have any of them under their command?
In the illidan novel the Bloodelves and Nightelves did not get along very well. I think there was some lines in it about them killing each other in training and just tensions generally being bad.
I wrote about this in the DH forums awhile back at the start of BfA, which I’ll summarize here;
Basically I see it like how a military unit would be demobilized at the end of a war. Similar to how the US demobilized a lot of divisions at the end of WWI and WWII.
The faction leader (Kayn or Altruis) would probably realize that the Illidari’s purpose has been fulfilled and that to force his order to choose sides in the next war would fracture them. So until the next Burning Legion threat, he would allow the individual Illidari to use their powers as they saw fit.
There’s still plenty of demonic presences in Azeroth where they could put their skills to good use. Night Elves would probably not have much of an issue finding motivation; defending their world against the Burning Legion --> defending their home against Sylvanas etc. In another thread it was also said that it’s possible all Demon Hunters just look at undead generally as Burning Legion-lite knockoffs since the Scourge was originally a tool of the Burning Legion so another thing could be seeing them up in the WPL/EPL helping to clean up the lands there.
As for Blood Elf Illidari their motivations for the war could be simple, such as family allegiances, or old loyalty to Silvermoon, or they see the Horde as their adopted family. Or more complex, really this could go on for pages in the RP forums =P.
As for actual story involvement by Blizzard though I feel that is unlikely. The Demon Hunter story is so much tied to Illidan and with Legion over I doubt them bringing them back into the narrative forefront. Which in some ways is a shame, seeing how people deal with the aftermath of a war can be at least as interesting as how they went through it, in particular I would love to see Kor’vas, Allari and some of the other notable Illidari NPC’s get some screen time =D
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The thing is, I largely agree with the theory behind all this. This is what I generally assume.
But if someone is going to posit Malfurion and Tyrande are somehow at fault for not using their Demon Hunters, then I think the headcanon that they’re there at all much be demonstrated further.
The Illidari remind me - in a very small way - of the American Armed forces between 1840 and 1865.
A lot of Southern and Northern Generals earned their ranks, respect, and reputations during the Mexican-American War in the 1840s. They were united in a purpose despite their backgrounds and had respect and camaraderie. (The Illidari against the Legion)
Yet - when that purpose was done, and the North and South came to war, the Military split mostly along lines based on their Homeland.
Many Southern generals were not proponents of secession but they would fight for their homeland.
I see lines being drawn in such a way among the Illidari.
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Why do you think they have to actually care about one faction or the other to join the faction war? They’re rampaging murder-hobos, just like the rest of us.
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Because Blizzard said if you want to progress you need azerite and the faction war is thr best way to get that, duh/.
The same might be said for death knights as well.
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Well, DKs also have the added reason that the Lich King has sent them in as a fifth column, since the duped the KotEB into accepting his dominion once again.
The only ones I see crying and sniveling are orcs about their honor and Horde survivors given PTSD by Malfurion.
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Night elves have a huge reason to join. Blood elves it depends if they agree with Sylvanas and if they feel their people are in danger.
It’s a random thought, but if void elves are former blood elves who embraced the Void, I wonder whether blood elf demon hunters could theoretically become void elves as well.