Theorycrafting: Blood elves joining Horde.

[Feebas233]

I heard from one of the discussion that blood elves or any survivors of Thalassian won't be joining the Horde in the future updates like they did in TBC.
Any lore reason for blood elves not joining the horde.
do you think Blizzard made a mistake by letting blood elves join the horde in retail?

[Nightowl]

High elves opening their doors to wayward breatheren? If you were a renegade blood elf would you join Horde, or your cousins working with Alliance, whose human elements have nothing to do with Garithos since he was a Lordaeronian noble and not a Stormwindian like the ingame humans are.

As for blizzard making mistake, I say yes. I believe that they blew their load too early with Outland and went a bit too much balls to the walls with the whole idea. We killed off Illidan, Kael, Vasj AND even Zul'jin who they basically pulled out of nowhere just to kill off! Not to mention the fact that they retconned original Draenei, perhaps the only original race ever created by Blizzard, into Space Tieflings from DnD and they even got away with it somehow.

"Future updates"
Honestly man. I like this server as much as everyone else, but a new expansion the way we are used to is simply not happening with this team - it's too much work. If I were you I wouldn't hold my breath on anything past High Elven Kingdom raid/zone/dungeon.

Maybe I'm wrong, and I'll be the first to concede that I do hope that I am, but I just don't see a full blown outland expansion on the horizon.

[Jongyi]

To answer the question, why would blood elves want to join orcs and trolls who basically tried to genocide them in the second war.
And why would they trust forsaken (mind control or not).
Blizzard blew the lore with TBC nonsense.

About Nightowl said, I partially agree with you that full scale expansion like BFA, Legion or Dragonflight won't happen. But i can one zone per patch release is still possible. Smaller scale and more grounded approach is feasible i guess.

[Ishilu]

I heard from one of the discussion that blood elves or any survivors of Thalassian won't be joining the Horde in the future updates like they did in TBC.
Any lore reason for blood elves not joining the horde.
do you think Blizzard made a mistake by letting blood elves join the horde in retail?

Absolutely. For me, "alliance vs horde" was never "good vs evil" but rather "orderly civilisation vs freedom and savagery". Pretty elves don't fit into my horde. I like to see Orgrimmar full of orcs, trolls, tauren and goblins as it should be, and not full of prettier humans with pointy ears like in retail.

Giving both factions new races and via that access to all classes made sense in TBC. The devs probably understood that they didn't want to tune raid encounters for the next 2 years (as we all know, they canceled WoW in November 2008, quitting while they were ahead in the game) for 2 factions with different toolsets.

Giving pretty elves to the horde also was an economically smart move. If we look at asian RPGs, we see a lot more androgynous and "pretty" characters than in western RPGs, as illustrated here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u1oXhiHJM0. So they basically made the game more interesting for the asian market and anime fans .

Considering cross-faction play in turtle WoW, I personally don't see a reason for adding Blood elves to the horde. If you want to play pretty, just play high elf .

[Trymv1]

To answer the question, why would blood elves want to join orcs and trolls who basically tried to genocide them in the second war.
And why would they trust forsaken (mind control or not).

Because most warmongering Orcs from the 2nd war are in Blackrock, Thrall's group is clearly out to calm things down even post 3rd war.

The Darkspear are trolls theyve never interacted with prior (and even then they started Neutral to them in TBC, the Darkspear envoy in Silvermoon acknowledges the harsh side-eye he gets).

And when they were down and out after Kael'thas bailed, Sylvanas was the one to answer the call for help and talk the new Horde into supporting them.

The reasons made sense despite it being an obvious move to just give Horde a 'pretty' race since that was a huge topic towards Horde faction imbalance at the time.

[Jongyi]

To answer the question, why would blood elves want to join orcs and trolls who basically tried to genocide them in the second war.
And why would they trust forsaken (mind control or not).

Because most warmongering Orcs from the 2nd war are in Blackrock, Thrall's group is clearly out to calm things down even post 3rd war.

The Darkspear are trolls theyve never interacted with prior (and even then they started Neutral to them in TBC, the Darkspear envoy in Silvermoon acknowledges the harsh side-eye he gets).

And when they were down and out after Kael'thas bailed, Sylvanas was the one to answer the call for help and talk the new Horde into supporting them.

The reasons made sense despite it being an obvious move to just give Horde a 'pretty' race since that was a huge topic towards Horde faction imbalance at the time.

A lot of orcs participated in the attempted genocide of the elves and many of them are still the Horde.
And devs stated that forsaken won't introduce the blood elves to Horde as they themselves are already on the thin ice.

[Talenne]

Because it was a narrative mistake to put Blood Elves on the Horde in the first place, they simply don't thematically fit the faction in any way and that became more apparent when they stopped being mana and holy light vampires with at least some edge to them in favor of becoming just red high elves, making them stick out like a sore thumb even worse.

Not to mention the way they did it was completely half-arsed, making Alliance commit terrorist actions in their homeland for no discernible or well-explained reason. It was a trademark villain bat moment that to this day people still try to fill the gaps in as to why they did it and Blizzard refusing to elaborate.

Furthermore it definitely did do a number on Alliance faction pride, removing a historical ally whose aesthetics mesh perfectly with the Alliance and giving the Horde a race that's much more human-looking than even the playable humans, causing a snowball effect that eventually did lead to Blizzard having to add cross faction grouping anyway because the Alliance was hemorrhaging in player numbers, whether that was because the Blood Elf model was simply more attractive than any of the Alliance options or because there was a larger representation of players doing the actual content of the game on the Horde, it has clearly proven to not have been a good idea for Blizzard to do in the long run.

[Bigspliffa22]

Blood Elves should just be a renegage cult to Kael'thas who sold out to the Burning Legion and high off fel

[Bruhh]

I still think making the High/Blood Elves a neutral race would have benefitted them way more in the long run. Same with the Draenei.

[Gladeshadow]

I still think making the High/Blood Elves a neutral race would have benefitted them way more in the long run. Same with the Draenei.

The high/blood elves are a mainstay of the Alliance. They have been since Warcraft 2 where they first appeared, alongside dwarves and gnomes. Players of that era want them to be on Alliance and, as others already noted, it made absolutely no sense for them to join the Horde no matter how many mental gymnastics one did. Same really for being neutral. One can say, “well, things change.” Sure they do. But we’re playing a fantasy game here. Change for its own sake alienates players.

[Talenne]

I still think making the High/Blood Elves a neutral race would have benefitted them way more in the long run. Same with the Draenei.

The high/blood elves are a mainstay of the Alliance. They have been since Warcraft 2 where they first appeared, alongside dwarves and gnomes. Players of that era want them to be on Alliance and, as others already noted, it made absolutely no sense for them to join the Horde no matter how many mental gymnastics one did. Same really for being neutral. One can say, “well, things change.” Sure they do. But we’re playing a fantasy game here. Change for its own sake alienates players.

This 100x

Was even funnier when Blizzard went right back to putting High Elves all over the place as NPC's in Alliance areas and you notice how their buildings are used far more in conjunction with the Human and Dwarf buildings whereas Blood Elves never have their architecture mixed in with Horde structures because they were never conceptualized to fit with the Horde.

Alliance definitely lost something and lost it hard by not having High Elves return in playable form and them trying to do weird shark jumping retcons to fill that hole with races that don't fit the Alliance.

[Karrados]

I feel like people are ignoring the real reason why Blizzard put in the Blood Elves on the Horde side: Horde was dying, they needed a popular race.

And people are ignoring one fact from Warcraft 3: 90% of the High Elven population was massacred during the game with a sizeable chunk leaving for Outland.

There should not have been enough left to make it a proper faction for either side along with the fact that many Elves would not be willing to Ally themself with Humans after they screwed them over in Lordaeron along with not fitting into the Horde which should have left them a neutral force.

People love to praise Turtle for their "Daring step" to give Alliance the High Elf race but at the same time they did it worse than Blizzard did.

Look at the newly added races in the form of High Elves and Goblins, look at their population numbers and then you will see how badly Turtle screwed up.

If it wasn't for Cross Faction Grouping then the Horde would have died out a long time ago.

But after seeing the most recent patch and a huge part of it being an Alliance-content patch then I am not really surprised by what they did.

[Mativh]

I feel like people are ignoring the real reason why Blizzard put in the Blood Elves on the Horde side: Horde was dying, they needed a popular race.

And people are ignoring one fact from Warcraft 3: 90% of the High Elven population was massacred during the game with a sizeable chunk leaving for Outland.

There should not have been enough left to make it a proper faction for either side along with the fact that many Elves would not be willing to Ally themself with Humans after they screwed them over in Lordaeron along with not fitting into the Horde which should have left them a neutral force.

People love to praise Turtle for their "Daring step" to give Alliance the High Elf race but at the same time they did it worse than Blizzard did.

Look at the newly added races in the form of High Elves and Goblins, look at their population numbers and then you will see how badly Turtle screwed up.

If it wasn't for Cross Faction Grouping then the Horde would have died out a long time ago.

But after seeing the most recent patch and a huge part of it being an Alliance-content patch then I am not really surprised by what they did.

The Blood Elves were betrayed by one Lordaeron Human. They are an ancient and wise enough race to understand that it was bad luck to be under a command of that individual during a dire situation, and that it doesn't outweight thousands of years of peaceful and friendly co-living between the Human Eastern Kingdoms and Quel'thalas. Why would they be judgemental towards the southern human kingdom of Stormwind. They have proven in the lore that they don't generalize as much as for example Night Elves or Humans do.
Some say the Blood Elves joining the Horde didn't make sense, to me both paths make sense. If you look at it the way the Forsaken joined, which was becoming allies of the Horde, not exactly a part of it, that's what Blood Elves also did, both the Horde and these ex-alliance civilizations gained strategic allies.
However I prefer the Alliance having High Elves.
Regarding how many High Elves were wiped out; you don't know if it was 60% or 95%, only thing is known that the majority of the ones in Silvermoon got killed by the Scourge, but there were survivors both in and outside of Quel'thalas. Akthough according to the lore most of the ones led by Kael'thas left to Outland, some could've deserted before the departure, as it was a drastic decision to tap into fel magic, it is not known how many were left in total, we can as well pressume that it was enough, it definitely isn't far fetched that the survivors from various regions would get together to rebuild their civilization. In real life history populations of various peoples faced extinction and reemerged from smaller numbers many times.
You're also implying that Blizzard when making TBC predicted that Blood Elves will restore the balance of the factions because people otherwise heavily preferred alliance races, and that Turtle WoW has a balance problem that got exacerbated by adding High Elves because of the devs having a pro-alliance bias.. With all due respect, to me it seems that many of your statements are impressions influenced a lot by your own biases.

[Jongyi]

I feel like people are ignoring the real reason why Blizzard put in the Blood Elves on the Horde side: Horde was dying, they needed a popular race.

And people are ignoring one fact from Warcraft 3: 90% of the High Elven population was massacred during the game with a sizeable chunk leaving for Outland.

There should not have been enough left to make it a proper faction for either side along with the fact that many Elves would not be willing to Ally themself with Humans after they screwed them over in Lordaeron along with not fitting into the Horde which should have left them a neutral force.

People love to praise Turtle for their "Daring step" to give Alliance the High Elf race but at the same time they did it worse than Blizzard did.

Look at the newly added races in the form of High Elves and Goblins, look at their population numbers and then you will see how badly Turtle screwed up.

If it wasn't for Cross Faction Grouping then the Horde would have died out a long time ago.

But after seeing the most recent patch and a huge part of it being an Alliance-content patch then I am not really surprised by what they did.

I mean Blizzard screw themselves up by adding blood elves to Horde. All the faction imbalance and lore inconsistency start from TBC. Alliance was basically dying in retail until blizzard add void elves

[Talenne]

I feel like people are ignoring the real reason why Blizzard put in the Blood Elves on the Horde side: Horde was dying, they needed a popular race.

And people are ignoring one fact from Warcraft 3: 90% of the High Elven population was massacred during the game with a sizeable chunk leaving for Outland.

There should not have been enough left to make it a proper faction for either side along with the fact that many Elves would not be willing to Ally themself with Humans after they screwed them over in Lordaeron along with not fitting into the Horde which should have left them a neutral force.

People love to praise Turtle for their "Daring step" to give Alliance the High Elf race but at the same time they did it worse than Blizzard did.

Look at the newly added races in the form of High Elves and Goblins, look at their population numbers and then you will see how badly Turtle screwed up.

If it wasn't for Cross Faction Grouping then the Horde would have died out a long time ago.

But after seeing the most recent patch and a huge part of it being an Alliance-content patch then I am not really surprised by what they did.

I mean, not really, from what I've seen so far the questing consistently shows High Elves to be a refugee race with a destroyed homeland more than retail did where Blood Elves can form massive armies and Quel'thalas looks mostly untarnished.

If we're talking player numbers though, that simply can't be helped, WoW's artstyle pretty much leads to the High Elf model being the best one in the game with a human-like design that outclasses even the playable humans who are too army man overly muscular to properly represent what a player likes to see in their character. I don't equate player numbers with lore, I just look at how the setting presents the actual state of a playable race and so far it comes across as far more respectable to how dire the High Elves have it than how Blizzard did it.

I mean Blizzard screw themselves up by adding blood elves to Horde. All the faction imbalance and lore inconsistency start from TBC. Alliance was basically dying in retail until blizzard add void elves

And even then that didn't rescue the Alliance, because Void Elves were a half-arsed compromise with too much of an emo scene kid design that doesn't resonate with most people that want to play an elf version of themself in a fantasy game.

[Tamamo-no-Bae]

As others have pointed out, Blood elves joining the Horde never made sense. In fact, Blood elves all fled to Outland. The ones remaining on Azeroth that joined the Alliance are the High elven refugees.

After hearing rumors from survivors of Garithos's army about how the Blood elves betrayed the Alliance, many High elves have retained the ancestral moniker for their race and continue calling themselves Quel'dorei.

The Sin'dorei do exist. You will encounter a bunch of them if you look hard enough, Sin'dorei that have come to Azeroth from Outland.

[Trymv1]

You're also implying that Blizzard when making TBC predicted that Blood Elves will restore the balance of the factions

They DID predict that it would help balance the factions. Paladin was favored for PvE in Vanilla and a major complaint against the Horde races were they were 'ugly.'

So Blood Elves on Horde gave them both Paladin and a 'hot race' and Horde has practically dominated ever since.

[Karrados]

You're also implying that Blizzard when making TBC predicted that Blood Elves will restore the balance of the factions

They DID predict that it would help balance the factions. Paladin was favored for PvE in Vanilla and a major complaint against the Horde races were they were 'ugly.'

So Blood Elves on Horde gave them both Paladin and a 'hot race' and Horde has practically dominated ever since.

I mean all it takes is for people to take a look at the graph between the new races of High Elves and Goblins. If they still think "Races are not a leading factor for faction balance" then they are just dumb.

High Elves are the Second most popular race on Turtle, Goblins are the least played. Go figure.

[Adunai]

In my view, viewing the Horde as an intercontinental union of disjointed races was a mistake. If anything, I would rather have seen the Night Elves as part of the Horde and the Forsaken in the Alliance. Would have made more sense geographically and aesthetically - after all, the Night Elves are savage, and the Undead are just dead humans. (Blizzard actually used the flimsy reasoning of how both factions need at least one race on each continent... even though they clearly were able to put Kargath in the middle of an Alliance territory for the Horde.)

In the light of this model, the Blood Elves in the Horde are nonsense... although not for the reasons brought up by Blizzard. There is an Elf in Farstrider Retreat in TBC (Paelarin) who holds anti-Troll views, but the larger extrapolation is that the Elves hate the Horde overall - even though Thrall's Horde has little in common with that of Gul'dan and Orgrim (to the extent of actively fighting the Amani Trolls).

Although on the topic of Blood Elves on Turtle, I'm afraid, there might be a hateboner against the race as a whole? I mean, it's understandable, considering the High Elves being somewhat shafted for 20 years, but still, to me, they are by far the coolest archetype in all of Warcraft (with Kael'thas being reminiscent of Fëanáro, both epic tragic heroes).

[Whalemilk]

In my view, viewing the Horde as an intercontinental union of disjointed races was a mistake. If anything, I would rather have seen the Night Elves as part of the Horde and the Forsaken in the Alliance. Would have made more sense geographically and aesthetically - after all, the Night Elves are savage, and the Undead are just dead humans. (Blizzard actually used the flimsy reasoning of how both factions need at least one race on each continent... even though they clearly were able to put Kargath in the middle of an Alliance territory for the Horde.)

In the light of this model, the Blood Elves in the Horde are nonsense... although not for the reasons brought up by Blizzard. There is an Elf in Farstrider Retreat in TBC (Paelarin) who holds anti-Troll views, but the larger extrapolation is that the Elves hate the Horde overall - even though Thrall's Horde has little in common with that of Gul'dan and Orgrim (to the extent of actively fighting the Amani Trolls).

Although on the topic of Blood Elves on Turtle, I'm afraid, there might be a hateboner against the race as a whole? I mean, it's understandable, considering the High Elves being somewhat shafted for 20 years, but still, to me, they are by far the coolest archetype in all of Warcraft (with Kael'thas being reminiscent of Fëanáro, both epic tragic heroes).

Night elves in the horde and undead in the alliance.

That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re loco man.

[Adunai]

Night elves in the horde and undead in the alliance.

That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re loco man.

The Night Elves in the Alliance is equally weird. They were presented as an independent faction, half consisting of beasts, breaking the dichotomy without acting an antagonist. And what grievance do they have with the Horde? Chopping trees? Really? I mean, it's realistic, but still contrived - especially considering to what lengths did Thrall go to have peace with Theramore, they are expecting us to believe that the Orcs magically forgot about fighting alongside the Night Elves against Archimonde and his Scourge?

The Forsaken are explicitly free-willed Undead. Garithos did not represent the Stormwind-centred Alliance anyway. If in vanilla lore, the Alliance had no trouble working with the Forsaken-accepting Argent Dawn, I see no issue with having a monstrous faction in the otherwise-pretty Alliance.

The only gameplay argument I can think of is class balance. Yep, that's it. But hey, WoW butchered the Night Elves by making them humanoid-only anyway, it's not like WoW could be improved much with those constraints.

[Redmagejoe]

The argument against Forsaken in the Alliance isn't a gameplay one, but a thematic one. Have you read the actual quest text of a number of the Forsaken questgivers? While there are a few sympathetic souls early on who lament what they've become, none of them indicate any desire to reconnect with the Alliance (ignoring that prior to Warcraft III, the Alliance of Lordaeron insulated themselves from the Alliance of Stormwind which is what led to them being cut off from any potential support when the plague spread).

Furthermore, a great number of Forsaken have, in a way I find to be jarring and sloppy writing on Blizzard's part, inexplicably become so bitter and nihilistic and unsympathetic that their only drive is "fuck the living, fuck everyone, edge edge death death Evanescence, I just want to watch the world burn". A faction like that should be held at a Titan's arm's length by the Horde, let alone by the Alliance. Yet here we are.

[Whalemilk]

And what grievance do they have with the Horde? Chopping trees? Really? I mean, it's realistic

Trees were basically living beings for the night elves. It’s like they were cutting down all their buddies.

[Calevarn]

And what grievance do they have with the Horde? Chopping trees?

None, actually.

At the end of Reign of Chaos, Tyrande tells Thrall and Jaina that she misjudged them, and blesses them in Elune's name.

Malfurion holds a similar tone in his line "To arms, brave orcs and humans!"

That was the last interaction between the night elves and the orcs. After which a Pact of Peace is signed between the Alliance and Horde.

There was obviously no implication the orcs were trying to colonise Ashenvale, or ravage the forests, or that they held even remotely hostile terms with the elves by that point.

WoW Classic sort of winds back the clock in time to reset the Ashenvale stage to what it was during the Warsong invasion (a similar argument could be made that the clock is also wound back between Horde and Alliance relations to what they were in WC2, though there's more nuance). And from there it's a whole mess of insanely bizarre storytelling for the Horde, arguably behaving even worse than a fel-corrupted Grommash Hellscream did. A tremendous tonal whiplash from the conclusion of Reign of Chaos.

There's all sorts of gratuituously villainous acts by the Horde, from polluting the water supply and tainting the local wildlife, poisoning the land, cursing sleeping druids, a troll who wants to torture and eat night elves, and even a Shadow Council cultist you help in butchering the spirits of nature and steal sacred artefacts, while the Warsong are devastating everything indiscriminately ala Venture Co.

In the middle of all this, on Turtle, there's a tauren called Taupo Foreststrider who, hilariously, sends you to kill some bog elementals, and assures you "this is all in the name of balance" as he stands in viewing distance of a giant Warsong deforestation.



Now, if any of this sounds out of character for the Warcraft 3 Horde which repeatedly sought to let go of their history of bloody conquest, it's because it is. Thrall has no reason for doing or endorsing any of this, you literally go through Stonetalon stopping the Venture Co. from mindlessly deforesting the zone, learning of the damage that it does, while supporting the Warsong doing the same things Stonetalon taught you were wrongs. The story there is jarring and most often times all the NPCs will simply try to ignore why the Horde is invading, and focus on just getting you through your quest.

At best you'll get a "muh lumber" and that's also a contrivance caused by the fact Durotar was retconned from a savannah filled with trees and oases, and even a verdant, forested ridge into a desert where nearly everything is harsh, dead and dry.

As if Ashenvale was the only place in the world with lumber, or as if that explained why the Forsaken are there poisoning the land, the water and the wildlife which seems very counter-productive to the orcs' goal of exploiting resources anyway.

What they so desperately need all that lumber for is also something that is never ever clarified and left to everyone's assumption.

TLDR: Yes, the Ashenvale conflict, and to a greater degree the Horde/night elf conflict is all very contrived and influenced by Durotar retcons and gameplay design to generate faction tension.

[Trymv1]

Night Elves being in Alliance is peak 'two faction' design they chose to go with and Im pretty sure they admit there wasnt any other option with that setup.

If they'd have stuck with EverQuest reputation methods like they initially wanted, Night Elves (and honestly MOST of these complaints in this thread) wouldve just been their own group willing to work with some but not others.

[Markuis]

You are right. In W3, Durotar isn't a desert. And NE and orcs actually made peace. Ah, even vanilla is corrupted.

[Melhist2]

Undead elves to horde

[Talenne]

Night elves in the horde and undead in the alliance.

That is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. You’re loco man.

It would be cool to see but would require some thematic changes, like Night Elves would have to be more like their original pre-WC3 concept where they were pretty much blood drinking savage elves that worshiped animal spirits.

Forsaken might seem tough, they would not be called Forsaken since the entire point was being forsaken by humanity. (Even though they kinda brought it on themselves by betraying the last living remnant of Lordaeron's defense.)

I could still see it work though if they wanted to return to their Lordaeron roots, adopting the Light and becoming cool zombie bishops, might have to have Sylvanas and Varimathras involved somewhere else though and a leader for Undead that represents their heritage more.

[Andromath]

As far as Blood Elves joining the Horde go, I can't speak for the Turtle WoW devs or anything, but from a lore perspective while anything may be possible, that doesn't necessarily mean its plausible.

Blizzard's decision to add Blood Elves to the Horde in BC was a prudent one as far as gameplay is concerned. It opened up Paladins to the Horde and added a conventionally, 'attractive,' race to the Horde at the same time to bolster its player population. That would help Horde guilds find enough players to engage in more end-game raiding content.

From a Lore perspective, however, it didn't exactly make much sense. I think the biggest question left unanswered (or poorly answered) would be, What did the Horde have to offer the Blood Elves?

In truth, not much. The Horde was holding on by a thread itself at the time. Meanwhile the Blood Elves were constantly seeking new sources of magic to sate their addiction. The Horde had virtually nothing on that front, and thus very little of value to offer. Conversely, the Alliance as of Vanilla still counted Dalaran as one of it's members, thus meaning it was plausible for them to provide magical artifacts for the Sin'dorei (as they did with the Quel'dorei whom live in Dalaran). Another source of magic for the Sin'dorei (although this one is far less friendly with as-of-then established lore), would have been the Moonwells of the Night Elves.

In the end, while Blizzard added Blood Elves to the Horde in Burning Crusade, the justification was never exactly all that great from a lore standpoint. The Blood Elf starting area's were not the best written, meant to leave the player with enough personal justification to kill every human, dwarf, and night elf on sight as the game's PvP system demands. Meanwhile it expects players to ignore the numerous atrocities and depredations committed against the people of Quel'Thalas over the millennia by trolls, orcs, and undead, and one of that group actually succeeded at destroying the kingdom and nearly scouring the race from the face of Azeroth. We're also not to question why or how the Night Elves sent an army across the ocean to Quel'Thalas to, "investigate reckless arcane magic use," after ignoring it for 10,000 years in their own backyard (Dire Maul), and while their own sacred forests are overrun with corrupt furbolg, demons, naga, and orcs.

Where lore and story-telling go, Blood Elves joining the Horde made absolutely no sense.

In an ideal world, Burning Crusade would have opened with a new faction, rather than new races for the Horde and Alliance. We should've seen the Illidari introduced with the Blood Elves, Naga, Broken Draenei, and Ethereals as playable races. That set-up would certainly have made more sense for the Blood Elves, with most of those races having something to offer them as far as magical resources for their addiction goes. That would have been a lot of work as far as the development side of the game goes, but from a story perspective, it would have done the intellectual property justice.

Or at least that's my two coppers.

[Kefke]

As far as Blood Elves joining the Horde go, I can't speak for the Turtle WoW devs or anything, but from a lore perspective while anything may be possible, that doesn't necessarily mean its plausible.

Blizzard's decision to add Blood Elves to the Horde in BC was a prudent one as far as gameplay is concerned. It opened up Paladins to the Horde and added a conventionally, 'attractive,' race to the Horde at the same time to bolster its player population. That would help Horde guilds find enough players to engage in more end-game raiding content.

From a Lore perspective, however, it didn't exactly make much sense. I think the biggest question left unanswered (or poorly answered) would be, What did the Horde have to offer the Blood Elves?

In truth, not much. The Horde was holding on by a thread itself at the time. Meanwhile the Blood Elves were constantly seeking new sources of magic to sate their addiction. The Horde had virtually nothing on that front, and thus very little of value to offer. Conversely, the Alliance as of Vanilla still counted Dalaran as one of it's members, thus meaning it was plausible for them to provide magical artifacts for the Sin'dorei (as they did with the Quel'dorei whom live in Dalaran). Another source of magic for the Sin'dorei (although this one is far less friendly with as-of-then established lore), would have been the Moonwells of the Night Elves.

In the end, while Blizzard added Blood Elves to the Horde in Burning Crusade, the justification was never exactly all that great from a lore standpoint. The Blood Elf starting area's were not the best written, meant to leave the player with enough personal justification to kill every human, dwarf, and night elf on sight as the game's PvP system demands. Meanwhile it expects players to ignore the numerous atrocities and depredations committed against the people of Quel'Thalas over the millennia by trolls, orcs, and undead, and one of that group actually succeeded at destroying the kingdom and nearly scouring the race from the face of Azeroth. We're also not to question why or how the Night Elves sent an army across the ocean to Quel'Thalas to, "investigate reckless arcane magic use," after ignoring it for 10,000 years in their own backyard (Dire Maul), and while their own sacred forests are overrun with corrupt furbolg, demons, naga, and orcs.

Where lore and story-telling go, Blood Elves joining the Horde made absolutely no sense.

In an ideal world, Burning Crusade would have opened with a new faction, rather than new races for the Horde and Alliance. We should've seen the Illidari introduced with the Blood Elves, Naga, Broken Draenei, and Ethereals as playable races. That set-up would certainly have made more sense for the Blood Elves, with most of those races having something to offer them as far as magical resources for their addiction goes. That would have been a lot of work as far as the development side of the game goes, but from a story perspective, it would have done the intellectual property justice.

Or at least that's my two coppers.

Bravo. Beautifully said.

[Jongyi]

As far as Blood Elves joining the Horde go, I can't speak for the Turtle WoW devs or anything, but from a lore perspective while anything may be possible, that doesn't necessarily mean its plausible.

Blizzard's decision to add Blood Elves to the Horde in BC was a prudent one as far as gameplay is concerned. It opened up Paladins to the Horde and added a conventionally, 'attractive,' race to the Horde at the same time to bolster its player population. That would help Horde guilds find enough players to engage in more end-game raiding content.

From a Lore perspective, however, it didn't exactly make much sense. I think the biggest question left unanswered (or poorly answered) would be, What did the Horde have to offer the Blood Elves?

In truth, not much. The Horde was holding on by a thread itself at the time. Meanwhile the Blood Elves were constantly seeking new sources of magic to sate their addiction. The Horde had virtually nothing on that front, and thus very little of value to offer. Conversely, the Alliance as of Vanilla still counted Dalaran as one of it's members, thus meaning it was plausible for them to provide magical artifacts for the Sin'dorei (as they did with the Quel'dorei whom live in Dalaran). Another source of magic for the Sin'dorei (although this one is far less friendly with as-of-then established lore), would have been the Moonwells of the Night Elves.

In the end, while Blizzard added Blood Elves to the Horde in Burning Crusade, the justification was never exactly all that great from a lore standpoint. The Blood Elf starting area's were not the best written, meant to leave the player with enough personal justification to kill every human, dwarf, and night elf on sight as the game's PvP system demands. Meanwhile it expects players to ignore the numerous atrocities and depredations committed against the people of Quel'Thalas over the millennia by trolls, orcs, and undead, and one of that group actually succeeded at destroying the kingdom and nearly scouring the race from the face of Azeroth. We're also not to question why or how the Night Elves sent an army across the ocean to Quel'Thalas to, "investigate reckless arcane magic use," after ignoring it for 10,000 years in their own backyard (Dire Maul), and while their own sacred forests are overrun with corrupt furbolg, demons, naga, and orcs.

Where lore and story-telling go, Blood Elves joining the Horde made absolutely no sense.

In an ideal world, Burning Crusade would have opened with a new faction, rather than new races for the Horde and Alliance. We should've seen the Illidari introduced with the Blood Elves, Naga, Broken Draenei, and Ethereals as playable races. That set-up would certainly have made more sense for the Blood Elves, with most of those races having something to offer them as far as magical resources for their addiction goes. That would have been a lot of work as far as the development side of the game goes, but from a story perspective, it would have done the intellectual property justice.

Or at least that's my two coppers.

Damn, this is very well-thought explanation.
I am sure blizzard don't have answers to these questions. We are told to close our eyes and not to shoot back any questions (like many lore inconsistencies)

[Whalemilk]

Blood elves for alliance!
Ogres for horde!

[Etarpylon]

I heard from one of the discussion that blood elves or any survivors of Thalassian won't be joining the Horde in the future updates like they did in TBC.
Any lore reason for blood elves not joining the horde.
do you think Blizzard made a mistake by letting blood elves join the horde in retail?

My answer: No.

However, there is the fact Blood Elves joining the Horde could have been explained more readily, and without needing The Alliance to be insufferable douchebags in the process!

I would like to see Blood Elves recruited into the Horde, personally, but if Turtle devs don't want that I can easily improvise a way for Blood Elves to still be pals of mine in roleplay.

Vanilla lore isn't exactly good either, as I've unfortunately taken to noticing. In fact, NONE of the lore is good. So, we need to be the good lore we expect out of the WarCraft franchise (at this point).

I identified with the Forsaken due to being hella marginalized as a severely autistic teenager. I would identify with the Blood Elves in TBC for much the same reason. They are both underdog races who fit with other underdog races (The Darkspear Troll are underdogs even among their own fellows in other Troll tribes, and the Tauren are underdogs compared to every other Kalimdor-made race - the Quillboar, Centaur, and Harpies all gang up on them), so they are decent fits. The Orcs under Thrall's banner are underdogs because they want Peacecraft, but other Orcs would rather continue to consort with Demons or undermine the WC3 Peace Treaty in ways which can be seen as far as Ashenvale (though Ashenvale being bad storytelling is something I will absolutely take note and agree with).

Blizzard didn't make a mistake in the Blood Elves joining the Horde in retail, but their execution of it was sloppy. Basically everything Blizzard did with WoW, even their peak in Wrath of the Lich King, was done in the most sloppy way possible.

I will continue to observe everything from the lens of "I will roleplay eccentric misfit characters since I am an eccentric misfit irl" regardless of what Turtle does with Blood Elves. So long as they're not just murderhobo fodder, I will be content. If they get stuck being Alliance trash, so be it.

[Zirek]

Blood Elves should be in Alliance . They realy don't fit to Horde and it was one of the things bothered me in Tbc .

[Andromath]

I heard from one of the discussion that blood elves or any survivors of Thalassian won't be joining the Horde in the future updates like they did in TBC.
Any lore reason for blood elves not joining the horde.
do you think Blizzard made a mistake by letting blood elves join the horde in retail?

Vanilla lore isn't exactly good either, as I've unfortunately taken to noticing. In fact, NONE of the lore is good. So, we need to be the good lore we expect out of the WarCraft franchise (at this point).

Vanilla lore has some hiccups here and there.

Night Elves and Forsaken would be the prime examples, in my opinion. Between the Horde and Alliance, yes, the Night Elves do make more sense with the Alliance, but the unasked question is, Why did this have to be a choice to begin with?

Blizzard's answer is simple: they wanted a two-faction game, Horde and Alliance, and they also wanted to add Forsaken and Night Elves to it. Really, both of those races could have been their own factions entirely, neutral and independent from the others.

The Forsaken joining the Horde is a little stickier. If I'm honest, I feel like they'd have made an ideal fit with the Illidari. Illidan learns that the Royal Apothecary Society is creating a blight to kill the living and undead? He'd ask them to send him a list of requested research material, whereas in the Horde they had to keep that sort of secret/the Horde just looked the other way.

I'll also never get over the fact that within a few years of Grom sacrificing himself to free the Orcs and the Horde from the influence of demons that Thrall then allows a DREADLORD into the Horde into A POSITION OF AUTHORITY. I don't care what kind of justification for that lies buried in the minds of WoW's Vanilla Writers, I refuse to accept that there is ANY justification suitable enough for that to pass.

Narratively, the Forsaken were hostage to the Horde as well, always holding back from being a proper undead faction. Whenever they were allowed off the leash, their actions were so damning that the rest of the Horde wound up looking as if Warcraft II had never ended. By contrast I feel like Illidan would've encouraged the Forsaken to be evil-pragmatic.

A lot of Vanilla's lore was world building, and it did a great job making Azeroth come to life, but some of WoW's foundation was shakey before the game launched, and it always seems to boil down to what races are on what factions.

Blood Elves on the Horde was just one more glaring crack in the lore's foundation.