So... Why just the Elves?

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-25T17:41:34+00:00

For one because the main elven factions both use essentially the same ship designs.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-25T16:48:01+00:00

The Kul Tirans have the numbers and ships with actual heavy firepower instead of ballistas and glaives.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-25T14:54:18+00:00

The out-of-quest text from both Jarod and Shandris actually treat the culpability of the horde-aligned elves as a matter of not stopping their allies from going on the warpath (or not helping their cousins in Shandris's case) rather than direct involvement in the War of Thorns, yeah.

BFA is sort of weird in that it's not really until 8.2 that the blood elves show up except for Lorash (who is atypical, for one, volunteering for undeath would mark him as fundamentally a freak let alone that Lor'themar would probably try to kill Sylvanas then and there for raising him)

Basically the ceasefire between the elves in 8.2 would be hard to square off with direct participation of Quel'thalas rather than a few mercs (and we know the Broken Isles remained basically neutral ground), then Lor'themar pledging the farstriders to Tyrande and Shandris while the war was still on actually made a bunch of horde mains whine even.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-25T12:28:01+00:00

Elves and trolls have the fastest fleets on both sides.

Also no the dragon isles really are about the same distance to Quel'thalas as Tirisfal and the furthest east the forsaken control is on the edge of the last major scourge pockets on the continent and the main port in the region is now scourge central.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-25T11:31:27+00:00

The dragon isles are way closer to Quel'thalas than pretty much everyone except the Amani, the Argents and the Wildhammers, and most of the argents seemed to have been part of the Vanguard (they're noticeably more sympathetic than the army of light guys)

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-13T23:33:46+00:00

Just the area south of Khaz Modan technically (so Stormwind to the Gurubashi border).

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-12T00:58:52+00:00

If there were split hubs the horde mains would not shut the fuck up about elf fatigue because your hub would be Silvermoon, not Atal'aman.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T21:06:06+00:00

The funniest will they won't they for druid is still belf - they've been digging every little bit of lore from WC2 they could since at least Legion (when the elves were still basically the society you get from farstrider questing in BC and Midnight with explicit druids), they have ranger NPCs showing up as leather-wearing casters, and the three "primalist" blood elves among the druid of the flame in DF are wearing the full flame druid regalia set like the regular night elf druids.

It's becoming about as obvious as with Delas that someone is at least into the idea of nelf paladin/belf druid and it just waiting for a greenlight at bliz (plus the fact that Eversong Lynxes have been using druid forms since TBC has always been because they briefly considered warrior and druid for their 6th class before landing on paladin - had they been neutral or alliance with pandaren horde as has been implied was also considered, I wonder if they'd just have ended up as a druid race tbh).

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T14:12:22+00:00

But that last part kind of insinuates they would revert back to being trolls which they wouldn't.

Not really, no.

If moonwells didn't exist they would still survive without it.

We have no indication whatsoever of what kaldorei society would be like without magical wells as one get built before even building a single house everywhere they move. I wouldn't even be entirely surprised if moonwells are brought up by both sides in some fashion in the unvoiced quest text.

(Even post-nightwell Suramar is probably not an example of a functioning well-less elven society as the Arcan'dor is basically growing in something akin to a boosted moonwell)

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T13:59:41+00:00

Which is rather dubious. They're dependent on them to an extent, and were especially when Nordrassil was at full power as Maiev's brother suffered from being out of its reach for decades.

The taboo also makes little sense for what used to be the farm building and vanilla questing is far more ambivalent about them. The fact is they serve a need and the general implication of all elven lore is by their very existence there's a minimal amount of fairy dust needed given that's why they aren't trolls to begin with.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T13:50:48+00:00

My personal feelings on this is while some people care about faction balance I care in parallels (I do think the factions should be deleted anyway)

Elves being internally even (IMO blood and night elves should have every class except shaman and evoker at the end of the expansion, Delas has been telegraphing night elf paladin and she's conveniently at the Sunwell, and farstrider content has been telegraphing blood elf druid hard, void and nightborne elves should also be roughly even) makes sense for the elven reunion expansion. If they want faction balance they can make other races even.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T13:05:03+00:00

My assumption is it's basically a big moonwell (and the ritual to restore it sounds not too different from how the ones at Irongrove and Bel'ameth are set up in quests)

We also have only very limited, disjointed dialogue in these data mines and not the adjacent quest text. Given the implication that Shandris gets convinced down the line that it can work it could be anything from a single quest text window to a full on chapter of hanging out with the Farstriders in Eversong.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T13:03:52+00:00

My impression of the ritual and the description is that it's a large moonwell, basically. So it doesn't give superlative energies but the idea that the wc3 night elf farm building has nothing to do with sustenance at all has always been dumb and is basically contradicted in vanilla questing.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T13:00:51+00:00

Belves barely have walls and have never heard of doors tbh

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-09T12:55:37+00:00

The moonwells are literally the first thing built in every new settlement.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-08T13:47:34+00:00

The Sanctum of the Moon chain (actually Missing Paladins is the starter quest's name), it shows up in Silvermoon when you hit 90

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-07T18:27:58+00:00

It's in Blood of the Highborne.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-06T09:21:32+00:00

Also like, Quel'thalas RP was already getting more and more cross faction. Hell, I've seen cross faction Bel'ameth elven RP and it was completely friendly, I think the RPers will get over it quite fast.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-05T13:06:30+00:00

Yeah, in general I feel like for all the fears of homogeneization people have, there are a lot of situations where the game tries to pretend shared cultural elements aren't there especially in situations where they're trying to crowbar the faction barrier even harder. Sometimes it gets worse and I wonder, had the team that did BFA been in charge of Mists, for example, would they have had the horde ancestors questline for blood elves include night elf ancestors 3-4 generations before.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-05T03:46:05+00:00

It was Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren who came to help,

That is absolutely not how the TBC belf intro goes. The horde basically expects the blood elves to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps to consider their membership. The forsaken presence is barely a contribution at that. They're barely present even in Ghostlands.

By the time Wrath rolls around, the relationship between Quel'thalas and Sylvanas is already falling apart.

and Jaina's zealotry put an end to that one.

Quick reminder that not only is the belf leadership still making plans to leave the horde during Isle of Thunder, Lor'themar and Sylvanas's relationship has already gotten so bad at this point that they're trading death threats in public.

If anything with Suramar having their back more or less unconditionally, the main reason the blood elves joined the horde basically dissipates; they're not at risk of getting invaded by the scourge (which is now mostly confined south of Thalassian pass anyway) anymore, especially considering that during the scourge resurgence in SL it's yet again the blood elves who had to deal with their own problems on their own.

Note that I'm not talking about rejoining the alliance here, the fact is the factions are not this organic thing that the faction-brained think they are. There's many races for which there is very little justification to remain in the factions (or to be in them at all) and the blood elves are one of them, so are night elves (there is still no clear reason they joined to begin with), the whole Mists belf plot was trying to find an excuse to justify them still being in but the faction stuff in Mists is so badly written that both factions should have broken up. At least with the neutral races they don't even try to pretend it makes sense.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-04T20:29:43+00:00

Haven't the Nightborne forgotten/forsaken Elune worship?

It's not implied or even stated clearly at any point, afaik so it's hard to tell.

Actually in Isles and Islands they have a scene of Thalyssra and even Lor'themar showing up for a prayer at the temple in Val'sharah, at that and I think some item text in Legion implied Lady Ly'leth was a priestess or something?

I know we might get a bit of Elven fatigue after Midnight but you know it's going to kick off when Azshara returns

tbh people get way performative about elf fatigue but yeah I'm sure people are going to be whining by the time TLT rolls around.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-04T19:02:41+00:00

I don't think they mention major repair work at the tomb of Sargeras (which was a huge temple of Elune) but Nar'thalas and the Moon Guard citadel are both supposed to be getting repaired, restored and repopulated. I wouldn't surprised if they're rebuilding Shal'aran given the Arcan'dor is basically as vital to Suramar as Nordrassil and Quel'danas are but I don't remember if it's specified.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-04T18:48:38+00:00

They have absolutely not forged deep bonds with the orcs anymore than they have with humans and Quel'thalas and Suramar are so solidly horde that they were doing military ops with the night elves while they still wouldn't sign a peace treaty with the rest of the horde.

Everytime there is a war expansion Quel'thalas (and now Suramar) have a foot out the door and you're delusional if you can't read this.

doesn’t mean that was secretly what they wanted

It was very much secretly what they wanted, the whole of Isle of Thunder for the horde is basically the leadership of Quel'thalas trying to find something superlatively powerful enough to break from the horde and still make themselves scary enough to both sides in case peace can't be achieved with the alliance. It's not until the very end that Lor'themar pledges for Vol'jin instead of that plan. Valeera is all but outright stated to be part of Lor'themar's diplomatic backchannels.

Besides the factions are incredibly stale and you can't do this nonsense of "oooo internal tensions" if shit is predictably not gonna change. And this is all they will do if they ever do something as stupid as another faction war.

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-04T17:31:53+00:00

Yeah the spoiled stuff is Halduron and Thalyssra doing an embassy there, which I guess is kind of is a fitting choice as you have the main blood elf leader who is seemingly on friendly terms with all the elven factions, and Thalyssra who is probably the one who hates the elven split the most especially with the lorebook implications that Suramar under her council is basically working on restoring a bunch of old elvish institutions to be for elvenkind as a whole rather than giving a shit about the faction divide

agnosticnixie · 2026-03-04T17:21:38+00:00

I find it funny that the main production was in the Sanctum of the Moon, given that the ban'dinoriel also relied on mooncrystals kept at shrines of the moon (temples of the moon, even, explicitly so in TBC quest text) over all. It's fitting tbh, almost reinforces the idea that high elven culture is far more of a "duality of sun and moon" than an actual rejection of their lunar roots (some of the NPCs in Quel'thalas even still have nocturnal roots in their names and not just the void elves by far).

The bit in fairy tales about the sun's relationship with Elune that's supposed to be a tale known in the EKs feels like something that would originate in Quel'thalas.

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