I don’t want to offend BE and Nightborne players, but I feel that these races are sooo out of place in the horde.
The Horde used to be a “barbarian” faction and always had “barbarian” aesthetics, heck they still have barbarian orcish architecture in their towns and camps. And seeing creatures like BE and Nightborne residing in a place like Orgrimmar is so… weird. And of course our “warchief” feels extremely out of place as well. Not because she is forsaken (forsaken actually do fit the horde aesthetics) but because she is an elf.
I am not a Garrosh fan, but the horde with so much elves…doesn’t feel horde anymore.
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The Horde was created to welcome those whose ways weren’t welcomed in any other faction.
For as long as they had goals aligned with the rest, they had a place within.
The tribal and barbarian Horde that settled on Kalimdor is but a fraction of the wider picture.
And both Blood elves and Nightborne fit thematically with the other half of the portrait, as the self-serving, often cruel, and pragmatic elf branch that became anathema to some of the core “good guy” values that are fostered in the Alliance.
If we were to keep it purist, not even the Zandalari would fit in the “barbarian” trope, as they are about as “civilised” as certain Alliance races like the Night elves.
The Horde wasn’t created with a barbarian theme in mind.
The barbarian ratio was diluted throughout time, to the point it became but another characteristic of a wider range of alternatives. Regardless if it started as the primary one.
Not even the initial Horde (Orgrims one), was completely barbarian.
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You need the blood elves, because in Classic the vast majority of people played the more beautiful and regal Alliance. The modern Horde is dominated by elves and, soon, furries. Have fun!
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Doubt player choices influence the overall story of a playable faction (and we know for certain that BEs and Nightborne are far from being the dominant races in the factions story).
If that was the case, if I were you I’d probably wonder why Blizzard felt like including fat humans for the Alliance in the latest allied race batch 
(Kidding ofc).
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Really now, dumb as rocks maybe, but the nightborne are hardly self-serving, cruel or pragmatic.
Allow me to chime in with some optimism. Blizzard has ruined both factions and turned them into a joke! Enjoy the faction pride expansion!
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You never fought the Nightborne team on one of your island expeditions?
Thalyssra may be a gentle soul but the elitism and contempt for the lowborn races is definately still there among the wider population.
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Horde is not “the Horde” that existed back in the original WarCraft series. It’s the edgy elf faction now. The similarity exists in the name only.
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But our edgy elves defected to the blue side.
We’re the High Elven and Zandalari union now.
I doubt you will offend them ( Them is a nebulous term anyway, I have as many Orcs and trolls as I do Belf’s 
) most folks are pretty easy to keep a level head. Lets look at why you don’t think they’ll fit:
I’d be a little unsure on that, Orcish architecture, whilst primitive to our eyes, is actually such that would completely ‘out civilise’ Barbarian architecture in our real world. Remember the word ‘Barbarian’ referred to the fact that the ancient Greeks could not understand what the foreigners were saying, and it just sounded like a load of ‘Bar bar bar’. (There is a certain irony in that a saying in modern English to describe a text that makes no sense is “I don’t know, it is all Greek to me” Bizarrely it flipped around at some point.
So Barbarian only recently came to mean someone with a primitive and savage demeanour in the most recent centuries, before then it literally meant ‘Foreigner’. Amongst the people the Greeks called Barbarians were the Keltoi, or Celts as we know them, who had a legal system that was actually more complex and fair than Greece and Rome combined. The Vikings, who had developed the concept of non lethal punishment for crimes, and were responsible for massive advances in maritime, the Phoenicians who were an incredibly civilised people and created most of our current concepts of money, The Carthaginians who were experts in logistics, the Egyptians who were the daddies in term of getting Irrigation and crops to grow in the most hostile of environments; Basically anyone who was not Athenian, was a Barbarian, whatever their technological progress.
So what is ‘Barbarian’ aesthetics really? Lets say that Orgrimmar is the height of Barbarian chic (I’d actually say Echo Isles is much more Barbaric, and Thunder Bluff is not Barbaric at all, and Undercity was oh my goodness not barbaric) Would Elves look out place there?
Yes…
That’s why they mostly live in Silvermoon or Suramar, where it is the Orcs who look out of place. Oddly on RP realms you get that happening, Nightborne and Sin’dorei tend to stick to Silvermoon, Orcs, Trolls and Tauren to Orgrimmar, but occasionally business takes them to each others cities. Sometimes it is fun to play with that ‘Stranger in a strange Land’ kind of motif. Even if Barbaric, to our modern understanding, Orgrimmar is an intensely efficient military industrial complex -even in comparison- to Stormwind. Sure, it looks ugly as heck, but it is not backwards mud huts, it is hefty metal and stone walls, structures designed to last, cranes, derricks, harbours, an infrastructure. So yeah, the Orcs are ‘Barbaric’ from the point of view of people like the ancient Greeks,
What you might be thinking of is ‘Savage’
Savage fits the Horde, more than Barbaric. And that’s the thing, Savage comes in different forms, a Howling bloodthirsting beserker is undeniably ‘Savage’, regardless of how civilised their people are? John J Keeshan is a Savage, does that mean Stormwind is? Was Vol’jin a Savage? Read Shadows of the Horde and see what you think, yet his people -look- Savage, undeniably. What about Baine or Cairne, based on a culture epitomised in our world by the concept of the ‘Noble Savage’ Are they Savages?. Hardly. Savage is Savage, whether it comes in furs and leathers or perfumes and silks, whether the peaceful Tauren Shaman, or the vengeful Blood Elf Farstrider with a necklace of Amani ears (I still remember the quest text “You can only cut off one, two would be cheating”.
I’ll try to sum up what I mean succinctly (Yes, yes I know, I never can)
The Fomori were grotesque creatures, terrifying to sight in Celtic Legend, indeed their Champion (A lot of people mistake him for their King) Was Balor of the One eye, who could slay the ‘civilised’ folk by gazing upon them, so hideous was he. His King, the ruler of all Fomori was King Indech Mac de Domnu, who was described in legends as a beautiful Elf-Lord, in the company of Monsters. “Fair of Face, but Foul of Feeling” Was the phrase.
And that’s your Blood Elves right there.
“Fair of Face, but Foul of Feeling”
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They are way less edgy than TBC belfies, with their church burning and naaru sucking.
wE aRe tHe TrUe mAsTeRs oF tHe LiGhT.
Well, they did protect Azeroth while everyone else was hiding. Gotta give them that.
To be honest, by hiding, they did protect Azeroth from themselves, so Liadrin might have been right after all.
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And those are extinct. But you knew that already
But Brigante is right. They may not fit in based on looks alone but their actions make up for it. Bob illustrated it rather nicely on the Isle of Thunder.
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No Liadrin Vikernes still lives.
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Ours is the true way of utilizing the Light, . To show others that would call themselves ‘paladins’ the folly of their ways, I intend to send an unmistakable message.The Alonsus Chapel, where the Order of the Silver Hand was founded, seems immune to the destruction of Stratholme. The chapel’s eternal flame affords it the Light’s protection, but when you use this mixture to extinguish the flame, that protection will be no more. It will burn, and our dominion over the Light will be proven to the world.
metal noises in the background
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I’m sure you always knew I was refering to their past characterization.
Guess we can’t have a discussion about the Horde and its aesthetics without being hit with the “You’re Evil” bat again…
C’mon, whats wrong with a discussion on topic, as opposed to team blue wang waving…Its an interesting topic, which has nothing to do with the Alliance at all, so whilst everyone has an opinion, whatever faction they play, or both, like I do, trying to make it into another “The Horde is Evil” thread is a bit gauche, lets stay on topic eh?
You really need to see a therapist at this point, swear to God. We could be discussing turnips, you would find a way to turn it into a “Horde is evil” debate.