Really, they already exist except in name only.
“The kingdom’s magi are trained here and study the arts of magic. Their society of mages has a task to ensure the safety of the kingdom and its lands, they wage a “secret war” into the “invisible world”, notably by investigating and dealing with any magical anomalies and creatures threatening the realm and its inhabitants.”
Conjurer-Lord of Stormwind is the best canon Archmage title in the entire setting with its massive aura
Personally, I don’t care or mourn anything that’s lost, but the Kirin Tor and Dalaran that I liked hasn’t been in vogue for a long time. As with most of modern Warcraft lore, it hasn’t been written well enough to merit my interest. To quote Majestic by Wax Fang:
"If you’re searching the lines for a point
Well, you’ve probably missed it.
There was never anything there
In the first place."
Can I ask what was different about it before and why you liked it then, but not now? I assume it differed a fair bit after MoP ended and Legion began?
Well, for one, I’ve always been an advocate for distinct, race-specific organisations (where it makes sense, of course - an orc mage organisation? I think that’d be stupid, but different strokes) over an all-encompassing mage world police. That always struck me as ocean-wide but puddle-shallow - I’d much rather have many smaller institutions, where you can really dive deep into ‘what relation does magic have to the culture of X-race, what are their arcane traditions, are they elementalists or do they categorise the effects of magic by school’ bla bla bla.
No, I think the Kirin Tor and Dalaran worked much better as that human kingdom that had a good splash of high elves (because of the historical significance they played in humanity’s development of arcane magic), and the odd dwarf + gnome. I recognise other people may not necessarily feel this way, but that’s why I prefaced my argument with ‘personally’.
As for other portrayals I prefer, you’ll have to look up the older books like the Last Guardian and co., and compare it to the modern writing, because much of it comes down to feel and flavour that is hard to explain.
… and leaving it at the mercy of our favourite Plague-throwing, corpse-raising, violently conflicted Undead 
(They may seem fine now, but it’s only a matter of time before those Plague catapults are aimed at their neighbours again. Absolutely not biased. I swear.)
before they’re turned into the und-
wait hang on
Ill miss Dalaran, as will my character. I hope this allows them to do something cooler with Aethas, instead of just being awkwardly in Jaina’s shadow like a puppy, begging for recognition from the Kirin Tor.
This is where I’m at with this in general, destroying stuff isn’t inherently bad but so far the worldbuilding we get in return doesn’t feel particularly worth it.
How can you even consider that!?
There’s got to be some other way…
tl;dr: The Kirin Tor DID do such things, and even organised the hunting of demons in secret for well over a couple of millenia, and things such as the expeditions of modern time, and the Violet Eye; the effort to ensure that Karazhan and Medivh weren’t being… well, Karazhan and Medivh.
However, while this did happen, the entire city and organization was rife with contradictions on a fundamental level, from laws, to acts. It is mentioned that Dalaran and the Kirin Tor had laws that heavily contradicted each other, or changed without warning to the rest of the populace, no less the outside world. We actually do see something like this happen in-universe, such as the Kirin Tor and Dalaran switching in and out of faction affiliation as it was convenient for their goals.
It is also mentioned that it is absolutely full of political manouvering. The entirety of the human kingdoms barring Stormwind had people of importance being ‘guided’ and ‘influenced’ by the wizards sent by the Kirin Tor, and even they, as individuals, had schemes of their own a lot of the times; without accounting for the fact that the nobles themselves also had schemes of their own unknown to the outside world.
The thing about why the Kirin Tor might seem more unified than this depiction of them is due to the simple fact that the kingdoms weren’t much of a thing anymore. Gilneas was abandoned and had forsaken patrolling it until 9.2, and it was only reclaimed with their own help a few patches ago; Stromgarde was a ruin and its status of it being anything more than a military base was unknown until very recently with the audio logs; Lordaeron is no more, and the Forsaken weren’t on particularly good terms with them in Vanilla, nor in the Cataclysm quest (much as it was said it was non-canon in an interview,) - and since Stormwind was well outside of its reaches, it’s not like we had much of a chance to see the Kirin Tor being as over-extended as it once was.
In the questline that gets you there, and the pre-patch, it is revealed that a mage had been missing for years; a mage that had never been in the Council; and it takes extremely little for him to get assigned to a leadership position. This mage, being Xal’atath in disguise, had brought nothing, and yet, through nepotism alone, it was enough to fastrack to leadership in what was virtually, an instant.
Then, this mage, gives you a quest, where you ‘manipulate the wards’ to DEFINITELY strengthen them (ignore the void effect at the end of the wand item sound effect), and then Xal’atath is capable of opening a swarm of portals, so, yeah, nepotism and politicking did have a bit to play into it.
Having said that, it’s not really the point the quest is trying to make. This part of the quest references a short story from 2005 quite vividly, in which it’s explained that Kel’Thuzad was once member of the Council of Six, and how they let him get away with mere exile after doing things that would’ve earned anyone else pacification, or being thrown into the Violet Hold, both because he was a member of the Council, and because it would ‘look bad’ in the eyes of the Church, who were having stirring trouble against Dalaran. The same Kel’Thuzad that, later, summoned Archimonde, and had the city destroyed.
It draws a parallel. It doesn’t mean to say that Kel’Thuzad is entirely right, but, especially after what Kalecgos has seen in his own questline from Dragonflight (which is also referenced, with the gnome from Theramore being a part of the encampment in Khaz Algar, so, they definitely remembered), and reflected that maybe just rebuilding things to be the same as before isn’t all too wise.
It’s not saying that it’s the fault of their own arrogance alone, or that, ‘oh no, the magical library is gone, whoopsie, my power level!’ but that an actual genuine kingdom just died. A whole city. It’s literally worse than Theramore from plausible death count alone.
They feel guilty not because they took the forefront and due to their arrogance, they lost the war. They feel guilty because they took a whole city with actual people living in it to a warzone, got someone into a leadership position after being missing for years and just let him bark orders at people, and what happened is that an entire city full of people just got turned into an ocean full of corpses. They make a special indent in the questline to show that they’re mourning for the people, not the organization, or their trinkets.
It’s easy to look at it from an utilitarian point of view, but this is just a genuinely normal reaction to have as a group of people who might have more-directly-than-not gotten the genuine near-entirety of the population of Dalaran killed, which is worse than its destruction in the Third War, and of Stormwind in the First War, because at least they had enough people to make the reconstruction effort mean anything, because at least there were people to inhabit those then-rebuilt cities.
The Kirin Tor doesn’t. They’re gone. It’s not just a library that was lost.
Sadly it feels like, with the introduction of Suramar, the arcane aspect of blood elves isn’t what it was in favour of the Light. And Suramar isn’t even a playable city. I know this isn’t the argument at hand, but when these two races are in the game, yet Jaina is celebrated to be the strongest mage in Azeroth, it’s a little telling.
We do however see them evacuating the civilians before the city falls, so I’d definitely put it way under Theramore level where the civilians decided to stay and defend it and were inside the city when it got nuked.
We also see the mages surviving the fall, with some relocating to Dornogal while others are captured by nerubians and later either killed or rescued. The civilians are also in Dornogal, so it’s not like they all died.
We don’t really know what the death toll of Archimonde collapsing the city on them was, or the subsequent moving of Scourge forces in. Throughout TFT, the Kirin Tor is a non-entity even though multiple missions take place around and inside ruins of Dalaran.
And yet they rebuilt in the years after. So why is this time, when they got to evacuate the city, any worse?
Because in Warcraft 3, Antonidas’s last stand and anti-undead barrier shenanigans were to delay the Scourge enough as to evacuate the entire city, and they managed to evacuate most of the entire city, as per Chronicle: Volume 3; and in this new storyline, they go out of their way to state that most of the civilians are dead and a lot of the mages have gone missing, including the entire Council of Six except for two of them.
Had they not mentioned it, I’d agree; but it’s what they have gone to state for these storylines. In the case of the Third War, Antonidas had a long time to react, and was warned enough for what was to come, with Jaina having his ear to talk to him about the Plague, which he knew had a strong possibility of being magical, as per his words to her - and thus, came his last stand, the anti-undead barrier, and so on; while the Kirin Tor in The War Within probably had minutes to get their bearings, and unlike Antonidas’ gambit, all their wards had been deactivated before Xal’atath’s attack.
tl;dr because I like to yap: In Chronicles: Volume 3, they say that most of the city is evacuated bar the strongest mages and Antonidas himself to halt the Scourge’s advance, and in The War Within the entire questline goes on to mention that most of the city is dead.
Slight tangent but I do wish they had shown this a little bit more in the cinematic that plays at the end, because at that point it really does just look like it’s Khadgar, Alleria and Xal’atath there with everyone else missing. They do a good job of it in the quests showing quite a few familiar NPCs dead on the ground (including one of the ones you helped prior to the teleportation which is a neat detail), but then by the point the city blows up, everyone has seemingly been evacuated or captured by nerubians - but most people would have assumed the former given that we help people do just that before going into the sewers - and also after we go into the sewers. Like, it very much seems like we were successful in evacuating people, actually.
It’s my continued frustration with Blizzard that they fail to abide by “show, don’t tell.” The comparison is Teldrassil because we are quite literally unable to save everyone (in a quest which was forever exiled to BFA’s pre-patch) and that did a much better job of communicating the sheer despair of the situation.
At the very least we are getting the info that everyone is dead/many didn’t survive soon after the event rather than several years down the line but I really wish that they would use more than just dialogue to confirm these sorts of things.
I don’t like the resolution at all. My feelings could be summarized as “I am not mad, just disappointed.” I am not a Kirin Tor RPer, but ofc I have a char for it (I am an altoholic and Kirin Tor is way too iconinc) which I briefly played during the expansion release because I wanted to bid farewell to one of my most nostalgia filled zones in WoW. As a Wotlk baby, the RP events that were organized by the Dalaran community here on AD were infinitely better than anything Blizzard made, so I thank them for allowing me to experience much better end to this iconic place and faction.
But by now I am used to Blizzard fumbling stories and destroying zones in the game world. This is just another case in the line of Blizzard’s tradition of taking things away and not replacing them with anything new (if anybody wishes to count Bel’ameth I am happy for you, but to me it’s way too halfassed and doesnt compare to Darnassus and rest of Teldrassil at all) Dalaran, Undercity, Teldrassil, Darkshore, Arathi Highlands (one of the better cases actually), Theramore, hell even Westfall with its pointless and annoying stupid tornado thing and most importantly Taurajo of course… I think most people called it from the first datamining before the expansion released all the way through the main campaign that Dalaran was taken down just for “dramatic” effect and Khadgar will survive, so no surprise there. The Kirin Tor questline ending however was disappointing.
I would have loved for Dalaran to start being rebuilt at the original crater, but expected more so characters talking about it or something similar rather than seeing any changes in the world happen.
As for Kirin Tor, I am a faction enjoyer (that means not just player factions, but all the friendly, neutral, hostile factions big or small), so I think the direction they are taking it hurts the world building and is taking away from the world as a whole. But I am thinking back to the blue dragonflight questline in DF, where we briefly visit Theramore crater and find some rogue mages there, so there is still potential for new stories and characters related to the Kirin Tor to be made, it is not gone, it is not ruined, it is just meh with hope for some small crumb in the future.
There are still opportunities in the Kirin Tor taking a step back, as mentioned in this thread, racial/factional mage organizations could be brought forward, but also magical locations like Nexus, Suramar, Karazhan.
To me the whole storyline from start to finish is exactly the reason why I came to AD, to experience a better version of the story from better story tellers, making the most out of whatever scraps Blizzard throws our way, with way more interesting events and characters than are in any questline.
I forgot to actually respond to the rest of this.
Despite the memes, and his complaints about the Kirin Tor, my character was and is deeply affected by the loss of Dalaran. He was there for it, for a start, and tried to get as many of the civilians out as he could, just like he tried to do in Darnassus. He never equated the city with the Kirin Tor, not really. They were merely the governing body, it was the people that were more important to him, and those people were the people of one of the Seven Kingdoms, of which yet another one has been lost. He can’t help but be upset by the loss of a magical symbol for humanity, too.
At the same time, however, he is angered by the arrogance of sending an entire city to a possible warzone. They did the same thing both in Wrath and in Legion, though he was younger then and didn’t really have an opinion, now that he’s older and more mature, he believes that to have been an incredibly stupid decision, defying the logic of fighting to protect a home and taking risks doing so, when you bring that home with you. He doesn’t necessarily blame the Kirin Tor for the loss of Dalaran, he blames the forces of the Void ultimately, but their error still made it worse than it needed to be.
From a story perspective, I’m hoping it may lead to some focus returning to Karazhan. Maybe trying to fix it and cleanse it of the corruption, and that would be an opportunity for the human mages to have a ‘place’ they can go to. (And also be a Stormwind thing which I’m all for)
Both IC and OOC sad for the civilians that lived there, but a untrustworthy “ally” like the Kirin Tor bieng disbanded or destroyed is not a loss for the Alliance.
Sad the city had to go with it, tho.
Hmm I did forget to add my IC-view on things, although I did not think that was really the point of this thread, but more how we all felt as Kirin Tor/Mage Roleplayers?
Even then, Mori’s view on the situation doesn’t differ that much from mine, although with less OOC knowledge since he does not have the years of Warcraft games and Warcraft wiki on his side 
The main thing i dislike about dalaran being gone is we lost 2 class order halls with it. (Assuming portals can be made for the dh lock and priest ones)
Losing the rogue order hall and the mage one sucked massively for me. As they are some of my favourite rp spots in the game