Itās not actually Horde territory. During that quest, Arator is informed of it being a legal grey area, and that in spite of being Alliance, he is now the inheritor of that entire land. The refuge itself is also part of Quelāthalas, I donāt know how you can argue that itās not? Beyond that, Windrunner Village is claimed by the Void Elves also, rendering most of southern Quelāthalasā coastline being returned into Alliance posession. Itās a nice start.
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Soon Silvermoon will belong to the High Elves and the Alliance!
Weāll just need to paint everything white and blue colors 
Silvermoon is the capital of the Blood Elves and a core part of Horde territory. Blizzard has never signaled any intent to flip it to the Alliance. Doing so would require rewriting decades of established lore and faction identity, which they are extremely unlikely to do because it would upset a massive portion of the player base.
What can happen: Alliance can have footholds in surrounding areas, like the Ghostlands, through Void Elf settlements (Windrunner Village, quest hubs, etc.), but Silvermoon itself remains firmly Blood Elf/Horde. Itās a cultural and political anchor for the Horde, Blizzard isnāt going to remove or replace that.
Dream on.
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The horde, and especially the filthy orcs, do not deserve to walk on this sacred land. Silvermoon was built by the High Elves, architects of the Alliance. You simply occupied it! But soon we will liberate our city 
Thatās extremely one-sided and ignores the established lore.
Silvermoon was indeed built by the High Elves, but the Blood Elves are their direct descendants calling it āoccupiedā by the Horde completely misses that lineage. Lorāthemar and the Blood Elves arenāt invaders; they are the ruling people. Blood Elves are firmly Horde-aligned, and there is no in-game mechanism or storyline that allows the Alliance to āliberateā Silvermoon.
Void Elves are the only playable Alliance race with High Elf heritage, and even they havenāt taken the city. Rhetoric like āfilthy orcsā and āliberate our cityā is purely personal or roleplay flavor; it has zero grounding in the story. From both lore and in-game perspective, Silvermoon will not become Alliance, and the Blood Elvesā allegiance to the Horde is fully canon. That statement is just wishful thinking dressed up as ājustice for the High Elves.ā
But to answer you in your lore style:
āThey fought well. But the strong prevail.ā or āWe took the land, as the strong always do. Fight again if you dare.ā
Lokātar ogar!
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Noooooo 
To be fair personally I didnāt mind that because
A) Stories will always bolt down to some kind of great threat that requires both sides to work together, that was the case of TBC, Wrath, Cataclysm, WoD, Legion of the times where factions really mattered.
B) When they write in full on war stories they canāt really do it well which oftentimes leads to unsatisfying conclusions like BFA and Horde getting the majority if not all of War Crimes but since the story requires both factions the Horde can never be fully punished.
At the same time I understand that faction pride is important. The values of Horde are different than those of the Alliance.
Thatās only because they donāt know how to write a war story that isnāt taking inspiration from recent IRL politics (looking at all the younger writers at Blizzard and Patch 11.1.7). Typical american PoV problem.
Very easily. If itās in Eversong Woods then it is part of the Kingdom QuelāThalas. Individuals may inherit land within Kingdoms, but very rarely is an individual allowed to unilaterally remove that territory from the sovereignty of the Kingdom. So it is Horde territory.
These areas are going to be frozen in time once the expansion ends of course, meaning those NPCs will be there essentially forever unless there is a future questline that phases them but narratively these presences are likely temporary due to the current crisis and there is no way the Blood Elves will tolerate an Alliance presence post the end of the story.
As a comparison, there is a Night Elf presence in Suramar if you go there now. We know that was a temporary staging area and is almost certainly gone now, but it is present in game forever.
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The right answer is a cold war. The leaderships of both factions should not be overtly hostile, but somewhat antagonistic to each other.
Faction interests should clash, and there should be skirmishes along territory and bleeding borders between the two. Outright war should be avoided, and the faction narrative should be primarily told through each side trying to get a leg up over the other as week exploring new lands and meeting new peoples.
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Exactly. Ironic that they could use the current NATO-Russia tensions for that as inspirationā¦
Ironically they would need to do some narrative legwork for that, which I hope happens.
Basically, each faction needs an undisputed leader once again to act as a narrative focus. The Horde Council has diffused Horde storytelling and blurred responsibilities which is part of the reason the faction narrative for the Horde hit the buffers at the end of BFA.
You donāt tell good stories by committee, and never about committee. It doesnāt have to be a restoration of the role of Warchief, but perhaps a new role empowering a single individual to lead the Horde and thus restore some narrative coherence. This was the motivation behind introducing Varian in WOTLK after all, the Alliance lacked that focus. The Horde leadership is now so underdeveloped that any of the current leaders would be able to step up and become the new locus. Geyaārah for example has enormous potential. LorāThemar would also be credible given he is the longest-serving continuous leader in the Horde.
Similarly, the Alliance is also blighted by a lack of a clear singular figure to lead them. Anduin never stepped into the Varian role effectively, though he may be willing to do so with the end of the Worldsoul saga and may actually have the experience to credibly do so at its conclusion.
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So which one is it then? Youāre contradicting yourself in here - the Refuge is part of Eversong - ergo according to your logic, the Silver Covenant ends up controlling a part of Quelāthalas through a millitary base.
Beyond that, youāre under the impression that the Alliance will be leaving after the expansion ends canonically. But so far, weāre seeing that Void Elves are allowed to return to Silvermoon at the start of the Voidstorm questing. And Lorāthemar overrules Rommathās decision, with dialogue emphasizing the need for binding the Elves together.
I think you should look around on the datamined info some more, because I feel youāre going to have a lot of unpleasant surprises once the expansion launches otherwise. This isnāt even touching on how the āelven reunificationā part starts now, and gradually progresses from this point onwards as relayed in the interview. So who knows what else theyāll be doing long-term.
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Is the Refuge part of Eversong? My understanding is that it is at the northern tip of the Eastern Plaguelands in an area that currently exists in retail but is inaccessible, just outside the border.
And the vast majority of the Alliance should be and probably will be leaving, whether residency is offered to Void Elves after the expansion is yet to be seen.
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I am asking you to simply look at the Eversong Woods map, otherwise youāre just speculating and offering wishful thinking. The TBC map has been remodelled and increased by roughly 40-50%. Silverglade Refuge is almost directly south of Windrunner Spire and also connected to the rest of Eversong.
Youāre saying this, but the Draenei have jointly managed Quelādanas together with the Blood Elves for two decades now, long after the Shattered Sun Offensive came to a conclusion and restored the Sunwell. And Iām not denying that most of the Alliance millitary personnel (formed from SH Paladins) will be leaving once itās over. But thinking theyāre not allowed to visit given the precedent set by the Sunwell is once again, wishful thinking.
So youāre not only going to end up with Void Elves and High Elves returning long-term and setting up shop, but also Quelāthalas remaining open to Alliance-aligned characters overall, even in terms of lore. This isnāt something novel either, given how thereās Alliance race NPCs that pre-date the Vanguard (and the assault on the Sunwell).
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To be fair the BFA was to a degree similar beat to beat as MoP before it which again showcased Horde going increasingly off the rail until the āsane onesā rebel and overthrow their Warchief.
Iāll be honest the reasons I liked Warcraft 3 and Frozen Throne as well as early WoW was the absence of good vs evil in the playable races. Good and evil were the choices made by individuals and not the trait of entire races. Over years the lore moved away from it be it by Shifting the blame for Stonemasons rebellion and Defias Brotherhood birth solely to Onyxia who used magic to control the Nobility rather than it being ultimately their decision or retroactively changing relationship between Orcs and Draenei before Legion started the mess from peaceful and distant to constant attack on Draenei outposts by the one tribe that previously in lore was against fighting goat people.
And due to that the faction conflict tires me because it lacks the early nuance. It lacks the bite.
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The location seems to be as far from the core of Eversong Wood as possible and so that is the source of my confusion, particularly as this location technically exists in retail right now. Red shirt guy Ian Bates is pointing out it is extremely small. I obviously disagree with him that it needs to be bigger, as a military outpost it is what I would expect.
His point though is that it isnāt even a village as he compares it to existing villages in Blood Elf territory.
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What it is is the Alliance equivalent of the bases we had in Battle for Azeroth. I am sure you recall them, the small outposts of the Horde in Kul Tiras and the small outposts of the Alliance on Zandalar. Neither of those outposts represented a loss of territory to the other faction, and they existed for player convenience.
Silverglade refuge for example clearly exists to give the Alliance a flightpoint they can may find handy, and ensures they have the same number of flightpoints the Horde does (as the Horde has an extra one in the heart of Silvermoon area).
Until we see how the story unfolds, I am of the opinion that this does not represent a cession of Horde territory, more that the Alliance is chancing its arm on the very outskirts of the Kingdom whilst there is a bigger threat distracting everyone. Bates point about this not even being a village does mean that it is not terribly permanent. And itās not a village, or even a home.
Itās a two or three buildings. Itās a military outpost.
And the question is not whether the city and lands will be open to the Alliance. That is you changing the discussion. The question is about sovereignty. Allowing someone to come in as a guest does not change the fact that it is still Horde territory. Arator may have a familial claim to ownership over Windrunner Spire, but that doesnāt eliminate the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Quelāthalas, which is a Horde member. Instead we are going to end up with an equivalent to BelāAmeth. The Alliance can visit Quelāthalas, but it is never going to be Alliance.
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I tend to blame Afrasiabi for the mess of the BFA storyline. This is the guy who decided to burn Teldarassil for the shock value without thinking through the reprecussions or even the why of it until later. Redoing Lemix I can see the whispers of some different plan. Sylvanasā concern for her people, the big bargain with Helya, the death of Varian on the broken shore because the Horde was forced to retreat, the Alliance feeling that happened because the Horde deliberately abandoned themā¦
Itās incredibly frustrating that those points of the lore which were exciting and much debated at the time were so criminally wasted and kinda painful to go through all that wasted potential.
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Those examples arenāt particularly good because they do not represent a long-term settlement of hostile lands. As we have been told, all of those bases have been vacated and returned back to their rightful hands, no? A better example would be Tiragarde Keep or the Northwatch command fotresses strewn across Durotar and the Southern Barrens. Which remain operational and functioning to this very day (the last update having been during late Shadowlands with Exploring Kalimdor) in what would nominally be described as a Horde heartland.
Same goes with Quelāthalas. Itās not only that theyāre allowed to return and be around as guests. But theyāre in a position where theyāre setting up a long-term millitary base (that might be hostile?) on the mainland, granting full ownership of Windrunner Spire to an Alliance character, and allowing Alliance NPCs to settle another village.
Did I claim that Quelāthalas is becoming Alliance at any point? Thereās nuance beyond the absolutes that you seem to operate on. Itās certainly not becoming Alliance, but it also is undoubtedly becoming visibly less Horde than it was before. Think of it as the Horde equivalent of Dalaran, which remained Alliance all throughout (according to TWWās dialogue between Jaina and Khadgar), but was happy to play neutral and accomodate the Horde all throughout.
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You are presuming Silverglade Refuge has a future beyond this expansion, despite its size being paltry. And you are allowing your imagination to run wild in regards to Windrunner Spire. Even if Arator is the legal owner, that doesnāt remove the area from Blood Elf Sovereignty or Horde territory.
And itās not really absolute if the choice is binary. Either something is Horde territory or it is not. Dalaran is not an equivalent, as Dalaran was OFFICIALLY neutral for long periods and was only explicitly Alliance aligned between the purge and the Legion invasion. You are attempting to force a parallel where it doesnāt work, particularly as the real parallel is BelāAmeth, which is clearly Alliance but open to the Horde.
I mean come on, they went to the bother of creating a kill on sight area for the Alliance within the core of the city and they decorated the city AND the navy with Horde iconography. It is wishful thinking to think they are loosening the bonds between the Blood Elves and the rest of the Horde, or that the āreunification of the elvesā (whose format we still know little of, though my hope remains for the retirement of the Alliance High Elves from the narrative) means that the Alliance will get a greater foothold.
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