Isn’t Ice/Water magic the most common type of magic used by mages in Warcraft universe? Maybe (pure) Arcane? Then what about Fire?
When Fire was discovered/invented? Was Kaelthas first to use it? Or maybe he was just one of first in (pre+?) WC3 timeline to ignore warning signs and kinda promoted it?
I remember something about Fire to be portrayed as not much better than Fel. One of reasons why people have hard time telling if Kaelthas was a Mage or Warlock. Now… There is plenty of Fire mages with at least one in the council so~ what about it? Is it treated as normal and only destro locks are considered as threat?
What is Dalaran policy about Fire? Do they still teach: “dont play with the fire” lessons or its just dumped? Maybe it was never a thing and its my imagination?
After extensive research, I have come to the conclusion that the idea of the “don’t use fire magic” by the Kirin Tor was something said in the RPG , which is not canon.
Kael’thas was not the first fire mage, in fact, there were highborne who used fire magic in the time of Queen Azshara (check her encounter in the Well of eternity dungeon) and if that doesn’t convince you: Anasterian Sunstrider himself used fire magic.
It is canon, however, that blood elves in particular prefer manipulating the arcane into fire than into water/ice, but the HIGH elves who separated themselves from Quel’thalas and seek to distance themselves from their brethren prefer water and ice. With that said, fire and frost are but manipulation of the arcane. There are more elements mages can manipulate the arcane into such as storm (lightning) - we see Rhonin and Azshara doing this.
The fire magic summoned by warlocks comes from a different source (the twisting nether and its chaotic energies) and is far more chaotic than the fire magic employed by mages. Warlocks channel “hellfire” or “fel fire”, they do not use the arcane for that.
I think that is the gist of it! Keep in mind that surely there are blood elves that use frost/water as well as high elves that use fire, in the end: it is all arcane.
Regarding humans and undead they use both! We see Jaina who mainly uses frost magic but we’ve seen her use fire as well and Khadgar for example used raw arcane, frost AND fire. The main difference between them and the elves is that the elves manipulate the arcane in a certain way, more elegant and sophisticated and use it in its raw state more than the humans who use the schools taught in the Kirin Tor more.
Basically every mage uses the arcane and can mold it into elements, then the preference is according to the individual and sometimes race!
As for Warlocks, they use shadow magic and felfire magic channeled through the twisting nether and not through the arcane that is all around!
Still, I think the Kirin tor does see fire magic as harder to control than ice but they do not forbid its usage or promote ice more than fire!
Fire isn’t the ‘bad boy’ of magic and appears to be actively taught at Dalaran.
I doubt Blizzard have a score board with how many mages they create who are specialists in each school, so it appears there may be more arcane/frost than fire.
Supposition: arcane and frost are more useful/convenient so it probably makes more sense for those schools to get used more to drive story. Fire is the more chaotic and destructive of the three schools, and outside of lighting lamps/campfires/torches would have limited every day use outside of combat. Outside of that, personality probably helps determine a mage’s toolkit.
Actually, the assumption that Fire Magic = Something Dangerous was something that first appeared in the RTS games. Look at the Blood Mage description from WC3: FT for one. I also think it might have been mentioned in some of the early Warcraft novels.
This doesn’t seem to have been explored much further and in fact seems to have been dropped a long time ago along with other things of dubious canonicity, such as that ritual that stripped Tirion of his paladin status via what seems to be shadow magic.
