Humans and high elves not knowing (or remembering) night elves was ridiculous to be fair.
However, this is not the way to retcon the knowledge in…
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What’s the context? They’re discussing ancient history of elven ancestral tales and mr uglyhot makes a classicially snarky dig at Sylvanas’ stature?
I interpreted it as the High Elves owning records and knowledge of Kalimdor and the Night Elves they broke away from - which does make sense. Golden and Danuser then, to show how super-awesome and respected Nathanos is, imply that the High Elves, for some weird reason, decided to share that secret knowledge with Nathanos… 
That or they forgot that humans weren’t aware of Kalimdor until WC3. Honestly, it could also just be that.
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Well that wasn’t the case anyway. The elves sent an expedition to Winterspring long before the Third War and scholars like Medivh knew, too. But why should a simple spy or courier know this much?
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Sylvanas is escorting Nathanos around Silvermoon for the first time, and during their walk she humblebrags about the Sunwell and the wonders of her homeland. To which Nathanos dryly suggests that it left them shorter compared to their ancestral origins… I’m guessing he’s trying to be funny?
I can but speculate. It’s possible, as Nathanos seems to serve as a courier of Lordaeron now and then. Though my impression was that this was the first time he spent much time among the elves proper, with Sylvanas showing him the sights of Silvermoon City.
Anasterian did not want him wandering around unsupervised.
Medivh specifically name drops the night elves in The Last Guardian (2002). Tides of Darkness (2007) shows that humans are aware of the other continents when questioning where the orcs came from. Warcraft 2 (1995) established Kul Tiras as the naval superpower with mercantile fleets ranging across the globe to deliver goods back home (Basically East India Company), making it the richest nation on Azeroth. Traveler 2 points out human sailors have visited Kalimdor before the First War.
Humans have known about this stuff basically since the inception of Warcraft. None of this is a retcon. L meme.
They have known about Kalimdor since at least a few years after the Second War, Gadgetzan was already a metropolitan city back then.
Isn’t that technically a retcon from Warcraft 3? With how they were treating Kalimdor as this long, lost forgotten continent shrouded in mist until recently in the story.
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The Last Guardian and Warcraft 3 both came out in 2002, and both make contradicting statements about the matter. Scholars and other educated folk are aware of the Highborne Empire and the exiles who split away from Kalimdor after the Sundering, Warcraft 3 claims it’s a forgotten continent.
Though the person educating people in Warcraft 3 is also the same person who name drops them in The Last Guardian so it might just be the normies who weren’t aware of them. As mentioned previously, as late as MoP, the average villager in Redridge had never seen a night elf in his life, only heard legends of them.
In Rise of the Lich King, Kel’Thuzad name drops Kalimdor and night elves as the progenitors of high elves, again further confirming that Educated People were well aware of them and the history of the high elves. Jaina wasn’t concerned about voyaging to Kalimdor either – she was afraid that abandoning Arthas would truly seal his fate if she underwent the voyage.
Even if Kalimdor was a known continent, I doubt most people would’ve ever seen a Night Elf, I suppose.
With them being isolasionist(sp?) and being able to hide in the forests.
So maybe they were known, but nobody ever saw one 
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Lots of people saw them. It’s just they were generally the last thing people got to see.
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Khadgar also points out that the Sundering of Kalimdor is a tale even children know in Lordaeron, though Medivh points out that the child’s tale version is far too optimistic for what really happened. Khadgar asks how is it that we actually know about this, Medivh says that humans were on the verge of discovering the secrets of arcane magic themselves by accident, so the high elves intervened to teach humans about the War of the Ancients and the Highborne, and prevent them from breaking the world out of ignorance by summoning demons.
The elves basically saw the red flags when humans were like “yo the fabric of reality is kind of spicy rn” and realised they need to teach them how to wield magic safely before they draw Sargeras’s attention. The Troll Wars was also a contributor for further necessitating it.
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Judging from this, it seems likely scholars and nobles know about Kalimdor and the Night Elves but the average commoner would not. Do we happen to know anything about Nathanos’s background before becoming a Lordaeron ranger by any chance?
Well, he is an over glorified mailman by the time Sylvanas sees him for the first time.
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Concerning Lireesa Windrunner, the Farstriders shared one of her almost legendary exploits after her passing. (It is repeatedly mentioned how famous her career made her, so I dare assume these stories live on to modern era Warcraft.)
At one point, the Amani had risen up from within Zul’aman. Not a mere skirmish force, but a well-coordinated incursion with their finest warriors in the vanguard. So too was a massive creature that had once been an eagle, but warped and twisted into a true monster by means of dark magic.
Lireesa’s unit was the only one close enough to respond, only seven in number. Worse still was that they had lost some of their arrows hunting. More were spent felling the trolls and could not be retrieved, and soon they were dangerously low on ammunition. They prepared to spend the rest and then fight hand-to-hand, fully expecting to die to defend their people, when Lireesa spoke.
She would not hear of it, despite having only one arrow left herself. She asked each of the others to give her one of theirs and then fall back to defend the nearby village. They did so reluctantly, and barely had time to prepare defenses before the trolls approached - absent their dark eagle. Running ahead of them all was Lireesa.
Morale surged, and everyone, villagers included, fought the trolls to the point of them scattering and fleeing. No elves died that day.
Lireesa brought the Farstriders to the battlefield afterwards, showing them the slain dark eagle. It had an arrow in each eye, one in its throat, and four tightly clustered in its heart. They praised Lireesa, who rejected the honour of the kill. She could only do it with the strength (arrows) given to her by her companions.
On another note, Sylvanas was not universally beloved at the time of her ascension to Ranger-General. An oath was traditionally asked of each Farstrider on that day, simply being asked if they would serve the candidate. What was expected to be a formality did have some dissidents, who held that Alleria was the rightful heir to the mantle. Despite having once abdicated that right, circumstances had changed quite a bit by then - so was the argument. Sylvanas believed the reasons were entirely personal.
Alleria had been absent for years at that point and not sent word when the elder Windrunners died. She made a timely arrival that day however, vouching for Sylvanas and once more rejecting the title for herself.
Another ceremony involved the coming Ranger-General serving a simple meal to the Farstriders, as they would soon be serving her instead.
The Horde’s presence in Quel’Thalas angered Sylvanas. Not just because of their destructive nature, burning large swaths of the southern woodland, but because Anasterian had chosen willful ignorance on the matter. Sylvanas had been charged with investigating her parents murder and had found proof of Horde involvement in the shape of a Horde arrow. An arrow Anasterian threw in the fireplace, wanting to prevent panic.
It appears Eversong isn’t so enchanted as to guarantee fair weather all the time. Albeit rare events, lightning has sometimes set woodland fires.
When the Horde first reached Quel’Thalas, they set a number of fires in order to draw in the protective Farstriders and ambush them. Sylvanas saw through the ruse and ambushed the orcs in turn, suffering only small casualties compared to wiping out orcish units entire.
Sylvanas first learned of Paladins from Nathanos, and thus understood what Turalyon was when hearing of him. She quite approved of the warrior-priest concept.
The heat of a red dragon’s flame can be so intense so as to reduce trees to ash in seconds, or turn metal liquid. Not burning do much as near-instant incineration.
Also, the Convocation of Silvermoon was finally mentioned by its name. I personally started to wonder, but the council’s name is reaffirmed.
When Arthas first commanded Sylvanas to shriek at the defenders of Silvermoon, she was commanded to target the innocent first. Children, healers, the elderly etc.
Banshee eyes are, according to Arthas, red on account of their seething rage.
Arthas was responsible for keeping Sylvanas body more or less intact. It was held by Dar’khan Drathir in Deatholme, but reclaimed by Sylvanas and her dark rangers.
Contradictions and clarifications aside, it really doesn’t make me understand why Nathanos in any context would say something so bizarre in casual conversation. It’d be like meeting the ambassador for Austria and going “do you think it’s possible that you have whiter skin now because of the Late Bronze Age collapse?”
I will fully accept it if the answer is Nathanos is purposfully written as the Warcraft universe’s incarnation of a redditor.
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Because look how smart and wise he is! Don’t you wish everybody was like him, having knowledge he can randomly drop, even if it makes no sense!?
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He is widely regarded as a rude individual among the elves. I can transcribe a segment of the conversation tonight.
80% of all High Elves died when the Scourge came. Such are the estimates by the survivors at least. The days following the genocide were spent cremating the almost incomprehensively large number of victims to prevent them from rising, which left ashen dust on the leaves of Eversong’s trees.
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He’s a spy acting like a country bumpkin who mistakes a simple fountain as the famed Sunwell, and when questioned on how the humans let someone as clueless as him be a spy if he knows literally nothing about Quel’Thalas, he drops the act and lists what he knows of the Sunwell and the circumstance of its creation to provoke Sylvanas. Acting like a bright eyed messenger awed by everything was a cover for being a spy.
Though granted, he wasn’t sent to spy on the elves, but to spy on the Amani out of suspicions that they were working with the Horde and he had been instructed to share his intel only with Anasterian.
I think that is an important distinction to make and I am glad the book does so.
A while ago Narmë and I came up with the headcanon that the actual numbers for the Fall aren’t as high as reported (perhaps even being as ‘low’ as 50-60%), mostly to explain how Quel’Thalas can still field armies in-game just fine. We mused that they didn’t actually lose nearly everyone, it just feels that traumatic to the Elves that 80-90% is reported. This seems to make that even more plausible.
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