Stroybeats are designed to support the development direction you want to go.
In other words, if the nightborne went alliance, Tyrande would have been given very different lines to use. they don’t write the story and so, okay because Tyrande behaved this way, the nightborne are now going to go horde because it’s more likely based on her behaviour.
Revisiting what happened in the past
7.1 was modified did you know that? After a closer examination at the time, I pinpointed that the modification came after the meeting that finalised the Nightborne would go horde.
Did you know that the decision for allied races to be a game feature for 8.0 came after 7.0 was released and during the implementation phase of 7.1?
There were lines Elisande had to Tyrande that were removed. also Vereesa was the one giving the alliance world quests into Suramar, not Tyrande - Tyrande was swapped in after the decision was made and written to react that way.
When it comes to dealing with responses, at the end of the day it’s the writing team that determines, a much more accepting Tyrande woudl have been more plausible than a disgusted Tyrande, but a difficult Tyrande, which we got, was also plausible, and helps us understand why the nightborne eventually fall in with the horde. As we are progressively shown a more reluctant Darnassian kaldorei stance.
now compare that to 7.0 , where you have Farodin, and other night elves including the Moonguard, Nighteyes, and the refugees from Val’sharah all helping out the nightborne, they are sympathetic, understanding, regarding each other as kin - because the story beats for that was based on the original plan, which was to have the Nightborne completely wiped out, and the nightfallen were the ones who would survive and be restored to their kaldorei forms (not nightborne forms) with the healing Arcan’dor fruit.
That was the original trajectory. IT was the fan delight at the nightborne coupled with 8.0 introducing allied races that resulted in the change… and the ensuing decision for the Nightborne to go horde, seemed quite obviously a result of bias back then.
I’m not saying this out of any emotion, but the horde had ben favoured enormously traditionally in wow for the greater works in warcraft since TBc… the coolest stuff went horde first, then the alliance. blizzard always tried to make both factions have cool stuff, but the development mandate was for the horde to be built up and preferred.
Contrary to some fans’ feeling, this isn’t done because they hate the alliance or any such thing. it was done way back in TBC development to improve gameplay by having equal numbers - done by making the horde more attractive… not out of developmental (if not personal) hate for the alliance or the night elves.
obviously the ensuing result was a lot more neglect of alliance races, and less consideration for them, less development drives and favouring the horde with better things, in time the constant push caused most of the developers to fall in love with the horde too - I mean if you are constantly writing from a horde perspective, have a developmental mandate to continuously think horde so you make it’s story better and so more attractive so people keep paying - you’re going to end up loving it.
throwing the blood elves in also makes it easier, because now you have an attractive model for all your fantasy tropes and delights, and so it becomes easy just to switch wholesale, including your affection.
This is what happened, the developers in Warcraft are human and actually some decisions are made by consensus. Most of them play the game, and only a handful are involved with the lore so they are not impartial by any mans.
most who play also play on the horde, especially on the senior development team, when since WotLK the horde has been the dominant raiding and competitive gameplay faction both in terms of numbers and power/throughput (from racials).
Even now, the night elf restoration story feels weak and lacklustre, there is lacking motivation to make the race epic, they are content for it to be small and niche, they will not feel the same way about blood elves or other horde races, and will not feel he same way about the humans which they have been unofficially considering only as the alliance - which is why hardly any alliance race has got any serious development, yet humans have been in the fray constantly since the start - even if they played second fiddle to the horde - whereas, draenei, dwarf, night elf, gnome etc have not had anything interesting to write home about.
Legion seemed the first true departure from the horde dominance in the narrative when it focused in turn on the night elves who now at this point were considered alliance… but many of the broken isles zones were converted from night elven based to tauren, Vrykul and legion heavy , Thal’dranath was scrapped for Argus (legion) and even night elven priest arc for the broken shore was cut in favour of class order halls, Suramar was then repackaged for the horde - and the night elves proceeded to be exterminated and initially were quite ignored in the midst o the Sylvanas circuit.
All the first few responses from Danuser and Afrisiabi were all about fans questions about the horde, as if the night elf moans and cries meant nothing. night elves, having lost Suramar because the nightborne were made playable and made playable on the horde (which wasn’t necessary - you could have still had playable nightborne go exiled to Silvermoon, like void elves went to Stormwind, and the Nightfallen restored to night elves with the kaldorei moving in - that could have happened)
The point in this is they have shown they didn’t care enough… it was only when the alliance fans got really upset, with no responses from development team about the night elf treatment, followed by moving the night elves to Stormwind that looked like it would be their new capital, that the fans just had enough.
Darkshore was not the original second warfront either for BFA, it was switched to Darkshore because of the fan outcry, and it was a meaningless warfront - it was a pacify, they didn’t even delve into night elf lore to show the best way of showing them powerful, they used part of the cut Tyrande storyline of the night warrior was meant to be in Legion and used it then instead, didn’t delve into the night elves other skills and powers - and even the warfront is only known by the player base who read tweets that canonically the night elves won it because in game both factions play and take turns winning.
They cut Tyrande from Azshara in 8.2 citing that she had already shown up in 8.1, but she was not in the raid, nor was she in the warfront, only the opening night warrior quest - and that was it, meanwhile Jaina, who had starred in both 8.0 and 8.1 being the end boss of battle for Dazzar’alor was suddenly fit to face Azshara in Naz’jatar, where Prince Farondis, Malfruion, Tyrande, Mordant Evenshade - all people and an entire race with big bone to pick had their star characters ignored n favour of Genn Greymane who has nothing to do with the Naga and Jaina Proudmore who should have been injured and recovering with Mekkatorque.
I only point these things out to illustrate the level of bias and just not caring as much - to show there is a bias - or at the very least a lack of genuine passion when it comes.
you see when they are passionate about something or decide to focus on it, you get a much better production, (well mostly) even if you think the storyline is dumb, there is an excellent and superior effort in producing and supporting it accurately.
When they don’t, you can tell, this is not a major concern, but that one is, it is visible in the quality and in who you include, leave out, what you choose to remember or forget or why you picked it this way or not, these are all indicators that can help back up observations and direct communications from the developers that help you piece together a highly probable narrative of the situation.
It gets us where we are.
Look, our analysis of the past matter little now, it is purely observational and hindsight - whether it is true or not, neither of those matter, what matters more to the developers is how you feel about what they have done now.
whether you like it, or do not like it , and why you do not - not whether you think they are biased or not biased or they’ve been favouring this over that. Truly i don’t think they hate the alliance any more than the horde, , they’re developers, they work, and yes they can have favourites and do, and these are the subtle ways such favouritism can influence design and eventually what you see.
Individuals pushing their favourites at the expense of narrative cohesion… you can’t write the night elves are x, y, z and then show in game they are x-100, y-50, and z-2000 it’s inconsistent - because you want to push your favourite character… so you go to Naz’jatar, but you won’t use Tyrande , Malfurion but Jaina and Sylvanas instead - ignoring the connection and you may cite that people are more familiar with those, but then why? Tyrande and the night elves were extremely popular back in the day, they aren’t now simply because you keep pushing Sylvanas and Jaina at every turn , blood elves, humans, orcs etc and leaving night elves out - whereas you established them in certain places …
It looks weird for someone who comes from the beginning looking at your work and going, but hang on, what’s happening to these guys? surely they’d have had something to say the way you presented them.
it’s exactly the same with night elves and their civilization side, their arcane magic, their druidic power and female martial strength, their priestly magic etc, these things were shown to be powerful, night elves presented as being in isolation due to the long vigil task, so when you end it you need to show that finally their period of hiding is done, they’ve emerged, and they are the epic race you designed lore for them - off course they’ll build a city, start re-establishing themselves re-use their arcane magic you have now removed the very reason you gave for why they haven’t used it for so long - bearing in mind you are the one that put a period of abstinence to make your story interesting. the night elves did not have to have a 10k arcane abstinence gap, and blizzard proved it by introducing the Dire maul Highborne that didn’t have any hiatus, the story of the high elves that leave so they could end their hiatus (and so linking them to the night elves) and later re-introducing a pristine half of Suramar to show another night elf community that took no hiatus - not to mention Moonguard and
Right… their own separate group, still living the kaldorei life of the times in a kaldorei city. They are as much as separate group of night elves as the Shen’dralar or Moonguard in Suramar or Farondis or Dreamweaver druids are.
So night elves have so much in common they can replace blood elves in every story board - now you know where blood elves get all their magic stuff from.
But you forget night elves are nocturnal (and that is the main distinguishing factor), Elune centred and while similar you seem to be failing to perceive what is also very different and how.
Where do you think the blood elf addiction comes from? or the arcane affinity? or the graceful appearance? or love of nature? or the great skill with the bow in the forest that you see the Farstriders have?
Or do you forget that blood elves and night elves are just as similar to each other as Darkspear trolls and zandalari are - or maybe you were not aware - cos you didn’t know.
Well now you know… too long have fans like you felt that night elves and blood elves were a different species, nightborne were showing you what the novels had made plain right from their intro in WC3, they are both elves and have very many similarities.
Stop thinking of night elves as some different species. It’s like those white Europeeans that use to think black people were not human because they didn’t live in similar developed environments or worse, had never done (showing their ignoranec) and sadly still there are those amongst us who think that way. They don’t know the history, and they don’t care, they just want to feel superior.
And btw, it’s really weird when you start talking about the similarities of nightborne and blood elves and ignore the night elf component - when you are literally talking about a night elven faction, a sub-race group branch of the main race. to those who know the lore well, it is weird.