The next will be Exploring Outland, and it’ll be racist against draenei, orcs or both, while definitely slamming it at ogres regardless of whose PoV it will be written from.
1 Like
Death to the ‘Unreliable Narrator’ schlock.
Reject failure, Return to Chronicles as meta worldbuilding fact 
1 Like
This is stupid.
That both arcane practice and nature worship existed in night elf society before Azshara and Malfurion respectively is not new lore. However, the second group — the “keepers” of Farodin’s order who co-created the arcan’dors together with the ancient magi — were not called druids, despite what the quest text said.
My guess is that the author of this tidbit read the quest text, but not Don Adams’s explanation that the quest text was misworded.
This is just yucky.
And this is stupid. It removes the sense of agency and achievement. Apparently even as trolls they couldn’t discover anything by themselves, they had to be hand-held.
I realize I’m playing into nelfposter stereotypes, but I’m sad that Blizzard can’t leave night elves alone and stop retconning their lore with worse lore even after they’ve given them, if not a happy ending, at least a bittersweet one.
6 Likes
Khadgar is just a human with common human bias. It’s no wonder that he sees trolls as inferior since they have a rather simple (from human PoV) society and prefer following the natural deities rather than building the kind of civilization he’s used to.
We know arcane magic increases one’s intellect, so this makes sense. Good job Khadgar.
Makes sense. They could do it post Third War, too, after all. Malfurion did it pre Sundering, as well.
This is only slightly tweaked from previous lore. Only the term druid seems to be new. The night elves lived in harmony with nature during the time of the empire. It was the reason Azshara publically gave for not settling Hyjal, after all. And you have people like Valewalker Farodin.
Also Highborne were not only mages, but elves of greater wealth, power or intellect etc. Not good Khadgar.
3 Likes
I’ve met a bunch of mages who are massive idiots.
Checkmate Elunites.
1 Like
The troll arcanitals were a thing long before the nelf empire ever existed. But of course the strongest human mage doesn’t care about lesser races.
1 Like
Well, it’s a general statement in the end. Can’t take the whole of Silvermoon into account…
The trolls learned arcane magic from the Mogu, back when the night elves already practised magic, if memory serves.
The alliance of mogu and the Zandalari existed long before the kaldorei empire, thanks to Lei Shen. So if it’s true, it still predates the existence of the night elves.
5 Likes
Based Khadgar forgetting the Zandalari Empire exists, along with his decades’ worth of historical knowledge of every race on Azeroth including the trolls that have joined the same organization he’s a leading member of, just to represent the average Stromgarde role-player
It’s not really clear, in my opinion. We know Lei Shen was born 15k years ago, but we don’t have much information in way of when all of the following happens. We get a timeline between 15 000 and 12 200 years ago. We know Lei Shen extended Zulathra’s life, but not by how much, so I’m guessing their pact is from around 12 500 years ago? If true, the kaldorei empire did already exist.
All that being said, the Dark Trolls transformed into the night elves due to the arcane influence of the Well of Eternity, which is a much more profound change than a cultrure having some mages. In my view, the average troll mage is more intelligent than the average elf, but due to the whole ‘Well of Power’ history of elves, the average elf is more intelligent than the average troll.
I don’t think mages are more intelligent than any other class and taking things like Int being their stat or Arcane Intellect as signifers just displays a limited understanding of what ‘intelligence’ is.
His decades’ worth of historical knowledge barely had any practical application before the First War, since he mostly was learning under Medivh in Karazhan. Doubly so since he joined the expedition beyond the Dark Portal and only recently returned. More than that, all he saw from the non-Horde trolls until BfA was conquerors that occasionally dabbled into darker magic than common sense allowed (Zul’Drak, Zul’Gurub and the whole of Pandaria invasion). Although I agree that he should’ve been less of a common human with his position.
It’s not really based on ingame stats, and more on how it has been described plenty of times throughout Warcraft history.
It’s not about arcane, it’s about the studies needed for it. The whole population of Silvermoon and Suramar was into arcane, but I dont’t think they have higher average IQ than tauren or pandaren.
To be fair, it was always possible to read the whole lore surrounding the Dark Trolls discovering the Well of Eternity as it being some kind of divine intervention. We don’t get any good reason as for why they left their homes, for example. Maybe Elune sent that Faerie Dragon to them?
There are literally arcane spells that increase intelligence (this time based on stats, yes, but its porbably a good enough approximation). You could debate on how lore accurate that is, but I don’t see much to contradict it.
I mean, mages say they’re smart, but I’m not really sure that’s true. They might be scholarly, about magic in particular, but that’s not the same thing as being intelligent.
The Titans are beings of pure ‘arcane’ and if arcane=smarts then that don’t work, they’re big idiots too.
Objection, your honour. There’s a clear contradiction here.
He’s been portrayed as the exact opposite of what you’re describing since he was readded to the story in TBC, which is why this particular snippet about his views on trolls is weird. He’d be the last member of the Justice League of Azeroth who I’d assume would have hot takes on the intelligence of other races, being the go-to neutral questgiver for both factions since WoD.
Mind you I don’t really care about the connotations of this topic, just that for Khadgar it’s out of character.
5 Likes