Yeah, I think overall it shouldn´t be seen as some massive slight against orcs in general, both due to dubious canonicity and because, if we accept it as fully canon, then the Warchief himself executed the man responsible. But it´s a good example of why, even despite heinous acts of members of one race against another, it doesn´t mean those races should hate each other or that those acts fall upon the entirety of the race that commited them.
Sunken cost + addictive personality is the tl:dr that can be applied to many of these arguements
I don’t think there is any issue with the way the story was written, except perhaps the seeming eagerness for the Nightborne to get embroiled in a war, or Thalyssra doing the dirty work for Sylvanas with the Stormwind Extraction. But BFA as a whole suffered from people acting out of character, so its pointless to bring that up.
Now, what was a valid complaint at the time, in my opinion, is that the disparity between Void Elves and Nightborne in terms of community interest and lore presence was incredibly stark to say the least. But that’s not a problem of ‘what the Horde got’, but ‘what the Alliance got.’
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The salt from Horde getting the Nighborne was one of the best things you got to experience on the forums.
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I think there’s also something to be said about the not so subtle hostility shown towards enthusiasts of the Highborne in general on either side of the faction divide. It was a major issue back in the day that has largely and thankfully fallen away since.
When I founded both The Sunwarders and The Sanguine Eye alongside my partner, it was done in no small part with a lot of fondness for the rich history that paved the way for the Blood Elves to end up where they are at present.
Despite that, there was always a segment of very vocal players who sneered with contempt at the mere idea that Blood Elves could look fondly on the likes of Suramar or not be fully on board with either the Horde or the Alliance.
Coincidentally after I took an extended leave of the game altogether, Suramar was not only added as an actual zone but its surviving inhabitants later formed strong ties with the Blood Elves. We likely would have stuck around if some of the plot beats in Legion had occurred earlier.
So whilst I won’t pretend it is perfectly written, I stand by the idea that it does make quite a bit of sense as a trajectory.
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The shame lies in that instead of having the Nightborne slowly realise that their closest kin are no longer Night Elves but instead Blood Elves due to the time that has passed outside their bubble is, rather than exploring the lands and cultures of the two, mainly shown through two dialogues of which one is Tyrande telling them they kind of deserve to die.
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I always found that funny. Nooo, you can’t be mean to the Nightbourne Tyrande. Meanwhile we’re besieging their city because they joined the Legion.
Guess they have that in common with the blood elves too. Joining the legion, summoning demon lords using sun/night wells, having to lay siege to their city and kill their ruler…
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You’d think Tyrande of all people would sympathise with a rebellion against a despotic leader that sided with the Legion, but I guess introspection has never been her strong suit.
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And we love her for it
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They can’t all be paragons of everything like Anduin…
And I would have Tyrande no otherway as this flawed leader, who might actually not be super good at diplomacy, like everyone else.
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I mean, she did send troops to help.
But I think its understandable she’s abit… blunt to the nightborne too, they left her and the Resistence to die during the War of the Ancients by conjuring and hiding under a bubble after all.
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I have Thoughts, but I know it will just result in a circular shouting match again 
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Elisande saved the Resistance by overthrowing the Legion occupation of Suramar and closing down the second invasion point they were planning to open from the Temple that was designed to crush the Resistance between two fronts.
After Suramar was liberated, Elisande was preparing to march her forces to the heartlands to reinforce the Resistance when the Eye of Aman’thul showed her a vision of the Well imploding before they could make it there in time, which would have ultimately wiped out the Suramarian forces mid-route. She decided to bubble up to weather the Sundering in the hopes that at least some of her people would survive it.
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Does Tyrande know that, though? Or did she only learn that after they joined the Horde?
I did not know that! Why did she keep the bubble up tho?
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We don’t know.
At first to wait out the end of the world, in time it became a way to punish crime in the city by exiling criminals. Eventually “crime” came to mean “everyone who isn’t loyal to Elisande” as her reign became more autocratic out of desperation, when Gul’dan doctored her visions of future* to make it seem like allying with the Legion is the only way to survive round 2.
*the comic in which we see Elisande explore the timelines after Gul’dan ultimatum, the comic panel of her visions are surrounded by a distinct fel outline, and they conveniently leave out the possible future where we win despite Elisande using the Eye of Aman’thul to explore “every possible timeline” to make a decision. Gul’dan was blinding her sight of the future.
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The Night Elves didn’t shun the Gilneans for locking themselves away and finding them in distress. So it came across a bit performative to criticise the inhabitants of Suramar for doing their best to preserve their beloved city and rich culture.
It’s a large part of my beef with the two faction model. Potentially an unpopular opinion for some but…as someone who is very much an unapologetic elf enthusiast I always found the way in which the Night Elves shunned darker powers altogether to be fairly bland in combination to…just turning a blind eye whenever it was the Alliance doing the exact same thing.
Even more silly given that they begrudgingly allowed one batch of Highborne to join them anyway - but then decided that another batch of Highborne was actually too much.
There’s a little more to it than that, sure, but I’d have very much preferred the various elves of this setting to not be stuck killing each other off for the sake of different coloured banners that for some time were dominated almost exclusively by the interests of humans or orcs.
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Slight difference bieng that the Gilneans became distressed and turned into mindless wolfmen because of the night elves messing up.
Also, the Gilneans didn’t ally with the Legion en masse.
My only beef is that the night elves don’t fit with the Alliance.
The high elves do, however.
Yeah that was weird too.
But Tyrande has been known for her double standards before, so thats in character for her to allow the Highborne, but judge the nightborne by a different standard.
Heck, I think Telaryn has a source that states that until the Cataclysm, the majority of dead Alliance magic users in Kalimdor was by the night elves hands.
Thats usually the case!
She didn’t though. She asked what guarantees Thalyssra could give that she wouldn’t be another Azshara, or another Elisande. That seems like a pretty valid concern for anyone who’s coming to liberate a city from its rulers who allied themselves to the Legion. She didn’t know Thalyssra, and even if she did once upon a time, 10.000 years had passed since then.
Some say that Tyrande was cold towards the Nightborne as a whole, but she’s got pretty good reasons for that, too. And its not Suramar’s role back in the War of the Ancients. It’s Suramar’s role right then and there, as the eye of the storm of the Legion’s invasion. In her eyes, the Nightborne surrendered to and colaborated with the Legion, and Thalyssra’s rebels were only a small group of people. She could say it’s all the fault of Suramar’s leadership, but for Tyrande there is a more fundamental source at the heart of this problem: yet another magical well.
So when she wants to destroy it, you can’t really say she’s the paragon of tact nor diplomacy, but at least she’s thinking of a more permanent solution to a fundamental problem. A solution which Thalyssra and her fellow leaders of the rebellion also accept after the Nighthold raid, even if they don’t make it sound so drastic.
As for Tyrande accepting the Highborne of Eldre’thalas, this was a small group of survivors basically on their last legs. They neither had sufficient numbers, nor a well of magic to cause any kind of threat to the kaldorei way of living. In other words, the surviving Highborne would neither be targetted nor swayed by manipulators like the Legion, because they don’t have anything the Legion would want.
At least that’s how I see it.
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Which is fair enough to an extent but then Tyrande herself also later went off the deep end after tapping into a volatile, dangerous power out of desperation…so they’re pretty even on that front.
I don’t hugely care if desperate people resort to desperate measures in order to safeguard their people, culture and borders if the alternative is to just let themselves be wiped out from existence in some sort of misguided attempt to be ‘more moral’.
I’ve played far too many games with broken aesops at this point where the supposed ‘good guys’ do the exact same thing only to conveniently get a free pass because of the banner they happen to be serving under. Sometimes it’s by the writers, other times by players…and on yet more occasions it is a combination of both.
There’s a lot more to be said on that front but at its most simple level I’d have more respect for the loathing of the Night Elves towards darker powers - including the arcane - if it were written with more consistency rather than via an awkward scenario where the Alliance is full of magic uses who get a free pass but when a fellow elf uses magic, it’s presented as some unforgivable sin.
Not so much in the current era but for much of the game’s lifespan. I understand what they were trying to portray but it was a missed opportunity not to have more drama between the Kirin Tor and the Night Elves.
The whole ‘but Azshara’ concern is valid to an extent…but it was largely humans abusing magic who contributed to the Scourge and the Burning Legion gaining such prominent footholds.
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And that is among the most realistic parts of the story here, and the storytelling. It’s written by the victors. And apparently, humans as a race or characters can’t be anything but.
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