The Arathi are, same as the blood elves or the Nightborne, still an alliance-colored thing.
Regardless of wether the Arathi are closer to Alliance or Horde, it just doesnt matter.
They are civilized, they have “higher” magic and they dont have that kind of internal struggle that horde-colored races have. Or a more horde-colored culture.
Its just not orcs, not trolls, not tauren. No shamanism, no “primitive” cultures, no focus on “honor” as a concept etc. You know, causal horde-things that one thinks about when they picture the horde. No people who wish to tame their savagery or who wish to reclaim what they had in the past. Or who just strive to survive in a world that hates them in one way or another. All the way down to relatively “primitive” architecture and visuals etc.
Its just elves, humans and the Arathi as a result of interbreeding of these two races. With a zealous faith in the light. And the lack in numbers to solve the issues on their home turf wo they turn towards outsiders for help.
No wonder people complain about the game having Alliance focus when a race that has been with the Horde for 18 years is viewed as Alliance thing. By these standards, Alliance is like 80% of the entire game.
Having a discussion go on for this long about an argument that if a fantasy culture doesn’t fit within the parameters of most of the Horde, they clearly must be an Alliance concept rather than an entirely new thing of their own says more than several dissertations worth of explanations about the harm that Danuser’s writing did to the lore and the community’s perception of it.
Battle for Azeroth and its consequences have been disastrous for the development of Warcraft worldbuilding.
I could start a really flippant argument on where the Forsaken belong here. Ah, but you see Aerilen, they’re not “attractive!!!”
The overall binding theme of the Horde in Vanilla-Wrath was scrappy underdog, bound together by either culture or necessity due to an imperious Alliance.
Truly a race that lost 90% of its population, turned to darker magical methods to survive, was being corrupted by Fel radiation from crystals in their homeland and was being constantly undermined by the Alliance did not at all fit this theme.
Clearly an Alliance race because pretty.
While I do believe that the Hallowfall Arathi are strongly “Alliance-coded,” I don’t think that your requirements are appropriate for determining whether or not a race is “Horde-coded.”
Blood elves and nightborne are both “Horde-coded” races that fit in the Horde in my opinion.
My wish for more attention for the “monstrous” Horde is solely because of the huge amount of attention that Danuser has given to humans and elves over the years, and how he has even made races that aren’t human or elves feel like humans and elves. Horde elves are still Horde to me.
Blood elves and Nightborne would do far, far better if they could establish and protect a truly Highborne-like society. One of high magic, long-living people and relative isolation from more mundane races. But sadly, it would take a world with more than two factions being relevant.
Do I even have to respond to that?
When all you can say why the belves are more alliance-colored is “they are attractive” its strange when there is the whole part about what the majority of the horde is like aesthetically, thematically and culturally.
That we can all agree on.
Of course. And I never told anything against them being part of the horde. They are, and they are an important part of it.
However, even when they are legit part of the horde, they are not what one first thinks about when they imagine the Horde. Might also be that I’m still a bit stuck in the good old warcraft 3 days where Kaldorei were still savage protectors of nature that got the Warsong scared, orcs being savage people who struggle with their past and claiming a land for themselves and Illidan still a villain with some few redeemable qualities.
Thats what I was advocating for basically.
Even when horde elves are basically like high elves dressed in red. They are horde, no doubts in that. Just not that “monstrous” horde and more the “alliance-like” horde. If I put my point across well enough.
Isnt that what the Belves and Nightborne already doing? Though not as independent faction of course. Still would be great if they did that, could also add the Kaldorei into the mix and the Ren’dorei as well. Big elven empire would be fun.
That´s because it ends up being the gist of arguments against blood elves being Horde.
Case in point, Forsaken, which don´t have any of the same cultural closeness with the Horde (they´re even outright stated as being in it as alliance of convenience), nor do they have its aesthetic (their capital was modelled after Warcraft 3 Scourge buildings), somehow rarely if ever are talked about as “not the Horde race”.
I wonder why that might be.
Nope. They might not be the first thing that some people think of when they think of the Horde, but they are not Alliance-like. They’re both shunned races struggling to forge a new place for themselves in Azeroth after moments of significant upheaval for their societies, and have found their home amongst fellow survivors, bound by convenience and their common struggle to live in a world that frowns on them. It’s the iconic Horde story.
It was much more for orcs, tauren and trolls. Or are we seriously going to pretend that these three races did not become really close back in Warcraft 3?
It´s a clever tactic to make the predator fat and therefore unable to hunt more elves.
Nature is truly beautiful.
Its not about them being against horde. That might have been a misunderstanding on your part, or alot more likely, a failure on my part to convey.
Though I have also to admit that how I imagine the Horde might not be the most up-to-date. Or the way I see them. For me elves and how they are portrayed were always something “alliancey”, not really horde-like.
For me Horde was always about the Trolls, Tauren and Orcs in all of their varieties, except the Zandalari. The Forsaken always were some weird spot of the Horde who struck along out of convenience but who didnt share anything else with the Horde except the allegiance and similar tropes as being outcasts.
That anyway. I mean the whole reason why the belves and forsaken joined the horde was because the alliance did their crimes against them. Even when the only practical difference between Quel’dorei and Sin’dorei is a philosophical one. Literally just the question about how they deal with their arcane addiction.
They absolutely did.
Remember fondly how the orcs saved the Darkspear from their lsland and having Vol’jin leading the Darkspear after his father died. Or the Tauren who were saved from extinction by the orcs and trolls and even saved Baine as a kid. forgets about the wacky Chen Stormstout-parts of the durotar campaign back in warcraft 3
Ruined Nathanos. He was pretty much the only good Forsaken ( actual Forsaken, not an ‘undead’ with a Night Elf model ) character they had in Vanilla.
Nathanos and Saurfang were both characters that were done very well in Vanilla who most players didn’t know about. Saurfang received 20 minutes of CGI cinematics and basically an entire expansion building him up towards a glorious death, meanwhile Nathanos got turned into a pathetic lovesick puppy with no other character/personality beyond " Is an ahole and Sylvanas’ little b " and then got offed by Tyrande ( admittedly his voice actor ate that cinematic up )
I kept waiting for that BFA moment when he tells Sylvanas “NO” and redeems himself and it never came. The worst part is they even had a moment in the Warbringers Cinematic when Sylvanas orders him to burn Teldrassil and he looks at her like she’s gone crazy and she has to yell at him again to do it. They really gave me hope there that they were cooking something.
But the original character of Nathanos was also “is a mean-spirited jerk towards everyone other than his Dark Lady.” The only major changes were that he got voice-acting, a makeover (because at the time no iconic undead characters were allowed to look undead) and romantic subtext for his relationship with Sylvanas.
Some rebellion or internal conflict from Nathanos would’ve been nice though.
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