Why did the naaru focus mostly on draenei, and not recruit more races into the Army?

[OwenBurton]

The naaru recruited the draenei to fight the Legion -- but the Burning Crusade had barely begun at that point, and thousands of worlds were yet intact. And yet, the hundreds or thousands of naaru scattered throughout the cosmos were apparently powerless to save most of them, nor did they feel inclined to recruit any of their survivors into the Army of the Light. Why were there only draenei abroad the Xenedar? Were Xe'ra and the other naaru simply powerless to save any of the other planets? Even the draenei seemed to have mostly fled -- without taking or saving any of the other countless species they must have interacted with over the millennia.

[Radaney]

The Army of the Light were losing and stretched thin, hence why Xe'ra sent her sperm Light's Heart out in Legion. What you see on Argus is essentially the Army of the Lights last ditch effort against the Burning Legion.

Were Xe'ra and the other naaru simply powerless to save any of the other planets?

Apparently actually yes, during The Burning Crusade both Khadgar and Velen asked The Army of the Light for aid on Outland. They could only afford to send out Tempest Keep with A'dal, M'uru, and O'ros.

I think the Army of the Light is much smaller than you are imagining it to be. The Army of the Light was literally just a bunch of Draenei and Naaru on the Xenedar and Genedar, one of these in which randomly crashed on Outland and shot the Exodar out of it. The survivors post Argus are so small that they joined the Alliance with Turalyon.

There was a vision that the Army would grow and essentially be all the races of Azeroth helmed by Anduin, Velen and Illidan to fight against a new? reformed? Burning Legion and the Void. Although this vision was most likely a fabrication because Illidan did not accept Xe'ra's gift to become lightforged, as he was in the vision and instead blasted her into little fragments.

[nonameelf]

The Army of Light was supposed to be something formed in the future with every race in it. Draenei were meant to be the backbone of the army.

And then Blizzard decided to make it something that has been around for ages and was just draenei.

[cparle87]

The naaru recruited the draenei to fight the Legion -- but the Burning Crusade had barely begun at that point, and thousands of worlds were yet intact. And yet, the hundreds or thousands of naaru scattered throughout the cosmos were apparently powerless to save most of them, nor did they feel inclined to recruit any of their survivors into the Army of the Light. Why were there only draenei abroad the Xenedar? Were Xe'ra and the other naaru simply powerless to save any of the other planets? Even the draenei seemed to have mostly fled -- without taking or saving any of the other countless species they must have interacted with over the millennia.

Where do you get this "the Crusade had barely begun" thing from? The eredar were recruited 13,000 years ago, a mere 3,000 years before the War of the Ancients and long after the empowerment of the Aspects. We have no date as to when the Pantheon had been slained.

As for the why, probably the same reason Sargeras wanted them. They were a biologically immortal, magically gifted race. As for saving most of them, that would be kinda impossible since 2/3 of them joined the Legion. Even saving all the ones from Argus wouldn't have been most. Yes, it seems they were pretty much powerless since the Army was losing a guerilla on the run war when we finally met them. And that is one of my gripes with the non-Army draenei. They land on a world not caring whether it has sentient life. Not caring whether they bring the Legion's wrath down on those races when they up and flee. Look at what happened to the orcs because of the draenei. Getting away with merely a blood curse causing two generations or more to be mindless butchers was getting off easy.

[Venziir]

The Army of Light was supposed to be something formed in the future with every race in it. Draenei were meant to be the backbone of the army.

And then Blizzard decided to make it something that has been around for ages and was just draenei.

Which is pretty fucking funny, considering that the official promo art for 7.3 showed other races, such as orcs and tauren, as part of the Army of Light.

[hortrorog]

Which is pretty fucking funny, considering that the official promo art for 7.3 showed other races, such as orcs and tauren, as part of the Army of Light.

That's literally what happened tho Azeroth joined the Army.

[Venziir]

That's literally what happened tho Azeroth joined the Army.

I suppose that's one way to interpret the image.

[Mayia]

Blizzard ret-conned and forgot this faction required a backstory.
its not a main faction you can't expect them to keep track of stuff.

There's a great example in star trek infact.. Deep space nine had small shuttlecraft (larger than normal infact) called runabouts they kept track of each one that got wiped out and replaced it, mean while Voyager kept magically making new shuttles everyweek on "limited to no resources" completely forgetting the point of the show.

Warcraft's side factions are more like voyager - its nice if they remember but you never expect them to do anything about it until a retcon comes along.

[Razion]

It may be part of the Light's ultimate path of victory that things specifically turn out this way. Any untold survivors could change the paths of history in any number of uncalculated number of ways - potentially endangering the entire operation. Especially with Sargeras as the main threat, it's paramount that they be incorruptible and vigilant. But maybe they did try at first -- keep in mind they've been doing this for tens of thousands of years. For so very long they've known nothing but war and lost often. They're a force of faith, so it's probably doubtful they gave up in their crusade when being so dedicated is what is supposed to be part of their M.O. But, again, tens of thousands of years -- those they saved may have just died naturally along the way. Either of old age, or in the wars. Probably more likely in the wars. As far as races go the Eredar were said to be one of the best spellcasters ever, so it would stand to reason that against an endless army of demons they would have some survivors like we see in the Army of the Light and Draenei. But for other races that weren't so fortunate as to have such long lives that aren't as proficient in magic or war? Such races and creatures would be doomed to die. Plus, a lot of creatures or races may require their home planets to survive, and may not have been feasible to take with. Even if they took a lot of flora and fauna, it also may not have been sustainable for natural reasons... as well as practical ones. They may have been a liability - a threat and point of potential corruption or exploitation by the Legion, which after tens of thousands of years would surely have come up. The Universe is infinite, and after tens of thousands of years of nothing but war and exploiting whatever they can to break down the Army of the Light, the Legion would have been merciless and left no quarter. It's no wonder we only got the few ships of Lightforged that we did -- anything else is either probably dead or dying or hiding or off fighting elsewhere if they are alive. And it's not just the Legion the Army of the Light has to deal with. They could be fighting agents of the Void and Death especially, but they could also be fighting Life or Order elsewhere in the universe as well. Who's to say there isn't more Army of the Light out there? We know the Lightforged are adding more forces with the Mag'har at least, so it's not like the Draenei are the only ones even now. Like the Mag'har, they may be taking over those planets and converting them at different rates. It could be part of the Light's goal to convert on as many planets as possible and so the situation we found ourselves in frankly may not have been a priority compared to like the Void or forces of Death or whatever else they may be dealing with elsewhere in the universe. Light doesn't necessarily have to abide by the same kind of One True Timeline that the Titans had in mind for us, their goals very well could be very different and Illidan or keeping the Lightforged Draenei in line may well have been the only reason they even bothered to try and help us at all. Or maybe even sending the Draenei to us was even a suicide mission - maybe they weren't meant to survive. We're working with too little information about the Light on a cosmic level at this point to draw too much of a conclusion about every contingency why they did what they did at this point. It could be any number of infinite reasons. The Light is big.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

The writers were lazy and decided to include it in the story earlier than planned and to just include the Lightforged in it because they didn't want to create new races that would be members of it.

[Feanoro]

The writers are lazy minds, and since Draenei form a sizable part of the Army, they deemed it an Alliance story, and therefore it gets zero effort.

[Aliven]

The naaru recruited the draenei to fight the Legion -- but the Burning Crusade had barely begun at that point, and thousands of worlds were yet intact. And yet, the hundreds or thousands of naaru scattered throughout the cosmos were apparently powerless to save most of them, nor did they feel inclined to recruit any of their survivors into the Army of the Light. Why were there only draenei abroad the Xenedar? Were Xe'ra and the other naaru simply powerless to save any of the other planets? Even the draenei seemed to have mostly fled -- without taking or saving any of the other countless species they must have interacted with over the millennia.

Because when naaru were introduced the army of light did not even existed. It was made up later.