Kael'thas in an Alternate Universe

[Koryn123]

I just wanted to tell you how much i enjoyed your story. I actually loved it.
As a big lore fan of the Alliance of Lordaeron, this is almost exactly what i wanted the Alliance to become after the Scourge outbreak.
If only your story was the canon one..

You know, this is why right now Gilneas is my favorite nation in game. I wanted to be as close to the Alliance of Lordaeron as possible. And Gilneas is a human kingdom right next to Lordaeron and was a part of that Alliance, even if it didn't stayed that long. So playing as one of them makes me feel very nice, in a way.
I just wish Gilneas would have joined the Horde instead....to be again allies with (an undead now) Lordaeron, and Quel'Thalas. Three nations that were used to be former allies, reunited. A small part of the once Alliance of Lordaeron, would be 'awaken' once more..

I dislike the Alliance as it is today :/

As do I. I would have much preferred story take precedence over gameplay, but Blizzard decided to give Blood Elves to the Horde to attract Alliance players to it. That's not to say that I don't still love the Blood Elves' story, though. I actually wrote this story as a way to correct what Blizzard ruined in BC as a response to Vanilla raiders whining that they didn't get to kill enough notable characters for their purples, since apparently the Majordomo of the Lich King, Lord of the Elemental Plane of Fire, an Old God, and the two most powerful of the children of the Aspect of Death weren't notable enough. So Blizzard handed off the reins of the game to the raiding team to decide who lives and who dies, and the Story Team took a backseat, forced to explain how they happened. And after 10 years, they still haven't explained why Kael'thas turned evil. I tweeted Micky Neilson about it, and he said the novella was put on hold.

And thank you for your kind words of appreciation. It helps to know people are interested in my work. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback of any kind, anything at all about the story you'd like to talk about, I'm all ears, and that would really help with getting my muse back for writing more.

[Graden]

Yeah exactly. I mean, after so many years, i can still hear my older brother's desperate screams when he first learned that the Blood Elves are going to join the Horde.
He was a seriously very big fan of the Alliance of Lordaeron, way more than i am. And he was the reason i fell in love with Warcraft in the first place.
But yeah, he stopped caring about Warcraft lore, and this was the main reason.
Overreaction? Sure. But his dream back then was, the Alliance of Warcraft strategy games, the very Alliance he so much adored, to be continued in WoW as well. And his dreams were shattered. (Not just because of Quel'thalas, he disliked many other things too, but i guess that was the cherry on top).

Me personally, i understand why Blizzard did it. They wanted to add a pretty race but also boost (the main reason imo) Horde's numbers too. And well...Blood Elves right now are like what, 70% of Horde's players ? Or even more. Imagine if they were Alliance, the Horde player base would not even exist. So gameplay > lore in that case.
Lore wise i guess Quel'thalas would rejoin the Alliance? I don't know, maybe, i think it'd make more sense. But as i said, what happened was inevitable. People just need to get over it.
The only main problem of this decision that i can think of though, is that because of the Alliance's history with Quel'Thalas, we experience some problems now in WoW. For example, Alleria, her son, her rangers in Outland, Vereesa, the High Elves that were in Eastern Plaguelands. And many other High Elves actually. Except of Alleria, everything else i mentioned, we've seen it as friendly to the Alliance and hostile to the Horde.
And this fucking sucks. It sucks to be a fan of Quel'Thalas and see some of its people or even big named characters/heroes, to be divined, and a part of the enemy faction. So yeah, this is the only problem. Blizz had to keep some High Elves ties in the Alliance, just because of their past history i guess.

But anyway, now some advice for your story! I'd like to give you my opinion about Greymane/Gilneas, in case you ever go back there to rework or expand the story of how Genn will get convinced to help and rejoin the Alliance. As you already know, Genn is a very stubborn, proud man, that hardly can be convinced to do something that he doesn't want to, so...even if he loses a big battle outside of the Greymane Wall, i think it won't be enough.
This is what i suggest : use his son's death, in a similar way like Blizz used it in Cata. This is what will truly shock him in a such a way, to open his eyes and truly see how big of a threat the Scourge is.

[Koryn123]

But anyway, now some advice for your story! I'd like to give you my opinion about Greymane/Gilneas, in case you ever go back there to rework or expand the story of how Genn will get convinced to help and rejoin the Alliance. As you already know, Genn is a very stubborn, proud man, that hardly can be convinced to do something that he doesn't want to, so...even if he loses a big battle outside of the Greymane Wall, i think it won't be enough.
This is what i suggest : use his son's death, in a similar way like Blizz used it in Cata. This is what will truly shock him in a such a way, to open his eyes and truly see how big of a threat the Scourge is.

I'll take that into consideration. I honestly hadn't put as much thought into Genn joining yet. That part was written a lot earlier. I'd gone back and began to re-write and flesh out the earlier parts, ending October of 2014 at the part where they start to go reclaim Dalaran, but I'll think about that whenever I start this back up again.

As this story was written more because I liked Kael'thas and Illidan a lot than anything else, Gilneas is sort of not at the front of my mind, but I understand others are big fans of them, and I'll try to make it cool. But, this story is more about the restoration of Quel'thalas and Lordaeron, so obviously it can't take up the whole spotlight, but I'll see what I can do. I don't want to take the story to Gilneas because that's in the opposite direction of Quel'thalas, so story-wise, that'd be kind of a weird move. But, now that I think about it, the story is supposed to be an accurate telling of a ripple effect caused when Kael'thas was rescued by the Kirin Tor, rather than betrayed and left to die by them, and since the New Alliance is focused more on the eastern and northern portions of the Eastern Kingdoms where the Scourge is the thickest, the narrative probably can't really shift all the way there in such a drastic way as to shift Liam's death from Cataclysm to TFT almost 10 years earlier.

I suppose that perhaps Liam could want to join them, but he seems dedicated to Gilneas and protecting it. Also, any word on how old he would be during TFT?

Edit: But here's an idea for how it could shift a little ways down there: Naberius is on Purgation Isle now. That's pretty close to Gilneas. Perhaps he could unleash a plague there, converting lots of folks to Scourge. They quash the Scourge uprising and Liam dies in the process. Genn decides to help by sending Arugal to Dalaran as his representative, because I think it was around that time that he had Arugal summon the Worgen in canon lore, but since he'd have the option of joining the New Alliance, he might take that instead, a little humbled by Liam's death.

[Zenny]

Me personally, i understand why Blizzard did it. They wanted to add a pretty race but also boost (the main reason imo) Horde's numbers too. And well...Blood Elves right now are like what, 70% of Horde's players ? Or even more. Imagine if they were Alliance, the Horde player base would not even exist. So gameplay > lore in that case.

What? No, Blood Elves account for around 25-28% of the Horde player base. Humans account for a far larger % of the Alliance player base, almost 40%.

I'm sure the Horde population would drop a bit if they had no Blood Elves, likely around 10-15%. Depends on what other race would be in it's place. Then again you can be damn sure the Alliance player base would not be as large without humans.

[Scabior]

That was so cringe-worthy, wow.

[Koryn123]

That was so cringe-worthy, wow.

I've also looked back at certain parts of what I wrote and was dissatisfied with it, so I began revisions a few months back, but never got around to finishing them. Thanks for letting me know what you thought though.

[Gurluas]

To this day I still love this story. Will you finish it one day?

[Powerogue]

It's interesting but does kind of devalue some of the points of the original story. No one else helping meant he had to turn to questionable allies like the naga, and it was clear he and his forces were too depleted to do it on their own.

Working more elements of what we'd see later in the story is a good idea though, makes me wonder how some things might be adjusted in Reforged to make more sense in hindsight. I for one definitely think it will be more visible that Kil'jaeden is looking at Kael'thas when he says "these allies of yours show some promise..."

[Koryn123]

To this day I still love this story. Will you finish it one day?

Maybe, I haven't touched it in years, but last night, my younger brother finally decided to start reading some of my WoW books, which kind of renewed my interest in WoW's history, so who knows? If I did continue, I'd probably be re-working it a bit because I wrote this when I was a cringey roleplayer, so it'd definitely require some dialogue changes at the very least, and I may take away some of his allies and change the way a few characters act, like Alleria. She ought to be a bit tougher and less smiley like a celebrity the way I had her in the greeting at Ironforge.

I'd also take into account some new stuff with Kul Tiras and possibly isolate the Eastern Kingdoms story from Kalimdor so they're not interacting much. When story-wise, a character can just step through a portal and be on the other side of the world like it's nothing, it makes the world feel a lot smaller.

It's interesting but does kind of devalue some of the points of the original story. No one else helping meant he had to turn to questionable allies like the naga, and it was clear he and his forces were too depleted to do it on their own.

Working more elements of what we'd see later in the story is a good idea though, makes me wonder how some things might be adjusted in Reforged to make more sense in hindsight. I for one definitely think it will be more visible that Kil'jaeden is looking at Kael'thas when he says "these allies of yours show some promise..."

That last bit didn't age well. Still very salty about that.

My goal with this story was that the elves being betrayed by the Kirin Tor themselves in the original story was the last straw, especially considering Kael'thas was a member of the Council of Six and spent so much more time in Dalaran than in Quel'thalas. So I thought that if that one hinge point could have been changed, the story could've gone in a completely different direction. He doesn't mind being around the Naga because they and Illidan proved beneficial for the Blood Elves, so even if he was apprehensive at first in the WC3 mission, by this point, he considers them friends and allies (as a group, and possibly on an individual level with Vashj at least), and I imagine with our current knowledge of what happened later after MoP, Azshara wouldn't mind having Vashj around to spy on the land-dwelling races for her indefinitely.