Warbringers Jaina: trying to rewrite events of the past

[huth]

Again, resource limitations didn't exist under the dome.

Quite the opposite. Most resources were very limited. They had no source for ore, stone, significant amounts of wood and even food was limited. Arcwine still used wine as a base, which was created in the old-fashioned way. This is explicitly shown ingame.

Not to mention that space is also a resource, one they had no way of increasing.

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The problem is in all of the lore it is never once said that the humans are actually better/stronger, the only source that researched arcane affinity and magic was a book in dalaran which pretty much said humans and elves are pretty much equal.

I'm fairly certain it does say so somewhere. Explicitly stronger, not better, though. Like a steam ram is stronger than a hammer, but rather useless at putting a nail in a wall to hang up a picture. A human may be able to torch a regiment, but will have trouble not melting the entire candelabra while trying to light a candle.

[Combatbutler]

I'm fairly certain it does say so somewhere. Explicitly stronger, not better, though. Like a steam ram is stronger than a hammer, but rather useless at putting a nail in a wall to hang up a picture. A human may be able to torch a regiment, but will have trouble not melting the entire candelabra while trying to light a candle.

Nope that is from the non canon rpgs, the only official source in terms of arcane affinity is a ingame book in dalaran listing affinities of many races

[Super Dickmann]

IIRC the elves differ from all the titan-construct, as they are simply not one of them : in the description of one of the grey items from the broken isles there's a mention of "long tusked humanoids facing faceless creatures", hinting at Trolls being present on Azeroth at the time of the Black Empire, before the arrival of the Titans, and thus being a native specie.

Regarding the magic affinity, I am not speaking of any "human potential", but of the Arcane being ingrained in every Titan-construct : there were several mentions of Ogres and Mogu using the Arcane liberally and naturally (and almost innately, as opposed to using lots of techniques). Similarly, humans, dwarves and gnomes are able to master great power without any sings of the addiction drawbacks displayed by the elven kin in general.

What makes the "human potential" is in the end plain demography : since they have a much larger population and rate of renewal, it gives them much much more chances for exceptional individuals to appear (and for Human Mages and Archmages quickly outnumbering the Magisters).

As said already, and replying also to @huth human potential because of titan heritage is purely fanfiction and nonsensical fanfiction at that. There's nothing in lore that says humans are any stronger, and it wouldn't make sense under that argument already described. Titans shaped human predecessors - who barely used arcane, mind, they were frontline troops, before they were corrupted by the Curse of Flesh and then didn't use it for ages and had no exposure to it before elves showed it to them. By comparison, elves were also influenced by arcane magic from a titan, except it was centuries of exposure and it came from the strongest titan and resulted in a society based around magic. On top of this, as already referenced, there's no proof anywhere of elves having lower birthrates than humans. Additionally, humans shunned arcane up until Vanilla and sent their mages to Dalaran, whereas magic was developed by the high elves throughout.

Not even the 'oh, but they had more frontline experience' makes any sense, because the elves were involved in every war humanity was in from WC2 onwards, and were fighting skirmishes with the Amani for centuries prior. Unless someone will seriously postulate the argument that Jaina fleeing from the Scourge and being perennially involved in the fight with the Legion far exceeded the high/blood elves in the Scourge Invasion and ensuing guerilla war.

On the population issue, we know Fandral was awake during the war with the qiraji, so I think it's mostly a Malfurion thing that he sleeps indefinitely. The other druids wake up more often, and the soldiers don't sleep at all, they were just far fewer than the woman. So there's reason for them to grow slowly, but even at a slow pace, 10k years is a lot of time.

@huth

Arcane is the manipulation of matter. The Nightwell is a huge source of it. Arcwine is made out of grape-juice because it tastes good, not because it's necessary for it, hence "Nighwell nourish you" and the comment that hte Nightwell sustained them prior. Children drink juice for example. Note that none of these would currently apply since the Nightwell is kill and now that they're in harmony with nature they have to eat and drink.

[Super Dickmann]

I mean Jaina and Khadgar are not strong because of human potential. They are strong because they were both apprenticed to Guardians (Medivh and Aegwynn).

Proximity to Einstein doesn't make you Einstein. Khadgar's apprenticeship to Medivh lasted less than a year and Aegwynn was massively depowered by the time she was teaching Jaina. The Guardian's power wasn't just based on their learning, but on the powers exclusive to them, which neither Jaina nor Khadgar received.

[Super Dickmann]

It also was bound to their immortal and their access to a vast number of spells. Aegwynn almost defeated Medivh while much weaker than him in raw power largely because she had a vastly better understanding of magic, having both pushed herself and traveled all over Azeroth to collect and study it. This is knowledge she could and did transfer to Jaina, as much as she could. As for Khadgar, he spent time in Karazhan which had more arcane lore concentrated than even Dalaran itself and then studied the Arcane.
Another issue is, the elves did have masters of the Arcane that could match Khadgar and Jaina or possibly surpass them but almost all of them died during the Scourge invasion. Dalaran fared better than Quel'thalas if only barely.

Dalaran had a far lower population than Quel'thalas, since it was basically a mage academy. Quel'thalas is full of magisters, but the Grand Magister has legitimately done nothing with spells in his entire career. As for Jaina, her most ridiculous feats with no explanation are pretty much the sole province of BFA. Learning with Aegwynn didn't protect her from bullets, nor was she especially above your average skilled mage in the defense of Theramore. Her subsequent power increase is also not tied to the staff of Antonidas, as she doesn't use it, or to the focusing iris or azerite, which she doesn't have. It's pure plot magic. Khadgar is the beneficiary of the same process as are the Kirin Tor in general, hence that whole business with the arcane sanctum and the Tirisgarde. If arcane learning and experience by itself was sufficient to make great mages, then again Quel'thalas and Suramar should easily have the highest quality mages, given both the resources at their disposal, their magic-led societies and their long lifespan.

[Super Dickmann]

I mean learning with Aegwynn could have taught her a more efficient shield spell than the one taught in Dalaran. A system that showcases that is the Inheritance Cycle; you can have the same effect with much less effort if you use better methodology. And these are skills that can be taught. The Guardians had an intense interest in battle magic and probably knew the best way to create such effects. The elves probably never had to concern themselves with creating efficient spells because all elven civilizations depended greatly on massive mana batteries to power their spells.
All this is just conjecture of course. As you say, wow magic is plot magic. There is no magic system to speak off and the way spellcasting is described doesn't lent to much analysis. It's just that you expect elves to be more magically apt because they always are and because they had two (three if we count Suramar as separate) civilization that were based on magic.
Well so did Ogres, Eredar and Arakkoa and none of them depended on having access to a massive mana battery to achieve that. So the elves are not really that impressive.

To be fair, Eredar were more advanced than elves or pretty much anyone else at everything, but we don't mention that. Broadly I agree with your point that the system is extremely barebones, but this is some basic logic here. If you base your society around X, have a constant source of X and have had ages to practice X it stands to reason you'd be better off than someone who has none of these things. It's not like this was unavoidable, this has been something that's been exacerbated the more the game has gone on.

[Combatbutler]

Edit: Heck considering how elves react historically to any threat to their wells and their despair for lacking access to them, it makes sense that their arcana is very much tied to them. Illidan could not conceive of not having access to the Well of Eternity and that suggests that the way he knew to use magic required it. When people were cut off from the Well during the War of the Ancients by Xavius, their access to magic in general was much diminished; they had learned to depend on the well for power, not on their personal power.

Yet the elves of Quel'thalas lived centuries without a new well, before building their kingdom and wrecked the scourge troops stationed in Northrend endangering the Lich king himself, with roughly 1% of the kingdoms original population, after their well had been destroyed. A feat which should have been impossible if they didn't know what they were doing.

[Super Dickmann]

You'd be better in some ways. Elves never had to deal with scarcity in magic power so it would make sense that they would design their spells to be mana hogs because they could afford that. Why spent time to make them more efficient. That would mean that far from the Well of Eternity or the Sunwell, their mages would be much weaker since they'd be able to power far fewer spells. Heck a further effect could be that maybe they'd function like Netheril in the Forgotten Realms; Netheril used mythallar which concentrated magic and allowed them to create much more powerful effects but those effects were localized (and when their magic system was flushed down the toilet and their mythallars exploded they were restrained to much simpler magic). That is, perhaps a lot of elven effort went into creating magical effects that were directly supplied by the Well of Eternity/Sunwell, enabling great civic works and simplifying life. Perhaps elven magisters would use layers of such magic to empower themselves, all such magics would collapse with the destruction of the respective wells and would have to be rebuild.
In short, if their magic is define by the wells, it would make sense that it would develop to be very dependent on them. Keep in mind that the Well of Eternity was massively more powerful than the Sunwell and thus the Highborne likely had access to it even far from it and that while the Sunwell was much weaker and likely its effects were far more local, the Quel'dorei were also insular and not at all expansionist so they likely did not have much concern about their personal power far away from Quel'thalas.

Again, this is just me trying to apply logic to a system that is bound only by the narrative and no internal consistency. The problem is the narrative. If the narrative ever wants to show an elf with insane magic power, it will. Khadgar and Jaina after all have different power levels in different pages of the same book.

Edit: Heck considering how elves react historically to any threat to their wells and their despair for lacking access to them, it makes sense that their arcana is very much tied to them. Illidan could not conceive of not having access to the Well of Eternity and that suggests that the way he knew to use magic required it. When people were cut off from the Well during the War of the Ancients by Xavius, their access to magic in general was much diminished; they had learned to depend on the well for power, not on their personal power.

There was a tweet around WoD that said that the Sunwell can be reached from anywhere. Now, that's nonsensical, but it's what we have to work with. The elves would always be able to tap into its powers at least to a point in other words. In other words, the well, when it's there, is a baseline. And back before Blizzard went fully off the reservation, the blood elves rebuilt parts of Silvermoon with magic without the Sunwell on hand. In general I like the explanation you're putting into it above, but I don't think it translates into the result we do get to see as it regards the discrepancy between human and elf magical performance. It's obviously only a narrative decision since the Kirin Tor, Khadgar and Jaina are more recognizable than the likes of Rommath or the Nightborne characters but that doesn't excuse things like Thalyssra vs Jaina.

[Combatbutler]

The elves did not live well though. They were struggling to survive. We have accounts from the time before they made the Sunwell and they were hapless refugees.
As for the Northrend campaign, it wasn't just the elves. They had Illidan and the Naga too. Heck maybe they were unknowingly using power from the vials Illidan was carrying around.

They were hapless refugees because they didn't have a infrastructure, they had more than enough power to wipe out primitive humanity at the time and ward off the amani while they were on their track north, both parties clashing constantly. Illidan is just one guy and the Naga weren't that numerous either, a small army laid waste to the scourge strongholds in the north, it is nonsensical to believe that the elves would lack the ability to tap into the ley lines as well as humans do, because they are the ones who later properly refined it and later taught humanity how to do it, which then revealed humanities affinity for the arcane.

Heck Valtrois and the sanctums littering Quel'thalas are prime examples that the elves knew exactly how and where to tap into ley lines.

[ausoin]

They were hapless refugees because they didn't have a infrastructure, they had more than enough power to wipe out primitive humanity at the time and ward off the amani while they were on their track north, both parties clashing constantly. Illidan is just one guy and the Naga weren't that numerous either, a small army laid waste to the scourge strongholds in the north, it is nonsensical to believe that the elves would lack the ability to tap into the ley lines as well as humans do, because they are the ones who later properly refined it and later taught humanity how to do it, which then revealed humanities affinity for the arcane.

Heck Valtrois and the sanctums littering Quel'thalas are prime examples that the elves knew exactly how and where to tap into ley lines.

You are kinda stretching it, Keal forces would have been overrun by the undead if it wasn't for the naga then later Garithos captured them without much struggle and if it wasn't for Lady Vashy they would have been executed.

[Combatbutler]

You are kinda stretching it, Keal forces would have been overrun by the undead if it wasn't for the naga then later Garithos captured them without much struggle and if it wasn't for Lady Vashy they would have been executed.

Not really, a small portion of the Naga Joined illidan and Kael never got more elves than he had in dalaran heck, both armies lost troops by conquering outland and then this ragtag highborne army of Naga and Blood elves rampages through Northrend forcing the lcih king to call for backup from Lordaeron. Is it ridiculous that 1% of the original high elf population and a small splinter faction of the Naga threatened the entirety of the scourge, yeah but it is exactly what has happened.

[ausoin]

Not really, a small portion of the Naga Joined illidan and Kael never got more elves than he had in dalaran heck, both armies lost troops by conquering outland and then this ragtag highborne army of Naga and Blood elves rampages through Northrend forcing the lcih king to call for backup from Lordaeron. Is it ridiculous that 1% of the original high elf population and a small splinter faction of the Naga threatened the entirety of the scourge, yeah but it is exactly what has happened.

Well the Scourge back then in Northerend werent really strong, all they had were the nerubians to ressurect, bulk of the Scourge forces were dead humans, which were all in EK. So while they did almost destroy the Lich King, its more attributed to the lack of the Scourge forces in Northrend and not the strength of the naga and the BE.

[Combatbutler]

Well the Scourge back then in Northerend werent really strong, all they had were the nerubians to ressurect, bulk of the Scourge forces were dead humans, which were all in EK.

Northrend wasn't empty it was heavily fortified, the scourge had vast armies in the eastern kingdoms, but they also had many troops in the north, the nerubians alone had a vast empire spreading half of the entirety of Northrend and most of its citizens were brought back into undeath. Before the lich king set its eyes on the south after he had subdued most of the continent

[Thage]

Simple answer: Kul'Tiras as a nation heard the story second- or thirdhand. Without the context of the time Jaina spent working with Thrall to uphold a truce and attempting to forge a long-term alliance between the Alliance, Sentinels, and Horde, Jaina ordering Theramore's troops to stand down and Jaina herself refusing to take part in Daelin's battle after he forcibly annexed a (recognized) sovereign city-state comes across as betrayal. And Jaina has hardly been in a healthy state of mind since Theramore's destruction, even if we discount the rapid swings in characterization between the games and books in that time frame.

Her telling Daelin's spirit she should have listened to him is not presented as a sound decision (especially because Daelin restarting the cycle of aggression could well have been the root cause behind the current merry-go-round of truce and bloodshed), doubly so because during the end of the Kul'Tiras storyline, Katherine tells her Daelin dug his own grave. That the Horde kept going down dark paths in the time since is irrelevant; at the time Daelin was unquestionably the aggressor and until then, while things weren't all skipping through meadows the Horde was content to remain in its lands and stick to the occasional border clash that the Alliance, Horde, and Sentinels were all willing to overlook and chalk up to troops on the frontier getting antsy.

[Valkari]

It's not showing the Orcs like that at all, it's showing things from the perspective of the Kul Tirans. In their eyes, the Orcs were all brutal savages with fire in their eyes, and Daelin was the brave Admiral who tried to save his daughter and was betrayed.

In reality, Daelin was an old racist who dove headfirst into attacking an "enemy" who had shown no provocation and done nothing to him or his people, then when his own daughter told him that they weren't a threat, he disregarded what she had to say in order to cling to old hatreds.

His death was his own fault, as were the deaths of his men.

Exactly, this basically boils down to lack of access to unbiased information in a fantasy world/Jaina regretting past decisions. As far as the people in Kul Tiras know, this is how it happened.

Sort of similar to the whole debacle with the broken shore, how neither side really gets the whole story and assumes betrayal.

[Nihilux]

Events always have different perspectives on them. There's no rewriting events, rather it's the sensible in-character view of a Kul'Tiran. Jaina did betray her father, after all.

Thrall was right to attack Daelin, but Jaina was never right in assisting them, but she assumed that if she sacrificed her father for the greater good, it would be the best solution. Thrall makes on his own the conclusion that they'll go after Daelin, after they blockade themselves after being beaten by the Horde, because otherwise they'll have to deal with skirmishes with Daelin all the time. It makes sense for him, because he's a leader doing what's best for his people. Just like Daelin, understanding what the alien invaders, the orcs, have done to humans and what a risk letting them build up forces could lead to in time, decides to pursue them (and also colored by personal experiences as well). Neither are wrong, just like Jaina as an outsider, has a different perspective on the orcs, viewing a peaceful co-existence as the best solution after the battle of Mount Hyjal. Especially since she had established a non-aggression treaty with the orcs. Daelin's perspective makes even more sense, if you view the history of humans on Azeroth and the Troll wars.

This is why it's completely understandable that Jaina is hated in Kul Tiras and why after all the times she feels she's been proven wrong about her ideal, especially with what happened to Theramore, that perhaps her father was right all along. Perhaps her sacrifice of her father was in vain and a young person's naive idealism due to how the races banded together in facing external threats. Perhaps she, like Arthas, didn't take the time to consider other options. Very fitting considering that Uther and she chastised Arthas for the very same. After all, there were solutions other than killing Daelin. More so, with Daelin seemingly outranking Jaina once he comes to Theramore, makes it seem that even she acknowledged the city as part of the human alliance, rather than a new kingdom established by her and survivors of Lordaeron. After all, thinking about it, orcs and humans never had a good relationship, and on Kalimdor it was Jaina and Thrall keeping each of their faction in check, meaning that sooner or later aggressions would rise up. Especially over resources, but also of old grudges. Especially once all external enemies are defeated.

Generally, there's no absolutist position to take on this. It's all depending on your view. If you took another perspective of the WC3 campaign, it'd be that of an invading force, establishing in Durotar, killing and driving out native harpies, centaurs, kobolds, murlocs, quillboars, wildkins and bronze dragons. But since you are the horde in the campaign, they're all enemies and your job is to establish your own land. (Funnily enough, Rexxar points this out at the beginning of the bonus campaign, then goes off killing and then joining the horde)

My problem is not with the Warbringer video, but rather with what you actually experience in the game's storyline. Katherine so easily forgiving Jaina and washing over their leader being killed, a thing Jaina assisted in and also stood by, is what's ridiculous. There's no point dredging this up, if it'll all be swept over like it's nothing. The premise of the Warbringer is great, the execution of the premise it sets up is terrible in the game.