World of Warcraft

It may have happened nearly 20 years ago now, but I can still remember it clearly. It was the end of October 2005. The very first BlizzCon was taking place. I was a young teenager at the time and had been playing World of Warcraft for around six months. As I was scrolling through a (now defunct) WoW news site, looking for any BlizzCon updates, I suddenly saw it – the official announcement of World of Warcraft’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade. There were accompanying images showcasing a brand-new region of the game called the Eversong Woods. It was to be the starting zone for a new race: the blood elves. It looked like an enchanted forest, bathed in warm, soft sunlight. Swards of green and yellow grass stretched out beneath trees alight with gold and crimson leaves. Thin, elegant structures extended high into the sky. I instantly fell in love with the place.

Truth be told, I haven’t really played any of World of Warcraft‘s last three or four expansions, but I still sometimes return to the world of Azeroth to explore and quest through old zones that I remember fondly from my younger years. The Eversong Woods, in particular, keeps drawing me back. I can’t quite explain why. There’s something about the sun-drenched aesthetic and the wondrous, gravity-defying elven architecture that combine to create an extraordinary fairyland that is both relaxing and extremely fun to explore.

But first, a bit of history. To fully understand this corner of World of Warcraft and its blood elf inhabitants, we need to travel back 10,000 years before the game takes place. At this time, Azeroth only had one giant continent. It was inhabited by various races, such as the night elves (also known as the kaldorei), the tauren (minotaur-like beings), the earthen (basically proto-dwarves), and the trolls. When demons of the Burning Legion invaded Azeroth, attracted by the night elves’ use of arcane magic, many of these races banded together to repel the demonic threat. A terrible conflict known as the War of the Ancients broke out. In time, the demons were vanquished, albeit at great cost – there was a Great Sundering that shattered Azeroth’s single continent and drowned many parts of the world. 

After the war ended, the night elf race outlawed the practice of arcane magic. Some, however, opposed this. These were the Highborne, the upper class of the ancient night elf civilisation, who seemed to have a natural aptitude for magic. They viewed magic as their birthright and suffered from magical withdrawal. Many continued to practice the arcane arts without fear or restraint, daring the other night elves to act. Archdruid Malfurion Stormrage could not bring himself to put so many of his kin to death, so those who refused to abandon their magical pursuits were exiled from night elf lands. Most of the Highborne happily accepted their banishment, glad to be rid of their conservative cousins and free to practice the arcane with impunity.

The Highborne left their homeland behind and sailed east to a new land that the Great Sundering had created. They forged inland and, deep within the northern forests of this continent, they founded a new kingdom for themselves called Quel’Thalas (which translates to ‘High Home’ or ‘High Kingdom’). At the forest’s northernmost tip, close to the ocean, they established a new capital city for themselves, Silvermoon, and on an island just off the coast, they created a fount of arcane energy called the Sunwell, which granted them magical sustenance. Eventually, they came to call themselves the quel’dorei, or ‘high elves’. No longer fearful of using magic, the high elves bathed their new land in eternal springtime. They interwove their architecture to complement Quel’Thalas’s landscape, blending nature and their arcane-empowered structures together in beautiful ways.

As time wore on, Quel’Thalas became a shining monument to the high elves’ efforts and magical prowess. The Convocation of Silvermoon, which was comprised of seven of the great high elf lords, was founded as the ruling power over Quel’Thalas and worked to secure the safety of the elven lands and people. Surrounded by a protective barrier, the high elves remained unmoved by the old warnings of the kaldorei and continued to use magic flagrantly in almost all aspects of their lives. They allied themselves with the human tribes of Lordaeron and even taught them how to use and wield arcane magic themselves, in exchange for help in defeating the forest trolls of nearby Zul’Aman. The high elves maintained good relations with the humans for centuries.

In the Second War (which is depicted in the real-time strategy game, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, released in 1995), Quel’Thalas committed its rangers, priests, and sorceresses to the Alliance. But the kingdom suffered heavy losses. The Horde’s enthralled dragons breathed fire across Quel’Thalas, razing the land. Ultimately, however, the Alliance triumphed, and the elves started to rebuild. 

Some years later, the Third War began (as seen in Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, released in 2002 – the first Warcraft game I played, incidentally), and the high elves once again sent their warriors to fight alongside their human allies. The death knight Arthas, leading a huge undead host, later invaded Quel’Thalas to use the mystical powers of the Sunwell to resurrect the slain necromancer Kel’Thuzad. Though the high elves put up a valiant fight, Arthas and his forces eradicated their army, killed Sylvanas Windrunner, the Ranger-General of Silvermoon, and battled through to the Sunwell. In a cruel gesture of his dominance, Arthas even raised Sylvanas’ defeated body as a banshee, cursed to endless undeath in the service of Quel’Thalas’ conqueror.

Ultimately, Arthas submerged Kel’Thuzad’s remains within the holy waters of the Sunwell, and he was reborn as a sorcerous lich. By the time Arthas, Kel’Thuzad, and their army of the dead turned southward again, the Sunwell had been fouled and the high elf race had been decimated. The glorious homeland of the high elves, which had stood for more than 9,000 years, was no more.

In the expansion to Warcraft III, The Frozen Throne, we learn that most of the high elven survivors, embittered by what happened to them, had come to call themselves ‘sin’dorei’, which means ‘children of the blood’, in honour of their fallen people. Soon, they became known as blood elves. They set fire to what remained of their beloved forest, resolved that the Scourge would not revel in its victory, and joined forces with the night elf demon hunter, Illidan the Betrayer.

At this point, I want to take a detour from the history of Quel’Thalas to discuss its history within the game of World of Warcraft. When WoW shipped in November 2004, although there were some blood elves here and there, and a few pockets of high elves dotted around the Eastern Kingdoms, Quel’Thalas was not accessible. The main road from the Eastern Plaguelands into Quel’Thalas was simply blocked by debris.

There was, in fact, a closed zone in World of Warcraft called ‘Quel’thalas’, found between Tirisfal Glades and Lordaeron’s north coast. This big, empty area was not intended to be accessible to players (although some intrepid individuals did manage to gain access to it), and there was very little there other than a solitary white tower. This was likely a leftover from the early development of World of Warcraft, which was postponed, reworked, and later added in the first expansion.

But at this point in time, before The Burning Crusade was revealed, we knew very little about what had happened to the high elven kingdom since the Third War, or its current state. The Warcraft RPG Book, Lands of Conflict, which was released in September 2004, shortly before World of Warcraft came out, provided the first glimpse into a post-Warcraft III Quel’Thalas. It explains that Quel’Thalas, ravaged by the undead and burned by the remaining elven survivors, is now a dead, barren realm known as the Blackened Woods¹.

‘Black trees march away on all sides. Ash and grief, almost tangible, cover the ground. Elven ruins jut from the gray-black ash like the bones of the dead, and ghosts of murdered elves pass through the trees. [ ] No living creatures remain in this haunted realm. The spirits of slaughtered elves roam the landscape like mist given form and voice.’

It was long speculated that Quel’Thalas would be added to the game in an expansion, thanks in no small part to the existence of a high elf named Adon (a play on ‘add-on’), who was located in the northernmost part of the Eastern Plaguelands, close to the blocked entrance to Quel’Thalas. That theory did indeed prove correct with the announcement of The Burning Crusade at BlizzCon 2005 and the unveiling of the blood elves as a new playable race. But the image of Quel’Thalas (aka the Blackened Woods) that was presented in Lands of Conflict does not really line up with the bright, cheery Quel’Thalas that we see in The Burning Crusade. I should point out that Lands of Conflict and Warcraft’s other old RPG books are now deemed non-canon. However, some of the lore that was introduced in them still makes its way into World of Warcraft to this day, and I don’t believe the description of Quel’Thalas in Lands of Conflict is entirely incompatible with how we see it in The Burning Crusade, with its gold-leaved trees and sun-drenched hills.

Firstly, a later RPG book, World of Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game, suggests that the Blackened Woods is not, in fact, the high elven land as a whole, but merely a region within it. And a later Warcraft novel explains that a massive forest once stretched from the southern borders of Quel’Thalas to the city of Silvermoon in the north, known as Eversong Forest. When a third of this forest was burned down by red dragons enslaved by the Horde during the Second War, this land was effectively split into two: Eversong Woods to the north and the Ghostlands to the south.

After the events seen in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, the lore states that many blood elves returned to Quel’Thalas and began reclaiming and rebuilding. The land, it transpired, though ravaged by the Scourge, was not beyond healing, and the elves managed to restore at least part of their kingdom to its former resplendence. In my opinion, the designers did a great job making Eversong Woods feel equal parts idyllic and bittersweet. It is beautiful but fractured – a land recovering from tragedy. The background music is airy, melodic, and faintly melancholic. Some aspects of the zone have an autumnal feel – such as golden leaves gently falling from the trees – but lorewise, it is actually an eternal springtime. This makes sense to me. Spring, after all, represents hope and rebirth – the rebirth of a nation, of an entire race.

Reborn though the blood elves may be, they are nonetheless adrift in a sea of uncertainty. For a start, they are magical junkies. There are no two ways about it. They are addicted to magic and cannot get enough of it. The fact that blood elves have mainly mana-oriented classes – and have racial abilities that emphasise magic – reinforces this theme. Ever since their primary source of magic, the Sunwell, was destroyed, they have been desperately searching for something – anything – with which to fuel their incessant need for mana. They’re experimenting with magical crystals, alchemy, and even trying to tap into the demonic magic of the Burning Legion. This does not mean they’re an ‘evil’ race – on the contrary, they’re just a people that have been through a massive cultural trauma. As Blizzard’s former loremaster Chris Metzen once put it, they’re like ‘Legolas if he went down a pretty heavy path.’

As you explore Eversong Woods, you’ll see that blood elf culture revolves heavily around magic. They are utterly dependent on it. Everywhere and everything is enlivened with magic – especially their buildings. I’ll cover elven architecture in more detail in another post, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it at least briefly here. In some parts of the land, there are stately, circular homes of polished marble tucked away among the trees. But the most eye-catching elven buildings are the thin, elegant, swirling structures that, befitting beings once referred to as ‘high elves’, seem to float up towards the sky. And, in many cases, this floating is literal. Second-storey turrets and extensions often defy gravity, connected to the first floor by ramps that twist and wind around the structure without support. Without the arcane, many of these soaring buildings would quickly topple, hinting at the sin’dorei’s arcane mastery.

One notable building is the North Sanctum, just south of Silvermoon. This is an Arcane Sanctum, a building that can be constructed when you’re playing as the Alliance in Warcraft III; it allows you to produce elven priests and sorceresses, and, later, in The Frozen Throne expansion, elven spellbreakers. Its depiction in World of Warcraft (below) differs somewhat from its appearance in Warcraft III (right), but I still instantly recognised the North Sanctum when I first stumbled upon it back in 2007 – thanks mainly to the distinctive astrolabe on top of the building, orbited by floating spheres that represent the stars. Arcane Sanctums siphon arcane power from ‘ley-lines’ – currents of magic that traverse the lands, invisible to the naked eye. They have been used by the elven magi and sorceresses for years to diligently study mystical arts and create new spells. Ever since the destruction of the Sunwell, they have also provided the blood elves with a steady and reliable source of magical energy.

The visual atmosphere in Eversong Woods is truly a joy to behold. Most of the zone seems to glow with rich golds, deep crimsons, and warm oranges. Leaves are never green here. The sunlight has a soft, golden filter, making everything look warm, serene, and slightly surreal. The overall effect is that of a kingdom permanently frozen in a moment of autumnal perfection, with a nostalgic, almost dream-like quality. The idea of a land that is locked in perpetual autumn/spring is, of course, nothing new in the fantasy genre, especially when it comes to elves – similar imagery appears in the Elven kingdom of Lothlórien in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, with its golden mallorn trees and sense of seasonally unchanging beauty.

Although most of Eversong has been reclaimed and restored by the blood elves, some pockets of undead Scourge remain. They are mainly concentrated on and around the Dead Scar – a ghastly, barren wound on the land that rends Eversong and the city of Silvermoon in two, just as it does the Ghostlands to the south. This trail of ravaged, blackened, lifeless earth was created during the Third War when Arthas and his Scourge army moved northwards through Quel’Thalas to reach the Sunwell, plaguing the land upon which they marched. Even today, it serves as a grim and permanent reminder of the brutality of the Scourge. Apparently, the blood elves looked into trying to heal it, but it was deemed too tainted to save.

The ruined remains of Scourge meat wagons lie abandoned along the length of the Scar, and it is stalked by shambling corpses, skeletons, and other blights of creation. Crossing the Dead Scar at any point can be dangerous, but the dark necromantic energies in northern Eversong seem weaker here than further south, and the ground is not quite so cursed.

Despite this blight on the land, the Eversong Woods, on the whole, is a verdant and cheery region. The forests here are bright and colourful. The difference between the blood elves and their night elf cousins is, quite literally, day and night. Whereas the kaldorei live in eternal twilight, the blood elves, like the high elves before them, live in a place of everlasting vibrancy. Everything they do, they seem to do in bright reds, oranges, whites, and golds.

But this lush landscape is in contrast to the dark measures that the blood elves have taken to retain their use of magic. For those who look, the ethereal beauty of Eversong has an underlying darkness. Visually enchanting though it may be, the zone is layered with a sense of quiet sadness and lingering melancholy. Much of the plant life you see feels quite unnatural in a way, as if the blood elves, who love to be in control of both their magical addiction and their environment, have changed everything slightly to better suit their needs. Meanwhile, some of their soaring structures are powered and kept aloft by green crystals that glow with fel energy. Look closer and you’ll see sinister eyes trapped within, glaring outward. An entire segment of Silvermoon City, not yet repaired, is infested with elves who have fallen to their addiction and become twisted reflections of their former selves.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll get to Silvermoon soon, but next time, I’m going to start a new blood elf character and explore the blood elf starting area, Sunstrider Isle.

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1. Lands of Conflict also mentions that the Blackened Woods are sometimes known as the ‘Ghostlands of Quel’Thalas’. This is the first mention of the Ghostlands, which would become the name for the southernmost region of Quel’Thalas in The Burning Crusade. ↩︎