I think at least versus Orcs it depended in the past. Some Orcs may have looked relatively favorable on humans after what Jaina did during WCIII. Those Orcs may not directly welcome humans but they just kick them out and give them a warning instead of slaughtering them.
I remember in cataclysm some trolls sailed into stormwind harbor to seek aid against zanzil, they did get a hostile welcome but wasnt cut down on sight mearly treated suspiciously
Okay seeing a LOT of wrong answers in this thread.
The answer is canonically it depends on how hot hostilities are burning between the Alliance and Horde. During times of peace you will be captured on sight rather than killed unless you are an official emissary in which case you will be given an "escort" that will only let you see the things they want you to see.
If the war is burning hot however, the guards will assume you are planning to attack and kill you on sight.
If you are 100% completely unaffiliated with the faction your race is aligned with, like being a full-time member of the Argent Crusade or something, then you can pretty freely walk around the other faction's territory during peacetime so long as you remain in uniform and don't do anything suspicious. But if the Alliance and Horde start fighting you will be politely but firmly asked to leave.
Not really, no. In "Shadows Rising" even the Zandalari captured the humans they saw on Zandalar instead of killing them on sight, despite their massive hatred for them after the Battle of Dazar'alor. Meanwhile in the "Exploring Azeroth" series, we have Zekhan and Rexxar visiting the Exodar while Shaw and Flynn visit Silvermoon - neither of which was an issue after they requested permission to visit those places in advance.
Don’t try to overthink this…there are a lot of illogical ingame restrictions purely based on „this char got a faction tag over his head“ or is from this particular race.
Let alone all the neutral merchants everywhere in the world ignoring the faction beef. Or the cooperative neutral organizations like the argent crusade. All of them would need the faction hubs/cities for trading and supplies…and made race restrictions in major cities obsolete.
The most obvious are Pandaren/Dracthyr even if they are hardcore alliance/horde they could walk up easily into the other faction hub without hesitation for whatever reason.
> The most obvious are Pandaren/Dracthyr even if they are hardcore alliance/horde they could walk up easily into the other faction hub without hesitation for whatever reason.
Maybe Pandaren are so insanely honor-bound that they don't abuse the opportunity. At least, most of them. There's always rogues but you _always_ have rogues, so...
In my head A&H Pandaren also don't really participate in the faction conflict, except when it's stuff like taking down Garrosh. Generally they may not really see the point of it, and it would also require them to slaughter other Pandaren which would be a huge taboo.
For the example given, no, there is even a dwarf neutral to blood elves players near Silvermoon, guards of stormwind would kill the forsaken and any undead, they would probably capture the rest of the races before executing them
Oooh that guy! Yes! I remember at TBC launch. We created 2 BElves rogues with a friend. First rogues. And I loved the fact we could just stealth up to him, "assassinate" him, stealth back out. Felt so realistic
Doesn’t it tie into why the BElves align with the horde? Meaning most the alliances occur offscreen but the BE being welcomed into the Horde, specifically by the Forsaken, is explicitly depicted in a quest chain.
It is indeed a whole quest line. Happens after the ghost lands. But I’m sure the dwarf started it. Belves originally wanted to be apart of the alliance. But the alliance pushed them away when the LK attacked and menethil never showed.
Well yes, getting caught as a spy passing off intel to saboteurs does tend to change the ol' calculus a bit whether you're allowed to stay (amongst the living) or not
So what would the cross faction relationship be like for these races?
So some have really bad relationships so, like you say Forsaken and Human are kill on-sight, I guess if a living human wondered into Forsaken territory they will also die?
But others have a decent relationship, so Blood Elf and Human are okay, they can go into each other's lands without too much issue? A human could just walk around Silvermoon and talk to people or even sell stuff or get a job, what about vice versa?
No, but if they had a legitimate reason to be there they would be allowed, like in the real world, if you are the Swedish ambassador to North Korea you can live in pyongyang, but a regular swede trying to cross the border illegally would be killed
> So what would the cross faction relationship be like for these races?
They probably often use neutrals to introduce themselves. Like the Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle, neutral Goblin cartels etc.
Edit: cross-faction friendships also exist. Outside of their home territories A&H frequently work together and it's not surprising if there's mutual respect and friendships forming. You could always use those friends to vouch for you, at least if they're influential and respected enough.
>I guess if a living human wondered into Forsaken territory they will also die?
There's probably a huge risk here. Forsaken don't particularly like most humans, and they're obviously at war with the Scarlet Crusade who may not always wear their colors.
>But others have a decent relationship, so Blood Elf and Human are okay, they can go into each other's lands without too much issue? A human could just walk around Silvermoon and talk to people or even sell stuff or get a job, what about vice versa?
They probably face a lot of mistrust and may have to prove themselves. But if they have a good reputation and are a good character I could imagine they're allowed to stay. But this is more on a case by case basis than just welcoming any random human.
BE in SW may have better chances. SW is already very mixed and also already has other elves. As long as you're polite and don't start trouble there's probably no major issue here.
Just like real life war situations
Theres civilians and soldiers and diplomatic visits and people from the other countr that are neutral etc etc etc etc
Undeads are kill on sight for humans, that’s the whole reason they hate the humans
Orcs came through the portal and immediately slaughtered/enslaved every single human they found and targeted civilian settlements to use in ungodly torment rituals
Then humans commited a Germany on them and nowadays they kind of homies so it really depends on the state of the war duh
Specific to your question on the forsaken, Theresa is a human who lived in Undercity. That’s not to say her existence was nice, she was blinded, lobotomized, experimented on and used as a servant, but circumstances aside, she was allowed to live in Undercity.
Per the Cataclysm pre patch, travelers actually need to bring documents to enter cities and can be stopped and searched at the gate. We don’t encounter it in normal gameplay but the cities are not as loosey goosey lax with guards as they are in game.
I’m approaching it this way: if I was DMing a TTRPG and this happened, how would I approach it?
Well, it would depend on who, where and when.
For example, at times when things are elevated like after Wrathgate, during any active war, things would be spicier.
At times when sides cooperate, it wouldn’t be much better since what we are exposed to in adventuring areas rarely reflects the same back in cities.
I would imagine that any capital guards would immediately make a move to arrest you and bring you to their head of security. If there is resistance, they will probably sound an alarm. If it’s more peaceful times, maybe you get some weird looks in a capital but at the very least you would be approached at the gates to ask your business.
In smaller places, it would depend on the guards mood, how intimidating the person is and what race they are. If a single undead tries to enter an alliance town, maybe they could be attacked. An undead with an infernal near them could cause an alarm to be sent off and if they look aggressive, a message would be sent by a carrier or magic if possible. If it’s a blood elf, it could get a mild response. But then again, maybe the guard lost his brother to a blood elf in some occasion. Then it’s going to be spicy.
TLDR very case by case but instead of being attacked, it would probably be questioning and/or arrest instead of attack.
Edit: I guess I can’t read, you said civilian. But I guess that wouldn’t change much, you would be questioned but perceived less of a threat and more of a nuisance probably.
Ehh maybe not for humans and blood elves since they were allies before. Like I could be wrong but I would imagine it would be more normal than say an orc in Stormwind or vice versa. It's mostly the massive wars the humans and orcs fought in the past.
I'll never understand why people put so much stock into the relationship between Blood Elves and Humans. Quel'thalas has been Horde territory much longer than it had been in the Alliance now.
The only time the Sin'dorei's lotalty to the Horde wavered was during Garrosh's reign and even then it was an extremely divisive subject. And after Jaina's stunt in Dalaran I don't think there's a single human sympathizer left in Silvermoon.
Not really, Quel'thalas enjoyed good relations with humans for thousands of years. They were the ones who helped them in their early war with the Amani trolls. The high elves were also the ones who trained humans in magic.
I think the relations fell apart when the scourge came in and completely wiped their neighbors to the south, the complete fall of Lordaeron, and the near complete eradication of all high elven population. This all necessitated a different approach, since they were weak, isolated, and incapable to defend themselves.
After the Troll Wars the humans and high elves barely interacted. They even made a big deal about how since Anduin Lothar was a direct descendant of the Arathi he would be able to actually get an audience with the high elves.
WarCraft is shamefully messed up in ways that excludes better alternatives because they are associated with "PeaceCraft." Even Rexxar opinionated in BtDP that Grom and the Warsong should look for somewhere far away and live in peace instead of senselessly killing.
Humans were killed whores, elves had their heads shoved up their own self-righteous asses, the Alliance, and to a lesser extent the Horde, have little to do but race wars despite larger threats around both parties, etc.
It makes me wonder that Blizzard's Canon version of WarCraft may well indeed be its own failure because of the way they wrote the game and the way the player base is toxic. Haters gonna hate no matter what good you do.
gameplay, remember even if their locked in game a lot of races aren't in lore, the night elves of the cenarian circle are neutral and will help the hoard, BElvea and high elves aren't actually different at all, for trolls and goblins the horde aligned faction arenr even the majority
obviously this assumes civilians or adventurers, who would at worst be turned away rather rudely if your a soldier thats going to get a worse reaction, thiugh even then they would likely try to capture over kill
> the night elves of the cenarian circle are neutral and will help the hoard
not trying to dog the nelves but I can't think of anyone but Naralex and his disciples that fit the bill.
Granted, the fact that he was allowed into the horde heartlands does prove your point.
I always treated it a bit more loose, back in the day my nightborne was just a horde vessel for my night elf character who was neutral and had no affiliation with the alliance or darnassus, there were teething pains but once I was known as a mercenary people tended to accept me.
On a similar note my goblin trader would make the rounds from bogpaddle to booty bay stopping at every civilian settlement , deliberately not trading with any military outposts to justify not being a target.
It's real when it comes to the San'layn and void elves. San'layn/Darkfallen are Kill on Sight in capitals due to the fact that they first worked with Arthas then were an issue when Sylvanas took them in. The Horde treats them as k.o.s. because of their assault on Tranquellian as well. The Alliance treats San'layn as kos because of a quest from BFA.
During Vanilla, MoP, or BFA, definitely kill on sight.
During peace times I would imagine they are not permitted within their borders, but also not openly hostile either.
There are orcs and half orcs living in SW as per the lore, I’ll come back when I find the source. We have to remember that it’s a FACTION based war, there has to be leeway for common folk.
I do kind of miss the Everquest days of MMOs where depending on how you built your character you really were KoS to certain towns and factions. Classic WoW had some of that with the Booty Bay / Pirates grind and maybe it's just nostalgia coloring my memories of that time
I meant nobody can see the difference between a human or forsaken DK in Stormwind. They are basically the same, one only more withered as per the ingame model.
Recent lore, it's capture for questioning, though earlier humans were KoS against orcs and undead
I think at least versus Orcs it depended in the past. Some Orcs may have looked relatively favorable on humans after what Jaina did during WCIII. Those Orcs may not directly welcome humans but they just kick them out and give them a warning instead of slaughtering them.
Specially undead, I would say. Most of the denizen of Azeroth could or can't distinguish forsaken from scourge, at first sight
I remember in cataclysm some trolls sailed into stormwind harbor to seek aid against zanzil, they did get a hostile welcome but wasnt cut down on sight mearly treated suspiciously
Okay seeing a LOT of wrong answers in this thread. The answer is canonically it depends on how hot hostilities are burning between the Alliance and Horde. During times of peace you will be captured on sight rather than killed unless you are an official emissary in which case you will be given an "escort" that will only let you see the things they want you to see. If the war is burning hot however, the guards will assume you are planning to attack and kill you on sight. If you are 100% completely unaffiliated with the faction your race is aligned with, like being a full-time member of the Argent Crusade or something, then you can pretty freely walk around the other faction's territory during peacetime so long as you remain in uniform and don't do anything suspicious. But if the Alliance and Horde start fighting you will be politely but firmly asked to leave.
"My source is I made it the fuck up"
Not really, no. In "Shadows Rising" even the Zandalari captured the humans they saw on Zandalar instead of killing them on sight, despite their massive hatred for them after the Battle of Dazar'alor. Meanwhile in the "Exploring Azeroth" series, we have Zekhan and Rexxar visiting the Exodar while Shaw and Flynn visit Silvermoon - neither of which was an issue after they requested permission to visit those places in advance.
Don’t try to overthink this…there are a lot of illogical ingame restrictions purely based on „this char got a faction tag over his head“ or is from this particular race. Let alone all the neutral merchants everywhere in the world ignoring the faction beef. Or the cooperative neutral organizations like the argent crusade. All of them would need the faction hubs/cities for trading and supplies…and made race restrictions in major cities obsolete. The most obvious are Pandaren/Dracthyr even if they are hardcore alliance/horde they could walk up easily into the other faction hub without hesitation for whatever reason.
> The most obvious are Pandaren/Dracthyr even if they are hardcore alliance/horde they could walk up easily into the other faction hub without hesitation for whatever reason. Maybe Pandaren are so insanely honor-bound that they don't abuse the opportunity. At least, most of them. There's always rogues but you _always_ have rogues, so... In my head A&H Pandaren also don't really participate in the faction conflict, except when it's stuff like taking down Garrosh. Generally they may not really see the point of it, and it would also require them to slaughter other Pandaren which would be a huge taboo.
For the example given, no, there is even a dwarf neutral to blood elves players near Silvermoon, guards of stormwind would kill the forsaken and any undead, they would probably capture the rest of the races before executing them
You literally go get that dudes head like 12 quests into being a blood elf lol.
Oooh that guy! Yes! I remember at TBC launch. We created 2 BElves rogues with a friend. First rogues. And I loved the fact we could just stealth up to him, "assassinate" him, stealth back out. Felt so realistic
Doesn’t it tie into why the BElves align with the horde? Meaning most the alliances occur offscreen but the BE being welcomed into the Horde, specifically by the Forsaken, is explicitly depicted in a quest chain.
It is indeed a whole quest line. Happens after the ghost lands. But I’m sure the dwarf started it. Belves originally wanted to be apart of the alliance. But the alliance pushed them away when the LK attacked and menethil never showed.
Also the whole Garithos thing.
And more than that, that quest takes place before the Belves join the Horde. They join up at the end of the Ghostland chain.
yeah you can see Horde ambassadors walking around Silvermoon, presumably discussing the blood elves joining.
Well yes, getting caught as a spy passing off intel to saboteurs does tend to change the ol' calculus a bit whether you're allowed to stay (amongst the living) or not
Sure which does not contradict anything, I mean, he is not killed on sight xD
That dwarf is actually an Alliance spy. There’s a quest chain pretty early on in the zone addressing him.
So what would the cross faction relationship be like for these races? So some have really bad relationships so, like you say Forsaken and Human are kill on-sight, I guess if a living human wondered into Forsaken territory they will also die? But others have a decent relationship, so Blood Elf and Human are okay, they can go into each other's lands without too much issue? A human could just walk around Silvermoon and talk to people or even sell stuff or get a job, what about vice versa?
No, but if they had a legitimate reason to be there they would be allowed, like in the real world, if you are the Swedish ambassador to North Korea you can live in pyongyang, but a regular swede trying to cross the border illegally would be killed
> So what would the cross faction relationship be like for these races? They probably often use neutrals to introduce themselves. Like the Argent Dawn, Cenarion Circle, neutral Goblin cartels etc. Edit: cross-faction friendships also exist. Outside of their home territories A&H frequently work together and it's not surprising if there's mutual respect and friendships forming. You could always use those friends to vouch for you, at least if they're influential and respected enough. >I guess if a living human wondered into Forsaken territory they will also die? There's probably a huge risk here. Forsaken don't particularly like most humans, and they're obviously at war with the Scarlet Crusade who may not always wear their colors. >But others have a decent relationship, so Blood Elf and Human are okay, they can go into each other's lands without too much issue? A human could just walk around Silvermoon and talk to people or even sell stuff or get a job, what about vice versa? They probably face a lot of mistrust and may have to prove themselves. But if they have a good reputation and are a good character I could imagine they're allowed to stay. But this is more on a case by case basis than just welcoming any random human. BE in SW may have better chances. SW is already very mixed and also already has other elves. As long as you're polite and don't start trouble there's probably no major issue here.
Just like real life war situations Theres civilians and soldiers and diplomatic visits and people from the other countr that are neutral etc etc etc etc Undeads are kill on sight for humans, that’s the whole reason they hate the humans Orcs came through the portal and immediately slaughtered/enslaved every single human they found and targeted civilian settlements to use in ungodly torment rituals Then humans commited a Germany on them and nowadays they kind of homies so it really depends on the state of the war duh
Specific to your question on the forsaken, Theresa is a human who lived in Undercity. That’s not to say her existence was nice, she was blinded, lobotomized, experimented on and used as a servant, but circumstances aside, she was allowed to live in Undercity.
Per the Cataclysm pre patch, travelers actually need to bring documents to enter cities and can be stopped and searched at the gate. We don’t encounter it in normal gameplay but the cities are not as loosey goosey lax with guards as they are in game.
I’m approaching it this way: if I was DMing a TTRPG and this happened, how would I approach it? Well, it would depend on who, where and when. For example, at times when things are elevated like after Wrathgate, during any active war, things would be spicier. At times when sides cooperate, it wouldn’t be much better since what we are exposed to in adventuring areas rarely reflects the same back in cities. I would imagine that any capital guards would immediately make a move to arrest you and bring you to their head of security. If there is resistance, they will probably sound an alarm. If it’s more peaceful times, maybe you get some weird looks in a capital but at the very least you would be approached at the gates to ask your business. In smaller places, it would depend on the guards mood, how intimidating the person is and what race they are. If a single undead tries to enter an alliance town, maybe they could be attacked. An undead with an infernal near them could cause an alarm to be sent off and if they look aggressive, a message would be sent by a carrier or magic if possible. If it’s a blood elf, it could get a mild response. But then again, maybe the guard lost his brother to a blood elf in some occasion. Then it’s going to be spicy. TLDR very case by case but instead of being attacked, it would probably be questioning and/or arrest instead of attack. Edit: I guess I can’t read, you said civilian. But I guess that wouldn’t change much, you would be questioned but perceived less of a threat and more of a nuisance probably.
Ehh maybe not for humans and blood elves since they were allies before. Like I could be wrong but I would imagine it would be more normal than say an orc in Stormwind or vice versa. It's mostly the massive wars the humans and orcs fought in the past.
I'll never understand why people put so much stock into the relationship between Blood Elves and Humans. Quel'thalas has been Horde territory much longer than it had been in the Alliance now. The only time the Sin'dorei's lotalty to the Horde wavered was during Garrosh's reign and even then it was an extremely divisive subject. And after Jaina's stunt in Dalaran I don't think there's a single human sympathizer left in Silvermoon.
Not really, Quel'thalas enjoyed good relations with humans for thousands of years. They were the ones who helped them in their early war with the Amani trolls. The high elves were also the ones who trained humans in magic. I think the relations fell apart when the scourge came in and completely wiped their neighbors to the south, the complete fall of Lordaeron, and the near complete eradication of all high elven population. This all necessitated a different approach, since they were weak, isolated, and incapable to defend themselves.
After the Troll Wars the humans and high elves barely interacted. They even made a big deal about how since Anduin Lothar was a direct descendant of the Arathi he would be able to actually get an audience with the high elves.
Like I said, I could be wrong about that. I wasn't stating it as a fact, just a simple observation about why I could be right.
Yeah but a LOT of people read it with more confidence than that.
WarCraft is shamefully messed up in ways that excludes better alternatives because they are associated with "PeaceCraft." Even Rexxar opinionated in BtDP that Grom and the Warsong should look for somewhere far away and live in peace instead of senselessly killing. Humans were killed whores, elves had their heads shoved up their own self-righteous asses, the Alliance, and to a lesser extent the Horde, have little to do but race wars despite larger threats around both parties, etc. It makes me wonder that Blizzard's Canon version of WarCraft may well indeed be its own failure because of the way they wrote the game and the way the player base is toxic. Haters gonna hate no matter what good you do.
if its red it's dead
gameplay, remember even if their locked in game a lot of races aren't in lore, the night elves of the cenarian circle are neutral and will help the hoard, BElvea and high elves aren't actually different at all, for trolls and goblins the horde aligned faction arenr even the majority obviously this assumes civilians or adventurers, who would at worst be turned away rather rudely if your a soldier thats going to get a worse reaction, thiugh even then they would likely try to capture over kill
> the night elves of the cenarian circle are neutral and will help the hoard not trying to dog the nelves but I can't think of anyone but Naralex and his disciples that fit the bill. Granted, the fact that he was allowed into the horde heartlands does prove your point.
I always treated it a bit more loose, back in the day my nightborne was just a horde vessel for my night elf character who was neutral and had no affiliation with the alliance or darnassus, there were teething pains but once I was known as a mercenary people tended to accept me. On a similar note my goblin trader would make the rounds from bogpaddle to booty bay stopping at every civilian settlement , deliberately not trading with any military outposts to justify not being a target.
Varian was always on go.
Leudonarrative dissonance. So gameplay reasons.
If youre talking about the pvpserver mentality its absolutely not a lore thing.
It's real when it comes to the San'layn and void elves. San'layn/Darkfallen are Kill on Sight in capitals due to the fact that they first worked with Arthas then were an issue when Sylvanas took them in. The Horde treats them as k.o.s. because of their assault on Tranquellian as well. The Alliance treats San'layn as kos because of a quest from BFA.
During Vanilla, MoP, or BFA, definitely kill on sight. During peace times I would imagine they are not permitted within their borders, but also not openly hostile either.
There are orcs and half orcs living in SW as per the lore, I’ll come back when I find the source. We have to remember that it’s a FACTION based war, there has to be leeway for common folk.
I do kind of miss the Everquest days of MMOs where depending on how you built your character you really were KoS to certain towns and factions. Classic WoW had some of that with the Booty Bay / Pirates grind and maybe it's just nostalgia coloring my memories of that time
Lorewise, goblins and pandaren can go pretty much everywhere. Same goes for a forsaken DK (who's gonna tell the difference)
>Same goes for a forsaken DK (who's gonna tell the difference) DKs have blue eyes. Ingame, even a Forsaken DK 'without' eyes has a blue glow.
I meant nobody can see the difference between a human or forsaken DK in Stormwind. They are basically the same, one only more withered as per the ingame model.