Level 13: Friday, February 11, 2011

Fair warning: I have never so much as created a Blood Elf, but in the interest of showing each race's capital city, here we go with Silvermoon:

The Blood Elves are the Horde race added to the game in its first expansion, The Burning Crusade. Their city features all of the touches that a race addicted to magic might feature, including magically enchanted perpetually sweeping brooms. However, the statue that greets you as you enter is a little suspect.

The statue is that of Kael'thas Sunstrider, a one-time ruler of the Blood Elves, who was present when Arthas destroyed his city to get access to the Sunwell, a source of the magical power that the Blood Elves love so much. The attack left part of the city in ruins.

All of the survivors of the attack renamed themselves Blood Elves, and with Kael'thas as their leader, sought a new source of never-ending magical crack. One of their bright ideas was to kidnap a naaru, (one of those pure light beings) M'uru, and drain his power from him. (This was also the Poochie reasoning behind the blood elves' ability to be paladins, which gave the Horde the class for the first time.)

With logic like "Kidnapping this godlike being will solve my problem," it's not surprising to hear that Kael'thas eventually backs the wrong horse and throws in his lot with Illidan Stormrage (the big bad behind the Burning Crusade) and eventually betrays the Blood Elves by going off to become a boss whom the players have to kill at level 70...twice!

More on Illidan later. Meanwhile, with Kael'thas gone, Lor'themar Theron is in charge of the Blood Elves, and still hasn't taken down his predecessor's statue, which is akin to entering Berlin and being greeted by a 30-foot Hitler monument.