Deathknights now.

[HownDoog]

So then I guess it's to be assumed they all chose to be under the title Blood Elf. Makes sense. Thank you.

[Anski]

To bring up a point I am surprised that wasn't brought up before, the Ebon Blade might still be poking around Northrend a little bit, cleaning up the Scourge that are not fully contained by Fordragon's position as Jailer of the Damned. It's not very clear whether it's all the Scourge dropped their skeleton swords, shrugged and went to go have a few drinks or they're still scowering the lands.

[Sol]

Keep in mind that most of Acherus' death knights were drawn from the heroes of the Argent Dawn or their respective faction, slain in the battles of the Plaguelands. Given that a large amount of the Knights of the Ebon Blade were risen in the months leading up to Wrath of the Lich King (mass-produced as expendable shock troopers, no less), it does seem slightly daft to assume many of the high/blood elves in their ranks were slain during the fall of Quel'Thalas. :P Any who joined the Scourge at this point would be second-generation DKs, who are, as a general rule, massively more powerful than thirds (compare player character to Rivendare) and unplayable to my knowledge.

Also consider that the NPC you're instructed to execute during the starting quest as a blood elf does specifically describe you as a "champion of the sin'dorei". (But that said, going by the backstory presented by these quests, the executionee for night elves has raised over nine thousand different children).

[ManDudely]

It isn't clear at all, which is ridiculous considering it's probably an important issue being faced on the official RP servers aswell, and the Lich King's been dead a while now. Probably just ignoring the matter until Cata comes out.

[Grakor456]

So technically....all Belf DKs are High Elves....interesting...

Er, no. This is not the case at all.

Before the High Elves turned Blood Elf, most of the dead elves were reanimated during the Third War, long before the Scourge was mass-producing DKs (they would have become stock zombie soldiers or banshees.) By the time they began, the High Elves of Silvermoon had already turned Blood Elf. The majority of Belf DKs would have been animated long after the destruction of Qual'thalas. They would have been animated at the same time Orcs and Tauren would logically have been animated...immediately after the events of BC. The Belves have been fighting the Scourge near constantly since the events of WC3, so there is no shortage to corpses that could have been potentially animated then.

[Terant]

Most (or all) of the Third Generation DK's, which are the only playable DK's, were killed and reanimated pretty much at the start of WotLK. So they could definitely be Blood Elves. The High Elf ones would all be Second Generation, which served the Lich King. The question that this raises is: What happens to Second Generation DK's now? They were DK's with a limited amount of free will that served the Lich King, so what would they do when he's dead?

[ManDudely]

Before the High Elves turned Blood Elf, most of the dead elves were reanimated during the Third War, long before the Scourge was mass-producing DKs (they would have become stock zombie soldiers or banshees.) By the time they began, the High Elves of Silvermoon had already turned Blood Elf. The majority of Belf DKs would have been animated long after the destruction of Qual'thalas. They would have been animated at the same time Orcs and Tauren would logically have been animated...immediately after the events of BC. The Belves have been fighting the Scourge near constantly since the events of WC3, so there is no shortage to corpses that could have been potentially animated then.

What is the source of this information? Total speculation here, but would it by chance be the order that the expansions were released, as it (coincedentally?) seems?

As in, the blood elves were revealed post-Arthas attack, before players had the option to choose the Death Knight class? That gap between the attack that wiped out most of the High Elves, and the emergence of DK characters could be explained through a period of training necessery prior to unleashing the DKs on Havenshire etc, or preservation of valuable corpses from Silvermoon in preparation for becoming DKs later.

When, 'logically', were the Tauren and Orc Death Knights animated? What lore is there to support this?

[Terant]

There is lore to support it, actually. I don't think it was really "announced" in any lore-type thing, but the in-game event that happened right before WotLK on retail says enough. Plagued grain in every major city, and Scourge attacks on Stormwind and Orgrimmar. That's when Garrosh made his first appearance in Orgrimmar as well, and had his fight with Thrall. There was also a big Scourge attack thing in Eastern Plaguelands.

Most if not all of the Third Generation Death Knights were killed in this event, and wer reanimated in Acherus, and were at the Battle of Light's Hope Chapel. Anyone who was killed/taken by the Scourge during/before the Third War was a -Second- Generation Death Knight, which is not playable because they still served the Lich King after the Ebon Blade was formed.

[Grakor456]

All of the third-generation DKs were animated and trained after a certain point in WoW lore. In fact, if you go through the quest chain, the third-gen DKs weren't trained so much as animated and then immediately put to work.

While the expansions coincide with this, the fact is that third-gen DKs were all made at roughly the same time. Because Draenei are among those numbers, the animation had to have happened after the events of BC, as otherwise they would have been elsewhere and not on Azeroth. Similarly, it would make no sense for the Scourge to have high elf bodies lying around for the years between Reign of Chaos and Rise of the Lich King, they would have put those bodies to work long ago (and, in fact, they did, during Reign of Chaos.) Putting elven bodies on ice for later use is a catastrophic waste, particularly given how easy it is to get dead bodies whenever you want. Why waste time?

If you want more proof, though, I would go to WoW-Wiki and read the information of the Knights of the Ebon Blade: http://www.wowpedia.org/Knights_of_the_Ebon_Blade They were created (or so they were told) expressly for the fight against the Scarlets there. It would make no sense at all, then, for them to have been High Elves, since they turned Blood Elf as early as Frozen Throne.

[ManDudely]

Well consider me educated. Off I go to edit my DK's history... again. As it stands, I had written that he was killed during the attack on Quel'Thalas, and raised sometime after as a Death Knight. It was accepted the first time :P