Blood Elf and Void Elf factions should have been switched

Community General Discussion
21

Honestly? Lore is lore, even if its bad (which is about 95% of the franchise at this point). I’m not complaining about Blood Elves joining the Horde. I made my peace with that long ago. Not letting High Elves be playable on the Alliance though? That I find annoying.

Blood Elves were never in the Alliance to begin with, so, you’re not wrong. Kael’thas went to rejoin the Alliance when he met up with Garithos’ forces, but its not like Garithos could admit them back in. It would have taken a meeting of the Alliance’s leaders to do so, as we saw with Gilneas and Genn Greymane.

22

Yeah, Helves that stayed with the Alliance or returned shortly after are a completely different thing.

Threads about switching things on Belves even after we are settled, taking away more things from us including Silvermoon. Those just seem like troll topics to me. They might not be, but it cycles often that it feels like it’s just to antagonize.

Belves had grouped up temporarily with the Alliance in the third war. But there are people that still want us on the Alliance, even after leaving after being sentenced to death and all that. It’s just odd after all these years, and now with cross-faction being a thing. And Velves getting their non-Voidy looks. People can technically be Belves on the Alliance if they choose already.

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23

The problem is that Blizzard’s so bad about relaying their own canon that they had to correct people in the middle of a Blizzcon. Alliance players could be forgiven for thinking High Elves, who have been in the alliance since WC2, should be a playable race since they’d been asking for it since the beta.

24

No disagreement here.

As someone who wants Alliance High Elves, I want nothing to do with Quel’Thalas. The lore of the High Elves makes it clear; they chose the Alliance over Quel’Thalas. They shouldn’t want anything to do with Quel’Thalas at this point. Whether its because the Blood Elves exiled them, or Quel’Thalas being in the Horde, or any other reason. I don’t get why so many ‘pro-high elf’ posters want Quel’Thalas.

As far as Hairstyles go, I’m of two minds on this one.

  1. Just apply hairstyles used by High Elf NPCs to Void Elves and be done with it.

  2. Update every High Elf NPC in the game to use Void Elf hairstyles.

Either one works for me.

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25

And hopefully they add some of the customizations both communities have wanted too. Because fans have created some pretty good stuff.

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26

Not reading all that, but Alliance needed another spooky race with possibly questionable morality.

I don’t know why Blood Elves would ever be Alliance, and Ren’dorei are fine over here on the blue team. :blue_heart:

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27

So, instead of Krokuul or Ethereals we got… Void Elves?

28

Yup, and loving it. :blue_heart:

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29

They could still do Ethereals for Velves. I’ve seen people suggest that and it looked pretty good.

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30

Except in this case we are talking about 15 years or so. This isn’t the same community of people with generational history, these are the same individuals. This is made even more trivial by the lifespan of elves.

31

Are we though?

High Elves have been living in Dalaran since it was founded. That’d be an order of thousands of years with a population of elves living in very different conditions than those in Quel’Thalas.

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32

Perhaps “ideologically differentiated blood elves” is the better term, because that’s what a lot of people mean when they say “high elves”.

But yeah, they’re portrayed as a distinct subgroup in-game, with multiple NPCs over the course of several expansions both referring to themselves as “high elves” and expressing some level of contempt towards the idea of being put under the banner of “blood elves”.

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33

Unless they have retconned this, elves were pretty reclusive until the orcs came along. It was only after this that some didn’t return to Quel’Thalas and stayed in human territories like Dalaran.

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34

Eh?
The High Elves existed way before the Alliance was even formed.

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35

I don’t think there was ever a retcon. High Elves were involved with the founding of Dalaran. Look into the history of the Guardian. There’s been a population in Dalaran since.

Reclusive to other parts of the world? Sure. Dalaran and Quel’Thalas have always been the placed you’d find them.

36

Of course, but they’ve already made a cultural decision to be separate groups because of a deep divide over who they want to be as people.

Splits start somewhere, and once it happens it’s perfectly fair and valid to recognize the two groups as different even if it only happened recently. If a new country was recognized, you’d note them as being different from whatever they split off from - even if, for the time being, all of them still remember being one country.

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37

That’s the thing though, it wasn’t reckless use of arcane magic, it was the fel that had them worried, they don’t exactly have a good history with highborne and fel. If you ask me, them taking drastic measures due to the fear they’ve held since the War of the Ancients is more in character for the Night Elves than almost anything they’ve done in WoW, since for the most part they are just tall purple humans.

As for the rest of the Alliance deciding to spy on their once allies, yes, I do agree, they were forced to do that in the narrative for the sake of faction balance.

Also, using your point here, the same reason why the Alliance acted out of character to get the Belves to join Horde, the Night Elves not protecting their lands was basically an excuse to have you doing something in them.

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38

At the time was there any evidence of them using fel? I mean, even in Silvermoon the average Blood Elf had no idea Fel was being used or anything. The crystals they drained mana from weren’t fel crystals, despite appearing that way.

The Night Elves traveling halfway across the world to investigate Quel’Thalas was so strange and out of character for them, especially after the borderline friendly relations between Tyrande, Malfurion, and Kael’thas in WC3:TFT. If those Night Elves had been in Quel’Thalas to help the Blood Elves, I might have honestly believed it.

True, but I’m just pointing out the fact that it being the Night Elves made no sense. You could’ve replaced them with any antagonistic force and the story would unfold the same, just without that underlying message of demanding Blood Elf players kill every Human, Dwarf, and Night Elf as the game’s PvP system demands.

Imagine for a moment it was the Scarlet Crusade out there moving their armies around and fighting the Blood Elves. A bunch of zealots fighting the Scourge also fighting Blood Elves seems to make as more sense than Night Elves abandoning their sacred forests to spy on Blood Elves. Even comes with the added benefit of giving Blood Elves reasons to hate all humans.

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39

Eh iirc this was more a Night Elf thing and High Elves collaborated a bit with humans. Not all, but some did.

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40

People maintain the common mistakes of calling High Elves and Humans ‘centuries-long allies’

What their relationship was, was nothing more but: “You can be useful… we’ll remember that you exist when we need you.”

The High Elves sought the humans out out of desperation when the Amani launched their invasions plans, not before, and not because of any love for the humans. They struck a deal with the humans: “Help us, and we’ll teach some of your people magic” the dislike for the humans further showed itself, when the High Elves quickly seized the opportunity to again take the magic they taught the humans away from them (Well, attempted to), following the human’s misuse nearly bringing back the Legion.

There was no deeper friendship between the two, the humans may have wanted more, but the larger population of High Elves never did. They even mistrusted the humans so much, that they even looked at their own crown prince with skepticism due to his talk of cooperation with the Alliance - even Anasterian Sunstrider feared for Kael’thas’ loyalties.

All this bullcrap about how the High Elves were all ‘buddy-buddy’ with the Alliance is exactly that, bullcrap.

The Blood Elves, at the end of the day, should not have been allied with either faction. The High Elves, should not be allied with either faction. When Kael’thas was first forced into a desperate situation, and then to be executed in the city of Dalaran, the Blood Elves and High Elves should have abandoned the Alliance then and there.

Under the eyes of two Dalaran leaders, Modera and Ansirem, members of the Kirin’tor council at the time, Kael’thas was to be executed. And under the eyes of the Ironforge dwarves too.

Anywho, the story that is told thus far, is fairly sensible. If anything, the Blood Elves and High Elves should in fact align themselves more so with the Horde than the Alliance. At the time of the Burning Crusade, the forsaken was lead by Sylvanas Windrunner, who at the time could be seen as a fair leader, and who had direct connections with High Elves and Blood Elves both. She was the ranger-general who gave her life in an attempt to save the High Elven people, now leading undead who broke away from the Lich King’s, Arthas’ control.

The Horde was newly-founded, the Blood Elves very much aware of the demon blood and legion control that first forced the orcs to the borders of Quel’thalas. And with the Ironforge dwarves being members of the Alliance, the same faction of dwarves that gladly saw their prince and kin executed, there is no way that they could trust the Alliance wholeheartedly. The Alliance’s shenanigans in Eversong Woods and the Ghostlands was unnecessary, but served to be the final drop.

With the Blood Elves desperately needing aid against the remnants of the scourge and amani uprising, the Alliance came to trample on them, the Horde came to help. The Blood Elves also needed help reaching Outland, and the Horde needed the Blood Elves for information on stuff in Outland.

The Void Elves is a story gone wrong. While I find their existence to be fine, as it is a great compromise to High Elves. The Void Elves should have been the Silver Covenant, and the Allerian Outpost High Elves being inspired by news of Alleria Windrunner - and thus they pursued her and similar powers - only to end up in a trap (As the story goes). Making it a ragtag of Blood Elves was a mistake, and served only to say: “Look guys, the Blood Elves are totally Horde! No need to doubt it, the last remnants of Alliance sympathy is gone now” that was just stupid - but the entirety of BFA seems to have ignored Lor’themar’s character anyway, he and Baine agreeing to continue a senseless war was just stupid.

But that is the factions wars in a nutshell - for them to work other members of either faction would have to be written to be dumber than they actually are. The Orcs, Tauren, Trolls, Blood Elves and Nightborne could have pulled out of the BFA war at any moment, leaving Sylvanas with a small faction of Goblins and Undead. The five races that left could form their own coalition in defense against Sylvanas’ retaliation, basically forcing her into a prolonged fight on two fronts which would not go well for her at all, against forces significantly larger than her own no less.

Damnit, I hate this story.

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