They didn’t walk that back at all. It was always canon. They’re elves, they didn’t forget the war of the ancients and they know what fel does to a person. So much that their entire civilization was initially constructed in a way that would allow free use of magic without alerting demons.
They did, however, want to be clever and used fel to power their facilities that were no longer being powered by the sunwell. Because it’s not like a building can get corrupted. They did not account for the fact that fel energy is like radiation and contaminates by proximity.
The elves you did see chugging the kool-aid turned into the Felblood elves.
Nah, it definitely was Fel magic. Perhaps the technique itself to siphon Arcane was a Fel technique. Still, according to Chris Metzen (start at 10:40 if it doesn’t automatically start there):
Those panels about the blood elves are split all over the place.
In WC3: Frozen Throne Kael’thas himself was initially against the idea of siphoning fel magic. He reacted quite vehemently against it when Vashj first suggested it.
That Blizzcon panel was an idea, rather than the finalized product. The finalized product came in the Burning Crusade dev dive, where they talked about how fel was used to power the buildings in Quel’thalas, rather than Blood Elves overall actually siphoning fel. That was the lore that was later used.
The fact that people misinterpreted that, is their own fault at the end of the day. It was never a largely recognized method among Blood Elves, nor did they have an endless source of fel magic to go on, exactly the same as they did not have an endless source of arcane magic to take from.
TBC see was a little quick to “redeem” and tame down the wild new cutthroat pragmatism that the Blood Elves had. It went too far, and honestly too fast.
The Blood Elves post The Burning Crusade became the moderate voice within The Horde practically overnight and enjoyed a very warm relationship with the Draenei that’s seen later on in Warlords of Dreanor.
If that path towards Light had to be their story-arc it could have been spread out over a much longer period. I can’t imagine the blood elves “settling down” before Arthas was brought to justice. Something they had almost no involvement at all with.
It does make sense for Priests. I don’t think I personally want more purple eyes. But void elves should get more eyes for voidy stuff. As far as green eyes, Fenelon is way ahead of this:
Maybe they need more class related eyes like DKs get. DKs too need more eye options. I could see green emitting eyes for Warlocks. I want some kind of red eyes for Warrior rage.
It was pretty clear that the original plan was to have them be a bit edgier but large swaths of the community just refused to engage with what they were writing, stuck their heads in the sand and said “NONO ELF PRETTIER HUMAN FRIEND TO MAN AND DORF”.
I mean, the elves that refused to become blood elves that sustained themselves through their wealth and looked down on the dishonor of their people were clearly a nod to some of the worst aristocratic peoples to ever exist(let them eat mana gems!), and people somehow thought that was supposed to show them as loyal and good.
I’m typically very critical of the WoW writing of late, but in this case I can’t blame them for giving up on what the elves were and just making them generic fantasy elves.
I definitely think class specific customizations would be the way to go. DK eyes should be specific to specialization. Green for unholy, red for blood, Standard blue for frost.
Warlocks i’d like to see get more Fel corruption visuals. Green eyes, Felblood elf skin tones, and so on.
Technically since the lich king no longer controls deathknights, or the scourge, i don’t think there’s any valid reasoning for deathknights to be restricted to glowing blue lich eyes anymore.
Personally, i’ve always been of the opinion that blood elves should’ve been an alliance race, but at the same time that would mean Draenei wouldn’t have been added, and i think draenei are one of the more interesting races in the game. With that being said, i think the Edgy, evil, and sinister vibe the early blood elves had were extremely important in the racial identity they had. I also thought it was a nice touch that the blood elves weren’t exactly loyal to the horde up until recently, and that they were really just affiliated with it out of necessity. As a faction, i feel that the horde should always be unstable and unruly, with various racial dislikes playing a factor, but never really boiling over to the point that certain races abandon the horde or fight a civil war.
I admittedly was (and partially still am) one of the high elf crowd members, although in my opinion adding a new race of “high elves” isn’t necessary, all i really want from blizzard now is the option to disable the visual effect of Entropic embrace as a void elf player. (mainly because i really don’t like how it ruins my transmogs and i’ve never been a fan of those overly done visual effects that retexture your character entirely. By that point, we’d basically have legitimate high elves as a race.
they became the draenei of the horde… yeah and then Blizz started spoiling them with cosmetic options they really didn’t need and the playerbase got a tad toxic. BEs were cool…a long time ago now I don’t know… I’ve run into so many toxic players who’re playing a BE than i have any other race in the game.
I agree with this, but it goes further. The conceit of the High Elves as a faction is that they refused to be told what to do and valued self determination over everything. They abandoned their homeland and kin over these values. Its why, for the reasons you touched on, the Horde was always a better fit for them.
Eh, i don’t know. There’s plenty of alliance races that did that too, I mean for example the highborne night elves are part of the alliance now. and the high elves are also part of the alliance, Void elves are another example of this, They were told not to use void magic, and they disobeyed that order, which resulted in them becoming exiled from Silvermoon.
