Blue Eyed Elves - Act of good will or a higher up saying "Just do it"?

I am genuinely curious. Blizzard devs have repeatedly told everyone that there are not enough legit High Elves left on the world to even be playable, and those that are close to the blood line are just the tainted Blood Elves/ Void Elves.

So, why did they change their minds? Did they just decide “You know what? Player choice is a good thing.” Or did a higher up decide “I don’t care about your lore. We need good PR. Give people whatever they want so they shut up”?

I am not trying to insult Blizzard here. I am just curious what happened to make them want to give High Elves to not just one, but both factions.

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Think of it like this, Valve has a huge aversion to the number 3, now when you think about it and apply the same logic to Blizzard, it’s high elves for them that they have a huge aversion to.

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I kinda wonder if its cause they are about to give something awesome to the horde so they thought they would preface it with something most ally players have wanted for a long time.

Or they have realized what a flop alliance races actually have been and that its not helping our representation, that the hall of fame looks like a joke with how they mismanaged racials for so long - theyll try this. Which I dont think it will work without some questline to abandon the void and embrace a true high elf racial… still glad Helf people got what they wanted I guess.

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You know, it actually would have been smarter to give the Alliance exclusively the rights to High Elves. It would greatly help bolster the ranks of the Alliance player base.

But some believe Blizzard only care about the Horde. I am not sure on that topic though.

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I think it’s a bit of both. If I were working for blizz my way of thinking would be “They’re just gonna pretend they have them anyway if we tell them no they can’t have this. Lets give this to them so they can pretend better while we work on other things.”

higher-up. definitely a higher-up. hand on my heart, ion did not want us to have the blue-eyes. atleast, not on both sides. he wanted’em horde-only, but knew he’d tick-off alliance high-elf hopers.

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Without a doubt higher up.

Someone did the math and said it would boost numbers and forced the devs hands.

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Kinda sad we need Ion’s Dad to step in in order for an alliance wish to work out.

Gives me little hope of getting an AR that wasn’t pulled out of thin air at the end of the weekly meeting.

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We are all speculating here so here my take on it;

We already have a race that is ‘decimated’ by the scourge. Blood Elves are few but proud and smart members of the Horde. High Elves and Void Elves in terms of proportion I imagine are even fewer in number.

I figure since they have already made the decision to make these playable races that they have gone one further and then given them more customisable. The game was already on it’s way there but it is focusing less on lore and more on customisation ‘make your own lore because we are done trying to make boxes’.

Alliance bias.

This…is a bad joke that demonstrates little understanding of how businesses work.
If they wanted to make money, they would have benefited doing this much earlier. You don’t make money later, what you can make today. It loses its worth.

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It’s weird to me that the greatest addition to the Alliance in Legion/BFA/SL is just the ability to make Void Elves look like basic Blood Elves.

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I’m curious about that too. But do you honestly think a blue or any other official will come out and give you an answer? These are the people that don’t even share sub numbers with us anymore.

I mean its not my favorite but it does represent a significant victory for soem ally players.

That is my point though. The victory for Alliance is that Void Elves get to look like BC Blood Elves.

It’s just so weird to me that the bar for an Alliance victory is set so low.

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Void elves get green eyes now?

It’s a victory for Alliance players because they get one of the core races of the old Alliance back, akin to ogres for the Horde, at least in a visual sense. Nevermind the fact that high elf NPC’s have been in WoW as friendly towards the Alliance before blood elves even became a thing on Horde side.

What amazes me is just how many Horde who claimed they wanted blue eyes for blood elves for TOTALLY NOT TROLLISH REASONS are so upset and desperate to undo the changes. It’s like their toy isn’t good if the Alliance gets what they wanted too.

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Ion lore isn’t real lore. Ion consults MMO-Chump polls for advice.

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As long as we’re just speculating, this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing somebody higher than even Ion would bother micro-managing.

At most it seems like a case of people going on and on about it and the dev team going “Okay fine, we’ll do this as a compromise”.

I wouldn’t mind something awesome to complete the “trade”.

What they did does not really undermine that at all.

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But we’re talking about Blizzard. The beancounters ALWAYS wait too long to intervene.

Cata players: Dungeons are way overtuned compared to last expansion!

Ghostcrawler: LOL, git gud scrubz

Execs: y we lose 2 milllion subs?!?!?!?

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