Like, I think Draenor Orcs have the most detail of any allied race (like half of WOD), but I still don’t know all that much about how they differ or what happened in the ensuing years. Or why we insist on calling them Mag’har when A) we had Mag’har at home and B) D’orcs was RIGHT THERE.
Granted, I straight up missed 98% of WOD. But still. Focus is not a guarantee of interest.
And a story of exile, fighting for respect and a sense of home in a land not your own? Yeah, that’s the good stuff. Give me them short elves.
I’m working with the actual information that we have at hand as opposed to the head canon and fanfiction that people appear to be concocting and attempting to astroturf in lieu of facts. Hence my position that the high elves are an incredibly boring race defined entirely by their association with the humans of the alliance because up to this point that’s all they’ve been.
Could they hypothetically have some les miserable story to tell that moves us all to tears? Sure! Could the old gods have hypothetically been justified in corrupting the embryonic titan known as azeroth? Absolutely! Could Malfurion be having wild orgies with furbolgs and tauren where they go full dommy mommy on him whenever we’re not looking directly at him? Don’t see why not! Could the orcs construct buildings that don’t wildly violate OSHA? Sure!
Because that’s the great thing about hypotheticals: we don’t actually have to justify them or have them rooted in any sort of reality. Just go ahead and go full buck wild with your imagination and get indignant when people point out how utterly absurd they are.
What people want to play is mostly going to be dictated by what they find interesting (including looking cool), and since character backstory is all player agency, it’s fine to say you find 'em boring. But that doesn’t mean they’re empirically boring, full stop.
People have different tastes. And some people even argue that Kul’tirans are better than Zandalari. They’re wrong, because Zandalari are the best edition to the game outside of Dark Irons, but you know. Varying opinions.
You’re use of current existing lore is fine and dandy.
Your inability to see how much better it could and should be just because of your dislike of high elves is a stupid thing you should bury.
Blizzard should be telling more stories, better stories and deeper stories about multiple races and cultures and if you don’t see that and can’t understand why some folk might want that then you’re willfully being ignorant for your own bias.
I love looking at frequent posters in these threads, because it pretty much shows that people who hate High Elves will do everything possible to keep these threads relevant for as long as possible by never letting them die.
They’re not fans of fel, for any reason.
They werent as xenophobic as some elves, who preferred to stay in the forests of quel’thalas.
Some of them latched on to Alleria and followed her to outlands, so they are rather adventurous.
They kinda old school.
Why not direct such effort at extent player races in the game that have substandard writing as is instead?
It’s not so much that I hate them as I’d rather see the alliance get actually interesting races as opposed to another elf; The Jinyu/Ankoans, Arakoa or Consortium are all more distinguished in both lore and what they’d bring to the alliance then what the queldorei could.
every time someone says this, alliance ends up with races no one wants to play. naga would be popular, so would vrykul and high elves, just depends how goofy they are when finally released, and whether or not the females are appealing. i can tell ya right now, female vrykul are not my cup of tea but alot of people like the males. they look like tall dwarves but their womenfolk are ugly, whereas female dwarves are cute by comparison.
Part of the problem is that the alliance keeps demanding things that don’t make sense from either a gameplay or lore standpoint:
The Naga have a series of problems associated with them; the shape of the model is problematic for armor appearances, the absence of feet means that there is serious questions of stat balance and then their is the issues with the lore wherein the Naga are pretty much all united in hating everyone on the surfaces, rarely helping anyone let alone taking sides.
Vrykul are simply too tall; blizzard had this same problem with the original tauren model that caused it to get stuck in doors, rooms and passageways, thus they gave us the current model who’s head is more stoop shouldered.
High elves would be the easiest but ultimately the most bland and generic choice possible; literally anything the horde got would have alliance players going insane over how blizzard hates alliance. Other then Troggs I suppose; those are still the z teir race in this game.
consortium (ethereals) would be cool but i’m convinced they have no females. everybody is disembodied soul energy kept in the 3rd dimension by mummy wrappings. dracthyr prove they can do odd body shapes with limited custom armor. just depends on if they have enough employees left to design it. it would be odd to make yet another race where the main form has no breasts
i’m an elf fan. loved elves since the first keeblers to the lord of the rings, everquest and wow, so my first looksee is does the game have elves and do they look nice.
I’m hoping they add them the next round of customization options. I would love the blue ones for my helves, and purple ones for my velves. Tattoos for all races would be ideal. Also scars on the face and body would be nice for all races too!
For the Ethereals it would be relatiely simple to just alter their model slighlry to suggest female characteristics and hire a female VA; my interpretation of them was that they were pretty much an asexual species and the “voice” we’re hearing is either some form of telepathy or a simple spell that created what we’d expect them to sound like.
And the thing is I like elves just fine, my issues stem from a combination of elves being over exposed in general and that of all the elves in the game the Queldorei are simultaneously the most generic interpretation of elf while also bringing nothing new to the alliance. Like every other race in the alliance and the horde brings some fresh perspective and nuance to their faction that wasn’t really there before; the Kaldorei have a matriarchy defined by their worship of elune and the natural world, The Vulpera are nomads who thrive in an environment the zandalari send their prisoners to die, The mecha-gnomes explore themes of transhumanism, the forsaken are the people of lordaeron who tore themselves free from the lich king through sheer force of will.
Point is that players will attach to those strings Blizzard themselves put in and want those stories expanded where they find interest.
Its no wonder why people want the stories of High Elves expanded, nor why players have widely made those headcanons about them either. Blizzard seeded such story concepts in Vanilla, some in TBC, Wrath, a tiny bit in Cata, plenty in Mop and even a little here and there in WoD.
The push and pull narrative between high and blood elves is an interesting story on its own merit, it just needs to be better expanded. Cause honestly it would come up a lot more and in a lot more ways than Blizzard has explored if they were more serious about their world building.
I don’t blame people wanting to see those stories.
Toss the Furbolg on there too otherwise I think thats a good list overall.
I’d also throw in the Frostborn Dwarves at least and because I’m very much stuck on em the Wildhammer Properly.
The High Elves should be a part of that list too given how often they’ve come up. Arguably more so than Jinyu who are already in the Allance…
On the further end from likely though I’d like Sethrak to be neutral and available to both sides.
The amount of this is just a you problem not a Blizzard one…
The shape of the model has been shown multiple times to be fine, they can in fact already wear armor, no stat issues would arise they’d just not show or show a funny tail boot lol, and the Naga could easily have a group break off or even have Aszhara just choose to ally with the Alliance. Not like the Zandalari have always been allies either.
Or you know… they could use the shorter Vrykul that don’t really have that issue like they would for Ogres or like they did for Tauren just shrink them. Oh noes.
This is just wrong cause of your bias again, though I personally don’t want high elves separately myself, I’m quite happy with them as they are now through void elves.
Worgen didn’t have females till they were playable either.