same race, different cultures. some intermixing with humans over 2000 years of being in the alliance. different food sources and traditions around eating. different levels and types of leylines. just like the leylines of quel’thalas molding highborne into high elves, the leylines in human domains, outlands and argus, would differ from those of quel’thalas.
It’s been only 18 years since any Blood Elves took up that name. That is not enough time to see genetic divergence.
You can have visually distinct half-elves, sure, but all Blood Elves (a political faction) are literally High Elves (have identical genetically carried attributes). Those who followed Kael have not become genetically distinct in what is for elves at most a third of a generation (more often an eighth or so).
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some of the helfs of quel’thalas moved in with the alliance in dalaran 2000 years before arthas laid waste to silvermoon. some of those were sunreavers who evacuated with kael’thas to outlands, some became the silver covenant and stayed in the alliance.
most helfers want a version of the silver covenant, who, frankly, would be different from belfs for various reasons as i’ve outlined. the models i showed you, rather depict that. they look like and dont look like, blood elves.
personally, i wanted the belf model with completely different stances, hairstyles and animations.
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I honestly believe that the HB were affected by the curse/bless of flesh in the eastern kingdoms when they arrived in what we now know as Tirisfal/Silverpine, as that would explain why their range of skin and hair colors is so similar to that of the other races affected by the curse/bless.
If you look at the native races they have fur or extravagant colors, not the “human” tones that are common among curse/blessed races like humans, dwarves, and gnomes.
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makes sense, unless of course, the leylines were how the curse/bless was distributed. who knows what the lore folks were thinking or if they even thought that far into it
Which is also possible, we literally don’t know how the Oldgods expand their influence/magic over beings to physically alter them.
Another thing to consider. The NE for a long time were under the protection of nature, so perhaps it doesn’t affect them, but the HB broke away from that protection by following a more arcane path and even went to lands full of its influence and beings that carried the curse/bless.
Perhaps the curse/bless affected elemental beings (hence the proto-drakes and other races of meat) but they later adapted it so that it also affects the arcane, but not the nature/life ones? 
But I digress, this is about HE, and YES Blizzard screwed up hard with this theme
i think it wouldve been fun and fascinating for belf fans of both factions to see their favorite models, idling differently, casting differently, different expressions, different attitude, different hairstyles, different beards and so on. ah, they missed so much opportunity with velfs, as they had the same animations and poses.
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All that would involve development time which would mean something else that got done would not have gotten done.
The Sunreavers, as a faction, likewise only go back around 15 years, when Aethas Sunreaver created a cohort of Sin’dorei who pushed for readmittance into the Kirin Tor, from which the Sin’dorei were automatically removed when they broke from the Alliance. He did not form a cadre of his own, let alone one named after him, until that time.
The Silver Covenant (a sort of intermediary military force between the Kirin Tor and other Alliance forces), on the other hand, does predate the Sunreavers, but was of little note until the Sunreavers pushed for readmittance, to which one of the Silver Covenant leaders, Vaneesa Windrunner, was opposed.
- This was probably in no small part because she saw Anasterian Sunstrider’s disdain for the Alliance (seceding from the Alliance, declaring edicts to give the Alliance no support, and later ignoring any calls for aid and barring any mustering of volunteer forces when Lorderaen was destroyed by the Scourge) as one of the reasons the Scourge managed to so successfully dismantle the northern kingdoms, including Quel’thalas.
(To be clear, not all elves who stayed with the Kirin Tor joined the Silver Covenant. The largest group were priests, who believed their calling superceded royal edicts to return to Quel’thalas, with the second largest groups being what parts of the Second War combined-army and expedition forces that didn’t blame the Alliance for the Horde reaching Quel’thalas (and burning its outer forests).
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Legit: when Isaw the announced allied races I groaned out loud and said “God dammit no more elves!”
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well one thing - they couldve started in dalaran (silver covenant) thus telogrus rift wouldve been unnecessary. allerias transformation into void cutscene, unnnecessary. modifying the npcs reactions to void elves, unnecessary. void elves creating portals into undercity unnecessary, etc.
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well here, let me quote
Many of the Sunreavers’ present-day members were Quel’Thalas citizens who had also lived and studied in Dalaran under the Kirin Tor’s banner at one point or another prior to the Third War,
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i just think it’s silly that people want the devs to spend time and resources building yet another race whose distinguishing characteristics are stuff like “slightly taller than blood elf” or “can have red eyes” or “has smaller ears” or whatever
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Sure they could have and some people would have favored that. Others not so much.
I spent my career in software engineering and at the beginning of each development cycle for what ever product we were doing the product manager would come in with a long list of “must haves” for the next version. It would amount to over two years of work but he would want it all in six months.
So we would prioritize the list, put it up on a board, talk it over then draw a line. Things above the line got done, things below the line did not. And who ever wanted the things below the line was convinced their feature was more important than something else that got done.
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The distinguishing traits for High elves are:
- They’re basically weebs for humans.
That’s it. That’s the only thing that actually delineates them from Blood elves, and the fact that people lust after this boring, shallow race when there are far more interesting options that would bring more to the table then another pretty people.
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All very nice but irrelevant when you see that they took out the Void elf instead of the HE, this was a choice between 2 options, and they chose wrong, it’s as simple as that.
On the other hand, there are many private servers that with fewer people are doing things Blizzard has been asked for years. But of course, how are we going to compare billionaire individual producers with a poor Indi company with hundreds of employees?
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Yes, but prior to the Third War just means ‘any time more than 20 years ago’ (~5 years before Sunreaver build up his cadre together with whom to appeal for re-inclusion to the Kirin Tor). That doesn’t mean they were away from Quel’thalas for literally thousands of years, let alone that such would somehow change their genes.
And Dalaran itself only became a citystate ~1200 years ago (as a community of wizards within Arathor, it goes further back, but it wouldn’t be until recent centuries that it starts to look anything like it does in WC3).
Again, those elves are not going to be genetically distinct just because they had occasionally visited a different town->city.
high elves who were animated different with new hairstyles and poses, wouldnt be more work since 1) the model already existed, just required different animations and hairstyles and since void elves also had new hairstyles, new hairstyles were not the issue, 2) they wouldnt require the animated tentacles in their hair, 3) they wouldnt require fancy animated wings on the heritage gear, nor a fancy animated racial mount. what the whole problem boiled down to is ion’s determination to not have playable high elves.
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so basically it’s just RP? then why does blizzard have to make a new race? can’t you just play some other kind of elf and pretend it’s a “high elf”?
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Not without getting rid of all the quests associated with the Void elf, and a glyph that allows changing the appearance of the void effects in the racial ones for arcane effects, and the introduction of quests associated with the HE culture instead of the VE, oh! a change any text that says VE in to say HE.
All of that is necessary to avoid breaking the immersion of pretending to be HE.
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