They’ll either have them use the Void instead of the Light, and offer the Light as an optional glyph (plus Void glyph for other Paladins), or make some clarifications about Void Elves and their capabilities of using the Light to simply allow them to use the Light.
Honestly, the only thing missing for the true “high elf fantasy” is the paladin class…
I’d just say: give us more customization options, more hairstyles, skin colors, eye colors - that both normal, void and dark ranged themed (could have the DK skins!)
3 Likes
I think they’ll just say “Void” Elf Paladins are actually High Elves. Since High Elves and Darkfallen are under the “Void Elf” Umbrella. I really wish they would just change the race’s name. Even if it wasn’t High Elf. Just something that unified all the Thalassian Alliance groups.
5 Likes
Are we in a time warp?
Because I remember being absolutely PUMPED in 2007 when high elves became a playable race.
5 Likes
hopefully they start inroducing new paladin/race combos. if they ever do.
3 Likes
Aside from High Elf Paladins, I’d love to see Kul Tirans and Night Elves.
I don’t understand why they teased Night Elf Paladins back in Legion if they weren’t going to add them in that expansion or the following one.
6 Likes
This. ^
I mean, the terrible / massive suspension of disbelief writing was clearly forced into the situation with the intent of pushing Nightborne to the Horde to mirror Void Elves being added to Alliance, but if we accept what the game put into the world then… no, not a betrayal.
You could say they’re ‘Horde because Tyrande was turned extra idiot-mode’ or ‘Horde because Danuser’ or ‘Horde because they needed their second Elvish race, apparently’ but under no frame of reference was that a betrayal.
Can be argued.
Compared to the light, it seems the void has a much stronger evil presence in the form of its entities.
While light-beings can become fanatical, they don’t become outright insane like beings of the void do. While I would argue that neither can be reasoned with, the former is far less dangerous as they are predictable, they also seem more rare compared to the latter - most likely due to the void entities that seem to be less so benign and thus are more driven to manipulate and drive those who dabble in the void insane.
Void Elves also risked putting their people back into the Burning Crusade era… and they did so willingly and knowingly - that is inherently evil, even if their intentions were good.
Void Elves were the last remnants of the totally radical blood elves that would do anything for more power. The remaining Blood Elves are the ones who only did what they did in order to survive.
5 Likes
What I’ll never forget from those days are gems like “the horde doesn’t need pretty elves! only ugly races should be in the horde!”. Mostly because it was Horde players who were saying those sorts of things. It even got parodied in that post on Lord of the Rings rewritten to be like WoW trade/barrens chat.
I figured they would have pulled the trigger on Night Elf paladins by now. The set up was actually more cut and dry than the introduction of sunwalkers.
It’s a point with no basis, as I’m not making anything up here. High elves have made appearances, and the story has done little to develop them. As I said, by now they should have developed, discovered, or otherwise shown some level of growth. Instead, they’ve been stagnant as a people since their reintroduction. Hell, even a “society in decline” story could have worked.
By now we should have seen some emerging high elf social structure (be it secluded communities or the founding of a new city), or some revelation that they’re basically a scattered people forevermore. If they go with the former, who is their official leader? If they go with the latter, then we need to start seeing them in the capital cities. Has their breaking off from the other thalassian elves affected them culturally? Have they done other things to diverge from their blood elf kin? These are the questions that would be answered by developing them as a race.
The scourge’s attack on Quel’thalas and the schism over how to deal with magic addiction are not insignificant events and should have lasting repercussions on both sides. So far, only the Blood Elves received any development.
Void Elves, as they are presented, make no sense.
I could believe a group of elves choosing to become void-touched to help in the war against the Legion. I could even believe a group of elves becoming void-touched by accident, discovering it comes with some powers and use that to bring the fight to the Legion. Note that both of my examples involve something with massive stakes, because that’s the only context in which becoming void-touched would serve a purpose and not sound ridiculous.
Another poster wrote a really good idea that would have made sense and give their existence some credence.
3 Likes
Ah, I see the point of confusion right here: you don’t understand what hypocrisy is or why it applies to your position on rendorei v. queldorei so let me explain it to you.
Hypocrisy is when you are caught espousing two contradictory positions and holding them both as truth; A person condemning homosexuality being caught in such a relationship or someone who advocates for equality and tolerance having oppinions on “the jew” would both be the most obvious examples of this phenomenon but it doesn’t have to involve prejudice for it to apply.
In your instance, it’s the ridiculous position you have that the high elves ~who have been in the background of several expansions but lack any real distinction~ are simply held back by a lack of writing volume (An odd position to hold but not neccesarily in and of itself hypocrisy) but that somehow Void elves couldn’t have their issues resolved via similar treatment.
5 Likes
Very interesting idea. Makes think that “A Thousand Years of War” was written well before Void Elves were an idea (pretty much all that we do with Alleria in game feels like that as well) but if they had a more solid idea of where they were going, they could have build up the lore of Void Elves as a group of helves from the Alliance Expedition that ended up having a parallel journey to Alleria -maybe even because of her-
Either way, I think that what really bothered me about the Void Elf introduction was the broken suspension of disbelief with Umbric’s group: They really are a group of elves that by sheer coincidence fell on the same path and that always felt lazy.
It would have made much more sense that Alleria’s transformation was what gave elves the idea of this potential, and Umbric’s group backstory could have been mostly preserved, just the events themselves rearranged somewhat.
Best case scenario we would have Alleria returning to Outland to see her forces, and in there be contacted with elven void users that have heard of her trascendence, and through a series of events we end up with a group of Void Elves that’s both Umbric’s group and Allerian High Elves.
The other, more simple option, would have been just a more subtle rearrangement of events. Have Umbric, as a void scholar, become greatly interested in Alleria after the events of Argus, and after Druzaan’s attack on the Sunwell, he and his people then leave in order to seek her help.
So you would have this group of Void Scholars and their soldiers, seeking Alleria’s help to strike Druzaan in order to protect the Sunwell from further attack, but againts Lor’themar and Rommath’s orders, considering too dangerous.
After they find him on Telogrus, it can either play similar as it id with Druzaan trying to convert them, of have their transformation be a side effect of his destruction. Ultimately, it would still end up with banishment for them because Rommath deems them to dangerous to the Sunwell in their new state. And it’s that sense of betrayal what makes them go so hard going into BfA.
8 Likes
We see them recruiting, and with Wrathion we know there is a potion that silences the void whispers. We also can see with the High Elven skin tones, so I would argue that the process is being taught by the Locus Walker without such extreme results that we see with the first generation of Umbric’s elves.
I don’t think it’s hypocritical to say that Void Elf lore was rushed, and their implementation made their presence very flimsy in the context of the world, contrasted to the Alliance High Elves, being a steady presence since Vanilla, which was like 14 years at the time of Legion.
Yes, Void Elf Lore can be rehabilitated into a more cogent state, but to pretend it wouldn’t have been far more easy to build up on top of HE lore (including adding Void as a theme through Alleria) than the rush job VE’s were, seems very innacurate.
The biggest issue is that WoW hasn’t even attempted to address the ethics of creating new Void Elves. There are so many possibilities of going about it, but we have literally got nothing beyond the implication that Void Elves do indeed train new void users.
Also I really think there’s a huge dissonance with trying to frame Void Elves as “walking WMD’s” when we have Demon Hunters, which we have literally seen having to deal, and failing, with their demon self. Yes, it can be a dangerous path to follow, but it’s evident there is precedent on the idea of high risk and high reward when it comes to meddling with cosmic powers.
8 Likes
stop with the madness. We have enough paladins. Unless high elves rejoin society then we don’t need anyone else joining the light. Let them remain in darkness.
This is because void elves have a terrible foundation, which takes us back to the idea of first impressions in writing. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, and bad writing will plague the story, concept, or character forever without major retcons. This is a self-perpetuating problem because having to make major retcons to fix something that was poorly introduced the first time around makes you look like even more of a hack.
Void Elves in their current incarnation cannot be fixed unless you use mass hypnosis to make everyone forget the allied race questline or walk back/handwave away a lot of the aspects connected to the void (at which point, I’d ask why you even bothered to make them void-touched in the first place) while also trying to find some justification for why someone in their right mind would become one today. This is why I’ve pointed to situations with massive stakes like the war with the Legion. Situations like that can drive people to meddling with dangerous powers just to have a fighting chance. Peacetime or “lets have adventures” times, on the other hand, do not.
Then we have the massive Sword of Damocles hanging over void elves, which is the existence of high elves in WoW. Fixing void elves would need to involve the high elves in an official capacity. If you’re going to turn every high elf into a void elf or just kill off every high elf, you better have a really good reason for it and the writing to back it up. If you’re not going to do so, then those high elves better become playable at some point because otherwise the requests will continue (the idea of just unifying both groups under a new name might do the trick here).
To reiterate something I’ve said several times in this thread, this is a very stupid situation and should not have gotten this far.
3 Likes
Well is something doing its natural purpose evil? Is the predator that hunts the prey evil? That’s practically what the old gods at least really are, their goal is to get the world soul. We’ve never really met a true leader of the void yet.
I want Crick elves
They do have writing though, and aren’t just in the background. In mists and legion they were big players and sent aid to siege Orgrimmar twice.
3 Likes
The High elves did basically jack squat in Legion; they showed up just long enough to get told how pitiful they were by Elisande.
3 Likes
They helped siege the city which was crucial in taking back Suramar. When they were freed from statis Vereesa stayed to lead the allied forces while the rest went to help the Heroes within the raid.
6 Likes