High Elf Allied Race Megathread (Continuation)

[Reginageorge-moon-guard]

It is seen in every expansion since TBC.

the blood elves?

oh you mean the album with nothing but dalaran high elves and vereesa appearances in the context of kirin tor reps? you should update it. take one with vereesa appearing as alleria arm candy in razor hill

[Archmage-azralon (Archmage)]

The list grows thin, indeed!

I personally think that High Elves will happen, not as a carbon copy of Blood Elves ofc, but they will happen. However, the problem is if the game will still be relevant by that time or just a dead game looking for some last easy profits before it’s closure.

[Rreifren-grobbulus]

I want to play a fair skinned, brown haired, brown eyed elf though…

[Archmage-azralon (Archmage)]

I’m not talking about Blood Elves, man.

I mean, c’mon you really quoted me to type this?

The Blood Elves addition literally didn’t change anything, since you know High Elves didn’t vanish. As long High Elves keep existing their fan base will also be kept alive.

Your efforts are pointless, it’s like someone trying to beat ocean waves, the waves will keep coming as long the ocean is there.

[Rreifren-grobbulus]

and yet they beat on still. They say we are beating a dead horse but they are beating something that doesn’t die.

[Reginageorge-moon-guard]

I’m not talking about Blood Elves, man.

yes you are. high elves are blood elves now

The Blood Elves addition literally didn’t change anything, since you know High Elves didn’t vanish.

blood elves are playable high elves. only the adjective vanished. a few just cling to it to show political dissent. an adjective is not a candidate for an AR

[Joyeuse-barthilas (Joyeuse)]

an adjective is not a candidate for an AR

Tattoos, eye color, new hairstyles, and unique underpants are, though. See: every other allied race.

[Reginageorge-moon-guard]

See: every other allied race.

those are all variants of a core race

Tattoos, eye color, new hairstyles

these are customizations. the core races needs these. BAD

[Tarrok-thorium-brotherhood (Tarrok)]

@Joyeuse-barthilas

underpants

Wrong Alliance race…

[Joyeuse-barthilas (Joyeuse)]

these are customizations. the core races needs these. BAD

Then every allied race shouldn’t exist and simply be a customization for playable races. But that’s not the direction Blizzard went in, so High Elves remain a viable possibility on the basis of “these things make an allied race.”

[Rreifren-grobbulus]

If you want those for core races I suggest making a thread requesting it.

Of course continuing to post your ideas and requests her only helps our cause so whatever I guess.

These threads at the end of the day just become a statistic and their contents mean nothing so far as blizzard is concerned. To them it is just another capped high elf request thread and thus tells them high elves are a popular request.

[Rreifren-grobbulus]

aye. So many people argue against high elves and wildhammer because “it should be customization for the core race just like all allied races”

I am sorry to say that ship has sailed. The allied race system is what it is and you not agreeing with what blizzard made it doesn’t change what it is.

[Talendrion-wyrmrest-accord (Talendrion)]

The difference is that Night elves have myriads of different skin colors, and visual themes to choose from that allow them to remain visually unique, while the Nightborne only have one, and it isn’t even identical to the Night elves. Like the Nightborn the Blood elves also only have one skin color and share this with High elves, leaving Blood elves with no unique visual identity at all. The alliance got the Blood elf model with void elves, and it’s animations, and now the last visual themes should be given to the alliance with all new updated model too? You have to see the problem blood elf players, and the devs see with this.

Several issues here; do you really think NB are lorewise limited to those three skin tones and there’s no variance? Do you think that giving NB more skintones similar to NE’s would be horrendous?

IDK; I really find the notion of bemoaning skin tones puzzling; I really cannot agree that identity is THIS linked to skin tone when VE’s animations feel a far larger infringement on visual identity. Humans, gnomes, dwarves and belves share a lot of skin tones, and obviously is the rest of their differences what gives us visual cues.

High Elves with a different stance would be FAR moire visually distinct than VE’s in full armor. Blood Elves visual identity is not solely on their skin tone or hair colors.

There’s more to visual identity than that, and to be quite honest, nor do I prescribe to the notion of visual identity when Pandaren already exist -not talking about neutral race mechanics, simply that visual identity is not some sort of holy threshold that cannot be crossed. It already was and the world continued.

But it’s not, they can still remain distinct, and unique from Nightborne, in addition to having a completely different model. It’s not like we got the Night elf model in one race, and then all their color schemes in another, which is what you’re suggesting with high elves.

NB have the NE model with altered proportions and idle stances; all other animations are shared. It’s definitely not a “completely different model.”

So you are definitely cognizant of how a different idle stance and build make a model feel unique enough if you believe so.

More over; BE skin tones are shown to be quite sun kissed and tanned; high elves could be made to be ashier/palier as they have lived for too long far away from the eternal spring of Quel’thalas.

Differentiation, if it is the name of the game, can be achieved.

But still, I am not one with the need for it.

It’s not about what identifies the race the most overall, but which themes identify the race the most in each category. There is lore fantasy, and there is visual fantasy, each one is important for each race, and each one should have something unique that can only be found with that race, the moment you start picking those themes away and giving them away to other similar races is the point where what originally made that race unique, and evocative to play is muddled down and cheapened.

Blood elves are the only raced faced with this dilemma, of having every visual them torn away from them until there is nothing unique about them, and everything you would have wanted to pick the blood elves for can be found somewhere else. It’s important to players, and the devs that these “identities” remain intact for these races, so that every race feels unique, and fills its own visual fatnasy within the game.

Yet is this sort of design ideology that gave us Void Elves, high on aesthetic, low on background. They are voided Blood Elves, they look different, but besides being anti horde, what makes them different ideologically from blood elves?

We have seen with them how focusing only on the aesthetic creates backlash. It simply can’t be one or the other, it has to be a mix of both.

High Elves can be made to exist on the empty spaces Blood Elves don’t occupy now; it’s simply alarmist to say BE’a are being cannibalized of their aesthetics when there is ENOUGH of the thalassian content created for Warcraft that exists beyond the BE’s current aesthetic -cause BE’s changed too, they are not the same pre third war society they were- and added that to the evident human culture syncretism allows the HE’s to be their own distinct identity:

High Elves can most certainly intrude very little on the current BE aesthetic; but then the question becomes whether you think HE’s can use the thalassian elements not currently used by BE’s.

The problem isn’t how different they look, it’s that certain themes be addressed individually, the ones the players and devs feel most crucially define the blood elf visual fantasy. This we’ve been over many times, and Ion even went over in the Q&A when asked why Void elves over high elves, albeit a little insensitively.

Ion, and the players are typically of sound mind that “Blonde haired” and “fair-skinned” elf themes are the most defining visual themes of Blood elves, which is why void elves were specifically changed in those ways. They didn’t change the model, or the animations, they didn’t give them tattoos, they changed their skin and hair to avoid infringing on key themes.

No one is saying you can’t have High elves, but you can’t have the key themes believed to be crucial themes to blood elves. If you changed those, players on both sides would likely be more receptive to your ideas.

But there’s the unreasonable notion that BE’s should have the monopoly on human like skin and fair hair. It’s simply nonsense to believe BE’s are defined by those traits in conjunction, as much as saying “white hair and purple skin are NE identity”

You can’t get rid of a certain overlap between aesthetics, but you can have different focuses and medians, to the point there are enough difference that even a blonde and fair skinned HE looks different enough from a BE.

You can have different hues on the skin -less tanned- or have a paled blonde and overall less saturated hair colors on high elves; you can make blue-white hair more emblematic as it is the case with Vereesa.

You can have differences even inside of an overlapping thematic, that is how we have Nightborne.

The problem lies with the fact that you’re trying to make high elves different from blood elves by dipping into their history, and culture as elves. When you go into Quel’thalas you’re experiencing High elven culture in its designs, in their clothes, in the weapons they wield and the language they speak, while also arguing that modern high elves are different than blood elves as they remained with the alliance, and assimilated into the alliance culture and largely shed their thalassian traditions. Why would they suddenly become tribal, and begin practicing a culture they were said to have abandoned so long ago?

This lore argument aside, the problem lies with that you’re asking for themes that dip further into what Blood elves were designed to fulfill, which was the traditional “high elf” fantasy, which isn’t a satisfying disparity and ignoring the issue with playable high elves almost in its entirety.

What I am simply asking is for HE that can exist on the unused spaces of thalassian lore; an unused aesthetic given place through a lore reason, like “Yes, Quel’danil elves continue to wear old fashined tattos” or “Yeah, Vereesa who has obviously molded the SC in image of the Farstriders has dipped into old traditions”

These are not unreasonable developments. A people doesn’t shed the whole of their culture with an exodus or migration,. they focus on different aspects of it, and with High Elves, it can even be a reasoned choice to hold to the bits of their past the BE’s have moved past to.

Here’s the thing; HE’s can’t simply be traditional HE fantasy, nor can BE’s. They have both changed, and High Elves are one of the few races that have been profoundly affected living hosted by another culture, that approach can be made entirely unique to this setting.

Unfortunately its because you don’t understand the nature of the problem, which is that players don’t want another race that digs into their race’s history, and themes. That High elves, if playable should remain distinct in the sense that their themes are thematic to the culture they’ve adopted in recent history, and if your aim is to appease the players and find a compromise, constantly dipping into that race’s themes is bound to upset players and muddle the race’s identity.

But it’s okay on Nightborne, yes, you have said that.

Whatever cultural identity HE’s have now is definitely affected by their assimilation into human culture, something categorically untrue for Blood Elves. We have 3 different human kingdoms in game, aesthetically different from each other. High Elves would fall on a similar place.

“High Elven” identity could very well be based on a mix of thalassian and human, what we could call “Dalarani” and they would be unique. And while I agree that the more distinct the better, to presume HE’s should have nary a connection to their past because it’s shared with BE’s is nonsense.

It’s their past too. We can all agree that trying for differentiation would be the best, but again, barring HE’s from their own past to the point of denying the possibility of them having tattoos when BE’s don’t currently use them is simply selfish.

[Darvel-hakkar]

I’m not really a huge fan of elves, but I’d trade void elves for these elves any day. I’m so disappointed with void elves. Their entire story and lore is so cheap and flimsy.

I would have been much happier with these elves. They’re sleek, elegant, as well as having good lore and background. They look and feel like they belong in the game. They would be a far superior choice to void elves

[Rreifren-grobbulus]

I think this adequately sums up high elves and what makes them different from blood elves.

Blood elves do indeed have the culture often associated with high elves in many fantasy universes.

High elves post warcraft 3 (the ones that remained with the alliance) are like human elves. Note that is not half elves (though half elves are part of this “Human elf” society). Simply put they are elves that culturally are like humans.

[Licynia-sargeras]

I think, if anything, the inclusion of High Elves will make WoW relevant again. It will revive interest in the game and it might even bring people who have played since warcraft 2 back again

[Talendrion-wyrmrest-accord (Talendrion)]

your fanfiction art is just that, fanfiction. it has no bearing on the game. cosmetic changes like ‘tattoos’ or a different ‘posture’ are not distinctions. and a political opinion is not distinct enough either. playable alliance high elves because you have a few individuals(like a portal keeper) make even less sense now and is moot in the age of ‘breaking the cycle’

cosmetic changes like ‘tattoos’ or a different ‘posture’ are not distinctions.

They literally are. If the point is to make them aesthetically different, cosmetic differences and behavioral ones ARE distinctions, non-biological ones.

and a political opinion is not distinct enough either

And yet we literally have Pandaren where their whole thing is about ideology. Like sure, I am not asking for the same treatment -but to say “political opinion is not distinct enough” is embarrassingly ignorant when it has been literally the case.

yes blood elves get everything because they are the future of the high elf story and are our high elves. blizzard has made that clear. the future of the high elf story is not a few elves shoved into a couple apartments in dalaran or living in a hut just south of quel’thalas, its tied up with the blood elves who control the high elf state and its armies and make up the overwhelmingly majority of their people

And yet there continues to be a group(s) of HE’s currently in the alliance. The fact is that there are organized groups of High Elves on the alliance, simply as that. Those facts don’t change because you believe Blood Elves are the TRUE continuation of the kingdom or whatever. It doesn’t matter.

High Elves exist on the alliance. They just do, no matter how much it bothers you.

wanting a different model in an attempt to differentiate them from their own race is proof its not about the lore. its an admission they are thematically and aesthetically the same thing. you admit the only thing they dont fulfill for the high elf fantasy is the faction they are tied up with. that you are willing to bend lore to create something brand new as long as its a light skinned elf is contrary to statements thats its about the lore. that they could be made distinct from their people was refuted by the game director when he said ‘if you want to be a light skinned and majestic elf, that IS a blood elf’

It’s like you literally didn’t read the whole point about aesthetic differentiation only being a necessity because BE players feel HE’s would infringe in their identity, hence the “darned if you do, darned if you don’t”

Please pay attention if you are gonna reply.

Also do you realize we disagree with Ion’s logic, right? That’s the whole point, we find his answer reductive and simplistic and we are aware that not because of his role he is the holder of all truths.

that you are willing to bend lore to create something brand new as long as its a light skinned elf is contrary to statements thats its about the lore.

Specific to this, I really don’t know how High Elves culturally having a different aesthetic and behavior from Blood Elves is “lore bending” when their differences are literally part of the lore. The point is about translating those differences into a different aesthetic.

nightborne had physical changes caused by their isolation with the nightwell, arent druids, dont worship elune, etc.

thalyssra even tell you ‘it changed us’

you cant compare NE/NB to the high elf race. its like vereesa saying, our political opinion ‘it changed us’

Yet NB have the same models than NE, with changed proportions and stance. Did the Nightwell made them stand differently? What about all the cultural and historical overlap? I have seen MANY NE players saying NB took away from their themes, but since it doesn’t suit you I guess they are wrong in your eyes.

“It changes us” said Thalyssra, to what amounted to a different build and stance and ear shape. So little change that she herself used a NE model on the Suramar cinematic.

That’s the hypocrisy, to say NB are “sooooo different from night elves you guyssss”

Only when it suits you.

[Talendrion-wyrmrest-accord (Talendrion)]

I think this adequately sums up high elves and what makes them different from blood elves.

Blood elves do indeed have the culture often associated with high elves in many fantasy universes.

High elves post warcraft 3 (the ones that remained with the alliance) are like human elves. Note that is not half elves (though half elves are part of this “Human elf” society). Simply put they are elves that culturally are like humans.

High Elves are in a rather unique cultural landscape by living hosted by a different -human-culture.

Even if we falsely pretend that Blood Elves are unchanged from their Pre-Third War days, the exiled High Elves are ex-pats, living in a different culture, assimilated into it, becoming something else.

[Archmage-azralon (Archmage)]

blood elves are playable high elves. only the adjective vanished. a few just cling to it to show political dissent. an adjective is not a candidate for an AR

As I said, the former ones still exist, nothing that you type here will change this, and many people outside the forums are aware of this since you know, the game, the main source(that has way more people on it than this forums), made a clear border between these elven groups everywhere.

These threads existed even before I started playing WoW, and kept going all the way until I joined the discussion. Why do you believe that what I’m saying or what you’re saying is going to change it?

This whole thing is way bigger than you or me, only Blizzard can end this.

[Rreifren-grobbulus]

and it only has one ending unless you want to wait the several decades until the warcraft franchise is discontinued. Even WoW itself ending wouldn’t stop the request because there would be a new warcraft game at some point.