Here is something to look at. Believe it is the work of Moonli9ht, from reddit.
Ion’s main points can be separated out and argued with individually, to show this is a very weak response. In his defense, it was supposedly off-the-cuff, but since it is so often used to attack the High Elf argument, it becomes mandatory to dismantle the entire thing.
Point 1: "They look too similar to Blood Elves".
It’s an easy argument to make, but it very quickly becomes a soggy answer for a number of reasons. For one, most Allied Races are another race with minor tweaks. If all High Elves are is Blood Elves with a different eye color, then all Lightforged Draenei are is Draenei with a different eye color. All Mag’har are is Orcs with a different skin color. All Nightborne are is Night Elves, period. But there are a number of ways to differentiate the race that are canon to High Elves (eye color, hair colors, tattoos) , and several that could be added without the help of canon at all (stance, idles, voice). In this sense, Void Elves are a much bigger poster child for this problem – they have the EXACT same silhouette as the Blood Elves. If the two were fully armored, the difference would be the color of their ears. Even this pretends that the problem exists at all, which is arguable – Pandaren have existed in the game for years with no issue on target identification from the player’s side of things, and the only Blizzard employee to have ever spoken out against the concept no longer works with Blizzard.
Point 2: "By creating a High Elf playable Allied Race, we are giving the Alliance Blood Elves".
Another easy argument to make if you’re not familiar with the story of the world. High Elves came first, and were originally aligned with the Alliance. The race was forced to splinter after a handful of political and ideological disagreements, as well as pressure from the Alliance itself. The group that continued to call themselves High Elves have always been Alliance, and continue to be so for every expansion they’ve been a part of, even Battle for Azeroth.
Point 3: "It blurs faction lines".
No more than adding Blood Elves to the Horde did after High Elves had been established both in the original Warcraft series and then Classic WoW onward as an Alliance race. No more than Void Elves do. No more than Pandas did, in the absolute worst case scenario where no unique customization is offered to High Elves save for eye color, which is undesirable for all parties.
Point 4: "There isn’t a clear example of who or what High Elves are".
This was the line that led a lot of pro-High Elfers early on to thinking that Ion was “trolling” a bit – an overwhelming number of threads, polls, suggestions, and even tweets made at him during the Q&A included different factions and origins for THE group of High Elves that would join the Alliance. The Silver Covenant, Auric Sunchaser’s High Elves, Hinterlands High Elves, etc. were all listed consistently in an effort to provide flavors of High Elf for the community and Blizzard to choose from. As far as leadership, Vereesa has been a character in WoW since Wrath of the Lich King, with a plethora of reasons to throw her lot in with the Alliance – and she has, both in Dalaran and elsewhere like the Isle of Thunder.
Point 5: "If you want High Elves, you want a fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed elf, and the Horde is waiting for you."
This was a way for Ion to push the idea that anyone who wanted High Elves were vain and superficial, solely chasing after an aesthetic. He chose to word it in a way that also made a connection with Hitler’s master race concept, in a way that cannot be easily dismissed as accidental – this has the added benefit of turning the community on each other, and gives the anti-High Elf crowd an incredible source of ammunition in numerous ways.
It’s now politically correct to attack anyone who is pro-High Elf because if they like High Elves, they’re “sharing an ideology with literally Hitler”.
Since the line itself is solely in relation to looks and is his only direct attack on the High Elf argument itself, to the anti-High Elf crowd it is easily seen as an attack on the “core” of the argument, as if Ion was calling out High Elf fans for “what they’re really after”. Anyone who says they like anything about High Elves other than their looks is now dismissed as being dishonest, because the Game Director implied that they were.
It goes an additional step by making it very demoralizing to talk about High Elves, even in a casual setting, because anyone regardless of how informed they are can parrot Ion’s argument and feel righteous by shutting it down in a “politically correct” way.
The community now blames each other, instead of Blizzard’s response (blaming the player instead of the company), taking any Blizzard response out of the equation much to the company’s convenience.
It isn’t the player who wants High Elves’ fault that Void Elves were added to the game. It isn’t the player’s fault that 2 of the Allied Races added (of 8 confirmed so far) have been Elves. Yet, the points that are entirely out of the player’s hands are used to attack the High Elf argument retroactively more than anything else at this stage.
This all ties into the last, and biggest point against High Elves.
In no small part thanks to Ion’s response, it is now exhausting to talk about High Elves with the community at large in any capacity.
