High Elves have literally only been mixed with Humans and Night Elves in different scenarios, when mixed with Blood Elves are usually enemies or opposing.
These are also never in a way that eludes to anything other than the story going on at that moment, not because of something grander, like they have with Void Elves, which you would be right in thinking it didnât mean anything, until these customization options were revealed.
Youâre right, we should never expect reasonable story telling from Blizzard, itâs always something ham-fisted.
I think both the HE wayfarers and the BE scholars serve the purpose of new recruits, a BE player from the Horde can faction change and keep the same appearance, or you can make a new character and RP as a former BE and use the non blue options. Same goes for High Elves, the HE wayfarers allow people to be HEs loyal to the Alliance never having taken the name Blood Elf.
However we need this to be explicitly stated by Blizzard I agree, and it would be fairly easy for them to do so to say yeah the wayfarers/scholars in the rift, they are the new recruits, have fun with the new customizations guys. Like it wouldnât be difficult at all
Well while they have spent their time mainly with Night Elves and Humans they do regularly make their high elf pilgrimage to Silvermoon so they do spend some time with other blood elves as well.
There are even high elf pilgrims NPC around the Sunwell and for me to say âWell those high elves MUST be rejoining the blood elves since theyâre in silvermoonâ is a stretch since theyâve been there for so long alreadyâŠ
See how people can make a connection that is not really there?
and here is where we hit on the biggest problem facing velfs, now that our other requests were mostly solved, and that is classes. currently blood elves can be every class in the game except shamans and druids, and even a class only belfs and nelfs can be - demon hunters.
whereas velfs cant be shamans or druids, nor can they be paladins, nor can they be demon hunters. considering we are belfs that had a science accident, youâd think what we could or couldnt be, was sorta wobblyâŠ
in other words, if we are so different we cant be demon hunters and paladins, then perhaps druids or shaman. but druids and shaman say nope, cause it makes no sense.
and of course, thatâs true, it is rather silly to suggest that something permanently void infested can be anything friendly with nature or the elements. but i cant imagine what a nerf we took if weâre former belfs. youâd think a special race you have to do special things to earn, weâd have extra classes not less. its like being punished, as far as classes go
I can, considering from a lore perspective, High Elves dropping the Alliance after all the times theyâve actively helped them in conflicts against the Horde throughout WoW makes 0 sense against the idea that High Elves would join Void Elves or vice versa and be these new customization options we see now on the Alliance.
So to you, High Elves dropping the Alliance after 15+ years, makes more sense than blatantly seeing their aesthetic slowly be added to Void Elves being a story connection to them being actual, canon High Elves studying the void?
Hereâs a new compilation of suggestions. This time for Blood/Void/High Elves.
Void Elf improvements.
General Concepts/Additions-
-Some lore stating that High Elves and Void Elves are merging in some way. Either by having Alleriaâs troops follow her path or having the Void Elves join the Silver Covenant.
-Alleria like Tattoos/Warpaint.
-White/Blond/Brown Hair Colors.
-Short Ear options so people can play Half Elves on Alliance
Possible Additions/Alterations/Options-
-The High Elf skins that are currently unavailable to players.
-Either the option to hide/change Entropic Embrace or making it less obnoxious.
-Night Warrior type quest to allow more High Elf themed options or a more Ranger Like armor set like Alleriaâs.
-Paladins. (Unlikely but it would be nice)
Blood Elf improvements.
General Concepts/Additions-
-More large pieces of Jewelry for both genders. Including Ankle/Arm Bands.
-Glowing Blue/Red/Green Rune Tattoos like Rommath that match Eye Colors. Maybe some black ones.
-Red/Black Felblood Skins.
-Wizard Beards!
Possible Additions/Alterations/Options-
-Night Warrior type quest to allow for Sanâlayn and/or Dark Ranger customization options.
-Blood Mage and Spellbreaker Armor Sets with Spell Breaker Weapons.
Except it was random, and youâre trying to connect a recent announcement with NPCs that were present when Ion originally said âAlliance races are not getting customization options for Shadowlands.â.
Youâre trying to say the future proved the past, when Ion blatantly said this was a recent thing.
This isnât back to the future, letâs not try to prove past theories with future decisions.
-So far, alliance aligned High Elves have had exclusively blue eyes and human skin tones.
-Blood Elves NPCâs have had blue eyes in limited appearances.
I mean I really donât see an issue with Blue eyes for BEâs, but is disingenuous to deny that, up until now, the quickest ârule of thumbâ to distinguish HEâs from BEâs was⊠literally eye color -with the aforementioned exceptions, of course-
If those exceptions, which have occurred since Vanilla, keep popping up then its not an exception and it doesnât make the HE look exclusive to them Talendrion.
Let alone, they are NPCâs, the alliance cant claim something it doesnt actually possess.
That is like claiming they own the Jinyu look.
Or if the Horde had human allies who were only skinny humans.
-Only two named BE NPCâs have had Blue Eyes, the other ones are no names/alleged bugs. Or both.
-They had never been playable, so they are qute literally, outliers.
So, yah, quite literally, the exemption, not the norm of the BEâs as a group.
Agree with this, I was just pointing out that alliance HEâs have never been shown with green eyes, and as to how that has contrasted to green eyed, red wearing BEâs when they have shown up as foils. But Blue eyes as a whole had been exemplary of High Elves (both neutral and alliance)
Then again, Iâm using the past tense since itâs quite moot now, but I would be remiss to say that it would be disingenuous there wasnât a deliberate attempt to differentiate high elves from blood elves in game by their eye color, until now.
Itâs easy to solve, though. Give the Alliance Sethrak and treat both Vulpera and Sethrak as new core races, and give Gilgoblin customization options to Goblins.
YesâŠyes theyhave Talendrion.
The first high elves the horde meet are thalothas brightsun and his friend firebough, and theyâre not alliance based.
Those few blood elf NPCâs that did exist used a blue model night elf model as well.
Why do they have to be named NPCâs to be relevant? If we go off this logic, this makes the entire argument about high elves being in BFA completely non-existent outside of Vereesa.
If we are playing the never been playable argument, then high elves have absolutely no claim.
High elves make up 10% of the entire thalassian race, therefore, exception, not the norm. Therefore, no one should have blue eyes. The argument of âexceptions dont countâ is clearly non-functional considering blood elves just got blue eyes. So you canât even cling to such an argument anymore.
Let alone the fact the devs said their green eyes were being cleansed which meant they would have blue eyes eventualy.
UhhâŠyesâŠyes they have.
There have been occassions where they popped up with green eyes, but the helf community complained so hard that they had to fix it in a later hot patch.
The deliberate attempt to differentiate was because of how limited WoW was in terms of customization.
Face = eye color.
So to make it easier for the player, and not necessarily lore accurate, they did such a thing. A lot of the things we see in game are for gameplay, not lore.
SoâŠfor exampleâŠthere are orcs who stand up straight but the game didnt have the means of straightening the modelâs back yet.
it doesnât mean all orcs were back broken.
People often forget that the game makes huge sacrifices to show what it does.
The other BEâs you mention? Got updated to green eyes. If itâs retconed, does it count?
Well, there were 4 named HE characters in BfA, not the point tho.
This whole thing misses the point; which is about whatâs representative of a race. Iâve always believed there was no reason for blood elves with blue eyes to be impossible, that doesnât mean they were representative.
Not the point; the point is that non-playable options of each playable race are outliers, and obviously, not representative of the race as a whole.
The point is that BEâs didnât seem to have blue eyes as the norm so far dear lord. How are you not getting that? Which again, is moot now since they are getting blue eyes now.
Unless you point is to say Blood Elves have always ahd blue eyes in significant numbers. Which, again, might not even be true since it quite as well might be that now we get to play as outliers.
I mean if they fixed it was a bug, otherwise the answee would be âoh yeh some high elves have green eyesâ which⊠would make sense since some BEâs also had blue eyes.
Doesnât change the facts of what is representative for each group sweet jeesus.
At best this is speculation on your part.
But man, I literally canât get your angle here; why are you arguing against the evident fact that up until now, BEâs and HEâs were differentiated by their eye color, safe for exceptions?
Blood elves and high elves are literally just semantics. I am not sure why even now, people insist on playing the game.
Golden eyes were not representative of blood elves until they suddenly were, and people still argued against them. Something being representative does not exist in WoW, and it never has been a metric for determining availability.
Mages were not representative of the night elves, and neither were paladins for the Horde. It i a flawed concept that doesnât hold up to scrutiny.
Except this isnât the case because again, you have cases like dark iron dwarf death knights. There was only ONE npc in the entire game but hey, that didnât stop the class from being a thing.
I am pointing out the flaw in the argument. The numbers never meant anything to Blizzard at any point. Exceptions dont matter. It literally become a case of
âDoes blizzard care to do it or not and what is the purpose?â
BLue eyes became less and less of an important distinction, particularly with the release of void elves as the allianceâs âhigh elfâ group.
NotâŠreally⊠whenever youâre testing the client and you look it all over, you also test it against a live client. Those green eyes were seen, and the devs said âwho caresâ until helfers complained.
They still havent changed the sunreavers despite the multiple bug reportsâŠ
My point is, not everything is done with the intent of lore. It is all done for gameplay and nothing more.
Simply because lore says âwell a blood elf may not often have blue eyes but they also can, its just rare.â.
Its a fact because the game was built of a warcraft 3 engine where the models head and eyes were connected.
So noâŠits not speculation.
This is why when you change worgen faces your eyes can change color.
Or when you change blood elf faces you can get gold eyes.
Because the arguments that are used regarding lore donât work.
So the only argument is that it is purely for gameplay.
Meaning the whole âwell its exclusive to this or thatâ holds absolutely no merit and never did.
They are not just sematics; they literally point out to different context.
Blood Elves are High Elves that followed Kaelâthas and got their name changed, which then led to them getting green eyes per his decisions.
âSomething not being representative does not exist in wowâ
OK
Anyone can become a DK, thatâs the point. How is not that representative of a population?
Sure, but again, it doesnât change that blue eyes werenât representative of blood elves, and unless it gets retconed, it will continue to be so??
You are literally speculating on the motive FFS. If they wanted to show that High Elves can have green eyes and BEâs had blue eyes as a normality, they wouldnât make either overwhelmlingly blue eyed or green eyed, which they can, cause they have, dear lord.
Which is again you dismissing the simple fact that they have, to this point, overwhelmlingly represented HEâs with blue eyes and BEâs with green eyes. Even when they can do otherwise.
Iâm sorry but this might be actually the dumbest discussion I have had here.
It is indeed semantics because that is literally the only difference between them design wise. To the point that the high elf name literally is in the blood elf descriptor.
blood elf or high elf, same thing design wise.
Really? That entire point and not only do you strawman me off a single sentence, you canât even get the sentence right within the very quote you pulled.
umâŠno?
because there were not dark iron DKâs at the time because they were not present for Arthas to raise them. That is literally where all PC DKâs come from was arthas.
SoâŠlike gold eyes arenât representative but yet we still have them? Are you not realizing the inconsistency? Or is it an exception because its high elves?
What about blue eyed DKâs?
Or is it going to be an argument 'well those are glowing and not ALL high elf blue eyes glow."
It isnât speculation for anyone who has any sort of knowledge about coding dude. The game was not designed to provide multiple eye colors. To have a different eye color, you needed a completely different head.
It was an extremely limited engine for when it was designed. Unless you want to rock under the notion that they werent using NPC bunnies for spell effects.
or go under the notion that they simply didnt feel like doing customization options for fun.
Simply because it was easier to do so for gameplay purposes, not because of lore or anything else. Gameplay design operates under a simple decision process.
Youâre right, it is, so maybe stop acting that way and disguising it under pseudo-intellectualism like you always do when pressed in an argument?
LikeâŠthe fact youâre debating the reason eye colors were limited with me isâŠridiculous.
In fact, forget it, I am not interested in the round about. We wonât go anywhere in the convo despite the fact that blood elves are getting blue eyes despite your whole representation argument.
You know, the more I read the forum, the more I really hope Blizzard doesnât manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on this one.
The way I see it from the general acceptance of these additions, if they donât say the wrong things (i.e., âThe Horde is waiting for youâ to a group of obviously pro-Alliance fans during an expansion where their ad campaign says âfaction mattersâ) then they at the very least walk away from this with a tie.
If they say the right things, (i.e., lore blurb about some High Elves â not even all, just some â joining the Void Elves) they walk away with a win.
If on top of that, if they throw a bone to some of the further concerns/ideas (Entropic Embrace getting a âlighter lookâ, but why not also give it a âvoidierâ option too, let Void Elves who want it double down on their void aesthetic in some way, sprout void tentacles from their back when it procs or something), then with the right words, they might just be able to spike the ball.
And itâs probably been a while since theyâve been able to spike the ball.
