They didn’t want to feed on the mana from the creatures nearby correct? How did they remain unphased.
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Originally they almost all died or were corrupted by drinking from unstable artifacts.
Then Sarah Pine wrote a fanfiction story that they just had such awesome willpower that they didn’t have any trouble at all unlike those weak Blood Elf scum. It won a fanfiction contest, and everything in it was made canon.
TLDR: Alliance Elves are just better than Horde Elves.
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They doubled down on that with Quest For Pandaria Part 4, where they explored the story of a husband that chose the Blood Elf way and his wife that chose the High Elf way and was exiled for it, but kept her integrity.
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So blood elves basically are addicts. Dirty addicts. Does explain the eagerness to murder I guess
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Good Question. The answer to that is, at the request of the Alliance, the Night Elves offered their Moonwells to the High Elves so that they can sate their thirst and not undergo the same mana addictions issues the Blood Elves went through. Those that were aligned with the Alliance were given access to Moonwells, combined with their resilient nature, the high elves were easily able to control their addictions.
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The vast majority of High Elves were not exiled from Quel’thalas. They chose not to return and help rebuild after Arthas destroyed it and instead stayed in human cities like Dalaran or Theramore where they could sate their addiction with magical objects they mooched off their benefactors.
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I didn’t even know that.
Most of them did. most of those who did died, this doesn’t include the vast majority that were simply slaughtered by Arthas and the Scourge.
This also does not include the contingent who went to Outland with Alleria and Turalyon because they were being nourished by the ambient magic there.
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You know a ton of High Elves became the Wretched right? I mean they didn’t just survive on moonbeams and well wishes, they wasted away much like the Withered of the Nightbourne did.
And I’m pretty sure the lore is that those High Elves that did survive fed on enchanted relics, not donated moonwells.
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The symptoms of their addiction also proved less lethal overall that Kael’thas initially thought; the very old and infirm were more likely to suffer permanent damage from arcane withdrawal, but among blood and high elves alike the truly catastrophic symptoms like Wretchedness and outright death were fairly explicitly linked to grossly irresponsible indulgence in concentrated magic followed by an inability to maintain one’s supply rather than simply being denied said magic in and of itself.
Coping with the withdrawal was extremely unpleasant for both groups, as even between draining magical creatures in Silvermoon or draining enchanted objects in the Alliance, since neither supplemental “fix” was a true replacement for the Sunwell they all had to basically wean themselves off of needing a constant stream of arcane energy at all times just to function in their daily lives.
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They mostly just hang around Dalaran and suck mana out of the plumbing.
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That’s not in any lore I’ve ever read. Source?
@OP: Many did die. Others supported themselves through feeding off magical artifacts. For example, there’s a quest in Outland to find old Dranei artifacts for the High Elves there to nom on. This is risky; the High Elves at Quel’Lithien Lodge all became Wretched after they scavenged the wrong object and brought it back to their base (PS: these are the Elves from the short story. Not so superior now, huh? Shoulda sucked on a mana wyrm).
Others who survived seem to have been in locations where they could get help - the largest single population seems to have been in Dalaran, where there would have been plenty of resources.
But I haven’t read anything about them feeding off moon wells.
Also, to those calling them dirty addicts…it’s true! But so are the Night Elves, and the Nightborne.
Edit: Finally, let’s raise a toast to one of the most inexplicable “moral” stances taken in this story. The High Elves refuse to feed off living creatures. How noble! But only when it comes to mana, because they still eat meat. Which makes this not so much a moral stance and just them refusing to do something they found kinda aesthetically gross. Basically, they were just being picky.
They were the functional equivalent of the starving person who refuses to eat a rat because it’s yucky.
They are essentially mana vegans. And just as obnoxious about it as you’d expect.
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I don’t think that’s true at all. Is this your head canon?
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In the non-canon RPG, it was mentioned that High Elves creepily lurked around the Moonwells, but the Night Elves didn’t like it and would drive them away. So the Helfs would often go on missions “tracking undead” that happened to bring them near moonwells they’d leech off of.
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That might very well explain the presence of the Moonwell in what used to be the Park District of Stormwind. Stormwind does have some resident High Elves after all.
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Wasn’t the moonwell there because of the night elves there?
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This is mostly because Blizzard walked on eggshells about where Blood Elves were getting their energy from, and the Blood Elf starting experience was written in utter vagueness.
But we know what the concept was supposed to be. We all knew that the concept was that Blood Elves were siphoning fel energy. CDev Answers 2 even said it directly:
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Why do blood elves still have green eyes?
Corruption from fel energies takes a long time to wear off. It's why most orcs are still green even though Mannoroth is dead.
The Allied Race Mag’har Orcs have prejudices against green skin Orcs. Likewise, it should have been a lot clearer that what High Elves weren’t indulging in was fel energy.
But Blizzard left the Blood Elf starting zone in the vague, not thought-out writing style that we had from the Burning Crusade expansion.
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Thanks for the mental image of the Night Elves doing the /shoo emote. shoo, begone pests!
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What I find interesting is that this was after the Sunwell was reignited, so even with the Sunwell sating their mana addiction, Blood Elves and High Elves can still become Wretched nonetheless. Which Raselle explained very well in this thread, too:
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What’s not true? The High Elves at Quel’Lithien lodge becoming Wretched after they scavenged the wrong item? Not only is it true, it’s in in-game quest text.
Yeah, the problem with trying to get mana from items seems to be that it is unpredictable - if the item is too powerful you can effectively OD, which is what leads to going Wretched.
Again, they shoulda just sucked on mana wyrms.
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