This implies either side has been actively trying to erase the other.
There have been no calls by High Elf players to remove Void customizations. The most you see are requests for options to the visual elements of the racials, or to have the tooltip read a different name, as well as the inclusion of classes which make sense for High Elves.
By the same token, I haven’t seen serious Void Elf players demanding High Elf customizations be removed. All they want is more void-themed customizations added.
Both sides are looking for more customizations and options to enhance their sense of immersion, but the most serious requests don’t detract from the potential of either identity. Its mostly trolls calling for the removal of one or the other.
This is exactly it and we all know it. They were a race added based on blizzard’s ego. They knew what players wanted and were too stubborn to just do it. Now we have the eternal mess that are void elf players fighting about adding more or less void options depending on whether they like Void Elves or just see them as ruined high elves.
High Elves were a mistake and Blizzard should have stuck to their guns when they said Blood Elves were High Elves. Void Elves were cool and unique, even if they did feel like Blizzards attempt at a compromise, but giving them High Elf skin tones, hair and eyes was just caving to the loud minority that always wants more. Not saying ALL High Elf advocators are those people but… a lot of you are.
It just never ends with demands. Now if Belves get anything, Velves have to have it, too, yet the reverse doesn’t happen, which has caused a lot of Belf players to start becoming obnoxiously loud about it, making the situation even worse. And next they’ll give Velves Paladin like so many Helf advocators want, but that still won’t be enough because they also want to remove the racial animations, too! Many even want to officially be called a High Elf and won’t stop complaining as long as they are called Void Elves.
And in the meantime all that has essentially been done is water down the lore and culture of both Blood Elves and Void Elves, making them lose anything that made them unique and interesting. All until Blizzard inevitably adds yet another Elf race, High Elves, and they end up either being carbon copies of Belves and Velves, or end up having unique models, animations and customization which will just start the cycle all over again as suddenly the Belves want everything the Helves got because they are the same bloody race!!!
There is only one solution at this point. Kill all elves.
What? Is Blizzard supposed to just make the same options appear twice in the belf character customization menu’s or something?
You make it sound like Void Elves have gotten something belves didn’t already have… Maybe blue/purple eyes? Well, Blood Elves got those so… I don’t get the complaint here. Are we talking about Dark Ranger skins? Pretty sure those weren’t made with Void Elves in mind, but Blood Elves, and were tossed onto Void Elves as an afterthought (I still can’t figure out why though).
I think you mean the option to hide the Void Elf racial visual element. As in, a toggle, so that those whom like it can still use it.
Hey, if players could choose how their tooltip reads, I’d say that could be a win in a lot of ways. You could have a Night Elf who could be a Highborne or a Kaldorei, a Tauren who is a Shu’halo, perhaps even start letting Orcs go by clan names, or humans by their nationality. I’d say this kind of option to pick how your character’s racial tooltip reads would be a win for everyone.
Void Elves would have had to have lore/culture to begin with to get anything watered down. Unless you were trying to point out their lore/culture is 100% the same thing as the belves’, just purple.
At this point I’d just just combine Allied Races with their parent races, and in the case of Blood/Void Elves, and probably Night Elves/Nightborne, just make them Pandaren neutral and be done with it. That, is how you solve this problem Blizzard created for itself.
not actively but there’s people i.e wanting to make another AR of high elves(that shouldn’t happen)
velves and helfers must learn to co-exist and share the same AR.
i think is a bit too greedy for high elves wanting to change their “race” name or toggling entropic embrace, as it hasn’t been made for any other race, is not like worgen can change their name to gilnean or night elf mage change his name to highborne/shendralarian and have new racials…
helves looking void elves, should accept even tho they are high elves they fighting under the rendoi banner.
as for entropic embrace, making it a 2 minutes cd so high elfers can decide to use it or not is enough, and for void sake make EE beauty, as it is, it seems like a bucket of paint dropt in our characters it’s ugly af
Speaking for myself, I’d like to see Entropic Embrace changed to a toggle, with the form separately customizable to include all sorts of different void aesthetics, like extra maws or eyes, tentacles, dark naaru wings/runes, etc… there is a lot to pull from in that department. Heck, even a proper photo-negative visual like Alleria has would be great. Our current, ‘suddenly dipped in blue paint,’ visual is gross, and to be honest, not being able to control it runs contrary to that underlying theme Void Elves try to sell, that they’ve mastered the void.
Tell me you don’t actually consume any media related to eldritch horror or void with a single statement. Red is and always was a void colour, even in WoW, and shadow, void, and undeath have all played off each other since the start of the IP, and in fantasy in general.
Red eyes are the main motif for corruption.
It’s actually insane we never got them on launch, but it would have caused a certain group of people to freak out just as hard as they do over a gothic elf race getting access to undead skins.
I don’t main a Belf so forgive me if it’s since changed and now Belves get everything too, but it very much so initially wasn’t the case. There was a lot of outrage on the forums when Velves were getting Belf customizations but not vice versa. Either way the point was that the homogenization of Belf and Velf has only caused more problems.
As for most everything else you said, you basically just proved my point. While, yes, more freedom is good, and I’ll always advocate for more options, the fact is only the Helf community is demanding them, and only because they don’t have an official Helf race. We don’t really see anyone demanding Taunka or Yaungol for Tauren, or Leper Gnomes or Clockwork Gnomes for the punted ones, Forsaken don’t really demand for undead versions of other races (i mean, besides elves i guess, why is it always the elves?) Even humans and kul tirans don’t really demand skinny humans anymore.
It’s only ever the Elves that complain and demand these things, especially the Helf community.
I mean, yes, that is the problem. I don’t think we’re in disagreement on that?
If Blizzard’s answer to this mess is to make it possible to immerse one’s self as a High Elf, through a Void Elf, then more than just skin/hair colors are necessary. Quite a lot more. The problem is they’ve thrown these customizations onto Void Elves piecemeal.
Speaking for myself, I can’t say I have an issue with Blood Elves getting access to whatever Void Elf customizations they want. Some of the skin colors would go well with the Dark Ranger themes (we have some solid gray skin tones). Whatever hairstyles Blood Elves want they’re welcome to (I know at least one female Void Elves have which Blood Elf players really want). I don’t see why Blood Elf males couldn’t have the Void Elf male facial hair either.
What Blood Elves get doesn’t really affect me, so more power to them getting more options.
Imagine you order a pizza, and then you’re delivered a blueberry pie. You’re reasonably confused and send it back.
Next, they bring out pizza crust. Just a flat disk of dough (skin tones). Annoyed, you send it back, again. Now they bring it out with sauce on top, but no cheese (hair colors, no proper hair styles).
Would you decide that’s the point to just say, “you know what, this is fine, I’m sure it’s good pizza?” Or would you go after at least the cheese (hair styles) before calling it quits, thinking its not even worth bothering over the toppings (actual new assets and categories for customization, like warpaint).
The thing though is I can’t really blame Alliance people for wanting High Elves. People often accuse them of being “stuck” in the mindset of the old Warcraft games for wanting playable High Elves, but Helves are still a large part of the Alliance and are practically shoved into Alliance players’ faces in most expansions nowadays. A large part of the modern Alliance identity is formed around them. It’d be the equivolent of we Hordies not having playable Forsaken.
The reason why there aren’t as many pro-ogre players on the Horde is because as soon as WoW came out and Blizz had no plans for playable ogres, they had the grace to leave them out of the Horde storyline for the most part so that they didn’t become part of the Horde’s core faction identity in WoW. Blizz kind of did a similar thing with Helves at the start in Vanilla and TBC, but starting in Wrath the things started showing up everywhere.
Because of Elf fatigue, I don’t think adding Helves as an allied race would be a good idea at this point. I think Blizz should stick to the mentality they had in TBC and make the Helves scarce and practically non-existent in the Alliance. That way, actually playable Alliance races can share the spotlight with the humans (who’ve always had priority). Have Vareesa and her followers leave, get killed, get voided, return to Silvermoon–just anything. Having there be no Helves in the Alliance lorewise is the best way to get rid of the pro-Helf crowd and develop the Alliance around the newer races they have.
They didn’t even do that properly back then. High Elves had more settlements in-game than Gnomes did. There was an entire settlement of them added in Burning Crusade. Before BC launched, they had even planned to add a rep faction for Alliance players for them.
Blizzard said one thing, and did the opposite. Actions speak louder than words. “High Elves are a rare sight in the Alliance.” Then why are we seeing more of them than Gnomes? Honestly, Wrath was just icing on the cake of that, ‘say one thing but do the opposite.’
How about just making them playable through Void Elves? Hairstyles, Paladins, Entropic Embrace toggle. Simple enough.
The problem with High Elves is, as you’ve said, Blizzard shoved them in Alliance players’ faces for years now. Just writing them out is throwing away literal years of assets, development, story, etc… all stuff which could have gone to actual playable races, but didn’t. Getting rid of them now is just spitting on so many under-represented races. At least making them playable gives some payout to High Elves having a presence in the Alliance expansion after expansion.
Honestly, your suggestions would be my ideal scenario. I like the Helves a lot and would love playable ones Alliance-side without voidy passives and whatnot reminding me that I’m not actually one.
My suggestion of just changing things storywise is just kind of a minimalist one that I think would be the easiest for Blizz to implement and would cause the least outrage in the community. Even though I’d love to theoretically have basically just blue-eyed blood elves on the Alliance side, I fear that many people would feel it’d undermine Belves (including the devs).
Since Alleria is basically not a Helf at this point, I feel like she could satisfactorily continue the “Helf legacy” with her Velves even if the actual Helves just rejoined Silvermoon. Besides, I think it could work well in the story. BfA already missed the mark having the Alliance of all factions accept void users into their midst; perhaps they could retroactively narrativize it to an extent. Perhaps Anduin and other Alliance leaders were uneasy about it, but because Alleria was a war hero, they were willing to look the other way. Considering the fact that Vareesa and the remaining Helves found the use of fel magics by the Belves disgusting and was part part of the reason for their leaving Silvermoon to begin with, perhaps she feels more inclined to return to Silvermoon now that it has begun adopting holy energies as of late whereas Stormwind has turned to the void.
Given the fact that the two factions are no longer at war and the DF alphas seems to imply that a timeskip has occured, it doesn’t feel to me that it’d be too outlandish that Vareesa might relocate to Silvermoon and decide to still be on friendly terms with Alleria and the Alliance even if she found some of their recent choices regrettable. However, if another war expansion did happen, it’d certainly throw the whole concept in the drain.
I found it baffling that Void Elves got the dark ranger look at all considering they weren’t even there when they were created!
They weren’t there with the Alliance at Teldrassil, and they didn’t exist when the Blood Elves became dark rangers as being “void-touched” is only a recent occurrence.
I don’t know. We Helf EnjoyersTM might be a pretty large group, but we’re still a minority group at the end of the day. I think at this point, the anti-Helf sentiment has grown considerably to the point where even people who aren’t interested in the Helf debate tend to have strong opinions about people who want them added. I think a simple narrative redirection would be far less controversial at this point than copy-and-pasting Belves in their entirety (minus the green and yellow eyes presumably) to the Alliance. Although, I’d personally be estatic about it.
If giving Helves to the Alliance were to happen, though, it’d have to be done properly. Part of what makes the “elf exchange” in BfA feel so bad is that no Horde player ever had even a passing interest in playing as Nightborne on the Horde specifically (much less playing a Nelf to begin with). I think many Hordies just see the entire affair as the Horde being robbed and being left only with a small butterscotch candy as compensation. If Belves with blue eyes were to be given to the Alliance, an actual equal exchange should be carried out. The only problem is that it’s hard to think of an entire Alliance race that it would make sense to port over to the Horde. I guess Draenei? They’re pretty forgiving (Velen and Maraad talked kindly to orcs and Belves at least). I guess Nelves could also be introduced if they were incorporated solely as a body type for Nightborne (because there’s no way an actual Darnassian Nelf would join the Horde after Teldrassil.
Edit: Then again, I’m not sure the Horde even has any interest in any Alliance races to begin with.
I don’t have a problem with Void Elves being their own thing. It’s just my own problems with them is their lack of Lore, No Starting Zone or City Capital, or atleast more Lore Void Elf Characters that people ether know from the Warcraft 2 Lore or 3 if you count the Dalaran and Jaina High Elf Survivors of Classic WoW or High Elf Npcs that are also Void Elves.
Plus having the Exiles from Northern Lordaeron would be a good start for Void Elves since they can have both Cultures be together. One is more Dark Elf related to the Void, and another is like High Elf Fantasy meets with Wood Elves. So basically, it’s a mix of together that Blood Elves don’t have. They have the True High Elf Fantasy but not the Wood Elf Fantasy.
If we are going to see Alliance High Elves in General I want to see Silver Covenant Void Elves just for a heck of it and then it’ll be like hey there’s Void Elves in the Silver Covenant or a New Alliance High Elf Faction would be called Silvermoon Remnants with High Elves and Void Elves being a Exile Faction.
I’m really trying to plan out a “High Elf” as well, but it’s really difficult with how limited the customizations are. I really love the short hair options on Belf women in how simple most of them are; the ones on Velf women are so fancy. I feel like the Velf men had way more luck in terms of “casual” hairstyles.