So when BFA came out, allied races joined the Horde and the Alliance.
One of those allied races was suppose to be a faction of mostly blood elves that began to experiment with the void and were over a certain period of time totally forever altered by long term exposure to the void.
I loved that idea. A new race forming from another one. It reminded me of Darwin’s evolutionary theory which states
That a new species can form if you take a portion of any given species population and place that portion into a new environment (at least over a long stretch of time).
Well with Azeroth being a magical place, that evolutionary change was much faster (like I think within a year or months) and we had a new race called void elves.
A new elven sub species that had specific skin colors to reflect the colors of the void.
And I thought it was a great idea. I loved being a void elf. Specific light and dark blue skin tones to reflect the void colors as well as their racial bird mount (which is a space void toned) bird.
Then suddenly without warning and with no explanation at all, void elves began popping out everywhere that did not look very much or all like they had been altered by the void.
And I feel now, this has completely ruined what was suppose to be a new unique branch of elf.
Any other void elves or anyone else feel this way?
But makes sense because not all Void Elves actually got in the transformation part, which was forced, not a ritual they decided.
So any High Elf or Blood Elf (because there are Blood Elves joining) could retain their normal skin as it’s possible their transformation or infusion was not as drastic.
Might be the only time I’ll ever have to defend Blizzard…
Think this stems from people wanting to have high elves (which, the difference between high and blood elves is only political so appearance wise alliance getting high elves would essentially mean alliance getting blood elves with a different name) so bad they constantly complain about not having all the hair and eye colors that blood elves get - which I do get to the extent that I think there should be more skin/hair/eye color options for void elves, just don’t know if they should just be the same as what blood elves get.
I think Blizzard has tried hard to find compromises between people like you who want void elves to actually be their own unique VOID touched race and people that essentially wanna play blood elves on Alliance and still aren’t over the fact Blizz gave blood elves to the Horde (which I get to a degree but at the same time, when bloodelves were implemented, the Horde kinda needed some more human looking race imo) instead of giving high elves to the Alliance.
Man, all those Darkspear trolls must be so upset by their handful of new subraces. They don’t even look like Darkspear trolls!
I’m a huge void elf fan.
But dismissing the fact that Void Elves were never asked for - High Elves were - and the devs eventually finally gave into the requests to give High Elves as a subrace of Void Elves to the Alliance early through the means of regular skin colours before the Allied Race pass - is dismissing what players actually wanted.
There is nothing being ruined.
We haven’t seen what the allied race customization are, and it’s likely they’re going to lean in heavily with the void thematic s while giving a spattering of things to appeal to people who want to play High Elf.
Many also consider the “regular flesh toned” void elves with actual void customizations to be the second generation; those mutating slowly/differently because of exposure, but not fully due to Durzaan’s influence.
If people are going to complain about anything to do with the void elves, it should be the complete and utter lack of foreshadowing and prior presence in the game, with a heavy part of our backstory being locked behind the Nightborne unlock.
They didn’t even put hints in.
By asking to get high elves you completely ignore the fact that high elves don’t exist in large numbers on Alliance side in the lore either though.
Personally, I think void elves need more customization options and they should be turned into a core race at some point so people who want to play Alliance don’t have to level up a different character just to be able to unlock void elves while they can just start off with their first toon being a blood elf on horde side… But I’m pretty sure nobody shares my opinion on this
And yet, they made a small research group an entire race to get around that.
It made no sense.
We have a race that crash landed on a space ship - with a good chunk of their people dying in said crash - as a playable race.
Heck, Darkspear trolls didn’t have much of a population either, yet.
The quel’dorei had a pretty strong presence starting in WoTLK, a smaller presence in BC, and continued to show up in every expansion since. If they stopped having them be quest givers, portal/flight masters, ect ect, that argument would work, but there were enough of them remaining they had their own military units called in more than once.
Blizzard should have just never had them show up allied with the Alliance at all and stuck with “they all went Horde”.
All the racial mounts still are space chickens. Which really are just a mutated or new form of the racial mount that blood elves get.
Yet if as you say some void elves now don’t even look like they were touched by the void at all, then those void elves should not have space chicken bird mounts.
Yet I bet they do.
The fact that they do would reflect lore wise that those void elves like myself were touched by the void and thus should have skin tones that now reflect closer to voidy colors.
The reason by the way that my void elf has one of the darkest blue skin tones is to reflect that he was very much changed by the void.
To me light skin blue void elves are partially mutated or changed by the void.
In any case at least the light skin blue ones I feel at least were affected by the void.
It’s also why my character’s long hair is partially void. Again to reflect two things.
That he did come from another race (blood elves) As he was one.
To reflect that the void changed him quite a bit from his original form.
Lastly, this change did occur fast. Meaning instead of taking 1000 years or 10k years. This happened in less than a year or so (I think lore wise).
If it had taken a long time to change them (they should have a unique native tongue now) but void elves do not.
All void elves can speak Thalassian which again reflects that their original roots stemmed from Silvermoon.
Why I can still speak fluently to blood elves even though most never speak to me (I guess because they think I’m a traitor).
The way I see it is we shouldn’t be fighting over these petty “They have the same thing as me now!!!” and instead give both factions what they should have as per the lore.
To achieve this allied races should be reorganized. Allied race can still exist as a way to add new races. However subraces should now be a thing and part of the customization process under the base race.
Lets start with alliance elves. You would click the elf icon under alliance. You would then be given a choice between night elf, void elf, and high elf. After choosing one of them you would then select your class. After choosing your class you would then customize your character.
For a time many of these subraces would share voice lines and racials with their base race until blizzard is able to put work in to change that.
This would be done for all races. Subraces would be able to have unique class options as fits them per the lore.
Oh, yea no I do agree the way they implemented void elves was lazy storytelling and made no sense. Not sure if they did it to screw over high elves fans or if they were trying to find a compromise between not screwing over blood elf players/horde entirely and still giving people who wanted high elves something close to that.
-obviously wasn’t the right way of introducing a new race but I think we can agree that blizzard’s storytelling is often lazy…
Yes. Void elves should have been given void elf skin tones, and other things to reflect the void and its various aspects. More monstrous options like extra eyes, sha goop / blotches on the skin, qiraji exoskeletons, etc. There were so many possibilities for void elves to be great, but Blizzard caved and made them helf-lite.
I mean, posting on a level 19 alt void elf makes it seem more like you might be a BE main still upset about the fact the Alliance finally got something they have been asking for since 2004, albeit in a roundabout way.
We haven’t gotten an actual customization pass.
The skins were given to pretty much shut people up because they were a literal copy paste job outside the underwear.
