You’re completely ignoring that the customization options are missing, which is the main point, I want Ion to commit to his BE are high elves comment and make high elven customization options, as they existed before the Sunwell was lost, available. End the discussion once and for all and force Helf hopers Horde. I bet this would get too much backlash, which is why they won’t, but I really want to see some consistency behind this rationale. The most hilarious part of this being Void elves are technically everything an allied race shouldn’t be according to the points he put forward. I think Taliesin did a hilariously brutal takedown of this.
They almost joined in Legion? Source? I think you’re misremembering parts of other expansions and injecting narrative. I’m not going to argue with someone who can’t keep their facts straight, let alone focus on main points.
It’s fun how the only high elves to remain with the Alliance were the ones Jaina took with her to Kalimdor, yet she was the one who decided to massacre civilians when she “cleansed” Dalaran of all blood elves, even those not Sunreavers.
The fact that the high elves remain okay with the Alliance and Jaina in specific is more confusing than ANY question of why the Sin’dorei should be suspicious of trolls, frankly. The Alliance abandoned their people, left them to die, the Queldorei never came back to help defend Silvermoon or to honor their dead.
They do. I rolled my first Belf in TBC beta and lots of us have been pointing the fact we should have had blue eyes out from day one. Frankly, if holy could overcome fel contamination, the Blood Knights should never have had green eyes but always had gold. And since eye color has always been attached to faces, it shouldn’t have been hard to add the different colors.
That would pretty much have settled this whole thing with the Alliance yelling about high elves. But Blizz has always been terribly lazy about customization. The character customization in this game has always been the worst in the business. It came out just after COH, compare THAT character creator with the “five faces, siz hairstyles” nonsense we have here
It’s not confusing at all. High Elves are an Alliance race and Blood Elves are on the Horde to artificially boost faction numbers by giving them an Alliance race.
Simple. All it takes to understand is admitting the truth of the matter instead of twisting your brain up to justify them only being playable in the wrong faction.
Excuse me? Warcraft III is the game in which Blood Elves came to be. The Quel’dorei, and their leader Kael’thas, were betrayed and thrown under the bus by the Alliance and I didn’t see Dalaran elf mages coming down to help them. Those who remained High Elves didn’t give a damn. The entire purpose behind changing their name and identity was to honor the dead. How exactly am I “forgetting my whole history” when all of this happened before WoW?
Gold eyes were a wonderful way to represent the Blood elves narrative progression, that with the reliance on fel no longer necessary and the Sunwell restored, it was only a matter of time that it would reflect through their eyes. The problem is that this progression really only appropriate on light-wielding elves like priests and paladins. (A point they repeatedly stressed in Q&A’s when asked about the golden eye changes.)
Blue eyes would be an equally nice way to reflect this narrative step forward for the other classes like hunters, rogues, and especially mages. After all when you create a Blood elf the narrator is every careful to mention that while many elves embrace the light, there are still many that refuse to relinquish their reliance on the Arcane. And since the Sunwell is also a source of arcane magic, blue eyes are a perfectly rational customization option for them.
Lastly, and theoretically, two purified Blood elves (gold eyed blood elves) could produce a pure, blue eyed blood elf as well. With there no longer being any fel presence in Silvermoon, there would be no reason for any future generations to have green eyes. At this point there’s really not any reason for them to not have blue eyes.
Man I just wanna play a high elf paladin. If you use the dressing room on wowhead and put a blood elf in the Alliance Heroic Arathi Warfront plate armor…It’s freakin epic looking. But since blood elves are team red they don’t get to look awesome like that.
I’ll open by saying that I’ve stated in previous discussions my stance is we play “factions” not “races” despite them being called “races” because no group we play represents all humans, all Eredar, all Elves, etc. This observation is not unique to me, but I wanted to put it out there so we both know where I stand. What we play are in fact, specific political organizations of certain races, and I believe that distinction to be important.
I’m going to try and break this up. Forgive me if it’s not perfect.
Since “fair-skinned” is rather generic, and “purple” is rather specific, would you prefer I widen that statement to “not fair-skinned” when referring to Night Elves/Nightborne? Perhaps I should, as that would probably help get the point across better than the oversimplification I used for shorthand. Or perhaps it would be better to reference them as the “generic fantasy high elf look” and the “generic fantasy Dark Elf look”. The point is in contrast to the “fair-skinned Elf” assertion being made that it must only exist on the Horde, while “non-fair-skinned Elves” are fine to not be exclusive to the Alliance. I have seen discussions where some on the “anti-HE” side have suggested that fair skin is a core identity feature. If the point is that the “generic fantasy High Elf look” be exclusive to one side, certainly it should only be fair that the “generic fantasy Dark Elf look” be exclusive to the other?
Fair enough, but then the physical characteristics that fulfill the “generic fantasy Dark Elf look” should likewise be exclusive to the faction that had it longer than Blood Elves have been playable on the Horde.
You seem to be indicating by contrast that “a fair-skinned elf” does indeed define a Blood Elf, and I reject that. Blood Elves are more than their skin shade, just as are Night Elves. As I’ve already addressed the “High Elf look” vs “Dark Elf look” I’ll skip that part, and set aside for now the “A High Elf looks like a Blood Elf” part as I think my initial statement on the fact we’re playing “factions” and not “races” deals with that well enough to move on.
Of equal if not greater importance here is that previously, Night Elves were the ancient Elf race with members whose memories reached back to the beginning of their empire and the Sundering/First War with the Legion. When Nightborne were given to the Horde, that feature of their history was co-opted by the Horde, despite them having two of their own ancient-though-not-immortal races/ 3 factions (Tauren and Trolls, with the Trolls being divided between two factions: the Zandalari and the Darkspear), one at least of whose history if not personal memory reaches even further back than the Night Elves’, to the Black Empire and life under the Old Gods. The Night Elves of Teldrassil were the original faction with direct living ties to the history of the Well of Eternity and Azshara, and now the Nightborn have it too.
Just as the Blood Elves did not abrogate themselves of all High Elf history occurring before their rename, the Void Elves did not abrogate themselves of Blood Elf history by being transformed by the Void, the Nightborne did not abrogate themselves of all Night Elf history that occurred prior to binding themselves to the Nightwell, and the Draenei did not abrogate themselves of all Eredar history that occurred prior to them departing Argus, neither did the Forsaken rid themselves of the history of Lordaeron simply by dying and being brought back to life.
I remember back in the day when one of the arguments forumgoers made for the Forsaken’s legitimate claim to Lordaeron are that they were in life, and so are still in undeath, the exact people who lived there. And indeed, in lore, we have seen that many of the Forsaken have wanted to reconnect with that life by reconnecting with their living brethren, so the people themselves can’t be that different after all. They are the citizens of the sponsor-nation of the Alliance of Lordaeron, and certainly in plenty of cases the same citizens who fought for the Alliance of Lordaeron in the Second War, regardless of any changes in the Lordaeron faction’s political affiliation or its cultural shifts. They are not the only heirs to the legacy of Lordaeron, as there is also a living faction whose members no doubt still consider themselves Lordaeronians, but they are heirs.
To be clear on one thing: If they did implement playable Alliance High Elves as requested by the “pro-HE” community, I would be very surprised if I ever leveled one past any unique initial experience. I haven’t even bothered with playing the Allied races we currently have. I am far too attached to my main of 15 years and have far too little time and interest to bother levelling up a brand new character to replace or even compete with him. I neither gain nor lose, on a personal level, whether they implement what the “pro-HE” community desires or not. I do, however, understand the desire for it, and disagree with the manner with which that desire was treated in Ion’s response.
That said, if all any race has to offer to players is their model, then that’s just sad on Blizzard’s part.
My point is that Blood Elves aren’t, though they seem to be the one many have the biggest problem with it being done to.
I’ve already discussed what the Night Elves lost to the Nightborne. I’ll add to that that they used to be the “no magic” Elves, and recanted on that in Cataclysm.
The Humans, Dwarves, and Gnomes no longer hold the unique position of being Titan-created races. Orcs are too.
Stormwind and Lordaeron were the two founding kingdoms of the original Alliance. Humans who were part of that Alliance exist on both sides. That’s been the case since WoW launched, so we tend not to think it’s a big deal, but that is the Human history of the Alliance being on both sides of the Alliance/Horde divide, which should matter if we’re going to look at everything in the prism of “races” and not “factions.”
Gnomes used to be the big tech guys, giving that unique theme to the Alliance. Then the Horde got Goblins.
“Pretty”/sophisticated faction? That was Alliance, then Horde got Blood Elves. “Pretty”/sophisticated faction on the Horde? Well now the Horde also has Nightborne, so that takes that uniqueness from the Blood Elves.
The “savage” theme that was originally Horde? Alliance got Worgen to give them some of that.
Themes cross faction lines all the time, for good or ill.
I say it again: If all any race in the game has to offer players are its models, then that is sad on Blizzard’s part, and I would hope Blizzard would agree. They should be cool, but they shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all.
So the bigger question should be, what besides the “generic Fantasy High Elf look” do the Blood Elves add to the Horde and to the game? They’re not the oldest/longest using magical faction (beaten by Draenei, Night Elves, and Nightborne), they’re not the only faction that was dealing with a magical addiction (shared now with Nightborne), they’re not the only pretty/sophisticated faction on the Horde (again, Nightborne), they’re not the only faction that was willing to do whatever it took to survive (Forsaken).
So what is it that they do that no one else does, and if we can’t come up with anything, does that change whether or not we like the Blood Elves? Or do we come to the conclusion that it’s not the what that brings us to like them, but the why, the story woven around them that helps us understand how they came to make those decisions?
So here is where I address the “High Elf looks like Blood Elf” comment, and bring it full circle to my opening statement.
I don’t care if Alterac Humans ended up on the Horde, or Lightbound Orcs ended up on the Alliance. I don’t think either needs to be so drastically different from Stormwind/Orgimmar variants that you can’t see the relation as a race. Even something as simple as a different stance can change a silhouette. I care more about the factions that are on each side than I do about the races, and why they are on that side.
For me, High Elves and Blood Elves being similar in superficial physical appearance is less important than their political leanings and personal beliefs. Game of Thrones wasn’t interesting because it was all the humans on one side and all the White Walkers on the other. Wheel of Time wasn’t interesting because all the Humans never did anything but fight the Trollocs. Those personal, cultural, and political differences, both minor and major, and the interactions between the factions because of them, are what made both interesting.
As I’ve mentioned in a past High Elf discussion, what the High Elf/Blood Elf split gives us is the opportunity to see something that is usually reserved for back stories in the annals of history of whatever world we’re experiencing: that sundering of peoples that makes the Empire of Arathor become Stromgarde, Stormwind, Lordaeron et al. The only question is whether Blizzard has both the interest and the ability to make that story an interesting one, and if they do, I’d like to see it. And if they can write an interesting reunification story that’s reasonable within the world, that’s (in my opinion) a waste of an opportunity, but at least it’d be interesting.
If, however, all they do is hamfist a “now they’re all together again” then that’s a disservice to us as fans of the Warcraft franchise, regardless of which side of the debate (or no side at all) we fall on.
It’s hard to choose an elf mage in the Alliance as an elf fan.
The Void elves are all about the void
It’s hard to pretend being a Shen’dralar mage because of the lack of highborne customizations and the odd idle animations of the night elves
Giving the Horde another magic-based elf would be a triple treat
At this point they should just unlock all of the races for each side. It’s not like there wouldn’t be people who want no part of war or traitors. Both are a fact of every conflict. With Horde being the majority on most servers they should open up PvE content to everyone, no segregation by faction. I’d happily hold onto a Drenaei’s tail and nuke with the other hand. Or scratch a worgen behind the ear and nuke with the other hand. Man … if I was a Shokan I could do both and double the nuke power! Wooo.
