And this is an argument I can mostly agree with up until it gets on the slippery slope. I personally believe there’s a sweet spot where faction identity is not solely related to aesthetics and actual lore has more weight, but that’s a long cry from asking for total hegemony.
Every race that could conceivably be cross faction already has a flavor distinct from its main group.
And I could say that adding new races can also fall on the innovation for innovation’s sake’s pile, where there’s more concern with the new rather than interconnecting while there already is.
I don’t think I’d call it a slippery slope. Because it’s not just aesthetics, the lore of each race is still a point of difference between the factions. It provides another avenue for making alts less tedious as you can interweave (which I wish they’d do more of) the lore of that faction’s races, and how they interact with other races into the questing. Like with the Tauren and Dwarves in the Tauren questing experience.
The debate of course is if the high elves are separate enough to have pretty much the same race on both factions when it wasn’t designed to be that way, or is much of the High Elf story more of a tie-in to let story that’s heavy on Blood Elves be used for Alliance content as well, or being an alliance group with a grudge to act as antagonists in Horde Blood Elf stories.
One would argue that the aesthetics is one of the most important aspects, if not the most important aspect for creating unique diversity between the two factions. When you first play WoW and log in, that is the first thing you see. It is the first impression made by the game. If you have a singular group have the exact same appearance as the opposing side, then faction doesn’t matter.
It becomes arbitrary blue or red. Not healthy either.
Usually for many of the High Elf threads, I was using the term “Half Elf” as a placeholder, for a allied race where their customization revolves around High Elves and Thin Humans.
Primarily using the Human Model’s skeleton. It’s a much more pragmatic solution to this High Elf request without sacrificing any True Dark Ladies.
I mean but do you see how a group of Playable High Elves for example would do all of these things you point out? It’s just about not looking the races as a whole but the specific groups within. A High Elven experience, as exiles living in human realms perhaps still wanting to reclaim a long lost homeland would be a completely different point of view than that of Blood Elves.
Because race doesn’t define motive as a whole, ideology does.
From a gameplay perspective, perhaps you could make that argument to some extent -and even so as a design choice rather than a truism- but from a lore perspective? It’s utterly senseless.
And do you see, like I mentioned in the next paragraph how the debate is on if they actually have their own story or if they are sub-sections of the blood elf story there to give an in for Alliance to those plots or to provide internal adversaries to the blood elves?
And the plot of the High Elves reclaiming their homeland is immensely blood elf related, you know, since that’s who the runaways would be reclaiming it from. So that would either be a story of the blood elves defeating the high elves, or as it so happens with so many of these ideas, hurting the horde in order to give something to the alliance. Not sure if there are other states that would be compatible with a story giving the alliance high elves.
What’s the great difference in ideology? It’s not like either group has completely cut off the other. We’ve seen Lor’themar reaching out to the elves he exiled to try and reconcile and we’ve had high elves talk about rejoining their siblings in Silvermoon. The strife seems now to center more around allies now that the mana tapping is no more, so it seems very much like both sides want to get back together, just aligned with the people that they like.
But that’s the point, even if wanting to reclaim their homeland is their goal, it might be something that might never come to fruition. In fact, their desire, and likely failure to reclaim Quel’thalas could work with barely any interaction from the Blood Elves -But I never deny I would just love a civil war in Quel’thalas-
Even so, personally, and as many other has said, the whole impetus of the High Elves could be the opposite and let go of Quel’thalas in order to follow a new path, and fund a new home instead of remaining on human lands. Reinvention.
That’s tantamount to asking “what’s the difference in ideology between horde and alliance”, thing that you kinda get answered when you choose sides on a Pandaren. Horde and Alliance ideologies are different, their politics are different. IMO any group that chooses to follow the opposing faction than their main racial group is tremendously more interesting.
Also we cannot dismiss the fact that most High Elves have mostly assimilated to a point into human cultures, which changes their own identity in relation to their blood elven kin.
If they were the compromise I feel Blizz would’ve used the SC or other Alliance High Elves in their creation instead of pulling exiled Blood Elves out of nowhere. I mean they probably were an attempt to compromise, but the High Elf request didn’t really gain steam until after Void Elves were already announced with the rest of the first wave of allied races
Half Elves would be a true compromise, and would bring something more unique than Void Elves imo
Vulpera are seen as cute for more than just their small size. Like Broflake said, a short Half Elf would basically be a Dwarf/Gnome with pointy ears. Not sure if that’d really take off
Half Elves have all the lore wanted from HEs, but I don’t think they’d be more unique then VEs being as were a literal Void exclusive race it’s just a different niche that Void Elves appeal to, so Half Elves would sate that better than VEs can or do but I’d disagree they’d be more interesting
If you’re being serious I don’t remember who in the HE thread had artwork of mini Gnome Sen’layn stuff, I think it might be from Hearthstone or some wow related thing idk but it was both gnome and elf like and also undead ish
