I think the point of this thread is lore wise, it doesn’t have to be wrong. There is nothing wrong with a story progressing and things evolving. That is the beauty of an ever changing world. What OP and a lot of people who do care about lore are asking for is to explain how the fair skin blood elves have a pigmentation change or how their eyes can be blue or why a blonde night elf is a thing. Explain the changes in the story rather than just shoe horn random things in the game that dont make any sense.
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I am not sure how Blizzard would add an excuse to say why many Blood Elves are dark or why humans are Asian now.
We just have to assume they were always there. That the game’s limitations prevented it.
Just like we accept and know why Darkshore has outdated graphics in comparison to Valsharah or something. These are just game improvements, not story changes.
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I do not think they need any further justification as they are consistent with the story Blizzard wants to tell. They said the customizations are not counter to their lore.
Blizzard’s word > Forum Head canon
Inventing some new justification would be the retcon. And it is based on the presumption that they are some how not meshing with current lore.
For people who create the game, and for people like me, there needs no further justification or clarification. It is perfectly fine under current lore. Asking for an explanation or justification is based on the false premise that they are some how illegitimate.
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What happens to the customization option if it has no lore reason to exist and exist only for the player’s enjoyment? What happens to that option then? 
Chromie did it.
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For me, it’s not that they’re illegitimate. It’s that we’ve never seen them before and all evidence points to that skin color not existing. For me, it would be like adding a option for stormwind humans to be shorter than dwarves. It just feels jarring not because of the color or customization itself, but the fact that it’s never been observed or explained before. Like I mentioned in another thread - or maybe it was this one? - it would be tantamount to TES adding white colored skin for Redguards.
And for such a relatively small population, one would believe we would have seen them.
I agree, though, that it’s blizzards word and that’s what ultimately matters. It’s just that for a game steeped in racial descriptions in their written and visual lore, nothing has existed yet that explains what we see. I’m excited to see more colors in game, I just like not having to continue to suspend disbelief in a game I enjoy for the (somewhat) coherent story.
[quote=“Aussielight-dathremar, post:63, topic:492761, full:true”]
Well to that my African-American, and Aboriginal friends would beg to differ very vehemently; as they were keen with the new customisation options because they felt they could feel more themselves in-game.[/quote]
then they should play humans.
you don’t play a fantasy race to feel more like yourself. you play a fantasy race to play a fantasy race.
Agreed. Representation where it makes sense, everything else is fantastical.
So, I already somewhat said my thought in another thread awhile back ago. And like someone else said in this thread somewhere, I’ve mostly dismissed the discussion of dark-skinned elves by the majority but so far your post doesn’t seem of any ill intention and just wants to address ‘lore’ reasons like some other people do.
I will start by saying I really don’t think there should be a lore reason for the sudden dark-skinned elves, and someone in another thread said it was probably not mentioned because they weren’t so concerned with the racial skin tones versus the actual stories of the elves instead.
With that said I think that racial skin tones in elves have existed the entire time, and I think it is safe to assume this simply because it should be assumed by any fantasy race and world that there is a diversity in any race placed in that world because there’s nothing that would indicate a cookie cutter base appearance for everyone in that race. And there are multiple other factors outside of just the purebred race that could tie into appearance. So, diversity exists everywhere that isn’t in game customization in my opinion (quite hugely if you ask me).
With that said, I also firmly believe that the translation of skin tones came when Highborne evolved to High elves and thats just been the genes someone gets. As in, the highborne of darker skin tones compared to other skin tones in night elves would correlate to the respected skin tone as a ‘human’ equivalent.
EDIT: Also, someone in another thread made the argument of Highborne being strictly fair-skinned. However, there’s no information that suggests that it was strictly fair-skinned in the Night Elves skin tones when you discuss hues of skin coloration. And in fact says that there’s nothing different physically between them and lower caste. The majority would’ve been more than likely fair-skinned, but to assume there wasn’t a broad range of skin tones just like in the normal night elves now in the highborne wouldn’t be an accurate assumption imo.
You’re talking about a skin tone like being something weird that belongs to another race. They didn’t turn white Blood Elves into green Blood Elves. They just added melanin into their skin.
Some elves might have been overexposed to sun at some point and therefore are darker than the people living in Silvermoon. We don’t need a lore justification. Skin doesn’t need magic to get darker. Sun can do the job.
Agreed. But for it to appear now and not in the past - for a people that live thousands of years - that’s the odd part to me. To re-emphasize, I’m not saying it can’t happen and I’m not saying that I don’t like it. They look amazing!
It just seems a bit head-scratch why they’re an option now and not originally or not shown that way in the RTS.
Further, if this is a quel’dorei customization, I would expect to see examples of this from silver covenant high elves, otherwise that would mean this change in skin color occurred only within the last 30 some years.
we have no hope. blizzard is taking a dump on lore for the sake of new skins with no justification. I come with proof because I asked about it through twitter and the lady got mad WOKE triggered when I was trying to give ideas about why are there dark skinned blood elves.
Blockquote ‘‘I don’t think skin color should matter in lore. At least not when it comes to ‘shades of brown on the same spectrum.’ Brown skinned Belves are Belves. It is not something to be remarked upon in the universe. It has no inherent meaning. It just is.’’
So with this type of ignorant response. I have no hope. We literally got sold brown orcs as an allied race feature. yet this douche doesn’t bat an eye until it’s something more human. That’s the type of toxic worker now at blizz. I can’t believe she’s a quest giver. All I want is explanation for X skin on any race. It has always mattered in wow, just like different eye colors on elven races etc. Stop putting PC opinions on a game Azeroth is not EARTH.
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I agree but I think they are trying to expand their universe a little bit. Allowing more possibilities like that. And I think some people just don’t like drastic changes.
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I can appreciate this. I like change and I’ll get down with it. It would be really cool if the explanation was that the Sin’dorei’s exposure to Azerite, being a kind of Titan radiation, added this effect to their skin. (After all, lots of Titan constructs are earthen toned already).
The effects of Magic we’ve seen before very well in lore - fel in particular.
But, as Rialius said in his thread, this does allow players to invent their own backstory - a little sandbox-y approach to RP.
It will just take me a little bit to shake the fact that the change seems to be made without respect to lore. Reminds me of things like the Kurdran versus Falstad
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I mean aren’t these basically the same tones that demon hunters can get? Both demon hunters and regular blood elves fed off demons so I don’t really see this as much of a stretch
regular blood elves didn’t feed off demons.
latent fel corruption from the magisters using fel to restore the ransacked silvermoon is what caused the corruption of the average sin’dorei.
i’d be happy if they said that the fel caused it. it needs that explanation.
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Yeah. That’s a fine description for me - I can accept that. And maybe I’m jumping the gun - maybe Blizzard will have an explanation in game for these? But for a game and gaming company that goes on to make a three volume compendium about their lore, has dozens of outside-game story media and then for them to not give an explanation on something that’s just now being added seems odd.
I think, for me at least, the best way to reconcile it is to interpret this as it’s always been there. The skin colors have always been present. Just not depicted in game. Like blood elf warriors until cataclysm
oh, and before someone comes at me(i’ve had this happen before) that it’s whatever buzzword to say dark skin is from corruption, fel isn’t inherently evil. so there’s nobody saying dark skin is evil, just that fel causes mutations in those that are effected by it.
fel is inherently chaotic, thus causes mutations. but not inherently evil.
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Elves as a whole seem to be built to quickly adopt whatever magical energy they harness, starting with their eyes seems like. High Elves practiced arcane magics = blue eyes. Drawing power from demons = Green eyes. Drawing holy power from the Sunwell = golden eyes. These are the more immediate effects. Void Elves show us that extreme exposure can lead to full on skin color pigmentation, even physical attributes like naturally shifting into a void form in the heat of combat.
While Dath’Remar might have had streaks of gold, I don’t think he’s solely responsible for removing the cooler hues from all High/Blood Elves. The Highborne lost their access to the well of eternity when they were exiled to the eastern kingdoms, while the Night Elves proper held onto a knock off well of eternity and continued to exercise use of their moonwells, as well as nature magic and… whatever channeling Elune’s power counts as.
Further, while High Elves practice arcane magic freely, they didn’t turn blue, but Azshara was a really deep blue while being a powerful practitioner of arcane magic and being sustained by the original well of eternity (now the maelstrom.) Then we look towards the Nightborne and see they went extra deep blue while under a perma-night dome, feeding on the Nightwell…
The Night Elves located in Dire Maul, Feralas aren’t as far from the Well of Eternity as the Highborne were, but they were still quite a distance away, still practice their arcane magics, and lack a Sunwell, Nightwell, or even Moonwells last I checked. This raises questions on how this group of Night Elves would physically change, and would presumably make up the bulk of the new cosmetic options for Night Elves in Shadowlands.
Though this is just conjecture. It’s entirely possible Blizzard has no guidelines for how Elves are effected by magic outside of eye color, which the Night Elves already throw a wrench into with their own golden eyes, so eh.
Though I think the only question really worth asking is if High Elf fans would be happy with Night Elves having High Elven coloration options, treating these arcane Night Elves as history repeating itself in the form of a new breed of High Elf? I’m trying to find a way for everyone to win here.
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you know, that bit about the highborne of feralas just made me feel a bit better about that blue-black skin that night elf female is getting.
the feralas highborne were feeding off of a demon for thousands of years, it’d only make sense for there to be some change to their skin tones from it.