Members of the Silver Covenant are fighting for the Alliance. Thatâs undeniable proof in-game, that they are Alliance Aligned.
If they were truly neutral, they wouldnât be there at all.
To be fair, despite being a legit military target, no one deserves to be nuked.
But theyâre not neutral, they are clear as day fighting members of the Horde as part of the Alliance.
I didnât even have a sub, so I didnât get to experience it at all.
if they werent neutral vereesa would have shown up herself with much more then just 2 in SC uniforms
aethas, a blood elf, was the deciding vote to even get involved at theramore
Itâs not involved either. The aid was provided to evacuate civilians not providing arms and the regime that did the bad deed is no longer in place. Neutral in one sense and not another. Though I guess the devs leave a lot of the world building open to interpretation on purpose.
Granted I donât recall seeing any Kirin Tor there, I was busy trying to save everyone I could. It was pretty messed up.
Thats the thi g though, we do know the sunreavers are doing things, but the sc wasnt around until after the war ended.
So i am unsure if they are truly alliance anymore due to khadgar.
The Horde certainly isnât a monolith.
If they did show up, then theyâre breaking neutrality more than Dalaran ever did in the past with Theramore and blizzard dropped the ball, hard.
However, nowhere in the article about the war of the thorns is the Silver covenant or the Kirin tor mentioned.
I did hear of 1 NPC from the SC on the ship of the⊠uh⊠Arathi warfront I believe?
Some of them were involved in the warfronts but had to change their colors to do it.
All Iâm saying is if Blizz wanted them to really be neutral, they wouldnât have left that SC tag on their models.
Maybe is not a logical answer.
You either are, or you arent.
Otherwise you donât know, which is where maybe comes from, which means your whole assertion was a wrong one.
Just like you were wrong about the zandalari model, you are wrong here.
You cant know, and if you focused on discussions not.people, you wouldnt get so much flak.
It really makes no sense though.
No matter if I look in the war of thorns article, or the warfronts article, or the Khagdar and the SC articles, thereâs no mention of them being involved.
And for the Vereesa one sheâs only mentioned to be there when Saurfang got slapped by Sylvanas.
Either those updating the wiki are being lazy (which is possible) or blizzard just forgot about it (which is also possible).
I find your ignorance quite disturbing. What youâre asking is for the High Elves to be a nuetral race to be playable across both factions. But guess what, that is not ever going to happen.
The simple fact is, Blood Elves are High Elves. No matter the name they call themselves, they are still the same group of people, doesnât matter what faction they are on.
I thought I might repost this comment here for those to see, considering the âBlood Elves are not High Elvesâ thread got deleted.
1: âHigh Elves are different enough from Blood Elves!â
I see this one a lot, but no. Sorry. They arenât. The High Elves went through no mutation, no physical change, no evolution or otherwise genetic alteration after Quelâthalas was sacked by Arthas and the scourge. Kaelâthas renamed the High Elven people Blood Elves in memory and honor of their fallen, and for no other reason. Itâs been only 30 or less years since Kaelâthas renamed his people Blood Elves. They are racially, genetically, identical. While people love to think of High Elves as âpureâ or Blood Elves as âtaintedâ, which are both untrue, given the recent golden eyes of the Blood Elves, it doesnât appear that tapping demonsâ magic to sate the elvesâ magical addiction did anything cosmetically permanent. Blood/High Elves that succumbed to their hunger became Wretched. Blood Elves that overindulged in fel became Felblood Elves.
2: âBlizzard did Pandaren for both sides, they can do Blood/High Elves on both sides! How could it dilute faction identity more than Pandaren?â
Iâm going to go ahead and say most people asking for High Elves donât play Pandaren. Why? Because they represent the lowest number of players within their own faction out of ALL races. Last number estimates show about 2.5%, per faction. Combined across all of WoW, roughly 1 in 20 plays a Pandaren, whereas Blood Elf numbers are the most populous among Horde races, having been roughly equal to Human numbers in Alliance for most of WoW since TBC.
Also, for or those that donât know, Blizzard regrets doing Pandaren as a Neutral race, to the point that I can say weâll likely never see another Neutral race. Since MoP, itâs basically impossible to write Pandaren lore now, because their forces are split faction, and we havenât seen them do anything notable in WoW since MoP. Their identity is basically nothing.
3: âHigh Elvesâ lore and history is rich enough to stand alone!â
Except any High Elf history is also Blood Elf history. High Elven buildings, tabards, crests, architecture, vehicles, weapon style, etc. is Blood Elven except painted blue. The only notable High Elven characters left are Alleria and Veressa, but Alleria now leads and represents the Void Elves going forward, leaving only Veressa. The two have been separate for only 30 or so years. Not nearly enough to diverge or have enough unique history.
4: âNightborne are just Night Elves, so we should get High Elves even if theyâre just like Blood Elves!â
Nightborne spent 10,000 years in arcane isolation from Night Elf society. They physically changed from the powers of the Nightwell, and their culture changed immensely from worship of Elune. They bear little cultural similarity to current day Night Elves.
They are far more similar to the Blood Elves in that isolation around a magical font of power changed them drastically over time. Blood Elves originated as Highborne Night Elves that were cast out for continuing to practice in the arcane. This doubles as a lore reason as to why they find allies in the Horde through the Blood Elves, as they can empathize with their plight.
5: âHigh Elves chose not to feed on demonic magic! They sated their magical addiction through other means! Their culture is so different!â
If I make myself a ham sandwich and offer you one, but you tell me you donât like ham and would prefer a turkey sandwich, I wouldnât turn around and call you culturally different from me.
Regardless, as of the end of The Burning Crusade expansion, where Blood Elves were introduced to the Horde, the Sunwell was restored as a font of Arcane and Holy magic, removing the inherent need for Blood Elves (or High Elves) to sate any magical withdrawal. Lorâthemar has also continued to allow High Elves to make pilgrimages to the Sunwell. You can see High Elves in a post-TBC-era Sunwell during the Quelâdelar questline, and more recently, the Nightborne recruitment questline, where he even granted Alleria an audience.
6: âWe can make High Elves different enough from Blood Elves! Look at all these tattoos and tribal motifs we made! Void Elves are not what we want!â
Re-imaging the High Elves to all look like extrapolations of some Warcraft 2-Era rangers isnât solving the problem. The problem is that Blood elves are High Elves. The problem is that the fantasy of a traditional LOTR âHigh Elfâ is a Blood Elf.
Blizzard hasnât been deaf for all these years when Alliance ask for High Elves. It is NOT a secret, but they likely took a look at High Elves and agreed that they are just Blood Elves in fantasy, skin tone, hair color, origin, and feel, with the only difference to speak of visually being eye color.
So they made an attempt to see how they could spin and mix up a Thalassian elf enough to merit inclusion on the Alliance. They made a compromise. They gave it a prominent Thalassian leader with strong Alliance ties, and they provided it with a unique, flavorful aesthetic to set it apart from other races, most importantly their Blood Elf counterparts. In these areas, I think Void Elves were a success. They also currently number greater than any other Allied Race of either faction, so it sounds like most Alliance are enjoying them.
7: âYou say thereâs not enough High Elves left, but thereâs even less Void Elves, yet they are an Allied Race!â
Letâs start with basic stuff. Actual NPC numbers, towns, factions in WoW, etc, do not represent canon numbers. WoW is a representation of a multi-game IP. Example: The canon number of people in Goldshire is somewhere in the thousands, where as in game, I donât think you can find more than 30 NPCs.
The point being, we donât know how many High Elves are left. We also donât know how many Void Elves were created. Peopleâs perception that thereâs less Void Elves than High Elves is based on in-game representation, and Void Elves were literally just added, so of course there will appear to be less. This has definitely changed going forward as you can already see them in BfA events, and they even have their own Island Expedition team. High Elves, barring a single NPC here and there, will only see less and less limelight as Void Elf stories move forward.
8: âHigh Elves were there in the Nighthold cut-scene! They represented 1/3rd of the forces there!â
The two main factions involved in that quest were the Blood Elven forces under Liadrin and the Night Elven forces under Tyrande. Veressa made an appearance so Elisande could insult her and her people for diluting their bloodline with humans (ouch!). Because she showed up to help Tyrande with a glaive thrower and a few of her Silver Covenant does not somehow equate to being one third of the forces there.
9: âBlizzard reverted their stance on Classic Servers! If we make enough noise and cry enough, theyâll cave on High Elves!â
No, definitely not, and if this is the reason you keep arguing about it, please stop. The two are not at all the same. The lack of Blizzard Classic servers was causing unauthorized private servers to pop up and recreate this experience, and Blizzard has to protect their IP, so they shut them down. However, they realized there was more of a crowd/market for this than previously thought, so they announced official Classic servers to cater to this demographic.
If you honestly think thereâs as many people clamoring for High Elves as there were for Classic servers, you severely overestimate your vocal minority.
10: âIon doesnât know his lore. Ion isnât listening to us! Ion should be fired!â
While this isnât exactly an argument and more of an opinion, Iâm including it here because itâs flooding the forums while High Elf Hopefuls go through their stages of grief. Ion isnât Lead Game Director because he doesnât know his lore. Heâs also not the only person that weighs in on these decisions, though itâs easy for everyone to bash him because he is the messenger.
Ion in my opinion does what any good developer does: experiment, keep what works, cut or fix what does not. Through the Q&Aâs, weâve seen the progressing stance on unpopular things in Legion like Legendaries, RNG, AP grind, etc. and in BFA, all of these are getting addressed, while popular things like Mythic+ are seeing dungeons specifically designed around it.
11: âIf Blood Elf is the High Elf Fantasy, then NIghtborne is Dark Elf Fantasy, and Horde are getting those! They look just like Night Elves!â
I would say no here. Nightborne were isolated for 10,000 years from Night elf society. Thatâs as long as it took for Night Elves to transform into High Elves after their exile, leading to the creation of the Sunwell, and those two are obviously different races.
If you hadnât caught the obvious, the Nightborne was basically a Legion-era retelling of the Blood Elf storyline:
âAn elven people (Blood Elf/Nightborne), physically and culturally warped by thousands of years by exposure to a mystical font of power (Sunwell/Nightwell), find their leader had consorted with the Legion (Kael with Kilâjaeden, Elisande with Gulâdan). A splinter faction within these people (Scryers/Nightfallen) rise up to overthrow their leader and purge them from Legion taint and control.â
The only difference is that Velen reignites the Sunwell, whereas Thalyssra decides to destroy the Nightwell. Either way, they culturally and visually clash with Nigh Elves, who have shunned practice in the arcane since Azshara and The Sundering, having only recently allowed Night Elf mages to tenuously practice since Cataclysm.
Back to the question, Nightborne were given unique idle animations, had the Night Elf signature flip jump removed, and given only one eye shade between them. Nightborne get Warlock as a class option. Nightborne also have severely limited customization options, less than that of any Allied race despite being the most fleshed out in Legion. Whether that serves to severely limit their palette, or indicates they were merely worked on first, I donât know.
I find Nightborne plenty different from Night Elf, considering the entire first story arc in Legion is dedicated to explaining and detailing this, and given the changes mentioned above.
12: âHigh Elves being barely different from Blood Elves is just like Lightforged Draenei being barely different from Draenei, or Highmountain being barely different from regular Tauren!â
Yes, of course. But unlike High Elves, Draenei and Tauren are not crossing faction lines. They are just more Alliance Draenei. More Horde Tauren. More Alliance Dwarves. More Horde Orcs. The only two Allied Races thus far that âmixed it upâ would be the Void Elf, a compromise to the Alliance to get the Thalassian model, and the Nightborne, a compromise to the Horde to get the Night Elf model.
Using any other comparisons between Allied Races to merit High Elves is a pointless endeavor, because Blizzard specifically catered these two to be opposing and opposite compromises for each faction. For an Allied Race that âcrosses faction linesâ a more drastic set of rules and distinction would be required.
13: âAll the reasons Ion gives for not allowing High Elves could be used to exclude Void Elves!â
Iâm seeing this one echoed quite a lot, probably because of Taliesin and Evitelâs two videos (which, by the way, end up with the result that High Elves probably donât make sense).
To reiterate Ionâs main points of reasoning for why High Elves werenât going to work, taken from the two live interviews:
-Too similar to Blood Elf in aesthetic (Fair-skinned, tall, majestic, blond-haired)
-Blurs the lines between the factions (Both visually, and by population numbers)
-No clear idea of who/what High Elves are as a larger faction (Splintered groups)
-No hub where High Elves would pull from (Sort of related to the above point)
Void Elves, by comparison, addressed these in the following ways:
-Changed the visual aesthetic, dark to pale grey skin, dark hair with animated glows and tentacles, vastly different hairstyles, armor type, void skin racial
-Ties Void Elves to Alleriaâs story with the Void, Alleria staying with Turalyon firmly on the Alliance, being the link to bring them into the fold (not unlike how Sylvanas became the link for Blood Elves to join the Horde)
-Clear idea of who the Void Elves are, Blood Elven exiles who dabbled in Void powers, Alleria and Locus Walker teaching and helping these people to harness and control these powers. New Blood Elf and High Elf exiles find their way to Telgorus Rift.
-A clear hub in Telgorus Rift, where they can study and practice their, frankly dangerous, void powers away from public eye. Reinforces their initial idea as a crack elite squad of Alleriaâs
The mistake people make when they use this line is that High Elves not being playable was because Blizzard couldnât bend or understand the lore enough to make it work. Thatâs just not the case. Weâve seen Blizzard do major, drastic ret-cons or lore changes to merit inclusion for a number of things. Blood Elf Paladins and Draenei that werenât Broken back in TBC, etc. To think they couldnât have easily made High Elves âmake senseâ lore-wise is not the issue.
The real problem is that they visually, culturally, and aesthetically were not distinct enough from Blood Elves to merit including them on an opposite faction, and so Void Elves were the end result of the iteration Blizzard went through to give Alliance a âflavor of High Elfâ.
Not sure who you are. But I doubt Iâm wrong about the Zandalari model.
https://i.redd.it/1wd76u0463k01.jpg
The assertion that they took the troll model and then modified it to be exactly like the Night Elf model? But also still got done months earlier than the Kulâtiran model?
Not buying it.
People were asking what reason she had to not tell the truth: The question asked is basically, âYou are spending a lot of time on that Alliance model. What about that Troll model?â
and you think she could say, âWe just used the Night Elf model and swapped the head, hands and feet.â Yeah right. That would have gone over well.
You also donât know. So you donât now if Iâm right or wrong. But since it would be insane to make the Darkspear Troll look exactly like a higher resolution version of the old Zandalari model, instead of taking the quicker and easier route Iâd be willing to bet money on it. We wonât find out, however.
Second.
Maybe is the logical answer.
You want to prove me wrong, youâre going to have to go through and parse every person who has been âAgainstâ with a blue background, then find out if their main is Alliance or if they spend much time playing on the Alliance at all.
Let me know when you get that aggregate data. Sorry you think, for some reason, we can talk in certainties about things that we donât know.
I find you calling me ignorant quite offensive,
Iâm offended that you find this offensive.
Wow talk about people hating cause facts are brought forward or opposing views.
Mmm. Your premise is incorrect. Not only did you throw an ad-hominem in there. But thatâs not what anybody is asking.
People want High Elves to be playable on Alliance.
Nobody has asked for High Elves to be playable on Horde, and lorewise it wouldnât make sense.
Blood Elves arenât High Elves.
Someone making a fact and you calling it an opinion?
Also, I said your ignorance. I didnât call you ignorant.
Hello, Blood Elves are High Elves. They are already playable on Horde.
Who is hating? All I see is a reasonable discussion by several parties and various agreements and disagreements.
Calling me disturbing and ignorant wow,
Where did I call you this?