Before we get into it, this isn’t a pro- or anti- High Elf or Blood Elf thread. You have your arguments in those threads. This also isn’t a lore thread, we’re not debating whether Lor’themar could beat Freiza before he reached Azeroth’s core with a Destructo Disc.
What we’re talking about in here is what Blue Eyes mean in a larger scheme. WoW is, simply put, showing its age. It’s also hampering the development and production of other Warcraft titles because it’s technically still a ‘living’ world. So if a new Warcraft game were to be released, it would need to be represented in WoW to a significant degree. A new Warcraft game would probably have the Horde and Alliance back up to their silly tricks, trying to snatch each other’s cereal before the other could pour the milk. The issue here is in the RTS, every single time, the Alliance was your ‘typical’ fantasy, and the Horde were this gang of monsters (that before WC3 were hellbent on destroying/conquering/doing other unspeakable things to Azeroth, but I digress). With the Blood Elves and High Elves at an apparent stalemate, the RTS would undoubtedly need to answer a single question; Would Elves be Horde units, or Alliance units?
This single point may explain why Blizzard is being so, so cagey with those precious blue eyes, because whichever side they eventually go to is who the Elves will go to, and it’s clear they don’t think the High Elves are dry for storylines. More to the point, WoW itself will probably need to come to an end before a new RTS in the universe can be released (unless it’s some gaiden deal, but stick with me here). Which has… Unfortunate implications for Elf-kind in general.
Either the Horde loses a race that was contentious in delivery but has swollen to absurd popularity, or Alliance loses access to an RTS unit it’s had for most of its entire franchise life. Or perhaps elves, the non Night Elf variety anyway, are annihilated utterly in some event that serves as the catalyst to this new RTS’s setting. Where the blue eyes eventually settle will dictate a lot of the franchise’s future.
So that’s probably why Blizzard is so incredibly reluctant to pull the trigger on everything HE-related. But it’s just a theory. A PANDAREN theory!
There is only one correct choice for Blizzard: to fulfill the High Elf fantasy for Alliance players. The Horde has held our race hostage for too long and we don’t even get to play with the Chinese players that the change was aimed at (lol thanks communism).
Blizzard never had a legitimate excuse before and they sure as heck don’t now.
Oh god we have people like this on horde…
I say just make both most popular faction’s races neutral. Blood elf is ours. I’m sure humans is the alliance’s so just make them neutral.
Lets NOT make this another ‘we demand HE’s’ or a ‘no to HE’s’ Thread, there is 5 in GD you can duke it out in there
Back on topic…
I have my doubts on a RTS game being a factor on it…
More likely it has to do with they didn’t think the great debate would swell up like it has when they first did blood elves to the horde, sure it would cause some controversy, but i doubt they foresaw it getting THIS out of hand…
And now their kinda stuck since both sides have been screaming for blood for so long, doing it one way or the other is just gonna make things worse.
Blood Elves were brought in for one reason: Girls wouldn’t play Horde side because there were NO pretty options for any race. They could’ve tweaked customization for Horde core races to provide non-uglies, and all that wife and girlfriend aggro would have gone away.
I love the Forsaken, and pre-Belf, I leveled a troll hunter and a couple of forsaken priests. I hated that my gear would always look like garbage because the undead get a brand new robe and apparently cut it up for their bones to stick out…and the troll couldn’t wear shoes (or, apparently, take decent care of her two toenails).
Belves came, and I could play something I liked looking at. Guilds who spent years as Alliance (while secretly wanting to play Horde) were now released by the wife aggro that said, “sure baby, I’ll play WoW with you, but we have to be Alliance because I’m not spending my life role-playing a creature with tusks and/or hooves.”
That’s why the Horde got Blood Elves. Has to be.
And people DO care about whether or not they like the way the toon looks. They do care if it’s handsome/pretty. Clearly…because there are so many Belves on the Horde.
I think the new customization options will go a long way to bring parity on that.
But, this constant arguing over the elves boils down to: “We want to play pretty elf people in our fantasy game, and we want their eyes to look like so, and we want their hair to shine in the sun.” That’s it.
To put it in fewer words, giving The Horde Sin’dorei High Elves was a Business Decision. Giving The Alliance Ren’dorei High Elves was also a Business Decision. Both of these decisions have proven very successful.
Blizzard is hesitant to throw that success away by doing something as obviously contentious as giving The Alliance Quel’dorei High Elves.
Lore means nothing. Population numbers mean nothing. Story means nothing.