No, the Horde doesn’t need another type of night elf, or another type of elf at all.
Give the Alliance an option to turn their void elf into a high elf. Give the Horde an option to turn our jungle trolls into forest trolls.
Celebrate victory.
2 Likes
Don’t agree. I’m not going to sit here and listen to the usual suspects decide that this means that their High Elves are the real ones. They have to give something up. And I have little doubt it is the only way Blizzard will do it.
I actually would give the Horde a faction of humans. So they don’t get ignored as much in all the human bias. But that has been controversial.
Don’t care a whit about Forest Trolls. How would they even be different? Certainly not worth High Elves.
2 Likes
But if they do anything, it won’t stop at one or two races. it will be the first step toward separating choosing race from choosing faction.
At the end of the day, nothing would change that. If we get forest trolls, if we get (ick) a second version of night elves, or worse, if we get humans. People gonna people.
But I think the worst solution is to Alliance-ify the Horde. Well, further Alliance-ify. Actual night elves and actual humans walking around Orgrimmar will do much more damage to the Horde identity than letting the Alliance race-plate change their voids to highs.
Because once you give the Horde very identifiably Alliance races, the narrative of the Horde will start focusing on them. Maybe not a lot, but enough that whenever we’re saving the next special magic tree from a fiery doom, you won’t have to worry about a Horde counterpart to this obviously night elf situation; Tyrande’s there, working with the night elf rebels, so it’s just as much Horde content, just with even more weirdly placed guilt attached for betraying “our people”.
Instead of getting a Dazar’alor-style area with identifiably Horde-relevant characters, we get another human city, just like the other human cities, but this time with mildly different humans which makes it… Horde now.
The worst way to develop the Horde is to develop them into Lesser Alliance.
4 Likes
You literally ignored every single thing in my post. Well done.
Again, the Void Elf recruitment scenario has content specific to Void Elves.
The Void Elf starting location? You guessed it, specific to Void Elves.
The Void Elf heritage armor? Yep, you guessed it, specific to Void Elves.
The Void Elf racial abilities? What do you know, specific to Void Elves.
So, think hard about this, do you really think that the Void Elf specific content will be just fine if they decide to change a label and make the Void Elves ‘High Elves’ and do absolutely nothing else?
Oh who am I kidding, of course you do. Unfortunately for you, reality doesn’t match up with what you believe.
And again, we literally have the Man’ari as a contrasting point that all of these are SUPERFLOUS. That you don’t need a true starting zone/heritage armor and even at best just a racial customization.
That a recruitment scenario doesn’t even have to be super indepth. A quick acknowledgement that, yeah the Silver Covenant and Alleria’s void elves will be working closer in future, boom, that is all you need!
nah no trolls
You’re still missing the point.
The Man’ari, as they currently exist, are just a customization option for standard Draenei. Now personally I think that’s a mistake, and they should be a unique race of their own, but they’re not.
To that same extent, High Elves are just customization options for Void Elves. The actual Allied Race that joined the Alliance was the Void Elves. All their race specific content is created around that simple premise, that Void Elves have joined the Alliance and that you, the player, are a Void Elf, even if you’ve picked nothing but High Elf customization options.
What YOU are asking for is for Blizzard to erase that. To change the Void Elves completely into High Elves. And that means none of the content specific to Void Elves fits them anymore, because you’re no longer playing a Void Elf, you’d be playing a High Elf.
The High Elves have absolutely no ties to the Void. If Blizzard changed Void Elves to High Elves, then the recruitment scenario, heritage armor, racials and starting location would all need to be changed.
1 Like
if the night elves felt abandoned they still wouldnt join the horde after they burned down the tree
1 Like
The addition of the Man’ari didn’t suddenly erase my draenei. The fact I can literally create a Man’ari right now and have them play the draenei starting zone goes against everything you are saying will happen. In a similar vein adding the customization of high elves will not erase your ability to play void elves. Now people simply have the choice to choose whatever they want.
Again, none of this happened with the Man’ari/draenei. It wouldn’t happen either for a true high elf/void elf customization change. And no, I don’t particularly mind the customization option for the Man’ari and as I said the most I would want from them is just the added customization option of truly changing the name from draenei to man’ari.
As an added note, Blizzard could simply customize the current void elf heritage armor as well. Give it a purple glow and viola, arcane theme armor that fits high elves.
1 Like
Horde ARs I’d actually root for : Taunka (LONG overdue), Gilgoblins, San’layn, maybe Leper Gnomes, maybe Kvaldir (as a KT Human reskin). Stuff like Forest Trolls, Grimtotem and Fel Orcs (also arguably Felborne) absolutely needs to happen, but customization options would probably be enough here (how come we don’t have a green skintone for Trolls yet when the Revantusk have been part of the Horde for like 15 years, but SOMEHOW we have Sand and Dark skintones ? How come ???)
Then the highest priority when it comes to adding a full-fledged new race is definitely Ogres. Hozen and Drogbar should also become a thing at some point, and I’m personally a sucker for Horde Quilboar. I know people are into Cursed Arakkoa too.
See ? Horde requests, generally backed up by lore and/or actual fan interest. It’s not that hard.
3 Likes
Again you bring this up as if they’re comparable.
Man’ari are an additional customization option for Draenei. They aren’t a unique race with racials, heritage armor, a unique starting location or a recruitment scenario like other Allied Races. So naturally the existence of that option doesn’t erase your Draenei.
If Blizzard were to change the name of the Draenei race to ‘Man’ari’ though, it absolutely would. Because at that point you’d no longer be a Dranei in-game. You’d be a Man’ari. The game would recognize you in all dialogue options that mention your character’s race as Man’ari. Your starting zone would no longer fit, as the Man’ari are not exiles fleeing the Burning Legion.
What you are asking for is for Blizzard to change Void Elves into High Elves. Completely. As in, when I do a quest that mentions my character’s race, it no longer says “This void elf champion… blah, blah, blah.” and instead says “This high elf champion… blah, blah, blah.”
My full unasked for opinion on the high elf/void elf, allied race vs more customization options:
If given the choice between more and more and even more allied races vs using character customization to represent smaller racial factions, I’m choosing customization. Because the former could quickly descend into the most convoluted and cluttered character creation screen.
Humans from Stormwind and humans from Kul Tiras are not radically different, beyond cultural differences. Jaina is Kul Tiran and seems just as human as Anduin. She is not some seperate subspecies of human from him. So shouldn’t this same divergence be applied to orc clans? Should we then get a seperate allied race for every clan a baseline orc can represent? Then seperate Mag’har double-allied races for all of their clans?
Imagine the character creation screen with the horde side having seperate selection icons for Frostwolf, Blackrock, Warsong, Bleeding Hollow, Shattered Hand, Dragonmaw, and Burning Blade orcs, then following it up with Mag’har icons for all of their clans too.
I’m obviously taking the argument to the extreme, but I’m doing so to make a point; sometimes, customizations alone should be enough so we don’t start going down a road like that.
Along that vein, making those customizations matter will never be a bad thing. I don’t think giving every customization option its own special seperate starting zone, because realistically that would just be a waste of resources for next to no gain. Why do high elves need something other than the Rift, when it solely exists as a place to zone into and leave? Why would hypothetical forest trolls need a 1-5 baby-start zone leading into Durotar, or even a full 1-10 one? You won’t be spending much more time there than we spend on Exile’s Reach beyond visiting the old home. How many people ever even visit Bloodmyst Island after they level out of it?
But giving them options like changing their displayed race is a good thing, especially if NPCs who refer to your race use that signifier. If what you wanted to play more than anything is a Frostwolf Orc and there is a way to select your orc’s clan affiliation, it will be more fulfilling seeing NPCGeneral#38 greet you with “Hey, a new Frostowlf recruit” as opposed to “Hey, a new Orc recruit”. And the only person seeing it is you, so it impacts nobody else’s immersion.
I understand the desire to see a seperate high elf race, and I’m not even against it. If Alliance gets fully fledged high elves? That is awesome, and I’m so happy for the high elf fans who got the thing they want!! But if the only way to play a high elf is to look like a high elf, have people refer to you as a high elf, and have the option for your voidy stuff to look like arcaney stuff? I think that’s a middle ground that isn’t quite so bad.
6 Likes
You are already a man’ari with a racial that is already visually different. Again, you don’t need a unique starting location or recruitment scenario(although the unlock quest is effectively the recruitment scenario for them!).
Their existance does not erase your draenei.
Yes, they should, because you know what, it will have zero effect on anyone who still just uses the base draenei look.
It would be better because it would say “this void/high elf champion” YOU get to choose what they want them to use to refer to you!
Oh, wait, the heal racial ability looks visually different with red drainos??
That’s actually really neat, I haven’t noticed it yet!!
Yeah hard agree. It’s pretty wild how many fairly common playable race requests could be pretty much entirely satisfied with the fitting customization options and a good Dark Ranger/Manari-esque integration questline to explain and cement their position within the faction. I wish devs realized the full potential of generalizing this trend. Granted, maybe they have, given the two recent examples I just gave, but they definitely need to keep it going
… At the end of the day though it only makes the inherent flaws of most of the BFA ARs even more obvious : the Man’ari are genuinely more distinct from the baseline Draenei than the LF are, yet the LF are the ones with the AR slot… Y-yeah
3 Likes
No you are not.
Customization options, no matter how unique, are not racial abilities. I know you’re not stupid, so stop making stupid arguments.
Allied Races literally have these. It’s part of what makes Allied Races what they are and not standard races like Draenei, Worgen, Goblins, Trolls etc.
No, they shouldn’t, because it completely goes against the lore for the Draenei race.
The actual name of the race is Eredar, not Man’ari. The Draenei call themselves that because they are the ‘exiled ones’ which is what Draenei means in Eredun, their language. Man’ari means ‘Unnatural Beings’ and is the term that the Draenei gave to their kin who chose to become demons.
I shouldn’t really have to explain why changing the name of the Draenei race to ‘Man’ari’ makes zero sense.
And just to nip this in the bud. No, the Draenei should not have their name changed to Eredar. They named themselves Draenei for a reason, in the same way the Blood Elves named themselves the way they did. We shouldn’t change the name of the Blood Elves to ‘Elves’, we shouldn’t change the name of the Draenei to Eredar.
They are as close enough that it doesn’t matter. We don’t need a unique racial for the Man’ari. The fel themed Gift theme gift of the Naaru is enough and similarly an arcane theme one for say high elves that have the exact same function as void elves racial would work.
And that is why we dont need to spend an allied race slot to get high elves(although I dont particularly mind). A customization option is enough.
You get to choose how you get to be called. If you want to continue using the draenei terminology, go for it, similarly if you want to use the draenei base look go for it, but people who want to look like Man’ari and get called man’ari get to do the same.
And yes it becomes fel colored instead of light one.
1 Like
They are not even remotely close. Again. Stop making stupid arguments. You’re better than this.
We literally already have that though. Again, if you want to be a high elf, you can be one. You can literally go to the barber shop right now, as a Void Elf, pick a non-void elf skin, hair style and eye color. Aside from racial abilities and heritage armor, you are a high elf, in the same way you can go to a barber shop right now as a Draenei and choose to change your skin color to one of the Man’ari tones and BAM, you’re a Man’ari.