Yeah I want night elves to sit out the game for a long, long time now, and I say this as someone who mained a night elf druid for like 8 years.
I dread what’s going to happen to dwarves in War Within. Being the focus of Blizzard’s writers is a death sentence.
Other way around. Void Elves were compensation to the Alliance for the Horde getting Nightborne. The Nightborne actually existed before their recruitment questline, unlike the Void Elves, whom were such an after-thought that Blizzard didn’t even have a reputation to link them to. The Void Elves are currently the only playable race that doesn’t even have its own reputation to grind.
The weird thing there is they say that but Alliance side nothing is ever mentioned of it. As far as we know Thalryssa sent a letter and junior prest bob who delivers the temple mail misplaced it. And why would Tyrande deal with them directly herself anyways, she knows she is prickly and she had the Shen’dralar for that. The whole thing felt as slapdash justification as the void elf origin story did.
Can’t say I agree that this tells us anything. We don’t know that Blizzard was going to make them anything, let along a Horde race. Nor do we know when Blizzard made the decisions. You could argue Alleria was there to set up the Void Elves.
The bottom line is that I don’t believe that Blizzard would have been willing to give the Horde the Night Elf model if they weren’t giving the Alliance the Blood Elf model.
Thallryssa approached Tyrande directly. But yes, I’ve never seen any mention of this Alliance side. I think this is because it was, in fact, a decision made after the expansion was plotted out.
The vibe I always get is things were such a train wreck internally for them at that point that they were sort of just kermit flailing and making it up as they went as there was no capacity for planning.
While I think there is some logic to this, no matter what variant of elf the Alliance wound up with (High/Void), there was no seeding for it to happen. Even High Elves would’ve been an after-thought as there was no reputation in Legion appropriate to grind to unlock them. Blizzard could’ve linked it to the Silver Covenant reputation in Wrath, or perhaps even the Kirin Tor Offensive from MoP, but there wasn’t anything current for them.
This is why I state that the Alliance’s elf Allied Race was compensation for the Horde getting Nightborne; there was simply no forethought into the Alliance’s elf allied race, whatever it was.
If anything, Alleria’s immense popularity was Blizzard misreading the room as usual. Rather than seeing players excited to have back one of the WC2 heroes, particularly a High Elf, they instead saw, “Wow these guys love Alleria. It must be the Void.” At the time there was a lot of excited chatter about High Elves feeling more involved in the Alliance due to Alleria’s return, that the idea of them becoming playable in the future was more of a possibility than previously.
Which is one reason among many Void Elves were such a monumental failure at announcement that Ion couldn’t go more than an hour before someone asked him, “why not High Elves?”
And explains why after several weeks/months of blizz insisting high elves were never going to be playable, ever, they finally threw up their hands and caved with the high elf customizations, hoping in their eyes anyway, that would be good enough to get people to shut up about it
Same way players wouldn’t shut up about Teldrassil. Or any of a number of other bad narrative decisions they’ve made over the years. Blizzard cannot read the room. That, or they’re unwilling, and the moment the metrics start dipping, they go into emergency mode and start breaking glass.
The most insulting part about the whole Void Elf debacle is, the Silver Convenant was RIGHT THERE, with a intact rep too boot to use as the AR for the alliance and they fumbled that real hard
Right? EVEN IF Blizzard was deadset on Void Elves, use the Silver Covenant! Just corrupt the Silver Covenant into your Void Elves. It would’ve been hackneyed and dumb, but at LEAST the Silver Covenant has been there this entire time. Narratively they would’ve worked SO MUCH BETTER than traitors from Quel’Thalas.
The Silver Covenant has worked alongside the Alliance for years by that point. Vereesa herself attended Tyrande and Malfurion’s wedding, worked alongside the Night Elves at Suramar etc… The Void Elves would’ve been sympathetic victims the Alliance would’ve been trying to support as loyal allies. Even Night Elven tolerance would’ve made so much more sense than what we have right now with Void Elves.
The Silver Covenant becoming the Void Elves would’ve been a tragic fate, and their place in the Alliance would’ve already been secured by bonds of trust and loyalty. Before, it was the Silver Covenant that had proven itself by forsaking homeland and kin to stand by the Alliance. Now, it would’ve been the Alliance standing beside them in their time of need.
This comes off as the Devs being lazy and bothered that they have to think… so they gave up even the pretense of thought.
Like… they just wanted a space saver villain, then they created one called Primalists, then they called it boring and gave up without development - because they wanted to move on from the Primalists to their Night Elf pets.
Blizzard wasn’t will to outright bow to demands from one faction to be given another faction’s race. Make them “void” was as close as they were willing go. Just like making the Nightborne “arcane” was the quid pro quo.
And, in fact, it mostly worked.
That’s the thing, turning the Silver Convenant High elves, who were already in the alliance into void elves isn’t taking anything away from the horde though.
Blizzard : “If you want Blonde High Elves, the Horde is waiting for you…. never mind, Void Elves are blonde now…. also the Horde will have Dwarves… because no one asked for that.”
Seems like an easy reason why not to. They still want the high elves to exist as race. Again, decent chance high elves will be the allied race of Midnight.
Either that or Amani troll. Would be funny if they ended up with the Alliance.
Either that or Amani troll. Would be funny if they ended up with the Alliance.
Even Nu-Blizzard isn’t dumb enough to put Trolls on the same faction that has the Trollbanes.
The Alliance is now allowing Eredar into the Alliance, why would you suddenly be suprised about Amani?
… The Eredar aren’t in the Alliance.
If Metzen’s Uniting the elves means what everyone thinks he means by it, than sure, it’s a distinct possibility.