The Unofficial High Elf Discussion Megathread

Community General Discussion
4541

Frankly I don’t even think it’s fair to judge him too harshly, even though he should have known better than to say the PR nightmare stuff he said.

He mostly talks about gameplay elements from a top-level decision making perspective. He rarely, if ever, talks about story and lore except when it comes to major content where he gives a quick overview about it.

I’m pretty much convinced that he was asked on the spot to address the High Elf issue because it had reached critical mass on social media, and he went about it in a way that would not disparage a very recent content release (Void Elves).

Alternatively, he could have been just exasperated by the amount of criticism they were getting just as their work was winding down and he took it out on this question. That entire interview was pretty much heated.

Ion isn’t a bad dude. He probably should have had someone else handle this though. Probably the whole interview even.

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4542

Haha, perfect!

4543

This post in that reddit thread though (edited for naughty words)

Which one of you was this? :rofl:

Oh hey, did someone say high elf? Re-posting my “Blizz f’d up with void elves over the organic option high elves”.

Alliance want High Elves (not blood elves) because they were a huge part of the Alliance in WC2 and esp. WC3 - of the 13 units Alliance could build with Frozen Throne, 4 were high elves (~30%), plus a hero unit. The entire Alliance campaign in Frozen Throne, the story of the Alliance, is the High/blood elves, which now is the story of the Horde, and the Alliance were the villains of their own story?

“That’s WC3, this is WoW” you say; there are high elves everywhere in the Alliance experience, Blizz loves to feature them prominently e.g.:

  • [they’re one of the biggest Alliance quest hubs in BC];

  • they’re one of the most iconic Alliance rep grinds across multiple expacs, the Silver Covenant;

  • [they have a lengthy quest chain in Hinterlands in one of their remaining villages] and dozens of quests with individual high elves in a huge number of zones;

  • they’re one of the biggest rep grinds in MoP, the focus for purging Dalaran and patch 5.2, a war/battle where they built a navy large enough to oppose the Zandalari, dudes we’re losing our minds about in BfA because they have a huge navy;

  • there they were [in 7.1.5];

  • they’re 2 prominent and important Alliance lore characters, Alleria and Vareesa, with god knows how many pointless ones sprinkled in the lore along the way like [Ravandwyr];

There are more consistent Alliance high elf quest givers across expansions and zones than Pandas, they’re even featured heavily in MoP, and we play Pandas in whatever faction we want with identical models. Yes, pandas weren’t in the first 4 expac, but we’re 3 expac out from their intro and I have to stop and think for any panda guest giver outside MoP that isn’t “I heard there’s food around here”. Off the top of my head high elf quest givers are in:

  • Stormwind

  • Ironforge

  • Loch Modan

  • Dustwallow

  • Plaguelands

  • Hinterlands

  • Terrokar

  • Netherstorm

  • Crystalsong

  • Grizzly Hills

  • Borean Tundra

  • Wintergrasp

  • Dragonblight

  • Icecrown

  • Dalaran (both)

  • Townlong Steppes

  • Thunder Isle

  • Suramar

  • now in Stromgarde/Boralus

A bunch of pointless food and shirt vendors no one uses in Stormwind and Dalaran are high elves, [Dalaran is infested with quel’dorei] look at that listthere are literally twice as many high elves as blood elves. Check the Darkmoon Faire - looks like a lot of blood elves work there, yeah? Nope, like a dozen nameless high elves slumming it as carnies. This isn’t some exhaustive list of zones or high elves Alliance interact with because it would take me hours to track them down! These are just the ones I remember “yeah, high elves there”.

And Blizz still puts in high elves in BfA in pointless ways which don’t further the story or promote a sense of rarity or specialness like e.g. San’layn. If you play Horde, [there’s as many high elves to fight in island expeditions as human ones; a whole fighting force is named for a bigwig Alliance high elf]. If you’re Alliance, the wizard that opens the portal to the Stromgarde Warfront, the one with all your quests in Arathi, the only NPC interaction Alliance have in one of the big new features of BfA? [Blue-eyed high elf] Why? Why put in a high elf in the void elf expansion , in a role that says nothing about high elves and could’ve been a million other human/gnome/whatever NPCs?

If you only play Horde and don’t get this (I main Alliance but had to go Horde for heroic raiding), imagine if the horde in vanilla was orcs, Tauren, undead, and goblins, and the alliance was humans, dwarves, night elves, and high elves (interestingly, no gnomes in WC3). What gives, where’s the horde’s trolls? They’ve been around since WC2, no darkspear? to which Blizz’s response was “they were 1 tribe, most died on that island, but hey, maybe later”. Then in BC, new races! The Alliance gets forest trolls, meanwhile the Horde gets something that’s a total lore rework (WC3 draenei vs. WoW draenei) and feels pulled out of their bum, but ok, at least Alliance didn’t get the darkspear, and Blizzard confirms “maybe darkspear… someday”. Then in Wrath, after tons of trolls scattered here and there in questing and lore, we finally see a darkspear army, a whole city of them… but they’re an unplayable faction… yet leading the Horde in Icecrown…? Now it’s cata, the Alliance finally gets their gnomes, meanwhile the Horde gets another out-of-nowhere race. Seriously? The Horde are then teased stupid with darkspear for the next 3 expansions as quest givers, another rep grind, and major movers in lore, but most accept its never coming. Then, BfA - it’s rainin’ dark irons, Horde’s getting brown orcs, it’s happening, if ever there was a time for darkspear this is it! Nope, it’s lightforged trolls, pious servants of a Light Loa with Naaru crystals for hair, Alliance defectors/traitors who secretly always wanted to be in the Horde… da heck? Sure, that’s mostly a troll model, but that is not at all the cannibal voodoo dude you’ve seen everywhere for years and asked to play as since day 1! Then, when asked about it, the response was a condescending non-apology, literally “[if you want that vicious mojo master, sorry? The Alliance is waiting for you?]

IMO this speaks volumes about how Blizz handles reasonable feedback and has tortured existing lore and general coherence of the world to satisfy new design/marketing objectives. To be clear, it’s not world ending that high elves aren’t playable, but it says something about how Blizz views feedback that it either repeats handwringing arguments for “why they can’t" despite legions of community feedback over years about how that’s not remotely consistent with game or lore experiences or now other allied races, or more importantly, Blizz mocks them/speaks condescendingly to their customers, as Ion did in that Q&A, rather than explain to them like adults why they don’t want to and think the game is better this way, which could be totally reasonable ([although that condescension isn’t new to BfA], and maybe like classic servers someday this will change).

If a blizz employee reads this, please don’t misinterpret it as “make it consistent (stop using them)” - people want high elves for the same reason I/Horde wanted mag’har. We had orcs, why do we need brown ones? Maghar embodied a lost heritage, what the orcs were/should have been without demonic corruption. Similarly, high elves embody the Alliance’s resolve through loss, its certainty that what’s right will prevail, that sacrificing the moral high ground even to survive like the Sin’dorei did costs you something more important. It made so much sense to see the Silver Covenant in Wrath and again in 5.2 and Suramar. That’s why people get excited when High elves are part of the story in meaningful ways and are angry about void elves - it’s not about the cosmetics (for some it is, sure) but because their lore fundamentally aligns with blood elf pragmatism rather than Alliance idealism. The shame is that new content will probably use void elves any time it might’ve made sense to have high elves, and if so that’s a massive waste, because that would silently obliterate a unique part of WoW’s lore, one of the only conflicts that truly is ambiguous in the perspectives of the two factions.

Last 2 cents/crazy town: high elves probably were an allied race and Blizz chickened out. Arathi warfront was undoubtedly vertical slice work, they probably shelved it when practicallly done and full BfA production greenlit around 7.2 or 7.1, then, for whatever reason, changed their minds and went with void elves before 7.3 and either forgot or no one cared to change that portal NPC or island expedition character when there were so many other bigger bugs. It’s speculation, but I worked in AAA game dev. for years, those changes happen and that kind of error is everywhere in shipped games, those 2 are conspicuous when they gave us void elves and knew high elves were contentious.

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4544

Oh lol I just read it there XD

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4545

So it wasnt you? :thinking:

:stuck_out_tongue:

4546

Hahha no, I’m just a lurker of the WoW reddit XD

4547

Wasn’t me.

Good read, the guy made a few exagerations, but overall a nice post.

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4548

Another thing: I agree with this part. It feels like Blizzard considered helves as an allied race, but gave up to late to alter course. Over Legion, you have the constant presence of Vereesa and the Silver Covenant, but absolutely no foreshadowing of void elves anywhere. I think the return of Alleria was going to be the catalyst for high elves to step up. Even Alleria’s model, including her armor, are pure high elf aesthetics.

Instead of being true to that plan, Blizzard for whatever reasons made up void elves, but there was no time to properly seed them nor mature the idea behind the race. That’s why they are essentially a shallow gimmick: elves using the Void.

To me, it’s clear that Legion was paving the way to high elves. What I can’t figure out is what made them change course so late.

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4549

Not to mention the High Elves presence on Suramar when it wasn’t really necessary in the first place, and the fact that there were more High Elves than Horde on Argus, clearly coming in as the opposite to Nightborne… same as in Suramar.

The most obvious thing is the fact that VE require Argussian Reputation. That is a dumb association if I ever saw one.

High Elves being “Lightforged” along with Arator and under Turalyon as part of the Army of Light with the golden eyes (that later went to BE) with Void Krokuul is very likely to have been the original incarnation.

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4550

The art and story team where probably working on them during Legion, but then Ion Horde is my fav Hazzikostas came in with his bias and said “Nope”. As a Game Director he does hold the final decision about what goes and what doesn’t go in the game, and this was probably a late decision, considering how lacky is the lore for the Void Elves.

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4551

In late Legion, they probably had complete and finished models for the high elves, at least the female one, which they used on Alleria. If this is the case i just say that they did a really good job, without changing the idle stance, animations or the model itself, and with just a different hair style, tattoos and a emphasis on the blue eyes, they managed to make Alleria look really unique and quite different from a normal Blood Elf.

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4552

Alleria is actually a recolored Sylvanas model.

4553

Technically, Alleria and Sylvanas just use recolored blood elf models. I know that they share the same base model with different armor and colors, but i used the word model because i couldn’t think on a better one to describe it. “Complete and finished customization options and modifications for the high elves” sound weird and definitely not clear enough.

4554

I really don’t see it at all, when Blood Elf lore has been SO HEAVILY shifting towards the Light, and the Silver Covenant has no particular connection to it. Most of WoW’s history has downplayed the light worship on High Elves -even the priests on flasbacks were made “mage-priests”

There’s really no indication AT ALL that High Elves were supposed to be Ligthforged.

I love that the SC showed on Suramar, but it’s hard to conceive at any point that was build up to making them an AR at the point. There’s just not an inkling during Argus that HE’s were being set up as an AR.

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4555

Not exactly. They are both based on the blood elf model, but Alleria is not just a recolor.

4556

I really don’t think so… Alleria is just a recolored Sylvanas. There’s NOTHING to suggest that Alleria was a precursor model for playable High Elves, when her model is just an alteration of an existing one. Just like Turalyon is.

If Alleria’s model had been far more unique, then I could maybe believe it, but it really sounds like wishful thinking.

The fact that Void Elves have nothing to do with High Elves really shows how little consideration there was for HE’s on the first place. It’s like they literally forgot about them.

Which makes me think it’s far more likely there is like one dev that really likes them and pops them around rather than Blizzard seriously considering them to be playable.

Because we all know they were so unaware of why people wanted High Elves that they made Void Elves lol.

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4557

I think everybody would make a high elf if they had Alleria’s model. She’s elf Barbie.

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4558

Then what are we? Blueberry elf barbies? O.O

4559

I’ll disagree there.

There’s a clear arc of “finding Alleria” in Legion. There’s Thas’dorah, then the SC appears in the Hunter questline, later they are among the night elves in the Suramar campaign, and it finally caps with Vereesa and Arathor going to Argus to search for Alleria.

Meanwhile, there’s zero foreshadowing of void elves.

To me, the return of Alleria seems to be meant to be the event that would unite the high elves. I can see the Vereesa and the Silver Covenant, the Highvale and the allerian elves pledging to fight with her.

Maybe the void power storyline could even be planned for some time, but the void elves clearly weren’t. Even Alleria’s look has nothing to foreshadow the void elves.

Legion clearly prepared the path for playable highmountain and nightborne. One could say the lightforged draenei as well (through Lothraxion and his draenei imperial guards in the Paladin/Priest shared questline, then later the Argus campaign). What other non-playable Alliance race was present for the whole of Legion? High elves.

The thin lore void elves received also hints at them being a late idea, which didn’t have enough time to mature.

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4560

No, we’re stick figures. Alleria has…curvature.

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