Which I find completely unlikely. There’s nothing on Alleria that says “playable HE model was done” It’s like saying that the Sylvanas model is proof they have an Undead Elf Playable model ready. One thing definitely doesn’t lead to the other.
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But here’s the thing; how flimsly the lore for VE’s is has little incidence on their plans -or lack of thereof- for High Elves.
There’s nothing to even suggest that “the return of Alleria seems to be meant to be the event that would unite the high elves” I can definitely SEE it, but there’s nothing that makes me think the development team had that in mind.
Alleria herself was the focus, that’s the reason for Thas’dorah, Vereesa on the Unseen Path, Arator on the Paladin Hall, and their appareance on Argus, all was done for Alleria’s arc, not the High Elves as a whole.
That’s when they decided they were doing Allied Races, they had to scramble for a barely coherent story about exiled blood elves, because even while obvious, they really didn’t plan anything with High Elves regarding Alleria.
Legion was about Alleria’s arc, not High Elves. The fact that they gave her a bunch of exiled BE’s clearly shows that they really weren’t thinking about HE’s as a race, just her arc.
And the Silver Covenant showed up on Suramar because it would have been just weird to leave them out lol.
I stand by it, there’s nothing to make me think they considered High Elves as a playable race in any serious manner, because nothing on the text is telling me so.
Even when you can see their inadvertent set up and TOTALLY SEE HOW THEY COULD HAVE which is infuriating, but clearly unplanned, which is clearly in line with powering through with a bad idea rather than assessing what you have and say “oh we could do this with High Elves”
You think Allied Races were a concept made late in Legion?
No, they weren’t. That’s just not how software design works. These decisions happen several months, sometimes even years in advance.
You can see the seeds for the nightborne to join the Horde as early as 7.1.
When 7.3 was released, the Lightforged Draenei model was already done (only the tatoos were added later). At that point, the main features of BfA were already decided by a matter of months.
Then try to explain how they couldn’t seed the void elves over the last patches of Legion. Because the allied race system was already defined by then, Blizzard knew it was going to add new playable races.
Now think the alternative: everything happens exactly like it did until 7.3. But, come 7.3.5, the recruitment story is you and Alleria recruiting her old 2nd war squad, the Silver Covenant and the Highvale. You pass a test put forth by each of them, and in the end they join together.
We search for Alleria, we fight alongside the Covenant in Suramar, we go to Argus with Vereesa, we rescue Alleria, she pledges loyalty to the Alliance, she recruits the high elf splinter groups. Boom. It would be a perfect arc capped with a simple but effective conclusion.
Instead we do everything above, except the last part is about recruiting elves we never heard about before, led by new a character who couldn’t even get an original name (Umbric, really? It literally means “Shadowy!” They should have gone all the way and called his full name Umbric Sombra’el Darkblackshadow).
Look at the signs:
- There was no seeding the Umbric or the void elves.
- The void elves lack interesting NPCs.
- Void elf appearance was not hinted at all in Alleria’s design or even in her void form.
- Concepts like void elf icons and flag were being reworked and redefined as late as patch 8.0, after their introduction.
- Void elf introduction quest was very simple, and poor in both depth and quality of storytelling.
This totally looks like a late decision.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they pitched Alleria’s void powers and some executive then made the decision: “Forget high elves, they are too much alike blood elves. Let’s go with more elves using the void. It’s cool and new.”.
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I mean it in the sense that when they were actually doing the Allied Races instead of just thinking about it. You can actually see how Ligthforged themselves were a late thing even if the concept was already something they were working on. They already knew they wanted AR, and even still LF came undercooked.
All that it tells me is that they had no clue what AR they wanted to give the Alliance.
Because they simply hadn’t seeded any Allied Races for the alliance prior 7.3. Seriously, that’s just it.
This is lovely, but just wishful thinking that I simply don’t see it as intended. There IS a perfect set up, but the thing is that is simply by chance, not because they planned it.
Again, the fact that VE’s came out of nowhere has no connection with the notion that High Elves were planned and then scrapped. There’s just nothing for me previous to 7.3 that feels like intentional set up. All that feels intentional is building up Alleria’s narrative.
One thing doesn’t have to do with the other at all IMO.
The question is: building up Alleria’s narrative for what purpose?
Then why weren’t void elves built up in 7.3 as well? Specially since Blizzard had already slipped the void elf weapons (never used!) and the allied race names in the race datafile in 7.3, so they were already defined by then. But not seeded. Why? IMO, because the decision was too late to change the story, and they were being worked on for 7.3.5.
I also remember that interview in Blizzcon 2017 with Shani Edwards and other developer. When asked if there was any allied race the team wanted to work on but couldn’t. they exchanged glances and said there was but they couldn’t talk about it. Then the next very subject were the void elves.
Uhm, the whole Void Thing? It feels that AFTER they decided to give Alleria Void powers they were “oh we can make a race out of this, it would be cool” THAT’S why Void Elves weren’t properly set up WITH Alleria. It all screams to me that they weren’t planned until after they went for the whole Void angle with her and just pinned them to her narrative. They might have been already somewhat conceptualized by the 7.3 cycle, but still WAY too late to actually set them up in the already done narrative. All it tells me is that by the time of 7.3 development they were like “We could have some sort of Void… Elf? for the Alliance? That sounds cool? Let’s workshop that a bit.”
Again, all it tells me is that Void Elves were poorly and probably lately, conceptualized, it tells me nothing about High Elves being actually planned.
Like I am sure someone brought them up, of course they did, but all the evidence tells me that if they were, they were soon and swiftly dismissed, because there’s nothing in Legion that tells me they were intended to be set up as an Allied Race.
But yeah, that has nothing to do with how poorly conceptualized VE’s were. It actually makes me think that if HE’s were planned, it would have been FAR more easy to pivot them into the Void Elves rather to scrap them given how out of nowhere VE’s are.
VE’s reek of “Alright let’s just go with this they look cool, let’s just make them relevant to Alleria GOGOGOGO” and if anything if someone said “High Elves would be a cool all…” and was cut off by “We are not gonna make HE they are just too close to BE’s”
So, Blizzard had plans for highmountain, nightborne and lightforged draenei, but the fourth Alliance race was completely undefined until near the end of Legion development cycle?
I find it really hard to believe.
To me, it’s way more believable that the plan changed near the end. That they had an idea, and this idea then turned into void elves because they “are cool”.
And what’s the only other NPC race that has been featured over Legion patch cycle and even tied-in to Alleria’s return?
To me, that’s way more belieavable than no idea until the very end.
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Yeah Tal the mountains of High Elves in Legion, the random reputation association, and the clear leftovers in BFA indicate that they were going for something with High Elves before making a 180 at some point.
I’m inclined to believe that Void Elves as a concept didn’t happen til 7.3, as at that point it would have been too late to change the Void Krokuul to Void Elves or something.
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I’m not too sure on “void krokul”, but I do think (varied) krokul may have been a scrapped plan. The new broken models from 7.3 are incredibly detailed, but still too far from playable quality (and not females as well), so I think the idea was scrapped way earlier, maybe because there wouldn’t be enough time to develop the model in time for preorder. The level of work the broken would need would be a lot like the vulperas received.
Good point.
I would like to point out that Alleria’s arrow you get for the WoD dungeon Quest is next to the Void Lord in SMB and that entire dungeon was about Void.
Not saying Void Elves where planned since then, but Alleria being Void related likely was.
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That quest makes no sense but you are right. Alleria meddling with void was foreshadowed.
Which makes it worse that not a single story beat was made to pave the way for the void elves. They really feel like a late change of plan. Maybe the developers got to like so much what they were doing to Alleria that they decided at the last moment to make a whole race about that.
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Pretty much my guess.
I think they where planning to have Alleria and Turalyon trapped in the Void as the explanation for their disappearance and have that be the tie in to the Void Lords but decided to use them to wrap up the Legion instead. Thousand Years in Hypertime seemed weird.
And considering that Blizzard has a rough time making females that aren’t attractive, I think it’s the Korkul that got scraped.
I think it’s possible to make a nice krokul female. Take the female draenei model, change hands to three fingers, remove the nose and replace hair for various tentacle styles. Do not give them mouths like the males’. I think any decent artist can do something that, while not that attractive, wouldn’t be ugly.
As for Alleria/void elves, if meddling with the void was already foreshadowed in patch 6.0, there’s no reason to not seed and develop the void elves properly unless they were not originally planned. Which seems to be the case.
I wonder how they could possibly expand Dalaran culture beyond what we’ve seen now if they took that route for the High Elves.
Well, they never really explored Dalarani culture. It has been just a hub, we know its architecture, its rulers (the Six), but all we’ve seen is the diminute version of Dalaran that exists in-game, which is barely bigger than a city square.
I think dalarani architecture would work very well for high elves.
About the rest, it can be expanded, but it depends on how much it would need to be expanded. I don’t see that much need, but the potential is there.
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Yeah I know a lot of fan art and origin stories lend themselves to the Highvale Elves but I must admit that if we had to choose one I’d go for Dalaran.
I believe the Alliance will take back Lordaeron through the “redeemed” undead which will be explored around the time of Nazjatar. Playable or not, that would add Lordaeron as the 4th human nation back in the Alliance.
Dalaran would be one of the last remaining Alliance representations that aren’t playable. That they would be represented by High Elves would be pretty appropriate especially within the context of their roles as support units to the Alliance.
The Alliance also needs a magical city, at least for some measure of parity against the strongholds of Silvermoon and Suramar. While we would only see a part of it (phased), knowing that Dalaran is on our side would be great.
One thing I disliked about BTS is how it explicitly had Kalec mention that there weren’t many Half Elves in Dalaran.
Made me sad. They can retcon it of course, or even justify it as more of a “mage” vs “regular citizen” kind of deal, but it was explicit.
But how many times has Dalaran been a victim of some circumstance in some expansion?
Honestly there’s just nothing that makes me think they actually put in work to make High Elves into an Allied Race. I can believe that maybe they had another idea and Void Elves were change of plans, but again, nothing makes me think they seriously considered High Elves before that.
The Silver Covenant shows either because Thas’dorah which is all about Alleria’s background, and Suramar, which is about all elves and it would have been weird to leave them out. But nothing of those appearances really seems intended to build THEM out.
Mind you, my point is that while it’s evident the SC is relevant because they keep showing up and just fit because they are an established part of the lore which should be used, it’s also evident for me that they weren’t setting them up for something on specific, which is the bummer.
Again, I do agree that there WAS a swerve on the VE development, but IMO it’s easier to believe they were planning on Void Krokul at some point but it was pretty cleat they couldn’t do 2 draenei races. Cause again, there’s nothing previously to 7.3 that leads me to believe that High Elves were considered to be an allied race, because compared to Highmountain and Nightborne, their set up would be negligible.
I find easier to believe that Vrykul were considered since they had the same level of set up than HM and NB, but they decided against. Even Blue Dragons! But yeah, the SC got no where near that level of set up so I really don’t but at all the notion they were seriously considered at some point; the work is just not there to make me believe so tbh.