the difference is, the population numbers are irrelevant for anybody (including ion, when he is talking about anything other than high elves) who has been paying attention. a handful of void elves. a handful of lightforged.
EVEN then, i can write a hastily made story of how a group of shipwrecked farstriders are rediscovered on tropical island, from pre-arthas invasion. been there for a long time. not identical to belves, still helves. but and heres the drawback, they wouldnt have silver covenant lore. and thats one of the reasons the rp’ers want high elves… .they want the silver covenant lore.
I mean, people can want it all they want, but that doesn’t mean that it’s in the cards.
As for the whole numbers debacle, the numbers we were given was described in such a way that invokes a sense of indefinitely smallness. They didn’t just say 1% remains.
They said that 90% of all of them were utterly wiped out, and of those remaining 90% fell to corruption.
Context and delivery is important in storytelling. Nothing is by accident.
it makes zero sense that belves would feel threatened by the addition of silver covenant elves since they are not an actual addition – they are not new. they are already in the game. nobody complained about them till they were requested as an allied race.
the original argument was they would hurt the horde population as former belf players rushed to make alliance helfs. and now that alliance is low population all we hear is
too identical (werent they too identical since they were introduced?),
cant be made different (thousands of ways are created to explain different appearance…ignored or called mental gymnastics)
I’m not trying to be rude but none of what you said seems like it applies to anything I said.
Maybe you weren’t talking to me. I don’t know.
I think the argument of players possibly moving from blood elf to high elf is ridiculous and unnecessary. There’s plenty enough of a reason without it to keep high elves as NPCs.
if they are indefinitely small in number, how are they giving birth to half elven children, some of which are already adults. it only takes 2 to tango.
Because it would take centuries to rebuild them to numbers that would even rival blood elves.
I have no source for this, it’s purely speculation, but I imagine that with all of the constant warring going on, the number of high elves dying in battle might outweigh the number being born. For every elf that falls, one must be conceived, born and raised for some twenty-odd years before he’s replaced.
have you ever played alliance and paid attention to who is giving you quests? and who fights alongside you? i mean the entire belf population of helfs has fought in every war in the game so far, and there’s still enough to populate armies in isle of thunder, allerian stronghold, island expeditions, etc. they are all over the place in the game. shops in dalaran. the argent tournament. i guess you dont encounter them as much when on horde characters but alliance players do.
No it doesn’t. Because we’ve been told high elves are so few. If there’s a high elf encampment and there’s only two NPCs, I’ll gladly believe that there’s actually more than two at that particular encampment.
As an example, there are camps that have one person sitting by the campfire. Is that grounds to believe that no, really, there’s actually 30 people standing around because Stormwind guards are underrepresented? No. Common sense dictates that there’s probably only one guy.
Use context. Don’t make things up to fit the narrative you want to see.
Long ago, when the high elves of quel’thalas had only been away from the well of eternity for a few generations, a group of farstriders set sail off the coast of qu-el’thalas to survey the surrounding islands. they were lost at sea as a result of a huge storm and ship wrecked on a tropical island that contains the ruins of a troll pyramid, from the days of the troll empire.
the pyramid’s glyphs reveal the location of huge stockpiles of troll jeweled artifacts on the island and lessons on how to use the artifacts to tap the ley lines of the island. later, it is revealed that this is how illidan learns the mana tap ability, which he then improves on before teaching it to the blood elves.
anyway, as a result, they evolve differently from their relatives in quel’thalas, as they not only aren’t accessing the sunwell, but they are also somewhere between the highborne and the blood elves, in appearance, having been separated from them for several thousand years.
current time: the alliance rescue them off the island. by now they are tanned, thinner than nightborne, blood elves or silver covenant elves and have acquired some troll fashion sense, adopting feathers, bones, etc, to decorate their attire.
no they are high elves. they are just skinnier. tanner.
and retain some highborne features. might look like talendrions half elves in fact but they are more high elven than half elves since half elves are elf+human whereas the shipwrecked farstriders are high elves who’ve been on a sunwell diet.
and now i’m on the topic of half elves, there are even fewer half elves than high elves (currently) but many who dont want alliance to have playable high elves are fine with alliance having playable half elves. so each person has their own flavor of why they dont or do want to let the alliance to have access to high elves. there’s not even an one size fits all reason for or against anything. so neither of us are speaking from authority. about the only one that does is ion and we’re working on him. hehe
personally, i just love the thalassian model. i wouldnt care what color their eyes were or their hair as long as they looked like elves. in fact, the more elven they look, the better. have you seen talendrions models?
I like when Horde players start to discuss Alliance affairs, especially when they start to talk about what allied races blizzard should give to the Alliance and how they should narrate their lore.
I have a better solution, just kill Halduron Brightwing and replace him with Vareesa and have ALL the remaining Blood Elf Farstriders convert to High Elves and go Alliance, while Blood Elven Shadow Priests and Warlocks escape from Silvermoon to become Void Elves
There’s no story left to give to the Farstriders, the Blood Knights already cover wanting to bring back Silvermoon, and they don’t like Alliance etc. while the Magisters cover being the Blood Elves true successors.
Are you not satisfied with void elves? Not trying to argue but if you don’t care about the color of their skin or eyes, you already seem to have your model.