I don’t believe high elves not being made playable yet has anything to do with their status or lore or anything like that. The reason they are not playable is because the current dev leadership doesn’t see them as a thing that matters. They don’t know the story about them that well so they are kind of dismissed.
The lower tier devs and even some prominent people in the story department have said on record that they would love high elves to be playable and that they have a future role to play. They don’t get the final say yet because they are not the lead devs. Ultimately the devs can suggest and come up with ideas all they want but if they are denied by the top they won’t happen until the situation changes.
I don’t prescribe to this theory because she’s quite clearly a Void Elf, and the idea lives in the empty space of Alleria never blatantly stating, “I am a Void Elf.” Which seems…I don’t know, a little too demanding of a theory?
It’s interesting to talk about, and there’s so little lore to debate it properly, but I’ve filed it away under “edgy theories”.
personally I can’t wait for the dev leadership to change up. Many of those at the top have come out and said on stage at blizzcon that they just do what is cool in the moment and will alter or write new lore around that thing to make it work.
I don’t like that personally. I think lore should dictate the story and not the story dictate the lore.
Saying that she’s “the first”, and saying it on the Void Elf race page, along with the WoWpedia stating she’s a Void Elf(a fansite, I concede, but not an unreliable one) leads me to believe…she is meant to be a Void Elf.
I mean if you want to argue, Alleria having learned the ways of the Void proves that there’s more than one way to become a Void Elf, so accidentally stumbling into it isn’t necessary. Locus-Walker specifically told Alleria he would teach her how to teach others, I’m pretty sure. I don’t have a source for it but I recall it in the quests.
Learning the ways of the Void doesn’t turn a Blood Elf or a High Elf into a Void Elf, no matter how deep one can go, only that ritual interrupted in the middle on Telogrus that was able to create them, and we don’t have any to reproduce it.
Alleria quite literally learned to become a Void Elf, or if you prescribe to the latest edgy theory of Alleria not being a “Void Elf”, she learned to become something stronger than them but equally imbued in the Void.
Once again, learning the ways of the Void doesn’t turn you into a Void insert race here, if it did Blood Elf Shadow Priests and Warlocks cannonically wouldn’t exist because they would became Void Elves by simply using void.
You cannot simply learn how to become a Void Elf, either you are forcefully transformed by a ritual that cannot be reproduced or you simply isn’t.
The Shadow Priest issue is one that’s been brought up before, the same kind of issue Worgen Death Knights have.
The best theory I’ve seen is that there’s enough contextual evidence to suggest that elves can willfully undergo a transformation and become … Void Elves. Alleria did it. Locus-Walker taught her how to do it and he’s said during Legion that he’s not told Alleria all that he knows. I imagine it isn’t a nice transformation, and I should probably clarify that I don’t think they simply read books in Telogrus Rift until they literally turn blue in the face, but I think the learning will be preparation for a later transformation. Which is the difference between Shadow Priests and Void Elves.