There’s a difference between handwaving and deconstructing an argument
Your entertainment is not in the discussion here.
Umbric is a character with a shallow background that has yet to get any meaningful conflict. Blizzard didn’t even provide a short story or in-game questline that is about exploring him in any meaningful way. His character could make a 180 degrees turn next patch and it wouldn’t feel forced, because we know nothing of him, not even if he’s lying or not. And he’s the leader of a playable race.
Vereesa is a character with a deeply developed background and that had several conflicts over the years. Her character and motivations are both very well-defined, and making a 180 degrees turn on her would feel forced and out-of-character. And she’s not even a leader of a playable race.
There’s no comparison there.
If you find one entertaining or not does not matter to this discussion. My criticism of Umbric and the void elves are due to undeniable facts: they were forced on us without any proper introduction and, one year later, are yet to have even the most basic details about them shown or explained.
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I never noticed this character before:
I mean, I did notice her on the Broken Shore opening the portal to Niskara in the Thas’dorah questline. But I never noticed her in the Stormwind Keep library in the event.
" I was doing research for Ranger-General Windrunner when all hell broke loose. What do you need? "
Just another small appearance of a high elf in Legion among the many that spark my suspicion that playable high elves were intended as counterpart to nightborne but dropped in favor of void elves later.
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She is only there for the small quest chain in Legion and if you did not kill any demons in the library you would have missed her.
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Yeah, but I like these small easter eggs. It’s not every day you see a Silver Covenant mage in Stormwind’s library.
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I mean it isn’t like she is some big character in the lore. She is just a high elf and we like that. They add in these characters that help fill a background for the game. The ones they choose is representative of what they want that background to look like.
This is showing that high elves and the silver covenant are still active and off doing their thing in the war against the legion.
To me it shows something similar to the mission table in BFA. It informs us of other events going on in the world that we are not necessarily present for. We can’t be everywhere but through these things we can know that other battles are being fought elsewhere.
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Does anyone knows about this rare encounter on Highmountain?
You loot a treasure and it summons 5 mobs representing a dungeon group, composed by a Nigh Elf mage, a Human rogue, a Gnome hunter, a Draenei paladin and a… High Elf priest.
I mean, yeah it’s a joke encounter but i just found this interesting because it was representing a Alliance group of real players, and they placed a High Elf on it, a representation of playable characters with a High Elf, hmm, i have questions about what the devs were planing during Legion.
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they were forced on us without any proper introduction and, one year later, are yet to have even the most basic details about them shown or explained.
Apparently an extensive introductory quest line to actually unlock the race is not a proper introduction.
Being named and hinted at participating in a storyline is more than enough. I mean, these small appearances often foreshadow things. In hindsight, it’s clear that the NPC was hinting at Vereesa having an important role in Legion. “Ranger General Windrunner” ended up having roles in 7.0, 7.1 and 7.3.
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Another one of the many Legion high elf easter eggs.
Yes, I remember doing it, but I noticed the high elf only after doing it a second time on another character.
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Nightborne introduction was extensive. Highmountain introduction was extensive. Kul tirans introduction is very extensive. Vulpera have not even become playable yet and already have a more extensive introduction than void elves.
Void elf introduction was a single short scenario in which you mostly smash void things and, boom, void elves are created. They didn’t even merit their own reputation requirement.
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exactly. They made them require the krokul faction. I assume they guessed it work since they are slightly void themed?
in all honesty they should have had a different idea for LFD either vrykul or high elves and argussian reach AR should have been krokul broken. Lightforging would make much more sense as a neutral thing that any race could do as an optional questline to become lightforged.
Personally I believe that vrykul would have made a lot of sense coming from legion. The horde and the nightborne were more aligned with each other while the vrykul after the events of stormheim had no reason to like the horde and it would have been totally believable they would join the alliance in retribution for the horde’s actions.
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I remember speculation that the void elves would be Aethas and some of his Sunreavers. I found that idea particularly interesting. During MoP, Aethas not only showed displeasure towards the Horde, but the Warchief’s actions caused his people to be purged from Dalaran. In Legion, he showed more interest in returning to the Kirin Tor than honoring his own people (he gave away Felo’melorn in exchange to the Sunreavers returning to the Kirin Tor!). ALso, in 7.3, he talked about being overwhelmed by the cosmic forces in Argus, a dialogue that some people speculated was the event that would spark his interest in the Void.
Particularly, I’d have taken Aethas over Umbric. It would be a real twist and the void elves would start with a lot more story behind them.
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exactly. and it would also create some rather interesting drama in the alliance between void elves and the silver covenant/high elves.
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It would be interesting if Aethas joined the void elves. I think there is a story to be told about blood elves feeling their leadership is corrupt and looking to join the void elves. Perhaps Aethas could lead a group to reproduce the process that created the void elves. He did seem pretty strongly attracted to the void in legion.
So Vereesa has no personality because we’re going to overlook over a decade of character development just because we dislike her, while impersonal character traits make for a well rounded character with deep depth.
While I have no problem with Felblood options for Blood Elves and even welcome the idea, giving Void Elves fair skin as an answer to High Elves may work aesthetically to a degree, it hardly works on a cultural and thematic level.
As others have mentioned the heritage armor doesn’t work to the degree where it ironically would fit the Blood Elves better than High Elves.
Developmentally speaking, if the Void Elves were modeled more around Alleria rather than the devs going out of their way to give something so blatantly different than High Elves, then this idea would be much more organic, appropriate and could have made for an actual compromise, but like I said, the purpose of the Void Elves were to be different than High Elves.
That being said I do respect where you’re coming from and I believe that Void Elves should have stemmed from High Elves akin to Alleria and do still hope we’ll see options to better emulate Alleria, but as far as Void Elves being an answer for High Elf demand, they were completely mishandled and that ship has sailed.
The way High Elves have been mishandled has only challenged the High Elf community, which I feel has definitely rose to the occasion. I’m almost happy enough with Void Elves personally, aside from a limited aesthetic, but there have been so much creative concepts that the High Elf community has come up with, that I will continue to advocate for them until they are added.
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There’s a difference between deconstructing an argument and being dismissive.
I guess you’re just very easily entertained.
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I think one of my biggest issues with Void Elves right now in BFA, is that we still aren’t seeing any narrative seeds being spread out for them. They’ve avoided Old God related content whenever it comes up to be living weapons for the Alliance in the faction conflict. Everything is about Umbric. Now would be a fantastic time to start introducing additional Void Elves who will play a prominent part of their future narrative.
We could see Shadow Knights with a Captain, made up of former Blood Knights who use the Void to strike multiple opponents at once by opening a concentrated Void Rift on their blades and have those rifts lead right behind their enemies.
We could see an order of Priests who specialize in using the Void to delve into minds with both an offensive and defensive purpose. They could do this to other Void Elves to help those struggling to control the Whispers. They could do this to captured Horde to extract information, or make those captured Horde into sleeper agents who try to take out key figures on sight, or even into spies.
There. I just invented two groups and two characters to lead them that could provide more depth to the Void Elves, and even more culture.
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Yea or actual have Warcraft 3 Units like Void Elves to be Priests, Sorceress, Blood Mage, Spellbreaker, and Dragonhawk riders but in Void Version. I only see just simple spellcasters within World Assaults rather than the True fully on Warcraft 3 Nostalgia that Blizzard hypes up Void Elves to be.
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In the Telogus Rift, the void elves had all these interesting aesthetics. The Void warlocks, the void mages, veiled rift blades, rift wardens, locus researchers, and umbra rangers.
What happened to all that? Why did they become generic? These seems like an extreme dropping of the ball.
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