Considering how Blizzard cheated me with Worgen, then I would argue that unfulfilled niche is part of it but also that kind of thing does contribute to adding more depth to the faction. It’s more interesting to consider that the champions of Light and heroism faction would accept a race of shadow-users who show that using bad powers doesn’t always make someone bad.
Now I definitely agree it would be nice to give them stories to have them relate more to other races, but then I also see the negative downsides of doing that. Considering Blizzard’s practice before it could make them end up redundant if they go too hard with it, or water down what their entire concept is supposed to be. It would at least be nice, given that they’re a cursed race, to see them having something in common with Worgen and we’ve seen them paired with Dark Irons in Alliance armies so I would think they could do more with that.
Yeah. The Suramar campaign is absolutely amazing.
Poor things stuck in the Horde right now why Sylvanus is being nuts though.
I think or at least what I have been told that it would imbalance the game in this way…player balance via the factions. If you think it was crazy when blood elves filled up the Horde when they were released do you think they would honestly stay on the “Monster” looking faction if high elves are sent to the major humanoid faction where the whole Lotr fantasy can be achieved? The Hordes player base numbers would drop dramatically thus causing game imbalance. Again at least that’s what I was told and it makes sense.
Well to be fair, they deployed a huge group of Battle-Mages to Suramar.
Quel’dorei and Battlemages please.
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Don’t forget the inn-keeper!
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First, it’s the Alliance that’s lacking in player numbers right now. Horde is 54% of population at max level and dominates all competitive aspects of the game.
Second, the addition of high elves does not remove blood elves from the Horde.
Third, the game is completely different than it was back in 2005. Back then, population balance was per server, there were no tools like Group Finder, LFR, LFD, sharding, linked Auction Houses and many other aspects that made faction population matter less over time.
Fourth, the revamped models made a lot of Horde models way better. Orcs are just amazing, specially now with straight backs. And the Horde also is getting a lot of interesting new races: nightborne, zandalari and soon vulpera.
I really doubt there would be droves of people faction-changing and abandoning friends and guilds just because a similar race was added to the other faction. Hell, there are void elves already and it’s not happening. Unless you are admiting that void elves are purposefully a worse version made to be less appealing and prevent this supposed max exodus of Horde players.
Most people who would go high elf are already in the Alliance. It’s an Alliance request first and foremost.
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If I’m being honest I feel as if Void Elves were the devs not so subtle middle finger to the inclusion of playable high elves. And while I’m in no way saying I don’t want High Elves as I would throw money at them so fast, faster then you could respond on the forums…the reality of it happening for me at least highly diminished when the Void Elves were revealed.
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Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep showing there’s a demand for playable Alliance High Elves.
All giving up does is tell the devs we’ve lost interest in them. I haven’t so I keep showing my support in the hopes the devs realize there’s something worth adding to the game that players want and that it will be quite profitable for them to do so.
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And you should! I’m also not rallying for people to give up hope on what they would like implemented. More so responding to things and getting others perspectives. I do see Blizz holding on to High Elves as a get out of “this game is finally dying” card if only to get a large substantial amount of money from those who seek out this race highly. I know I’d invest in it.
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To be frank, I have no idea where void elf story is going. It’s like having just the introduction of the book and be left waiting for its first chapter. And, because of Blizzard’s past mishandling of Alliance races (Draenei: lost spotlight in their own story and were abandoned for 3 expansions before they were revisited; Worgen: abandoned mid-introduction and still waiting to get some love), I’m very afraid void elves will be this elephant in the room whose main draw is that their magic is colored dark.
And it’s not just the void elves: lightforged draenei may have had a slightly better introduction, but have been abandoned since then.
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Sorry for the one day delayed response, so, what i was going to say is that after taking Horde players feedback in the 8.1 PTR, it was allowed for them to not follow Saurfang, where before it was not possible.
Big plot changes never came into the PTR because they might demand large changes in the physical game structure, but i assume they can make large changes in the story according to the reaction of the playerbase, but those changes happen before they got the new content into any realm, test or not.
It’s my assumption, but my observation is that the story established for the expansion involved Sylvanas as a main villain based on the direction the story was going, and they expected everyone to go into the train to kill her, but that wasn’t exactly what happened because many players are still loyal to her.
I still believe that she will be turned into a villain for this or the next expansion, but allowing Horde players not to follow Saurfang might be a indicative that they can change something in the plot based on the players reaction.
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aye. Blizzard is listening this time but the same was true back in MoP with garrosh. Some horde players wanted to side with garrosh. Up until a certain point he was just being an effective leader. He didn’t go for an entire orcish horde until the very end.
Shadows does seem to be personally offended by the mere idea of playable High Elves, I’ve noticed.
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I’m not offended, I just don’t see why people keep asking for High Elves when Blizzard already gave their reasons for not including them. It’s borderline spam at this point.
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Ion is not Blizzard
A game director’s word is not a final, end-all statement. And his didn’t even come out as that.
Ion will likely not retain his position for long either
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The game director’s word matters, whether you like it or not. Claiming he is on his way out is pure speculation.
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It matters, but it is not final, absolute, or set in stone, which is the way you act, attributing his quotes to “Blizzard”.
And considering how long other game directors lasted, there is a pretty solid basis to speculate Ion won’t make it to another expansion.
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it doesn’t matter if he is going to be out of the game director position soon or not. He will not be in it forever. As has been pointed out he has been shown to be the only developer vocally against high elves while we have had multiple come out in support of them.
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