The Unofficial High Elf Discussion Megathread

Community General Discussion
10623

Ahh. Makes sense.

I skipped MoP.

I wasn’t against it. I played Warcraft III.

I just was doing other things.

It’s really funny but I’ve probably played BFA longer than any other expansion. Typically I follow my other interests.

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10625

That seems like an important Wiki Highlight. Thanks for posting that.

10626

I love that questline.

Thought I always felt the Horde version is way better. It’s a progressive story: you join Rommath, help Sunreavers escape while the Silver Covenant mostly ignores you (because it’s an area where the Sunreavers are cooperative, so the Silver Covenant is not actually harming them), then move on to a fighting area. Then there’s the guy holding the Sunreaver over a shark, but it’s your interference that makes him lose control and drop the victim to its death. Then you move up in the city. There’s even a secret mini-event if you fight Jaina: she teleports you to the Violet Hold and you must defeat Lan’dalock to escape. It’s full of details, and events, until you finally rescue Aethas. Then escape and see Lor’themar finally decide to go serious about defying Garrosh.

Alliance version is… Well, talk to Vereesa, she gives you 4 or 5 quests. That’s it. There’s a small scene with Jaina and Aethas before and Jaina and Varian after, but it’s not as deep and interactive as the Horde version.

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10627

Side note, and a fun fact, based on the timeline of Legion the whole Nightfallen rebellion - and everything that it entails is only about 4-10 months long.

Also, that’s in Azeroth time. Hell, the Legion expansion - a single year in Azeroth time - creates greater changes, upheavals and shifts in Nightborne society than the 10,000 years preceding.

I’d also like to point out Runas the Shamed’s quest arc. There’s a point where, as a Nightfallen, he is cut off and becomes Withered - He Withers in the span of a couple of hours at most.

So magical mutations can occur extremely quickly or extremely slowly, if you want to take that route.

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10630

Even if Blizzard bring Blue Eyes for Blood Elves it don’t change anything for us, because all the types of eyes that Blood Elves have glow, something that don’t happen in case of High Elves. High Elves have non-glow eyes like Humans.

I’ve posted about this before:

Like I said in the past about current model being a “carbon copy”, High Elves models right now don’t reflect exactly what they are truly about, and if they become playable Blizzard surely will need to make adjustments in their model to reflect their culture, values and lifestyle that High Elves have defined in the recent years.

That’s why we keep saying that High Elves models can receive the same treatment that Nightborne got.

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10631

was there not enough of a difference that you had to switch the hair color and skin tone for comparison?

10633

While I agree, that right now there’s isn’t much diference, changes can and should be made. Blizz will need to make adjustments in their model to reflect their culture, values and lifestyle, pretty what they did with Nightborne/Night Elves.

Diferent hairstyles, stances, pale skin colors, bland hair colors, face and body changes (like more taller and muscular) to reflect their wild lifestyle on lodges etc. High Elves like Elisande stated, are living too much closer with humans, so they must receive changes to reflect the Human lifestyle.

I mean c’mon, you guys know that is possible to make High Elves different enough from Blood Elves and still appease their fanbase, stop trying make it feel like it’s impossible.

10634

And that’s a npc model, she didn’t have the same skin colors of Blood Elves. She didn’t have even underwear. It’s from WoW head model viewer, you can check later, the only thing a changed was the hair color and put a shirt on her, because of underwear.

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10635

Interesting Picture. Mind if I use this.

This isn’t just for Trolling or getting back at the Antis. I’m going to show the Antis what High Elf Eyes Look like other than the Death Knight Ones.

10636

It’s a good picture to show their eyes differences, but people will still find something to complain like you can see above, even if it’s unintentional.

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10638

:rofl: It’s true, I can’t stop laughing now.

10639

Fun fact. High Elves have less skin colors and less faces then Blood Elves because they are an NPC race.

So they would need to add a bunch anyway.

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10640

I mean, I keep telling folks, let’s just grab ol’ Nozdormu’s model from Dragon Soul. Bamn, clearly not a BElf model that is clearly a HElf

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10641

For those wondering.

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10642

Greetings! I have decided to read up on many of the arguments being made in this thread! :smiley:

Part of me is starting to regret this decision :no_mouth:

However, I do want to point out that getting hung up on “genetics” isn’t really helpful.

Genetics almost certainly exist in WoW lore; it’s just implied more so than anything else. You’re talking about a universe with hundreds, if not thousands, of distinct, sentient races. Some races have more differences when compared to each other than others do, but these differences, these things that make a race a race, absolutely must be encoded somewhere.

Quite simply, if DNA didn’t exist in WoW at all and races were defined only by cultural or political affiliation, then a human male and a human female could mate and produce a monstrous deer hybrid with the torso of a hippopotamus.

This just flat-out doesn’t happen without the intervention of magical influence. Ergo, DNA coding must exist.

Another piece of evidence that DNA exists can be observed in the Nightborne. Many of these individuals are just Night Elves that were mutated by the Night Well. If this were a condition like the Worgen curse or the real-world example of leprosy, Nightborne wouldn’t be considered biologically distinct. However, in Suramar we see that Nightborne children exist, and they bear the same physical features that make the adult versions distinct from night elves. Therefore, the Night Well’s mutation must have had a fundamental impact on the racial coding of those affected. Nightborne don’t just mate and have kids that look exactly like night elves. This is part of the reason why they consider themselves a completely separate race.

I’m not saying that people who bring up the fact that High Elves and Blood Elves are biologically identical necessarily torpedo the pro-high elf platform, but what I am saying is that it does necessitate some consideration. The counter argument that DNA “doesn’t exist” doesn’t really resolve the point of contention, if for no other reason than that it is inherently fallacious.

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10643

It’s simple, the Blood Elves are also mutants. They have been mutated by fel energy and have the characteristic reddish skin and reddish hair found in the Fel Orcs (to a greater degree).

High Elves have not been fel-mutated. They are the default, or base state of being for a Thalassian elf. Blood Elves, Void Elves, and Nightborne are all the results of mutations driven by magical (radioactive-like) energies.

Night Elves are a primordial version of elf that you could say the High Elves evolved from. But those Night Elves are also the descendants of Dark Trolls.

10644

Ah, but you have to be careful there when referring to a “default” form of elf. Literally every elf in WoW lore exists only due to levels of magical exposure. The question is; how much exposure is necessary to define a race?

High Elves themselves are considered a mutant variant of Night Elf due to their tinkering with arcane magic. Dath’remar Sunstrider himself was once a Night Elf.

Still, the differences between High Elf and Night Elf are enough to consider them distinct races, on that we can accept as a given. So, if magical influence is enough to turn one elf race into another, is this what happened to the blood elves?

That’s where we run into a serious problem. Because we cannot simply operate under the assumption that any magical influence, regardless of magnitude, is enough to create a new race of elf. Blood elves, as a whole, bear some physical manifestations of their usage of the fel. However, blood elf paladins (and any elf that now uses the yellow eye coloration) are uniquely marked by the light. Does this mean a whole new variety of blood elf has been created? What about blood elf demon hunters that are affected by fel in unique ways due to their very specific training regimen and distinct physiological markings? Are demon hunter blood elves still blood elves at all? Obviously, there’s a limit to how much fel energy can be consumed before you turn into something else, because Felblood Elves exist.

But then there’s the point that was brought up by a few others in this thread; it was intended for the lore that the physical markings of fel usage, such as the green eye colorations, would fade over time, it would just take a while. If true, this means blood elves aren’t irreversibly mutated by the fel; they’re simply suffering from a version of radiation poisoning.

I can’t pretend to be an expert on how to make sense on all, or indeed any, of this. However, I do think it is safe to say that elven mutations that generate new races require one of two criteria;

  1. Impressive god-tier magnitude of a magical source on-par with the Nightwell, the Well of Eternity, or the Sunwell.
  2. Moderate exposure to lesser magical sources over the course of hundreds if not thousands of years, mimicking the real-life process of evolution.

Neither of these criteria that resulted in the creation of every other known elf race fits the idea of blood elves being a biologically distinct race from high elves, especially if everything unique about a blood elf’s appearance is indeed merely temporary. This, I think, is a major sticking point for those that take umbrage with the idea.

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10645

TBH I don’t think anyone is seriously arguing that Blood Elves and High Elves are genetically distinct enough to be seperate on a biology level. Or at least if they are, I’d probably call it ill-advised.

That being said, the Elves’ susceptibility to rapid and drastic mutations (see: Withered, Wretched) means that that’s one potential avenue Blizzard could explore if they wanted to differentiate Blood and High Elves more.

However, personally? I prefer to just go the simple route and point out Kul Tirans and Stormwind Humans being separate ‘races’ despite both being biologically just human. It works for them; the same logic can work for High Elves.

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10646

Exactly. My opinion is that High Elves and Blood Elves are biologically the exact same race.

However, High Elf supporters that try to deny this fact to support their arguments for inclusion are basically responding to the wrong question. The fact that High Elves and Blood Elves are the same race should have absolutely no bearing on the criteria for High Elf inclusion as an allied race. At least, not inherently so.

“Allied Race” is in and of itself a misnomer. It’s just a lot catchier than “allied ethnicity” or “allied culture.” It was never really clear whether races like Lightforged Draenei and Highmountain Tauren were technically biologically distinct from their corresponding “core” races, but the addition of Kul Tiran Humans makes the whole thing a non-issue. The cultural differences alone between the two human factions allow for incredibly creative distinctions such as Kul Tiran Shamans, Kul Tiran Druids, and completely different physiques despite being biologically identical.

These, combined with appropriate racial traits, are exactly the kinds of differences that would produce enough of a distinct identity for the high elves. If you wanted to emphasize their more “savage” ranger aesthetic that stretches back to WC2, you might have to sacrifice the paladin class but I could see a potential high elf race getting enough lore to justify their learning of Druidism and shamanism just as the Kul Tirans did.

Here’s how I see a potential class list panning out;

Warrior: No — Although some are utilized by the Silver covenant, the warrior class is already available to every other race in WoW, including every other elf race. Sacrificing this class in favor of more interesting alternatives would go far in carving out a unique niche for the High Elves amongst the Alliance. Additionally, High Elves are often portrayed as being among the frailer varieties of elf and are nowhere near as militant as the Sin’dorei.

Mage: Yes — High elves literally only exist due to the Thalassian affinity for arcane magic that resulted in their evolution. Additionally, high elf sorceresses have been rocking magic usage since WC3. It’s pretty damn iconic.

Hunter: Yes — A reference to the high elf rangers in WC2, high elf hunters are a definite must.

Paladin: No — As mentioned before, carving out a unique niche for the high elves that differentiates them from the blood elves requires a downplaying of the more militant qualities of thalassian elves. The blood knights are iconic to the Sin’dorei and the High Elves have no corresponding paladin order save for possibly a few scattered throughout the Silver Hand. Still, the general high elf status as a race of refugees has undoubtedly shaken the faith of many devoted light users.

Druid: Yes — As stated before, I really just think this would be a cool idea. Neither blood elves nor void elves have access to Druidism, and it would fit with the general “woodland” aesthetic High Elves (and Alleria) have been linked to sine WC2. Night elves could easily teach high elves Druidism as a sort of “mending the fences” moment, which really is overdue between the two races as they have both been part of the Alliance for years yet rarely deal with the elephants in the room. Additionally, with the addition of Highmountain Tauren and Zandalari Trolls, the Alliance is short 1 Druid-using race when compared to the Horde.

Rogue: No — For many of the same reasons outlined in why warriors and paladins should be excluded, rogues should also be excluded. Lorewise, they do indeed make sense, and the Silver covenant does use them, but from a meta standpoint both night elves and void elves are thematically superior options for rolling an elf rogue. It we’re talking about highlighting cultural differences between a theoretical high elf race and all the other elf races that are currently playable, adding a shifty shadow-using side to this theoretical culture probably isn’t the best way to go.

Priest: Yes — The first high elves we ever meet in WC3 are priests. I really don’t have to say much more beyond that.

Warlock: No — High elves were undoubtedly watching the developments of Silvermoon. They know the potential of fel, and they have absolutely no use for it. Besides, void elves have already cornered the market there.

Shaman: Yes — High elves could very easily pick up shamanism from the Wildhammer, Dark Iron, or Bronzebeard dwarves. Making high elves the one and only elf race that can utilize shamanism would be a fantastic means of differentiation, and it goes in line with a more “primal” cultural aesthetic that runs counter to the Sin’dorei’s more refined, civilized appearance.

Death Knight: No — Due to being an allied race. In all seriousness, all high elves that are eligible for being raised into Arthas’s service were killed before the Sin’dorei joined the Horde, and before the High Elves had a chance to strengthen their ties to the Alliance. All raised High Elves would probably find themselves in the same situation as Koltira, who also died as a high elf but, upon being raised, swears loyalty to Silvermoon regardless. As such, Koltira willingly takes on the racial name of “blood elf.”

Demon Hunter: No —- Obviously not.

Monk: Yes —- Can always be taught by pandaren and will be necessary for the high elf race so that they have access to at least 2 classes for tanking and 2 for healing.

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