Actually, on this sentence in particular,I think it’s important to stress every now and then that this whole thread and discussion is just a bunch of like-minded folks who support the idea of High Elves and are requesting that Blizzard consider the idea.
For all of the various idea crunching, speculation and, sure, even hyperbole at times (like when someone comes in DEMANDING HIGH ELVES RIGHT NAO), as players, that’s pretty much all the power we have to do: band together, show strong support for the requested idea, speculate on various ways it could be implemented, and make sure the idea remains prominent and visible.
Think of it like an informal sort of petition. And not in the ‘we demand the mayor resign’ kind of way, but more the ‘hey we think mail delivery on sundays would be rad’ kind of way.
I think there’s a serious ego at play here. He seems incapable of accepting any idea what isn’t his own and when flaws in his ideas (or the ideas of the team he leads) are proven broken/ineffectual/downright stupid, rather than listen to the players on how to fix the issues he/they double down on their ideas and usually make it worse.
His statements regarding this issue have become meme-worthy … “The horde is waiting for you.” I mean WHO would say that? Who would be so absolutely obtuse about the lore of the game you’re developing to make THAT what is now the definitive statement on how he feels about playable Alliance High Elves.
He could have said “We understand and we acknowledge that there is a race of elf that is in the game and currently not playable. We have many noteable NPC’s and while we do not plan to make them playable right now, they will have a continued presence in the game and if/when the story takes a direction where it would make sense to add them as a playable race, we would explore that opportunity.”
What’s what a LEADER would say. That’s what someone who actually cared what the players thought or experienced in the game would say. Ion is not a leader and I honestly don’t believe that anything the players ask for will get implemented under his leadership simply because he didn’t think of it himself.
guys what happened i just wanna stop substituting my humans for high elves in RP
Edit: Alright guys, hear me out - what if the high-pothetical elves’ customization was spiced up by a wider range of skintones than the blood elves’ like 4 shades of Tan™? What if the high elves had cooler (in shade) skintones in general, not only the fairer skin but darker skin as well? I think that’d be an interesting design change.
Also, I’m still totally advocating for a silhouette/stance change if they were to be added. They made nightborne stand different and have flipped ears, why can’t they tweak the high elves? A different body type to the blood elves may be asking for… too much, but hey, they changed up their whole scene in WoW once before, why not do it again?
(Sorry if this has been said before! I’m very bad at reading.)
If there wasn’t people keeping the thread going and showing the support for High Elves, they would never happen, the fact that they addressed questions related to them shows that they are aware.
For sure. And part of supporting a cause - any cause, really - is that you need to expect set-backs and rebuffs and whatnot. As long as the strong support remains, our chances of getting High Elves someday remains. And I think that’s improtant to keep in mind sometimes, that part of requesting any new feature like this is going to be a long, drawn out process.
I personally find it sensible to create a new model really, not really required, but sensible. If Nightbornes and Night elves could, and even Kul tirans…
If we’re really into faction identity, i.e. identify different “races” with a glance.
I mean take a look at this picture: http ://i.imgur.com/mI0epni. png
We have High elves, Blood elves and Night elves at the same picture sharing the same model prior TBC addition of “new blood elf models” into the game…
If you look at some sources like A Good War Novel you will realize that the Elves of Warcraft are very similar, non-elves normally cannot distinguish even Night Elves from Blood Elves from a distance, they are just made extremely different in the game for better distinction.
The thing about the Nightborne is that they didn’t got a new model, the devs just changed their skin, ears and idle/run animations, a similar treatment to High Elves would be welcome, but with the right features of course.
The Nightborne model isn’t “new”. Its a modified Night Elf. The only significant differences being the idle stance, the thickness of the arms and legs, and the hairstyles.
The stance is what really makes a noticeable difference IMO. I’d like to see High Elves use a modified Thalassian model or a modified Night Elf model like Talendrion’s mockups, with a new idle stance, some new hairstyles and perhaps borrowing some hairstyles from other Alliance races such as Humans and Void Elves.
I don’t think a totally new model (which Nightborne do not actually have) is necessary, but it would be more work than just a retexture. Something like the Zandalari, for example, where they took the Night Elf skeleton with a heavily modified mesh and then jury-rigged the Darkspear animations to it.
Only instead it would be the blood elf with minor modifications, and the Stormwind human animation set. With just a few small tweaks to limb thickness, height, breadth at the hip and shoulder, they could look quite distinct while still looking like they were related. The most work would be in the face, since that has a lot of parts and it’s hard to just copypasta the rigging (although I suppose they could just export the entire face from the human model like the mockup some 100 posts ago).
Basically, the High Elf would be made to look like the Blood Elf’s older sibling. Even though they came from the same family, you could tell them apart easily, even from 40 yards away.
For increased distinctiveness, the shadow layer of the textures could be done in cool tones instead of warm ones, which would complement the blue warpaint idea that’s popular. Their hairstyles could be mostly taken from Stormwind humans (since they already overlap a bit with belves anyway) and Kul Tirans. Maybe use the Lightforged facial hair.
Aside from the textures, this can all be implemented with some scaling work on existing assets, and a new batch of geosets.
To me it’s a very light “touch-up” of the Night elf model (not considering the animations and stances), where different ones for the High-Elves would be very welcome.
Yes, I also agree with this. I’ve even argued in the “Anti” topic that Warcraft elves are only really defined by the energy they’re infused with, nothing more.
The model change makes sense mechanic-wise but not so much lore-wise…
Well, using model A with animations from model B is possible, but it require either a bit or a lot of scripting and it would look a bit weird and incompatible, and in my opinion, it’s a unnecessary work. They can do it, but only assuming that they consider it necessary or if they even have time and resources to do it.
I suppose it depends on what they think is more work, although I’m pretty sure they have more coders than animators, so that would lend to the jury-rigging solution.
But I think they need to have different animations than Blood Elves. it’s fine for Void Elves since they come from the post-Scourging Silvermoon culture of haughty affectations of faux grandeur to cover up their insecurities, but I don’t think High Elves should have the same attitude or mannerisms.
That’s part of the reason why I think concerns over High Elves stealing the spotlight from Void Elves are much ado about nothing. If anything, the internal conflict could be mined for volumes of drama. Well, if they ever add more Void Elves besides Umbric…
