The Unofficial High Elf Discussion Megathread

I mean, the devs did tell us to give ideas on Allied Races, and to discuss ideas around them like story possibilities, potential implementation, customisation and the like.

And they haven’t told us to stop yet so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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Totally, i’m all for productive discussions here, like we had on their possible racial hub, their classes and visual concepts.

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Coming back to this post, i think i used the wrong word there and it changed the idea of my entire post. I’m gona change it from “expect” to “believe”, i didn’t meant to say that “we are awaiting Blizzard, you better do it”, but rather “i don’t think we are going to get them in a short term, but mayyybe next expansion”.

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Yeah, I kind of figured that was your intention, but I wanted to make sure. All good!

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Yeah. They genuinely asked about who the players are most excited to play as. So… you know. Just keep doing what you do.

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I know I’m a bit late with this part of the topic, but going to classes available.

Warrior was/is the catch-all no class class. Basically it is the person that failed at every other class but refuses to give up and picks up a weapon and prays they don’t die while learning to use it. Blood elves lost it at BC launch because Draenei lost druid in favor of shaman, so they changed warrior to paladin for BE’s. When Cata launched blood elves didn’t suddenly learn to warrior again it was just a very convenient way to give them a class that was scrapped from before.

Gnomes didn’t get hunters until damn near Legion and that was more from outcry that Horde had one more race/class combo than Alliance (which originally got dwarf mage and lock pulled from Vanilla launch because Alliance had more race/class combos with those).

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Woah, i didn’t knew that gnomes got hunters only in Legion, i thought they made hunters and warriors “global” in cata.

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Morning, high elf buddies.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to see a high elf tabard, if they were to become allied races? What do y’all think it’d look like?

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I want it to be a snazzier version of this:

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I wish the unicorn symbol could be used. However, tabards need to be symmetrical due to in-game restrictons (which is why the Silver Hand’s tabard has no thumb), so the unicorn symbol is out. :frowning:

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There’s a few ways you could go. A couple of common or recurring motifs and emblems include the golden wings you see on objects like tents (https://www.wowhead.com/item=116998/high-elven-tent) which would look pretty great with the traditional Alliance blue and gold.

Also you have the Silver Covenant logo, which an alternate version could be used by High Elves as a logo style.

Personally? I’m a fan of an old classic, though - the unicorn logo that adorned Elven Destroyers in the Second War, wrecks of which can be found across Azeroth in WoW. (https:// wowwiki .fandom.com/wiki/Destroyer?file=Highelfdestroyer.PNG)

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Really? I hadn’t heard of that. Disappointing. =/

Double sided unicorn. <3

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Yes, it’s because of the way the textures are designed. THey only make half the texture, and the other half is just inverted, so all shirts/chest pieces/tabards/pants need to be symmetrical.

This is the reason you don’t see a Lordaeron or Stromgarde tabard, and instead troops from those Kingdoms use a generic “fenix” image, since those symbols can’t be made symmetrical. You can also notice it in the thumbless Silver Hand tabard, and even the Horde symbol (which was originally assymetrical).

I thought of two unicorns rising up, side-by-side, one’s back towards the other’s. But tabards also have an additional problem: complex images lose a lot of detail on the tabards and may not look good, which is why they usually have big central symbols.

I mean, you could still do something like a unicorn’s head, facing straight on, wreathed in wings on either side to create a circular design.

But come to think of it, that’d probably wind up looking like the Jedi Order symbol at a low resolution.

Actually, you know what? That works. Jedi Elves, hooah!

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i don’t see why they can’t just make a new type of item that goes into the tabard slot.

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They probably could at some point. I think the point is: should we be asking for preferential treatment like that? I’d say no. Best to try and work within the technical limitations of the system as-is as much as possible, IMHO. It makes for an overall more reasonable request.

EDIT: Also, 11k posts already? o.O

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Indeed, this explanation only serves to explain why Umbric’s group existed on the first place, why Blood Elves would be interested in joining it, but all of this before they themselves were exiled.

Overall it makes little sense for any present dissenters to join the Void Elves over the High Elves -unless the later hare just made to not accept BE’s which would be a stretch given Vereesa’s desire to “redeem the BE’s”- that the HE’s retreat from the war in a way that being in the frontlines means to be a VE -which comnsidering we still have HE’s being present on BfA doesn’t quite fit- or that the Void gives them something they absolutely need or gives them a considerable edge in the wars to come.

Mind you, I think there are non-awful ways to “force” Blood Elves -and High Elves- into the VE’s ranks, ways that go beyond the simple allure of power. It’s hard to believe VE’s would even want more of their kin to go through such a dangerous transformation, so we could be looking to a “Void Elf lite” concept -which could fit the idea of more normal looking skins on VE’s- or another sort of accident.

Say, some Blood Elves reveal the location of Telogrus to another Nether Prince, and the Ren’dorei are attacked in their home. Alleria, Vereesa and her elves and dissident Blood Elves mount a rescue operation, knowing that whatever is happening in Telogrus might affect them as it did the VE’s, so they have to chose to put themselves in that danger to save their kin.

A bit convoluted, but it shifts the onus from an accident to a hard choice, and sidesteps the moral implications of willingly converting more VE’s, which they make sound even worse than the worgen curse.

Alternatively, we could go a bit more wild about things, and make Void Elves a natural semi random occurrence We know the Sunwell can be rather easily affected by the void -probably caused by being powered by naaru bits- maybe it was already affected enough, enough to cause a feedback loop where it tries to discharge any occurring void energies -and maybe this isn’t an accident occurrence, but engineered by BE magisters- so while commonly infusing elves with light, outliers would be infuse with void to prevent the Sunwell from darkening. Maybe this is a natural process and all the magisters can do is direct that energy, choosing to affect High Elves -this would be seen as morally wrong tbh, while blaming Alleria as the cause of all of this-

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It’s not just a matter of making a “new type of item”, but remaking how textures work on the models. Notice that faces also needed to by symmetrical until the models were redone. The new model face textures cover the whole face, while the old ones were just a half-face. Something similar would need to be done to torsos in order to allow for assymetrical tabards (and shirts and chest armor). It’s a lot of work.

On the bright side, since faces do not need to be mirrored, we can hope for assymetrical face warpaint for high elves.

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I still think there’s a chance of the war events affecting Silvermoon. There’s been some foreshadowing on the corruption of the Sunwell: Il’gynoth’s quote (“Its surface burns bright, masking the shadows bellow”), Alleria’s presence reacting with the Sunwell, and I heard (but haven’t done it yet) that the blood elf heritage armor questline has the lantern you hold glow with voidy power once it’s taken to the Sunwell.

Maybe there is void power gathering beneath the surface, only waiting a catalyst to explode outward. Maybe this will turn many more elves into ren’dorei.

The problem with that is… that how would it turn all high elves, but not the population of Quel’thalas itself, that has been powered by the well constantly? How do you justify that? The Sunwell exploding and corrupting its surroundings would only cull the blood elf population… Unless the Alliance had taken over the city and the population was forced to flee. But, even then, it would not affect high elves not in the vicinity.

How can Blizzard make that work? I don’t know, and I doubt it can be done in a satisfying way.

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