The Unofficial High Elf Discussion Megathread

Community General Discussion
11185

Skimming through the threads, something caught my attention. Something about there being only like a dozen or so High Elves left. I find this to be completely false. My Gnomish calculation puts the number between 2500-3000. Some migh wonder how I would come to this conclusion. According to the Wowpedia, after the third war 1% of the original Quel’dorei population remained High Elves, the other 9% became Blood Elves. They gave the number of High Elves as being around 1500.

So right after Kael’thas renames the Quel’dorei, Sin’dorei. There’s 1500 High Elves, whether all of these who chose to keep the High Elf name were loyal to the Alliance is hard to say. However we know that many of them were.

So now we have 1500 High Elves.

Kael’thas takes 15% of the Blood Elves with him, to help fight the Scourge. Through a series of unfortunate evens they end up in outlands. Rommath returns and teaches the Blood Elves how to feed their magical addiction by draining the mana from magical creatures. Some of the Blood Elves refused to do this. Now those refusing t do so and against those who were doin it. Had to be a big enough % to be seen as a threat, thus cast out of Silvermoon City. So even at the lower percent I would have to guess that 1.5-2% of the remaining 7.5% were tossed from Silvermoon and started calling themselves High Elves again. At just the 1.5% that is more than 1700 Blood Elves that are now High Elves. This brings the High Elf total up to about, 3200. The loss of the High Elves at the Quel’lithien lodge and at Theramore, would have dwindled the numbers by a few hundred. So High Elven Population is between 2500-3000, more than enough to become an Allied Race.

Mind you this is just Gnomish thinking and my take on what I’ve read of Quel’tharain history.

3 Likes
11186

I personally don’t like to subscribe to solid numbers, since Blizzard tends to try to avoid them as well, since there are as many or as few of any race as the gameplay/plot demands. Look at the Bloodhoof Tauren, or the Darkspear Trolls, both of which were almost completely wiped out, but recovered within a single generation. Hell, look at how the Orcs bounce back regardless of losses.

Narratively speaking, attrition is boring, and Blizzard have shown they pretty much ignore it.

That being said, it’s important to note that the people pushing the whole ‘there’s only a dozen High Elves left’ line are either employing hyperbole, or they’re being deliberately misleading (or both). Between the Silver Covenant, the citizens of Dalaran, the citizens of Stormwind, the garrison from Allerian Stronghold and the High Elves at Quel’Danil Lodge, there are considerably more in-game examples of High Elves - (and not just military forces, but civilian populations as well) than Void Elves.

That whole line of argument is demonstrably false.

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11187

Because it presents a nice personal dilema. You are cursed in this form, you get these awesome powers, but using them is dangerous, is wrong. You want out, but there’s no cure. You don’t want to use your powers, but sometimes they can be used for good. And sometimes you just don’t have a choice. You can’t just ignore what you are, you can’t just pretend you are normal. This is your life now, how do you cope with it?

Personally, is how I imagine my character. Alamara does not want to use the void, she hates to use it, but sometimes not using mean people will die.

I think having two or more camps of void elves, each with their own outlook on the Void, would be good for the race. Umbric’s people are interested in delving as deep as possible while maintaining control. Another group could see the Void as dangerous and avoid using it unless necessary.

This was reflected in my old alternative scenario that I wrote one year ago for void elf introduction. In which Alleria didn’t go alone searching for Umbric, but was helped by her old Draenor team and the Silver Covenant, and ended up with some high elves being transformed alongside Umbric’s people.

In that scenario, Auric would be the leader of the former high elves, who would mostly be fighters and rangers. These elves would have this careful approach towards the Void, not wanting to depend too much on its powers, fearing that they’d become tools of the Void even if they thought they were in control.

Variety, like I said in an above post, makes things more interesting. The void elves would benefit greatly by having more named characters, each with their own view on their transformation, their powers and their path.

5 Likes
11189

there is no evidence to suggest they came from gnomeregan. I find it far more likely they were brought in from the camp at brill.

11190

Void portals have been used to cross universal distances. Telogrus is somewhere far in the universe. Alleria was able to hop between planets in the novel.

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11191

I don’t recall seeing any Gnomish units held in reserve at Brill. You move through Brill as part of that experience, remember? You start at the shore, make your way to Brill, and then assault the Undercity.

11192

Keep in mind the, 1% stated comes from the 10% survivors of the Fall of Quel’Thalas. There has never been a number, percentage or otherwise, that has been applied to the High Elves living outside of Quel’Thalas. Even the Blood Elves’ official page here on the WoW website states Arthas killed 90% of the Kingdom of Quel’Thalas. So when we discuss 10% of the survivors, it is always 10% from Quel’Thalas’ fall.

Thanks to Chronicles we’re aware that the world’s second largest population of High Elves, those in Dalaran, were evacuated prior to the Scourge’s attack on the city.

A crazy thought it may be, but it is entirely possible the number of High Elves could be anywhere from half of the Blood Elves, to matching them. Dalaran wasn’t even the smallest of the Seven Kingdoms, after all. We don’t know how many High Elves live there, but it was a significant amount. Add in scattered Lodges and populations such as those in Theramore, Stormwind, Hinterlands, Loch Modan, and the Allerian Stronghold, and the numbers for the High Elves aren’t so small anymore.

They’ve probably got a larger population than the Darkspear, let alone some of the new Allied Races like Void Elves, Lightforged Draenei, or even Mag’har.

11 Likes
11193

I miss when portals had rules. The whole ‘you can travel halfway across the universe, no prob’ kind of undermined the competency of the Burning Legion.

And by the end of Legion, they were already at ‘Saturday morning cartoon villain’ levels.

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11194

I agree. Something I hate about Blizzard storytelling is how the constraints and rules are overlooked when making new lore.

Plus, overuse of portals makes the world feel so much smaller.

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11195

Honestly, most of the void related stuff kind of takes a massive dump all over the demon/fel stuff that used to take center stage as the root of all evil in the universe. Remember when Sargaras was a titan driven mad by trying to bring order to a chaotic universe, and then decided to subjugate or destroy all life to bring order to the universe?

Then they brought in the Void Lords, and suddenly the Burning Legion was Sargeras’ army he was creating to fight a greater evil. Suddenly the Burning Legion - and Sargeras himself - lost a ton of status. The demonic army rampaging across the universe to destroy and conquer all life was now playing second fiddle to an even greater threat. Archimonde and Kil’Jaeden weren’t two of the most powerful entities in the universe anymore; they were just glorified generals, and even the Titans paled in comparison to Blizzard’s sudden new fixation on purple imitation Lovecraftian horrors.

The whole process trivialised Sargeras, trivialised the Titans, and de-fanged the Legion.

And honestly? The Old Gods are a bit of fun, but the Void Lords are nowhere near as interesting as villains as Sargeras was back in the day. Even as a faceless villain, the guiding hand behind the Burning Legion that was never seen, only heard, he was much more menacing than the Void Lords and Old Gods. Not to mention he wasn’t half as derivative.

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11196

Ironically, it’s related to adding blood elves to the Horde, lol.

TBC had massive retcons. They gave blood elves to the Horde and, in order to make an Alliance race of good eredar, completely retconned the stories of Sargeras, the eredar and the draenei. It also came with a rework of the Light, so the blood elves could wield it, and a lot of developments on the nature of Shadow.

While Chronicle was the first time the primordial forces were explained, its foundations come all the way back from TBC’s questlines. There’s a lot of things on Shadow and Void in TBC, specially Netherstorm. Even the final boss of Arcatraz says that the forces he serves dwarf even the Legion.

I hated a lot of things introduced in TBC. It downgraded the Light from a religion to a force to be manipulated. It downgraded the Eredar from primordial demons that turned a titan to corruption to a mortal race seduced by Sargeras. It introduced spaceships and reduced demons to a space-faring army. It tried to bring cosmic elements to WoW, but ended up just making the world smaller and less mysterious.

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11197

well it is possible seeing as they don’t show everything for gameplay reasons.

Considering the attacking alliance army had units from every alliance nation I think it is fair to assume that there was an area of brill that had gnomes preparing siege equipment. It would also make sense to bring in the spider tanks once inside of the walls via portal seeing as they can’t do much at all to actually assault the walls effectively. They are purely designed to be anti infantry.

11198

Ha! We’ve come circle, and completely by accident.

11199

If it was planned and expected, why were they considering retreat before Alleria and Mekkatorque showed up? Clearly Anduin and the others were not expecting reinforcements.

11200

Yeah, unfortunately the whole Naaru thing, and TBC’s insistance on explaining everything, ruined a lot of the mystery around WoW. And that’s something good writing - particularly fantasy writing - needs to balance quite carefully. If you’re introducing elements that are supposed to seem wondrous to the beholder - ie a benevolent healing force, like the Light - then you need to avoid over-explaining it to the point where it becomes mundane. Part of fantasy is that it needs to be fantastic. It needs to be wondrous.

Once the magician’s explained their trick, there’s no magic anymore. The illusion’s ruined. That’s TBC’s cardinal sin.

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11201

I did try to tell you that most people’s choice when rolling a race in WoW runs only skin deep.

I’ll lay down where I’m coming from a bit:

I’m an older player. I’ve seen many reddit posts of them front of a WotLK login screen at an age I was playing Warcraft I or Diablo at. While I’ve always loved the story of Warcraft, the writing wasn’t terribly cohesive until Warcraft 3 and TFT (it was being adapted afterall) and to me remains the strongest storytelling in the franchise’s history. It both excites and scares me anticipating WC3 Reforged with their intent to bring “parity” to WoW.

Back in Vanilla, or TBC-era when I rolled my zillion Blood Elves, the game was still in an age where a majority of the playerbase were Warcraft, or at least Blizzard nerds like myself, and already had some investment in the story and fantasy.

Comparing Blizzcon 2005 to something like Blizzcon 2013 is like flipping a light switch. The game got more popular, more accessible, and for better or worse, lost many people who were familiar with, or even cared about, the lore. I can say with complete certainty the typical player today isn’t making a character because of their story or culture or politics, and simply rolls with what looks good/cool. The “pretty” races aren’t the most played because of their lore; it’s because generally people like to play a fantasy game (or any game that serves as escapism) as a race that fits their ideal standard of beauty. I don’t necessarily like it, but that’s reality.

Our threads have at the very least taught me a few new things I did not know, reminded me of things I had forgotten about, and made me revisit things I missed or didn’t understand at the time, so even if High Elves as an issue putter back down to their more typical historical levels and the threads become less active, I’m at least glad to discuss this much about lore with people, even if I don’t agree with everyone or this side’s position.

9 Likes
11202

I think that when you saw WoW at its peak population you likely saw a lot of people that were basically just riding its popularity. So I think at that point you’d have the most people who didn’t care about the lore.

I think as the population draws down towards the population that genuinely enjoys WoW and is more dedicated to it that you are going to have a larger percentage of people who care about the lore.

I think one of the things we really see in this thread is that WoW has the ability to train people who may not be interested in the lore about WoW.

But they don’t have the same perspective as a player like you or I who played the old original Warcraft games, maybe read some novels. etc. Played Vanilla.

There will always be people who are playing for other reasons and don’t care. Also, this is conjecture and I operate on roleplay servers. So my observations certainly don’t extend to players not on those platforms.

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11203

I started on Argent Dawn merely by coincidence. My sister’s “main” character was there. She quit the server by the time I hit level 10 on my Nelf Hunter, and I was already too “invested” at that point to bother moving after that (I had just learned to tame a pet so I was feeling good).

I didn’t move to Emerald Dream until TBC, but I rolled placeholder name alts on the server about 10 seconds into its lifetime, which was in Vanilla.

1 Like
11204

I started on Argent Dawn back in 2005… back when the resolution was so low I could ignore how god awful humans look.

They really need a rework. so frustrating. Blizzard knows how to make human males, Anduinn Wrenn, Varian, others make that obvious.

Seriously the flexors and extensors on human males forearms blow my mind. They could tear a car apart with their bare hands. haha.

The elven models blood elf/void elf have got the most reasonable arms. Such sick delts and triceps. Anyways.

I was hunting for a good server for just, ambient population and jumped on Moon Guard… then realized it was Moon Guard and moved on to Wyrmrest. haha.

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11205

I guess that Elune might be one of the few miseries still not uncovered.