There’s so many things Blizzard can do to differentiate Blood Elves, and High Elves. Alleviating the High Elves addiction to arcane magic would be a major change. That in my opinion it would completely change the physiology of High Elves. While they would still be High Elves, they would no more be like Blood Elves.
I could also see the breaking of their addiction causing slight physical changes as well. Perhaps the non magic using High Elves could be slightly taller, with better muscle definition than their Blood Elven kin. While those that weird magic are slightly smaller, with a more slender build.
On several occasions after the Sunwell’s defilement, Kael’thas publicly asserted that his people would die unless they found a new source of magic. Technically the prince was mistaken. According to Azeroth’s top priests and medics, the only high elves to perish due to magical withdrawal have been the very old, the very young, and elves who were already in poor health.
Such a low rate of attrition might be considered an argument in favor of simply forgoing magic and suffering through the consequences. Indeed, a few high elves are said to have succeeded in taking this route through sheer willpower: they survived the process, however unpleasant. Apparently certain magical artifacts also ameliorate the symptoms of withdrawal and might, if sufficiently powerful, be able to suppress them altogether.
I always thought that the period away from the Sunwell was excuse enough to justify some changes in the high elves. If elves are highly linked to magic, how restraining their access to it would change them?
Could justify non-glowy eyes, different hair colors, slightly different skin and other phenotypical details.
I agree with you, it should be enough to justify the changes within the High Elves. Unfortunately there will be those who will claim… Blood Elves are High Elves, they’re the same race. This would hopefully make the difference large enough that they could no longer make that claim. Although it probably wouldn’t stop them.
These people cannot see races besides visuals.
It’s kinda true that they are both descendants of the proto-High Elves (couldn’t find a more appropriate word), but so are the Void Elves.
Also, they ignore the fact that Allied Races aren’t actual races, they are more like specific factions or groups of a larger main race, in our case the Thalassians or Eastern Kingdoms Elves.
Blood elves are far enough removed from what they were in wc2 and wc3 that they are unique (green eyes, gold eyes) why not show high elves with a little less arcane influence. They could have the glowing effect removed from their eyes and show a more defined iris like humans. blue shaded ranging from light to darker blue.
In fairness, High Elves are still regularly used for most manner of Arcane-related things on the Alliance side when it doesn’t pertain to humans. When Blizzard gives us High Elf NPC’s in places, they are as much Mage as they are Hunter.
I think separating them from that aspect is a disservice, and arguably unnecessary just for the sake of differentiating them from Blood Elves when they work fine being a more Arcane-themed race in the Alliance. (Albeit, I’d prefer them being very Frost and Lightning-leaning as a contrast to Blood Elves being Fire and Blood.)
Yeah, one of the most recent named High elves added to the game was Yvera Dawnwing- a portal master that takes you to Arathi Highlands and Darkshore when they’re under Alliance control.
There’s gonna be a High Elf Mage training a bunch of different Alliance Mage NPC’s in the portal room too, that kind of stuff just really strikes me that Mages are very iconic to High Elves.
Eh, idk if you’d really need to go that far and I imagine plenty of people would actually complain about that. To be honest, you could just treat it like it is with Night Elves where they have Mage, but their Mages exist more on the fringe and aren’t as numerous as their Hunters, Rogues, and Druids, but I think even then we just see far too many High Elf Mages that I think they’re beyond iconic at his point.
Distancing High Elves from Blood Elves by reinforcing the divide between the Light and Arcane magic, maybe?
Kinda goes back to Blizzard’s silly ‘each race can be represented by one class’ mentality that seems to be seeping through more and more each expansion.
![:pensive:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/pensive.png?v=6" ":pensive:")