(in a film, television series, or other fictional work) a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.
You’re understanding of what entails a retcon is, objectively, incorrect.
A reversal of a previously established position (i.e. if Night Elves decided in 9.0 to abandon Druidism), doesn’t in any way require that their existing history be adjusted – ergo, it isn’t a retcon. It’s just a new direction.
It’s new lore, not a retcon.
If the original storyline is altered to suggest that High Elves were present with Illidan in Outland, during BC, it’s a retcon.
If the original storyline is unaltered, and High Elves simply decide they’re interested in becoming Demon Hunters in the present, it’s new lore.
Again, your’re wrong about both. I’d advise actually looking up and learning about what constitutes a retcon.
No more than the process of becoming a Blood Elf DK would turn him/her into a High Elf – eye color isn’t indicative of political allegiance or cultural heritage.
The notion of what people generally consider what a High elf is, that is to say, being staunchly abhorrent of Fel magic, is what would be retconned in this hypothetical scenario.
I’m not saying that giving them Warlocks or Demon Hunters hypothetically implies they would retroactively always be ok with Fel, but allowing either class would be tremendously out of their traditional character to allow.
Also, please stop trying to talk down to me. I know what the word means.
Are you truly implying you’d be ok with High Elves being every class if new lore was provided for it and you wouldn’t call it a retcon? Hell, there’s many in this camp who consider the Blood Elves going Horde a retcon, and it was identical to these hypothetics.
Could say the Draenei also master air since it was an air spirit that listened to Nobundo and thus brought Shamanism to the rest of Draenei society.
Though on another hand, Shamanism is a very niche thing in Draenei society and not as dominant of a spirituality as the Light, so Draenei are probably not being as proficient in it as the other four mentioned could be perhaps an intentional.
I would also say Bronzebeard Dwarves are masters of earth.
On another note, while it’s not completely relevant to the thread it’ll still keep it alive so I’ll ask anyway, but what races would any of you say would be as hype or almost as hype as High Elves? Personally, I think Krokul and Furbolg are in the range of “long overdue” or “deserve better”, especially in the case of Furbolg who have even been an Alliance race in their RPG book like the High Elves were.
I dunno. Blizzard has come out pretty strongly as saying that the RPG books are “non-canon.” We’ve been doing are best not to bring up numbers and sources from there. Or at least, I have.
Furbolgs have have either been neutral or have had ties to the Alliance. Especially with the recent events in Ashenvale and Darkshore, I’d find them hard-pressed to work with the horde. I dunno if the demand for them is there though.
Oh yeah, definitely get that, though I still feel like the RPG had great concepts that more than made up for bad ones, such as the aforementioned concept they had laid out for Furbolg. (And they could somewhat fill a gap of not being a fully civilized Alliance race, contrasting Worgen that manage to be savage and civilized.)
Oh yeah. It had some GREAT concepts! It even had population numbers for cities, the aforementioned race ideas, sweet items (the sunwell ring,) more lore on some locations that haven’t been fully explored (to this day even…)
But it wasn’t the direction that Blizzard wanted to go with for their MMO, so it had to be scrapped. Plus it did have some stinker ideas too.
Wouldn’t it be neat if they made a new book based on the best ideas from the RPG books and the game?
I remember a while back they were releasing these manga-esque books based on characters and various short stories. For example the Death Knight one which focused on Thassarian and his backstory, which was pretty enlightening for both his character and Koltira.
Then there were the short story compilatons which told various stories about characters you saw in game, like one was about the Headless Horseman before he was turned into an abomination, another was about a pair of twins that had been separated (one raised by dwarves, the other raised by Quel’danil elves,) and another about the infamous forsaken inkeeper in Classic that gave a plagued pumpkin to some NPC’s that in the short story turned out to be a member of the Scarlet Crusade in life.
Stuff like that added to the lore and made things and places more interesting. I really wish they had continued it.
Wow, I never noticed that before. Even more awesome.
Just because people got tired of the forums or even gave up on their request doesn’t mean the desire vanished, thought.
It depends on how it’s done. If we learn that high elves had druids already, changing what we know of the past, it’s a retcon. If a character learns druidism in the present, it’s a lore development.
Neither are good or bad in principle. There are good retcons (when we learn new things of the past that do not clash with known lore) and bad retcons (when the new lore goes against what we knew as certainty). And there are good lore developments (when the story feels organic and is well told) and bad ones (story feels forced, just an excuse to reach a wanted conclusion).
Suramar was a bad retcon, despite it being a good story (really? There was a freaking gigantic bubble of energy in an island we visited three times and no one knew about it or was curious to know what was inside?). The quality of the story made the retcon tolerable. So, even bad retcons can be accepted sometimes.
(But I still hate the TBC retcons)
(Oh, and void elves are both a bad retcon and a bad lore development.)
I would say they still have a chance to grow and be better, and I still like them but I agree that they are another example of the writers being very poor at creating backstories and seem to take a “gameplay first” approach to the allied race system.
I know people often bring up that High Elves shouldn’t join because they’re already in the Alliance, but I’ve often felt like it’s more that they wanted the first four set of allied races to be “strangers in a strange land”, as in races that have never been to the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor before. It’s the name of the first quest you pick up when you create a Legion allied race. But even that purpose is defeated when Void Elves are from Silvermoon, when they could have been Alleria’s expedition from Outland that had been estranged from Azeroth for as long as she has. Then again, maybe the Void Elves were in the Telogrus Rift for that long as well and that’s the rationale they’re going with, but it then creates a plot hole in wondering how they managed to survive there for so long.
But again, goes back to the writers just not thinking it through clearly and their gameplay first mentality, which comes at the detriment of us who care about the lore and want it to have some semblance of sense to it.
Sure, I’m judging what we have, not the future. For instance, Draenei were a horrible retcon, but over time they became tolerable, and even spawned some good stories.
There’s no story that can’t be saved. But usually you need a “bad” retcon or an amazing lore development to make things right.
I’ve never seen any sign that High Elves have any innate abhorrence of the Fel. The fact that there aren’t many/any High Elf Warlocks is not indicative of any cultural inclinations.
A notion of something changing a retcon does not make. The underlined portion of the definition provided above can see you through this, I believe in you.
You’ll have to find the portion of the retcon definition wherein it suggests doing something out-of-character constitutes a retcon.
I see about 10 sentences, back-to-back, which suggests otherwise.
I wouldn’t be ecstatic about having that many classes on any race, because I prefer the idea of races having niches instead of being wide-open (i.e. Darkspear/Zandalari, or Bronzebeard/Dark Iron).
But if the accompanying explanation for these classes doesn’t require that any previously existing narrative be altered, then by definition it is not a retcon.
It doesn’t matter what they consider it, because like your earlier statement about changing notions of what High Elves are, how the audience feels about any new development has no bearing on whether or not that new development is a retcon or not.
Blood Elves going Horde wasn’t a retcon. It was simply written horrendously, and with such flimsy reasoning(s) behind every corner that I am now convinced that they borrowed the entire plot from one of Ion’s lawyer-era fanfics.
I completely forgot about the Bronzebeard’s. It’s probably true, because almost every one of the named Bronzebeard Shaman have some reference to stone, rock, earth, et cetera.
I’ll disagree there. While there’s no lore text talking about fel, high elves were against demonic magic. They were very fearful of attracting the Legion’s attention, their runestones were meant to hide their arcane power so the demon’s wouldn’t find Azeroth again, and, once humanity’s use of magic attracted demons, they helped Dalaran so that magic could be regulated (and the Kirin Tor was against the use of dark magics in general).
There’s also a notable lack of high elf warlocks (only one so far, called a “summoner”), and I may be misremembering, but the demonic magic (i.e. warlocks) was only unbanned after the loss of the Sunwell, when the blood elves decided any power should be used to protect their homeland.
As the Warcraft 3 blood mage description says:
Many of the stoic high elves, reeling from the loss of their ancient homeland, Quel’Thalas, have given in to their hatred and despair and embraced the dark side of their magical natures. Calling themselves ‘Blood Elves’ - these cold hearted refugees seek to expand their remaining magical powers at any cost - even if it means courting the infernal powers of the Burning Legion! Though still loyal to the Alliance, the Blood Elves’ passions will lead them not only to the highest pinnacles of power, but to the darkest depths of madness.
Also:
A mystical Hero, adept at controlling magic and ranged assaults. Though still members of the Alliance, the Blood Elves have begun to turn to the darkest parts of magic, abandoning the water and frost spells of the Kirin Tor for the fire and heat of what some people fear to be Demonic magic.
IMO, warlock magic, and dark magic in general, was banned in Silvermoon, practiced only in hidden circles to avoid punishment, much like it was in Dalaran and in other human nations.
So, not sure if Hearthstone is off topic, but the expansion will have two focuses: The Shadows and Dalaran, and those are quite related to the thread and maybe we can dig some easter eggs and references, maybe Vareesa get a card?
In all fairness, this probably has almost nothing to do with what type of magic the Legion utilizes and everything to do with the fact that the Legion quite literally split the world apart the last time they deigned to visit Azeroth.
I’d posit that being cautious about attracting trouble, especially trouble with a history of being globally calamitous, is entirely reasonable – and isn’t really indicative of the High Elves being disposed towards abhorring the Fel.
If I’m remembering correctly, the official position of the Kirin Tor was to dissuade as many practitioners from studying “dark magics” as possible and monitor those individuals who studied them anyways – apprehending any/all mages who were using their gifts maliciously (which also included standard Arcane-based Mages).
And this position, again, seems to be borne out of a healthy cautiousness – which is similar, but not the same, as a culturally-ingrained abhorrence.
Edit: I’m not actually interested in seeing Warlocks on any iteration of playable High Elves, by the way, just don’t think they’d be retconning anything by doing so.
It’s also quite likely, IMHO, that plenty of the High Elves today avoid the Fel solely because they (and the Alliance, more broadly) associate it with Blood Elves. They’d not want to risk being confused with one another, most likely.
I’m still lost on this. Granted, I only know the game lore, but aren’t Blood Elves just High Elves with a different title via Frozen Throne? I know that after Arthas slaughtered many of them, the survivors changed their name to Blood Elves to honor the fallen. They WERE serving under the Alliance until they started helping the Naga, also formally High Elves.
![:smiley:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")