Then use fan-requested well-established races, rather than half-formed new additions.
We heard something just like that one year ago. “Blizzard has plans for the void elves, you bet”, “they’ll be important in BfA”. We are still waiting.
I’ll never forget what they said in one Q&A, when asked if the then-new preorder allied races would be important in BfA. The answer was something like: “They’ll be there, but they’ve been explored in Legion already.”
That answer included the void elves, BTW. It was the sign that I needed to know Blizzard had no plans.
Even Danuser’s interview failed to give us a single story beat that void elves will be in. He said pretty clearly that nightborne would be in Azshara’s story. THe void elves got only a very vague “wait and see”.
I’ve previously said that I thought Allied Races should have less story if it meant being shown their story, not told it. My biggest gripe with Void Elves is that they’re poorly seeded compared to the other Allied Races; it’s more the inconsistency across the board that’s a larger problem.
Well, that and that the other Allied Races standing alongside the Void Elves are similarly undesirable, at least on the Alliance side. I’ve spoken about that pretty thoroughly previously.
And? We waited through a huge part of Legion before we fought anyone actually associated with the Legion directly. Tomb of Sargeras was the third raid and well into Legion, which I would mark as our first real direct conflict (Gul’dan was at the very end of Nighthold, and he played an Azshara type role).
We farted around Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold before getting to the meat of the expansion.
I still feel something big is going to happen with Void Elves, Alleria and/or Locus Walker specifically. I can wait and see. Apparently you can too.
No comparison there. We had just fought the Legion in WoD, and then in the prepatch event, and we clearly knew why we were in the Broken Isles. We also knew from the start that we would be going back to the Broken Shore and seal the Legion portal. Also, all the class campaigns revolved around stopping the Legion in some way.
Not to mention that the expansion was called “Legion” and was all about the Legion.
Tell me, Lydon, what do we know about the void elves’ future?
We saw the threads laid all throughout Legion and now BFA. You’re not paying attention or you have to be hit on the nose with something to see it.
Unfortunately, the Void works in more subtle ways. I know Void Elves have more in store for us than being intentionally warped High Elf wanna-bes on the Alliance.
They made the choice for a narrative reason. I don’t know yet what it is, nor do any of you, but I do know there is one.
I find funny that you pretend I’m blind while you have nothing to show.
“Oooooh, wait and see! Wait and see! It’ll get good any moment! Wait and see!” One year later
“Wait and see! Any moment now! I’m sure it’ll be good! Just wait!”
Forgive me if my ceticism is in the way of your blind faith.
I think it was just rule of cool. Heck, they confirmed twice it was rule of cool.
Void elves and lightforged draenei were made on the spot to fill empty slots.
The problem is that you fail to understand the concept of evolution.
Evolution happens because of an internal source, not because of an external influence. In other words, it’s the body itself that decides autonomously to change, regardless of any external source of direct influence. If the change happens mainly because of an external influence, this is NOT evolution - it’s mutation, if anything.
Having this in mind, none of your examples are examples of evolution - they’re examples of mutation. The Nightborne’s body did not change because their genes randomly wanted to change - they changed forcefully due to an external source (excess of arcane magic).
This is a fact, there are no counterarguments to this scientific notion.
TLDR: Evolution = random independent inherent mutation. WoW’s races have all mutated from a specificexternal influence that led to mutation
TBH, as a general statement, it bugs me how frequently the conversation steers back to Void Elves, since my position is more or less that as Ion put it (paraphrasing since its sunday and I can’t be bothered looking up exact quotes): Blood Elves are a type of High Elf. Void Elves are a type of High Elf.
It’s just that my position is that High Elves are also a type of High Elf. And there’s enough player support, narrative and creative options there - as this thread and the previous threads like it attest to - to create playable High Elves that stand on their own merit.
Exactly, and that’s the thing, DID work as such because we have seen them show up previously, specially in Cata were they joined the Alliance, and later in WoD. So they were already seeded in, they didn’t have to be set up like Nightborne or HMT had, and as much was true for the Mag’har in a lesser form.
And it’s that same treatement that races like Wildhammer Dwarves and SC High Elves already have gotten, more so than Mag’har had, more so than DID for HE’s and kind of equal measure for WHD.
And that’s the thing, of the old races that could be used for AR, SC High Elves have been undoubtedly the ones with the most recurring capacity, over DID, over WHD, over Mag’har.
Agreed. I think that Light and Void are two cosmologic concepts they want to explore, and have been for a while, and LF and VE are if anything more akin to props to showcase those concepts than actual “characters” to be written into the story.
The fact that people are all “they will be relevant when the plot arrives” is very telling. They aren’t really relevant or potential because of who they are as a people, they only matter for how they relate to the cosmology.
I think earlier in Legion development it was going to be Lightforged Elves in the Army of the Light, led by an Alleria who had absorbed X’era after Illidan destroyed it (which explains that confusing plothole where no one reacts much to the Naaru’s death or speaks of it further). Then there was to be a faction of void Broken, who we do meet, set up a bunch of story threads with, then never talk to again.
Late into the process, one of the devs had an issue with it and started drumming for drastic last-minute change. So they just decide to flip the two concepts around, making the Draenei holy-infused and the Elves void-infused. This explains why the Void Elves use the faction of the Krokul Broken, rather than having their own. It also explains why there were golden eye Blood Elf faces so soon, those were actually the work that had gone into the Lightforged Elves before the change.
To be honest, I find that to be a flawed premise to base any race on. It didn’t do the Draenei any favors for the longest time, and now the whole, ‘Army of the Light,’ storyline they had has been subverted by Lightforged Draenei. For all intents and purposes, the Draenei aren’t relevant now that their plot has come and gone, and that’s a terrible place to put any race.
Every race should always be relevant, should always fit into any existing narrative or conflict, though the races that are chosen should be based on the most logical.
This is why High Elves work. They’re always relevant to the Alliance. They can fit into every conflict. We seem them shine in the conflicts where it makes sense for them to have a strong presence.
Kinda agree, but I don’t think I’d quite frame the Draenei like that, because they WERE well set up to work on future conflicts; they were given a huge conflict with the Orcs AND the Blood Elves, this could have given inter-factional relevance for years.
The issue was that they were certainly pivoted away from those elements: They feud with the BE’s was extinguished, and their animosity towards orcs never lead to anything. The problem was that draenei weren’t fulfilled by their set up, all that potential was not used, and instead, they were only made to be relevant when the plot arrived.
And personally I am not saying that “relevance” has to mean a race has to be the central focus, it just means that a race is well cemented into the world to allow their presence to matter. And that’s the thing, the narrative itself has asked relevance from the High Elves, because it would have been weird if they didn’t show up, that’s how well built in they are for the world.
And, while I do think WoD and Legion gave the draenei lots of cool stuff, it hasn’t really built them into the world any more than BC did.
If a race is only relevant when they are the focus, for me that means they haven’t been integrated into the world, and as such, it’s a flaw. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that any race should be relevant to any conflict -you can sit some things out- but there always should be moments where we ask ourselves “this race should be here/I’m glad this race is here” A good modern example is how Gilneans form part of the Darkshore Warfront. It makes sense they are present, and it would have been weird if they werent’.
The dude was talking about things that didn’t exist. He’s also trying to come across as some sort of authority on High Elf Culture but doesn’t know how many villages, or the names of the villages.
As far as “Interpreting” the lore goes, we’re talking about data here. This isn’t Shakespeare where you’ve got to build up your vocabulary so you can 'Interpret" that his plays are a bunch of sex jokes.
This is some pretty specific information we’re talking about here.
No. When you are getting knocked around in a debate, you begin to troll. I’ve never accused someone of being a troll for making a valid point. Unless for some reason they would feel the urge to make a valid point in as toxic a fashion as possible. Which hasn’t happened.
He’s actually more eloquent than you, though you both type at around the same speed. You know more actual lore though. His knowledge of the Lore feels like the telephone game. It’s like someone heard it, then paraphrased it to him.
If your point is that Nightborne took 10,000 years to evolve you’ve missed how evolution works in WoW entirely.
10,000 years is like the “Lose belly fat” of WoW lore arguments. If you hear it you can safely ignore whatever the person has to say because they don’t understand how evolution in wow works.
You’re being semantic about the word. People have been using it genuinely over Nightborne.
If we’re ignoring cosmology then Void Elves and Blood Elves are the exact same race.
It may not be by a large amount, but if where you’re sitting on the magical spectrum matters in distinguishing races being different, Blood Elves are as different from High Elves as Mag’har are from Orcs.
Yeah. That’s not how Elves in WoW change. See Felblood elves, void elves and the difference between Kal and shal’dorei.
Mmm. The difference culturally between Blood Elves and Void Elves is that Void Elves like shadow magic and are aligned with the Alliance. Very little cultural difference between Lightforged or Draenei.
Also, Blood Elven society, spellbreakers, blood knights, blood mages, etc. are a wildly different culture.
High Elves and Blood Elves are way more different culturally than they need to be to be an Allied Race. Compared to some other races they’re miles apart.
That’s nice.
It’s interesting you’ve got no interest in High Elven speculation about future High Elf things but you are interested in trying to predict the future based on the fragments of developer comments you like.
