Yeah. High Elves can be added whenever Vereesa and the Silver Covenant do something. It’s easy for story opportunities for them.
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True. But, the fact that they’re always surrounded by Loa of their specific region makes it probable they’re changed just like Cenarius changes the High Mountain Tauren.
Cenarius and Loa being the same kinds of ancient beings.
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Evolution isn’t important.
Magical transformation isn’t important.
Population size isn’t important.
It doesn’t matter if High Elves are the “same race” as Blood Elves.
High Elves exist as members of the Alliance. That’s all the justification needed to make them a playable Alliance Allied Race.
If the Pandaren can exist on both factions completely identical, then High Elves can exist on the Alliance with some visual distinctiveness from unique hairstyles, non glowy eyes, and a unique idle stance like the Nightborne have. They would have a more distinctive silhouette from Blood Elves than Void Elves currently have.
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Mmm, this doesn’t ring true for me. For me it feels like the Argus storyline wasn’t even meant to introduce allied races conceptually, and only late in development they realized they had to, so they retrofitted it.
“Lightforged Elves” just don’t appear anywhere storywise in Argus, the only elven related thing there is Alleria being connected to the Void, a decision that would have been taken loooong ago. Lightforged Elves make no sense considering the nature of the Army of the Light, so the golden eyes were created for BE’s most assuredly. They had to be BfA pre-production; it’s not a huge change and they came in the wake of previous renderings of Liadrin -which also lead to her weapons been added-
I really don’t think there’s any weight to the notion of “lightforged elves” as an allied race were ever considered, ESPECIALLY for the Alliance since it would rip off the BE aspect that has most been built since BC. It really doesn’t make sense.
I think they knew they wanted to do something with draenei, so they brought up both LFD and Broken, and Ido think they decided LFD would be the Draenei AR early on thus leaving the Broken as half-way as they feel. I think they would have gone for both draenei races -and maybe considered it- but knew it would have too much backlash.
Void Elves just seem so transparently a rushed idea out of necessity, there just wasn’t another Legion-seeded Alliance AR, so they had to come up with something, so they half baked VE’s out of the scraps left of the rest of the Argus development.
This is how it feels to me -all conjecture- but yeah, I really don’t see at all the notion of “lightforged elves” being a thing at any point.
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Case in point:
https://i.imgur.com/rb9jLXf.jpg
I mean, this is just what some amateur can accomplish. I hardly hold it up as some proof positive of how High Elves should definitively look, but it does show that with a couple of small changes (namely, stance, facial texture and mesh shape, addition of tattoos and alteration of skin undertones) It’s pretty easy to make the two stand apart. And there’s still a whole lot more that you can potentially do to widen that difference even further. But a lot of small changes do add up pretty quickly.
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That’s the big issue IMO, and Nightborne are the barometer:
And it is if one thinks that Nightborne -lorewise- look significantly dissimilar to Night Elves.
If you don’t, then you probably agree that the model/stance/proportions is different to set them apart, to make them look different from normal Night Elves.
If you don’t, then you probably think that the Nightborne have a different model because they are too different from Night Elves so they have to have a different model.
Not knowing what a Nightborne is, if one saw the Thalyssra from the cinemantic, I’m pretty sure the most likely outcome would think she is a night elf, just one with different customization. Because that’s what they are aesthetically, they are no farther from Night Elves than human ethnicities are from each other.
Trying to set a bar on “but how biologically different” AR MUST be from each other is fraught, because none of them share the same metric, and “how biologically different” has ALWAYS been been dependent on the faction they belong, Their Faction, Their Political Affiliation.
AR have been made to be different BECAUSE of their political affiliation, biology/magic is the excuse used to preserve an “ideal” of faction exclusivity, because when they are meant for the same origin faction, the changes have been minimal: Biology by itself has never been the deciding factor for when an AR gets to be one, it has always been depending on the Faction they are in; politics, because of an ideal of faction exclusivity.
Biology is the justification, not the cause.
So, it stands to reason when biological difference is so little that another difference in context also weighs in, such as the case for Nightborne, who were given different aesthetics and stace, which are behavioral/cultural changes.
And that, is what could be done with High Elves, “biology” is just a metric of differentiation that can be supplemented with another contextual change, behavioral/cultural, much like it was for Nightborne.
The truth is, if High Elves can’t be playable because they look too much like Blood Elves, they CAN be changed to look less like Blood Elves, just like Nightborne were. The difference doesn’t has to be Biological, it never was that alone, but a mix of it and behavior and culture as well.
And that’s the thing, it can be made, because it has been made, and people have to realize that, and be aware that they just don’t want playable High Elves for the Alliance and are trying to justify that decision.
High Elves can be made to look significantly different from Blood Elves, biology is the excuse people use to deny this because they don’t want to, not the reason why they don’t want playable High Elves.
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Even the game itself treats Nightborne and Night Elves as being visually similar, like that one quest for Alliance players in Zuldazar where a Dark Iron NPC you help mistakes the Nightborne for Night Elves, saying something along the lines of “I don’t think these are our purple elves”.
Really that, and them being open about Void Elves having more flesh-skinned customization… it really makes me think they’re very confused on the issue and don’t know which stance they really want to take on it.
Although, on the Pandaren, I actually really do wish there were a bit more differences in how they look that’s shaped by the different philosophies of the Tushui and Huojin. Not necessarily dramatic body differences but more in the way of customization options.
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No one questioned that nightborne were just a different group of night elves before they were made playable. Many of those who now say they are not night elves were once advocating nightborne should go Alliance because that’s where night elves were. It was only when nightborne were given to the Horde that suddenly they became “another race entirely”, and that was just so they could deny that, by analogy, high elves could be given to the Alliance.
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Bleh, I love Alliance, but what the heck blizz? Even the recruitment quest for Kul’tirans (which I did somewhat enjoy) is terrible compared to the Zandalari one. I don’t think it’s favoritism, I just think they’ve run out of ideas for us and are trying so hard to make us like other things, but we just aren’t buying it.
Lightforged Draenei are just shinier regular Draenei, it’s boring. There is no reason why they couldn’t have been a customization option and we instead get Krokul.
Kul’tiran? How can you make the argument that high elves = blood elves when humans literally = humans. I think the shaman and druid arc was very well done, but everything else is completely identical to what we already had in game… We just have a fat model now. Ffs. So much for Vrykul right?
Void Elves? ugh
I will never feel sorry for liking Vereesa, Silver Covenant, and the other High Elves. They were written in this game to be enjoyed, right? What is the point of even having them in the game if we’re just supposed to ignore them and pretend they don’t exist.
The behavior of this dev team is insane, and it’s even worse that so many bootlickers make fun of us for liking something that was intentionally written in the game.
Also in response to Shani Edwards. Guess what’s “cooler” than Void Elves? High Elves. There have been High Elven fans for over 20 years now, yet we’re just going to ignore all of that and throw in these knock off blood elf shadow priests? We’re not buying it.
Thank you all for not giving up and continuing to support my favorite race in the game. Almost 15k posts, wow. They better be listening.
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To be honest, I actually want them as well. He’s stated that he wants them and Ogres, and has said they were considered before they settled on Worgen and Goblins for the Cataclysm races.
I think they’d be one way of giving the Alliance a solid reptilian race, and to some degree I even like them as a concept more than Furbolg. Although on the other hand, I think their motivation for joining the Alliance might not be as easy as it would be with Furbolg.
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I honestly wonder if nightbourne was a case of “we really like them, we want them on our favorite faction”.
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I think nightborne add more to the Horde than they’d do in the Alliance, it’s simple as that.
The thing is that the fair trade would be high elves. Horde gets a well-established “night elf” variant, we get a well-established “blood elf” variant. Instead, they pulled void elves out of nowhere.
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The reason void elves are so popular is because they are the closest thing to high elves, even with those insisting blood elves are high elves. At least they are on the right side. Thing is, blood elves are further culturally removed from high elves than void elves. Void elves are just purple blood elves who use the void. The only argument against high elves now comes down to skin color. Well, that and an allied race slot. I think they do add a lot to the alliance. Although that mostly amounts to breaking down the barrier to entry for high elves.
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I also wish to see the story of the Shen’dralar further explored. They haven’t been receiving attention for a good while. How do they feel about the nightbourne betrayal? How will they feel about Azshara? Will prince Farondis and his people join the night elves and take part in that fight? The portal room seems to suggest that they are likely to side with the night elves.
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It was cool to see Mordent Evenshade in the Darkshore warfront. And, in the Horde version, he teleports away when defeated instead of being killed.
I hope Blizzard remembers the shen’dralar in 8.2. I also would like to know what happened to the surviving Moonguard after the events of Legion.
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I actually felt kinda weird seeing Mordent working under Maiev after, y’know, she straight up murdered a bunch of Shen’dralar.
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Considering she tried to capture Illidan (later working alongside him and his Demon hunters in Legion) and semi-murdered Tyrande in Warcraft III TFT I’m sure it has been awkward for a lot of them.
My memory of Warcraft III is kinda hazy. I need to replay it sometime soon.
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Same with the Worgen, one of them died in order to protect Jarod from one of her accomplices.
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Well, left her to die, then lied about her fate to Malfurion. Which I think is kind of worse?
I loved TFT Maiev. The lines she crossed after Naisha died were great. I wish more had been made of that in Legion.
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Like I said, hazy memories. ![:sweat_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/sweat_smile.png?v=6" ":sweat_smile:")
Thanks for the correction!
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