I’m starting to think Lydon goes by the name Obelisk Kai on MMOC.
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The elves who existed when this fantasy you describe was a thing are mostly gone. This is a circa WC2 fantasy that simply does not represent what remaining High Elves are now.
Alleria was the posterchild of the WC2 High Elf, and aside from her looks, even she is something wholly different from her days popping Amani trolls in Quel’thalas.
Those who call themselves High Elves are Alliance, yes, but this isn’t even the same Alliance, nor the same humans. Dynamics have changed drastically.
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He’s actually an EU player. I have spoken with him once before. He’s as big a lore buff, if not moreso than I am.
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Honestly, this is an hilariously bad take.
I like Blood Elves, I play blood elves, I like Blood Elves lore.
You are so wrapped into a silly “us or them” mentality I can’t comprehend. I like Blood Elves, but I also like High Elves on the Alliance, because they represent different ways a people cope after trauma.
I love both, and as long you can’t understand that, I don’t know how to talk to you. I like elves my dude, I don’t have to pick a side.
And this is just another sympthom of your issues. You can’t fathom the Alliance High Elves having any value. You don’t respect they took a different choice than the rest of the people. You think the are wrong, and one way or another, you have to get rid of them.
It’s a nonsensical black and white mentality, the total opposite of my perspective of choices. You need one side to be wrong, so your side is right.
High Elves are expats that lost everything but their name, living in human cities, facing the fear of extinction, holding to bits of their culture, but only bits, and time changes everything, even them.
And you tell me that’s not a worthy narrative to explore. I would question your taste if it weren’t so obvious it is your bias that blinds you.
We both love Blood Elves, Lydon. But I don’t fear loosing their identity because I am very cognizant of why I like them and why I think High Elves are different and can like both.
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I’m just saying that is good form to read the OP -or get the gist of it- to have an idea what a thread is about.
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Yet they are not when they constantly appear as Alliance-affiliated troops and soldiers in quite a good deal of Alliance outposts, only with BfA being an outlier for their presence not being overt but they are still there and exist.
I really do think that vs. Ion’s statement really is a showcase of internal conflict and debate at the HQ about what exactly they want to do with them. To put these “true High Elves” as you call them on the red faction but keep using them on the blue faction does tell me a level of regret for such a story direction is at play.
Almost like taking classic allies and warping them to fit a faction they were previously enemies with is a very divisive thing to do and the side that’s having their allies taken away from them will not take such a decision lying down.
I disagree, the Alliance have not changed to as dramatic a degree as the Horde has. It has most always been the same Alliance that was founded in the Second War.
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I’m really not feeling this argument Grim, as I explained on my previous post. It’s not really about Alliance and Horde themes. The Blood Elves would not get “alliance themed” if they returned to their older traditions and ideologies, they would just got badly written and regressed.
The Alliance never defined Thalassian culture as a whole, they were partnerships of need and duty.
And the point is that for some High Elves, that partnership became loyalty, to the point they choose to stick to the alliance over their King. It’s about choices made and not made, and how that has lead BE and HE on different paths.
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Don’t paint me to one side because I find myself on the opposite end of this table.
I adore all elven lore in this franchise. I’m familiar with most of it.
My issues with this side are that many, many are simply trying to rationalize High Elves as things, numbers, and themes they are simply not.
I personally don’t find them interesting in WoW’s era because Blizzard hasn’t made any effort to make them such (not to mention, coming off Warcraft 3 we figured all the High Elves were dead or now Blood Elf aside from the Draenor Expedition, so describing what consituted a modern High Elf has always been a problematic exercise).
The main conflict between High and Blood elves was over siphoning mana from living things and such, a storyline Blood Elves fought their own internal conflict to rectify. Nothing new or interesting since the Dalaran Sunreaver debacle has given any narrative depth or teeth to their conflict, so I am not at all surprised Blizzard is moving Blood Elves towards the Light and Void Elves into the Alliance to have a conflict of greater, relevant consequence and narrative weight.
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I don’t understand the arguments of people that don’t want alliance high elves in the game.
Alliance allied high elves legitimately already exist, and in larger numbers than void elves. What’s there to argue?
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I addressed the comment you made about “Blood Elves also very much celebrate their High Elf heritage and traditions”. Obviously, they don’t fully anymore. The High Elves probably not fully either. In regards to Alliance High Elf celebrations, can honestly say I’m not too sure. I dont believe I’ve seen it represented in game, nor any of the books, so who knows.
The Blood Elves honoured their dead. They did it out of respect for those who were lost. You could say that’s celebrating their heritage, but then you have the High Elves who’ve kept their name. Just because the Blood Elves renamed themselves, doesn’t make the High Elves who kept “High Elf” any less celebratory of their heritage. You could argue keeping the name “High Elf” proves how proud they are in who they are, they’ve stood their ground and not let terror change who they are.
They don’t celebrate their traditions as what they used to, they adopted new traditions.
They might take on some aspects of the High Elven Heritage and Culture but it isn’t “very much” celebrated.
Modern day High Elves in the Alliance would be different again from the Quel’Thalassian High Elves before the Fall.
I personally just don’t think it’s fair you’re claiming Blood Elves “very much celebrate” their heritage and traditions only when High Elves too can “very much celebrate” their heritage and traditions.
The Silver Covanent for example take up traditional military ranks, High Elves are still into traditional study of Frost and Arcane magics. Etc. Amongst other things.
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Basically yes, but I more meant that they would not quite fit the Horde if reverted more and more to classic High Elves.
It’s the other way around. The Alliance is defined by the cultures that make up it and their common ideals.
But yes, the High Elves that are still part of the Alliance now generally do fit that “by blood and honor we serve” motto that’s part of the Alliance creed.
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I must retire for the evening. Pleasure as always.
Some people just seem to enjoy taking con in a debate wayyy too much.
Shorel’aran.
That has been your own doing. I’m only telling you what I’m getting from you as someone that likes both Blood Elves and High Elves.
Potential and Nostalgia. That’s it, that’s what Alliance High Elves have going on for them. People want to get the old back together, people want to see what the elves that didn’t become Blood Elves can do with their future. You can’t blame people for speculating about the potential they see, the excitement they feel because you don’t.
And that is a you problem. And you are free to not find them interesting, I’m not asking you that. I just told you why I do find them interesting, which is also the reason many other do.
I would have been okay if High Elves died out or all became BE’s. But they didn’t, they remained on the alliance, and as long as that’s true, I will hope they are playable because I’m drawn to the story of a bunch of exiles that lost everything but the friendships they made along the way. I like that, I like the idea of sticking together and being loyal, and that is contextually very different for Horde and Alliance, but something I enjoy in both factions.
For me MoP will always be the first actualization of potential the High Elves had. I liked their ruthlessness, their rancor, them being the bad guys, the opportunism of it all. I liked that, as I liked that the BE’s were only damned by a bad seed.
High Elves were not only a foil, but an antagonist. The weaker side finally having the means to strike. There was so much potential in that. But it led nowhere, for good or for ill.
Choices, choices. To live well or to get revenge. Vereesa would have burn herself in hatred if Jaina didn’t stop things in the Isle of Thunder. Did that put things in perspective? Reveal the crusade against the BE’s as pointless when they could just let go and look forward?
I think that Suramar implied the later at least.
As for Void Elves vs Blood Elves. Sigh my dude, to swipe the potential of civil war born out of ideology and politics to a proxy of the fight between to cosmic forces with little set up feels like the biggest waste.
Now if they had made the Void Elves with the Silver Covenant, now that would have been sweet, cause we would literally have paid of the set up by upping the ante to the cosmic level, now that would have worked.
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Blood Elf players want exclusivity of their aesthetics and lore to a degree it doesn’t allow anything too close on the alliance. “Identity” Ion calls it.
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Eh, they would fit more or like the same. I mean, as long as BE are okay to be complicit to genocide at least, because that one seems like a big overall difference. Ends justify the means is a doozy with the Horde.
Blood Elves will fit on the Horde for as long they don’t have many issues with how things are run, that’s the point.
And the alliance was defined by the values of the High Elves that fought alongside it, the ones that respected that duty. Not by the elves that solely did it out of obligation.
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Correct, yes.
The high elves left the alliance a long time ago. When the events happen in W3 they were already separated and defend their territory alone. Later, Prince Kael’thas rejects the alliance. And finally, the Lord regent again rejects the alliance.
In conclusion, the high elves (blood elves) reject the alliance 3 times.
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Some High Elves never did. They stayed on Alliance lands after Anasterian’s decree.
Hence they weren’t “separated” and in QT.
Nor were they part of Kael’thas forces when he left.
Nor were they part of the Blood Elves that didn’t join the alliance in MoP.
The High Elves we want, -and have been abundantly clear on- were never part of the Horde, were never Blood Elves.
You have been told this before, yet you are unable to understand.
Why?
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