I wonder if they were re-exposed to the Well of Eternity over time if Blood Elves/High Elves would turn back into Night Elves.
They should right? Not that you can get to it.
Just like Blood Elven eyes would have eventually stopped glowing green on their own.
but it does exist genetically. We can see that as groups of people labelled as a certain race possess certain physical markers that define said race.
I believe they could but Elune played a part the first time. I am sure they would if the moon goddess thing and well of eternity repeated the event.
DnD djd it with drow turning back into dark elves.
@Fliktarg: I can see your confusion on the issue. Yes there are physical and genetic MARKERS related to that âraceâ, but those variations are just that, variations within the species. Race as an objective existence just does not exist. On a biological and genetic level, you can have a pattern but it doesnt create a sub species group for a small variation. Its why race doesnt exist, there is no basis for it. I would gladly explaun it in detail, but there are PHDs that do a far better explanation of it which you can find.
Race as we view it, however, just isnt the same as WoW.
My Nightborne takes exception than that. Though I canât get the robe I need to play him to drop.
Re-naming isnât enough to create a distinct âRaceâ
Magic has to be involved.
If we were having this same discussion and Blood Elves werenât exposed to Fel Energy Iâd tell you they were High Elves.
I want all of the different groups united forming a new government. The silver covenant would exist as the official military of the new faction. The player character would be a new recruit.
Iâm not sure she did. They just started to worship her because the moon reflected in the pool.
I guess to be more correct Iâd need to argue that the High Elves would turn into Nightborne basically.
Because Night Elves currently are suffused with a mixture of nature magic and arcane since their moonwells have still got some well of eternity water going in them.
Also itâs interesting to note that the Nightborne that are playable are going to turn into something else because of the Arcanâdor fruit.
I wonder if theyâll be offered customization options for that slow change?
Silver Covenant seem like the easiest path to victory to me.
Itâs fine if the others join in and they rename the organization or to Silver ElvesâŚ
Itâs kind of a disservice to Quelâdanil Elves though since theyâve got their own thing going.
Not all high elves were exposed to fel energy. Many drew arcane out of creatures and other areas to avoid fel usage.
Tbh, id consider Demon hunters a truly different race
Unlike Dark Iron, there arenât dwarves within the Horde to worry about (though many speculated for years about clans like Dark Iron going Horde and Grimtotem going Alliance).
Also, they stated in an interview that Dark Iron specifically were added due to massive player feedback:
I canât think that feedback was greater than High Elven desire, so it stands to reason that the absence of High Elves is not because they donât have your feedback, but because they donât plan to act upon it.
The issue is less âHigh Elves look like Blood Elves, change thatâ, although youâd still need to, and more âAdding this race is a major blur of faction lines and infringing on major themes that are part of the Hordeâ, and honestly thatâs not something Blizzard has seen as a feasible thing to get around. You guys boil it down to âOh we just need new hairstyles and an idle stance.â, ignoring entirely that doesnât solve the problem (and is an inaccurate comparison to proper Nightborneâs differences, poor/rushed player models nothwithstanding).
Iâve rebuked the inevitable comparisons to Pandaren multiple times (I can hear the counterpoint before I even type this) but for fun Iâll do it again. Pandaren are 5% of the game, and that is counting both sides. Given current Blood Elf and Void Elf populations, we could easily approach 50% of this game being a Blood Elf or High Elf. Itâs far more disruptive than Pandaren are because frankly Pandaren are fat bear memes, literally running April Foolâs jokes historically, that most players donât identify with. They were also introduced and designed to be Neutral and given a choice, as Blizzard âDidnât want to deny anyone a chance to play Pandarenâ.
They denied Alliance the high elves. This happened back in TBC. While scattered remnants of Alliance loyalists still exist, they do so only to serve as Blood Elven foils as Izzabelle stated earlier. Nothing they have done in WoW has advanced their story, their people, or their identity, or served to make them anymore than Alliance or Blood Elf set pieces. Replace all instances of High Elves in this game with humans or 7th Legion forces and not one dynamic would change.
And as much as I find Alleriaâs Void storyline to be borderline character assassination, at least they are writing something new, making internal conflicts for her lest she fill a role identical to Veressa where she just shows up against Blood Elves now and then to be mad at them, even if she does end up dying by BfAâs end (Alleria really is her own full topic).
To close, Iâll post another segment from the interview I talked about earlier that always sticks out as relevant to this debate, emphasis mine:
As far as Elf Cosmology goes. Demon Hunters are a different race. Or⌠you know⌠are Dark Trolls. The sameway Felblood elves are a different race.
According to Ask the Devs Round 3.
When were Blood Elves ever a major theme of the Horde?
And how did literal Night Elves on the Horde and literal Blood Elves on the Alliance not blur the faction lines already?
Except Blood Elves and High Elves have wildly different fantasies?
I would have accepted this idea part and parcel about the fel radiation if Alleria, Arator, and Veressa all got radiated with green eyes the moment we landed on Argus, the highest concentration of fel energy in the known cosmos, not even considering the High Elves in Outland which they even point to in their own quote.
But this is a game and fictional universe made by mere mortals, got to handwave some stuff every now and then.
Funny thing that being as it is wrong. Playable High Elves have been a request since the Vanilla WoW beta (and yes by High Elves I mean the ones that are not Blood Elves and have been allied with or members of the Alliance since the Warcraft 2 )
Iâm pointing out that there isnât a clear threshold when the parameters vary from race to race.
What I am getting at is that at least you could make the comparison to a group that got exiled of their country: the point of the Dem/Rep comparison is that it lacks contextual nuance of the things that separate High/Blood elves beyond biology. The Dem/Rep comparison is more fitting of two opposite groups within the same government, like early Farstrider/Blood Knights BEâs.
Also we canât just dismiss that the BEâs spent like 4 years getting radiated with fel, how much of that didnât get reversed by the reignited Sunwell, and how that affects them on the long run.
Again, I think itâs a bad comparison because it lacks nuance.
But back to my main point with this, iâm not arguing that High Elves are a new race; Iâm arguing about the vague nature of what âracesâ are within universe and how many AR are simply slightly differentiated, with different and with parameters not necessarily present in all of them.
Iâm not saying High Elves are a different race, Iâm saying that other AR are not different races either.
And I argue that beyond a dependence to a magical source and small cosmetic changes, the difference is minimal in terms of divergence.
Better, but not entirely accurate either, because one of the groups is exiled from the homeland, with far less power and no real way of enacting any pressure within their home countryâs government.
Nah man. Itâs a serious oversight.
All the Allerian Hold Elves are literally in Outland and donât suffer from Fel Corruption.
I guess on the other hand they arenât surrounded by Fel crystals though. Or draining Mana wyrms that were going nuts for being near them.
But itâs still odd.
My point with dark irons was to prove that you can change details about a race once it becomes playable without worrying to much to stick to what existed previously. Dark irons are not the only example, almost every playable race underwent changes once it became playable, but dark irons are the best comparison.
It was just my answer to all the âonly eye color is differentâ argument.
About faction shenanigans, I point void elves. They are 3.4% of total player races at max level. They are behind pandaren. And, unlike the Horde, the Alliance has serious competitions to high elves in the form of night elves and humans, which will always be popular.
And also needs to be pointed out that Alliance is the less played faction at max level anyway.
But my prime answer to elves being too popular is: make the other races just as interesting, damn it! BfA has unsurprisingly reduced the blood elf population for the first time in years, and thatâs because more races are getting attention. Straight back orcs are awesome, Zandalari are awesome, Nightborne are awesome (and would be even better if they got more attention).
Blizzard makes blood elves wildly popular not only by ignoring other Horde races, but also making blood elves one of the two paladin options and the only demon hunter race in the Horde. When demon hunters were introduced, they should have been available to at least one more race per faction (orcs and draenei were the obvious choices). That Blizzard failed to do so only made blood elves more numerous (almost 1/4 of blood elves are demon hunters! Thatâs 9.1% of the entire Horde!).
So, I donât buy these reasons to prevent giving Alliance players a popular request. When someone says that high elves would unbalance things because they are too popular, it just means that void elves were a subpar option made to be worse on purpose. How can anyone be happy with that?
There are brown orcs in Outland, how that can be if Outland is so seeped in ambient Fel?
Yeah no, the idea that just living in outland should give elves green eyes doesnât make sense.
Again, what gave BEâs green eyes was using leaky power reactors.
Also, orcs got green skin because of the ex-shaman warlocks performing magics they didnât fully comprehend carelessly around them. The Magâhar didnât have those warlocks around.
As an Allied Race players would need to first be max level already, unlock them in-game, and level a brand new alt from 20 to 120 or purchase a race change
Thinking High Elves would suddenly overtake the Alliance core races and be anywhere nearly as popular as Blood Elves are on the Horde, or go above Humans and Nelfs, is just alarmism.
Not to mention the notion that Blizzard would shut down the idea because itâd be way too popular and bring too much money.