I have to say again, if so much damage was caused by skin colors alone, we have a MUCH bigger problem on our hands than we’re talking about.
I doubt the high elves would willingly align themselves with the identity of a bunch of people who only joined the Alliance because their research into the Void was so arrogant and disastrous that even the Horde didn’t want them around. The void elves are an ally of the Alliance, sure, but it seems much more out of convenience and mutual usefulness than anything more.
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They more or less added two races when they added one race, made Blood Elves basically a neutral race, and took a large chunk of players from one faction to the other. Plenty of other issues too, it’s not just a “skin color” it’s a whole other “race”.
I thought their culture was the pursuit of a dangerous/ poorly understood domain of magic regardless of the potential cost to themselves and those around them because it might bring them power?
Granted, I’ve unlocked the race but haven’t made a character just yet but that’s the gist I got. Willing to be corrected on that matter.
What they were meant to be/could have been doesn’t fit into the Alliance that side of the player base wants, that’s why since their inception the Void Elves can’t even figure out what they are.
For some reason morally grey/edginess doesn’t mesh with the alliance that well. They get handed the perfect chance to add some spice with Void Elves and Dark Irons and nothing is likely to come from it.
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Two races in one has been a thing with the new customizations. We’ve got Wildhammer Dwarves as well as Dark and Sand Trolls now mixed in with Dwarves and Darkspear Trolls. High Elves mixed in with Void Elves seems logical. As for large chunks of players from one faction to the other, I haven’t seen or heard any indication of this. By all accounts the Horde still has far more end-game participation and players, according to metrics you can find being quoted when reading actual threads on the matter, not that all of those sources as reliable.
They pursued their study of the Void out of the intent to show it could be used responsibly. At no point have they shown themselves willing to risk collateral damage. Their studies largely happen on Telogrus, which is isolated from Azeroth, and their actions during the War Campaign show they go for pin-point attacks rather than unleashing mayhem and letting the survivors deal with it. Even when the dinosaur was reanimated in the incursion, Umbric makes a point of explaining the goal is to wage psychological warfare to reduce casualties on both sides by breaking the enemy moral, and that speed is a factor so the Void Elves can disenchant the skeleton before it’s power becomes too great to control.
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I will admit this was somewhat of an assumption on my end, I just remember countless players who played Blood Elves that had always wanted to play High Elves finally happy they could do so.
Shame. It would have added some much needed spice or “moral greyness” to the blue side.
I also realize the description I gave up there could also fit the early TBC Blood Elves fairly well. (How do you make the Blood Elves rejoin the Alliance ? Turn them blue of course! 
)
To be fair I have nothing to back this up with, but most of them already seemed to be Alliance. There were High Elf RP guilds for years where players could use Humans or Night Elves to RP as their High Elves.
I think the Void Elves do add some moral ambiguity to the Alliance. Although their actions may be responsible, they’re still evil. In BFA alone they not only waged psychological warfare (pretty dark when you get down to it), but also sent Horde Ambassadors to the Void, never to return (who knows how they died), and even assaulted Gallywix’s Pleasure Palace, killing Goblins who were either unarmed guests, or unarmed workers just trying to make a living wage.
The Void Elves feel like a pretty good representation of Lawful Evil. You can justify their actions, but that doesn’t make said actions any less evil.
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I mean, my character is a Farraki and can now look like one, too ( yay! ) but I’m still officially a Darkspear troll in all but appearance. We even have an intro telling you you have “renounced the savagery of the other tribes” 
It’s good for RPers but that’s about it.
As for the Ren’dorei, they use the powers of the void which, by the very nature of it, is always a dance on the edge of insanity. You can never fully control it. And that’s what makes it interesting. It would be so boring if it was toned down to a beneficial feature without noticeable drawbacks. They already did that with the Worgen curse.
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Just kill off the spare.
Agreed. The HElves have increasingly been redundant, especially on the Alliance side. They’re Humans with Pointy Ears, combined with BEs without the arrogance and mana addiction, with just a dash of NE nature reverence. I cannot fathom a more boring, safe race in the game. Just have a reason for the remaining Helves and Vareesa to join up with Alleria and be done with it.
The VElves at least have the potential for interesting storytelling with all the Void and Light stuff still on the Horizon. They also are essentially WMDs for the SunWell, which deals with the most annoying part of any potential Helves PC race … its playerbase demanding ever increasing amounts of the BE racial fantasy. Just bolster the VElves with the HElf forces and reps.
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It’s a weird situation. Now they’ve split the high elf aesthetic between the blood and void elves, the dirt generic high elves have less purpose than ever. It certainly sunk their chances of ever being formally playable. At the same time though, players being able to 1:1 reflect these NPCs means Blizzard might be less hesitant to actually explore them a bit, when before they were pretty much soulless background actors for Jaina and Vereesa.
… also at the same time though, it’s only the Horde’s blood elves who can fully replicate high elf NPCs. This is silly, but opening all those options up to void elves too (they’re halfway there with skin tones) would demote blood elves to a 100% neutral race with nothing unique about them. That’s also a problem.
FWIW I agreed with Blizzard’s original take on this issue, that there needed to be a meaningful difference between the A and H’s Thalassian elf option. Which is precisely why, when they determined to make them playable on the Alliance, whichever form this would take - void elves, or light elves, or nature elves (2.0), or whatever elves - should have been the end result of story progression for the high elves already in it. Not that blood elf void cult nonsense.
Effectively if you give them different hair colors, perhaps share a couple hair styles across, and just make a glyph to hide the void mode spell effect? You’d have a high elf.
I really do not know why they gave those skin options, as it made their stated reasons for needing visual distinctness moot. But, as they have opened Pandora’s box on the topic might as well just finish up.
Or if we’re really worried about visual distinctiveness just give them a damned Two Forms, like Alleria has? So while not in combat they can be as Thallassian as ever, but while in combat the Void seeps out? Just make it an aesthetic thing, it really shouldn’t be that hard to implement. And it would make people far more willing to accept the Helves into the Velves ranks.
None of us really knows why. Just as blog post saying they were adding customizations so players could be a High Elf through either faction.
I’ve seen some people say it was part of the, “Identify with your character,” philosophy that gave us dark skin tones on races we didn’t see it with before.
I’ve seen some people say it’s to answer the request players had for a High Elf allied race without adding a new one.
I’ve seen others argue that someone above Ion basically told him to make it happen because the bean counters smelled money in it.
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The fundimental issue I have with the Helves as a playable race is just how scarce their Lore actually is. Due to their own actions, especially Vareesa’s in the Purge, they are denied access to a Lion’s share of their own racial history. Its not that its not relevant, they just have no functional claim to it. They made their choices, they must live with them. Which means any lore or stories told with them needs to be whats in store for their future, rather than coming from their pasts.
The issue is … I just don’t see that reality sitting well with Alliance HElf players for long. They’ll be satisfied with the Aesthetics of the HElves only for so long before they get frustrated at the lack of story, and will start demanding more and more of the BE Racial Fantasy. It doesn’t matter if those demands go no where, it will just create a frustrating cycle of complaints about “Horde Bias”. They might even demand Quel’Thalas, or Silvermoon. I don’t trust it not to happen.
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Void Elf Paladins incoming.
To be fair, they have infinitely more than Void Elves, Lightforged Draenei, etc… quite a few Allied Races were added with little to no lore, which is sad. High Elves, if nothing else, at least have had a presence in the story for Alliance players through most of the expansions, as well as the game when it originally came out. In that respect, they have something even some playable races are sorely lacking.
Blood Elves don’t have much of a story going forward right now, which is also unfortunate. You’d think there would be a lot to tell, and I was hoping with Kael’thas in Shadowlands we’d see something interesting, but so far, not much.
Playable races seem to rarely need a story. All they really need is a reason to be on their fact and involved in an on-going story, and then to be present as the sidekicks to Humans/Orcs. High Elves have filled that out pretty well without even being playable. Granted, that’s why I also like the idea of High Elves joining the Void Elves. Just a way to wrap it all up.
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