The forsaken don’t let petty things like no jaw prevent an epic beard.
Yeah, the days of when helfers would say they’re just glitched models, until danuser came out and confirmed one of them to be canonical.
I never really understood why folk were always so surprised or annoyed when blood elves were given blue eyes.
Lore said they’d get em back over time. I just always assumed the only reason blizzard didn’t add them was just to make it obvious which group of elves were aligned with the player faction or not.
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Oh, that was clearly the reason. The blue eyes were a clear definer between a blood elf and high elf for quite some time, but even during this time we had blue eyed blood elves, and I always wondered what their intention was adding them.
I think many people were angry about it because they worried it meant that they’d never get high elves, since it was really the sole distinction.
Honestly? I think it was a reactionary take towards the self imposed idea of differentiation between playable races options. if High Elves had any chance of being playable, then shouldn’t the green/blue eye divide stand? If BE’s didn’t get blue eyes, then there was a chance for HE. But if BE did get blue eyes, then that meant HE’s became more unlikely than ever.
And pretty much both sides believed this, from my end I did see a lot of anti HE people using the argument to deny the ever possibility of HE’s, thrown at me heh. (and of course, I did see it used the other way around) To me it was one of those things that wasn’t playable on BE’s because they weren’t representative, too outlier of the mainstream, but that could be changed/evolve.
But I am happy that we have overall moved on from the idea of strict differentiation as a necessary caveat of the discussion. The idea of aesthetic exclusivity is really not compatible with the nuances of the lore, specially when it comes to Blood, Void and High Elves.
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This is the most true conclusion imo, I mean even Ion up until the reveal of Shadowlands character customization had stated just weeks prior that ‘Blue Eyes on Blood Elves doesn’t make sense because they’ve evolved from that’.
So it truly was seeming like it was a signifier to keep the unplayable portion of Thalassians exempt from the playable portion.
Exactly, it’s nice to know that they are finally moving away from aesthetic exclusivity and providing a more nuanced approach. We see this with how Dark Ranger customization was added to Void Elves and not kept from them.
It follows that anything High Elf will be given to both Void Elves and Blood Elves. And then the two can be differentiated in all the other ways that are specific to their cultures of where they are today.
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Kinda this but there was always a lot of lore changes/retcons tied to the request mixed in with a little bit of “Blood Elves are the true High Elves!” mindset.
It made sense for some to have blue eyes but the lore made it clear it didn’t for the entire races.
Then the Head Dev said it didn’t make sense, which dispelled all the lore arguments. Then they implemented them which meant you don’t NEED huge lore reasons for everyone of these customizations anymore.
Which made me pretty happy on both fronts after dealing with it for years.
And some straight up anti elf players. Who hated elves and wanted to deny any new elf race they could. Pretending to be on the anti’s side.
End then end, the Blood Elf fans who just wanted Blue Eyes got what they wanted, the ones who wanted Blood Elf lore changed to suit their narrative got denounced and lost the method of achieving it, and the ones who did not want any form of High Elf on the Alliance shot themselves in the foot.
So I’m pretty happy lol
And purple eyes have no explanation what so ever!
I still would have preferred allied races for Wildhammer and High Elves with changed up models and animations and their own voices/racials/ect. And for Darkfallen.
And Void Elves are still in some kind of limbo as to what is actually going on with them. It not being clear if these options affect them or not. Which I really want fixed.
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Pretty sure he said this due to the large outcry when those first images cropped up showing Blood elves with blue eyes (even though im pretty sure they weren’t intended for blood elves.) There’s definitely a lore precedent for some Blood elves to have blue eyes because Danuser already confirmed as much in a tweet about a particular blue eyed blood elf.
This is exactly what im saying. Literally just adding a void elf npc utilizing full high elf customization would be proof that they are recruiting elves beyond the initial corruption of the blood elves at the rift. Basically confirming that the High elf wayfayers in the rift did eventually join their ranks.
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I’m sure it was mostly just to keep some differentiation while Blizzard was still staunchly determined to avoid a lack of such.
I don’t think it should have (nor did it) dissuade anyone asking for what they wanted to play.
Bah the whole eye arguments were always a bit silly. Whatever magic your elf fiddles with is the eyes you end up with. High or Blood it won’t matter. Kinda like the population arguments. Its settled territory. There isn’t anything to argue because the devs already answered those questions ages ago. (And all of it is rather of little consequence anyways)
Yeah. For good or ill the Blood, High and Void elves are intrinsically linked and likely will continue to be when they’re brought up.
I’d still like to have differentiations between blood and high elves and void elves (options wise) just for a little flavor but I find I have much more loose limits on what I’m personally willing to see shared. lol
I do wish they’d just had a dark ranger npc in the rift or something to give us full claim to this. I like to imagine two of them one a “high elf” one and the other a “void elf” one. High elf one just saying “yeah decided without Sylvanas I had no real hold to the Horde so I went back where I wanted to be.”
and the void elf one just saying, “I was raised during the war. Now I’ve come home to the rift to help my people.”
Just simple things so there is no ambiguity… plus you know… light additions to lore.
We have a few allusions though!
…
I also wish they’d explain that one. lol
This. Right here. I would have preferred this. (Keeping Void Elves)
Theres also the Cdev that literally said they’d come back with time to some Blood Elves with the reigniting of the Sunwell.
My ideal scenario for this is to show the Void Elves conduct their own ritual, created from the remnants of the ritual used to turn Umbrics people but refined by the void elves and from the teachings of Alleria/Locus-Walker, that has the wayfareres and scholars turned into proper void elves but come out as Umbrician, Allerian and a mix there-of.
Gives us all the options and shows how more are made in one fell swoop.
Personally I am okay with Customization over AR’s, to the point I’d rather have many of the AR’s as customizations instead. IMO, AR’s should be for races that necessitate a different model, which I feel WH and HE do not need.
Ideally tho, we should also have more customization options when it came to racials, voice set and nomenclature, so you could choose things like a “Wildhammer Dwarf” origin.
Let’s hope that happens because after like seven years in game the question of Void Elf continuation is PRESSING.
Yeah, just a lot of arguments made from the standpoint that strict differentiation was a necessity, which it really isn’t now.
I really think that this would work really well when it comes to “styling” rather than phenotype. Like hairstyles and jewelry and warpaint/tattoos that reflect their specific cultural background, and have skin tone and hair color be shared.
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My gosh this is beautiful work, I wish these option were in-game!
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I do think the High Elf Wayfarers and Silvermoon Scholars in Telogrus have always been meant as implication that they are studying the Void to become Void Elves -more so like Alleria than Umbric’s group- but I would really love a stronger confirmation than just an implication.
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It would be ideal to have in world explanations for sure but if it’s having that or far more customization available I’d rather get far more customizations into people’s hands than whatever manpower and time it would take to draft up a script, with a custom npc just to explain the choices available.
Like yes ideally they’d do this but they already explained why they have not. I’m a big fan of cohesive lore but WoW is definitely not the game for it. As much as I would like for it to be.
I don’t think in my case its about the… either or?
Like it would have been easy enough to just add the random NPC with a few small lines just as it is to add the customization. Blizzard is this massive company with a massive budget, with a massive team that should be flexible enough to just do what needs to be done to put out a good quality game… with lore and rpg elements abounding.
Blizzard should be ashamed of the half-efforts they’re relegated too by what appears to be internal red tape and bickering.
And despite everything I just said I also don’t have any issues with options being added to just give… well… options.
I just see that Blizzard could but is failing to fulfill significant aspects of a rpg in lieu of expedience and a focus on only one small part of the playerbase. Its maddening.
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Well yes there really shouldn’t be a ‘this or that’ when it comes to something like adding an NPC in (or heck even fixing bugged ones). But clearly that’s not the case, and I’m sure Blizzard understand that themselves.
The playerbase for sure has let them know more than enough times. Not to say that we should stop doing it, but only that it shouldn’t be a surprise.
I don’t know if you have watched Preach Gaming before on YouTube but he recently released his video on visiting the Blizzard Campus and sat down with many of the team members on WoW.
One of his sit downs was with Josh Allen aka ‘Lore’ the CM. During their talk, Lore stated that the way giving feedback back to the devs for any issues works something like ‘Okay tons of players hate the way Covenant abilities lock in works, but the team has already heard and know that, they don’t need to be told ten more times that it’s an issue’.
So essentially it’s like, we don’t necessarily have to harp on the same pain points, once we open up and discuss a pain point, his notion was that it’s better to move on to another issue or what not because they’re essentially giving feedback to the team each day / week and it gets added to a list and then prioritized from there.
I believe Blizzard can do a better job to make the world feel more cohesive like what’s suggested with adding a token npc here and there, but also it does seem like they have priorities.
An example of this is the transmogging of white/grey items, where they initially stated it’ll be in ‘by Dragonflight’ and then nothing of that was seen from the datamining so a lot of players went to online forums (r/wow for instance) and kept making a lot of posts like ‘did Blizzard lie? Wth!’ ‘Where is white/grey tmogging? They said it would be in my DF?’
And I remember posting about how it’s probably just not a priority compared to whatever other things they need to do for the expac release.
Anyway, that was weeks ago, and then I think in one of the interviews that came out this past week they finally responded on that point saying it’s still coming but they need to work on it more.
So we really have to pretty much pick and choose sort of how we want to focus our efforts.
Like that Lightcrown poster, would it be nice to see a Void Elf NPC with an Alleria look? Sure, but that’s not gonna stop me from enjoying my High Elf customization during the interim “I can live without it”, it doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of the game.
There’s just a point where sometimes you, as a player, have to understand that what might be a priority to you is not a priority to Blizzard, which sucks for having to deal with that but also it just makes sense if they’re having deadlines where they need to make the most amount of people happy with certain additions/changes they are going to choose the solutions that have the biggest impact.
In the case of character customization, the biggest impact is giving players the options, whether a lore explanation in-game is present for that or not.
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cool artwork, I wish you luck on your endeavors.
You don’t need confirmation. It’s all fiction. Just something someone made up. Don’t like what the developers are saying, no problem. It’s a role playing game, make up your own story for High Elves.
I think you’re missing the point of the appeal of discussing fictional lore tbh.
No, I’m adding the concept of freedom in role playing fictional lore.