I know that this race was shoehorned in, but their backstory just doesn’t add up. From the information we have, new void elves are not being created and all things considered, there isn’t a point in creating new ones since it’s mostly a corruption of one’s body without many benefits rather than a blessing in disguise.
Back to the subject, from their unlocking scenario, we, the hero, help Alleria save the exiled Blood Elves from a terrible fate due to messing with powers beyond their skills, the group is attacked by a group of Ethereals that turn them into the what we know today, the void elves.
Numbers-wise it doesn’t really add up, I mean, we get a handful of researchers, 15 or so turn into the first void elves, the playable void elf was probably included there, but then out of nowhere they get a full army, filled with skilled rangers, warriors and void-casters, not only that but that means the player is a double traitor, first betrayed the Alliance and joined the Horde to then betray the Horde and join the Alliance.
iirc, the Blueberries were a group of elves that were never fond of the Horde (and may have privately disliked joining them). If true, I don’t believe it’s accurate to say that they “betrayed” a Horde they never wanted to be a part of (or even liked) to begin with.
That’s as much as Umbric says about it. Though, early on, it may have been a fairly common sentiment, as BC Quel’thalas has priests MCing public dissenters, while arcane golems patrol the streets, making threats.
I agree, the army of the light is one such thing, however, as I said, the problem is that void elves went from a very small group of people to an entire army out of nowhere.
So to me in my own head, every battle is in scale when you play scenarios. The 20 or so void elves you saw were likely not all that were out there. If I remember correctly, Umbric lead a relatively large group of blood elves that weren’t particularly happy with the horde anyway. the whole disavowing them because they’re poisonous to the sunwell was the last straw, and they rejoined the alliance.
I guess that would make sense, it just feels… Odd? We know they wanted to use the void to defend Silvermoon, so you can see rangers and footmen joining up with the researchers to learn more about the void.
It’s just that the race feels very superficial, in a way.
There was a lot of hints throughout Legion that helves were being more and more active. When velves were revealed it became a, ‘wait a minute, why were helves everywhere and then we got this race?’
My personal interpretation is that the Devs saw how popular Alleria’s reception was by Alliance players, and wanted to give us the ability to be more like her. Thus, we got velves instead of helves.
Unfortunately the Devs completely misinterpreted that data if that is true. People liked Alleria, the Second War Veteran, who still didn’t like the Horde and would kick butt and take names. No one really liked the whole Void thing they pushed onto her, but most people accepted it as a, ‘Well, whatever, it’s not like there is an entire race of elves doing what she’s doing.’
Personally I feel for the players, and in terms of lore for these particular classes that: It squats and takes a giant Elekk Poodoo all over Blood Elf Shadowpriests, Warlocks and rogues that embrace the Void and/or shadows. I want them to also address that. Did we get leverage on Rommath? Threaten to expose? Make a deal to hunt other void-beings with powers to protect the Sunwell?
The lore is sloppy, not only for the Void Elves; but also for the Blood Elves and especially for the players that like to roleplay. There’s more plot-holes when it comes to this, than there is in Alterac Swiss Cheese.
like, they have been exiled after the sunwell was cleansed ? during that period?
how much time they have been out there?
alleria was missing for decades and she just shows ups and save them ala deux machima?
So they knew that their research was dangerous and still continued to do it?
what do they want? they want to conquer silvermoon for good? and they are going to kill all belfs to do so? what about them?
and they are so few that i could count them in this post:
also destroying the concept that the alliance is racist when we got jaina “purge the sunreavers” working side by side with umbric to create a void portal.
and the alliance accepting them to walk in their cities.
not even speaking about the “we can’t have helfs because they are too few” what about now?
What a mess.
That’s the best I can figure. Umbric says his people never felt any loyalty to the Horde, so we know for sure it was after the Blood Elves joined the Horde. After that we can speculate a bit. If Rommath believed Void magic was a danger to the Sunwell, it was likely after the Sunwell’s restoration as a partial fount of Light magic, given how volatilely Void and Light react to one another.
They even stated most High Elves are Horde, because Blood Elves are only called blood elves to respect the fallen and sacrifice of their people during the assault of the scourge – That, is referenced many, many times. In Books, comics and even one of the starting quests. Yet people keep arguing with it / demanding proof ignoring the countless amounts we have, lol.
It’s inferred that Void Elves are being recreated by recruiting the High Elves and Blood Elves who are joining them in exile. We see new Void Elves on the second island training with a senior teacher who was taught by Alleria. The only way that’s possible is that these new students are in fact new Void Elves. Consider by the time this teacher teaches his new students, we’ve had a time skip from the scenario where the original void elves are created. We know that in that scenario there were no monks among them. We saw mages and warlocks. Where did the playable void elves learn these new classes if they’re from the small group that was affected by the ethereal tampering? Either these students are novices and if they were created at the same time as their teacher they’d be driven insane if they haven’t learned to silence the void by the time their teacher did. We also know that the ren’dorei population is large enough now to field not only an army to fight at the battle for Lordaeron, but large enough to consistently help on missions and on Zandalar. How is this so? Well either they’re recruiting, procreating or their population was WAAAAY larger than what we saw during the scenario. All of these 3 options are possible, but considering the time they’ve existed from End of Legion to beginning of BFA we have an abundance of ren’dorei that don’t make sense unless one or more of these options are true.
We know Void Elves are constantly being whispered to, and meditation, extreme focus is needed to remain sane and silencing those voices. Listening to the void at your own peril. That’s what the locus walker taught these elves. I hope with Wrathion’s new potion will be a boon to the ren’dorei and I want answers on the population boom.
haha if this potion that Wrathion came up with really can silence the void. The Void Elves are going to be one of the most powerful races in game with almost no consequences for their actions.
Expanding on more Void Elf lore is actually a part of my warlock minion expansion idea. Learning more about their methods and magic could explain a lot and maybe even that they have ways to reproduce the event that that turned them into Void Elves.
It’s going to be needed very soon if we do have a Void expansion or Death theme expansion after BFA. We know just from Occam’s razor of BFA lore that new Void Elves have to be created or born. We cannot just have so many ren’dorei fighting in so many conflicts and say, “Oh they’re all that small elite corps.” When every time the classes, characters and forces displayed are radically different from the original small group we saw in the scenario.
If you did the recruitment scenario and them compared it to the scenario setting up Battle for Zandalar raid, the mission table forces, the Ren’dorei are all over Nazjatar, Stormwind and Boralus. The 2 scenarios from Battle for Lordaeron and Zandalar showed hundreds participating. We also have the Assault on Zandalar when Alliance gets to ride void t-rexes how on Azeroth do they have forces enough to Assault a racial capital? Two words - Recruitment and procreation
