When will high elf fans stop demanding more?

Lore Story Forum
382

Not giving someone what they asked for, and instead doing everything but was is asked for is not “listening to them”. That’s as close to textbook malicious compliance as you can get.

You should look at the old threads. The ones where piles of suggestions were provided on how to make them work in-world. Funnily enough, one of the threads had a concept for a separate settlement of high elves in that bit of land that is not being used in the eastern kingdoms. The hardest part of it was really writing a convincing narrative for how the blood elves ignored this new settlement and why none of the Alliance governments tried to establish contact with them.

Doing anything with Silvermoon was far, far, far from the first choice, if my memory serves me. Because factions cities tend to be off-limits for various reasons. Of course, BFA threw all that out the window (Teldrassil and Undercity) but I wouldn’t mind returning to the rule of “don’t touch capital cities”.

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383

Quel’Thalas will be bigger at Midnight, perhaps the revamped starting zone will be moved to a new safe location.

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384

I am not talking Details. The bottom Line of having elves that look like normal NPCs was it. Blizzard gave in. High elf fans know now Blizzard will do it again when they ask hard enough.

385

Yep, Blizzard might cave (again, for the fourth time) in favor of appeasing the children throwing a tantrum because the Christmas present under the tree wasn’t the right one. And it still won’t be enough.

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386

The answer is clearly no considering your comment.

I think the childish ones are people throwning a tantrum about something that has no effect on them but hey you do you. Ultimately this is a game, and people can ask for whatever they want and Blizzard gets to decide if we will get it or wont.

But over the years, it has been the “no” vote that has been losing ground. No classic servers, no way to make gold into a real world currency, no demon hunter of all things. Well, those nos are a thing of the past.

387

High Elves = opportunity cost of delivering on a unique race if it is added as a full race or allied race. Silvermoon is a Horde capital. You cannot deliver on one or both of those things without it affecting other people. And even if you could, I don’t care. Call it crying, call it an echo chamber, call it whatever you want—they’ve been obnoxious enough over the course of this game that I am actively pulling for them to never get any of their asks ever again.

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388

Silvermoon being neutral would allow those who tried to kill all blood elves twice a foothold. That’s the best reason not to do it.

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389

One, you don’t even need to do that. Just give the void elves the ability to change their racial to arcane looking ones and the ability to change the racial nameplate and boom.

And Dalaran was an Alliance city and it became neutral. And with how Warcraft is going i suspect we are more likely to get neutral cites in the future. Hell, Shattrath was the draenei capital and it is a neutral city. Heck, Gilneas is now neutral as well.

Pot meet kettle.

390

I’ll preface this next part by stating outright, even as someone who wanted/wants High Elves, the window passed, and unless Blizzard is going to make them visually distinct (such as using Alexstraza and Nozdormu’s visage forms as the base model for them), then I don’t think it’d be a good idea to add them.

This doesn’t seem to be a factor Blizzard considers. If anything, the bulk of Allied Races, and more recently, Earthen, seems to indicate they favor adding a new race that requires as little work as possible to implement. Even Dracthyr reflect this, as their visage forms use pre-existing skeletons, and their Dracthyr forms aren’t fully able to make use of transmog.

Considering you had Devs stating in tweets that High Elves were one of, if not the most requested Allied Race back in BFA when Blizzard said, “Tell us what you want,” coupled with the low cost, low effort implementation adding them would entail (assuming they use the existing Thalassian model), the probability of seeing them added is surprisingly high. Again, this is based on trends we’ve seen with Allied/New races added to the game since BFA. There is a clear pattern, and that trend skews in favor of High Elves eventually being made playable.

The idea of them taking the slot a, “unique,” race could occupy is nothing more than wishful thinking by a playerbase that doesn’t know what it wants half the time. Whenever I see a thread asking for more customizations, the most common trend I see is, “As long as X race doesn’t get anymore; give other races a chance,” and then they don’t even say which races they want to see get new customizations, let alone what kinds they’d like to see added.

More than that, most, ‘unique,’ races tend to fall flat in popularity to begin with. They’re not exactly generating massive revenue in cash shop transactions for race changes or the likes. Heck, when Earthen got announced at Blizzcon, the silence was deafening: they were practically dead on arrival.

May it remain so forever.

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391

Elves are a disease. Bring back Arthas and Sylvanus. We’ll take care of them.
Ironforge should reign supreme.

392

Gilneas is not neutral.

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393

I don’t know if I should tell you what Sylvanas is, or what your posting avatar is.

394

Neutral in the sense that the Horde can freely go there. Which is likely what will happen to Silvermoon.

395

Dalaran was never a race’s capital. Dalaran was never a playable Alliance capital at all in WoW. Shattrath was a refugee ruin led by a naaru. Gilneas is not a neutral city, just like Amirdrassil is not a neutral city, because both are part of The Alliance. Then again, I’m talking to someone who apparently thinks respawning mobs in a game means said mobs are canonically unkillable, so I’m not even a little bit surprised.

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396

What you want is an army of High elf NPCs to talk to. Gilneas is only neutral on paper in reality Not a single Horde character is anywhere to be seen.

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397

It is less about what Blizzard considers and more about how lame it would be for Alliance players to get stuck with yet another Allied Race that is just a tweak of their existing roster. Like, imagine losing out on Ethereals or Saberon or Arrakoa or Naga (or whatever) just so you can get Thalassian Elf Copy-Paste Number 3.

Also, people have been asking for a Dragonmaw customization on Orcs for a long time, which would be less of an ask than even the customization options given to Belfs/Velfs to placate High Elf fans.

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398

And this will be what will likely happens to New Silvermoon. Nominally a Horde city, functionally neutral. Like it or not, the age of separate cities for the factions are probably at end. But if it isn’t, I will still be pretty happy because it means the Alliance will have its own corner of Quel’thalas fully under its control.

That was never what I meant and you know it. That was in response to Dread somehow believing that just because we kill the named bad guys it means we suddenly kill everyone who participated in the attack on Brennedam.

399

Well, that’s not even what was being talked about, so cool, I guess? Members of the Alliance calling Silvermoon home =/= Gilneas or Amirdrassil, so why even bring them up?

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400

That’s going to yield different results with different players. I know plenty of old school Alliance players who’d be thrilled to see High Elves added, some who’d be pleasantly surprised, some who’d shrug as they really don’t care, and some annoyed that they didn’t get Murlocs.

I will tell you, I cannot think of a single Alliance player who was either thrilled or even pleasantly surprised by Earthen. The universal response in the groups I know was, “Meh.”

Ethereals would be an interesting race, but if we’re honest, I think the Horde needs them more than the Alliance does. The Horde’s really hurting for a race that traverses the universe, or even different planes of reality. Ethereals have an interesting culture that melds curiously well with both of the Horde’s elves, and their Goblins (even Vulpera to an extent considering the Ethereals have no home world).

I’d love Saberon as an Alliance race, but whenever I see them get brought up, most people seem to think they fit in with the Horde. Same generally goes for the Arrakoa and Naga.

Therein lies an issue that was made evident back in BFA. Players, and even the Devs, all seem to think these races just fit into the Horde. Players on both sides were interested in Vulpera, and then they joined the Horde. Even today, when Sethrak get brought up, a lot of Horde players feel they belong in the Horde, despite their counterpart already being in the Horde. The Alliance can’t really get a unique or interesting race because Blizzard doesn’t take the effort to add any and make them have a narrative with the Alliance that’d head in that direction. Just look at the Alliance’s BFA Allied Races! In the end, Blizzard came up with…

Checks Notes

Fat Humans, Amputee Gnomes, and Draenei with 10% more Light.

Kind of obvious Blizzard doesn’t know what to do with the Alliance in terms of new races. The minute they make an interesting race, it gets friendly with the Horde, and at best had lukewarm relations with the Alliance, signalling that it’ll eventually go Horde.

All of that having been said…

One reason I don’t think High Elves will happen (despite developer trends favoring their addition), is that with Void Elves and Blood Elves existing, and the last two new race additions both being neutral, there’s small point. At most, I think we might see the two races combine/go neutral somehow, but even that isn’t necessary at this point. Completing customization options on Void Elves, combined with unlocking class options, more or less completes the High Elf aesthetic on the Alliance. Add a toggle to Entropic Embrace, or an option to change the racial tooltip, and Blizzard will have effectively cemented it.

401

Eh pretty sure Amirdrassil is now open to every undead Night elf. Even those that may still feel they belong to the Forsaken.

Ultimately Warcraft is changing. You will either have to adapt to it or keep being miserable. So lets see what the future holds.