I don’t recall if it were the RPGs or not, but Wildhammer Dwarves were described as taller and more slender than dwarves from Ironforge. The comparison I’d always heard was that they were the Luigi to Ironforge’s Mario. That already sets them apart pretty well.
Add in some Storm Hammer tossing racials, and you’ve got a good race right there.
Yeah! This is what I was referencing. It would be very easy to make Wildhammer of all dwarven clans distinct. They are the most distinct culturally too.
This further adds to your point of Void Elves being a weird addition, I see many more High Elves than I do Void Elves on my RP server by a longshot. I’m unsure if adding more High Elf lore would really damage them any more than their existence in general already does, though.
This would be interesting, although I’d wager extremely controversial. I think this would be much more interesting than a copy+paste of the same elf for a third time with different racials and backstory.
I’m curious what they’ll actually do for Midnight with the vague inference of the ‘unification of elves’. I wonder if they may dissolve the barriers entirely between Thalassian elves to open up across-the-board customization and racials to make them faction agnostic under one ‘Thalassian’ banner, or if they truly ever will just make High Elves playable in their own right.
Ion explained all the reasons why already. They were never gonna do a carbon copy race with the only difference being the eyes.
Then the people who want High Elves will still be unhappy, because what they want is to be visually identical to Blood Elves.
Which they technically already have with the high elf customizations. All blizz needs to do is change the visuals on the racials if you’re using the high elf customization
Which we know they can do because they did it for the man’ari skin
Not quite.
Speaking anecdotally, MOST people I know who wanted/still-want High Elves, want the Silver Covenant elves to be playable. In other words, tentacles, blue/purple skin/hair and all, if the original Void Elves had been made from the Silver Covenant, most of those players would’ve been happy (even excited at the idea of exploring void themes). Some would’ve been unhappy about no natural hair/skin tones, but as Alleria kepts hers, there never was a reason for Void Elves not to have them either.
But, as with any group, the people who wanted High Elves aren’t a monolith, and do not speak with one voice.
Some people just wanted the Alliance’s High Elves to be playable, looks be damned.
Some people just wanted blue-eyed, blond haired elves on the Alliance to be playable, lore be damned.
Some people wanted the Alliance’s blue-eyed, blond haired elves to be playable.
Some people wanted High Elves with a strong focus on the Ranger aesthetic.
Some people wanted High Elves with a strong focus on the Mage aesthetic, using Dalaran as a racial capital (guess they dodged a bullet considering TWW).
Some people wanted High Elves with a strong focus on the Light aesthetic, bringing Paladins and priests to the foreground.
Some people wanted High Elves to be playable for the express purpose of usurping the Blood Elves, of, “taking back Quel’Thalas,” and painting it blue.
That last one, to my experience, has been a minority, mostly trolls feeding off of the paranoia of Blood Elf players, who already have legitimate concerns about their race’s narrative. Doesn’t mean one or two of them aren’t completely serious, but to say all High Elf supporters want that is a long shot. Speaking for myself, I don’t want playable High Elves to have anything to do with Quel’Thalas. It’s a step backwards in their narrative. High Elves put Quel’Thalas lower on their list of priorities than something else. Mana veganism, politics, racial prejudice, etc… for whatever reason, the High Elves turned their backs on Quel’Thalas. I really don’t like the idea of them being involved in Midnight, but the elven unification comment makes it a forgone conclusion that they will be, more’s the pity.
Again, speaking for myself, I don’t need High Elves to look like a carbon copy of Blood Elves. I accept that is the most likely outcome just because it’s the path of least resistance, but that doesn’t mean it’s my ideal outcome.
My current main is a void elf Hunter, using the Dark Ranger customization, (I LOVE the new Dark Ranger animations and playstyle since it got revamped; it’s SO good.)
Granted, I’m playing on Alliance side this time around just because it made more sense for me, as TWW fits a lot more thematically for Alliance than Horde, and since most of the characters we’re adventuring with are members of the Alliance.
THAT SAID, if I do want to connect with my character in an RP manner… My character would, what, be an undead ex-Blood Elf that decided she also wanted to dabble in the void because you can’t turn off Entropic Embrace? This character of mine apparently has quite a bit of an identity crisis. That’s a lot of hoops to jump through to rationalize why a Dark Ranger Void Elf exists. I mean, it’s possible to do so, but you have to mind-cannon quite a bit to make it make sense.
I would much rather play as a High Elf Dark Ranger instead; the Void Elf stuff on top of all of that just makes it jarring to rationalize a backstory for my character. And I’m not even one of those aforementioned High Elf fans. I just feel like trimming some of that fat would make a much easier backstory for my character. And Entropic Embrace, anytime it procs, is extremely jarring for me, Dark Ranger Void Elf Undead things considered.
That said, I don’t think it would cost them much on their end to actually just implement High Elves at this point. A minor developer not working on anything important could probably get it worked out in a week since the customizations and hairstyles could all just be borrowed from Blood/Void Elves. The only thing new thing that would have to be worked out would be racials, and I suppose voice lines for /silly and /flirt.
Just headcanon you are a High Elf and call it a Doyalist approach.
That’s fair - though I was thinking of it more on the technical side - as I understand it the Vulpera was built off the Goblin skeleton… but then you have the Kul Tirans - who are human - but very much have their own skeleton.
Entropic Embrace is problematic in that it is an uncontrollable racial effect. Players generally don’t like those.
There are a few other annoying tidbits with Void Elves. You can’t go into the Cathedral of Light at Stormwind without getting lectured, and NPCs, when referring to you by race, call you a Void Elf. Minor stuff to be sure, but anything that breaks immersion is problematic for RP’ers.
I learned to ignore those relatively minor things over the years. Once you learn to do that, it’s not as immersion breaking as one thinks 
What is relatively minor to one person, can be quite devastating to another.
They really should have just made void elves be Alleria’s high elf followers sucking on void juice with her instead of failed blood elves.
Pretty easy, they still wanted high elves to exist. Along with all the lore potentially they can bring.
High elves shouldn’t exist.
You spelled void elves wrong. Those technically shouldn’t exist when the silver covenant was right there
And yet they do, and as we barrel our way though TWW I cant wait to see what Blizzard plan for Midnight.
You know, Nov 31 is suppose to have news about the future of WoW, maybe we will get news about Midnight itself.
They are a mockery of everything their race is supposed to be. They are nothing else but stooges for their human masters.
It’s actually canon lore, Tides of Darkness describes them as being both taller and leaner as well as wilder than Ironforge dwarves. If you look at their models in game they are generally on average much more tan skinned than your average Ironforge dwarf too.