Easy. Add playable high elves in the form of the Highvale, who would be far more nature based than both regular high elves and blood elves and preferably wouldn’t have mages as a class option.
There was.
They already are by virtue of being grey skinned orcs.
They are very much not the same culture. They descend from the same culture, but the scars of the Third War irreversibly changed both high elves and blood elves and the ravages of the void greatly altered the void elves.
They got given a hamburger when they wanted pizza. A reskinned void elf does not a high elf make, nor does a blue eyed blood elf.
No, some people complaining about Man’ari not making sense is not the same as High Elves whining from day one. It began with griping about Gnomes beating out Elves as a playable race, then Blood Elves weren’t good enough because they were the wrong faction, then Void Elves weren’t good enough because they didn’t have the right appearance, then Void Elves with the right appearance weren’t good enough because we apparently need a third allied race to represent the 17 High Elves still alive that aren’t named Windrunner.
Dragonmaw are more of a blue-grey, with different eye color. Probably some tattoo variations.
Elven culture is unchanged between all three. Some aren’t allowed to visit the Sunwell. That’s it. Kal’dorei, Shal’dorei, Sin/Ren/Quel’dorei are the cultural barriers between elven peoples (and I suppose Naga). Moving into Dalaran doesn’t erase your cultural background, especially for someone as long lived as the elves.
If a restaurant is incapable of giving you what you order, stop eating at the restaurant. If you attempt to order a burger for 20 years and always receive pizza, you’re a masochist. Although, a more fitting analogy in this situation would be walking into a pizza joint and demanding a burger for 20 years and not being happy when the staff there keep trying to make you a burger despite it not being on the menu.
This is as insane as thinking they will ever go back on the removal to faction barriers. In a scenario where high elves are added, void elves will still remain. The point is to add options, not add and take options.
Which will Not happen. Blizzard is not gonna add races that already exist and look identitical. They will either add Etherals or Ogres next not high elves.
It’s not the same because they are very different.
Blood elves aren’t high elves, that’s why.
Void elves are not high elves, they do not play as high elves. There are 2 void elves alive that aren’t named Windrunner too.
If you go with “different eye colour” as something that sets them apart, well, in that case they don’t have tattoos anymore. You should be able to apply that logic to elves too.
No? Blood elven culture was much more militant and had a mindset of “we do what we must to survive”, while especially Highvale elves turned their backs in everything that made high elves into high elves. They do not practise magic to the point that they were unaffected by the arcane addiction plaguing the rest of their kind.
Kaldorei.
You’re right, but an invasion that wipes out 90% of your race and being exiled changes your culture a lot.
In that case just play a Mag’har to be a Dragonmaw with grey skin, I guess. Or regular orc if you want to join their clan.
Kinda digging your own grave here, because people only want customization options in Orc for Dragonmaw—the exact thing High Elves have been given twice.
They already have them. You can be a grey skinned orc with glowing eyes in game right now. You can even join the Dragonmaw Clan, that’s much more than any high elf has.
All this comes back again to just needing to redo the character creation menu and making a system that allows broad customization and choice among the many different options we have.
Simple something of broad category, nation, customization. Can add High Elves as their own allied race without making screen look bloated or have the orc/tauren/draenei effect of ‘how are any of these actually different from one another.’
Again, blue-grey, different colored eyes. It’s actually pretty spot on for the incessant bleating about blue eyes that they caved and delivered on (again, twice) that still wasn’t enough.
More importantly, and more in line with the crux of the issue, if Orcs had a skin hue and eye selection that correctly conveyed Dragonmaw, they would be content. You wouldn’t see thread after thread after thread cropping up demanding playable Dragonmaw.