Why High Elves Don't Work: A Primer (Part 1)

[Hecatone-burning-legion (Hecatone)]

Jinyu or Anakoan? I’d think they could be very colorful. That’s what we were discussing.

[Avarie-farstriders]

There’d be some green and purple in there too I am sure, but still. I don’t find them interesting. Jinyu were pretty bland story wise. Ankoan weren’t much better.

[Hecatone-burning-legion (Hecatone)]

Well, I think you know how I feel about the banality of a certain other race… but they could certainly sauce the Alliance up. Your opinion aside, I’d enjoy having them around.

[Avarie-farstriders]

I’m not against them being added, but I wouldn’t play one. It wouldn’t get me to come back when my game time is gone.

[Itoldyouso-illidan]

Understandable

[Hecatone-burning-legion (Hecatone)]

I don’t think it would for me either. I don’t prioritize playable races like that… but I would like it.

[Avarie-farstriders]

At this point I am just disappointed in the ARs we got as well as the storytelling.

[Hecatone-burning-legion (Hecatone)]

as well as the storytelling.

I’m right with you there!

[Bastéala-wyrmrest-accord]

After seeing this entire debacle play out since Void Elves were revealed, I have noticed a couple things. Firstly, that Ion, and thus Blizzard, haven’t changed their stance on High Elves since Blizzcon. Secondly, that High Elf Hopefuls keep bringing up the same arguments that they claim supports High Elves.

Despite our Lead Game Director Ion Hazzikostas stating quite clearly on two different live streams that High Elves don’t make sense as an Allied Race, why they don’t make sense, and that there are no plans in the immediate future for High Elves, I am here to refute each and every one of the copy and paste points people keep bringing up, and give clear, logical explanations as to why they don’t work or make sense, in hopes you all can reach the same conclusions Ion and Blizzard have!

Ready? Let’s begin!

Oh I’m ready, let’s see the trainwreck.

1: “High Elves are different enough from Blood Elves!”

I see this one a lot, but no. Sorry. They aren’t. The High Elves went through no mutation, no physical change, no evolution or otherwise genetic alteration after Quel’thalas was sacked by Arthas and the scourge.

This is a decent point, but there’s one small flaw. There’s a race in WoW that is seamlessly identical to their faction counterparts. They’re called Pandaren.

2: “Blizzard did Pandaren for both sides, they can do Blood/High Elves on both sides! How could it dilute faction identity more than Pandaren?”

I’m going to go ahead and say most people asking for High Elves don’t play Pandaren. Why? Because they represent the lowest number of players within their own faction out of ALL races. Last number estimates show about 2.5%, per faction. Combined across all of WoW, roughly 1 in 20 plays a Pandaren, whereas Blood Elf numbers are the most populous among Horde races, having been roughly equal to Human numbers in Alliance for most of WoW since TBC.

Also, for or those that don’t know, Blizzard regrets doing Pandaren as a Neutral race, to the point that I can say we’ll likely never see another Neutral race. Since MoP, it’s basically impossible to write Pandaren lore now, because their forces are split faction, and we haven’t seen them do anything notable in WoW since MoP. Their identity is basically nothing.

Ah you addressed this, good. I’m still going to counterpoint. Pandaren weren’t exactly popular out of the get go. From what I remember, many of the Pandaren haters felt the race was out of place. They weren’t popular, so why would they see continued representation in storylines beyond the odd cameo?

Also–Pandaren lore in the Horde doesn’t really make sense any more after what happened with Garrosh–not with the Pandaren’s ‘leader’ in the Horde being treated as he was, but that’s par for the course for half the Horde’s races, isn’t it?

3: “High Elves’ lore and history is rich enough to stand alone!”

Except any High Elf history is also Blood Elf history. High Elven buildings, tabards, crests, architecture, vehicles, weapon style, etc. is Blood Elven except painted blue. The only notable High Elven characters left are Alleria and Veressa, but Alleria now leads and represents the Void Elves going forward, leaving only Veressa. The two have been separate for only 30 or so years. Not nearly enough to diverge or have enough unique history.

That’s probably true. I’d argue that void elves have even less time divergence, however–and fewer numbers if I remember right.

4: “Nightborne are just Night Elves, so we should get High Elves even if they’re just like Blood Elves!”

This argument is stupid, and I’ve never use it personally. A better argument with night elves with nightborne would probably be the arc’andor, and what race helped cure the nightfallen of their woes. It wasn’t the Sin’dorei.

5: “High Elves chose not to feed on demonic magic! They sated their magical addiction through other means! Their culture is so different!”

If I make myself a ham sandwich and offer you one, but you tell me you don’t like ham and would prefer a turkey sandwich, I wouldn’t turn around and call you culturally different from me.

I mean by that logic the Void Elves aren’t culturally different either for consorting with void magic. Moving on.

6: “We can make High Elves different enough from Blood Elves! Look at all these tattoos and tribal motifs we made! Void Elves are not what we want!”

Re-imaging the High Elves to all look like extrapolations of some Warcraft 2-Era rangers isn’t solving the problem. The problem is that Blood elves are High Elves. The problem is that the fantasy of a traditional LOTR “High Elf” is a Blood Elf.

Blizzard hasn’t been deaf for all these years when Alliance ask for High Elves. It is NOT a secret, but they likely took a look at High Elves and agreed that they are just Blood Elves in fantasy, skin tone, hair color, origin, and feel, with the only difference to speak of visually being eye color.

So they made an attempt to see how they could spin and mix up a Thalassian elf enough to merit inclusion on the Alliance. They made a compromise. They gave it a prominent Thalassian leader with strong Alliance ties, and they provided it with a unique, flavorful aesthetic to set it apart from other races, most importantly their Blood Elf counterparts. In these areas, I think Void Elves were a success. They also currently number greater than any other Allied Race of either faction, so it sounds like most Alliance are enjoying them.

Let me ask you this–would it have killed Blizzard to put in a little effort and make the void transformation akin to worgen? Looks different during PvP, gives people the Helf aesthetic if they want it, is more consistent with Alleria’s void potential, and may even have allowed for a more visually interesting void form.

7: “You say there’s not enough High Elves left, but there’s even less Void Elves, yet they are an Allied Race!”

Let’s start with basic stuff. Actual NPC numbers, towns, factions in WoW, etc, do not represent canon numbers. WoW is a representation of a multi-game IP. Example: The canon number of people in Goldshire is somewhere in the thousands, where as in game, I don’t think you can find more than 30 NPCs.

The point being, we don’t know how many High Elves are left. We also don’t know how many Void Elves were created. People’s perception that there’s less Void Elves than High Elves is based on in-game representation, and Void Elves were literally just added, so of course there will appear to be less. This has definitely changed going forward as you can already see them in BfA events, and they even have their own Island Expedition team. High Elves, barring a single NPC here and there, will only see less and less limelight as Void Elf stories move forward.

By that logic you’re also extrapolating. Common sense could come into play though. Using the void was considered highly radical, and got Umbric and his people exiled from Silvermoon. Silvermoon City itself doesn’t seem impacted by the loss of the (at the time) void cult. Statistically speaking, their numbers can’t be that significant.

8: “High Elves were there in the Nighthold cut-scene! They represented 1/3rd of the forces there!”

The two main factions involved in that quest were the Blood Elven forces under Liadrin and the Night Elven forces under Tyrande. Veressa made an appearance so Elisande could insult her and her people for diluting their bloodline with humans (ouch!). Because she showed up to help Tyrande with a glaive thrower and a few of her Silver Covenant does not somehow equate to being one third of the forces there.

Eh if you really want to throw shade, Varessa herself is a bit of a dubious character in the lore, and there’s plenty of sordid thoughts on the subject. Still, I’m sure you can understand why someone might be frustrated to see High Elf NPCs teased–often–to Alliance players, with no access to play them.

9: “Blizzard reverted their stance on Classic Servers! If we make enough noise and cry enough, they’ll cave on High Elves!”

No, definitely not, and if this is the reason you keep arguing about it, please stop. The two are not at all the same. The lack of Blizzard Classic servers was causing unauthorized private servers to pop up and recreate this experience, and Blizzard has to protect their IP, so they shut them down. However, they realized there was more of a crowd/market for this than previously thought, so they announced official Classic servers to cater to this demographic.

If you honestly think there’s as many people clamoring for High Elves as there were for Classic servers, you severely overestimate your vocal minority.

Very true. Still it’s not like being quiet will change things. The real question is whether hardcore helf fans will roll Horde and appease Blizzard, or unsub. Honestly though, I doubt the latter will happen enough to make a difference, personally. I got no argument for this one.

10: “Ion doesn’t know his lore. Ion isn’t listening to us! Ion should be fired!”

Ion isn’t Lead Game Director because he doesn’t know his lore. He’s also not the only person that weighs in on these decisions, though it’s easy for everyone to bash him because he is the messenger.

Ion in my opinion does what any good developer does: experiment, keep what works, cut or fix what does not. Through the Q&A’s, we’ve seen the progressing stance on unpopular things in Legion like Legendaries, RNG, AP grind, etc. and in BFA, all of these are getting addressed, while popular things like Mythic+ are seeing dungeons specifically designed around it.

Ehhh…BFA Dungeons being designed around Mythic + Keystones is a little…generous, but that’s a topic in itself.

Blizzard’s PR right now isn’t exactly ideal. Like Ion or not, the man’s silver tongue needs some work. He isn’t the main reason for some of the Blizz hate out there, but he ain’t helping.

11: “If Blood Elf is the High Elf Fantasy, then NIghtborne is Dark Elf Fantasy, and Horde are getting those! They look just like Night Elves!”

This is borderline. One good look at a Nightborne will make them very clearly different from a night elf. Very clearly. But if the question of similar models is due to say…PvP or something–this argument loses some of its luster. One good look will separate a night elf from a nightborne, but in something like PvP, you may not exactly get a good look before you start getting your face melted.

If you hadn’t caught the obvious, the Nightborne was basically a Legion-era retelling of the Blood Elf storyline:

Very true. I speculate this is why the Alliance players found it so much more compelling, and were very interested in the race. Compared to Horde or dual faction players, who seemed less enthralled because they had already seen this story before.

12: “High Elves being barely different from Blood Elves is just like Lightforged Draenei being barely different from Draenei, or Highmountain being barely different from regular Tauren!”

Yes, of course. But unlike High Elves, Draenei and Tauren are not crossing faction lines. They are just more Alliance Draenei. More Horde Tauren. More Alliance Dwarves. More Horde Orcs. The only two Allied Races thus far that “mixed it up” would be the Void Elf, a compromise to the Alliance to get the Thalassian model, and the Nightborne, a compromise to the Horde to get the Night Elf model.

Using any other comparisons between Allied Races to merit High Elves is a pointless endeavor, because Blizzard specifically catered these two to be opposing and opposite compromises for each faction. For an Allied Race that “crosses faction lines” a more drastic set of rules and distinction would be required.

I think the biggest problem with the allied races and the frustration there comes from the utter lack of effort and imagination for the Alliance Allied races. Horde pretty much got every race they wanted. Void Elves are, in the end–off brand high elves. Lightforged, while cool, barely get any screentime compared to the Horde allied races in Legion. Seriously–the only Lightforged with personality is T’paartos–a one and done LFD.

13: “All the reasons Ion gives for not allowing High Elves could be used to exclude Void Elves!”

The real problem is that they visually, culturally, and aesthetically were not distinct enough from Blood Elves to merit including them on an opposite faction, and so Void Elves were the end result of the iteration Blizzard went through to give Alliance a “flavor of High Elf”.

The real problem is that like so many of the Alliance Allied races, there was a token effort put in. Lightforged got a slight makeover, Dark Irons are a palette swap, void elves are a palette swap with very little meat to their story, Kul Tirans are fine–although they didn’t get three heirloom sets, and do I seriously need to mention Mechagnomes?

CLOSING STATEMENT

At the end of it all the core issue that, especially in Battle for Azeroth, the faction identity is important, as are the races within those factions. Adding High Elves would indeed damage that identity. To say that adding High Elves to Alliance wouldn’t cause damage to Blood Elven or Horde identity is ignorance. Blood Elves have been part of core Horde story for over 10 years now, while High Elves have been a “me too!” inclusion at best, or completely absent at worst.

One might argue that giving Blood Elves to the Horde in the first place was a disruption of Horde faction identity. BFA seriously painted just how confused the Horde faction identity is in the first place. You show the burning of Teldrassil and it’s a coin flip whether a Horde player will cheer, or start getting really pouty about being the bad guys again–to the point that it would put the high elf salt to shame.

While I know this post won’t silence any of the increasingly desperate, baseless, or straight ignorant arguments being brought to this forum, reddit, MMO-Champion, the extremely radicalized/disturbed people on the “High Elven Discord” and the rest of the greater internet, I feel this forum needed a point by point breakdown of the broken record that is the High Elven argument.

And my post probably won’t dissuade any classless Horde players from dancing on Alliance’s grave yet again, although I do hope you give me the same courtesy of reading my words as I have yours. I’ll admit your arguments were better than I anticipated. Not used to that on the forums at all.

Also, as passionate as you may be about the inclusion of High Elf, I am infinitely more-so passionate that High Elves stay out of the Alliance, where lore has had them for over a decade.

In the end it doesn’t really matter. Blizzard made their decision. There’s a strong perception that Blizzard has massive Horde favoritism, and why wouldn’t Alliance feel that way? The Horde are karma houndinis in the lore, stories bend over backwards to explain why the Horde’s races will tolerate a megalomaniac as Warchief–twice–and only really turn on their Warchief once they’re losing. Horde’s gotten pretty much every allied race they’ve vocally asked for, while Alliance gets a mixed bag of “meh”, at best.

We’ve talked about numbers a lot. Alliance numbers have been plummeting through all of BFA, particularly Uldir, and the Allied Race controversy hasn’t helped. I’m closest to the RP community (WRA, big surprise right?). Outside of a few well established communities, most Alliance are either going to Moonguard now (as migration often happens when a community starts bleeding numbers like Alliance WRA has), faction changing, or just plain quitting.

Alliance players aren’t happy. Blizzard hasn’t given them a lot of reason to be happy. Any victory Alliance players get is bittersweet: won the war? Horde gets away with near genocide of the night elves. Had a lot of focus in Legion? Nightborne went Horde to negate most of it. It’s been a hard knockin’ life for Alliance fans since Cataclysm, and being Azeroth’s Gotham City that beats the Horde but does nothing to them is paltry compensation.

If Blizzard wants any remote pretense of both factions seeing play, something needs to change, and it starts with actually putting some genuine care and effort to both factions.

[Hecatone-burning-legion (Hecatone)]

It looks like you spent a lot of time on that. Maybe you should clean up the quotes? Something didn’t connect and it’s pretty unreadable.

[Bastéala-wyrmrest-accord]

Yeah I noticed that. Took a hot minute to fix it. Apparently you need to have the [/quote] below the quoted text–beside won’t do. First time I’ve seen that one.

[Vitaminshot-area-52 (Vitaminshot)]

very thorough and well thought out. thumbs up. sadly, its too late.

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

Horde’s gotten pretty much every allied race they’ve vocally asked for, while Alliance gets a mixed bag of “meh”, at best.

i dont think alliance mains are selecting alliance races now. i think horde mains are selecting alliance races they dont mind playing on their alts or they think would be funny to force alliance mains to have to endure, such as diaper gnomes or thicc ballet dancers. in fact, they’ve even went as far as to paint a very thicc elf and claim they want that to be the alliance’s next race. alliance is just the george mcfly of warcraft now

heres our high elf
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/af/07/04/af0704070046761e550b1e66592b1438.png
isnt that funny.

[Bastéala-wyrmrest-accord]

Honestly I’m only bothering with Alliance–and by extension, the game–because of my guild, my community, and the writing involved. It sure as heck isn’t the game or most of the stuff Blizzard is putting out.

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

you have a writing community? sounds cool.

[Evelyisse-moon-guard]

That elf hot though. She fat with an F.

[Bastéala-wyrmrest-accord]

Yeah, I’m a dirty RPer. What can I say? I enjoy writing storylines and after doing 10 Man Heroic and my old server not being able to accommodate 20 man mythic, PvE became kind of a been there, done that for me until Battle for Dazar’alor.

It’s not my community, though. This toon is just pretty good at getting into other groups, and that makes a little community of writing from there.

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

i use to run creative writing rpgs. had one for dune, star wars, star trek and vtm. the dune one was by far, the most intellectually stimulating but the star wars one was just pure craziness. you never knew what someone was gonna come up with because the extended universe cannon was enormous.

[Bastéala-wyrmrest-accord]

Ah the state of Star Wars…Another thing to be sad about. 2020 has been a bad year for some of us nerds.

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

long live luke skywalker and farewell to carrie fisher and peter mayhew.