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

The key word there is significant. The blood elves certainly adopted a few new customs, but by and large they still overwhelmingly represent the culture from before the fall of Silvermoon.

Changes that have since been abandoned since the restoration of the Sunwell.

It has nothing to do with the adoption or shift of cultures.

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It seems to me what Elisande said about the alliance high elves, is evidence enough that they have changed physiologically, but it just isn’t depicted ingame. In other words, many of the silver covenant are likely to be half elves.

Apart from religion, there are more cultural differences between the states of New York and Texas than, say, between Bosnia and Montenegro. Just sayin’.

Okay, cool? I’m not sure of your point. But uh, cool.

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No, I really don’t think you’re putting enough thought into this. Obtuse questions, loaded questions, and straw men arguments are all things that will stop a normal person from shifting down past your posts without giving you any serious thought. Given that this exchange of ours started with you having to try to bait someone into paying attention to you, you should really jump at any opportunity to learn these terms to avoid these behaviors.

Not really true though. There haven’t been any new significant cultural ideals espoused by the Blood Elves. Or at least, none that you’ve been able to show.

As for forging new allegiances, that’s an entirely separate topic, one that you probably don’t want to try to grasp until you have a handle on the cultural one.

Balkanization is about…

…the division of a multinational state into smaller ethnically homogeneous entities. The term also is used to refer to ethnic conflict within multiethnic states. It was coined at the end of World War I to describe the ethnic and political fragmentation that followed the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the Balkans. (The term Balkanization is today invoked to explain the disintegration of some multiethnic states and their devolution into dictatorship, ethnic cleansing, and civil war.)

Words have meanings, adopting some “or it is something else?” posture to deflect criticism of your decision to use the word is disingenuous.

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So…you’re making an assumption based on…

Musical notes?
Your desire to be unnecessarily verbose isn’t working in your favor. Even less so, is the fact you admit you have nothing to support this assumption outside of your imagination.

We shall let a divided people decide! Those who want high elves will surely be able to give an objective, unbiased judgement that is not at all influenced by their desire to move along the lines which support their desires.
I have a bridge to sell you.

I don’t know enough about the political differences between you and your neighbor or you and your brother to know if that’s pertinent here. I get what you’re saying, members of the same in-group can have divergent opinions but I think that’s missing the forest for the trees.

You say that political affiliation is not cultural, but I’d push back on that and say that who you choose to formally align and share resources with does inform what your cultural values are. Even if I met you there and agreed that it wasn’t cultural, it’s still a significant consideration when instead many would say that being biological and genetically the same were all that mattered.

Beyond the political, in what way would you classify the Quel’dorei resistance to mana-tapping living beings, which is what the Sin’dorei began doing and was the main reason thrust of their schism? That seems like either ideological or philosophical to me, or at the very least a moral one.

I get that it’s not a 1:1 translation for a multitude of reasons, but I’ve come to understand that as a result of Balkanzation, two ethnically homogenous groups can become bitter enemies, and that seems a worthwhile analogue for the relationship between the Quel’dorei and Sin’dorei, and an example of why reducing them down to their genetics is short-sighted.

I’m not particularly carrying water for High Elves. I main Horde and would not play High Elves if they were available. The fact remains that in Quel’thalas the Farstriders once practiced some rudimentary druidic magics as wardens of the wildlife in order to protect and maintain it. It’s obviously fallen by the wayside. In the wake of the Scourge, the Blood Elves had to slay a lot of the treants that cohabitated Eversong Woods with them. It was a sacrifice they made for their survival.

Like I said, it wasn’t as robust or developed as the Cenarion style of Druidism. Whether or not you like, it’s a ready made avenue to deepen the difference between them and their Blood Elven kin if they decided to rediscover and recommit to those druidic ideas, much like the Gilneans did when they experienced a renaissance of their Harvest Witch practices.

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Of course we’re not going to let a divided people decide. We’re going to let a profit driven corporation decide. On one side of the scales the players responsible for leveling 29,000 Blood Elves to 120 and the nebulous and undefined value the game would lose for them if their already limited story were split between them and High Elves. On the other side of the scale, an indeterminate number of people who would make High Elves and the nebulous and undefined benefit it would have for them.

And of course, the wild card of expectations versus implementation that we can see very clearly in the response to Void Elves. Twice now Blizzard has added “high elves” to the game, the first time they quickly became the most popular race in the Horde faction. The second time they were placed behind a grind wall and still became the third most popular race in the Alliance faction. Counting based on number of characters that have reached level cap.

I’m legitimately not sure if this is an argument for or against playable High Elves but the trend to date has been Blizzard writing High Elves into the game in a way consistent with their game design. People wanting something different than the game’s story and design will allow, and immediately asking for something else. I can see a scenario where Blizzard keeps adding different versions of “Alliance High Elves” that are just distinct enough from the Legolas/Elrond fantasy to keep players demanding more.

Oh no, my post was in reference to Fyorsing doing her whole “I am not a crook, they are!” Bit.

Just look at Korea…

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That’s still not what balkanisation means.

Not a result of balkanisation.

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To address the whole of your argument, ultimately I am leaning towards Blizzard deliberately choosing never to provide the high elves in a form that those who desire them want them to be.
Primarily because it is anti-thetical to the design which they have followed for 15 years. They wish to move in themes which are twisted from the expectation. Worgen, for example, are humans who are cursed, savage, and blood thirsty in their nature but have overcome it. As such, they are on the Alliance rather than the typical monster faction as one would expect.
On the other side of the coin, you have the blood elves, the people named formerly as high elves, who are driven by an iron will to do whatever is necessary to survive, even if it means working alongside those who were former enemies.
Ultimately, we’ll only ever see twisted versions of typical versions of races from the fantasy genre.

North Koreans and South Koreans do not hate each other. The actions of their leadership who control everything cannot be taken as the cultural views the civilians hold towards each other.

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Humans? Gnomes? Dwarves? Orcs for that matter.

I get what you’re saying, and Blizzard does so very love to subvert an expectation. But they have also bowed to the fantasy tropes in order to make their game lore accessible. And I would put Tolkien elves even ahead of Scottish dwarves in a ranking of tired and obvious fantasy tropes.

All of those races have a twist on them in some way or another.
Gnomes, for example, aren’t known for their engineering skills.
I don’t remember the twist Dwarves and humans have, but they do have them.

Orcs moved from typical evil bad guys to being a more nuanced, almost human, in their categorization now.

We should make the Alliance the bad guy faction.

Are you sure?

Literally the only thing the dwarves have to separate them from literally every other dwarf ever written is their ancient history.

I am 80% sure. They do have a characteristic that breaks from the typical Dwarven trope.
Might be their technology and origins, or it might be their friendly nature.

Definitely not that, dwarves are always the fantasy race that getta da boomsticka.

The division of Korea into North and South Korea would be considered Balkanization.

“to break up (a region, a group, etc.) into smaller and often hostile units” - From Merriam Webster

This seems to be a semantic argument, but I’d argue the division of Sin’dorei and Quel’dorei fits that definition.

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