Why High Elves Don't Work: A Primer

Then you run into the problem the Draenei had at their introduction. Horde likely gets something they’ve been clamoring for, and Alliance stares at the new arrival with a collective “Who?”.

And I dont see that as a bad thing. To me Draenei are one of the more interesting playable races in WoW, but thats just my opinion

I think the Jinyu would make a cool AR for the Alliance.

Even tho I agree, I would hope they would get modifications the there face rigs to at least show expression in line with other races

Perhaps, but that’s not going to fill the void of AHE, and it’s going to be looked at with frustration. Nevermind the fact that Blizzard seems uninterested in making the Jinyu actually playable, as, to my knowledge, there aren’t separate male/female options.

True, just thought it would be cool if I were playing Alliance. I seen the first female Mogu in the new vale by the repair dude. So they could probably do something about female Jinyu lol.

I dont think its a void that needs to be filled, the narrative for high elves broke the traditional norm in WC3 and continued that in TBC. Especially since the option is already available on team red.

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Well, the issue now is that Blizzard is apparently not capable of writing a storyline that pleases Alliance players enough to allow them to get over not having access to High Elves on the Alliance. Given the way the Alliance is written, it’s incredibly difficult to bring in other races unless it’s from nowhere. Which will still draw frustration because the door remains open for the Horde to get races rich in backstory and lore, like Ogres or some other monstrous race, because Horde is where ‘monstrous races’ go. Alliance is where ‘noble races’ go, and there are vanishingly few of those in Azeroth.

Dragon races should be a thing, imo. :dragon_face: :dragon: :fairy:

If blizzard wants to do that they’ll have to accept that many won’t like it.

In either case they’d have to have something happen to, with utter finality, end the high elves.

Like having the SC, and the other high elf groups associated with the Alliance become void elves.

More importantly they have to stop having them (high elves) show up in alliance stuff at all.

I dont’ believe it’s that important an issue for the devs to make changes to the game to satisfy a group of people who are hung up on a race they want.

Fair enough.

Though that is why I said;

If blizzard wants to end the request, they have to end the high elves on the alliance as a thing totally.

Sure…I guess I never expect the game devs to take our requests for anything we’ve been asking for seriously enough to change their game.
The people asking for other races aren’t expecting the game to eliminate all sethrak, for instance.

I agree. There’d need to be some event that ends any hope of High Elves being playable, and that means not just the Silver Covenant but ALL neutral HE need to be eliminated. Whether by politics and Lor’themar getting through to them and peacefully recruiting them into the Horde, or by violence. Either an elf-targeting engineered Blight or some other reason why every single neutral HE now lies dead.

Let their stories be told and explored through their ruins.

You said it.

I’m legally obligated to say…

Sethrak sethrak sethrak! :snake:

That’s also fair.

Though at this point why keep the high elves? They have void elves to act in their stead so why hold onto them?

Why not just straight up say the high elves in alliance territory are going home or joining the void elves? Why not have Vereesa take the SC to join her Sister Alleria in their joint cause?

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What’s funny is, I asked in the high elf thread 2 weeks ago. If Belfs got the optimization to have blue eyes what would you do? Would you go Horde?

The response I got was," blue eyes wouldn’t matter because, it’s about the high elf lore."

2 weeks ago I had no idea this would happen. And most of the responses now are angry Alliance mad about blue eyed blood elves lmao.

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I personally don’t care if they choose to change the high elf story within the alliance. But if their sole motive is to appease player requests that seems unlikely and possibly hurtful to the game.

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If we’re being entirely honest, this is just a continuation of the denial that the SLs announcement provoked.

We all knew what more customisation would result in.

It looks like we’ve all collectively decided not to accept it at last but dig our heels in and carry this on for another 6 months.

I believe that the issue isn’t about having High Elves as an Allied race but that the Void Elves literally had nothing substantive lore-wise and if Blizzard was seeking to give Alliance the Blood Elf model, why give us some spun-from-whole-cloth option when Blizzard has High Elves kicking around everywhere (Silver Covenant comes to mind). Why make up Void Elves when Vereesa’s Silver Covenant Elves would have fit the same niche and would have been a really interesting dynamic with Alleria and Vereesa against Sylvanas and Lorthremar trying to do damage control with what appears to be a civil divide amongst the Children of the Highborne in Exile. In other words, it would have pulled from existing lore to tell a compelling story.

When Blizzard made up Void Elves, with no history, no lore, and no emotional connection to the Alliance race, and did so when Blizzard gave the Horde to monumentally lore-heavy races while giving the Alliance two lore-light/non-existent races. Blizzard set up the churn that is “High Elves for the Alliance.” This is on them.

Because the answer to this, as I had stated elsewhere, was to have Alleria bring back the remaining High Elves in diaspora to Silvermoon, and have those High Elves become Void Elves. You still keep Alleria visiting the Sunwell, you just keep the Elves themselves outside the city gates. You still have the void entity issue that ensues. But the consequence of the exchange sends out a void energy that latches on to the High Elves who aren’t already soaking in fel and/or holy energy. These High Elves then become the Void Elves.

This solves everyone’s problems.

  1. There now are no more High Elves, as they are either Blood or Void with maybe Vereesa, her children and a few spare High Elves lurking about.

  2. You have Alleria responsible for the High Elves she stirred to action becoming Void, thus she takes personal responsibility for their training.

  3. You have Void Elves tied directly to lore and not some concocted story of a nobody NPC and an event no one knew about and did not even exist as background noise within the story of the Blood Elves.

The problem with Void Elves is that they simply do not have any lore narrative beyond a couple of quests in Legion. Compare that with the Nightborne, whose story was crucial for Legion, or the Highmountain Taruen which every player grew intimate with (Blizzard’s hand-waving notwithstanding) and you can see where the dissatisfaction is coming from. The only Allied Races the Alliance has which have any narrative weight are the Kul’tirans, via BfA questing and the Dark Iron, via decades of gameplay. Every other Alliance race is an empty placeholder - something to give the Alliance so there is some degree of parity (do not get me started on the monstrosity of mechagnomes). This is the root cause of the problem. All Blizzard needed to do was to give the Void Elves a background rooted in lore and not cut from whole cloth and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

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Again totally a fair assessment.

I’m just saying if high elves as a request is to end something like that would be needed.

Still stands for me. (though I love my belf and he’s totally getting blue eyes) blue eyes were never important to me about the high elf request.

That said I’m also not that interested in high elves all told. Just supporting those asking cause I see it as a relatively reasonable request…

Some pros go way overboard though. Much too invested.

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