Why High Elves Don't Work: A Primer

[Acony-pagle]

Instead of High elves, just give the alliance dragonkin that can transform into their human and high elf form.

[Saraslam-frostmourne]

Pretty sure everyone lets her get away with everything because of her mog.

[Guzzle-barthilas]

Step out of the van, sir.

[Fyarsing-sargeras]

Do 10-15 years really suggest a differentiation between “modern” and whatever antonym you care to use?

I’d wager no, but it was marginally easier to write out than “Alliance-aligned High Elves”.

[Amorallus-area-52]

Before you reply thinking I’m for or against whatever position you think I understand, it’s wrong. I’m simply responding to the points laid out. Regardless if I agree or not. Please read everything. This is nuanced.

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. Kael’thas renamed the High Elven people Blood Elves in memory and honor of their fallen, and for no other reason. It’s been only 30 or less years since Kael’thas renamed his people Blood Elves. They are racially, genetically, identical.

This statement is 100% correct.

While people love to think of High Elves as “pure” or Blood Elves as “tainted”

Blood Elves aren’t really tainted, even when using fel, but that does distinguish them from the rest of the High Elves who didn’t agree to being called Blood Elves.

which are both untrue, given the recent golden eyes of the Blood Elves

This is also true. The gold eyes are given as an option NOW because the Sunwell is restored and there are many who follow the Light that seek mana from that source.

doesn’t appear that tapping demons’ magic to sate the elves’ magical addiction did anything cosmetically permanent.

This is true. High Elves and Blood Elves can just change magic source for using Mana and then it alters them.

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

Here is my problem. High Elves are a member race of the Alliance. No one can deny this reality and fact.

Being able to play a race that already exists in a faction isn’t going so far to stretch the lore. I mean from a lore perspective, there are only as many “heroes” as there are in a raid. We’re a tiny elite force of individuals among the armies of our faction.

We all don’t make these characters and in hundreds of thousands populate the factions as it’s soldiers. No.

I mean we just twist our hands in thin air, and a mount pops out of no where. The game IS NOT the lore. The lore exists, then the game is an interpretation of that lore.

Look at Stratholm. “Obviously dude… they’re just games but every game adaptation COUNTS as lore!” No. This is wrong. Every game adaptation is AN interpretation of the lore. Not the LORE itself.

Meaning, us being able to rummage through our bag carrying thousands of pounds of ore, all slots if you farm is unrealistic. “maybe if you use a large mount etc.” Yeah. I’m riding a gryphon. I don’t see this ore. It’s invisible.

Don’t take the game as lore. Take it as a game. The lore is a separate entity, even if its’ made and progresses FOR the game. There might be a new game after World of Warcraft that continues the Warcraft franchise. Maybe it’s on Azeroth. Maybe it doesn’t look the same. Maybe the way that world functions is different than this world we play in currently.

The lore is the same. Not the game’s adaptation.

The reality that there are as many Goblin named NPCs in the Horde as there are named High Elf NPCs in the Alliance is an argument in it’s own to be understood that yes, High Elves have the population going for them.

Blizzard just needs to MAKE UP a place or town for the Alliance Helfs to allow us to have a lore reason to make playable characters of this current Ally race.

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.

I mean reading the rest of this just means you’re trying to protect playable Blood Elves as an identity on the Horde, even though we established that if Blizzard decided to make High elves an Alliance playable race, it wouldn’t break the lore in any manner and it would just make an Alliance race playable now. The population is there. All they need is to make up more lore, like how each expansion and patch progresses the lore already. Progressing the lore and writing up new towns and locations of already known races isn’t lore breaking. It’s ok if Blizzard makes up a new island with just normal everyday Humans and a massive kingdom, not like Kul Tiran, but literally just everyday humans. Do this for Tauren or Orcs. Its ok. It doesn’t break the lore.

Although with this said, I respect the identity of Blood Elves on the Horde. I think Velfs is going too far as is.

So while I accept the reality that it’s 100% plausible for playable helfs and probably it’s Blizzard’s fault for keeping them in the game so much as a mistake, I still think Blood Elves should generally remain a unique Horde identity.

We have to be fair. There isn’t much in the way of preventing Playable Alliance Helfs other than “we don’t like it.”

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.

This is a little unfair. High Elves aren’t Blood Elves. Blood Elves came second. Just because there are more of them doesn’t remove their identity.

There are standalone High Elven locations that never took the identity of Blood Elf. So you could say Blood Elf buildings are rather High Elf. But renamed to Blood Elf.

Since there are more Blood Elves, doesn’t remove the reality and fact there are High Elves still.

These High Elves live in their homes and have painted them blue before the existence of Blood Elves as a people. They used to be High Elves. So these communities that have generation after generation have been known as High Elves, don’t get changed against their will to being “Blood Elf” copycats, because a bunch of them renamed themselves.

High Elves still have their history. In those communities that predate the name Blood Elf and have continued on their legacy.

“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 agree. This is a stupid argument but it doesn’t postulize and make every other High Elf argument invalid. One stupid argument doesn’t taint another.

Intellectually speaking, those who know logic and understand it don’t stoop to such stupidity to assume “one bad apple ruins the bunch”. While that’s true for apples, that’s not true for ideology and argumentation. I’m not accusing nor did I say you said all other arguments are invalid. I’m throwing this in here for the purpose of recapping and showing those who are reading this that we shouldn’t postulate on fallacies.

“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.

You’re right. I agree that it is in fact a problem.

Blood Elves and High Elves are the same people and the writers of the lore do make some distinction between the groups these days. They’re culturally different, but racially the same at his point.

Which is why there are red buildings for Belfs and blue for Helfs. Typicall the vast majority of Helfs are allied still with the Alliance while almost all the Belfs are loyal to the Horde.

So we have differences and I personally don’t agree that it’s enough to give a race to the Alliance based on culture. They’re the same race. Even though culturally different.

High Elves being playable on the Alliance would be a different culture of the same race the Horde already have.

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.

So basically as we don’t know whether there are more Velfs or Helfs, you just postulate that there are probably more Velfs?

Well there’s something wrong with that.

Canon confirms that 10% of Helfs never became Belfs. So that means the Horde has 90% of the race.

The majority of the Helfs are Alliance. That would generally at minimum be 6% of the whole race in the Alliance.

We also know that all Velfs are ex-Belfs. Not ex-Helfs. Magister Umbric took his students from Silvermoon City. He himself is an ex-Belf. So how many Belfs became Velfs? Are we suggesting and going to assume that there are more Velfs than there are of the 6% Alliance Helfs? That would mean that the Horde only contains 84% of the whole race now. I was also just throwing in Velfs, even as a different race, here just to show for numbers.

Helfs- 100%
*Split
Helf- 10%, Belf- 90%
*Loyalties
Ally Helf- 6%, Other helf- 4%, Horde Belf 89%, Other Belf- 1%
*Velf split
Ally Helf-6%, Other Helf- 4%, Horde Belf ???, Other Belf-1%, Velf- ???

However many Velfs there are, this number comes from the Belfs. Now assume it’s greater than the Alliance Helfs at 7%.

Horde Belfs- 82%, Velf- 7%.

So now the Horde only claims 82% of the entire race.

This is why it’s a problem. I’d say that Blizzard wouldn’t make the Velfs more than the Helfs because that would be a massive chunk of Belfs that left the Horde therefore.

Remember. Each Velf means one less Belf for the Horde. Velfs probably make up only 1 to 2% of the entire Horde Belf population. I wouldn’t say anymore than this.

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.

You’re right. Cutscenes are one thing and we can’t count heads.

In reality, these battles could and should have troops numbering in the tens of thousands AT LEAST!

Look at the cinematics during BFA. Look at how many soldiers there are compared to represented in game?

The game ISN’T the lore!

With this said, just because we’re against Helfs doesn’t mean we should say that the Helf population at Nighthold was small. We simply don’t know but I’d assume that since there aren’t too many Helfs anyways, the Silver Covenant wouldn’t make up 1/3rd of the forces.

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.

I agree. I wouldn’t say that there are too many requesting Helfs. It’s a loud minority online but I wouldn’t say they’re small either.

Just because you’re against someone doesn’t mean you assume the worst position for them. There very well may be are a few hundred thousand supporters. There are still WoW players who don’t know about the whole Helf issue.

We can’t guage this but Blizzard can do that with their resources. I’m not going to claim how many there could be nor should anyone else.

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

While this isn’t exactly an argument and more of an opinion, I’m including it here because it’s flooding the forums while High Elf Hopefuls go through their stages of grief. 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.

Ion isn’t a lore master and he was told by others who know their lore that there shouldn’t be playable Helfs. I agree. Ion doesn’t have to be a lore master to be Game Director.

Being a lore master is a HUGE undertaking and Game Director is the head of everyone who makes WoW. They don’t have to be skilled and versed in every skill that goes into WoW.

Sorry but that’s impossible for anyone to think of Ion. So Ion should now how to code in all of the languages? Know how to design graphics? Know how to market? Know how to make concept art? Know everything in the lore down to how many exact NPCs with names were put into the game last patch?

People should understand that Ion runs the whole oversight. He speaks with those who know the lore more than he does. The Lore is not the most important part of this game.

The Lore is bent based off of the game. Therefore the lore doesn’t matter as much as raids.

There could exist a WoW where no more big baddies show up and therefore we have no raids. That won’t happen because they make up lore to create raids intentionally.

1: “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!”

I would say no here. Nightborne were isolated for 10,000 years from Night elf society. That’s as long as it took for Night Elves to transform into High Elves after their exile, leading to the creation of the Sunwell, and those two are obviously different races.

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

“An elven people (Blood Elf/Nightborne), physically and culturally warped by thousands of years by exposure to a mystical font of power (Sunwell/Nightwell), find their leader had consorted with the Legion (Kael with Kil’jaeden, Elisande with Gul’dan). A splinter faction within these people (Scryers/Nightfallen) rise up to overthrow their leader and purge them from Legion taint and control.”

The only difference is that Velen reignites the Sunwell, whereas Thalyssra decides to destroy the Nightwell. Either way, they culturally and visually clash with Nigh Elves, who have shunned practice in the arcane since Azshara and The Sundering, having only recently allowed Night Elf mages to tenuously practice since Cataclysm.

Back to the question, Nightborne were given unique idle animations, had the Night Elf signature flip jump removed, and given only one eye shade between them. Nightborne get Warlock as a class option. Nightborne also have severely limited customization options, less than that of any Allied race despite being the most fleshed out in Legion. Whether that serves to severely limit their palette, or indicates they were merely worked on first, I don’t know.

I find Nightborne plenty different from Night Elf, considering the entire first story arc in Legion is dedicated to explaining and detailing this, and given the changes mentioned above.

The Horde and Alliance BOTH have Dark Elf fantasies.

Nightborne look more like the Dark Elves from traditional D&D settings like say Forgotten Realms while Void Elves look more like the Dark Elves from Warhammer.

Even though this maybe is true in influence, both Velfs and N’bornes are Warcraft’s own take on Dark Elves.

Night Elves were also said to have been Warcraft’s take on Dark Elves from the creators. So I’d say that the Alliance has 2 Dark Elves and the Horde has only the High Elf fantasy and one Dark Elf fantasy.

Maybe the Alliance does need a proper High Elf fantasy traditionally speaking. I’d say give San’layn to the Horde to balance and give them a second Dark Elf.

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.

Well said. They’re the same race, the Helfs and Belfs, but different cultural groups of eachother now. Not even that distinct but different now because of what’s happened over time.

That’s why it’s such an issue to make Alliance Helfs.

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

I’m seeing this one echoed quite a lot, probably because of Taliesin and Evitel’s two videos (which, by the way, end up with the result that High Elves probably don’t make sense).

To reiterate Ion’s main points of reasoning for why High Elves weren’t going to work, taken from the two live interviews:

-Too similar to Blood Elf in aesthetic (Fair-skinned, tall, majestic, blond-haired)

-Blurs the lines between the factions (Both visually, and by population numbers)

-No clear idea of who/what High Elves are as a larger faction (Splintered groups)

-No hub where High Elves would pull from (Sort of related to the above point)

Void Elves, by comparison, addressed these in the following ways:

-Changed the visual aesthetic, dark to pale grey skin, dark hair with animated glows and tentacles, vastly different hairstyles, armor type, void skin racial

-Ties Void Elves to Alleria’s story with the Void, Alleria staying with Turalyon firmly on the Alliance, being the link to bring them into the fold (not unlike how Sylvanas became the link for Blood Elves to join the Horde)

-Clear idea of who the Void Elves are, Blood Elven exiles who dabbled in Void powers, Alleria and Locus Walker teaching and helping these people to harness and control these powers. New Blood Elf and High Elf exiles find their way to Telgorus Rift.

-A clear hub in Telgorus Rift, where they can study and practice their, frankly dangerous, void powers away from public eye. Reinforces their initial idea as a crack elite squad of Alleria’s

The mistake people make when they use this line is that High Elves not being playable was because Blizzard couldn’t bend or understand the lore enough to make it work. That’s just not the case. We’ve seen Blizzard do major, drastic ret-cons or lore changes to merit inclusion for a number of things. Blood Elf Paladins and Draenei that weren’t Broken back in TBC, etc. To think they couldn’t have easily made High Elves ‘make sense’ lore-wise is not the issue.

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”.

You summed it up pretty well here. This is true. Even though the Helfs and Belfs are separate cultures at this point, they’re NOT that different. Think Canadian vs New England American. Not much different right? Literally almost the same except in some ways.

I dont’ think Helfs are distinct enough to make them an Alliance race sadly. There have to be other solutions to give the Alliance a proper High Elf fantasy that won’t result in removing the Belf Identity.

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.

Moreover, the High Elves per current lore in Chronicle left the Alliance under Anasterian Sunstrider following the Second War (the one Alleria gained fame in), and any current-day remaining High Elves who did not follow Kael’thas or Lor’themar were fringe groups mostly Dalaran associated (remaining a mostly Neutral city-state).

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.

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.

You’re right to cover this issue and present your case. I find errors in the logic here and I understand the passion.

High Elves are a bad idea for the Alliance. It’s rather bland an uncreative in my opinion. We could have a new elf actually or something different.

Look at Nightborne right? That came out of NO WHERE! There can be something LIKE THAT to come about again that we can give to the Alliance to give them a proper High Elf fantasy.

There are 3 Dark Elves in the game and only 1 High Elf.

San Layn are needed in my honest opinion. That would mean the Alliance should at least get something to fill the void of the Helf fantasy but don’t make HELFs playable.

[Itoldyouso-illidan]

why keep tagging me?

Maybe things can be discussed without being confrontational?
Maybe a discussion is something to do such a discussing the unusual reasons for the high elves of quel’lithien to be outraged at the blood elves choice of turkey instead of vegetables?
Put down the shield and sword dude, you’re not being attacked.

[Avarie-farstriders]

Sorry, Murgy can’t step out of the van right now because…reasons.

[Guzzle-barthilas]

Considering he wanted to keep it T for “teen”, that only adds to my concern.

[Tarrok-thorium-brotherhood (Tarrok)]

And just because I’ve been sitting on this one for a day or two and this is as good a prompt as any…

[Avarie-farstriders]

It’s okay, there are no teens in the van.

[Guzzle-barthilas]

What did he do to them?

[Hypêrspace-dalaran (Hypêrspace)]

They’re culturally different, but racially the same at his point.

i dunno if they are the same. i think the devs have never bothered to render the differences.

[Avarie-farstriders]

There were never any teens in the van. It’s where we play twister and have karaoke contests.

I always lose.

[Avarie-farstriders]

Everyone is my friend.

Except one person.

[Tarrok-thorium-brotherhood (Tarrok)]

We should get a group together and go see a movie

[Guzzle-barthilas]

I got my eye on you.

[Fluffybuns-zangarmarsh]

Except one person.

well now im curious

[Kaleesh-perenolde (Kaleesh)]

It really just mystifies me how angry Horde players get when Alliance players ask for anything nice.

• Horde ask for Naga, I don’t say anything even though the tail makes them doubtful, and even though I could, I don’t throw a fit and overblow their Night Elf history just to keep them away from the Horde

• Horde ask for Ethereals, I don’t say anything even though the Alliance is the only faction with an Ethereal member and hook, Locus-Walker

• Horde ask for Eredar, I don’t say anything even though the lore would be nonsense, and even though I could, I don’t throw a fit about them “trying to steal the iconic Alliance Draenei race from us!!!” or complain that they are “all the same race, Alliance is there if you want Eredar, political and fel corruption differences doesn’t real!!!”, and I CERTAINLY don’t demand that Draenei get red skin options and act like that’s the solution. I know I will always have the OG Draenei no matter what happens.

• Horde ask for Ogres, an iconic Horde race. I despise Ogres, I think that they won’t fit in armor, I can’t imagine Blizzard bothering with a female model, and can’t see any attraction whatsoever or find anything they could add to the Horde, but I don’t heckle them for liking lame things or try to tell them it won’t happen

…Because why stand in the way of what gives an equally paying customer joy just because their avatar is red? While I cannot say this since I play both sides equally, why would someone care so much about what a faction they don’t even play gets when it deprives them of nothing? Why be the freaking video game fun police dream crusher for God’s sake? Don’t we get enough of that from Blizzard already? How are the subjective likes of myself more important than the wants of the many?

[Avarie-farstriders]

What movie?

I got my eye on you.

That doesn’t seem very sanitary Guzzle, for me or for your eye.

well now im curious

I am not my friend. I hardly ever talk to myself and when I do, I don’t even listen.

[Tarrok-thorium-brotherhood (Tarrok)]

It really just mystifies me how angry Horde players get when Allia