Why do they keep talking about a class being a race theme? It doesn’t make any sense.
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I think the term theme is confusing them. I’m trying to talk about the purely visual appearance and they start in on elven social study reports on the various aspects of their culture.
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But they are exclusive to the Blood Elves on the Horde which makes it an unique theme.
Lore-based implications are their own theme. Otherwise we also need to neglect the Night Warrior eyes for the Night Elves which where their own thing before 9.0. Everyone knows that the skin and eye color was exclusively locked before you could mix and match it nowadays.
Unfortunately the Blood Elf themes get reduced to the eye colors but I’m sure things will look brighter if they start adding cosmetic options for these. Runic tattoos would be a good start.
It’s prefaced with visual.
What can Blood Elves be racewise other than Blood Elves? Nothing, really. I don’t consider high elves a visual theme for Blood Elves because Blood Elves are already the plain Thalassian theme. Blue eyes are literally invisible at two yards away.
This is why people want something like dark ranger customizations, or sanlayn, or felblood elf (ok that is just me but I love wings), or light touched, or other magic mutations. Something that will be unique to Blood Elves and not handed to Void Elves on a silver platter at the drop of a hat.
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I go with blood elf visuals are the wow visuals of the high elf appearance so this is getting all xzibit and “I heard you like blood elves, so I put blood elves in your blood elves…” to me.
It just seems like all these supposed new visual themes I’m not seeing are either people talking about story themes, or people confusing something that flavors the appearance but doesn’t change it. Ranger/Mage/Rogue/hunter etc, visual choices that point to those things don’t stray from blood elves, they’re baked into them, it’s a touch of flavor that enhances the whole, and doesn’t turn it into a whole new thing.
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Being exclusive on one faction doesn’t make it a theme for us when it’s available to a different race on the opposite faction. It was just done for something so both sides had the class. Not so that we had some unique theme exclusive to Belves.
More races need tattoos, scars and beards. And Pandas need a lot of everything.
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Pandaren need the most attention from all the races. Belts with herbs, better clothes, unique keg animations for their hands, more weapons with physics (kegs, luck charms, …) and of course facial cosmetics.
I really don’t understand why you people try to undermine the available themes for the Blood Elves though. Just be grateful you actually have so many. The Void Elves aren’t supposed to get those and they will always reduced to Void and High Elf in the future.
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What do you mean the void elves don’t have so many? They have tentacle hair, non-tentacle hair, blonde, brunette, black and white hair themes. I could go on
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Because they aren’t themes. They are customization options. Just like every race gets. Eyes are not a theme. Neither are classes. No stretch of the imagination makes it different.
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These are options for two themes. I’m strictly talking about lore here. Mix-matching is something people do who aren’t RPer. Of course you could use a void skin with blond hairs but in reality, will the game ever have a NPC which looks like that? No.
It’s their own theme. Do you know that Wildhammer Dwarves have their own clan theme associated by beard colors as well?
But you guys are free to believe what you want. The Blood Elves have three unique themes to them which is actually pretty great. They just need to add more options for those so you can feel more unique.
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You mean the thing that has abso-freaking-lutely nothing to do with what was being discussed here?
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I have been always talking about lore-based designs the past days. As a regular player you really could care less about the lore implications I suppose.
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Yes. It’s been extremely annoying the way you don’t talk about what we’re discussing then act superior when you argue a point I’m not arguing about.
There are tons of themes that apply to all races if you want to talk about the story. As this is a discussion of visual customizations and NOT the story, it seems a bit irrelevant to bring up some of the many themes every race has and pretend that has any bearing on the concept of visual motifs of a model.
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I think you need to see it from the other side: I really don’t need to discuss things if they aren’t based on lore which influences classes and design choices. As a Sunwalker you should be familiar with this.
You need both to have the bigger picture here - otherwise we could just give every race every available class and color options and call it a day. You can’t have a discussion about visual customization without the lore, the lore directs what a race gets or not. The High Elf war topics are proof of this alone on a fundamental level. And to be honest, it also would undermine every discussion the past half decade.
I’m getting ready to work and I think that’s also a good point to end the discussion.
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Eye colors are not our own themes. Themes have a group of things that make an entire look. Eyes don’t do it alone. Felblood are the fel elves. We were just passively exposed to fel. Felblood is a theme. The gold eyes came from the well being cleansed, and also isn’t a theme. Just like green eyes aren’t a theme for anyone else. Or gold eyes. They are just eyes. Nothing to write home about.
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What?
Seriously what?
This is nonsense, we’re discussing two entirely separate concepts. Visual identity and character identity, they each inform the other, but terminology about them is different. Things that are important to one side, like eye color for some people, or faction affiliation or other things that are extremely story relevant to some are not as important to concentrate on visually. And the reverse, some important visual touches do not and should not have any impact on the lore, like human skin tones, hair colors, and tons of other stuff that allows visual customization but has little import to a story.
Like the eye colors, I think it would have been a mistake to get super lore focused on them and locked them off based on who “should” have them. There are tons of reasons an elf might have an eye color that is not the main one thought of. Blue for example, could represent arcane usage, losing the taint from fel, representing a high elf that has come to their senses and wanted to see home once again. Or green eyes for alliance could signify someone chasing after a spouse who joined umbric, or an elf who followed Alleria and got exposed to fel in outlands.
If you tie them too heavily to lore, you tie people’s hands. Visually eye colors are not a theme because blood elf is the theme. And if you tie in the story as well, a blood elf can study the arcane, still be fel tainted, be a blood knight to be reckoned with who has golden eyes that hunt for justice. That’s just seasoning to those characters.
As I said, if it were to be a whole visual motif it needs to tie the whole model into it, skin flowing with arcane energy that sparks out of their hair and fingers, runic tattoos where you can see the energy ebb and flow through them.
I put a high bar on these things visually, frankly, I think a lot of ARs, especially the horde ones don’t get near that. While the skin tones have been often requested for orcs, Mag’har are still orcs just with different skin tones. HMT are tauren w/ antlers on, if you’re gonna make moose tauren change the body too, cows and meese look pretty different, do something with that. LFD as well, they don’t really bring anything new and exciting to their main race that couldn’t have just been given to them.
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Devs have confirmed, the Nightborne are little too Highborne to do the front flips on jumps 
Angry night elves coming soon 
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I don’t think it’s overselling. Literally they were allied with the Alliance “for ages” after the Troll Wars. Sounds like more than a decade.
I feel like you keep trying to minimize the long history high elves had on alliance, while trying to act as if the decade of being on horde is more impactful somehow.
I’ve been saying both greater factions have had and still do have their loyalist high elven groups. Nothing overselling about the facts I’ve presented.
And the thing is, regardless of how much you want to minimize the high elven presence on alliance, it was enough to allow blizzard to give high elf RP tools to both factions. So I don’t see the point of trying to continue that 
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Never stated either of these but ofc Ariel continues going off the rails lol.
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Stop entertaining the obvious troll, Tarrok. Someone who made a post about his “whole server” agreeing with the premise that Belf players “are toxic” (which btw is hilarious because that premise IS toxic AF) is not someone who legitimately speaking will source non biased stuff.
Next time we know they will tell us characters are a theme too. /Facepalm
Btyw, has the Goblin realized that is “only lore supported stuff” is valid, then their Helfer stuff should have to be removed? Cause as much as they love to speculate, fact is, neither the canon lore Helves have openly joined under the Alleria banner nor have they been confirmed as “proto Velves” (this regarding the people visiting Telogrus, cause as harsh as it sounds those visitors are simply that: visitors).
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