High elves on the alliance?

[Zulkhan]

(1) If you played WC3, you'd know all of the Darkspear trolls fit onto a handful of ships.

If you go by game scale, the whole orcish Horde fitted into three ships, Bilgewater Goblins into one and Pandaren into a baloon.

My point being, is that High Elves are 1/10 of the remaining population (Blood Elves are 9/10s) of those who survived Arthas in Quel'Thalas. This does not count the High Elves in Dalaran or the ones who were in Theramore. Even if they were smaller than those factions (they aren't -- see; Silver Covenant wields an army), what we are arguing over is semantics. There is more than enough of them to be playable.

The main issue of High Elves are not the low numbers, is how they're presented and described. High Elves share no leadership, no unity, no cultural traits that don't belong to Blood Elves as well nor reasons to find a wide common ground in the first place. Couple that with their dwindling numbers and rather than a "race" you get a bunch of exiles spread around the world.

#1 You are citing a Blue Post from 2005 that was a Community Manager. He posted this before TBC launched for heavens sake.

#2 The lore has changed a TON since then. See; Warcraft Chronicles

#3 He claims Quel'dorei were extinct. They aren't. You see them later in the Silver Covenant in WotLK. You see them addressed as Quel'dorei by Elisande in the Suramar siege cinematic

#4 Maybe they retconned the original intent, but thats irrelevant. Its changed now. Just like a million other things they've changed since 2005. Give me a break.

#5 Moreover, its a Wiki where anyone can write anything. The links it provides as sources connects to nothing. Try again.

#1 Unless the post is outright debunked, it's still valid.

#2 The lore changing means nothing if the changes didn't touch High Elves in the slightest. Literally nothing about them changed apart their already low numbers diminishing even further and the Silver Covenant alone getting the occasional spotlight.

#3 They are extinct as a people. The Silver Covenant is just the military branch of Dalaran. As already said, they lack unity, purpose and common leadership. The "High Elves" as an actual people stopped existing the moment Kael'thas renamed them Blood Elves.

#4 You're not going to prove the existence of any change unless you don't bring actual contradicting information on the table.

#5 Those are all official quotes. Much like the AskDev and all other kind of information deleted by the WoW forum's overhaul, these pages are protected from any sort of unauthorized change.

[Caerule]

There's just so much conclusion-jumping going on in this thread. We caught a few glimpses, and your brains are filling in the rest of the picture.

1. All we can conclude with what has been found is that Blizzard is probably experimenting with the file structures needed to create usable sub-races.

There's no finished sub-race character building here. There's some code that might lead to it, using 4 Legion things as tests. That's no confirmation that these are actually the options Blizzard intends to create. If there was any non-Legion race among these, perhaps you could say there's strong hints of it. Like brown orcs. If brown orcs were in here, you could make a good case that these race options are things Blizzard is legitimately implementing, rather than just placeholders.

2. Assuming these are all actually planned sub-races, we don't know what'll happen to get them into the Horde/Alliance and into their states.

We're missing huge gaps here, folks. There are no Void Elves right now. There's only Alleria that fits the profile. We don't know what's going to happen to create these Void Elves, or how it'll work. If Alleria returns to the High Elves and they go "This seems like a great idea. We rejected reckless pursuit of magic and dark paths before, but this Shadow stuff is a great idea", then yeah: It'd be some weird lore.

But what if it isn't so voluntary? What if Alleria reaches her people on Azeroth, and N'Zoth takes control, using her to taint her people, only for Turalyon to break her free again. Now we have Alleria on a road to redemption, trying to teach her people to master their power before it consumes them. Sounds fine with me. There's lots of alternate solutions that could work. Maybe Tyrande saves them with the power of Elune, I dunno. All I'm saying is, don't draw conclusions about lore we've not seen. Else we're falling into the same trap as when people thought Illidan becoming retconned into a Light being was a done deal.

3. More sub-races than this will be coming with the expansion.
I'm not even sure I needed to state this, but I'm seeing a lot of "Too Many Elves!" complaints in this thread. All that's in the files listed right now is some new Legion-introduced races. That doesn't mean we won't also get more Orcs, Trolls, Dwarves, etc. Don't panic just yet, if you hate elves.

@ravenmoon
Yes, you are possibly right. If this datamining all foreshadows correctly, and this is a big if, then your desire for Nightborne for the Horde and High Elves of a sort for the Alliance may come true. I understand you're excited about that. I am too, really, for I too have argued on these forums that the Nightborne would be great for joining the Blood Elves. If Blizz had given them the skeleton and animations of the Blood Elves instead of Night Elves, no one would even be convinced otherwise. It's their posture that just triggers "Night Elf" in people's brains.

I think you're guilty yourself of that in another way, though. You too still see them as Night Elves, and believe they'll bring Night Elf lore to the Horde. But they've been separated from the Night Elves even longer than the Blood Elves have been. To be a Night Elf and to be a Nightborne are two vastly different things. If many ways, Nightborne are even further removed from Night Elves than the Blood Elves are. The Night Elves are sentinels, priests and druids. They may have a distrusted group of Highborne mages up in their tree now too. But overall their pillars are sentinels, priests and druids. Blood Elves have a lot of city dwellers. They love high magic. They have knights and nobles. But they too have rangers and care for the lands. The Nightborne though? They are all city-dwellers. Their are so magical, they've tattooed themselves with it and are used to drinking it. They are nobles, mages and spellblades. They don't have druids or rangers; they have gardeners.

The old Night Elf culture is gone. The Night Elves abandoned it for a new direction. The High Elves/Blood Elves tried to recreate it in their own way. The Nightborne took the Highborne part of it to the extreme. Other than their posture and animations, the Nightborne have less in common with the Night Elves than Blood Elves do.

But yeah, @ravenmoon, I know you're excited about the possibilities. But I would urge caution in jumping to conclusions as a sure thing. Not only is it a quick way to disappointment, but such 100% certainty is what's setting off the people here, which is leading only to people digging trenches to wage a war of mockery back and forth, rather than hold an interesting discussion. Taking equal part in such activity can't be something you're actually enjoying.

[melzas]

Like it or not, the most believable "leak" states we are getting void elves who are basically high elves. They join alliance with Alleria and the argument of not enough high elf is irrelevant as Alleria and her rangers had thousad years to create new generations.

[tikcol]

I will never allow high elves to be part of the alliance. High elves must be a sub-race of blood elves.

I don't really care that you don't understand that differentiating high elves from blood elves is the same as differentiating humans from human junkies.

[Deleted]

I will never allow high elves to be part of the alliance. High elves must be a sub-race of blood elves.

I don't really care that you don't understand that differentiating high elves from blood elves is the same as differentiating humans from human junkies.

Listen to yourself. First this is unofficial mumbo jumbo and secondly you have no say on what blizzard does and doesnt do.

[Deleted]

So nice and cosy in here. The sheer intensity of community love is making me a better human already.

[tikcol]

Listen to yourself. First this is unofficial mumbo jumbo and secondly you have no say on what blizzard does and doesnt do.

You're mad because you know I'm right. If you want to play high elves, play horde. We have high elves.

They're called blood elves and they're part of the horde.

[Jorah]

Zulkhan Friendlyimmolation and Mehrunes are known diehard Sylvanas fanboys. Like i said they project their hatred for Vareesa character on High Elves. Save yourself from wasting time.

[The Man in Room V]

High Elves for Alliance and Eredar for the Horde. This would make sense since Blood Elves and Draenei were both added in TBC.

After Antorus, perhaps some Eredar see the Legion as losing (I assume we won't defeat it, but who knows) and decide to side with strength, as demons do. Naturally they would prefer the Horde because of the similar strength-heirarchy based culture. I also doubt the Draenei would willingly accept them. And as turncoats who once fought for the Legion, they may find common ground with Orcs who did the same: bonding over their shared, tortured experience and hatred of their former Legion allies.

[Mehrunes]

I do believe High Elves will be the new playable race for the Alliance in WoW 8.0

I made a video going over it, but here is the wall-o-text version:

 Blizzard has been hinting at High Elves being playable for a very long time in the game.
 They were in Dalaran and Argent Tournament as the Silver Covenant (WotLK),
 they were the Alliance half of the Battered Hilt questline (WotLK),
 the defense of Theramore with Vereesa and Rhonin (Cata) and mana-bomb questline
 assisting Jaina and Alliance on Isle of Thunder as 1/2 of the Kirin Tor Offensive (MoP)
 Vereesa's Marksmanship hunter questline for Alleria's BoW (Legion)
 Elisande specifically targeting the Quel'dorei in addition to Night Elves and Blood Elves in the Nightwell cinematic (Legion)

All of those are about the Silver Covenant. The common theme with them is that they've been cannon fodder for the Horde in almost all of these events, thinning the numbers of an already small sub-faction of a small faction of a race that lost 90% of its population. Besides, why are these events specifically the hints? Why not Quel'danil being a thing, for example? This seems rather selective.

 It's very likely that with Jaina being a main protagonist that High Elves will be in this expansion to a large degree. They helped her found Theramore.

And you know that Jaina is going to be the protagonist from where?

 note Worgens are playable cursed Humans (two forms)

And?

 They've gotten more time than Gnomes, Worgens, and Dwarves combined in the ingame story since WotLK.

And multiple sub-races of Orcs got more time than most of the Horde races. Ogres got more time than Horde Pandaren. Going beyond the scope of factions as they are now, even Ethereals and Arakkoa (common requests for the next playable races) got more screen time than many of the playable races. Let alone the demons. Are all of them going to be playable on those grounds?

 Arator (who is probably the most important character moving forward) Alleria and Vereesa talking about Sylvanas (Legion)

Wat.

 the 3 Windrunner sisters story is primed to take center stage

There was already a story about Sylvanas' reunion with Vereesa and Vereesa's reunion with Alleria. How comes those did not result in playable High Elves? Is 3 a magical number?

 They've had a lot of story time and Blizzard just put Arator at the center of the struggle of the Light and the Void

He's just one of many potential champions of Light. Anduin had much more foreshadowing than Arator ever did.

 It would be very odd for 2 key heroes to not be represented in game by a playable race, which is why I think they will do it

Why is it weird?

 Common arguments don't hold water: Small pop (bigger in lore than Trolls or Bilgewater Goblins), same models as BEs but blue eyes (see; Pandarens), no more elves (highly requested), they are BEs! (races in WoW can instantly diverge or very quickly. See; Naga, Eredar, Trolls into Night Elves) - lore can instantly written like Worgen, who only had Arugal and SFK before

1. Source. 2. Blizzard said they don't want more neutral races. 3. Naga aren't exactly Elves anymore. Adding High Elves only to evolve them into another race defeats the purpose and goes against of what's actually requested by players.

 BEs are the most popular race in WoW by a mile (1/5th of all 110s)(20.7%. Humans are second with 15.8%). The difference between BEs and Humans is larger than all Worgen, Dwarf, Gnomes, Goblins and Pandaren at 110. When they were added it was to balance Horde. Alliance is the faction that now needs balance.

Except the balance is 51.5% to 48.5% on US realms and 51.2% to 48.8% on EU realms. It's near perfect as it is. As compared to a huge disparity in Vanilla. And adding the most popular Horde race on the Horde is going to shit all over that.

Don't know why I'm even bothering replying to Friendlyimmolation as he flames (ironic considering his name) anyone I've seen suggest High Elves. You sir, aren't someone I care to debate with, but let me answer you before I block you.

Where did he flame you again?

(1) If you played WC3, you'd know all of the Darkspear trolls fit onto a handful of ships. Bilgewater Goblins are a very small group of Goblins that work under Gallywix. My point being, is that High Elves are 1/10 of the remaining population (Blood Elves are 9/10s) of those who survived Arthas in Quel'Thalas. This does not count the High Elves in Dalaran or the ones who were in Theramore. Even if they were smaller than those factions (they aren't -- see; Silver Covenant wields an army), what we are arguing over is semantics. There is more than enough of them to be playable.

W3 representation is rather pisspoor. As Zulhan already mentioned, the entire Horde fit on three ships. Also, as far as Goblins go, that wasn't the only ship, another landed in Tanaris. And you're patently wrong about the percentages. First of all, why would it not include the High Elves of Dalaran? He was in contact with it. Secondly, the original source on the percentages clearly stated that the 10% of survivors that remained High Elves are those that Kael could not reach. That covers those in Theramore, Outland and in other places. Now, things have changed a bit since then and there was this whole tangent with Lor'themar exiling people, but that does not negate the original source entirely. There are still High Elves like Vereesa or those from Allerian stronghold. With it being unknown how the percentages apply to this mixed origin.

Besides, I don't know if you've noticed, but Theramore is kinda kaput. So is most of its population. Any survivors we've seen in SoO were human. And that fate befell other High Elven outposts. Others that survived, like Silver Covenant, still incurred losses after losses after losses. It's sort of a theme with High Elves. So even if the amount of Thalassian Elves that remained High Elves after the Scourge Invasion was a bit higher than that 10%, it's by no measure still the state of things now.

(2) Do yourself a favor and read the statistics. Also, that is total 110s, which many are Alts of Horde mains. Here's a link: http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/global-stats/races

Now do yourself a favor, look to the right column and stop embarrassing yourself. And what, Alliance mains have no alts?

#1 You are citing a Blue Post from 2005 that was a Community Manager. He posted this before TBC launched for heavens sake.

And unless you offer a source negating that, it remains canon as per the nature of canon.

#2 The lore has changed a TON since then. See; Warcraft Chronicles

You mean the Chronicles that haven't covered Third War and later yet?

#3 He claims Quel'dorei were extinct. They aren't. You see them later in the Silver Covenant in WotLK. You see them addressed as Quel'dorei by Elisande in the Suramar siege cinematic

Literally where.

#4 Maybe they retconned the original intent, but thats irrelevant. Its changed now. Just like a million other things they've changed since 2005. Give me a break.

Then it should be easy offering a source other than "The Silver Covenant pops up a lot, with in-game numbers being in no way representative of anything", right?

#5 Moreover, its a Wiki where anyone can write anything. The links it provides as sources connects to nothing. Try again.

If you bothered to check history of the page, you'd have noticed that bit hasn't changed in years for some completely inexplicable reasons. Since 2005, in fact. You know, the year the posts were made.

[Deleted]

Wait, how did we just jumped from "Alleria hardly can control the Void powers after centuries of training" to "every high elves (the 10 of them) are now void elves"?

[Deleted]

Wait, how did we just jumped from "Alleria hardly can control the Void powers after centuries of training" to "every high elves (the 10 of them) are now void elves"?

Any canon source on that? Specifically, a statement that Alleria was training in use of the Void for centuries?

[Deleted]

Any canon source on that? Specifically, a statement that Alleria was training in use of the Void for centuries?

Like Nymrohd said, the audio book.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/A_Thousand_Years_of_War

[Deleted]

Like Nymrohd said, the audio book.

https://wow.gamepedia.com/A_Thousand_Years_of_War

Ouch. I suppose all human shadow priests without Surrender To Madness could be feeling very smug right now.

[Dagoth Ur]

Zulkhan Friendlyimmolation and Mehrunes are known diehard Sylvanas fanboys. Like i said they project their hatred for Vareesa character on High Elves. Save yourself from wasting time.

What's up with you lol.

Even if they were, Sylvanas holds literally no significance to topic at hand.

Nobody here is "projecting hate" on high elves for disliking Vareesa alone.
Many deslike it primarily because it'll muddle faction identities even further and don't want to see same elves with different flavour flooding both factions to the point of making factions obsolete in the first place.
Not to mention that Belves are Horde's most popular race and it's perefectly reasonable not wanting it playable on Alliance since that can only affect Horde in a bad way.

There's tons of races that could be added to both sides without any harmful effect on the other side.

[Mehrunes]

But what if it isn't so voluntary? What if Alleria reaches her people on Azeroth, and N'Zoth takes control, using her to taint her people, only for Turalyon to break her free again. Now we have Alleria on a road to redemption, trying to teach her people to master their power before it consumes them. Sounds fine with me. There's lots of alternate solutions that could work. Maybe Tyrande saves them with the power of Elune, I dunno. All I'm saying is, don't draw conclusions about lore we've not seen. Else we're falling into the same trap as when people thought Illidan becoming retconned into a Light being was a done deal.

Except the first option is already lore we've seen. Plenty individuals succumbed to the Void, without any of them really returning (at least in a way that preserved the Void-ification). Even Alleria didn't go as deep as Locus-Walker wanted her to go because she realized she'd lose herself too. Of course one could make Void Elves that way, but it'd still end with them being an army of unique special snowflakes. And as far as Light cure goes, we've never seen it work in a way that'd preserve the corruption (be it Void or demonic) and only restore one's sense.

[The Iron Fist]

Zulkhan Friendlyimmolation and Mehrunes are known diehard Sylvanas fanboys. Like i said they project their hatred for Vareesa character on High Elves. Save yourself from wasting time.

Thanks for the new signature. Literally LOL'd out of my chair. I've had these people on ignore for years. I think we may have to add Dagoth Ur to that list too...

[Deleted]

All of this speculation are fine and dandy but Void mutants are not high elves.

[Mehrunes]

Zulkhan Friendlyimmolation and Mehrunes are known diehard Sylvanas fanboys. Like i said they project their hatred for Vareesa character on High Elves. Save yourself from wasting time.

And you supported it with jack shit. I wonder why. Even after it's been pointed out to you that people that do have more than one brain cell, without singling out any single brain celled individuals here (that'd be ableist of me after all), are capable of disliking a character of a race for different reasons than the race. Besides, I don't hate Vereesa, I care for High Elves even less. I made it clear in this thread that my issue with the High Elves, at least as far as the topic of them being playable goes, is not with the High Elves themselves, but with the people whining for it for close to 12 years.

And never mind that @Zulkhan also made clear in this thread he doesn't even like Sylvanas. But what does the topic of being Sylvanas' "fanboy" (and again, correcting geniuses that feel the inexplicable and moronic need to conjure up falsehoods about her in order to paint her as a bad character, even though there's a fuckton of actual material doesn't really constitute as fanboyism) have to do with projecting "hatred for Vereesa" onto the High Elves as a whole? What is the logical link here, exactly?

Because it looks to me like you're trying really, really hard to make a case for your posts being the waste of time here (and/or MMO-C's server space).

[Dagoth Ur]

Thanks for the new signature. Literally LOL'd out of my chair. I've had these people on ignore for years. I think we may have to add Dagoth Ur to that list too...

Not sure what are you even doing on forum if you're ignoring everyone who you disagree with.

Quality discussion comes from listening to both sides even if you passionately disagree with other.
If I was being rude to someone than I would completely understand if I get ignored, but what you said is just nonsense.