Void elves: The most uninspired race in wow

[Khirok]

Void Elves are an excuse by Blizz to add Nightborne to their pet faction. That's all.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Not necessarily. Pandaren weren't a new name so to speak. Blizzard had to figure out their entire backstory. And they were given a rather rich one. Void elves on the other hand have five minutes of back story which is: the void can be controlled now because reasons.

Pandaren is an unfair comparison, they had an entire expansion to build their backstory. By comparison to the new allied races (lightforged in particular), more creativity was required for Void Elves.
Also, Blood elves have been adapting to use new forms of magic forever. That was how they survived Arthas wrecking the Sunwell. Plus they have priests, so shadow magic is hardly new to them.

[maccajoe]

It's not hard to be 'coherent' when there's barely any lore whatsoever. Even the Alleria connection is flimsy at best. She hasn't been on Azeroth in decades, let alone Quel'Thalas or Silvermoon, yet somehow she conveniently has knowledge of these guys. She then instantly gains their thrust, and the Alliance's High King, a devout disciple of the Light, similarly accepts them into his kingdom without even a hint of doubt.

Suspension of disbelief can only reach so far.

Oh please im not going to debate this crap with you. Someone said it was not coherent and i said it was now your saying its not hard to be coherent. Ok great you are admitting its coherent which was my literal point from the start. I never said it was perfect i said it was coherent.

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No it wasn´t void elves are an ass pull, their story is not coherent it´s a poorly written fan fic, lilterally any suggestion for other elf variants an even changes to recruitment quest line made from random people in this and the official forum are leaps and bounds better than what Blizzard did.

You really need to go back and re learn what the word coherent means. The story of the void elves is entirely consistent and coherent especially with elven past. It follows the same formula of elves flying to close to the sun and being corrupted by a magic they dont understand, completely consistent with elven history even more so by Alleria just recently experiencing it. Nice try.

[Zulkhan]

Dude Highmountain Tauren have nearly identical historical figures as the regular Tauren.

Except they don't. All the references you saw in Legion regarding Huln and Tauren fighting during the WotA tied directly back to the namesake trilogy.

The Alleria's void story is explained on Argus and the scenario to unlock Void Elves explain where the rest come from. They didn't come out of nowhere, void has been part of the game since the beginning.

They pretty much come from nowhere since not only we never heard about Umbric and this sect of "extremists" dealing with the Void ever before but they weren't even hinted or vaguely referenced in any occasion. So yes, they literally come from nowhere.

Even if they were never introduced before Legion, they were still around for a year longer than Void Elves. More than enough time for the playerbase to get accustomed.

Not to mention that Highmountain Tauren did not need anyway a backstory explaining how they came to be in recent times and out of nowhere. Void Elves come "out of nowhere" in almost a literal sense.

to me it feels about as much fabricating a new entity as slapping a minor character's name from a story that took place long before the story currently being told is said.

seeing the discussions these days it feels more like people just have issues with elves in general since everyone wants to knee jerk with threads like this (elves with totally new appearances and aesthetics not really seen on player character models before somehow LESS inspired than teh copy pasta vanilla race with a different head ornament).

To me it feels like these are no more a random 'new' entity than anything added with teh onset of legion. At least the void elves are showing the same traits the blood elves have been showing since their debut in wow... and hell i'd wager they're about the same as teh elves shown rushing to outland with illidan and Kael from the RTS

Then why people don't complain over Nightborne the same way? I see a lot of complaints regarding the chosen allegiance but basically none concering the Nightborne themselves. Let's not forget that before Legion and Chronicle Vol. 1 they had even less references than Huln and his kin.

Their existence basically robs Blood Elves of what was left of their "reckless magister" theme. It pushes them, ironically, further into High Elf territory, which makes them an even worse fit for the Horde.

I believe the Blood Elf's main theme (at least concering playable Blood Elves, aka those who didn't go literally bonkers and betrayed their people) was "ensure survival with any mean necessary" which was enlightened by indeed tragic and dramatic circumstances they had to face by trying their best to swallow their pride down and jeopardize their very principles and morals to make it through.

In a way I perfectly understand what you mean and in fact it makes sense to an extent. However "Void Elves" didn't really catch that theme, besides the "reckless" part. If anything, the hardline mentality mentioned above was applied to the Void Elves (and later Alleria) themselves the moment they have been considered a threat to Quel'Thalas' survival. Void Elves, on the other hand, apart saying "we believe the Void can be used for good" didn't really manage to look like "desperate people willing to do anything to ensure their people's survival", they just looked as a bunch of inquiring guys with some misguided belief they wanted to push forward at all costs.

On the other hand, this doesn't mean they fit in the Alliance either. In fact this "let's use questionable powers for the greater good" never fully fitted any of the two factions at all (when the Horde pursued questionable powers it never did it with a greater good/big picture mentality and the Alliance usually tries to pursue all of that stuff resorting to no questionable powers at all) but they're obviously shoehorned there because of Alleria and, well, they had to give that goddamn Blood Elf model to the Alliance in some fashion.

You can't really have a serious conversation related to the Alliance or High Elves with Friendlyimmolation, guys. He is a massive Horde and Blood Elf fanboy who handwaves, strawmans and headcanons to his hearts desire. There is not a whole lot of rational or objective going on in his own world. Just wasting your time.

And in the end, the thinniest skin MMO-Champion has ever seen finally showed himself.

Come on, I support High Elves, but this is just a smug signature-tier post. There are decent arguments for High Elves; you've made like, one, and you managed to bungle that, too.

I mean, just look at his signature and you'll quickly get a few things about him.

Because being undead Lordaeron humans totally makes them not Lordaeron humans, who the High Elves despise.

Do you seriously not see the contradiction?

Please, that's an elementary school-level of argument. Forsaken are no longer "Lordaeron humans" by enduring the transformation they went through and, way more importantly, they formed a completely different society working utterly differently from anything related to Alliance humans in general. When Garithos and his subjects did what they did not only they represented what was left of the Alliance of Lordaeron but, during that exact time, Forsaken were already "something else" entirely and existed utterly indipendent from anything occurring in the Alliance.

There's absolutely no logical nor rational reason to deem Forsaken even remotely responsible for what Garithos did. To several extents though (greater or smaller) the Alliance bears responsibility for Garithos's leadership, sufficient to at least not trust them as the elves may have used to.

Yeah, he did, and I happen to think that's a rubbish piece of writing.

Clearly we have different standards.

Lmao "standards".

Do not think even for a moment that Tauren are Night Elves, the inflexible extremists who loathe the arcane and go batshit everytime someone touches their trees, just because they can train Druids too. Tauren are by nature a quite tolerant and balanced race, "balance" is the whole point of their Mu'sha/An'she dualism. And Hamuul was able to acknowledge how the Forsaken's situation was strikingly similar to the one of the Orcs of old, something Thrall himself acknowledged. Couple that with the obvious convenience both factions had in forming an alliance and here you go.

Honestly, I've not read Chronicles, and it's of little consequence to how the story was written before Chronicles released.

Except it wasn't written in any different way. Chronicles, bar a few retcons countable on one hand's fingers, merely explored and expanded already established information.

"But hey, let's ally ourself with the same damn humans now that they're undead!"

Seriously?

Forsaken =/= Alliance. Different political bodies do not necessarily act the same or think the same, especially when the Forsaken's way of thinking (for better and for worse) has been altered by their transformation and death trauma.

On the end of the day, people are judged by their actions. Forsaken helped Blood Elves when they needed it the most. The Alliance, however, approached Blood Elves during that same time with distrust and outright hostility.

And most of Lordaeron was dead when Garithos assumed command, which he could only do by virtue of every conceivable other claimant being dead or in hiding. But hey, sure, let's pretend Garithos was seriously the heir to the Alliance of Lordaeron and its moral compass.

You mention the fact that no one higher in rank than Garithos remained as something that matters. It doesn't. Garithos legitimately took command by his right of being the highest ranking military commander left in the kingdom and because of that he was fully supported by the rest of the Alliance.

The moral compass' of the Alliance is irrelevant. Garrosh's or Sylvanas' morals did/do not necessarily align with the entirety of the Horde, that doesn't mean they did/do not inevitably represent the Horde as a whole as long these leaders were/are supported and got/get their orders followed. Freaking stupid Alliance keeps distrusting the Horde when it was/is just Garrosh/Sylvanas being a jerk! Grrr!

"Lordaeron Humans are bad!"
*Sylvanas appears*
"Lordaeron Humans are now good!"

Awesome writing.

Not nearly as awesome as this post, that's for sure.

No, I tried to show the absurdity of that type of reasoning.

So far the only absurdity showed was the terribad logic presented by your posts.

[Arrashi]

...By fighting AGAINST Quel'thalas

"When force commander boreale ordered his men to attack the imperial guard he knew full well what he was doing"

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If you don't know how nuance in politics work, best stay away from conversations outside your scope, mate.

Since when is open treason a political nuance ?

[Xylense]

void elf are the result of alliance cry babies wanting to have high elfs who story wise would never join the alliance because alliance betrayed them when the scourge attacked the sunwell

the only high elfs who fought with alliance are varesa and a very small faction if you read the lore hundreds upon thousands of non fel taintet high elfs still live in silvermoon as neutrals who refused to use the demons as magic batteries

so lore wise horde has the only chance with high elf since vareesa only took a few high elfs with her

so void elf= bad lore because of stupid alliance players who are to blame for the most stupid race ever created gg alliance scrubs for ruining a good game of lore with your tainted pre teen brains

actually thats not true. if a high elf stayed in silvermoon at the time, their eyes turned green just from the proximity of the fel strung up around the city. Just like the frostwolves turning green though they never personally ingested the fel, guarding the dark portal and being near that much fel energy still turned them green. if you were in silvermoon at the time, your eyes turned green no matter what.

source : blizz devs https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/5208785474

You could be the most pious of priests or most outdoorsy of Farstriders, chances are, if you were a high elf in Quel’Thalas or Outland following the Third War, you were around fel energies, and your eyes would turn green. Like the orcs’ skin color, such an effect would take a very long time to wear off. Fel magic works a bit like radiation in this sense; it permeates the area and seeps into anything in the vicinity. Anything near a source of fel magic shows signs of slight corruption, it just so happens that high elves and orcs manifest it in a very visual way.

[Saverem]

Void Elves was 100% a cash grab race. Blizz KNEW they'd be making a shitfuck load of dollar dollar billz from race changes by creating that race.

It'll be the same for when they inevitably release that tiny fox race in BfA which I can guarantee is coming, cuz money.

[Melsiren]

And you think it does not? You would trust a guy to save your entire race but wouldn't trust his judgement of who to ally with?

It absolutely does not because as far as we can tell Velen was acting as a individual to fulfill a prophecy.

I mean if you have some citation where Velen says something like "I come on behalf of the Alliance." or anything like that please feel free to share with the class.

[Mehrunes]

Man, haven't kept up with this thread since it's been like three pages long and it became a trainwreck.

Well I think Vereesa and Silver Covenant is one of best Elves for the Alliance. They are the only true Essence left within High Elven Culture. If you think that getting rid the Silver Covenant at Teldrassil and hoping Void Elves to be far better then your a idiot like that jerk Obelisk Kai. Its people like you that ruins the Warcraft lore with stupid asspull races like Void Elves.

Haha, it's people like @Obelisk Kai and @Aeula that ruin WoW with asspull races like Void Elves? Riiight. Anti-High Elf sentiment existed for at least 10 years. Do try to go through older threads on the topic and try to find anyone who was anti High Elves proposing Void Elves. Or, alternatively, at least try to make something resembling sense when you're having a meltdown.

Then you know nothing about Alliance Lore then. As a True Alliance Player I welcome High Elves anyday than Void Elves. Void Elf's lore is short and weak, their customization sucks and only reason why they were ever made is to please moronic Pro Blood Elves idiots like you and Obelisk Kai because of your hatred for High Elves having the same lore and color eyes. Humans are Humans. Elves are Elves.

The only reason they were ever made is because Blizzard didn't want to have another Pandaren situation. The end.

Stop shoving down your ignorant reasons and accept the fact alliance is screw royally by Blizzard. High Elves have more lore and appearance then these stupid dumb emo Void Elves. Nothing is good from Void Elves and nothing less in appearance at all.

Likewise, stop projecting your feelings onto the entire Alliance. I know Alliance players who are OK with Void Elves but feel nothing for High Elves. You don't speak for the entire Alliance playerbase. Also, in the minds of Eternal Victimhood Squad part of the Alliance playerbase, literally everything in existence is Blizzard royally screwing them. So it's best for them to ignore this sentiment, because they will continue to cry even if the Horde gets destroyed and Alliance gets every race under the Sun.

From the rudeness of this post (and all the others) I really wonder if it was you who sent that PM to Obelisk.

Do tell me more :3

Google is great

This is beautiful.

[Zulkhan]

Do tell me more :3

Part in bold.

[Deleted]

Agree, some emo bullshit race to cater all people that haven't "found themselves" yet.... awesome... not!

stop misusing the word emo for fucks sake

[Arrashi]

stop misusing the word emo for fucks sake

Agree, "edgelord" would be much more fitting.

[Fyersing]

Originally, they planned to use the Horde as a vehicle to get to Outland, as time went on the Horde continued to be beneficial, and they grew into the faction more than they ever did with the Alliance (actively participating) Their reasoning wasn't really outlandish. They had two sides to choose, and one despite being an old enemy, now offered friendship and helped them kill Dar'khan, the other being an old alley who had in recent events tried to kill their leader, and who now got caught spying on them, and sending a sizeable hostile force into their territory. The distaste for the humans, and the Alliance in general snowballed hard from there.

As I said, not really debating what has happened (because, well, it has happened)... just how believable it is. You don't join one enemy, whose entire population once saw you as fair game, because another enemy exists as a faction (within a faction, within a larger faction). That's the unbelievable part.

I think ethno nationalism gets it's gnands kicked inwards once you get booted out for going against the rules. Umbric and his velves were humbled, they aren't prideful now, they are trying to prove themselves as useful.

This sentiment doesn't really jive with reality; an individuals fundamental worldview doesn't change because the political establishment elects to disenfranchise them. In almost every country in Western Europe, you'll today be driven into obscurity for espousing National Socialist views, yet Mein Kampf remains one of their top selling books year after year. The point being that becoming a pariah doesn't affect fundamental understandings, it affects practical understandings -- which is a fairly important distinction.

This part is important to the subject of Void Elves. That being because what is being asserted (namely, that all Blood Elves are racially conscious, and distrustful by nature) hasn't ever been witnessed or experienced by people on the Alliance who have had High Elves around them for ~8 years in the narrative. So what's more likely:

1) The various subgroups are all hard-nosed racialists, but disenfranchisement has caused two/three of the groups to abandon them -- despite this being the exact opposite of how these exact scenarios play out in the real world.

OR

2) The various subgroups aren't all hard-nosed racialists, but because Blizzard has committed the Blood Elves to the Horde their narrative requires that they be precisely that... left their reasons for being Horde be called into question, even by the laypeople.

As for being innate, we saw it when the overwheming majority of the elves followed Anastarian's idea to pull from the Alliance in the first place, and we get snippets of it time and time again, (Lorthemar hating halfbreeds, Rommath being Rommath, Liadrin spreading propaganda to smooth the nightborne's transition in to the Horde.)

Yet, none of that corroborates the notion of an ingrained sense of racial animosity for anything non-elf that is being postulated in this and other threads. It's almost fallacious to suggest that because the High Elves withdrew their support from the organization, this somehow lends credence to the idea of them being stubborn racialists -- why doesn't this charge get levied at Gilneans or even the Tauren, who were considering abandoning the Horde (if only briefly).

The reason is obvious: because correlation is not causation. A person/nation who disagrees with another politically/socially isn't/shouldn't be considered racist-by-default because the group they disagree with is biologically different from them. I would posit that there are likely a few (though, really, almost all of those who were arrested by Garithos are now dead) who view the slight by a particularly unappealing grouping of humans to be too much to forgive, but really almost all of the existing Blood Elves (and High Elves, and Void Elves) weren't even there -- and we've seen no evidence to suggest that they all believe, as a bedrock of their beliefs, in disparaging other races as a past time.

Instead, the opposite seems to be the case.

This is true, and is part of the elves using the Horde just for convenience, (as they once did the Alliance,) into coming into their own and being an active member, (really taking off in MoP, to where we are now.

The bits of their storyline which emphasize independence, from either faction, are absolutely fine -- as you say, Lor'themar stepping up in MoP to counter Garrosh was an amazing development (IMO). It's the stuff meant to draw them deeper into the Horde that is suspect, because they have very few cultural commonalities, because it necessitates that their relations be almost entirely based upon socialization with each other... which isn't why people form integrated military/economic organizations.

Humans in general seem to have a boner for elves, the prejudice is going to come from the elves mostly, and in case of the void elves, they are trying to make themselves useful, and recently were severly humbled by Durzan, they of course are not going to be as racially prideful as a Sin'Dorei.

Why would they care about the humans at all, save for orders from Alleria?

Their stated purpose is to utilize the Void, in the protection of Silvermoon and Quel'thalas. Just because the Blood Elves don't want their assistance, doesn't mean these people won't give it unsolicited, or at least prepare for when they're needed -- which isn't any different than American Jews supporting Israel, despite the fact that Israel is egregiously conservative and wouldn't actually want anything to do with the liberal politics espoused by most (71%, as of 2016) American Jews. That doesn't stop said American Jews from sending money and aid to Israel, or lobbying for as much, because a love for the homeland transcends political dichotomy.

To say Void Elves don't care about Silvermoon or Quel'thalas, when their purpose to dabbling in the first place was to make their homeland invincible, is to deny the narrative as it's presented.

This isn't that difficult. The Humans would trust a Human more than any other race. The Alliance is led by Humans.

There's nothing difficult, I'm just asking you to actually corroborate what you're saying. You can't expect to suggest, in all seriousness, that the Alliance is racist by design, and actively impeding the advancement of all of it's own member-races and not be asked to prove your own statements true.

Except that Tyrande meets Thalyssra with scorn for something that Elisande and Azshara did. That is literally generalizing an entire race. It's the same.

It's very likely that Nightborne are still biologically Night Elves. This needs to be more understood, generally.

To what you said, though, if you actually go and re-do Suramar you'll find that Tyrande never mentions anything about race at all. Instead, she's routinely expressing a callous concern over what she perceives to be an over-utilization of the Arcane... which is something Night Elves also went through with, well, virtually every other race that over-utilizes the Arcane (Humans, Blood Elves, High Elves, probably Void Elves).

This is a cultural indictment, not a racial one.

WC3 and other books talk about this all the time. Not to mention that all of the wikis state that the Humans hated the Elves.

Then it won't be too hard for you to dig up an example or two for us to analyze, no?

You're kidding me, right? Have you not watched or read LOR? Do you not see the incredible similarities between the Elves, how they behave, how they look, etc? The Dwarves? Orcs vs Humans? Do you really think Blizzard invented that concept? This stuff was written half a century before Warcraft 1.

You're willfully ignoring what I'm saying.

I didn't once deny that this game draws inspiration from earlier works (especially greats like LotR), instead I asked for you to utilize events from this franchise to illustrate whatever similarities you'd like -- if the Blood Elves are just as racist as the Noldor, you need to actually give examples of how this is the case. As head-canon doosn't count, even soft-citation would be nice.

[Mehrunes]

Myeah, that doesn't really work considering the Blood Elves were brought into the Horde by one of their kin (Sylvanas) consorting with a bunch of undead humans.

Blizzard hasn't been able to write one reasonable excuse for why the elves of Quel'Thalas should hate the humans who did not betray them, while being in league with humans who did betray them. After all, Garithos was the Grand Marshal of the Kingdom of Lordaeron, not of the Kingdom of Stormwind.

And Forsaken were not in league with Garithos when that happened. They weren't free from the Lich King even. Stormwind was in league with Ironforge and DArnassus when Dwarf ambassador spied on them and when Sentinels invaded Ghostlands. Stormwind humans also aided Jaina in Purge of Dalaran. Also, Sylvanas and Forsaken saved Quel'thalas from the Scourge.

Instead, the purpose of my statement was to sort of highlight that Blizzard (presumably, because they lack interest in potentially up-ending existing gameplay structures) has maintained that the Blood Elves are specifically loyal to the Horde... while more-or-less failing to provide a believable narrative that would explain this other than, as was mentioned, "evol Allianz, muh dignity".

Them relying on Forsaken support even in Wrath isn't a believable narrative? Hell, at that point there was no mention of evil Alliance either.

As for a couple of the specifics you mention ("any offer of friendship has a dagger behind it's back", "a way to abuse them in some way", "Combine this with several events and and already present Xenophobia"), especially the one regarding xenophobia, you have to circle back around to how believable something is or isn't. How can we, the omnipotent third party, be expected to believe that a primary motivator for the Blood Elves maintaining a near-fanatical devotion to the Horde is because they're hyper-conscious of which groups help or hinder their own ethnic interests?

And when was Blood Elven loyalty ever "nearly fanatical"?

A, perhaps the, founding nation of the Horde literally counts among it's veterans individuals who would've been complicit in the raiding and pillaging of Quel'thalas -- it's not immediately clear why we, the players, would sympathize with the narrative explanation (that Blood Elves have elected to remain aligned with the Horde, either for a grudge long held or because of a radical self-interest) when all of their criticisms of life as a member of the Alliance have played out the same, or worse, while betrothed to the Horde. That's the contentious issue, for me.

And the king of the founding nation of Alliance of Lordaeron steamrolled through their land and killed almost all of them. And all of their criticism of life as a member of the Alliance have played out the same or worse while they were in the Horde? You mean things like Alliance not helping them when they needed help as opposed to the Horde securing Ghostlands?

As an afterthought, doesn't it seem a bit strange to cite racial distrust as being a somewhat universal and intrinsic to the day-to-day life of a Blood Elf when there was at least three groups who became disenfranchised with the Blood Elves and who re-joined the Alliance, yet haven't once spoken of or even hinted at racial mistrust? Umbric is a pretty good example of someone who, in all likelihood, was present with Rommath when they were arrested in Dalaran -- yet he didn't even give a second thought to joining the Alliance (and, like Alleria, they both still explicitly state they fight for Quel'thalas) nor did he balk about working alongside humans despite having been a part of the group that apparently hates them with a Rwandan-esque fervor.

And Aethas didn't give it a second thought in joining Dalaran again. Kinda bit him in the ass again. Then he did it again anyway. Besides, Umbric joined Alleria first and foremost. Also, they kinda fight against Quel'thalas now so them fighting for Quel'thalas seems to be working in a rather weird manner.

This would fall into the category of "contrived explanations". It's a game set in a sort of medieval, fantasy setting -- you may as well expect anybody with a pulse is going to be spying for someone. You think the Blood Elves didn't have information flowing to them from the various frontages? Be real. At best, this is just shoddy reasoning for Blizzard to affect gameplay by giving the Horde things that would bolster their population, at worst it illustrates that the political class in Quel'thalas is either inept or hypocritical.

Even if everyone spied on each other (because Blood Elves had great manpower for that at the time), that doesn't mean nations are going to be OK with being spied on, let alone invaded by foreign military, when they discover it.

Edit: Also, "no help"? It's entirely possible that without Velen, Quel'thalas would be a Wretched-wasteland right now.

Why on earth would it be a wasteland without Velen?

It's because it doesn't jive with how the real world works, which means as a viewer/reader, you cannot suspend disbelief when obnoxious decisions are made. If Mexico sends a million soldiers to butcher their way through the southwestern U.S., whereas Canada arrests a bunch of reservists we sent to help them (who then broke Canadian law), it wouldn't be logical to then join Mexico against Canada -- the punishment doens't fit the crime, so to speak.

Who are the reservists in this comparison?

The Night Elves spied on them, at a time when Blood Elves were found to be killing Draenei and consorting with demons on the Azuremyst Isles, which was considered Night Elf territory before the Exodar crashed there.

First of all, Night Elves were part of the Alliance, so Alliance can't shrug the responsibility off. You know, the same way you justify Night Elves' actions with what another group of Blood Elves has done. And oh noes, they were killing a race that wasn't an Alliance member at the time. Secondly, it's the Dwarf that spied on them (and potentially sabotaged them). Night Elves invaded Quel'thalas.

Ahem. There was the slight issue of an entirely plagued former kingdom and the Forsaken in between them.

How comes it didn't stop the Sentinel army then? It's almost as if Quel'thalas was a coastal nation and ships existed.

And yet they then ally with the very successor of the kingdom that Garithos came from, which is filled to the brim with his former kinsmen, albeit slightly less living.

Exactly, a successor kingdom. I.e. not the same one anymore. Filled with kinsmen that didn't exactly see eye to eye with Garithos to say the least.

*cough* Forsaken are humans. By definition it was a civil war between two sides of the same, supposedly hated, group of people.

And Forsaken were killing those who tried to have Blood Elves killed. You don't see how this would be a positive thing from Blood Elves' perspective?

Myeah, which doesn't solve much because the Forsaken being part of the Horde was another massive lorelol that came out of nowhere.

Why was it? Both sides needed each other for strategic reasons. It was merely an alliance of convenience. Which happened all the time throughout history.

Dalaran is neutral at that point. As in: not part of the Alliance. But sure, blame Jaina on the other members of the Alliance.

Dalaran instantly rejoined Alliance because of that point. Also, did you miss the Stormwind battalion and a commander that were teleported in to aid Jaina?

Ah, yes, hatred for the Alliance ... after everything that happened at the Sunwell, where the Alliance literally teams up with the Horde and end up saving the entire Blood Elf race.

Shattered Sun Offensive isn't Alliance. Velen purifying the Sunwell that was already reignited by Kael'thas isn't saving the entire Blood Elf race.

Probably because they know pre-TBC lore.

While ignoring 2.0 lore

Ah, yes, not that deep of a relationship ... besides being the ones to teach humans magic, beating back the trolls together, founding the Council of Tirisfal to fight demons together, having members in the Council of Six, fighting the demonic Horde together on Draenor as the Sons of Lothar, sharing an entire religion, ..

But sure, literal millennia of deep cooperation between humans and high elves translates to just "never that deep in the Alliance".

I like how you try to make a point (incorrectly) about lack of Alliance involvement in the Purge because Dalaran was neutral, but when it comes to pro-Alliance arguments things like who was in what organization at which point suddenly doesn't matter. Because most of the things you mentioned here happened ages before Alliance is a thing.

So good job "proving" the deep connection to the Alliance with irrelevant nonsense. Because when it comes to the actual Alliance, they became really involved only when the Horde threatened their nation, then left shortly after the Second War, no longer bound by their oath to Arathor and the line of Thoradin (since Arathor was long gone and line of Thoradin died out in the Second War).

As for those who joined the Sons of Lothar were never Blood Elves and weren't around when Quel'thalas-Alliance relations have soured. So also rather irrelevant. They were also somewhat outliers and even then Alleria joined Sons of Lothar to satiate her hatred of Orcs, not because of her deep love towards the Alliance.

And out of all of the human kingdoms Dalaran is the only one they were somewhat open to. Then the very same Dalaran sat idly by as Garithos sentenced them to death.

If you don't know how nuance in politics work, best stay away from conversations outside your scope, mate.

There's zero nuance here. Either they fight for Quel'thalas or they fight against it. Rather simple. You'd have a point if they tried to recreate the monarchy or cause any other revolt, in which case you could say they fight for the formation of the Quel'thalas they want. But they don't claim to do that. They wanted the current Quel'thalas as it is right now to have joined the Alliance. That failed. So they fight against Quel'thalas after their faction of choice once again attacked the Horde. Quel'thalas included, so yay for their great devotion towards Quel'thalas.

[Orby]

I find it funny that 'emo elves' are getting thrown around for void elves as this is the exact title we had for blood elves when they were released. Are elves just emo in nature? :P

[Deleted]

Pandaren is an unfair comparison, they had an entire expansion to build their backstory. By comparison to the new allied races (lightforged in particular), more creativity was required for Void Elves.
Also, Blood elves have been adapting to use new forms of magic forever. That was how they survived Arthas wrecking the Sunwell. Plus they have priests, so shadow magic is hardly new to them.

I don't remember anyone poiting a gun at Ion's head and demanding he churn out races without creating an ellaborate backstory for them. Litereally nobody asked to be able to play as a edgie meme elf before they became a thing. The devs could have devoted the next ten expansions to building them up as an NPC race before making them playable.

I find it funny that 'emo elves' are getting thrown around for void elves as this is the exact title we had for blood elves when they were released. Are elves just emo in nature? :P

Kinda yes. Nooooo my treeee! Noooo my immortalityyyyy! Noooo my cocaiiiiiiin!

Void elves just take it to the logical extreme by actually referring to themselves as emo elves.

[Friendlyimmolation]

Snip

I think this is interesting, we disagree on multiple levels, and at this point in time I won't be able to properly respond, I will try to later when I'm less busy.

[Zulkhan]

Are elves just emo in nature? :P

Well, kinda. Elves are generally described to be quite emotional due to their long life spans and are particularly attached to their bonds because of the thousands of years they spent forging them.

[Mehrunes]

Those who today refer to themselves as High Elves would've, in most cases, been present for the raiding parties of/following the Second War (Orcs, primarily) and for the aftermath of the Sacking of Quel'thalas (whereby Kael'thas was arrested with his comrades). Thus, they recognize two incidents which could be interpreted as a slight -- the first perpetrated by orcs, the second perpetrated by humans.

Conversely, those who adopted the Blood Elven moniker (who were also present for all of the above) experience additional personal slights -- specifically, and again, by orcs. You can count the various run-ins like Dalaran as being racially-motivated, but it's a stretch because the perpetrators are almost always of the same biological race.

What additional slights by Orcs? Are you counting things Garrosh did to piss them off? Then why handwave away things the Alliance did because it'd be a stretch to say they are racially motivated? How did being racially motivated or not even enter the picture here? The Horde invasion of Quel'thalas, i.e. the slight that counts for High Elves, wasn't. So this is utterly inconsistent.

In any case, as you were writing that sentence, did it not strike you ass odd to characterize the Alliance as being magically cloistered-off when they've got the most powerful Mage, Warlock, and presumably Priest?

The Alliance has the most powerful Mage and Warlock now? And presumably Priest? Horde has nothing in Priest department.

You can't really have a serious conversation related to the Alliance or High Elves with Friendlyimmolation, guys. He is a massive Horde and Blood Elf fanboy who handwaves, strawmans and headcanons to his hearts desire. There is not a whole lot of rational or objective going on in his own world. Just wasting your time.

Given how in your world being offered sources constitutes headcanon, lel.

Ion hates the idea of playable High Elves on the Alliance, so he likes to pretend they barely exist. Meanwhile, we have them showing up all over the place.

Various Blizzard people said the same thing over the years though.

We can't really weigh benefits, because one is purely hypothetical. Trustworthiness, though, is fair play.

Ultimately, for me, everything stems from an unbelievable premise. The things that follow are mostly reasonable (to the extent that Blizzard portrays things, at least), but the actual decision to join the Horde to begin with is so outlandish in character that it sours the mood for all of their interactions with either faction.

But the decision to join the Horde rests on two things. 1. upon Alliance using diplomacy as an excuse to fuck them over. 2. Sylvanas. Alliance's behavior playing a role is mentioned in the final quest. And Sylvanas not only secured the safety of Ghostlands, with Tranquillien forces playing a pivotal role in Dark'khan's death, but she was also their beloved Ranger General that gave her life for Quel'thalas.

Before they realized that undeath changed Sylvanas two out of three leading individuals of Silvermoon would have given their lives for her. They didn't care much about Orcs per se. Neither did Sylvanas when she joined. There's a reason why Forsaken start friendly with Quel'thalas and vice versa, while the both of them start neutral with the rest of the Horde.

And at the start of TBC, whichever faction they would have went with, they were using that alliance only as a way to get to Outland and Kael's Utopia. They weren't joining the Horde for an eternity, they were just using them for one task. So they chose the faction that helped them out with their huge problem of Scourge running rampant across Ghostlands rather than the one that tried to fuck them over while they halfway in a grave for this low committmence relationship.

As for the Forsaken being friendly, did we forget that their first few years in the Horde were ultimately nothing but blackmail by Sylvanas? I mean, Lor'themar may as well have been a prison-b***h to the Banshee-Queen.

Except that happened only a year later. And blackmail or not, Sylvanas wasn't telling them what to do, she was conveying the message of what the Horde told them to do. Lor'themar tried to walk back on his obligation towards the Horde. That would have resulted in the Horde not supporting them back automatically anyway, with or without Sylvanas' harsh language.

[Aucald]

As this thread appears completely derailed, and no longer even about Void Elves, it is now closed.