Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Katchii]

Hey Katchii, thanks for the well reasoned discussion.

If the Blood Elves had been planned as a playable Horde race back when the RPG was being made, then the RPG "High Elves" would not have even been playable and "Blood Elves" would not have been a hostile NPC "monster" race to go fight (Blood Elves were basically described as vampire monsters that had gone psycho). We would have just been told that High Elves had left the Alliance and there were other races to play. Instead of hostile to everyone, "Blood Elves" would have been a neutral race that was part of no faction. There might have been optional rules for High Elves in campaigns set during WCI & WCII.

Even Metzen, when he first announced Blood Elves on Horde admitted that it was wonky lore-wise and they'd have to put some effort into making it workable. As I've said before, they made the right call, but it was not planned to be that way. It was a reaction to a serious game-breaking issue that was killing WoW.

Based on what you said here, I'm not sure the RPG should be considered as any reliable source for what should or shouldn't have happened. Blood Elves were never psycho vampire monsters, except for the Withered and the San'layn.

The RPG didn't need to tell you the high Elves left the Alliance because they already did, as part of the story line in Warcraft III. However as you've said, there were still some loyal to the Alliance, but those were a splinter of the main High Elven, now Blood Elven, nation.

Also, from what I've read, Metzen had to clarify a few things but never said that they'd have to put effort into the Blood Elf lore to make it workable. He referenced the "creepy elves" in Outland from back in The Frozen Throne, but not the nation of Blood Elves as a whole. He also straight up acknowledged that he fucked up on the lore because he didn't his homework, specifically in relation to the Eredar/Draenei and their interaction with Sargeras. Things change, evolve, or have to be fixed all the time.

Still, the RPG has been taken out of the continuity and shouldn't be considered any kind of source for what should or should not have happened. Obviously, things changed. Latching onto old lore that's been thrown out doesn't really show anything at this point. Though I understand your viewpoint, it still doesn't make sense to refer to the actions and lore within the RPG as any kind of anchor for how things should or should not have occurred.

[Obelisk Kai]

Good question, and there doesn't seem to be an official answer as far as I know but we have some information to speculate.

Gnomes were the last playable race to be added to the game which is why they weren't in the original cinematic.

From the Behind the Scenes :Characters video it is clear that the silhouette's of playable races were very important and the would even change race models to make them more distinc. Since Humans and Night-Elves were decided pretty early on High-Elves would probably have looked too similar in terms of silhouette. I think it's clear that in terms of silhouettes Gnomes are/were more distinctive than High Elves given the other vanilla races.

Goblins were seriously considered both as a neutral and Alliance race though which also explains why they could equip a lot of player armor models already back in vanilla. In an interview John Staats revealed that Goblins were scrapped as a playable race because building their starting zone starting zone Kezan/Undermine was simply too expensive since they didn't have a lot of art assets.

Gnomeregan was planned to be in the game anyway, and perhaps already build before Gnomes became playable so it was probably relatively easy to place them in Tinker Town inside Ironforge using existing art assets. There were no High or Blood Elven art assets in the game, even the lodges in Hinterlands, Plaguelands and Loch Modan are all Night-Elven in style so it could be that building Quel'Thalas for either High or Blood Elves would have been too expensive.

Btw, there is an image of an old map of World of Warcraft from 1999 which shows (High) Elves, Humans and Dwarves as team blue, Orcs, Goblins and Tauren (and perhaps Night-Elves) as team green and Naga, Undead/Forsaken and Demons as team red. This does confirm information from John Staats that blizzard originally planned 9 races including Naga, Goblins and demon shapeshifters and didn't settle on a 2-faction system from the start.

I suspect the reason High Elves were ultimately not chosen is because they had apparently been wiped out in Warcraft 3 or had become the Blood Elves, who left the Alliance and that when they limited themselves to four races per faction, they didn't want to make half the Alliance the Elven faction. At which point they would have been forced to choose who to bring in and they likely REALLY wanted those Night Elves to be playable.

Yet this goes back to the original point. If High Elves WERE so iconic to the Alliance, why has Blizzard taken every opportunity not to add them?
They added Void Elves rather than Alliance High Elves, and it is clear Void Elves were designed as a replacement for Alliance High Elves, because why create Void Elves if you ever intended to add Alliance High Elves.
They added Blood Elves to the Horde and not the Alliance, when the storyline of TBC could have easily been written as a reconciliation between the Alliance and their old allies.
In Vanilla they went a race of purple elves introduced in the previous RTS as an entirely separate faction rather than High Elves.
They still had a slot available for the Alliance and chose Gnomes, a race that hadn't been seen since Warcraft 2 and even then only as pilots of machines.
In Warcraft 3, while they knew they were making an MMO, they wrote the actual plot of the High Elves being decimated and then compounded this by having them leave the Alliance and rename themselves Blood Elves.

Time and time and time again, Blizzard has gone out of their way not to add this 'iconic' race to the Alliance. Perhaps that is because, in their desire to put a genre defying spin on their High Elves, the Blood Elves, the rupture with the Alliance and the loss of that iconic status is as defining as the purple skin is for their wood elf spin, the Night Elves.

[Ielenia]

Void Elves are confirmed to expand in number by converting adults of other Elven groups.

Has it been confirmed that the void elves have refined the process that transformed the original group? As far as I know, still research was being done about that.

Also, what's stopping the high elves from accepting blood elves who no longer agree with the Horde and want to distance themselves from their green-eyed brethren?

The High Elves left the Alliance, renamed themselves Blood Elves and joined the Horde.

Not all of them did, as shown numerous times.

The turn of phrase does not reference the ease of counting them, it means that despite the ease it isn't worth the effort. And their low population has been cited by Blizzard on every occasion they have discussed them.

Yeah, an argument that is, in the end, meaningless considering the idea that some blood elves might no longer agree with what Lor'themar and the Horde are doing and would like to distance themselves from the other blood elves, and decide to join the high elves again.

Alleria even in those days was a maverick. She butted heads with her government over the Horde threat and they sent her south to get rid of her. She defied her government by heading to Outland and taking several High Elves with her after her King withdrew her nation from the Alliance. She started a relationship with a Human and had a child with him, and unlike her sister took no steps to conceal the relationship. Whilst I am sure you could and will argue this demonstrates her loyalty to the Alliance, to the High Elven people it would doubtless look like she was putting Human interests ahead of her own people due to her affection for Turalyon. Alleria has proven time and time again to be completely unrepresentative of the High Elves even up to the modern day where her transformation means she isn't a High Elf at all any more

Oh yeah. The fact that the reason she went against her king's orders because she wanted to end the Horde threat, and not just get inside a human's pants, totally doesn't matter. The fact her disagreement over the Horde threat came long before her relationship with Turalyon is also meaningless.

Regardless of that, she is a representative. Of the high elves who still clung to their loyalties to the Alliance despite everything else.

And before you decry the feelings of the High Elves, who became the Blood Elves, remember that her primary task upon her return to Silvermoon was yet another entreaty for the Elves to put Human interests first with no consideration of why the Kingdom of Quel'thalas and the Alliance were now enemies.

Oh yes. The classic "human potential" nonsense.

Stuff like that really hurts your attempts at argumentation, Kai.

Was Lor'themar also "putting human interests first" when he considered leaving the Horde and joining the Alliance back in MoP?

[RangerDaz]

Oh look what this patch just gave us

Guess what Xalatath's previous body incarnation was!

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Inanis

Inanis is a high elf found in Drustvar, leading a group of novice Deep Watchers in a ritual to harness the power of the Void Stone. She is killed by the adventurer at the behest of Xal'atath, who then coaxes them into unleashing the Void Stone's power, giving her the strength needed to escape the blade and possess Inanis's body, corrupting it in the process. Inanis's final words suggest that she accepted becoming a vessel for Xal'atath as her true purpose.

A high elf with blue eyes? But Ion! I thought there were only Blood Elves out there

Xalatath has an eye for chosing greatness

[DeicideUH]

How do people know if Inanis is a high elf if she's not in the Alliance? Why isn't she a blood elf?

It's almost as if blood and high elves were different enough besides their political allegiances... hmmmm...

[FlubberPuddy]

Oh yeah. The fact that the reason she went against her king's orders because she wanted to end the Horde threat, and not just get inside a human's pants, totally doesn't matter. The fact her disagreement over the Horde threat came long before her relationship with Turalyon is also meaningless.

Regardless of that, she is a representative. Of the high elves who still clung to their loyalties to the Alliance despite everything else.

And not just Alleria, but all the High Elves she took with her as well. As we meet these High Elves in Outland, they describe how hateful they are of Blood Elves. This shows it's not just "Alleria being a maverick" when there's other High Elven NPCs who also went on along with her. Especially when Obelisk is so clearly trying to imply that people of their own race should all be fiercely loyal to their own nation as if that actually exists with big nations IRL.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh look what this patch just gave us

Guess what Xalatath's previous body incarnation was!

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Inanis

Inanis is a high elf found in Drustvar, leading a group of novice Deep Watchers in a ritual to harness the power of the Void Stone. She is killed by the adventurer at the behest of Xal'atath, who then coaxes them into unleashing the Void Stone's power, giving her the strength needed to escape the blade and possess Inanis's body, corrupting it in the process. Inanis's final words suggest that she accepted becoming a vessel for Xal'atath as her true purpose.

A high elf with blue eyes? But Ion! I thought there were only Blood Elves out there

Xalatath has an eye for chosing greatness

It's interesting, I think in BFA there's been more uniquely named High Elves added since Wrath? If this is the case, it is pretty funny considering this is also the same expansion where "Blood Elves are High Elves" meme came about.

[Traycor]

Based on what you said here, I'm not sure the RPG should be considered as any reliable source for what should or shouldn't have happened.

Not using it for that. Just a point of reference for where the franchise was at the time. Changes like these are partly why they declared it non-cannon. But Metzen steered much of the direction of the RPG.

Blood Elves were never psycho vampire monsters, except for the Withered and the San'layn.

By the end of the TFT they were following Illidan, who was considered a demon at the time, and they were sucking mana like vampires. They kinda went crazy (which we see in Kael'Thas in WoW), and their concept art at the time was all goth and evil looking (including early WoW concept art).

It's also important to note that Silvermoon was considered to have been wiped out at the time. There was no "blood elf" nation because they were all dead. The High Elf survivors in the Alliance were all that were left--the evil blood elves were only the ones that followed Kael'Thas. It was later retconned that we had survivors in Silvermoon that also called themselves Blood Elves.

Latching onto old lore that's been thrown out doesn't really show anything at this point.

We were discussing if High Elves were an iconic Alliance race, which they absolutely were from 1995 to 2005. Just because Blizzard makes a change in their game doesn't erase what happens in real life. In actual, real life for 10 years, we as players had High Elves as an iconic Alliance race in our games.

And Blizzard clearly acknowledges this because they've continued to put High Elves on the Alliance side throughout WoW. They've made Blood Elves a Horde thing, which is fine. I actually agree with that decision. But that doesn't erase the iconic High Elves of the Alliance.

Also, from what I've read, Metzen had to clarify a few things but never said that they'd have to put effort into the Blood Elf lore to make it workable.

I'm not going to go digging for the video, but he basically said something to the effect of "this is awkward" and they'll need to do some explaining to make it work. The video has been referenced somewhere back in the 500 pages of this thread.

[FlubberPuddy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...ves_have_been/

This is going on Blizzard's radar for sure lol

A very succinct comic that breaks it all down at the end. More fuel to the High Elf topic that Blizzard will see.

[Katchii]

Not using it for that. Just a point of reference for where the franchise was at the time. Changes like these are partly why they declared it non-cannon. But Metzen steered much of the direction of the RPG.

Fair enough.

By the end of the TFT they were following Illidan, who was considered a demon at the time, and they were sucking mana like vampires. They kinda went crazy (which we see in Kael'Thas in WoW), and their concept art at the time was all goth and evil looking (including early WoW concept art).

It's also important to note that Silvermoon was considered to have been wiped out at the time. There was no "blood elf" nation because they were all dead. The High Elf survivors in the Alliance were all that were left--the evil blood elves were only the ones that followed Kael'Thas. It was later retconned that we had survivors in Silvermoon that also called themselves Blood Elves.

I don't remember there being anything written that said it was wiped out, that may have been an assumption, and a reasonable one I guess, but still an assumption.

Regardless, fair enough, I suppose.

We were discussing if High Elves were an iconic Alliance race, which they absolutely were from 1995 to 2005. Just because Blizzard makes a change in their game doesn't erase what happens in real life. In actual, real life for 10 years, we as players had High Elves as an iconic Alliance race in our games.

And Blizzard clearly acknowledges this because they've continued to put High Elves on the Alliance side throughout WoW. They've made Blood Elves a Horde thing, which is fine. I actually agree with that decision. But that doesn't erase the iconic High Elves of the Alliance.

Again, fair enough.

I'm not going to go digging for the video, but he basically said something to the effect of "this is awkward" and they'll need to do some explaining to make it work. The video has been referenced somewhere back in the 500 pages of this thread.

That's reasonable, not asking to dig it up, maybe just point in the right direction, if you want. I went searching for quotes, not videos, so missed it there but the only quotes I saw did allude to lore being tricky at times and that they've messed up.

The more I read up on this the more unreasonable it seems to actively advocate against High Elves being on the Alliance. The only reasonable arguments at this point are that Void Elves now already exist on the Alliance and have the Thalassian elf model with some recoloring and the differentiation in racial features between them and Blood Elves, because they're literally the same race so shouldn't look any different for the most part, aside from eye color I guess, maybe some tattoo options or something. These seem to be the argument Blizzard is sticking to at the moment, but IMO it's a pretty weak argument. If adding High Elves would help inflate players on the Alliance, I don't see why they shouldn't do it, it really doesn't affect faction identity IMO considering a Void Elf and a Blood Elf in full gear can hardly be differentiated anyway.

But also, because Void Elves now exist and started with a super small population, there isn't really any rational explanation for why High Elves that also have a super small population are automatically disqualified.

[Hellspawn]

Would be blue eyes for night elfs fine too? Finally proper Shen'dralar! Also you would play the real high born.

[Graden]

Would be blue eyes for night elfs fine too? Finally proper Shen'dralar! Also you would play the real high born.

I'd love that. Shen'dralar are one of my favorites, although Blizz seems to have forgotten their existance.

[Garfurion]

I suspect the reason High Elves were ultimately not chosen is because they had apparently been wiped out in Warcraft 3 or had become the Blood Elves, who left the Alliance and that when they limited themselves to four races per faction, they didn't want to make half the Alliance the Elven faction. At which point they would have been forced to choose who to bring in and they likely REALLY wanted those Night Elves to be playable.

Yet this goes back to the original point. If High Elves WERE so iconic to the Alliance, why has Blizzard taken every opportunity not to add them?

They didn't add playable Alliance High Elves because they added Blood Elves to the Horde in TBC to give them a pretty race as requested by Korean players.

They have been adding Alliance High Elves at every opportunity to the Alliance though without a real reason to do so:

• Quel Danil and Quel Lithien Lodge High Elves in vanilla while there was no reason for it. They even considered a reputation faction for them: "The Silvermoon remnant".,
• Alliance Expedition High Elves in TBC including the Allerian Stronghold. They could just have said they all dissapeared with Alleria or died.
• The Silver Covenant in WotLK with repeat performances in most other expansions even at the cost of lore opportunities for other playable races. Again no reason to add them or keep using them. We didn't see Jinyu show up every expansion after MoP or Frostborn Dwarves after WotLK.

Clearly Blizzard doesn't really sees them as having been wiped out or they wouldn't have added them to the game.

They added Void Elves rather than Alliance High Elves, and it is clear Void Elves were designed as a replacement for Alliance High Elves, because why create Void Elves if you ever intended to add Alliance High Elves.

Ask Blizzard. Ion said anything can happen in the future so clearly they don't want to rule out they might be added at some point even if they think it's unlikely at the moment.

They added Blood Elves to the Horde and not the Alliance, when the storyline of TBC could have easily been written as a reconciliation between the Alliance and their old allies.

True, and perhaps that was there original plan but they needed a pretty race on the Horde and rather than invent a new race they went with Blood Elves.

In Vanilla they went a race of purple elves introduced in the previous RTS as an entirely separate faction rather than High Elves.

One of the reasons they went with Night-Elves for the Alliance is that they wanted an Alliance race on Kalimdor, just as they wanted a Horde race (Forsaken) in the Eastern Kingdoms.

If you look/click on this map




from 1999 which Metzen made for the WoW dev team you can see that Night-Elves were originally planned to be part of the "green" faction together with Orcs (O), Goblins(G) and Tauren (T). The "blue" team on the other hand consisted of Humans (H) and Dwarves (D). Team Red consisted of Naga (N), Demons (DE) and Undead (U).

This corresponds to 9 races, including Demons, Naga and Goblins, which were originally intended to be playable as mentioned by John Staats in several interviews.

They still had a slot available for the Alliance and chose Gnomes, a race that hadn't been seen since Warcraft 2 and even then only as pilots of machines.
In Warcraft 3, while they knew they were making an MMO, they wrote the actual plot of the High Elves being decimated and then compounded this by having them leave the Alliance and rename themselves Blood Elves.

As I already stated in my previous post, Goblins were probably the preferred race to add to the Alliance at some point but too expensive to add. Note that Metzen also mentioned Goblins as a possible Alliance playable race candidate back in a Blizzard Insider Interview in 2003.

As you already stated yourself they could have written a storyline for the Blood Elves to rejoin the Alliance so that would have been a more obvious choice than High Elves at this point in time. I think they decided early on though the leave the Blood Elves out of the initial races list.

Also, as you probably saw in the Behind the Scenes:Characters video the silhouette of the different races was very important and they didn't their best to make the silhouette of the different races as distinctive as possible. Blood Elves even with their own model at this point in time would have been much more similar to Humans and Night-Elves than Gnomes were to any of the other races. Also, Blood Elves would have required Quel'Thalas to be added would have caused the same problems as Goblins. Gnomes were relatively cheap since they didn't need their own starting zone.

Time and time and time again, Blizzard has gone out of their way not to add this 'iconic' race to the Alliance.

Yeah, Blizzard really went out of their way not add Quel'Lithien and Quel'Danil lodge, the Allerian Stronghold and the Silver Covenant to the game.

Good thing they also didn't go out of their way to change Frostfencer Seraphi from a Blood Elves into a High Elf once people started asking questions about his eye color or the rename Jaina's Angels into Aurics Angels and thereby linking them to a High Elf (Auric Sunchaser) rather than a Human.

Blizzard may not want Alliance High Elves to be playable at the moment but they clearly wanted them in the game. I don't think there is any other non-playable race of either faction that has been shown so prominently over multiple expansions.

Perhaps that is because, in their desire to put a genre defying spin on their High Elves, the Blood Elves, the rupture with the Alliance and the loss of that iconic status is as defining as the purple skin is for their wood elf spin, the Night Elves.

What iconic status ? In Warcraft 2 the High Elven Archers and Rangers joined the Alliance of their own accord, in Warcraft 3 the priest and sorceress units did the same. Quel'Thalas was never a prominent member of the Alliance so the rupture between Silvermoon and the Alliance is insignificant when it comes to High Elves as members of the Alliance.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...ves_have_been/

This is going on Blizzard's radar for sure lol

A very succinct comic that breaks it all down at the end. More fuel to the High Elf topic that Blizzard will see.

Nice informative comic

- - - Updated - - -

Also, what's stopping the high elves from accepting blood elves who no longer agree with the Horde and want to distance themselves from their green-eyed brethren?

Nothing. The Blood Elves in Telogrus Rift are proof of that.

[ksaf]

Just have gnomes create a de-voidfication ray and patch a new tint for void elves...

[Traycor]

I don't remember there being anything written that said it was wiped out, that may have been an assumption, and a reasonable one I guess, but still an assumption.

From the Warcraft RPG (again, non-cannon, but at the time it was cannon):
In the High elf entry, it said, "with Quel'thalas gone".

In the second edition of the RPG we get much more:
"Quel’Thalas: An area in northeastern Lordaeron and once the high elven homeland, the Scourge attacked and razed Quel’Thalas in the Third War. Little lives here now. The undead plundered the area’s resources and left. The regions once rich in magic and learning are now home to skeletal trees and elven spirits.

Silvermoon: The former high elven capital, Silvermoon does not look as devastated as the Blackened Woods. Trees and buildings still stand, and the white
stones are free of blood and ash. The appearance is deceptive, however, as Silvermoon is lethal. Undead elven guardians wander the streets and towers, ensuring that no more harm befalls their city. Nevertheless, the lure of undiscovered elven magic draws adventurers from across the world."

As an interesting side note, the High Elf entry (this is after The Frozen Throne) specifically lists "Affiliation: Alliance". We also get an image drawn by Metzen of the races of the Alliance:

The more I read up on this the more unreasonable it seems to actively advocate against High Elves being on the Alliance. The only reasonable arguments at this point are that Void Elves now already exist on the Alliance and have the Thalassian elf model with some recoloring and the differentiation in racial features between them and Blood Elves, because they're literally the same race so shouldn't look any different for the most part, aside from eye color I guess, maybe some tattoo options or something. These seem to be the argument Blizzard is sticking to at the moment, but IMO it's a pretty weak argument. If adding High Elves would help inflate players on the Alliance, I don't see why they shouldn't do it, it really doesn't affect faction identity IMO considering a Void Elf and a Blood Elf in full gear can hardly be differentiated anyway.

Yeah, that's why this thread was started. It was to brainstorm design ideas for ways to make High Elves stand out without changing them into something that wasn't a High Elf. The OP has ideas from several different people.

[ercarp]

Was feeling nostalgic so I made a few of these.

[FlubberPuddy]

Was feeling nostalgic so I made a few of these.

Really amazing work! Love how each of the options showcase different customization: earrings, tattoos, scars. The feather earring is a very nice touch!

[Varx]

Was feeling nostalgic so I made a few of these.

Amazing customisation ideas for belves for the imminent character customisation overhall.

[Newrio]

Interestingly, I did not know it before.

[FlubberPuddy]

Amazing customisation ideas for belves for the imminent character customisation overhall.

Just like all those Mag’har hairstyles/face customizations went to Green Orc fans that were hollering for em amirite?

[DeicideUH]

From the Warcraft RPG (again, non-cannon, but at the time it was cannon):

I have many of the old RPG books. The first ones are amazing, with a lot of info that would be used on WoW only many years later.

For instance, the RPG was the first place where we had the names for Feralas, Tanaris, Thousand Needles, Silithus. However, it didn't explain what many of those places were. For instance, it cites the Silithid as one of the dangers of Kalimdor without explaining what a silithid was, lol. The authors of the RPG literally got notes from Blizzard developers and used them, so they ended up with lots of partial information that showed behind-the-scenes decisions.

The book Lands of Conflict and Lands of Mystery were amazing. The former brought a lot of info on Quel'thalas (at the time completely overwhelmed by the Scourge, which was confirmed in a in-game book that still exists today), but it also cited the island of Quel'danas as a place where elves survived (thought no mention of the Sunwell being in the same island). The later detailed Northrend many years before WotLK. It already had areas such as Coldarra, Crystalsong Forest, Zul'drak or Storm Peaks that never appeared before it in any game. It also showed a lot of info on the Great Sea, including Zandalar, Kezan, Nazjatar and the Broken Isles (thought Legion retconned most of the Broken Isles, even the Warcraft 3 canon on them).

Characters like Rastakhan or Galen Trollbane first appeared in the RPG. Others, like Tandred Proudmoore, were decanonized and later canonized. Many artifact names, like the Lich King's Helm of Domination or the Javelins of Suramar (which will appear in 8.2) were first mentioned in the RPG books (the name of the Lich King's helmet was only canonized in Legion!).

The RPG is a treasure trove of information.

However, one needs to be careful with its second edition, when the it was renamed "World of Warcraft RPG". From that point on, Blizzard stopped cooperating with the authors and you start to see a lot of non-Blizzard ideas. The book Lands of Mystery is one of the few second edition books that had a lot of Blizzard input.