The fantasy of playing a blood elf - What is so capitvating?

[Baine]

I like the Blood Elves for the look and the cultural sophistication. Don't care about Orcs, Trolls, Goblins and Forsaken.

[RobertMugabe]

Looking at realm pop stats, this race is the most popular race amongst active players at the end game - i.e. basically active users of the game.

Blood elf race (incl high elves/void elves i.e. all things THalassian) generate the most conversation, whines, hypes and crazed fandoms.

Okay, Dudes! Tell me why are you so worked up about this race so.. what's your reason for playing em or liking em? And has any other race in wow competed for your affection over them???

They look pretty cool, armor looks good on them and they have interesting and rich lore. They are also the most human-like race without being just plain boring humans and without having some... shortcomings.

Besides that, they are the first good looking Horde race and they were originally an Alliance race, however due to gameplay/marketing reasons they finally became a Horde race, which pisses off a lot of Alliance players, but also did piss off many "traditional" Horde players too. And probably their biggest controversy gameplay-wise has always been that they had one of the most op racials in the game, that were both very easy to use and which are super powerful in almost every type of content.

[ravenmoon]

They're hot. End.

Magically all the fat/ugly races are the least played. It's no coincidence.

So true. Although the candid way you said that made me burst out laughing.

I do wonder how aware blizzard are oabout this, despite everything the elven stories are still pretty lousy. The night elves are treated like shit, and the blood elves whiles far more competent still also fall rather short especially when opposing humans.

- - - Updated - - -

They look pretty cool, armor looks good on them and they have interesting and rich lore. They are also the most human-like race without being just plain boring humans and without having some... shortcomings.

Besides that, they are the first good looking Horde race and they were originally an Alliance race, however due to gameplay/marketing reasons they finally became a Horde race, which pisses off a lot of Alliance players, but also did piss off many "traditional" Horde players too. And probably their biggest controversy gameplay-wise has always been that they had one of the most op racials in the game, that were both very easy to use and which are super powerful in almost every type of content.

tehy did make them great all round true.

I sometimes wonder if the blood elf hate for jealous alliance fans and horde traditionalists who want them out of the horde might ever lead to high elves being playable.

I have often felt that 4 factions was the best way to do.

Split the alliance in two, and the horde in two. For game systems, the two halves still operate as one (i.e. things like guilding and grouping) but otherwise they are two factions where one use to stand may solve that problem, with the blood elves and forsaken being away from the traditional horde races, and conversely the Night elves and draenei apart form the traditional alliance races.

[Daedius]

Being fabulous isn't enough? Talk about being greedy for more reasons...!

[ravenmoon]

1) I don't like playing any of the races that the Alliance has to offer.
2) I don't like playing races that are generally considered physically unattractive.
3) I like playing race that have solid racial bonuses.
4) I like playing races that a proficiency for magic (I mostly play spell-casters).
5) I like playing races in which it was obvious that the art team at least TRIED to make the armor sets look decent on.
6) While I never cared much for Paladins in general, I'm always down for a decent redemption arc, and the Blood Knights is a fairly moderately okay redemption arc in the grand scheme of what Warcraft has to offer, and I like to think it is at least a SLIGHT reflection on the culture as a whole.

This is coming from someone who hasn't played a Blood Elf in YEARS, but they are without a doubt the most interesting race in this game. Orcs are a close second.

Wow, you gave 6 reasons !! Palusible ones too, without being a blood elf fanatic.

They have two much going for them over other races. this is why i advocated for blizzard to bolster the night elves emphatically, with a better model revamp, and a much improved turn of fortunes ( i wanted to see both their forests and pre-sundering cities resotred boasting and showing both their legendary arcane and nature expertise). Their racials are pretty solid tho, but until the model and image gets improved, night elves aren't a patch on blood elves.

[Donald Hellscream]

Female blood elves and by extension void elves in my opinion have some of the best casting and attack animations, not to mention their idle stealth animation looks super cool.

Also their slender frames lends itself more to things like pauldrons not being ginormous like they are on races with larger frames like Draenei, Tauren, Orc etc.

[keelr]

Most of the sets looks good on them, their lore is interesting, racial abilities are good etc.

[Jazzhands]

Looking at realm pop stats, this race is the most popular race amongst active players at the end game - i.e. basically active users of the game.

Blood elf race (incl high elves/void elves i.e. all things THalassian) generate the most conversation, whines, hypes and crazed fandoms.

Okay, Dudes! Tell me why are you so worked up about this race so.. what's your reason for playing em or liking em? And has any other race in wow competed for your affection over them???

TnA.

And to a lesser extent, their racial I guess but most likely TnA.

[Soon-TM]

<snip>

I think that the "gap" between D&D and WoW can be attributed, at least in part, to their respective stories. Humans have always received a lot of attention, even before the rise of Human Potential™, so people in the Alliance naturally gravitate towards them.

The same applies to the Horde: during Vanilla, the most popular races, by far, were Forsaken and Orcs, i.e. two of the most featured races in WC3, especially in TFT. In BC, BEs (and Draenei, to a lesser extent) were definitely central during the entire expansion, which attracted lots of players. Combine that with AT being incredibly powerful all the way from BC to Legion, and you have a recipe for popularity.

With WoW dwarves the opposite has been true. They had little in-game story in Vanilla (despite their solid foundations in lore), and have been forgotten ever since, with the sole exception of WotLK. Add lackluster racials to the mix, and voilà, one of the least popular races.

[ravenmoon]

TnA.

And to a lesser extent, their racial I guess but most likely TnA.

Can't beat the TnA, it's no surprise the females are more popular than the males, but I like the males too.. so it's interesting. Their racial is still one of the most powerful in the game. Even blizzard admitted this.

[Vargulf the Happy Husky]

once upon a time, Orlando Bloom played a blond haired elf in a popular movie series titled The Lord of the Rings. that is why blood elves are cool, and also why so many alliance players want High Elves.

[Master Guns]

I believe it has nothing to do with anything other than they have great racials for gameplay as well as being the most "human" looking (IE aesthetically pleasing) horde race, so it looks good in most transmog sets bar a few plate ones.

[Joyreym]

Because they are the ultimate cliché of fantasy. Elf, blonde and magician.

[Soon-TM]

Because they are the ultimate cliché of fantasy. Elf, blonde and magician.

Tbh, the "magician" part has never felt more forlorn than in WoW. Everybody and their grandma in WoW are better spellcasters than belfs.

[Sagenod]

I seriously don't know how the NElf and Belf females swapped butts too.

The NElf female had the bigger rounder ass in the old models, then the BElf female suddenly gained one, and the more active NElf female just lost one against the logic of the race.

I guess it's always been nerd boy fantasy.. I still don't get why the NElf fmelae had to lose hers though, they also reduced the Nelf female's breast size

Physical activity does not necessarily equal bulk. In most cases a person that spends a lot of time in the wild, sustaining themselves with what nature provides, will be lean compared to the well-fed/over-fed people in the cities and suburbs.

[Razion]

Gamers are informed far more by what they see than what they read.

Curiously enough, when I was going through Northrend again recently to grab a cloth shoulder appearance, I ended up doing a handful of quests in Grizzly Hills related to the Iron Dwarves. It struck how in the area there was a lot of custom buildings and architecture for the Iron dwarfs that we really never saw again, and how even with a lot of the basic props (like the eagle-faced steam tanks) and buildings we see for dwarfs in the original setting, we don't see any of that anymore either. It also struck me how the Iron dwarfs have that slimmer model than the Ironforge or Dark Iron dwarfs have, and how there are so many various toy items in the game to take on an Iron dwarf look and it kind of stands out to me now that on some level, if at least subconsciously, that this is maybe the kind of preferred direction dwarfs were at one point meant to go in but never went. Perhaps in a similar sense, as you said earlier as well, it's this way for how Blood Elves ended up as well.

[valax]

When I rolled my first blood elf I was playing alliance in tbc . Turns out being able to play a warlock who is not a bodybuilder, a midget freak, an orc or a corpse was well worth the deleting of alliance lvl 70 and to start over in the horde.

[Morgaith]

Tbh, the "magician" part has never felt more forlorn than in WoW. Everybody and their grandma in WoW are better spellcasters than belfs.

I mean they're the only race that has ever been unable to be warriors, i think that speaks for itself.

[Fabled]

Because Tauren and Zandalari Trolls make for poor paladins.

[Khaza-R]

Being the pretty race on the Horde.

The motivation is really that shallow. Maybe if Blizzard didn't mess up the Nightborne we would see less of them.