Page 4 of 4 FirstFirst ...
2
3
4
  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by The Stormbringer View Post
    This is a minor quibble, but please say "Void Elf" sometime. Constantly saying "Ren'dorei" feels very pretentious. The race name in-game is Void Elves. We don't constantly call the Night Elves "Kal'dorei" or the High Elves "Quel'dorei", do we?
    Has it crossed your mind that I use their Thalassian name to sound pretentious

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Kokolums View Post
    This almost doesn't belong in Wow anymore. WoW has devolved into "haha! let's just slap Kel'Thuzad into the game as a boss and throw him away! Screw his lore built up for years!"
    Not sure what this has to do with the Ren'dorei, but the idea of Blood elves messing with the Void is an old one, dating back to TBC. High Astromancer Solarian, a boss in Tempest Keep, was a Blood elf meddling with the Void who even turned herself into a Voidwalker.
    Expansion Storylines ranking:

    Legion > Cataclysm > MoP > BfA up to 8.2.5 > Wrath > TBC > WoD > Dragonflight > BfA 8.3 > Shadowlands

  2. #62
    Quote Originally Posted by The Stormbringer View Post
    This is a minor quibble, but please say "Void Elf" sometime. Constantly saying "Ren'dorei" feels very pretentious. The race name in-game is Void Elves. We don't constantly call the Night Elves "Kal'dorei" or the High Elves "Quel'dorei", do we?
    I always refer to the Blood Elves as "Sin'dorei" because that is what they are.

    It's something that is commonly used in recent expansions.

  3. #63
    Light comes from darkness shise's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Location
    Denmark
    Posts
    6,750
    Quote Originally Posted by Val the Moofia Boss View Post
    There are three categories of race fantasies:

    • Race fantasies you can actually get in WoW.
    • Race fantasies that you see in Warcraft art and lore but can't actually play in WoW.
    • Race fantasies that are just weak.


    Let's start with no. 1: compelling race fantasies that WoW nails:



    WC3 Night Elves had pretty strong savage Dark/Wood elf aesthetics, but sadly these didn't really carry over into WoW and just became generic fantasy elves, but they still had strong aesthetics.

    Early Blood Elves have pretty strong vibes when you were coming off of WC3 and their starter zone. Their kingdom had been ruined and now they are crack addicts, trying to hold on to a shred of dignity in spite of all that. After the Sunwell was cleansed, they just sorta became generic fantasy elves and faded into the background.





    Humans in fantasy are usually boring, but in WoW they're pretty compelling because they are survivors of ruined kingdoms. If you play the games and read the books, you get a sense of loss for the humans. When Moon Guard RP was at its height, there was always some RP event going on Alliance side about human survivors trying to retake their fallen kingdoms. That's pretty compelling. Sadly, like the Dwarves, the most boring kingdom (Stormwind) hogged the limelight. At this rate we'll never see Gilneas, Lordaeron, and Arathi retaken and rebuilt. Kul'Tirans have stronger aesthetics than Stormwind in that they are an island kingdom of seafarers and sea witches, but still don't have the compelling story of ruination like the fallen kingdoms.





    Worgen are gnarly cool. Sadly their story never continued after Silverpine Forest.





    Draenei had compelling lore early on in WoW, when they were on a space Exodus wandering the wilderness for 25,000 years following angels of light and fleeing from space satan. Atmospheric music in BC, and very unique aesthetics. Sadly they were forgotten after BC, and then their lore got washed down in WoD (but they got an art update that was good!), and have been pretty much forgotten outside of the Legion context.





    Orcs are probably the definitive Warcraft race and I don't think I need to elaborate on them too much.





    I was drawn to Tauren because they were the "good guy" beastrace. They feel strong and inhuman beastmen, yet also sympathetic and relatable. Their capital is comfy, open air, and has bright colors. Strong aesthetics. Too bad you still can't wield logs as weapons.

    Forsaken also have strong aesthetics but they didn't appeal to me.

    - - - Updated - - -



    No. 2: strong Warcraft race fantasies that WoW does not provide ingame:




    The Wildhammer dwarves had strong aesthetics in the art and the books. Shamans who are in tune with the spirits and ride Gryphons. Sadly you can't play as a Gryphon rider in WoW. The Black Iron Dwarves also had very strong aesthetics in WoW, being an underground volcano kingdom that practiced rune magic and made deals with devils of fire. Sadly they too were neglected and you couldn't look as them until it was too late, let alone play as their classes or use their capital city. It's a shame that whenever Dwarves were onscreen in WoW, the focus was on the boring Bronzebeards and the boring Titans.






    Gnomes and Goblins are depicted as clever engineers, but you can't play as one. Goblins are also advertised as loan sharks and gamblers, but again you can't actually play as such.






    Trolls had strong aesthetics in WC3, but in WoW you get the Darkspear trolls and they're sorta boring and washed down compared to the other troll tribes. You don't get to perform blood sacrifices in WoW. The bad tribes do and that's why they're more memorable.

    The strongest thing Zandalari have going for them is the whole "riding T-rexes, triceratops, and teradactyls into battle" part, but sadly like the Wildhammer dwarves you cannot play as the iconic mounted warrior archetype.



    - - - Updated - - -

    Now, for the playable races that don't have strong fantasies, period:

    Pandaren have very expansive lore, but they're not particularly distinctive. Strong aesthetics I suppose (you can be a Panda monk) but not very distinctive like the other Warcraft races.

    Void Elves had terrible fantasy. I conceptually do not like the "Void is not inherently evil! It's just another side of the same coin of materialistic elemental power as the Light!". Also, I just don't like the aesthetic. They should have just been plain High Elves. High Elves aesthetically are just generic fantasy elves, but the Silver Covenenant had a compelling story in that they were sticking by the Alliance and their morals even though that was unpopular with the rest of Quel'thelas.

    I guess Vulpera are cute, but I don't have a strong sense of what their culture or aesthetics are. While Vulpera look like a Horde race, they don't have a convincing story that justifies their inclusion in it.

    Nightborne are pretty boring and the magic crack addiction is just a less interesting retread of the Blood Elf story.



    I guess I should also mention the strong Warcraft race fantasies that aren't playable in any form whatsoever:

    Naga have a compelling story in that their nation was drowned and they have been warped into sea serpents. They have a strong aesthetic in being savage sea serpents and mermaids and underwater kingdoms.

    Mantid and Nerubians are aesthetically very unique, particularly Nerubians as they are not humanoids. Furthermore, they have different castes with different models that gives them even more variety. Very cool environments with the underground kingdoms (or kingdoms carved out from trees).

    People keep bringing up Ogres. The bickering two head gimmick makes for fun RP potential. They don't have strong lore outside of that.

    - - - Updated - - -



    Night Elves really should have been a playable faction unto themselves. Their races should have been Night Elves, Fae Dragons, Treants/Ancients, Owlkin, and Stone Giants. Maybe throw in Dryads and Centaurs in there. Keep the Night Elves as rough and savage as they were in WC3. Make Druids, Priests of Elune, and Wardens into their exclusive faction exclusive classes.



    Blood Elf politics were interesting early on when you had multiple different sub-factions: The newly established Blood Knights, hated by the Alliance paladins for torturing an angel. The Farstrider rangers. The Magisters who went to the Horde because they would tolerate their magic sucking addiction. The Sunreavers that leaned more neutral, and the Silver Covenant who held on to their oaths and remained loyal to the Alliance, even if that was unpopular back home. Lor'themar considering declaring himself king. Made for some fantastic RP but sadly Blizzard never wound up doing anything with it in the end.



    You are right in that a lot of Warcraft's most memorable races are traditionally "evil" races like orcs or zombies, but given a sympathetic PoV. Or typically good guy races like elves but given a dark twist (but still have a sympathetic PoV). In WC3 every faction is somewhat sympathetic to the player because you get to play as them, even the zombie horde of Scourge. The only faction that comes off as sympathetic is the Legion, namely because you don't get to play as them. I'm sure if you got a PoV from their perspective, you'd have people wishing that they were playable.
    That, right there, is a masterful reply

  4. #64
    Quote Originally Posted by shise View Post
    That, right there, is a masterful reply
    Actually he is wrong about the Nightborne. The blood elf magic crack is a re tread of the night elf one - which blizzard writes about in the night elves then chooses to make that part of the blood elf expansion but never shows in game for night elves till Legion with the nightborne.

    So Nightborne addiction came first, it’s just that blood elf one went into detail and highlighted first.

    There are many elements in the high elves that come from the night elves. When choosing to design the blood elves to make them different from their former high elf selves, they drew from the stuff they had done for the night elves.

    This is fine btw, because blood elves are connected to night elves very strongly.

    They took blood elf inspiration from Night elf Highborne they had already written for Azshara and the Kaldorei.

    But because blood elf was a new shiny race. It was seen before the night elf stuff. So most people on this forum tend associate elven arcane magic with blood elves instead of night elves/Nightborne where the lore already had.

    Meanwhile, they could have shown more of this side of the night elves in the race development in game, but guess what happened to alliance races from TBC. Yep, they were ignored. Only humans and any new alliance race introduced in an expansion got attention.

    So the night elf arcane show came much later by which time a lot fans had felt that night elves were only about the forest because of 6 -14 years of playing starting zones and having the option of skipping Feralas which showed night elf magic , until Legion came and forced all to see. By which time many had dissociated.

    Incidentally. They did the similar for Draenei borrowing heavily from their other works. This time it wasn’t another wow race, but the Starcraft Ghost assets they were used. This is why they came with a space demon entrance.

  5. #65
    Quote Originally Posted by Tanaria View Post
    I would agree. The Sin'dorei are the core Thalassian race now and as such, High Elves make up the majority of Rangers on the alliance, with a few Mages whilst Void Elves make up a large core of Void Magi and Void Rangers.

    As far as pure Fire, Arcane and Blood Magical practice goes - that's the new Thalassian craft (in the main) and that's now what they are known for.

    This is why Sin'dorei Mages are a staple lore/class combo (and also why they are the default Blood Elf character option.)

    And Sin'dorei don't call themselves "exiles" because they aren't exiles. High Elves chose the exile, because they questioned the magical practice of arcane tapping. They have to live with those decisions, unless they want to come back to Quel'Thalas and join the Blood Elves, Silvermoon and the Horde.

    High Elves are part of a small minority - indeed, I believe the new Alliance Thalassian lore should make the Ren'dorei their core race and they become the High Elves' future. At least it would continue to showcase the differences between Sin'dorei and Ren'dorei.

    .
    I agree. Look, I could be wrong, but I'm only basing it on the fact that I haven't seen high elf mages do anything special - but Mace is also correct in that just because you haven't seen it shown in game, doesn't mean it's not happening or doesn't exist. The main difference between this and the Shen'dralar is that at least the Shen'dralar have lore references and descriptions about their capability.

    High elves do not, there has been no mention. We have seen some high elf mage units true, but nothing on the scale of the Sin'dorei. And unlike the Shen'dralar, who we at least know it's the same mage body that essentially worked on and made most of the Azshara accredited arcane wonders of the kaldorei empire (simply because it is the surviving mages that the lore describes as the the kaldorei empire's most revered arcanists -s o we know the talent pool that survive Dire Maul are the best of the Shen'dralar - which makes sense too, Prince Tothelrdrinn would have kept his biggest talents alive and killed off weaker ones consecutively)

    Difference with the high elves is that, we don't know how much of their talent became blood elves and how many remained high elves, so we can't say, without some evidence that they're as good as blood elves.

    They can likely train to be as good as blood elves or give birth to talented children as good as blood elves. .the reason i say this is that the lore tells us with the Scryers that the best of the mages that Kael'thas had taken rebelled against him, and that some of the most talented high elves either became blood elves or went to Northrend to later become San'layn and Darkfallen after a failed attempt to take out Arthas.

    With the void elves, we are told some of the greatest scholarly minds of the blood elves and some (not all) are the ones who become void elves. This means that we know all the void elves from the blood elf pool anyway - are extremely talented, but this doesn't take away from the blood elf height, because only some of them went to pursue the void, so we have some very talented Thalassians as blood elves.

    I just don't see the remaining high elves prominent here. However, that's not to say they aren't some I am not aware of, and it certainly would be easy for blizzard to create characters that were phenomenal with magic and who never became blood elves. Especially priestly high elves and those that stuck to the original Darth'remar precepts about wise and restrained magic - so frost instead of fire and the traditional stuff..

    I also can't tell you how much of the high elves have changed, but it defeats the point if you make them as daring or reckless as blood elves, even though it would be understandable if they were seeing they've had to fight ooh and nail.. yet, there would be some liens they won't cross, because they refuse to be anything like their night elven Highborne kin who disgraced the race and plunged the world into chaos by their recklessness - this would be a dividing line between them and blood elves.

    Off course, blood elves don't view themselves as been reckless but doing what it takes to "ensure survival", this is why they've ditched the cautious approach, don't care if the magic is fel or blood or fire, if it's powerful, it should be utilised so what happened with Arthas can never happen again. The one exception was potentially the most powerful of all, the void - and this is what allows the void elves to come into being.


    We also don't know how much the experience of magic abstention during the Sunwell's absence would have changed them, they may have been weakened by this. However I theorise they were not, when the Sunwell was restored, they would have been strengthened again or at least not needed to control their addiction by trying to wean off arcane magic, and the new version of the Sunwell would have cured or at least counteracted arcane addiction in them.

    It's a lot of words to say "I don't know" but I would expect some high elves to prefer not to be connected to the Sunwell or any magic source again so they don't feel like that if it gets destroyed...this could be a faction of high elves..however I think if they meet night elves, who are constantly connected to the Well of Eternity /Moonwells but aren't addicted at all because of their balanced lifestyle, these high elves might change - but it's just an idea when trying to think of what other high elf groups and factions you could generate from the existing lore.

    however knowing blizzard, rather than find some good ones based on existing lore, they'd just brainstorm new things - which is good to, but what is bad is when you either completely retcon the old stuff or the new stuff or just ignore the old stuff, rather than try to make them connect with creative ideas.

    So I really think high elves would not be able to compete against blood elves even though they're are the same race. Blood elves have developed a lot of stuff in those few years we are well informed about.

  6. #66
    Old God Soon-TM's Avatar
    5+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2017
    Location
    Netherstorm
    Posts
    10,842
    There are some very interesting racial backstories in WoW, and it's a shame that they've been left to rot for the sake of a handful of badly written "heroes" who steal all the spotlight. My top three are:

    • Blood elves: they were arrogant, highly civilised, fine archers and even better spellcasters. But they had to learn humility the hard way, when the Scourge lay waste to their kingdom and wiped out a large majority of the population and defiling their biggest source of magic. Even then, they tried to preserve whatever tatters of dignity they could still hold onto.
    • Tauren, aka the peaceful giants. I like how the original writers tried to give the Horde a counterpart to the nature-loving nelfs without being a mere copypaste. And while their ethos was quite different from the Orcs', it made sense that they belonged to the Horde, after playing the WC3 campaign.
    • Kul Tirans: the vanilla (i.e. Stormwind) humans were quite interesting at the beginning, especially given the tragic background of the northern human kingdoms. But that was promptly discarded in favour of a Mary Suetopia, that soon swallowed not only SW, but the entirety of the Alliance as well. But Kul Tirans are a refreshing gust of wind: a nation of seafarers, miners and sailors, who don't hesitate to lay waste (even stepping into genocide territory sometimes) to whoever they deem to be enemies: Trolls, Orcs, Drust - all while being remarkably less sanctimonious than their cousins from SW.
    Quote Originally Posted by trimble View Post
    WoD was the expansion that was targeted at non raiders.

  7. #67
    Draenei come in first for me, I like their racial fantasy most.

    But I will add in Worgen and Zandalari as well.

    For Zandalari I like the aspect of an ancient culture having to deal with a world run by younger civilizations that seem barbaric or primitive to them. Being Greek, I do that a lot as well :P

  8. #68
    all of them except vulpera
    "You know you that bitch when you cause all this conversation."

  9. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by Sugarcube View Post


    just further made me like night elves more...
    That cinematic still gives me goosebumps just watching it all the way to the end. The reveal of Malfurion attacking the caravan and then the end reveal of Tyrande and Malfurion together (with the awesome music)... talk about a power couple lol.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •