High Elves: Is it really what the player base wants?

[Urti]

I just can't understand this whole "They are stealing one of our races, we should steal one back!' Attitudes. I didn't get it pre BC when the same attitude was shown about Blood Elves going to the Horde side. Blizzard had released the new Horde faction waaaaaaay before the Alliances Draenei.

-They get our Elves, we better get one of their races!
"SHUT UP, WE AREN'T GETTING ALLIANCE UNDEAD"

Seriously? You don't own Blood Elves, and besides, High Elves AREN'T Blood Elves! So cut the "WE WANT HORDE DWARVES" crap out! It makes NO sense, and is ridiculous. In this hypothetical, we aren't "stealing" anything, so quit plotting about what race to "steal."

OK. If Blizz allows the Alli to roll Helves/Belves that would give alliance players access to 7 races; Humans, gnomes, night elves, draenei, dwarves, worgen, and high/blood elves.
The Horde would only have 6; Orc, troll, tauren, forsaken, goblin, and belf. That kind of difference wouldn't be very popular among players, so Blizz would have to give the Horde access to a 7th race, in the spirit of fairness and to prevent fanboy mobs from burning down GC's palatial estate.
The problem there is that if the horde got Ogre as that 7th race (prolly the most logical option), then the alli fanboys would freak out that the horde got a "new" race while the alli got stuck with a palette-swap horde recycle, and GC's decadent mansion would still go up in furious fan-boy mob-flames.

Blizz is in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation vis a vis alli Highelves unless they specifically give horde a palette-swap alli race, so that each side can grumble and mope equally.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

OK. If Blizz allows the Alli to roll Helves/Belves that would give alliance players access to 7 races; Humans, gnomes, night elves, draenei, dwarves, worgen, and high/blood elves.
The Horde would only have 6; Orc, troll, tauren, forsaken, goblin, and belf. That kind of difference wouldn't be very popular among players, so Blizz would have to give the Horde access to a 7th race, in the spirit of fairness and to prevent fanboy mobs from burning down GC's palatial estate.
The problem there is that if the horde got Ogre as that 7th race (prolly the most logical option), then the alli fanboys would freak out that the horde got a "new" race while the alli got stuck with a palette-swap horde recycle, and GC's decadent mansion would still go up in furious fan-boy mob-flames.

Blizz is in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation vis a vis alli Highelves unless they specifically give horde a palette-swap alli race, so that each side can grumble and mope equally.

For the record, I know Horde would get a new race as well. This thread is about the validity of High Elves, so I am mainly focusing on that.

I agree, they are damned if they do, or don't. No matter what they choose. Random, or old characters.

Hopefully Horde players and Blizzard are mature enough to know why its silly to rabble-rouse just for a palette-swap, just for the sake of it. The "fairness" factor doesn;t even make sense there. It would much up lore as well.

[Urti]

Hopefully Horde players and Blizzard are mature enough to know why its silly to rabble-rouse just for a palette-swap, just for the sake of it.

Dude. Wow players. They will rabble-rouse, just as sure as the sun sets and tides turn. As a community, wow players' only constant is a simmering undercurrent of passive-aggressive hatred toward Blizz and all they do. This crowd literally can not be made happy, anything and everything blizz could possibly do will be considered a "slap in the face" by SOME pissy segment of the playerbase.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Dude. Wow players. They will rabble-rouse, just as sure as the sun sets and tides turn. As a community, wow players' only constant is a simmering undercurrent of passive-aggressive hatred toward Blizz and all they do. This crowd literally can not be made happy, anything and everything blizz could possibly do will be considered a "slap in the face" by SOME pissy segment of the playerbase.

Hahaha I totally agree... So would just doing nothing be better lol?

[Daskapital]

Given the amount of homophobic/heteronormative freakout that continues to this day over the inclusion of Blood Elves in this game, I can't imagine why the player base is suddenly so interested in having High Elves, which basically look the same. Based on what I've seen on the forums, the majority of the player base hates Blood Elves and gripes about them constantly.

I don't play alliance, so its no skin off my nose if they get more elves, but I do really want a worgen or a draenei so Id love a version of them for Horde. Ultimately, though, I think it would be more interesting to see something else. But please not Ogres because they're gross.

[Mad_Murdock]

. Based on what I've seen on the forums, the majority of the player base hates Blood Elves and gripes about them constantly.

Which is interesting seeing how many people play BELFs. Granted it seems a large chunk choose to play Female Belfs. I'm fairly neutral to them myself. I like some of the male BELF stances and looks. But they do have a tad too much sniveling attribute to them. They sometimes makes me think of the stereotypical weasel type you see in the movies.

I really don't get the attraction\desire to have High elves. Unless Alliance players just want another Hot chick to play. They don't seem remotely interesting.

[Deleted]

Which is interesting seeing how many people play BELFs. Granted it seems a large chunk choose to play Female Belfs. I'm fairly neutral to them myself. I like some of the male BELF stances and looks. But they do have a tad too much sniveling attribute to them. They sometimes makes me think of the stereotypical weasel type you see in the movies.

I really don't get the attraction\desire to have High elves. Unless Alliance players just want another Hot chick to play. They don't seem remotely interesting.

I'd hope Alliance players are more mature than that and the male High Elf percentage will be at least 60-70% in that faction. Preferably the same gender ratio as dwarves.
Cross-dressing is not cool.

[risingforce]

High Elves should not be playable in WoW because their race, their story, their presence is a thing of the past and the world has moved on.

For the Alliance, I would like to see a contingent of Elves represented beyond the druidic (sic) Night Elves. Perhaps a new story arc is needed to bring in a new contingent.

Beyond that, I would rather see Centaurs or Half Elves bolster the Alliance ranks. Centaurs have a firm hatred for the Horde and lore already points toward the legend Hatred of the Centaur which would provide a backbone to story arcs and quest content.

Of course... if Alliance get a new race, so do Horde... in which case I wish for Felblood Elves, Ogres (not very original) or we welcome in the Lost Ones which could be interesting, politically!

[Deleted]

High Elves should not be playable in WoW because their race, their story, their presence is a thing of the past and the world has moved on.

....

Of course... if Alliance get a new race, so do Horde... in which case I wish for Felblood Elves!

Hypocrisy much?

[Flaks]

i want to be an alliance blood elf

I could see Blizzard someday bending faction restrictions on certain races.

P.S. We don't need anymore stinkin' elves in this game.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

High Elves should not be playable in WoW because their race, their story, their presence is a thing of the past and the world has moved on.

For the Alliance, I would like to see a contingent of Elves represented beyond the druidic (sic) Night Elves. Perhaps a new story arc is needed to bring in a new contingent.

Beyond that, I would rather see Centaurs or Half Elves bolster the Alliance ranks. Centaurs have a firm hatred for the Horde and lore already points toward the legend Hatred of the Centaur which would provide a backbone to story arcs and quest content.

Of course... if Alliance get a new race, so do Horde... in which case I wish for Felblood Elves, Ogres (not very original) or we welcome in the Lost Ones which could be interesting, politically!

I don't understand your obsession with half elves, and your hatred of high elves.. The race, story and presence of both would be very similar..

Lost Ones just wouldn't make sense at all..

[Deleted]

For the record, I know Horde would get a new race as well. This thread is about the validity of High Elves, so I am mainly focusing on that.

Actually it's mainly about whether the player base wants them rather than the tired circular debate regarding lore justification that you've turned it into.

You have not made one point in this thread. I will not respond to you anymore. Whats ironic is the pure hypocrisy in your posts.

Funnily enough that's exactly how i felt about you earlier in this thread.


OT: Looking at the poll numbers is very interesting. I'm curious to know what factions the people voting for no are part of.

[mistuhbull]

Then this thread is utterly pointless. Clearly, some do and some don't, as it is with literally everything else. The poll suggests that more people don't than do, but it doesn't matter if 100% of the playerbase wanted them, lore must still be taken into account. As I pointed out in my previous post, I don't think that the lore problems regarding the High Elves would prevent them from being added, but they're still important and arguable points of contention.

However the lore complaints that are most presented I don't believe are the most valid ones. The real question that has to be answered is what is their cultural identity? Really the only one they have is "disagreed with Lor'themar". They aren't a unified culture, the Quel'dorei are separate distinct factions that are remnants and political dissidents from another culture. Some of these groups seem to even be attempting some form of reconciliation with the Sin'dorei (Auric for example).

Are the trolls a small group? Yes. But they are also culturally unified and unique. They are a tribe, not just some trolls.

Could the Quel'dorei be added in as one of these separate groups? possibly, but that just seems weak for an entire new race.

The best chance we have of seeing Quel'dorei is through sub-race skin options for the Humans(as most Quel'dorei live in the Human kingdoms and really the only Human Kingdom we see/is left is Stormwind) or Night Elves (since some Quel'dorei are beginning to be reallowed into Kaldorei society.) This would place them in the same starting zone but be graphically distinct.
Most likely, this would be part of a mass sub-race addition. Such as Elven Forsaken, Mag'har Orcs, Taunka, Forest Trolls, etc.

[Granyala]

Unless Alliance players just want another Hot chick to play.

But .. but... ._.

Personally I think peeps just associate High elves with the alliance, because the Alliance had elven units in War III. Honestly, I was a bit surprised back in the day as well that they aren't playable in WoW.

But only until I encountered my first Draenei with my human trial mage..... needless to say: I didn't wait for the full 10 days to activate my TBC.

[Deleted]

If you played War III TFT, you would know that Sin'dorei for alliance would have been super awkward, since Garithos basically kicked them out of the blue fanclub.

if you played warcraft 2 you would know the horde attempted to genocide the highelfs.

---------- Post added 2013-01-11 at 11:20 PM ----------

No ... pandaren where supposed to be the new Alliance race in BC, but they have been scrapped and replaced with the Draenai. The Blood Elves where always intended to be part of the horde.





i guess that most "High Elves" nowadays would be half elves. since humans and high elves are interbreedable and have done so for many years.
thou it seems that most half elves get more genetic information from their elven parent since about all half elves that have been seen in WoW, been described in books and so on have the looks of elves as well as their age and so on ...

i wouldn't have a problem with high elves becoming half elves in the process of integrating them to the alliance.

and it makes no sense only one marshall of lordaeron not stormwind/kultiras/theramore was an elf racist while the orcs and there horde tried to destroy the entire highelf kingdom but failed cause of human assistance. Highelf and human have a long friendship and its just stupid lore that the entire alliance falters cause of 1 officer being racist. It was done to give alliance race people a race on the horde side and giving alliance a beast class.


there is more highelfs then halfelvs

high elven population is approximately 24,810 and the half-elven population is approximately 9,550, not including Theramore, Dalaran, and several less significant cities. Stormwind (pop. 200,000)[11][12] alone has the most, with a total of 20,000 high elves, and 8,000 half elves.

taken from wowwiki.

[TheDangerZone]

Then this thread is utterly pointless. Clearly, some do and some don't, as it is with literally everything else. The poll suggests that more people don't than do, but it doesn't matter if 100% of the playerbase wanted them, lore must still be taken into account. As I pointed out in my previous post, I don't think that the lore problems regarding the High Elves would prevent them from being added, but they're still important and arguable points of contention.

Whilst I agree that the thread is pointless, since this boils down to a matter of taste, there's no hard lore reasons that make it impossible; even hard. It is entirely plausible. I say that there're no arguable points of contention.

Population and identical model to another race don't matter. Starting with the latter; pandaren already can be played by both factions, it is unnecessary to make a new model from scratch when it would be pointless since the physiological differences are negligible. They exists, but these biological differences are so small that in no way would it warrant a different model to the blood elves, since they are basically (still) the same race. High elves would look almost identical to blood elves save for eye color.

The population issue: It really doesn't matters, and we have two difrerent reasons. Firstly, there's already a race with a incredibly low population: the playable Bilgewater Goblins. They are but the survivors of a shipwreck, from what? two ships? That would be an incrediblly low population, and yet they are playable. This is precedent for any other possible playable race that has low numbers. Secondly, player characters are but a sample of a race's population; the important thing is to show with the npc's the numbers of a race. If a playable high elven faction were to be based from the Silver Covenant, you wouldn't just some dude that picked a sword; you'd be a soldier. It would mean that the ratio between civilian/soldier is higher for high elves; they would be more militant since their numbers are small. You wound't see many high elves in the world just lounging around or even settling. Most would be militant members, most would be the player.

Architecture is another of those points that are not really important: making blood elf buildings blue would be enough, as the difference is striking enough, or their "new" architecture could be a halfway between traditional thalassian buildings and dalarani architecture, since that's the home city of the silver Covenant.

So, I believe that if we played as a High elf from the silver covenant, and that the racial separation is treated similary to tushi/huojin, there aren't lore reasons that would be deterrent enough to make it an impossibility.

Obviosuly, beyond how plausible I find my points, they are of no consecuence for for the sake of speculation. At the end is up to blizzard and no one else; if they want to make it happed, they will find a way to make it happen no matter what. All I'm saying is that hypothetically, there are no strong valid arguments against; be it gameplay or lorewise.

[Talen]

I still think that adding high elves as playable race is stupid, yet, I have an idea which I think would make this possible and rational lore-wise.

Hero races: High Elf for Alliance, Mag'har Orc for Horde.

So both factions will get uncorrupted versions of existing races, which are few in number. Also, from gameplay side, they will be just and only reskins.

Which wouldn't work. For there to be balance, an Allaicne race woudl need to become available to the Horde. The only one that seems viable in this case would be Night Elfs.

More specifically, Highborne Night Elfs seeking their highborne kin instead of the nature lovers the rest sought out. These would start in Silvermoon.

Want more? Make them hero races....players start at a high level

EJL

[Deleted]

Adding High Elves for Alliance is just plain bland and boring, unfortunately.

[Lumineus]

I really don't get the attraction\desire to have High elves. Unless Alliance players just want another Hot chick to play. They don't seem remotely interesting.

Probably wouldn't be one if male humans didn't look so stupid. It's not like the Alliance lacks for "hot" female pixels. WoW, like so many other fantasy portrayals goes for the trick of making male elves appear more aesthetical by giving them normal human proportions while warping "humans" into impossibly musclebound thugs.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Actually it's mainly about whether the player base wants them rather than the tired circular debate regarding lore justification that you've turned it into.




Funnily enough that's exactly how i felt about you earlier in this thread.


OT: Looking at the poll numbers is very interesting. I'm curious to know what factions the people voting for no are part of.

Thats fine, easy fix: Don't read/quote/reply to me. Except you know, if you go back and check I actually did make points/counters. Please don't compare me to a guy that just quotes people and says "ur dumb and have elves up your ass"

---------- Post added 2013-01-11 at 09:24 PM ----------

Which wouldn't work. For there to be balance, an Allaicne race woudl need to become available to the Horde. The only one that seems viable in this case would be Night Elfs.

More specifically, Highborne Night Elfs seeking their highborne kin instead of the nature lovers the rest sought out. These would start in Silvermoon.

Want more? Make them hero races....players start at a high level

EJL

I'm sorry, this logic is non-sense. Explain why Horde would need an Alliance race to "balance" things? High Elves aren't Horde, so Alliance wouldn't be taking away anything from the Horde to require "balance."