Last edited by Solzan Nemesis; 2013-02-22 at 06:45 AM.
Yes to High Elves. I don't care if they are introduced as a full race or a sub-race/alternate race for Night Elves or Humans, but Blizzard needs to address them at some point.
And here are reasons for it:
They're an already stablished race: You don't need fancy excuses or a forced storyline to add them. They are few in number, yes, but that is represented by their rarity in-game, not by the population of players playing them. The only other race that could be added to a faction and fit naturally would be Ogres in the Horde.
They've been related to the Alliance for the whole franchise: They were part of the Alliance in Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. They were a main race in the old Warcraft RPG books. High Elf NPCs in-game already have their own nation and were part of the Alliance even when that nation was neutral.
They just make sense: Before TBC was announced, everyone expected High Elves to become a playable Alliance race at some point. When Blood Elves were made the Horde race, they just didn't fit in the Horde. Indeed, for some people, they still don't really fit in the Horde today, thought in my opinion that has changed with the recent events in Dalaran.
They have an interesting backstory: High Elves have become very different (culturally) than both Night Elves and Blood Elves. They were exiled from their own lands by their own people for refusing to submit to extreme measures of survival. They resisted throught many hardships to remain true to their original culture and were severely punished for that. They are in search of their own future, few in number, but strong in spirit. And since Blizzard has so far not explored that backstory in the game, despite numerous ocasions (The Silvermoon Remnant faction that existed in Vanilla, Dalaran in WotLK, the current events in Throne of Thunder), making them a race would allow them to have a good story to delve into.
People want it: Just look at the poll. Almost 50% want them playable.
They can be unique enough: They share physical similarities with Blood Elves, yes. That, however, could be worked on: give High Elves slighly different models, with different hair style, skin tones and unique animations. One good example in-game is Nozdormu's High Elf form: it's actually based in the Night Elf model, but you look at it and know it's a High Elf, yet he's really different from the Blood Elves. So, make similar a model that moves has its own posture and animations, slighly different features and its own voice files, and you can differentiate High and Blood elves easily while they are still biologically the same race.
If blizzard goes through with the updated race models then there is no reason that they couldn't make blood elves and high elves look distinctly different. One might argue the wowpedia page saying they are the same but blizzard retcons these kind of things without hesitation.
No !
-We already have playable elves in game / the model is already used. They are the same as blood elves.
-We already have night elves in Alliance
-We don't want another ''pandaren double faction sh*t'' If you want to play a skinny male elves who look very girlish then reroll horde.
\m/(-_-)\m/
I'm alone again and old pine tree
Asked me, where's your woman?
I said: Shut up or I make of you another Firewood
I'd rather alliance get a new race...I'm personally sick of elves in most fantasy settings now, damn knife-eared , tree hugging, feminine bastards.
and to the people arguing about goblin population and fitting on one boat...you obviously don't pay attention to lore. When Kezan went boom the large majority of the entire cartels (so hundreds if not thousands of goblins) got on ships to Kalimdor to set up base (Bilgewater harbor) you are on gallywix's personal ship which leaves after the others left and gets shipwrecked and yada yada when you get to Kalimdor there is already a whole harbor set up because most of the cartel arrived way before you did on gallywix's yatch.
Pretty sure the change of Alliance getting High Elves as playable race went out the window when Horde got Blood Elves. And we already got 2 playable elven races. Put something else instead, if we really need a new race. I'd prefer that they stick with updating the old ones for now though.
Last edited by Santti; 2013-02-22 at 04:04 PM.
I can get behind all of those ideas, mostly the though because they're already established meaning we don't have to see another instance of a race being added that never receives any new story for prolonged periods while feeling shoe horned in their factions.
I'm hopeful that they become the new playable race, I just heavily doubt it .
High elves night elves and blood elves are all Kaldorei.
Most of the nobles of the Kaldorei (the Highbourne) practiced in the arcane arts, during the sundering a lot of them were believed to have perished but were instead transformed by the old gods into the Naga, the highbourne that did not suffer this fate made a new home north of Lordaeron and became the high elves (after Arthas and Scourge invasion a lot of these became Blood Elves, or in Sylvanas' case a Banshee)
The majority of the other Kaldorei were more into Druidism (Malfurion) or the light of Elune (Tyrande), these became the Night Elves. Ofc there are a lot of kaldorei from both who followed different paths (rangers etc etc) but that's the jist of it.
tl;dr Blood Elves, High Elves and Night Elves were once all the same race, and other than (for some strange reason) their difference in appearance should still be the same race... weird.
Last edited by Solzan Nemesis; 2013-02-23 at 11:43 PM.
Not entirely. The survivors lived amongst the Kal'dorei for another 3000 years, adhering to the new laws of land. Some were able to squash their addiction for good and turned to traditional Kal'dorei routes of an arcane-free existence. Many many more suffered the pangs of withdrawal for 3000 years until they couldn't take it any more and unleashed a torrent in Ashenvale. Because of their numbers, Malfurion couldn't bring himself to execute them all as per law so he exiled them.
Changes are confirmed a result of Diurnal living and also possibly not being Immortal and changing physically over generations.tl;dr Blood Elves, High Elves and Night Elves were once all the same race, and other than (for some strange reason) their difference in appearance should still be the same race... weird.
Let us interpret the results of the poll:
- Let's keep in mind that in these forums most people are of the Horde.
- We must also recognize that the great part of the negative response comes from the Horde, given the jealousy that this faction would have by lose the exclusivity of the elves.
- Finally we also comment that, since we are talking about adding a race for the Alliance, the Alliance should only be allowed to decide.
Therefore, we can say without fear of error that the Alliance wants the High Elves in their ranks by an overwhelming majority. Now it's time for Blizzard to carry it out.