TL;DR:
- Two Reasons:
- It would cause a shift in demographics from Horde to the Alliance, and since Horde is already in the minority this would be bad. How many? I predict best case scenario 1 in 4 Blood Elves would go Alliance on PVE and RP servers. Slightly less on PvP servers. Slightly more on RP servers than on normal PVE.
- They would be boring. Scarcely even a reskin, no new lore. Unless something dramatic happens to the High Elf population to change them
Horde Race Balance:
25-30% Blood Elf
~15% Tauren
~14-17% Undead
~14% Orc
~12% Troll
~9% Goblin
~6.5% Pandaren
Alliance Race Balance:
~30% Human
~19% Night Elf
~13% Worgen
~13% Draenei
~8.5% Gnome
~8% Dwarf
~6.5% Pandaren
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If that isn't enough said, consider the following:
- Before Burning Crusade, faction balance leaned slightly toward the Alliance. Hard to dig up statistics from that era, but I do remember that back then it wasn't huge, but somewhere between 40/60 and 45/55 with the bigger number being Alliance
- The top two played races are humans and blood elves. Blood elves have a neutral faction that works with the alliance, thus making them a possible candidate for the Alliance. There is no faction equivalent for the humans.
- Third most popular race is Night Elves - the only Elf option for the Alliance.
- Horde Segregation - Spend a day on any RP server and you'll find that Blood Elves are almost completely segregated in their own communities. It's not hard to find Horde players who hate Blood Elves for ruining the savage image of the horde. During the 2011 Blizzcon, the guest star of the L90ETC told the crowd that he thought Blood Elves were... well very many not nice words that would probably get me banned. But if you're curious about that incident look up Corpsegrinder 2011 Blizzcon incident.
- Just look at how many threads people make saying they want to be high elves on the Alliance.
- Blizzard didn't like making a neutral race.
Counter Arguments
Debunked: Current populations place horde at ~46% of total population. With only a 1% deviation between US and EU servers.
Debunked
Not hard to test that. I just used realmpop to filter out any characters below 88.
We end up with a ratio of 48% Horde to 52% Alliance Overall.
Top Horde Race:
Blood Elves again, at a perfect %30
Top Alliance Races:
Alliance, humans at %33 and Night Elves at %20
Debunked: One of the major reasons for Virtual/Consolidated Realms was to address faction imbalances and low populations. They've intentionally worked to pair servers together to fix faction imbalances. This was also one of the contributing reasons toward Blood Elves going to the horde in the first place. Also consider how often they've bent over backward to make sure things are even: Near Equal number of quests (Cataclysm was full of mirroring quests to fix imbalances in old zones), and giving Worgen mounts when they didn't need them just to make people happy.
Not an argument: This is a great factoid but I don't think it's a pro-high elves point. If anything I think it's pretty odd that Blood Elves, a minor race that barely fits in with the horde, has the same percentage of players as the main race of the alliance.
Debatable: On RP servers most people pick over looks. Increasingly we've also seen websites like icy-veins and noxxic say racials hardly matter in PVE. Then there's PvP. You'd expect players to favor Alliance because of some great pvp racials - but on PvP servers we see the balance tip toward more horde players.
Debunked: https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...65802590384129
Valid PointBUT THE PVP SERVERS!
Let's break it down by server type:
RPpvp + PVP:
58% Horde
RP + PVE
61% Alliance
Ultimately if this "unbalances" factions, it would be great for PvP servers because it might make them more even. On PVE servers though, they swing even further toward the Alliance than the average, so it could be devastating. Is fixing one worth ruining the other?
DebatableLore trumps gameplay!
This is a big one. It's pretty hard to say what Blizzard's stance is on that. Over the years they've gone back and forth a lot.
Many who argue that Blood Elves are friendlier to the Alliance today are ignoring the plot developments in MoP. After the Dalaran purge a lot of Blood Elves have reconfirmed their belief that the Horde is the better of two evils. Thunder Isle resolidified their stance in the Horde and we finally got to see their faction leader in action - and in my opinion, finally made blood elves seem kind of badass.
Blizzard has walked a fine line between gameplay and lore. Dwarf Shaman and Troll Druids are not the same types as the rest of the classes available, but the lore could be stretched and the gameplay needed some new life in old races. If High Elves were needed on the Alliance, lore could be written to change blood elf stances. However as it stands, there's no need for it and currently Blood Elves hate the Alliance.
Highborne are not High Elves. High Elves are descended from the Highborne, but the Highborne did not evolve along the same route as the High Elves eventually did. The only genetic differences we'd see in Highborne is probably some inbreeding. They did not become diurnal, they didn't get immortality, and they didn't interact with humans. They're closer to night elves than high elves.You're forgetting the Highborne.
Some Other Great Points Made By Other Posters:
My conclusion is this:
Blizzard will never make blood elves neutral, and high elves will never be an alliance option. The reason for this is because it would destroy faction balance. I do not believe that every Blood Elf would go Horde, but I do believe we would see anywhere from 5-7.5% make the change to Alliance. We would not see any Alliance player making the change to Horde because that wouldn't be an option to them. The only way to balance that further would be if an Alliance faction went neutral - and with current in-game politics there's no reason for any of them to.
You can now link this whenever someone makes one of those "Blood Elves should be neutral!" "High Elves should be playable for Alliance" threads, and then type /thread.
My Wager:
If Blood Elves become a neutral faction, or high elves become a race of the alliance I will upload pictures of and film myself taking off my socks after a hard day of work, and then eat them.
Disqualifications:
For some lore reason High Elves mutate into something weird.
The option as a 'subrace' to humans or night elves limited to certain class combinations. (If there is no limitation, I might as well eat my socks.
Sources:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/2...cters-by-race/
http://www.statista.com/statistics/2...cters-by-race/
http://wow.realmpop.com/us.html
https://www.google.com/search?q=corp...+2011+blizzcon
https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...65802590384129
I was high as an elf on vicodin when I started this thread.