Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[ravenmoon]

Any suggestion that Horde lose Silvermoon and/or Suramar, or that Blood Elf and Nightborne themes need to be changed is completely unrealistic. It won't happen. And even if it did, it would do nothing to fix the issues that the Alliance has with engagement at endgame. The damage that was done years ago can't be undone by giving the Alliance High Elves/Silvermoon/Suramar. It's a pipe dream.

It may be unrealistic, I shouldn't criticise anyone for saying that, not even MyWholeLifeIsThunder, it does appear unrealistic and it is not an unreasonable deduction to make given the changes we tend to get from blizzard.

Still, this is not about what is realistic in terms of what we've seen blizzard do, it is what would be best for the game. You see I use to change my desires and deductions based on what I reckoned was more likely to happen, but sometimes it is the unrealistic thing that needs to happen to fix a problem or mend what's broken. The bottom line is this sort of move has precedence - when the blood elf portion of the high elves went horde, that set a precedent for one faction's race going to the other, we've seen it happen again with the Nightborne and (with some debate, the void elves), even if you viewed high elves as a horde race, it is not beyond reasonable doubt that blood elves who left the alliance could return as High elves who have remained on the alliance.

Secondly, you also missed what is technically happening, NPC blood elves who live in Quel'thalas are the ones that are becoming high elves - this is not technically a horde race going to the alliance, because high elves are already on the alliance, This is my suggestion. The other half of that suggestion is that high elves become playable - which has been labelled as unrealistic and preposterous by horde fans since the blood elves went horde.

But that is not what you threw shade over was it, it was losing Silvermoon and Suramar, again, this isn't unprecedent either, a playable race has lost cities and territories, night elves lost both Teldrassil and Ashenvale, the Forsaken lost undercity. The alliance lost Theramore too and Dalaran (when you consider it went neutral again). These developments don't really affect gameplay but they can play a large role in promoting a faction and generating player excitement.

e.g. in the same patch that the High elves return and the Kaldorei rise up -w ith Silvermoon and Quelt'halas going horde, you also set upt hte trned for hte future of the blood elves and N gihtborne that remain on the horde, reveal to players for eg. blood elves had been building new thigns in Netherstorm, a glimpse of new san'layn, fel elf and nether elf customisations for them and that they are going ot recover, also orcehstrate with the other troll tribes coming into the horde too, and I think most people would please a lot of fans and soften the blow to the faction that might be felt. Ofc, those who love only blood elves on the horde and have no desire for the core horde themes and races will get angry, but remember you can't please anyone, and you are doing this to fix a bigger problem and create a better tomorrow.

In TBc, blizzard did do what we would consider totally unrealistic, it happened, and it had an important reason to, whiles this is not an automatic guarantee for a repeat, there is also now an urgent need.

however it is still only a suggestion that needs to happen, even thought it most likely won't. Hell, I'm skeptical they'd do anything for night elves and void elves - given the trend, however they have expressed a desire to give them homes again.. such things are important, but really the song and dance made in their story when they introduce things heavily influences the game.

I'm fairly certain Blizzard is going to leave Silvermoon and the Blood Elves exactly where and how they are. Same for the Nightborne. The Blood Elf and and Nightborne themes are HORDE themes. Why? Because they are members of the Horde. The tradition of the Alliance being the pretty faction and the Horde being the monstrous faction was broken in TBC. The clock is never going to be turned backwards to undo that change. Asking for it to happen is an exercise in futility and even entertaining the possibility is a delusion of the grandest kind.

Would it surprise you to see me say that I am also fairly certain blizzard is going to leave Silvermoon and the Blood elves exactly where they are. I am, however it doesn't stop me from being convinced they shouldn't and that they need to change this. I am not trying to convince them, but I am convinced they should make this bold change.

However, the blood elf and Nightborne themes are not HORDE themes because they are on the horde, nah, that's not what I mean, the blood elves and Nightborne are based on alliance themes, these are alliance races or rather alliance themed races, based on the themes and identity the alliance represents traditionally. in the Warcraft spectrum what the blood elves and Nightborne are comes under alliance because they exist as high elves on the horde and night elven pre-sundering civilization in a sub-race skin - those are both alliance based themes. This is what I mean.

If you do civilization like the blood elves do, ideology, heavy arcane emphasis, that whole set up, sense of justice, way of operation, organisation etc etc, that's how the alliance does thing, that type of setting and that type of world is 10% Azeroth (eastern kingdom) races that come under the alliance banner and formed the bases of the alliance.. this is what the alliance is themed on. When you take Alterac humans to the horde, or high elves to the horde, they remain alliance based and themed races that are on the horde. Because the horde does have a signature identity that is based on the orcs, trolls and goblins - there is asynergy to it. Forsaken and long vigil kaldorei are unique to those traditional themes, they were new themes brought in, night elves were taken to the alliance, which made sense seeing half of their culture, the pre-sundering bit is 100% alliance themed anyway, but they would have worked on the horde too and without feeling anywhere near as alliance based as the blood elves.

If you take what I say based on what I have actually said, i hope it helps clarify what this is based on. If you haven't followed the arguments, I would press on you to read my responses through the last 15 pages, they will give you a good idea of what I am proposing. If you have only read the reactions, you will be misled and wouldn't truly get what I am saying. Because those who are responding against it are reacting, and I am aware too many people just read reactions and respond rather than the actual proposal that is causing the stir. Without context it would sound preposterous, don't take my detractors on their word alone, don't just take them on their reaction because the premise seems so bold or so unbelievable, sometimes unbelievable things make a lot of sense once you've actually explored the reasoning and journey that brought you to that conclusion. I take a lot of time to outline the reasoning in earlier posts. Do enjoy the read, and feel free to disagree still after, or agree if you choose.

[Tanaria]

SNIP

Exactly.

I've also spoken to a friend of mine on discord who mains a Blood Elf Paladin and she's looked at this and she raised some very good points as well. She took a big issue with the whole idea of "Paladin being taken to the Alliance because it's too Alliance-y."
She has said:
"Right, so I'm going to have a faction transfer imposed on my blood elf and nightborne characters, the Paladin class is going to be removed from the blood elf options and if I want to continue raiding with my Horde guild, I have to swap classes and then pay Blizzard money so I can transfer back to the Horde and then pick a class that I don't really like. Or I have to re-level that character again - bearing in mind, this is for a class that I don't really want to play. Essentially, I'm rewarding Blizzard for a decision they forced on me because a few alliance fans are still salty."
On-top of that, if I want to continue playing a Thalassian Paladin, I have to find a guild that suits my raiding times all over again and that's dependent on whether they even need a Holy Paladin.

I don't raid, but she raids at a higher level and it's a basic fact that these ideas on people who play Blood Elves, are going to be hurt massively by these shoddy ideas - all because some alliance elf ex-player wants to impose on us and then play the victim when we fight back.

The long and short of it is, my friend as well as many others would just quit. This wouldn't be restoring the Alliance...this is Blizzard losing money and big money at that, as Blood Elves are the most popular race on the Horde, and they are a business. They will always take the current status over a make-believe status because the current status is still earning them money. WoD was the first time they were losing money, but that was due to the lousy expansion, not anything to do with people being removed from their factions.
They thought the losses in WoD were bad. The unsubs from this horrendous change would make WoD look like paltry.

[Eleann]

The long and short of it is, my friend as well as many others would just quit. This wouldn't be restoring the Alliance...this is Blizzard losing money and big money at that, as Blood Elves are the most popular race on the Horde, and they are a business.

I understand that. And that's why most of us do not suggest Silvermoon or Suramar changing faction. And the Blood elf paladins should be left as they are, I doubt even @ravenmoon suggested that. This thread was about High elves on the Alliance and boosting the Alliance, not taking things from Horde.

About what @Kyriani said, I will have to disagree with the fact it will not have any effect if High elven hair are given to Void elves. Initially they were just that, Void elves, and nothing on them resembled a High elf, other than literally just their char models. Then they were given skins not too long ago (so for about 4 years we stayed with blueberry elves, not High elves) and so their faces can somehow look like that of a High elf. Personally I still do not feel like a High elf with grey grandma hair, and what Blizzard did giving us skins only was such a big tease that I had to start advocating for that when I never even cared before the addition of the skins. If Void elves are given high elven hair, and even better a new class like Spellbreaker comes out next expac, that will significantly boost the popularity of Void elves I believe. I'm not saying that it will restore Alliance to its former glory, that will be hard. I'm saying that it will have a boost .

Pair that with giving Void elves and Night elves a proper city and you have a good chance of a boost to the Alliance. If we are just going to say that nothing that gets done will boost motive to play Alliance then Blizzard might as well scrap factions and just unite us all because then it is pointless to be separated as Alliance players will just keep suffering from the imbalance.

[Kyriani]

I understand that. And that's why most of us do not suggest Silvermoon or Suramar changing faction. And the Blood elf paladins should be left as they are, I doubt even @ravenmoon suggested that. This thread was about High elves on the Alliance and boosting the Alliance, not taking things from Horde.

About what @Kyriani said, I will have to disagree with the fact it will not have any effect if High elven hair are given to Void elves. Initially they were just that, Void elves, and nothing on them resembled a High elf, other than literally just their char models. Then they were given skins not too long ago (so for about 4 years we stayed with blueberry elves, not High elves) and so their faces can somehow look like that of a High elf. Personally I still do not feel like a High elf with grey grandma hair, and what Blizzard did giving us skins only was such a big tease that I had to start advocating for that when I never even cared before the addition of the skins. If Void elves are given high elven hair, and even better a new class like Spellbreaker comes out next expac, that will significantly boost the popularity of Void elves I believe. I'm not saying that it will restore Alliance to its former glory, that will be hard. I'm saying that it will have a boost .

Pair that with giving Void elves and Night elves a proper city and you have a good chance of a boost to the Alliance. If we are just going to say that nothing that gets done will boost motive to play Alliance then Blizzard might as well scrap factions and just unite us all because then it is pointless to be separated as Alliance players will just keep suffering from the imbalance.

I wasn't saying High Elves and/or High Elf hairstyles/colors on Void Elves wouldn't have an effect on Alliance population. I was saying that it won't affect Alliance endgame engagement.

WoW is a 16 year old game. While I can't say what the number of new players coming into the game is exactly, I am confident that it's an extremely low number. Over the course of it's life WoW has had millions of players come, go, and return again, but after over a decade and a half, rarely will we see new players coming into the game. And not for nothing, it's virtually a certainty that any new players coming to the game will have their choice of faction influenced by both aesthetics and potential for endgame engagement.

That means if we want to see any significant shift in the demographics of endgame engagement between the factions, it has to come from endgame progression minded Horde players swapping to the Alliance. And it has to be just enough incentive to get some of them so balance is maintained and the lopsidedness doesn't just flip to Alliance. Aesthetics aren't going to incentivize that when they have a virtually identical aesthetic already on the Horde.

Giving High Elf customization, blonde Hair, human skin tones, and elven cities to the Alliance isn't going to magically make current Alliance players, who aren't endgame progression minded, suddenly become so. Nor will it provide any incentive for Horde players to give up their faction, friends, and massive pool of endgame progression minded players. The answer to the lack of endgame engagement on the Alliance will not be fixed by making Void Elves more popular and/or adding a new class to the game. I honestly don't know what the answer to that quandary is, but it's not that.

If you can figure out what will make just enough Horde players want to swap to Alliance to balance things out as far as endgame progression is concerned, you'll have solved one of WoW's current biggest issues in my opinion. Blood Elves in TBC, and racial imbalances over the course of many years, were instrumental in creating the situation we are in now, but it's ludicrous to think that pretty elves are the answer this time, especially since both factions already have pretty elves.

Adding blonde hair to the ones that don't have it yet, isn't going to sway the pendulum in regards to endgame progression. The racials between factions are also probably the most balanced they've ever been, and I don't believe that Blizzard will even consider giving Alliance OP racials for any length of time as some sort of lure to endgame minded players.

If Blizzard's comments on population balance are to be believed, then the Alliance doesn't need a "boost" in population. What it does seem to need, is a "boost" in endgame progression engagement.

[Eleann]

I hear ya. Encouraging some of the playerbase to play one thing or the other is hard, it's like advertising, and most of the times it's just quality and reviews that win people over! In this case hordies are the reviewers of the Horde community, which has good reviews atm with regards to endgame activity.

Regardless, I will continue advocating for High elven customizations, as the main topic of this thread. I just figured that some of the imbalance issue may be helped by the high elf requests as well, and that is why I have mentioned it. Ultimately I don't really mind whether one faction has more endgame players than the other, I'm just advocating for better entertainment for us through aesthetics and fun additions, hence the topic I touched upon on High elves and classes, as well as customizations for other races too. Because for me that is what keeps me motivated to play this game actually, aesthetics, music, story and fun factors. The gameplay is very good as well but is by no means the only reason I play. I do raid heroic at this moment in time and do an occasional M+, but not hardcore. Even if I played hardcore though I probably would still advocate for aesthetics as that's what's fun for me

[ravenmoon]

Exactly.

I've also spoken to a friend of mine on discord who mains a Blood Elf Paladin and she's looked at this and she raised some very good points as well. She took a big issue with the whole idea of "Paladin being taken to the Alliance because it's too Alliance-y."

I wonder what you think happened when blood elves went horde and Nightborne too? There were massive quit threats, and I'm sure some people actually did, I know a few who quit and then came back.

I'd call the bluff, not because I'm being mean, but because I'm experienced. What you may feel about this, die hard alliance fans have felt and felt so a lot worse. This isn't as bad as what was done in the past (for the faction that appeared to have lost out), and look how successful it was regardless.

But the aim of this is not to make you feel bad or hurt you, it's not personal, it's a surgical strike that has potential for big short term and great long term results and repairing/restoring the original charm of the game, the horde gains a lot of things to, just not alliance themed elven things, the gains will be little consolation to some die hard horde elf fans, just like how gaining Draenei was little compensation to some back in the day... Undoubtedly, as with every change, people quit in rage, most do come back, I can assure you this change will attract more people back to wow than those who would quit, and those who quit will return once they get over themselves and realise it's not that bad.

It's happened before. And some times it is necessary, but when done right, it works beautifully, and I believe that any alliance elf resurgence, even if it results in some asset losses for the horde will be well compensated for on the horde and there are people who would love those compensations, I know you haven't thought much of it, but improvements to trolls, orcs, goblins tauren, forsaken and pandas will be welcome by a lot horde fans, and some of the horde elf fans would look forward to future developments for the Belves and Nightborne but will have a chance to be drawn to the alliance to experience a High elf and night elven resurgence showing them off in wow along with improvements to other alliance races and it's activities.

The bigger issue is those who just got deflated with wow, the charm lost, who've felt forced to have to go horde to play, even though they don't enjoy it, the spark of rivalry lost, these aren't spur of the moment emo rage people at one decision, those emo rage quitters always come back, no these ones don't because they've experienced a continuous decline, and the charm and core elements of the Warcraft they loved is simply gone. The horde feels little different from the alliance, the alliance feels crap - and they just have to swallow it. Some continued playing but the experience was dulled.


Lore and identity, character have always bee n one of Warcraft's greatest charms.. all that work to characterise races, a dynamic engaging world, it may not have always had the best lore, but the effort has paid of hugely - Warcraft had something special, it's what drew people like me to it back in the mid 00s - I didn't start playing because the lore and set up was amazing, no, but those are the things that kept me playing and drew me into it.

Horde hardcore elf fans like yourself have never had anything go against you, your constant enjoyment of favourable decisions has come at the expense of alliance fans , especially alliance elf ones, what I am proposing doesn't hurt you anywhere near as much as how the alliance fans have had it. And isn't half as damaging to, but in fact the opposite. It's one of those things that has to happen for you to see and realise.

But then if you continuously spoil a child, they're going to throw a tantrum when you finally decide to take something away from them, but you are still going to have to, even if it is to help them, and they don't realise it yet.

- - - Updated - - -

Giving High Elf customization, blonde Hair, human skin tones, and elven cities to the Alliance isn't going to magically make current Alliance players, who aren't endgame progression minded, suddenly become so. Nor will it provide any incentive for Horde players to give up their faction, friends, and massive pool of endgame progression minded players. The answer to the lack of endgame engagement on the Alliance will not be fixed by making Void Elves more popular and/or adding a new class to the game. I honestly don't know what the answer to that quandary is, but it's not that.

If you can figure out what will make just enough Horde players want to swap to Alliance to balance things out as far as endgame progression is concerned, you'll have solved one of WoW's current biggest issues in my opinion. Blood Elves in TBC, and racial imbalances over the course of many years, were instrumental in creating the situation we are in now, but it's ludicrous to think that pretty elves are the answer this time, especially since both factions already have pretty elves.

Adding blonde hair to the ones that don't have it yet, isn't going to sway the pendulum in regards to endgame progression. The racials between factions are also probably the most balanced they've ever been, and I don't believe that Blizzard will even consider giving Alliance OP racials for any length of time as some sort of lure to endgame minded players.

If Blizzard's comments on population balance are to be believed, then the Alliance doesn't need a "boost" in population. What it does seem to need, is a "boost" in endgame progression engagement.

I feel I have, and it's in the elves. I also have precedence to support this. When the blood elves first went horde, in such spectacular style, we had some q rage quitters terribly upset, but we had a lot of alliance playing/loving fans going horde because of it.

What I have proposed in earlier posts - if you have read all my post and seen the full picture (rather than the reactions of the haters), I think will draw enough of the blood elf loving crowd back to the alliance. The swing won't be as extreme as in TBC, because the horde will retain the blood elf model, and still have Nightborne playable, but the return of the High elves and the rise of the kaldorei would be spectacular enough with enough improvements including aesthetic ones and hype, excitement generated - with just enough boosts to the horde for trolls, orcs , goblins etc and other races, and a glimpse of the future for the blood elves who remained on the horde and the Nightborne who remained on the horde to not cause to much of panic.

I'm really not sure how these horde fans expect the alliance to be popular again if it doesn't look better than the horde for a while - they're not being realistic. I know no one wants to feel like they are getting nerfed or feel worse off, especially horde elf fans who've really had it best for the last 14 years, they won't be excited about losing that streak for the alliance to now look good - just read their reactions, but there is no other way. It seems incredulous that it's okay for the alliance fans to suffer losses as has happened in the past that have made the horde look good, but now the reverse needs to happen, it shouldn't happen because it hurts their feelings.

If blizzard want people to go to the alliance, the alliance needs to look better than the horde for a while. It doesn't mean the horde gets decimated, or completely neglected, the alliance needs a big initial splash and take the forward thrust for a while.

if they don't want to do that, or are too afraid, then they must accept their game will continue to be broken or must now completely change to keep the blood elves' high elf stuff on the horde.. this is what it boils down to, either change the game completely from that two faction distinct one to a new future where factions don't matter or they're all the same etc - or remove the high elven and night elven stuff from the blood elves and Nightborne, place it back on the alliance, let the alliance do alliance things very well and shiny, and do the horde up for horde things - which can also be attractive for what they are.

[Kyriani]

I hear ya. Encouraging some of the playerbase to play one thing or the other is hard, it's like advertising, and most of the times it's just quality and reviews that win people over! In this case hordies are the reviewers of the Horde community, which has good reviews atm with regards to endgame activity.

Regardless, I will continue advocating for High elven customizations, as the main topic of this thread. I just figured that some of the imbalance issue may be helped by the high elf requests as well, and that is why I have mentioned it. Ultimately I don't really mind whether one faction has more endgame players than the other, I'm just advocating for better entertainment for us through aesthetics and fun additions, hence the topic I touched upon on High elves and classes, as well as customizations for other races too. Because for me that is what keeps me motivated to play this game actually, aesthetics, music, story and fun factors. The gameplay is very good as well but is by no means the only reason I play. I do raid heroic at this moment in time and do an occasional M+, but not hardcore. Even if I played hardcore though I probably would still advocate for aesthetics as that's what's fun for me

I am a big advocate of more customization for everyone! That includes what might be considered "High Elf Customization" for Void Elves, though I'd prefer it to be stuff that isn't straight up copies of Blood Elf options. Blonde hair? I've got no problem with that, I'd just be happier if it was more of beige blonde than a platinum or yellow blonde like the Blood Elves have.

Aesthetics are a big incentive for me to play. The more aesthetically appealing options I have, and the more things I have to do, that I want to do, that feel worth doing, the happier I am as a player and the more I enjoy the game (which means I play more and am less likely to unsub). I just wanted to point out that aesthetics won't fix the endgame engagement issue Alliance seem to have.

Still, you should ask for any options you'd like to see! I think everyone should!

[Tanaria]

I wonder what you think happened when blood elves went horde and Nightborne too? There were massive quit threats, and I'm sure some people actually did, I know a few who quit and then came back.

I'd call the bluff, not because I'm being mean, but because I'm experienced. What you may feel about this, die hard alliance fans have felt and felt so a lot worse. This isn't as bad as what was done in the past (for the faction that appeared to have lost out), and look how successful it was regardless.

But the aim of this is not to make you feel bad or hurt you, it's not personal, it's a surgical strike that has potential for big short term and great long term results and repairing/restoring the original charm of the game, the horde gains a lot of things to, just not alliance themed elven things, the gains will be little consolation to some die hard horde elf fans, just like how gaining Draenei was little compensation to some back in the day... Undoubtedly, as with every change, people quit in rage, most do come back, I can assure you this change will attract more people back to wow than those who would quit, and those who quit will return once they get over themselves and realise it's not that bad.

It's happened before. And some times it is necessary, but when done right, it works beautifully, and I believe that any alliance elf resurgence, even if it results in some asset losses for the horde will be well compensated for on the horde and there are people who would love those compensations, I know you haven't thought much of it, but improvements to trolls, orcs, goblins tauren, forsaken and pandas will be welcome by a lot horde fans, and some of the horde elf fans would look forward to future developments for the Belves and Nightborne but will have a chance to be drawn to the alliance to experience a High elf and night elven resurgence showing them off in wow along with improvements to other alliance races and it's activities.

The bigger issue is those who just got deflated with wow, the charm lost, who've felt forced to have to go horde to play, even though they don't enjoy it, the spark of rivalry lost, these aren't spur of the moment emo rage people at one decision, those emo rage quitters always come back, no these ones don't because they've experienced a continuous decline, and the charm and core elements of the Warcraft they loved is simply gone. The horde feels little different from the alliance, the alliance feels crap - and they just have to swallow it. Some continued playing but the experience was dulled.


Lore and identity, character have always bee n one of Warcraft's greatest charms.. all that work to characterise races, a dynamic engaging world, it may not have always had the best lore, but the effort has paid of hugely - Warcraft had something special, it's what drew people like me to it back in the mid 00s - I didn't start playing because the lore and set up was amazing, no, but those are the things that kept me playing and drew me into it.

Horde hardcore elf fans like yourself have never had anything go against you, your constant enjoyment of favourable decisions has come at the expense of alliance fans , especially alliance elf ones, what I am proposing doesn't hurt you anywhere near as much as how the alliance fans have had it. And isn't half as damaging to, but in fact the opposite. It's one of those things that has to happen for you to see and realise.

But then if you continuously spoil a child, they're going to throw a tantrum when you finally decide to take something away from them, but you are still going to have to, even if it is to help them, and they don't realise it yet.

Blood Elves and Nightborne aren't going anywhere. Rather than spouting off your headcanon, how about you engage with the discussion.
Eleann and many others aren't interested and don't want Horde things...Horde assets. It's only you because you can't get over Nightborne going Horde and only wanting them to have lore moments with the Night Elves.

And what your purposing, as you've not tackled her main point, is that you actively want Horde guilds to be split. People who play Blood Elves and Nightborne, against their own will, are going to have their character pushed on the Alliance and then if we want to go back, we have to pay...PAY, for a faction transfer.
What does she do, considering you want belf paladins on the Alliance and her main is a blood elf paladin on the Horde side? Oh well, she just has to look for another guild on the Alliance side. This change was necessary and it has put a hell of a lot of people out as well as guilds, but it's tough. You're going to have to get over it...if that is the message, then I'm glad you've quit because that is sheer arrogance and a total "f you" to Blood Elf players, Nightborne players and to the Horde in general.

And we've seen all those races have their improvements. Hell, Forsaken were the leading race of the Horde for the past two expansions. Trolls got a lot of stuff in BFA. Orcs commanded the whole of MoP and WoD. Pandaren are not a "Horde race." I mean, who cares about Pandaren when their fanbase is small? And don't insult us by throwing Tauren at our faces...those guys are more Alliance than Horde and have been since MoP. Goblins are just a background race, like Dwarves and Gnomes.
Again, your not actually offering the Horde anything new and you know it...your just looking at a way of manipulating your headcanon in a way that is wrote as "fair" but it truly isn't, because it sees guilds and the Horde ripped apart and Horde players left for scraps and having to pay Blizzard for faction transfers back to the Horde and if we don't want to pay, we're oppressed into having to stay alliance. What you want - you know it's isn't good because you wouldn't play it but expect Horde players to accept that they have lost two, maybe three, big horde locations and be ok with that because -different colour trolls are cool- said ravenmoon, even though they aren't and we can already create different colour trolls and had an expansion that saw us stay in Zandalari Troll land.

[Kyriani]

Raven, I honestly don't believe what happened in TBC with Blood Elves going Horde can be replicated today.

First and foremost, Alliance already has what I feel most would consider traditionally aesthetically appealing races (general speaking)... the Horde didn't really have that until TBC. Secondly, it wasn't only Blood Elves that the Horde got which incentivized Alliance players to swap to Horde, but it was also the Paladin class. This was a big deal as Paladins were superior to Shamans for endgame raiding. Then of course there was Arcane Torrent which remained an incredible racial for many many years.

The Alliance can't be bolstered by shitting on the Horde. The Blood Elves and Nightborne, as they are right now, with all their lore and cities intact, are Horde and Blizzard isn't going to take those things away from them. If by making the Alliance "look better than the Horde" you mean aesthetics, that's not going to help the Alliance's endgame progression engagement. The Alliance already look good. It's one of the reasons they were top of the hill in Vanilla. If anything the Alliance look even better today (aesthetically) than they ever have thanks to Shadowlands. Aesthetics may get people to play Alliance, but they won't fix endgame engagement motivation.

Hypothetically, let's say Blizzard adds High Elves to the Alliance. Now let's say this High Elf race uses the same popular Thalassian model and the blue and arcane eye options we are all familiar with, but other assets like hairstyles, tattoos, scars, jewelry etc. are unique and these High Elves have a unique idle stance, voices and emotes. They also have the full range of human spectrum hair colors and a few more fantasy colors like silver and blue, and all Alliance High Elf NPC's are updated to use the new assets so they are more distinct from Blood Elves. The High Elves even get a spectacular new capital city!

Now, tell me how does any of that incentivize an endgame progression minded Horde guild to switch to Alliance? The answer is... it doesn't.

Let's delve a little further into our hypothetical High Elf race. Let's say they have amazing racials that are practical and useful in every area of the game. For example, let's say the racials are a single passive that provides both a 5% bonus to reputation gains and a 5% discount from all vendors, an active racial that's basically Blink on a 2 min cooldown, and they have a passive +5% damage/healing proc identical to Entropic Embrace in function but with an arcane themed visual aura instead of changing their skin color. Oh and these High Elves can be every class in the game!

Now the Horde progression guilds are going to be incentivized to at least consider swapping because... well... any class could hop the fence and the racials are pretty impressive and useful in endgame. That the High Elves are aesthetically appealing in every way, is just icing on an already rich and delicious cake. They'd still have to consider the loss of the robust Horde endgame scene, but the lure could be enough to make them bite that bullet and hope others swap as well.

The problem here is that Blizzard doesn't want there to be a massive shift of people from Horde to Alliance. According to the last interview I saw mentioning population numbers, the populations are fairly close. It's the endgame engagement that's lacking on the Alliance. There's also the fact that the above racials would never happen because they are just too good and unless Blizz opened up every class to every race, they'd never let a single race have access to every class.. Half of human's diplomacy? The Void Elf damage proc? Having a 2 min cooldown Blink on any class? Being able to have that on any class? It would swing things drastically, and a drastic swing isn't the desired outcome.

Blizzard doesn't see Blood Elf and Nightborne aesthetics on the Horde as an issue. The Horde are doing just fine and Blizzard don't want to rock that boat beyond maybe making Alliance just alluring enough to tempt some endgame players to swap. That's as far as they want to go. They aren't going to remove any stuff that Blood Elves and Nightborne already have. They also aren't likely to ever add High Elves as their own race at this point. With the new customziation options, I'm fairly certain Blizzard considers the request for Alliance High Elves fulfilled, even if some players do not. At best, more aesthetic options (and possibly class options) can be added to Void Elves to flesh out the High Elf fantasy further, and the lore (both in-game and out) can be expanded to show that the remnants of the Quel'dorei have joined the Ren'dorei.

While I think the following is probably something Blizzard is unlikely to implement, they could add a "veneer" option for races. The veneers would allow players select their displayed racial tag from a preset list based on their selected race (so the race says High Elf instead of Void Elf), and it would also change the names, icons and visual effects of the racials while maintaining their functions. For example, if I select the "High Elf" veneer for my Void Elf, my race would display as High Elf instead, and the "veneer" would change my racials thus:

Entropic Embrace becomes Arcane Legacy: The visual effect, icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.

Spatial Rift becomes Arcane Jaunt: The visual effect, icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.

Preternatural Calm becomes Focused Mind: The icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.

Ethereal Connection becomes Friend of a Friend: The icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.

Chill of Night becomes Against the Darkness: The icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.

Basically the "veneer" could allow subraces within a given race. The same concept could be applied to other races, such as Wildhammer for Dwarves, Farraki (sand trolls) for Trolls, Grimtotem for Tauren, Dragonmaw for Orcs, etc.

[Eleann]

Hypothetically, let's say Blizzard adds High Elves to the Alliance. Now let's say this High Elf race uses the same popular Thalassian model and the blue and arcane eye options we are all familiar with, but other assets like hairstyles, tattoos, scars, jewelry etc. are unique and these High Elves have a unique idle stance, voices and emotes. They also have the full range of human spectrum hair colors and a few more fantasy colors like silver and blue, and all Alliance High Elf NPC's are updated to use the new assets so they are more distinct from Blood Elves. The High Elves even get a spectacular new capital city!

Now, tell me how does any of that incentivize an endgame progression minded Horde guild to switch to Alliance? The answer is... it doesn't.

While I think the following is probably something Blizzard is unlikely to implement, they could add a "veneer" option for races. The veneers would allow players select their displayed racial tag from a preset list based on their selected race (so the race says High Elf instead of Void Elf), and it would also change the names, icons and visual effects of the racials while maintaining their functions. For example, if I select the "High Elf" veneer for my Void Elf, my race would display as High Elf instead, and the "veneer" would change my racials thus:
Entropic Embrace becomes Arcane Legacy: The visual effect, icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.
Spatial Rift becomes Arcane Jaunt: The visual effect, icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.
Preternatural Calm becomes Focused Mind: The icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.
Ethereal Connection becomes Friend of a Friend: The icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.
Chill of Night becomes Against the Darkness: The icon and name change but otherwise it mechanically works exactly the same.

Basically the "veneer" could allow subraces within a given race. The same concept could be applied to other races, such as Wildhammer for Dwarves, Farraki (sand trolls) for Trolls, Grimtotem for Tauren, Dragonmaw for Orcs, etc.

I know that hardcore end-game Horde progression guilds would probably not be incentivized enough to do a mass transfer to Alliance (due to costs), but I think many casual and semi-hardcore players could get incentivized enough to convince some of their friends to swap to the Alliance if Void elves were given proper High elf customizations, and both them and Night elves got great new capital cities. Like I mentioned in a previous post, once core races are looked into again Night elves could get runic tattoos and glowing limbs, and Blood elves could get Dark ranger and San'layn customizations. So far I can also tell that Blizzard has been trying to promote the Alliance in the last 2 expansions or so with great cinematics and ofc the addition of Void elves. To summarize, I do think that aesthetics, and good cinematics, can become a strong motivator for casuals and semi-hardcore. You are right on the hardcore part, but at least this way we have more possibilities of boosting the Alliance with regards to LFG, LFR queues and even some heroic and mythic raiding. At least it is worth trying.

I like the idea of ''veneer'' skins. That could be a great compromise for granting High elves to High elf fans in a more formal manner, and Dark ranger and San'Layn to Blood elves for that ''bad guy'' theme if players so wish to choose.

[delus]

I know that hardcore end-game Horde progression guilds would probably not be incentivized enough to do a mass transfer to Alliance (due to costs), but I think many casual and semi-hardcore players could get incentivized enough to convince some of their friends to swap to the Alliance if Void elves were given proper High elf customizations, and both them and Night elves got great new capital cities. Like I mentioned in a previous post, once core races are looked into again Night elves could get runic tattoos and glowing limbs, and Blood elves could get Dark ranger and San'layn customizations. So far I can also tell that Blizzard has been trying to promote the Alliance in the last 2 expansions or so with great cinematics and ofc the addition of Void elves. To summarize, I do think that aesthetics, and good cinematics, can become a strong motivator for casuals and semi-hardcore. You are right on the hardcore part, but at least this way we have more possibilities of boosting the Alliance with regards to LFG, LFR queues and even some heroic and mythic raiding. At least it is worth trying.

I like the idea of ''veneer'' skins. That could be a great compromise for granting High elves to High elf fans in a more formal manner, and Dark ranger and San'Layn to Blood elves for that ''bad guy'' theme if players so wish to choose.

That's not going to happen unless belf facials are nuked from orbit.

[ravenmoon]

Blood Elves and Nightborne aren't going anywhere. Rather than spouting off your headcanon, how about you engage with the discussion.
Eleann and many others aren't interested and don't want Horde things...Horde assets. It's only you because you can't get over Nightborne going Horde and only wanting them to have lore moments with the Night Elves.

Tanaria, this has nothign to do with headcanon, I''m not quoting lore here, nor am I saying blood elves and Nightborne are going to have those changes. I'm saying they should, and explaining why I feel so and that I'd like that to happen too.

And I'm quite within my rights to engage on my point of view, and as you can clearly see by the amount of replies I have afforded yourself, eleann, and many others that Ido respond to their ideas, and give my views, even if I do return to what I have proposed.. you can't arrest me for having my own convictions or silence me for sharing them when I want to or feel they are warranted. That's not for you to decide.

And what your purposing, as you've not tackled her main point, is that you actively want Horde guilds to be split. People who play Blood Elves and Nightborne, against their own will, are going to have their character pushed on the Alliance and then if we want to go back, we have to pay...PAY, for a faction transfer.

You are lying about me, stop saying this, I have in almost every response persistently iterated that the horde won't lose blood elves as playable nor Nightborne, that's not what I have suggested or proposed. I've made this clear time and time again, this is why people like Eleann and Kyrianni have come on thinking thinking that I'm requesting blood elves should no longer be a horde playable race - sigh, you've been challenging this from the start, you have no excuse, you are either deliberately trying to mislead others who read these responses or you're being ridiculously careless and have basically never read waht i've written all the way through because it has been mentioned almost every time that the horde will still have blood leves and Nightborne playbale adnhave access to the omdels as they are now, in every suggestion I have proposed. My proposals are not necessarily the same as what I want. But they are what I feel can realistically be done.

What does she do, considering you want belf paladins on the Alliance and her main is a blood elf paladin on the Horde side? Oh well, she just has to look for another guild on the Alliance side. This change was necessary and it has put a hell of a lot of people out as well as guilds, but it's tough. You're going to have to get over it...if that is the message, then I'm glad you've quit because that is sheer arrogance and a total "f you" to Blood Elf players, Nightborne players and to the Horde in general.

What are you smoking? You guys really are not reading what I'm saying, but I'm the jackass that keeps responding to you. She isn't losing the ability to play Blood elf paladin - for crying out loud. Did you forget the part where I said the horde still has blood elves? Playable blood elves and Nightborne? They aren't losing classes or anything like that.

It's the narrative that is changing not the player selection. It is NPC population in Quel'thalas that becomes High elves - not every single blood elf... some remain horde allowing hte player to continue to play, the player character is one of htose that ermain horde and Nightborne, iti s he NPCs that change. The Nightborne NPCs inSuramar all get changed to Night elves via the Aracn'dor - but some stop the process magically because theydon't want to be like that. The blood elf NPCs living in Quel'thalas are the ones that decide they've had enough and the horde isn't representative of them, and their values and decide they're high elves.

The horde will still have blood elves, it just won't have the NPC population of Quel'thlaas, this goes to the alliance, with the return of the High Elves that become a big shiny event properly show cased. The idea is that if you love pretty elven cities and high elf type lifestyle and living, then the alliance is the place for you. If you prefer more bad boy, delinquent, tough guy, mean guy vraiation, then the blood elf is for you. He can look the same as the high elf, but his character is generally very diferent, he also has some cool perks like darkfallen and fel elf skin tones, san'layn cusotmisaions and a few other ocol things that aren't high elven traditionally that he can choose from. Or the plyaer can roleplay a bloo d elf that remains blood elven but still keeps those high elven values - that sort of model would be rare amognst the blood elves beucse it is alliance themed, that willb emuch bigger with the high elves, but you will have that available on the blood elves.. the idea is that hte horde won't have alliance higih elf or kaldorei themes running srong in its blood elf and Nightborne, but there willbe allowance for that in a few. However mosto fhte blood leves would have distinct characters that make them different enough from the high elves, and htis would be much more apparent without Silvermoon and Quel'thlalas, and when they build new things with a new architecutre that isn't high elven based or a recolouring of it,


Your friend will still have access to her blood elf paladins.

And we've seen all those races have their improvements. Hell, Forsaken were the leading race of the Horde for the past two expansions. Trolls got a lot of stuff in BFA. Orcs commanded the whole of MoP and WoD. Pandaren are not a "Horde race." I mean, who cares about Pandaren when their fanbase is small? And don't insult us by throwing Tauren at our faces...those guys are more Alliance than Horde and have been since MoP. Goblins are just a background race, like Dwarves and Gnomes.
Again, your not actually offering the Horde anything new and you know it...your just looking at a way of manipulating your headcanon in a way that is wrote as "fair" but it truly isn't, because it sees guilds and the Horde ripped apart and Horde players left for scraps and having to pay Blizzard for faction transfers back to the Horde and if we don't want to pay, we're oppressed into having to stay alliance. What you want - you know it's isn't good because you wouldn't play it but expect Horde players to accept that they have lost two, maybe three, big horde locations and be ok with that because -different colour trolls are cool- said ravenmoon, even though they aren't and we can already create different colour trolls and had an expansion that saw us stay in Zandalari Troll land.

There are new things, but that's not the point of what's happening here, the suggestion I made is to gather the alliance themes and put them back on the alliance, and do it iinsytle so the alliance becomes attractive - you compensate the horde with horde core things to its core races, the new thing would be the new direction the horde blood elves and Nightborne go - it is not an exhaustive list of all the new things ththe horde and alliance will get.

Don't expect me to paint a roadmap of all the new things the horde should get.. I'm just giving an example of things that could happen should blizzard make the alliance the only place you can experience high elf culture, Quel'thalas, Silvermoon etc and the full breadth of kaldorei culture (i.e. both pre-sundering Highborne/Moonguard arcane types such as Suramar and long vigil forest druid/sentinel huntress types like you see in Val'sharah) - all that stuff is high elf and night elf stuff alliance based and themed, so the point is you remove the theme from the horde's elf - you are not removing hte horde's elves, you are developing them into something different.

Different doesn't have to be worse, it's blizzard, they will make it cool. The immediate task though is to make the alliance attractive.. which is why the blood elf horde developments should be delayed an expansion or two, to give the alliance type to gain equilibrium, by the time the blood elf new stuff comes, the alliance will also be having tings as well. cool but different.

[Kyriani]

I like the idea of ''veneer'' skins. That could be a great compromise for granting High elves to High elf fans in a more formal manner, and Dark ranger and San'Layn to Blood elves for that ''bad guy'' theme if players so wish to choose.

I'd love to see the veneer idea gain some traction to be honest. I like the idea of everyone being able to make their character exactly what they want them to be. There's a lot of non-elf players that would appreciate it I think. People who want to play Wildhammer Dwarves or Farakki Trolls are in the same boat as those who want to play High Elves in that they must do so through customization yet their racial tag and racial abilities still denote their actual race. The veneer idea basically takes features of certain RP addons and makes them better and a formal part of the game, and it does so without having to clutter the race selection with yet more derivatives.

[Tanaria]

I'd love to see the veneer idea gain some traction to be honest. I like the idea of everyone being able to make their character exactly what they want them to be. There's a lot of non-elf players that would appreciate it I think. People who want to play Wildhammer Dwarves or Farakki Trolls are in the same boat as those who want to play High Elves in that they must do so through customization yet their racial tag and racial abilities still denote their actual race. The veneer idea basically takes features of certain RP addons and makes them better and a formal part of the game, and it does so without having to clutter the race selection with yet more derivatives.

I like the idea as well, and I've seen ideas on how this can be done, in terms of breaking down what each race can access. An example for Blood Elves, that I have seen are:
Blood Elf
Illidari
Dark Ranger
Farstrider

Now this is on the right lines, but I'd remove the "Illidari" and "Farstrider" because the "class" based veneers are not exactly diverse. I'd suggest that Blood Elves have access to Dark Ranger as a solid thing. (I'd personally not include the San'layn in this, as it's a shared piece of the same cloth and "Dark Ranger" is far more closely related to the Blood Elves than the San'layn.)

But with the Dark Ranger veneer, you can still play a Warlock or Mage and play an Undead Thalassian Elf which isn't a DK. Plus, this introduces red eyes anyway, which most blood elf/dark ranger fans have wanted. I think the Dark Ranger concept offers more and still provides the "San'layn" feel, without needing to include a separate "San'layn" veneer altogether.

Other examples for Void Elves could be, as suggested:
High Elves

For Night Elves:
Highborne

It's a very good idea and allows for many people to truly play what they want. Again though, I'd make the choice between San'layn or Dark Ranger, as I think both make the whole aspect of "Undead Elf" quite redundant and you can essentially play one or the other, with just the one option and as a Blood Elf Horde fan, I wouldn't want the "death" thing to overwhelm the Blood Elf lore. We've still got the Magisters and Blood Knights.

SNIP

It doesn't matter. Kyriani has already laid out the idea as to why what you suggest will not make any difference to the game's playerbase and will only do more harm than good.
At the end of the day, Blizzard won't do anything which involves losing money. WoD was a wake-up call in that regard. They won't risk the large percentage of Blood Elf and Horde players unsubbing from the game and them losing money - especially if it's a case of alliance gets and robs horde assets and horde gets nothing in return. To avoid this, the Horde has to take Kalimdor and the Night Elves simply have to surrender it to the might of Lor'themar and Thalyssra.

Money > Your feelings, as a former WoW player.

[Kyriani]

I like the idea as well, and I've seen ideas on how this can be done, in terms of breaking down what each race can access. An example for Blood Elves, that I have seen are:
Blood Elf
Illidari
Dark Ranger
Farstrider

Now this is on the right lines, but I'd remove the "Illidari" and "Farstrider" because the "class" based veneers are not exactly diverse. I'd suggest that Blood Elves have access to Dark Ranger as a solid thing. (I'd personally not include the San'layn in this, as it's a shared piece of the same cloth and "Dark Ranger" is far more closely related to the Blood Elves than the San'layn.)

But with the Dark Ranger veneer, you can still play a Warlock or Mage and play an Undead Thalassian Elf which isn't a DK.

Other examples for Void Elves could be, as suggested:
High Elves

For Night Elves:
Highborne

It's a very good idea and allows for many people to truly play what they want. Again though, I'd make the choice between San'layn or Dark Ranger, as I think both make the whole aspect of "Undead Elf" quite redundant and you can essentially play one or the other, with just the one option and as a Blood Elf Horde fan, I wouldn't want the "death" thing to overwhelm the Blood Elf lore. We've still got the Magisters and Blood Knights.



It doesn't matter. Kyriani has already laid out the idea as to why what you suggest will not make any difference to the game's playerbase and will only do more harm than good.
At the end of the day, Blizzard won't do anything which involves losing money. WoD was a wake-up call in that regard. They won't risk the large percentage of Blood Elf players unsubbing from the game and them losing money. Money > Your feelings, as a former WoW player.

I'm glad I am not the only one who likes the idea and sees the potential. What I really like about the idea is that it has no affect on mechanical balance and it's a relatively "easy" thing to implement since it's purely visual distinctions. It also allows Blizzard to focus on truly new races for the future and they can add any new derivatives to their base races as a new veneer.

[ravenmoon]

Raven, I honestly don't believe what happened in TBC with Blood Elves going Horde can be replicated today.

First and foremost, Alliance already has what I feel most would consider traditionally aesthetically appealing races (general speaking)... the Horde didn't really have that until TBC. Secondly, it wasn't only Blood Elves that the Horde got which incentivized Alliance players to swap to Horde, but it was also the Paladin class. This was a big deal as Paladins were superior to Shamans for endgame raiding. Then of course there was Arcane Torrent which remained an incredible racial for many many years.

The Alliance can't be bolstered by shitting on the Horde. The Blood Elves and Nightborne, as they are right now, with all their lore and cities intact, are Horde and Blizzard isn't going to take those things away from them. If by making the Alliance "look better than the Horde" you mean aesthetics, that's not going to help the Alliance's endgame progression engagement. The Alliance already look good. It's one of the reasons they were top of the hill in Vanilla. If anything the Alliance look even better today (aesthetically) than they ever have thanks to Shadowlands. Aesthetics may get people to play Alliance, but they won't fix endgame engagement motivation.

Tbf, only horde elf fans consider that "shitting" on the horde, but I hear your point. I don't think what happened in TBC needs to be replicated on the scale that it did, I think the alliance is still well loved, it's just rusty, it will take a little fire to light it and it can run..

The blood elves were a catalyst back in TBC, but it was much more than them, every narrative decision put the horde at the centre, to raise its profile, every cool development favoured the horde and if it was alliance centric, it was shared with the horde, the horde either had to have the same or better every single time, the net result was the shifting perception of the horde from the lame, evil faction to the cool faction. Cultural shifts also influenced that. Off the back of the 80s/90s your noble virtuous hero was the most popular, as the 00s progressed your edgy emo , anti-hero part monster dude became quite the in thing.


With the horde's reputation much better, it is much popular , it doesn't need high elven assets in the blood elves to maintain that. This is why I know it can afford to lose those assets even though the race is still playable on the horde. The alliance on the other hand would HUGELY benefit from high elves making a big re-entry splash to the playable spectrum and the kaldorei actually truly shining in all the aspects of their lore on the alliance this time.


The reason why the horde needs to lose Silvermoon/Quel'thalas and Suramar is to widen the dichotomy of the two factions , distinguish them better, and heal the identity crisis on the horde, which exists precisely because the blood elves are far too high elven an d have a too high elven and thus alliance type of civilization /set of assets etc, same with the Nightborne. That's why you're removing them, the alliance popularity doesn't need the blood elves to lose the Silvermoon or the Nightborne to lose Suramar - the horde needs this more. however the alliance gaining it will make the alliance shine brighter - still alternatives could be simply building an even better pair of cities for the night elves and high elves - so the blood elves and Nightborne don't lose anything.

The problem is if the blood levs and Nightborne don't loose those high elf things and night elf civilization things, the horde still feels too alliancey, too much alliance on it, because those things are too alliance themed. this is why they have to go.


If you have followed my posts throughout the years I have suggested many things, never this, I've always bene in favour of not nerfing anyone and instead just buffing where needs to be, but sometimes, a little pain and loss can go a long way and open the door for something much better, and shouldn't be avoided - when mistakes need to be corrected.

Hypothetically, let's say Blizzard adds High Elves to the Alliance. Now let's say this High Elf race uses the same popular Thalassian model and the blue and arcane eye options we are all familiar with, but other assets like hairstyles, tattoos, scars, jewelry etc. are unique and these High Elves have a unique idle stance, voices and emotes. They also have the full range of human spectrum hair colors and a few more fantasy colors like silver and blue, and all Alliance High Elf NPC's are updated to use the new assets so they are more distinct from Blood Elves. The High Elves even get a spectacular new capital city!

Now, tell me how does any of that incentivize an endgame progression minded Horde guild to switch to Alliance? The answer is... it doesn't.

Let's delve a little further into our hypothetical High Elf race. Let's say they have amazing racials that are practical and useful in every area of the game. For example, let's say the racials are a single passive that provides both a 5% bonus to reputation gains and a 5% discount from all vendors, an active racial that's basically Blink on a 2 min cooldown, and they have a passive +5% damage/healing proc identical to Entropic Embrace in function but with an arcane themed visual aura instead of changing their skin color. Oh and these High Elves can be every class in the game!

Now the Horde progression guilds are going to be incentivized to at least consider swapping because... well... any class could hop the fence and the racials are pretty impressive and useful in endgame. That the High Elves are aesthetically appealing in every way, is just icing on an already rich and delicious cake. They'd still have to consider the loss of the robust Horde endgame scene, but the lure could be enough to make them bite that bullet and hope others swap as well.

The problem here is that Blizzard doesn't want there to be a massive shift of people from Horde to Alliance. According to the last interview I saw mentioning population numbers, the populations are fairly close. It's the endgame engagement that's lacking on the Alliance. There's also the fact that the above racials would never happen because they are just too good and unless Blizz opened up every class to every race, they'd never let a single race have access to every class.. Half of human's diplomacy? The Void Elf damage proc? Having a 2 min cooldown Blink on any class? Being able to have that on any class? It would swing things drastically, and a drastic swing isn't the desired outcome.

Blizzard doesn't see Blood Elf and Nightborne aesthetics on the Horde as an issue. The Horde are doing just fine and Blizzard don't want to rock that boat beyond maybe making Alliance just alluring enough to tempt some endgame players to swap. That's as far as they want to go. They aren't going to remove any stuff that Blood Elves and Nightborne already have. They also aren't likely to ever add High Elves as their own race at this point. With the new customization options, I'm fairly certain Blizzard considers the request for Alliance High Elves fulfilled, even if some players do not. At best, more aesthetic options (and possibly class options) can be added to Void Elves to flesh out the High Elf fantasy further, and the lore (both in-game and out) can be expanded to show that the remnants of the Quel'dorei have joined the Ren'dorei.

I cover this extensively in my earlier discussion, I thoroughly recommend reading it. The key to solving the problem with the alliance numbers in understanding why it is like it is.

Many people think it's things like racials, or the blood elf model , or horde guilds. It isn't. It's popularity and perception - it was the lore/narrative and presentation changes that made the horde very cool, that changed it's perception.

You need to make a cool shiny big song and dance over the alliance for a little while, and favour it for cool and nice things - this will do the trick. you don't even need new stuff, because the alliance races actually have a lot of cool things about them totally underutilised , ignored and siphoned off to the horde. Quel'thalas, Silvermoon and the kaldorei civilization are examples of things siphoned off, lame dwarves, lame night elves that have little magic, no well of eternity use, no fancy world tree magic use etc, going from a great multi-spectrum race to effectively a niche forest elf only expression - boring dwarves, Draenei who are just always agreeable - it lacks fire and imagination and grossly under utilised. Night elves have fascinating things in their lore, Suramar is evidence of it, and that's not even all, the Illidari are under utilised, the whole mystic of the stars - they call themselves children of the stars, had astrology towers in their civilization and so much mystery to the order of Elune that was intertwined with the mages and the people and the druids - so much non used, only the same one dimension druid take for most of it..

Want to see dwarves interesting/ you watched the hobbit? you played Warhammer? Dwarves can be so much cooler than they are making them in Warcraft.. it's all perception hun.


Do the horde need the blood elves? Well look at classic relaunch, there are no blood elves in the 2018 relaunch, but the overall population is 50/50 now why is that? Because the horde is no longer perceived as the lame faction. it didn't even need eye candy models, those were just the incentive back in the TBC days to lure players over and establish a trend...once the trend is established it is no longer need, emphasis should have switched to the orcs and trolls, they should have done majestic troll and orc places like Daza'ralor/Zuldazar rather than sling more alliance elven stuff (like Suramar) over tot he horde. Void elves should have been darker and a direction tied into blood elves while high elves the vanilla version gone to the alliance. But that didn't happen.

So what do we do now to change alliance perception.. make the elves incredible like they can really be, for being alliance type elves, in their native way - don't shunt that to the horde, the horde is not the faction of high elves traditionally, just because blood elves have sat on the horde since TBC, they've never become more horde like, they've remained very high elven which is an alliance template - if the alliance popularity is low, because it's unattractive and uninteresting, make it exciting. Find out what makes the alliance exiting and the players excited about it and make the shine bright and glorious like the sun.

And if you have any sense, you'd quickly see it is high elves and Night elves that do more for the alliance than any other factions. Even not playable, alliance players wish for and make more posts about high elves than they do dwarves, Draenei, worgen, gnomes, pandas COMBIND... it is alliance fans that talk more about Nightborne lore than horde fans do .. horde fans only talk about blood elves (Nightborne talks are just moans about the models), Night elves are the other massive alliance topic - there is such a desire for them to be cool, powerful, fierce, badass, magical etc - it shows you the things the alliance players like and want are not been given them, if you want all those players who've transferred to the horde to go back.. make their alliance cool again, change the perception.

This is why I feel it needs a big splash again.

[Tanaria]

SNIP

What you feel and what Blizzard are content with are two different things.

As mentioned, Blizzard are seemingly very happy with the Horde. Each race gets it's time in the sun. Hell, Blood Elves hadn't been seen probably, on their own, until Legion in 7.1. They only had cameo appearances between TBC and Legion.
Blizzard wanted to give the Forsaken race a leading part and this is where they developed the character of Nathanos, but also the character of Velonara, who was always a bit shaky on Sylvanas' leadership.

The writers for the Horde are seemingly just more, in-the-know, about each race and that is why they all get equal development. Nightborne only had 8.2 of BFA, since joining the Horde. Everything else was Orc, Tauren, Forsaken, Troll and Goblin.
I don't think you truly understand the Horde narrative and the way the Horde writers have always been. Unlike the Alliance that forces Humans at the front, the Horde writers actually look at each race and use them appropriately. 8.2 gave story to the Blood Elves and Nightborne as they were the races that made sense for the story. Typically, Alliance writers pushed Jaina to the forefront - that's not a Horde problem, that's the Alliance writers' problem. Shandris was involved and heavily used in the Eternal Palace raid, but that's about it.

During the faction assaults, they had the Orcs be the Warriors, the Blood Elves and Nightborne serve as the Mages, the Trolls serve as Hunters and the Forsaken serve as Rogues and Warlocks and these are just a few examples. Blizzard know what they're doing and despite the horrible story of BFA, it has worked in 90% of the cases.

Horde don't need to lose Silvermoon or Suramar. They are Horde assets, no matter how much you try and headcanon it.

EDIT: In fact, it wasn't until the Shadowlands pre-patch did we see any living elf direct and take leadership of the Horde. Lor'themar, not being the Warchief, was the very first time we'd actually seen a living elf be the de-facto leader of the Horde faction.
Sylvanas, being undead and leader of the Forsaken, doesn't really count as she primarily led the undead humans.

Shadowlands pre-patch was the first time an elf, who led elves, was leading the Horde. Not as "Warchief" but as the main commander. Blood Elf fans, myself included, have never really imagined Lor'themar being the Warchief, especially now considering how Garrosh, Vol'jin and Sylvanas were handled, but I think the majority of blood elf fans were happy to see Lor'themar be the main commander of the Horde forces. It could create an interesting dynamic between him and Turaylon and we could see the first antagonistic alliance, attack the horde.

At this stage, we have a more peaceful Horde commander in Lor'themar and a more zealous Alliance commander in Turaylon.

[Kyriani]

Can Blizzard focus the narrative on the Alliance and have them be more proactive rather than always reactive to whatever the Horde is doing? Sure! That'd be great! I think the Horde would also like not being beat in the head with the villain bat for a while too. But that doesn't have to come at the cost of anything Horde has currently. Blizzard simply has to want to devote the narrative and spotlight to the Alliance in a big and consistent way for a significant amount of time. Unfortunately, even ignoring the fact that, as a two faction game Blizzard cant simply ignore one faction or the other, the culture surrounding WoW for the bulk of it's life makes that difficult.

The Horde are "cool". The Alliance are "boring". And don't forget "Horde bias!". It's a matter of perception, and the perception of the Alliance would need to change in a big way to attract the types of players who engage heavily in endgame progression. Blizzard gave literal Blood Elves (painted blue) to the Alliance and it made no difference. Now those literal Blood Elves no longer have to be blue and I'm betting in the near future they'll get a bunch of new hair color and hairstyle options allowing them to appear virtually indistinguishable from Blood Elves. And even if they tossed Paladin and Demon Hunter access to Void Elves on top of that, I still don't think it's would make much difference. The "idea" that the Horde are the "cool" faction is so ingrained in the culture of both Blizzard (there's an orc statue on their front lawn), and the playerbase, that I am hard-pressed to think of what could change that perception.

I think giving the Alliance more majestic elves and magical cities is just going to make the people already playing Alliance happier, but I don't believe it will make the Alliance seem "cool", encourage existing Alliance players to engage in endgame progression more, or draw endgame progression minded Horde players to switch.

[Tanaria]

Can Blizzard focus the narrative on the Alliance and have them be more proactive rather than always reactive to whatever the Horde is doing? Sure! That'd be great! I think the Horde would also like not being beat in the head with the villain bat for a while too. But that doesn't have to come at the cost of anything Horde has currently. Blizzard simply has to want to devote the narrative and spotlight to the Alliance in a big and consistent way for a significant amount of time. Unfortunately, even ignoring the fact that as a two faction game Blizzard cant simply ignore one faction or the other, the culture surrounding WoW for the bulk of it's life makes that difficult.

In an ironic twist of fate, Blizzard could pull off a proactive Alliance with Turaylon as leader. He is far more zealous than Anduin and with Lor'themar seemingly being the defacto Horde commander, who is more reasonable and more for nation security, it could spice things up.

With Lor'themar and Turaylon as the commanders of their respective factions, we could see the tables turn. Plus, if Tyrande hasn't been calmed by the end of Shadowlands, then we do have more bite in the Alliance.

I think giving the Alliance more majestic elves and magical cities is just going to make the people already playing Alliance happier, but I don't believe it will make the Alliance seem "cool", encourage existing Alliance players to engage in endgame progression more, or draw endgame progression minded Horde players to switch.

It won't solve any purpose, other than making a few alliance elf fans happy.
Nightborne and Blood Elves are Horde races with Horde assets. Nothing of their's should be lost, unless Alliance is prepared to say goodbye to Kalimdor, to compensate for the Horde losing the Eastern Kingdoms and Broken Isles.

Yes, that does also mean the Night Elves will have to face another defeat. It's not what Night Elf fans will likely want, but it's tough, I'm afraid.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

SNIP.

I think this is it for me; you simply continue to not address any of the issues we keep presenting and just repeating your views again. You are not interested on a discussion, you don't care about how it doesn't work, you simply say "well it's my opinion" without any attempt to understand why your opinion and premise would negatively impact the experience of huge swaths of the playerbase.

And that's what's really unconscionable about your premise, you care only for your vision regardless of how it would affect others very real enjoyment of the game -cause again, to be clear, you literally want to remove an elven identity that has been part of the Horde for 15 years- and I am done humoring it.

- - - Updated - - -

Can Blizzard focus the narrative on the Alliance and have them be more proactive rather than always reactive to whatever the Horde is doing? Sure! That'd be great! I think the Horde would also like not being beat in the head with the villain bat for a while too. But that doesn't have to come at the cost of anything Horde has currently. Blizzard simply has to want to devote the narrative and spotlight to the Alliance in a big and consistent way for a significant amount of time. Unfortunately, even ignoring the fact that, as a two faction game Blizzard cant simply ignore one faction or the other, the culture surrounding WoW for the bulk of it's life makes that difficult.

That's the huge problem with Ravenmoon's proposals, he cares not for literally taking away 15 years of Horde identity. I am obviously alliance leaning, but I can't help but see such a view as utterly uncaring as to how others enjoy the game. And all for the sake of a simplistic dichotomy.

Also the sheer idea that what the alliance needs to be popular is elves is just... silly. It's far from the only option and it's just weird to present it as the only/best choice.

Humans are always the most popular race; if they gave humans the options to have leaner bodies like elves... yeah.

- - - Updated - - -

In an ironic twist of fate, Blizzard could pull off a proactive Alliance with Turaylon as leader. He is far more zealous than Anduin and with Lor'themar seemingly being the defacto Horde commander, who is more reasonable and more for nation security, it could spice things up.

With Lor'themar and Turaylon as the commanders of their respective factions, we could see the tables turn. Plus, if Tyrande hasn't been calmed by the end of Shadowlands, then we do have more bite in the Alliance.



It won't solve any purpose, other than making a few alliance elf fans happy.
Nightborne and Blood Elves are Horde races with Horde assets. Nothing of their's should be lost, unless Alliance is prepared to say goodbye to Kalimdor, to compensate for the Horde losing the Eastern Kingdoms and Broken Isles.

Yes, that does also mean the Night Elves will have to face another defeat. It's not what Night Elf fans will likely want, but it's tough, I'm afraid.

At the end of the day, Ravenmoon's proposal is just the laziest way to force a faction dichotomy, by making the setting more simplistic and dumbing down in universe choice. The premise that the alliance need elves t be cool is just silly, when the alliance has existed without that "magical and aracne" aspect of elves since... ever. Alliance has always had "forest elves" to pretend the imperial arcane themes belong to the alliance is disingenous.

There are so many other ways to give the alliance a stronger identity, and I am really bummed that this thread has become about engaging with what is downright a bad idea.