Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Ithekro]

High Elf and Blood Elf themes are probably getting farther and farther apart the longer they stay not only divided, but also hostile to each other due to the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. They are becoming more and more two different things. This will only become more noticeable with the renewed Sunwell (the golden eyes for example) verse the older High Elves that aren't around the Sunwell anymore. The Void Elves being a third version between the two in one way, and other the opposite end of the spectrum in another way.

[Deleted]

you guys are full of false equivalences aren't you

I dont want to answer this, so it is false equivalence

[bloodmoth13]

So... pandas and a comparison between allied races that aren't cross faction (we both know there are bigger differences between night elves and Nightborne than just the ears, and they also have significant lore to explain the changes). They did the panda thing one time, and didn't like it. Do you think they decided that content was bad with no evidence? If so, all you have to do is convince them that pandas were actually successful, and that neutral races are good for the game. Thinking they came to the conclusion that Pandaren weren't successful without any reason is very hard to justify, and considering that they still brought up the faction distinction in the Q&A with specific references to visuals and feel, it's safe to say they still believe that's an issue.

As for the comparison with the Stonemaul, I can at least see where you're coming from. The difference is that Blood Elves have been a Horde race for a long time now, that comparison was only really fair back when Blood Elves were announced. I personally would be willing to accept ogres on the Alliance if that was part of the story Blizzard wanted to tell, but I'm sure people would have complaints. However, I still don't agree that after making them an Alliance race it would make sense to give them to the Horde without significant and obvious visual and thematic differences.

pandas have the exact same culture, it makes it hard to justify having them fight eachother. high elves and blood elves have different culture. its almost the same as the distinction between nightborne and night elves, same race, different cultures. and again, its not the visuals that were the problem with pandaren, its the culture and aesthetics, they are literally the exact same between factions, high elves and blood elves have more distinction than that. So... actually i dont have to prove that pandas were a success because it has literally nothing to do with this.

The high elves have also been a part of the alliance longer than the blood elves horde. even in vanilla wow there were high elves in the alliance. they could add ogres to the alliance now, and in 12 years it would still be fair for the horde to ask for stonemaul ogres for the horde. alliance ogres wouldnt invalidate horde ogres. Heck, lets run up a scenario:

Blizz invent 'blood ogres', they rebranded themselves because of the death of their chieftain who loved poetry or whatever, they completely change their aesthetics and all wear unicorn skins and have a major focus on monks and poetry.

Horde petition to get regular basic ogres on the horde, the good ole fashioned 'big brute' variety.

Blizz then gives horde 'fire ogres' who destroy the blood ogres poetry library and got kicked out after they all suddenly became possessed by fire elements.

Horde point out that its not what they asked for and the stonemauls are still right their, in all their regular ogre glory, they point out that stonemauls have been part of the horde since warcraft III and players have wanted them for a long time.

blizz says "if you want ogres, then the alliance is for you".

when its put this way its painfully obvious what the issue is and why its going to continue to be an issue till alliance high elves are a thing. i know a lot of contributors to this argument havent been able to see things from the 'pro-high elf' point of view, so i hope this 'ogre' analogy can help players see the other side better.

[matrix123mko]

pandas have the exact same culture, it makes it hard to justify having them fight eachother. high elves and blood elves have different culture. its almost the same as the distinction between nightborne and night elves, same race, different cultures. and again, its not the visuals that were the problem with pandaren, its the culture and aesthetics, they are literally the exact same between factions, high elves and blood elves have more distinction than that. So... actually i dont have to prove that pandas were a success because it has literally nothing to do with this.

The high elves have also been a part of the alliance longer than the blood elves horde. even in vanilla wow there were high elves in the alliance. they could add ogres to the alliance now, and in 12 years it would still be fair for the horde to ask for stonemaul ogres for the horde. alliance ogres wouldnt invalidate horde ogres. Heck, lets run up a scenario:

Blizz invent 'blood ogres', they rebranded themselves because of the death of their chieftain who loved poetry or whatever, they completely change their aesthetics and all wear unicorn skins and have a major focus on monks and poetry.

Horde petition to get regular basic ogres on the horde, the good ole fashioned 'big brute' variety.

Blizz then gives horde 'fire ogres' who destroy the blood ogres poetry library and got kicked out after they all suddenly became possessed by fire elements.

Horde point out that its not what they asked for and the stonemauls are still right their, in all their regular ogre glory, they point out that stonemauls have been part of the horde since warcraft III and players have wanted them for a long time.

blizz says "if you want ogres, then the alliance is for you".

when its put this way its painfully obvious what the issue is and why its going to continue to be an issue till alliance high elves are a thing. i know a lot of contributors to this argument havent been able to see things from the 'pro-high elf' point of view, so i hope this 'ogre' analogy can help players see the other side better.

Your explanation is great. I'd like to have blood ogres now. However, there is one thing to complain. Blood elves and their alliance cousins have the same arcane-based culture. The difference is only political. It's like Confederate States and United States. They have different points of view on some subjects and fight eachother but they have the same culture. I think, with their relevance since vanilla, it is enough to make them playable race.

[Obelisk Kai]

There is petition for adding high elves to game: https://www.change.org/p/high-elven-..._share_initial

And WoWhead article about high elves and Ion's response: http://www.wowhead.com/news=283929/t...an-allied-race

A petition. It's not going to accomplish anything you know because they never have. It's just to satisfy the desperate desire to feel you are doing SOMETHING to change their minds.

If six months of forum spamming didn't communicate how much the pro High Elf community wanted High Elves, a petition is hardly going to make the scales fall from the dev team's eyes.

[JustaRandomReindeer]

If they add HE as allied race a big chunk of the Horde population will roll Alliance. I thought people around here would be smart enough to figure out why that would be bad for everyone and the game in general. You got Void Elves. Be happy and move on.

[psyquest]

If they add HE as allied race a big chunk of the Horde population will roll Alliance. I thought people around here would be smart enough to figure out why that would be bad for everyone and the game in general. You got Void Elves. Be happy and move on.

They already stated there wont by any high elves. If anyone wants high elves, roll horde, its the blood elves.

Dont know why this thread is still going on...

[Sigxy]

http://www.wowhead.com/news=283929/t...an-allied-race
@Traycor so good to see you again.

I SAID IT BEFORE BOYS AND I WILL SAY IT AGAIN!

WE WILL NEVER SEE SUCH SUPPORT FOR A RACE OTHER THAN HIGH ELVES

I remember you guys saying that when Blizzard extended the amount of posts you could have on your high elf thread on the WoW forums.

Didn't work out.

They already stated there wont by any high elves. If anyone wants high elves, roll horde, its the blood elves.

Dont know why this thread is still going on...

Because they can't accept the truth so they prefer living a lie, sadly. But hey, I prefer this thread being active rather than seeing 10 threads a day about High Elves x_x

[Arrashi]

There is petition for adding high elves to game: https://www.change.org/p/high-elven-..._share_initial

And WoWhead article about high elves and Ion's response: http://www.wowhead.com/news=283929/t...an-allied-race

Yeah, blizzard simply loves petitions.

[Syegfryed]

Dont know why this thread is still going on...

because people can't pass the stage of denial

[Deleted]

If they add HE as allied race a big chunk of the Horde population will roll Alliance. I thought people around here would be smart enough to figure out why that would be bad for everyone and the game in general. You got Void Elves. Be happy and move on.

No, high elves are requested by few vocal fanboys, who have their echo chamber on official forums, where they upvote themselves for bigger visibility. They would certainly not threathen faction balance. Also if the blood elves are the only thing, that keeps players to play horde, then void elves should be enough to cause massive migration, because these void elves are cooler and better than bland high elves.

[protip]

Here's something to think about. There was some discussion about using the Highvale settlement as a reference for a High Elf culture separate from that of the Blood Elves, and I had some thoughts about the idea.

In the existing cross faction allied races, in the process of becoming different from the race they're based on, they give up access to that race's most iconic class. Void elves lose access to paladins, Nightborne lose access to druids. Warlocks for High Elves are right out, of course, but the Sunwell was a font of arcane energy, not fel. If they didn't get enough arcane energy, explaining a high elf mage becomes very difficult, and if the distinction is to be drawn based on their relationship with magic, would you still accept a high elf without access to mages? In that situation, I see the only reasonable class choices to be warrior, paladin, hunter, rogue, priest, and monk. They'd still need visual changes to be focused on physical rather than magical, but if you push that fantasy to the extreme, perhaps there is room for them to exist in a game that already has Blood Elves.

I recognize that's not going to be a popular idea, but if your goal is to make them thematically different, half measures won't do. I think they would have to truly hate magic to oppose Blood Elves to the same degree that Void Elves and Nightborne do their counterparts. That said, I still think that space is crowded now that Void Elves are already in the game.

High Elf and Blood Elf themes are probably getting farther and farther apart the longer they stay not only divided, but also hostile to each other due to the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde. They are becoming more and more two different things. This will only become more noticeable with the renewed Sunwell (the golden eyes for example) verse the older High Elves that aren't around the Sunwell anymore. The Void Elves being a third version between the two in one way, and other the opposite end of the spectrum in another way.

I'm not necessarily against that, as long as the result is something that is both visually and thematically different from a Blood Elf. Since Blood Elves aren't going to change, that difference has to come out of the High Elf side.

pandas have the exact same culture, it makes it hard to justify having them fight eachother. high elves and blood elves have different culture. its almost the same as the distinction between nightborne and night elves, same race, different cultures. and again, its not the visuals that were the problem with pandaren, its the culture and aesthetics, they are literally the exact same between factions, high elves and blood elves have more distinction than that. So... actually i dont have to prove that pandas were a success because it has literally nothing to do with this.

The high elves have also been a part of the alliance longer than the blood elves horde. even in vanilla wow there were high elves in the alliance. they could add ogres to the alliance now, and in 12 years it would still be fair for the horde to ask for stonemaul ogres for the horde. alliance ogres wouldnt invalidate horde ogres. Heck, lets run up a scenario:

Blizz invent 'blood ogres', they rebranded themselves because of the death of their chieftain who loved poetry or whatever, they completely change their aesthetics and all wear unicorn skins and have a major focus on monks and poetry.

Horde petition to get regular basic ogres on the horde, the good ole fashioned 'big brute' variety.

Blizz then gives horde 'fire ogres' who destroy the blood ogres poetry library and got kicked out after they all suddenly became possessed by fire elements.

Horde point out that its not what they asked for and the stonemauls are still right their, in all their regular ogre glory, they point out that stonemauls have been part of the horde since warcraft III and players have wanted them for a long time.

blizz says "if you want ogres, then the alliance is for you".

when its put this way its painfully obvious what the issue is and why its going to continue to be an issue till alliance high elves are a thing. i know a lot of contributors to this argument havent been able to see things from the 'pro-high elf' point of view, so i hope this 'ogre' analogy can help players see the other side better.

Nightborne are 10000 years removed from night elves, just like high elves are 10000 years removed from night elves. They're not actually the same race.

I enjoyed your ogre analogy for the creativity, but it has some key differences relative to the High Elf/Blood Elf situation. The Blood Elves playable in game didn't change their aesthetics when they became Blood Elves. They're just WoW's interpretation of High Elves, plus some green eyes and a new love for the color red. If you're asking for the race as it was imagined in another game, it'll just be incompatible with the way High Elves and Blood Elves exist in WoW. That specific storyline already has an in-game representation that is bound in place by playable Blood Elves. It might be frustrating, because it doesn't leave space for what you want, but it's a decision that has already been made.

You can still get parts of what you want: a connection to the story continued through some transformation, a new race with some of the features of the race's interpretation from another game, etc. You just can't have both, because the High Elves are already playable in the form of Blood Elves (with insignificant changes according to the lore), and playable races don't change.

[Sigxy]

Yeah, blizzard simply loves petitions.

And as soon as that thing reaches it's goal they are aaaall going to believe that Blizzard will FINALLY listen to them! All 500 of them!

And then get denied. '.' And I bet if we made a petition about not allowing elves, even if it becomes much bigger than that, they will go to their discord and try find ways to ban us.

Edit: ACTUALLY, is it possible to sign a petition with more than one Email per person? Because I BET that is what is going on if that's the case o_o

[JustaRandomReindeer]

No, high elves are requested by few vocal fanboys, who have their echo chamber on official forums, where they upvote themselves for bigger visibility. They would certainly not threathen faction balance. Also if the blood elves are the only thing, that keeps players to play horde, then void elves should be enough to cause massive migration, because these void elves are cooler and better than bland high elves.

There are a lot of BE fans on the Horde side. If the alliance gets cooler blonde sexy elves then why would they play Horde? VEs are apparently not cooler. I think they are but after seeing all these High Elf threads maybe they were ultimately deemed to not be slutmong-able.

[Zli]

There is petition for adding high elves to game: https://www.change.org/p/high-elven-..._share_initial

And WoWhead article about high elves and Ion's response: http://www.wowhead.com/news=283929/t...an-allied-race

339 people signed up,that is pretty impresive number just like number of high elves in game as we speak .

[Deleted]

339 people signed up,that is pretty impresive number just like number of high elves in game as we speak .

Still better than 10 void elves living in two tents on an asteroid.

[Ithekro]

There are a lot of BE fans on the Horde side. If the alliance gets cooler blonde sexy elves then why would they play Horde? VEs are apparently not cooler. I think they are but after seeing all these High Elf threads maybe they were ultimately deemed to not be slutmong-able.

if the Horde has that many rerolls to Alliance due to High Elves, than the Horde has a much more serious problem. From what we know of Allied Races, there is very little chance that more than 7% of all the Blood Elf characters will reroll as High Elves. Why? Because that would equal roughly all the combine Allied Race character currently on Live. Also one should realize that more rerolls will probably be from the Alliance to High Elf anyway. Mostly from Human and Night Elf players that couldn't roll a High Elf (because screw playing on the Horde, right lol?). Also some of the people that already rerolled or made Void Elves because they though that was as close as they were going to get to playing an Alliance High Elf. People that have Night Elves with names like XXLegololsXX would definitely reroll as a High Elf, if they bother completing the grind and unlock quests to get them.

The grind to unlock the Allied Races is the biggest roadblock to any potential population swings. It takes effort to get an Allied Race and most people can't be bothered to rep grind for two or three months to play some random elf. So I don't image the population to shift much at all, with maybe one or two percent of the Horde Players rolling High Elves, with a similar or maybe slightly greater number of Alliance players rolling High Elves as well. That would put High Elves at I suppose Gnome levels of characters on Live. The faction balance doesn't shift hardly at all (because some Alliance players are going to switch over to Zandalari Trolls or Vulpera). And if it does shift, it will be by about 1%.

The only other reason that the Horde might lose more of its Blood Elf population would be due to their racial not being OP anymore. And that doesn't mean they will roll Alliance....just whatever is OP at the moment. That would have nothing to do with High Elves.

[Shibito]

No, i want high elf, with high elven story, what he did after destruction of sunwell, how he struggled, where he lived until today. But you cant grasp that HE fans want to play high elves for their story, not because they are pretty, magnificent, unearthly,divine

Or you just want one so you can erp in goldshire.

[bowlink]

The number argument has been debunked because void elvens because their are just more named high elves and high elf settlement.

They look to mutch like blood elf argument is also debunked because again void elves. In full armor you can only tell them apart by the colour of their name blue for green for friendly. And red orange or yellow for hostile.

They blur the line between factions. Well so do pandaren. And before you say "blizzard have stated that they aren't satisfied with how pandaren turned out".
Well blizzard also isn't satisfied with flying in game. And we all know how that turned out. The genie is out the bottle with flying, and the Genie is out the bottle with the blurred faction via the pandaren.

So to revue

1: The numbers argument is moot, because not just void elves but lightforged break that criteria

2: They look to mutch like bloodelves argument is moot. Because again void elves break that criteria so do nightborne if you want stretch it. To me it just that more effort was put in horde allied races, as opposed the alliance ones.

3: They blur the line between factions argument is moot because Pandaren, Void elves, Nightborne break that rule. And the Pandaren part of that statement gets compounded by the flying argument.

so all that remains is the true reason:
They (Blizzard) just don't want too

But they will never admit that because they don't like using finality because that limits their options. And would stop them using it as a selling point for a future expantion when subs drop again.

[Gentlepenguin]

All the positives are going to happen if you do what I want, and none of the negative. See these arguments? They can't be argued with. Why? Logic. What was my logic? I said it. Here's a wowhead article, high elves are happening.