Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Deleted]

Not sure if this is for discussion or if this is an anti Ion circlejerk, but I've been wondering.
Vereesa is obviously anti Horde, but why hasn't she joined the Alliance officially? I wonder if it's because after seeing Kael being crazy mistreated by Garithos when they were just offering to help post third war (I know it's waaaay back) she's afraid that her people might be treated as second class?

Ah yes, the good old Grand Marshal Othmar Garithos of Stormwind.He went to Lordaeron to abuse and bully blood elves.Now Vereesa is afraid, that his son, Anduin Garithos would do the same to them.

Nightborne was heavily hinted to be going Horde from their quest chain so there's no way that's an asspull. Void Elves are Blizzard's compromise on the High Elf situation.

I like how you can talk all day about Ion's comment on population but nobody wants to discuss the other comment he made. That High Elves are too similar to Blood Elves and they don't want an iconic Horde race to have a duplicate of itself on the Alliance side.

I am talking about nightborne existing, because broken isles were sunken ruins, which were inhabitated by murlocs and shrimp people.

Ion contradicted himmself more than once.. In WoD interview he was excited to talk about high elves and maghar orcs as additional races.. Also void elves arent that different, unless you count different skin color as something, that makes you completely different.. they look like blood elven death knights, and in full armor, they are inrecognizable from blood elves.. so there you go, your factions are already blurred.. and i am not even speaking about pandaren.

And no, pandaren on both factions werent considered mistake by blizzard. Only ghostcrawler said, that he wasnt fan of that.

[Deleted]

Oh pandaren were neutral from the start, that will excuse them from blurring the faction lines.

[protip]

I am talking about nightborne existing, because broken isles were sunken ruins, which were inhabitated by murlocs and shrimp people.

Ion contradicted himmself more than once.. In WoD interview he was excited to talk about high elves and maghar orcs as additional races.. Also void elves arent that different, unless you count different skin color as something, that makes you completely different.. they look like blood elven death knights, and in full armor, they are inrecognizable from blood elves.. so there you go, your factions are already blurred.. and i am not even speaking about pandaren.

And no, pandaren on both factions werent considered mistake by blizzard. Only ghostcrawler said, that he wasnt fan of that.

You keep saying that quote is Ghostcrawler's personal opinion, but you have cherry-picked the lines that suit you so that you can pretend that they meant something different. "We just didn't want to deny anyone Pandaren" clearly explains that those who made the decision for Pandaren to be neutral made an exception because they didn't want anyone not to have them. Even if you assume (apparently without evidence and disregarding context) the rest of the quote is his personal opinion, the fact that an exception was made for Pandaren is clearly stated to be a collective decision on the part of the dev team.

Trying to equate void elves and blood elf dks is almost reasonable, except that you're ignoring the fact that they simply don't want to blur the faction lines further. No degree of compromise up to this point invalidates their desire to keep the factions distinct. However blurred you may believe faction lines to be, if the Game Director says it's as far as they want to go, it's entirely reasonable for them to to stop there.

Ion didn't contradict himself, time passed and his opinion developed. Yes, he mentioned high elves back in the day, and now he has explained why the idea was rejected.

[Deleted]

Their appearance has no identity for either faction. Blood Elves are iconic to the Horde at this point. High Elves are a small faction that mostly only shows up when the Blood Elves are doing something or a human needs a wife.

But we got blood elves.. they are indeed silvermoon elves who are enhanced with different primordial energy, while high elves would be from dalaran or any high elven settlement. So we got horde race, instead of alliance race.

[Arrashi]

Why? Because I make sense and the Horde don't like when their enemies make sense? Because they don't know how to counter logic?

The thing is that you don't make sense

[Obelisk Kai]

Ion contradicted himmself more than once.. In WoD interview he was excited to talk about high elves and maghar orcs as additional races.
.

And then they sat down and thought it through and realised High Elves were identical to Blood Elves and they devised a void themed variant as a compromise.

It's not a contradiction, it's someone following through an idea until it's inevitable conclusion.

Hell when the interview aired this became a topic of discussion.

At the time I said the below in the relevant topic



"That is not currently the plan for Warlords of Draenor. Though, we've definitely heard player interest in some kind of sub-races and whether or not that means brown-skinned orcs, or High Elves or...(searches for another example of the top of his head. Interviewer says Iron Dwarves. Hazzikostas waves in an acknowledging gesture)...exactly, that could be very cool and it's something that gets our artists really excited when we talk about it.'

Absolutely nothing confirmed. Still a fantastic likelihood this will not come to pass once they sit and start looking at the drawbacks.

This is before Blizzard even builds the idea, tests it, and actually considers what sub-races they want to use. Call me in two years after Blizzcon'15 but all he's done is likely raised your hopes for nothing. But if you guys still really wish to play a thalassian elf, congratulations, they're already available."

And I was for the most part right. They did exactly what I said they would do, sit down; build the system and realise High Elves were impossible because of Blood Elves.

I didn't foresee the Void Elves of course, but nobody did.

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Oh pandaren were neutral from the start, that will excuse them from blurring the faction lines.

Yes it does because they were the first and the last to do this, and taught Blizzard the lesson that a neutral race does not work even if the race itself was designed specifically for this purpose.

[Darththeo]

You can if you aren’t totally deluded

If you think that, you are totally deluded. See? I can make 100% ignorant statements too.

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If you can visibly see part of the elf there's nobody that will confuse a Void Elf with a Blood Elf.

This is factually false. There are times where I see a Void Elf and the only reason I can tell is the color of the name bar because I see them quickly.
These weren't in full plate and I could "see" part of the elf, but because I didn't see it for long the first instinct was Belf because that what we see more often.

Hell, when Goblin became playable, in a dungeon group I had one guy as why we had a Gnome in the group because he didn't look close enough.

So it isn't just the ability to see part of the elf, but part of the elf clearly.

[Ithekro]

Not sure if this is for discussion or if this is an anti Ion circlejerk, but I've been wondering.
Vereesa is obviously anti Horde, but why hasn't she joined the Alliance officially? I wonder if it's because after seeing Kael being crazy mistreated by Garithos when they were just offering to help post third war (I know it's waaaay back) she's afraid that her people might be treated as second class?

I would say it is because Dalaran is her home now. That's where her children are being raised. Her forces were heavily Alliance leaning from Wrath onwards. Her husband was in control there and was more neutral mind, at least up until Theramore was mana bombed and he died, and then Jaina took over and brought Dalaran back into the Alliance after being betray once too many times by the Horde. Until Khadgar took over in Legion because he would rather have a united front. Than Dalarna became neutral ground again. During the Suramar campaign, while Vereesa was representing the High Elves, her mission as part of the Kirin Tor under Khadgar's orders was to keep the Night Elves and Blood Elves from killing each other and focusing on Suramar. Though I think her troops also did their bit of pranking on the Blood Elves and Night Elves. Elves will be elves afterall.

So Vereesa, at least from the time of the Purge of Dalaran to the invasion of the Legion was part of the Alliance officially through Jaina Proudmoore and Dalaran being an Alliance city. We don't know at this time if post-Legion Dalaran will return to being an Alliance city, as Kadgar seems like he'd going to seclude himself in Kara for the time being. So who's in charge of Dalaran? Not Jaina. She's going to Kul'Tiras with us.

[Darththeo]

You're making more of a case for your eye sight not being good than you are for them looking the same. The only thing a Void Elf's skin looks similar to is that one DK Belf skin color. Their skin makes them look like they don't even have blood.

Apparently you don't understand how eye sight works in the brain. You tend to go with something you are familiar with FIRST before determining it is something different. I raised goats ... do you know how many people thought deer when they first saw them?

[Ithekro]

You keep saying that quote is Ghostcrawler's personal opinion, but you have cherry-picked the lines that suit you so that you can pretend that they meant something different. "We just didn't want to deny anyone Pandaren" clearly explains that those who made the decision for Pandaren to be neutral made an exception because they didn't want anyone not to have them. Even if you assume (apparently without evidence and disregarding context) the rest of the quote is his personal opinion, the fact that an exception was made for Pandaren is clearly stated to be a collective decision on the part of the dev team.

Trying to equate void elves and blood elf dks is almost reasonable, except that you're ignoring the fact that they simply don't want to blur the faction lines further. No degree of compromise up to this point invalidates their desire to keep the factions distinct. However blurred you may believe faction lines to be, if the Game Director says it's as far as they want to go, it's entirely reasonable for them to to stop there.

Ion didn't contradict himself, time passed and his opinion developed. Yes, he mentioned high elves back in the day, and now he has explained why the idea was rejected.

The problem with the Pandaren isn't that they look the same for both factions, its that they were designed to start neutral. Their two factions don't have a strong enough identity to make for future faction based content within the Alliance or Horde. Thus they have little to no writing value going forward. That's why Blizzard has issues with them.

Blood Elves and High Elves don't have that problem. Their stories are intimately tied to the factions they are in. Their stories almost write themselves.

[protip]

The problem with the Pandaren isn't that they look the same for both factions, its that they were designed to start neutral. Their two factions don't have a strong enough identity to make for future faction based content within the Alliance or Horde. Thus they have little to no writing value going forward. That's why Blizzard has issues with them.

Blood Elves and High Elves don't have that problem. Their stories are intimately tied to the factions they are in. Their stories almost write themselves.

We know that the story was a problem, but it's your opinion that it was the only problem. I know we've already discussed that, and I only intended to correct a misleading statement. On the opinion part, we can agree to disagree.

[Zulkhan]

Given that copy-pasted and asspulled aren't mutually exclusive, your point has no teeth.

If you play deliberately dumb, maybe. But in fact, Void Elves aren't a copy-pasted allied race where High Elves and Blood Elves are literally the same shit.

Void Elf is just more emo Blood Elf ... it's a copy-pasted asspulled race in my view.

Your view is objectively wrong. Here you did nothing but stating your dislike for Void Elves but nothing to prove that Void Elves are similar to Blood Elves as High Elves are.

i like how people who dont anything about blood elf and high elf lore whine about Ion.

That has been the fundamental core of the issue since 2006.

[FlubberPuddy]

Nightborne are the biggest contradiction in Ion saying that if you wish to play a fair skinned majestic elf then go play Horde.

If he's going to say that to keep fair skin elves exclusive to one factiom (which was the point of him saying that) then the same should apply to Alliance with their purple skin elves.

Except it apparently doesn't, so that's probably the biggest eye sore of the contradicting statements he stated.

And yes it is completely arbitrary that skin color is big enough difference over eye color, or for Wildhammer dwarves sake - tattoos.

If your argument basically boils down to, "it's this way because Blizzard just wants it that way and it's their game." Then there's nothing wrong with that (their game duh) but it doesn't mean they can't be contradictory with their statements. Of which in this case, it's very clear to the more neutral crowd on this issue (the ones who don't care either way about High Elves getting added or not) that a lot of what Ion said contradicts himself.

Only people I've seen eating up his statements like there's no conceivable way Ion could be wrong are the staunch Anti-helf crowd.

[Zulkhan]

Nightborne are the biggest contradiction in Ion saying that if you wish to play a fair skinned majestic elf then go play Horde.

If he's going to say that to keep fair skin elves exclusive to one factiom (which was the point of him saying that) then the same should apply to Alliance with their purple skin elves.

You're twisting the hell out of what he said to your convenience. The point is not about Alliance or Horde having the exclusive towards fair or purple skinned elves, is about the fact that the elf High Elf faithfuls want to play in the Alliance is already playable in the Horde; Nightborne may be purple but the canon lore both states and shows that they are no Night Elves anymore.

[FlubberPuddy]

You're twisting the hell out of what he said to your convenience. The point is not about Alliance or Horde having the exclusive towards fair or purple skinned elves, is about the fact that the elf High Elf faithfuls want to play in the Alliance is already playable in the Horde; Nightborne may be purple but the canon lore both states and shows that they are no Night Elves anymore.

Not twisting at all. He specifically focused on looks for his explanations.

[Maljinwo]

Not twisting at all. He specifically focused on looks for his explanations.

And Nightborne look different from regular Night elves.

[FlubberPuddy]

And Nightborne look different from regular Night elves.

Then Fair-skinned elves, let's just call them "High Elves" for the sake of it, can also be a thing on the Alliance too then can it not?

People are already have been advocating for differentiating the High Elves more in order to implement them as an AR. So not sure the point of saying what you said.

There's a reason he pointed out not once, but twice about the whole fair-skinned thing

But if you want to be a fair-skinned, light, blonde-haired, tall, majestic, elf...that is a Blood Elf.

That said, obviously I understand you would love Alliance elves...you're an Alliance player, and want to be a fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed elf. Sorry? The Horde is there and waiting for you.

But yes keep trying to imply that what happened with Nightborne can't be done with High Elves. This also disregards that some races are ARs without much differences at all.

HMT are just moose antler w/ tats Tauren.
Dark Iron got improved looks than their current in-game looks.
Mag'har are just brown orcs, literally, with other skin variations thrown in.
Void Elves are just blue colored Blood Elves.
LFD are just white skin, yellow eye, naaru sign Draenei.

All those ARs share the same base model, if Blizzard were to "fix up" any of them then the same changes would go to their mirror. This is already proven by the Blood Elf mouth fix that also got implemented on Void Elves.

Most HE supporters have said time and again that they don't care for slight changes to the model so it's weird that people still say things as what the majority of HE players want are a copy/paste of Blood Elves on Alliance.

[RangerDaz]

You people keep this hard on for high elves and you'll end up with this ^

I want the Flipped Elf the most... I wonder if he would be good in pvp and pve, and what kind of racials would he get?

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(Hopefully people will understand that i'm joking...)

[delus]

Honestly, they should just retcon fel corruption to be a permanent change.

[Kithelle]

The thing is that you don't make sense

Yeah, sure that is what all the biased hordies will say.