Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[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.

[Zulkhan]

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

And he did that to enlighten the fact that the "fair-skinned" elf is already playable in the Horde and you should pick that if you want to play one. It can't be simpler than that, seriously.

[Deno]

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

Ah ok, not only you dismiss his opinion when he was the head of designers but you also dismiss the fact that Ion's last comment about how they don't wanna blur the faction lines actually intensifies ghostcrawler's comment. Not one single person makes all the decisions for the team, but when they do a Q&A, they talk on behalf of the team.

Stop being a fanatic for a second and think.

[Obelisk Kai]

Ah ok, not only you dismiss his opinion when he was the head of designers but you also dismiss the fact that Ion's last comment about how they don't wanna blur the faction lines actually intensifies ghostcrawler's comment. Not one single person makes all the decisions for the team, but when they do a Q&A, they talk on behalf of the team.

Stop being a fanatic for a second and think.

Well notice the pattern.

Ghostcrawler says something they didn't like (and he didn't) and he is just one man expressing a personal opinion. That was and is the standard response on his comments since he made them.

Ion rules out playable High Elves in the Jesse Cox interview at Blizzcon, and he is just one man or he doesn't know what he was talking about or he is ignorant of the lore.

Ion AGAIN rules out playable High Elves, even more emphatically this time because he lists the reasons it isn't happening, and again it's just one man.

There is a desperation among the pro High Elf posters to believe that just one person stands in the way of the realisation of their goal. And it isn't hard to understand why. If it just one person, then IF that person moves on then maybe the next person in that position will be more pre-disposed towards their demand. It also allows them to indulge the fantasy of a tyrant game director, lording it over the rest of the Warcraft development team who would be more than happy to grant the completely reasonable and in no way harmful demand for Alliance High Elves. That individual then becomes the target for character assassination, a face they can blame for their frustration at this particular desire not being realised.

They simply will not accept the more prosaic truth. That the development team is not a dictatorship and that there is a lot of collective discussion going on. The stance against playable Alliance High Elves is almost certainly the collective attitude of the team, not necessarily everyone but a clear majority, on the basis of preserving the distinction between the factions and that this attitude is probably a part of that team's culture which will persist and survive any change of game director. After all, the demand for Alliance High Elves pre-dated Ion as Game Director and they didn't add them.

Ion is not the barrier to playable High Elves.

The team's collective belief that they damage the faction wall is. And frankly, nothing the pro High Elf side is going to do is going to convince the team that playable High Elves don't damage the faction wall because it does, that is an inevitable consequence of playable Alliance High Elves.

What they have to do then is to convince Blizzard that the faction wall itself doesn't matter. Which is a tall ask when Blizzard regularly talks about how fundamental and important the division between Alliance and Horde is.

[FlubberPuddy]

And he did that to enlighten the fact that the "fair-skinned" elf is already playable in the Horde and you should pick that if you want to play one. It can't be simpler than that, seriously.

No one said it's complicated. But as I already said, that would then imply if people want to play Alliance's purple elves they should go Alliance. But Horde players don't have to, they get the option of both choices.

It's a comment that doesn't hold up to scrutiny (not that it needs to), but it's still contradictory regardless by the advent of purple elves on Horde.

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The team's collective belief that they damage the faction wall is. And frankly, nothing the pro High Elf side is going to do is going to convince the team that playable High Elves don't damage the faction wall because it does, that is an inevitable consequence of playable Alliance High Elves.

What they have to do then is to convince Blizzard that the faction wall itself doesn't matter. Which is a tall ask when Blizzard regularly talks about how fundamental and important the division between Alliance and Horde is.

Not really no, the group of fair-skinned elves that call themselves High Elves are already staunch Alliance supporters so there's no issue of faction wall not mattering.

That's actually one of the reasons many want playable High Elves on Alliance, BECAUSE they're Alliance.

What's clear that needs more convincing is how to make the current group of High Elves different enough visually to be playable, just how Wildhammer were side-lined to give the even more different Dark Iron.

Like I said, people are utterly pants on head illogical if they think no more elves will ever be added to Alliance again. Nightborne and Void Elves just brought on temporary respite from more Elf Races, but their popularity continues.

Just have to take a look at the 2nd biggest AR potential race: San'layn aka Undead Elves lol

What HE fans should be on the lookout for will be story progression that follows Alliance High Elves to becoming different enough to be playable. Something that will require more of BFA to release to know.

[Darththeo]

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.



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.



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

So you argument against me is I am literally doing what Anti-Helfer do.

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No shit Sherlock. However to say that you can't identify a Void Elf or a Blood Elf when you can see their skin at least when you know that they exist isn't an example of that. That's an example of you apparently being unable to see well enough to tell colors.

Void Elves and Blood Elves look very different. Shape body shape, but very different appearances. So an argument that they're so similar that High Elves would also work is silly at best. Then again I saw people saying Void Elves and San'layn were as identical as Blood Elves and High Elves so I guess being silly is just the norm now. People that want High Elves would rather blatantly lie or conveniently ignore things than admit the truth that they're not getting High Elves and they've been given a valid reason.

Just because a reason is valid doesn't make it acceptable or good.

Did you also not pay attention to what I wrote in the post before that one? Did you not pay attention to my goat example? Here is a hint ... goats in general have different color hair than deer. I still had people look at my goats and ask if they were deer or worse sheep ... do you think people don't know goats exist?

[Darththeo]

They never saw a goat in their lives before that moment so their brain went fuzzy and they said something stupid. Luckily for us Void Elves and Blood Elves aren't rare for the average WoW player to see.

Don't assume. And Blood elves are far more common than Void Elves ... that's a fact ... so if you see something that looks like a Belf what is the first reaction?

[Solence]

Stop discussing and asking for it again and again! Daddy said NO!

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

Kanye West spoke the truth and his people hated him for it.

In that moment he was the most Christ-like man since Oscar Schindler.

[Darththeo]

My first reaction is that it's fucking purple and pale white so it's a Void Elf. If you can actually see them you can't mistake them. Void Elves don't have natural looking skin tones.

Seriously just admit that the difference between them is large enough for people to not confuse the two. A new player could start the game and tell the difference between the two elves. However if it were High Elves instead a new player probably wouldn't notice the eyes at first and think that it's a neutral race.

If you aren't going to be honest, do me a favor and don't reply.