Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Evilfish]

lol a mod with a "Blood Elf" avatar and Sylvanas in her sig closed down the half elf thread comparing it with High Elves... Figures. Welcome to MMO-C champs.

Well you fellas are REALLY annoying so it's understandable.

[Deleted]

Well you fellas are REALLY annoying so it's understandable.

I mean, it's ironic that it's you who say it, lol.

[Evilfish]

I mean, it's ironic that it's you who say it, lol.

Whatever. Act like we are the ones with a problem all you want. The fact is it's you fellas that are spamming these forums with your messed up fantasy, trying to get people riled up, attempting to instill insecurity among common players by creating a fictional conflict between the developers and the player's respective faction just to get back at the devs cause they won't give into your extremely unreasonable demands. Starting thread after thread about this subject and derailing existing threads. Yeah, I guess mods got tired of your tactics. In my opinion you are among the worst people on these forums.

[Deleted]

Whatever. Act like we are the ones with a problem all you want. The fact is it's you fellas that are spamming these forums with your messed up fantasy, trying to get people riled up, attempting to instill insecurity among common players by creating a fictional conflict between the developers and the player's respective faction just to get back at the devs cause they won't give into your extremely unreasonable demands. Starting thread after thread about this subject and derailing existing threads. Yeah, I guess mods got tired of your tactics. In my opinion you are among the worst people on these forums.

Who are "we"? I was talking about you specifically as one of the most annoying, assholish and rude people in the thread. I genuinely believe that you are not a nice person, to put it mildly.

And the mods only try to contain the High Elf topic to one megathread in order to avoid multiple threads appearing on the front page about the same thing, like how it happened before.

[FlubberPuddy]

Remember that time blizzard chose to not do blood high elves and made up some stupid smurf elfs no one was interested in called void elves, and in a very PR way the game director who is very famously a meme for getting the lore wrong said that the high elves were just blood elves. Its like a giant satire on Trump supporters the way it brought out a huge group of people who don't seem to be able to read or comprehend, and still to this day will argue the same disproven points in a circle to try and make fake reasons to justify no high elves ever?

Crazy

Yeah there really is no rhyme or logic to the "no high elves forever" reasonings. Some even destroy their own arguments. It's really pointless after being exposed to it for the last few pages. I'd rather just focus on brainstorming any new ideas that could potentially lead to their (High Elves) addition.

Arguing with the "no crowd" leads nowhere. There's no compromising to be had between the two parties.

[Evilfish]

Who are "we"? I was talking about you specifically as one of the most annoying, assholish and rude people in the thread. I genuinely believe that you are not a nice person, to put it mildly.

And the mods only try to contain the High Elf topic to one megathread in order to avoid multiple threads appearing on the front page about the same thing, like how it happened before.

Evidently I am. I am speaking against your helf fetish, which means I must be the worse person on earth as far as you are concerned. But that's fine with me. Having some helf enthusiast slandering me is pretty much a given when you disagree with these people and it seems quite a few people tend to disagree with you. That's who "we" are. So feel free to insult me, work yourselves into another frenzy conveniently forgetting the words of Ion telling you to roll a fucking belf and shut up.

[Deleted]

Evidently I am. I am speaking against your helf fetish, which means I must be the worse person on earth as far as you are concerned. But that's fine with me. Having some helf enthusiast slandering me is pretty much a given when you disagree with these people and it seems quite a few people tend to disagree with you. That's who "we" are. So feel free to insult me, work yourselves into another frenzy conveniently forgetting the words of Ion telling you to roll a fucking belf and shut up.

Oh, come on, you are not the worst person on Earth, don't be so hard on yourself . There are much worse people out there, I am sure. And I am not claiming that just because you disagree with me, in fact, I would not call majority of anti-High Elvers bad people, only very very few. And only because they've shown to be such by behaving like, you know, you behave.

[tikcol]

The title of this thread is wrong. It should read ''Official Blood Elf Discussion Megathread''.

[Mehrunes]

How on earth is this still a thing? Like Ion said, roll a Blood Elf.

Whatever. Act like we are the ones with a problem all you want. The fact is it's you fellas that are spamming these forums with your messed up fantasy, trying to get people riled up, attempting to instill insecurity among common players by creating a fictional conflict between the developers and the player's respective faction just to get back at the devs cause they won't give into your extremely unreasonable demands. Starting thread after thread about this subject and derailing existing threads. Yeah, I guess mods got tired of your tactics. In my opinion you are among the worst people on these forums.

You forgot to mention that the spamming isn't even new but something that has been going on for more than a decade. And will continue for eternity.

[Andromedes]

How on earth is this still a thing? Like Ion said, roll a Blood Elf.




You forgot to mention that the spamming isn't even new but something that has been going on for more than a decade. And will continue for eternity.

Because we are supposed to be satisfied with everything Ion says. I wonder why there are now unique zandalari druid forms and heritage armors for old races, even though Ion said NO.

[Gurluas]

I'm still 100% pro High elves or pro an Alliance Thalassian elf that isn't a friggin Void monster.

Snow/crystal elf or Forest Elf (Nature infused elf) would be good too.

[Goldielocks]

Yeah the only thing that should matter is demand. Like if the issue was so passionate people have been arguing over it for an entire year.

1) There's no direct proof that there's actually enough demand to matter. Yeah, there are tons of HE questions on the Q&As but that's not exactly representative of the entire playerbase. Neither is this thread or any thread on forums. It's not big enough.

2) Demand itself actually mattering is an opinion and its an opinion the devs have to share. This is different to lore mattering because to a game, demand matters more than story. The story is supposed to serve the game, not the other way around.

I wonder why there are now unique zandalari druid forms and heritage armors for old races, even though Ion said NO.

Source?

[Deleted]

How on earth is this still a thing? Like Ion said, roll a Blood Elf.

You forgot to mention that the spamming isn't even new but something that has been going on for more than a decade. And will continue for eternity.

Wait, did you just get surprised that this is still going on and told someone that this is a usual thing that never stops in one post?

[FlubberPuddy]

1) There's no direct proof that there's actually enough demand to matter. Yeah, there are tons of HE questions on the Q&As but that's not exactly representative of the entire playerbase. Neither is this thread or any thread on forums. It's not big enough.

2) Demand itself actually mattering is an opinion and its an opinion the devs have to share. This is different to lore mattering because to a game, demand matters more than story. The story is supposed to serve the game, not the other way around.

Source?

Your 1st point can then be said for pretty much every potential Allied Race people are talking about. Don't be dense, there certainly has been popular race suggestions and unpopular race suggestions. Blizzard understands this too. It's why there are so many Elves in the game in the first place. The data is there, while only a % of the playerbase may use forums and such, you can still extrapolate some patterns from a subset of a community if the involved persons are varied and numbered enough.

Regardless, your point is correct in that we cannot truly know just how popular or unpopular any given want/addition is before it's added to the game. The only thing that can be seen is externally once that addition has occurred. Just like the whole Azerite armor debacle.

As for your 2nd point, not really. There are some conceits to the game that are added even when developers don't really approve of it. And not every developer shares the same opinion. This was seen with the Flying debate, where it was added back in but for pathfinder when it was initially outright removed.

Same for some employee opinions on High Elves, some are okay with them, some are not. Of course they eventually have to make a decision as a company, but that doesn't mean opinion that isn't shared by the Blizzard decision doesn't matter. It's how game changes occur as they do. Players just have to put up with the decisions because yes it's ultimately their game. Or if Blizzard gets the data back that truly shows something is worth implementing then they'll do it.

As for your source on Zandalari Druid Forms, it was last November Q&A 2017: https://www.wowhead.com/news=276367/...on-hazzikostas

Starts at 31:10-32:04

Ion: "Just the travel forms. So I think it's your combat forms, they're very specifically a cat, a bear. There's a ton of things that reference and hook into that. Both visuals and animations and the name and theme-ing of a lot of your abilities..feline such and such and Tiger Roar etc. That's just the kit of a druid so, suddenly turning that into a raptor or some other dinosaur variant I think would be at odds with the rest of Druid identity. The travel form thing just felt like a really cool hook for... alright there's a very close connection between the Zandalari Trolls and Dinosaurs as we're going to see as we explore that subcontinent. So, we're excited to be able to do that."

Notice as Ion went onto a long drawn-out bullshit answer about this as well

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Also I think with Void Elves reaching more population at 120 than some mainstay Alliance races. It's safe enough to say that particular Elf model shared by Blood Elves and Void Elves is extremely popular.

Which means people can hee-haw all they want about "omg High Elves would SO BORING" yet the rise of Void Elf characters made at end-game points to showing that model is really popular. Regardless of whether it's blue or not. Therefore while not directly showing High Elf demand, it correlates to that particular model being popular, which High Elves share - thus showing the potential of popularity for High Elves on Alliance.

[Andromedes]

Thanks for that source. I was wrong about heritage armors. He didnt say NO, but he said it is something they want to do. But this phrase is used for a lot of things that wont probably happen, or happen in far future. It is weird that this is more important than worgen and goblin models, which they are supposedly being worked on.. Just another lie, or only person is working on them, that is why it takes too long.

[Mehrunes]

Wait, did you just get surprised that this is still going on and told someone that this is a usual thing that never stops in one post?

One can spot the trend of never-ending "I am entitled to High Elves on the Alliance because the universe revolves around me" spam and still hope that in light of Blizzard's rather one-sided statements on the issue High Elf fanatics would finally get a hint.

[Pheraz]

I am pretty sure they will add a washed out blonde tone to void elves to please the high elf crowd in the future.

[Deleted]

One can spot the trend of never-ending "I am entitled to High Elves on the Alliance because the universe revolves around me" spam and still hope that in light of Blizzard's rather one-sided statements on the issue High Elf fanatics would finally get a hint.

Oh, good, thought the thread broke you

[Azalar]

I am pretty sure they will add a washed out blonde tone to void elves to please the high elf crowd in the future.

As much as I am sure that's the way they're gonna take. I find myself pleasantly amused at the possibility of blue eyes being a Blood Elf customization.

[Obelisk Kai]

I am pretty sure they will add a washed out blonde tone to void elves to please the high elf crowd in the future.

As much as I am sure that's the way they're gonna take. I find myself pleasantly amused at the possibility of blue eyes being a Blood Elf customization.

When the whole point of Void Elves is that they are a spin on traditional Blood/High Elves, why are you so sure they will add a more 'normal' skin to them?

Should we expect 'normal' skin tones for Nightborne so they can look like Night Elves?

Should we expect 'normal' skin tones for Dark Iron Dwarves so they can look like Bronzebeards?

Void Elf skin colour is not an error. Nor is it something to be mitigated. It is the most obvious differentiating factor between Void Elves and Blood/High Elves. It is a feature of Void Elves, probably their most striking difference.

While you are 'sure' Blizzard will do this, I have sincere doubts that they would. Could a lore rationale for such a change be provided? Probably, but the wider design of the game suggests they will leave well enough alone.

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Like, here's the thing:

If you think that Faction Identity and Group Ideology will always mean less than Racial Definition/biological grouping, High Elves will never make sense for you, cause everything they could be is taking something away from "your" race, Blood Elves.

So unless HE somehow change their race (Like VE could have done) or it leads to Half Elves, it will never work for you. Every argument you make is in lieu of that, and no matter how "good" argument that attempts to tell you that High Elves can be made unique enough (culturally, aesthetically, gameplaywise) won't work because as long as they are High Elves, they are taking something away from Blood Elves.

How justified any of you are on feeling so proprietary of the Blood Elf past is not for me to decide or call bull on it. All I will say is that in all fairness it already happened to NE with the NB, and to a far more weird extent with VE in a way that could have been made about HE. But as proprietor you feel of anything Blood Elf related, the alliance High Elves remain outside that, and thusly, be either by nostalgia or just alliance favoritism, people will gravitate to that and there's nothing you can do about that.

Whether High Elves happen is beyond the point. As long as they are a presence on the alliance, as long as they are still are a thing that is, people are going to want them. So as long any solution is given to that thread, this is not going to end.

As for the solution, one that doesn't include Playable High Elves? It could be many things; transform all HE into VE, obliterate them, Phase them into Half Elves, Transfrom them Back into Night Elves? Dragon Elves? Whatever; but I think that as a whole we have to accept that the way Blizzard has handled High Elves hasn't been the best, and we should all want for this issue to actually resolve somehow.

Like even if you hate Pro HE people, you would at least want them to shut up.

I have no hatred for the pro High Elf community, nor do I want them to shut up. That I have had friction with certain members of that community is no secret, one of whom apparently holds me personally responsible for there not being playable High Elves and 'forcing players' to choose between only the four kinds of Elf that are currently available.

Nor do I deny that the High Elves are a presence on the Alliance, as they clearly are. My problem with that 'presence' claim is that an equivalence is sought between High Elves, who are present on some occasions, and other Alliance races with some posters seriously claiming that the High Elves are a more important part of the Alliance story than a race such as Gnomes that are actually playable. High Elves are what they seem to be, a legacy group reflective of the tiny number of thalassian elves they did not remain with their people as they joined the Horde and sought refuge with the Alliance. Adding weight and gravitas to the overall story is fine, but extrapolating that to becoming playable is where I would draw the line.

Because fundamentally you are right, and that is why I am not responding to the bulk of the essay above (that and the sheer length of time it would take to compose a response). You will never convince me that a High Elf can be meaningfully differentiated from a Blood Elf, not because I am stubborn but because Blood Elves ARE High Elves and saying you can meaningfully differentiate one from the other beyond their differing political ideologies is as believable to me as a claim you can physically differentiate a Republican and a Democrat. Every suggestion I have seen does not make sense in why the Blood Elves wouldn't have it.

And Thalassian Elves that were changed to a degree I consider acceptable and unacceptable to the pro High Elf community. While your complaint is that they are not the Silver Covenant Elves, the majority complaint seems to be that they don't look like High/Blood Elves. If Void Elves are not acceptable, despite being almost physically identical, then we have entered a zero sum game. One side has to lose. Your desire to play the race is balanced against the racial integrity of the Blood Elves and the faction integrity of the Horde. In such a contest, it is no surprise the pro High Elf community has lost.

In the end, unless the High Elf story comes to an end (and the proposed warfront is an opportunity for that) you are probably right that the demand will always be there. Just as the demand for Ogres will always be there. And Arrakoa. And Vrykul. Just because there is demand does not mean Blizzard will inevitably cave.