Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Softbottom]

I think most of the shock at the time was coming from the well known request that Alliance members wanted playable High Elves since WoW beta and then Horde ends up getting a version of High Elves (Blood Elves) despite not having it requested.

Not necessarily that Horde gets Blood Elves specifically, but that they got a high elf race (although I know some who think even Blood Elves should be Alliance which is particularly silly).

We also know for fact now that Blood Elves were given for out-of-game reasons rather than story ones as this was revealed recently by J. Staats, which was probably being brought up at the time as well (I don't know for sure the details as I had not experienced WoW then).

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Because Night Elves were already on the Alliance? At a time when Blizzard's game design decisions for WoW was to add things that affected the majority of the population. Hence Elf fans already had a race, now they had to fit in an archetype for some small/cute/hobbit/halfling type race.

And why Night Elves then over High Elves? As stated by you previously, and by Blizzard's own admission, Night Elves were supposed to be their mix of Wood Elves and Dark Elves. Again, highlighting that Blizzard was trying to hit as many tick boxes as possible with every addition they made into the game, and also this design process was confirmed by Kevin Jordan who worked on Vanilla WoW's Class design.

Did that really need to be spelled out like that? Wowzers

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As ongoing as that WoW/Mordor meme, yup.

GOTTEM /10chars

[Garfurion]

I am not arguing Gnomes were iconic at that point, although they have certainly become so. I am arguing that if Alliance High Elves were as iconic to the Alliance as you argue they were, why were they not added with the first four Alliance races and Gnomes chosen instead?

Good question, and there doesn't seem to be an official answer as far as I know but we have some information to speculate.

Gnomes were the last playable race to be added to the game which is why they weren't in the original cinematic.

From the Behind the Scenes :Characters video it is clear that the silhouette's of playable races were very important and the would even change race models to make them more distinc. Since Humans and Night-Elves were decided pretty early on High-Elves would probably have looked too similar in terms of silhouette. I think it's clear that in terms of silhouettes Gnomes are/were more distinctive than High Elves given the other vanilla races.

Goblins were seriously considered both as a neutral and Alliance race though which also explains why they could equip a lot of player armor models already back in vanilla. In an interview John Staats revealed that Goblins were scrapped as a playable race because building their starting zone starting zone Kezan/Undermine was simply too expensive since they didn't have a lot of art assets.

Gnomeregan was planned to be in the game anyway, and perhaps already build before Gnomes became playable so it was probably relatively easy to place them in Tinker Town inside Ironforge using existing art assets. There were no High or Blood Elven art assets in the game, even the lodges in Hinterlands, Plaguelands and Loch Modan are all Night-Elven in style so it could be that building Quel'Thalas for either High or Blood Elves would have been too expensive.

Btw, there is an image of an old map of World of Warcraft from 1999 which shows (High) Elves, Humans and Dwarves as team blue, Orcs, Goblins and Tauren (and perhaps Night-Elves) as team green and Naga, Undead/Forsaken and Demons as team red. This does confirm information from John Staats that blizzard originally planned 9 races including Naga, Goblins and demon shapeshifters and didn't settle on a 2-faction system from the start.

[Strippling]

What Blizzard says and what Blizzard does are two different things. Classic WoW was supposed to never be a thing, after all. What they've done so far shows they don't actually care about "faction identity".

I laugh when players compare the 'WoW classic' situation to high elfs. WoW classic supporters outnumbered high elf fan supporters by a seriously LARGE margin. The Classic petition had over 200,000 signatories, the high elf petition has under 700... lol.

Assuming a playerbase of around 3mil, WoW classic had support from at least 6.5% (this percentage could realistically be less than 5% given the playerbase was likely higher when Blizz made the decision to bring out classic). So, it took at least 5% of the playerbase to persuade (for lack of a better word) Blizzard that classic WoW would be in their interests (financially and visionary)... and even with at least 200,000 supporters (including several illegal vanilla servers with healthy populations) it took Blizzard years to change their decision and finally announce Classic WoW.

On the other hand, the high elf petition of around 676 signatories equates to 0.0002% of the playerbase (assuming 3mil playerbase)... a measly figure lol. Yet high elf supporters claim that high elfs would make Blizz a "ton of money". Hmmmm.... No. Classic WoW will bring in "a ton more money than high elfs" yet it took years for Blizz to agree to the idea. So given that Blizz clearly stated they honor faction identity over a "small amount of cash from transfers to high elf" I just don't see them ever considering high elfs as an AR.

So, comparing high elfs to classic WoW is a joke. 200,000 players vs 676 players.... yea there really is no comparison at all.

Also, in a recent interview with Forbes Ion Hazzikostas stated the following when asked about PVE merc mode:

The Alliance-Horde divide is something that's integral to Warcraft. It's integral to the franchise, to the world, integral to World of Warcraft

To me it seems clear that Blizzard want to ENSURE that there is a clear divide between Horde and Alliance. It is also clear that Blizzard view distinct races in each faction as a part of this "divide". High elfs impede on the Horde-Alliance divide given that high elfs as a people chose to follow the Horde, and it would be confusing to the majority of the playerbase if for some reason this small group on the Alliance were now playable too. A high elf fan may be able to tell the difference, but I can guarantee you that majority of the playerbase would not and would be confused as to why "blood elfs" are now on the alliance.

Buffed.de. interviewed Ion recently too and he made an interesting statement (disclaimer it has been translated from German):

Blizzard spends a lot of time reading the forums, Twitter, Reddit, videos, etc. A challenge with communication is remembering that most players are not on social media for Warcraft discussion, remaining silent, and accounting for their opinions and playstyles when making big changes.

High elf supporters are a "loud minority" and I think Blizzard recognizes this.

I don't really care either way, I was just bored and baffled that this thread is at 512 pages so I decided to throw in another post. Though, like I said, I'll be a little angry if we waste a race slot on them when they could easily be made through a little extra customization of existing races.

I agree that high elfs would certainly be a wasted AR slot, and many people would be pissed (rightfully so). But adding customization options to void elfs doesn't solve the issue that is "faction divide / faction identity". So why would Blizzard go down that route too? Also, the void elfs skin is shades of blue and violet for a reason... giving them pink skin all of a sudden A) makes no sense, and B) detracts from who and what the void elfs are.

[Garfurion]

Maybe a bit off-topic but this very early WoW character creation screen image released in 2015 shows an interesting blue-eyed Night-Elf.

[Traycor]

Maybe a bit off-topic but this very early WoW character creation screen image released in 2015 shows an interesting blue-eyed Night-Elf.

That's awesome! I wish the race selection screen had something dynamic like this. The Forsaken especially looks really cool. I wonder how much higher a percentage of players would pick Forsaken if they had something like that instead of a slumping character slouching in place.

That elf is clearly a night elf, and I don't believe High Elves or Blood Elves were even being considered by that stage of development.

[Sayrah]

High elf please

[Alixie]

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/ch...hisper/menator

As I have mentioned time and time again, I have leveled several Alliance characters over the years. Do not presume that only someone ignorant of the Alliance leveling experience could conclude Alliance High Elves aren't active. I kept an eye out for them. I found a handful of individuals that popped up from time to time, completely outnumbered by every other core race within the Alliance at every turn as expected with the exception of areas where the Silver Covenant have set up shop. And given those areas were separated by time as well as location, it is likely that the Silver Covenant High Elves encountered are the same damn Elves just in different locations.

Don't gaslight. "Those arent High Elves. You were just imagining that they've been an active fraction in the Alliance for several years. The Silver Covenant, Highvale and the Allerian Stronghold doesnt exist. Only two elf armies liberated Suramar. You're just seeing things." The Jinyu are a fraction that only showed up once in MoP and haven't been seen since. The High Elves have been active from BC to BFA.

'Generic Light fearing fantasy elves now'. Exactly, they represent the Tolkien style High Elves that are very popular in fantasy games. People in a fantasy game enjoy the trope. By admitting this, you admit that Blood Elves are High Elves, that High Elves are therefore playable and that anyone pining to play a High Elf is denying themselves.

High Elves, Blood Elves, and Void Elves are the same race. Wild Hammer, Bronzebeard, and Dark Irons are all the same race. Kultirans, Lordaeron and Guilnean Humans are all the same race. Better tell everyone they arent allowed to play these different fractions of the same race. This isnt an RPG.

This thread is just over a year old. You have to round down, not up. As for the suggestions I have of course seen them. They make no sense of course, as nobody can explain why Alliance High Elves would look so different from Horde Blood Elves despite them being the exact same race. Void Elves got nuked and transformed and they could have gotten away with a new model, instead they kept the old one with a skin tone change.

The last time I visited this thread was in November. You insisted that my wish to play elves with brown skin tones was unreasonable because High Elves are only allowed to look like White Europeans, as dictated by Saint Tolkien, instead of letting WoW do its own thing with elves. Like that quote in your signature with Ion's offensive, colonialist assumption that I only want to play High Elves because they look like pretty white people. Blood Elves can keep looking like the typical Nordic Tolkien elves with blue eyes and blonde hair if they want. High Elves aligned with the Alliance have a chance to subvert that trope and introduce more visually different aesthetics that emphasis the growing cultural divide between their Blood Elf cousins.

As you said, magic can alter appearance. Blood Elves (and fel orcs, fel elves, ect) gained reddish skin colors due to exposure to fel. Exposure to holy magic turns skin "alabaster", as evident by that demon who joined the Army of the Light, and Lightforged Draenai, who can only have white skin tones (hmmmm). Now they have red, white, and pink skin tones. High Elves who do not live in Silvermoon would not have been exposed to fel magic (abstinence) and not be in constant contact with the Sunwell. The Highvale Elves abstain from ALL magic and would be even less influenced by it. (Orcs naturally have brown skin tones without heavy exposure to magic.) There's also the insult Elisande made to the High Elven army that totally wasnt at Suramar. High Elves living in Stormwind have been racemixing, leading to the possibility of Half-Elves who also would come in different shapes and colors. The elves that live in Silvermoon were always prejudiced against Half-Elves (less so in Stormwind and Dalaran), so there's precedent that they wouldnt welcome any Blood Elf that didnt look like them, hence the light skinned uniformity.

Edit: To comment on druid and shaman High Elves. Of all the playable elf races, only the Night Elves are nature inclined. With the loss of Teldrassil and most of Kalimdor, forests are either cut down, blighted, or burned, there's little left of the traditional "wood elf" aesthetic. The Blood Elves now heavily favor holy/arcane magic, the Blood Knights and Magisters (And Sylvanas's Dark Rangers) have displaced the Rangers, and the Nightborne have an even more sophisticated Arcane indulgent magical city that overshadows Silvermoon. Alliance High Elves have a chance to reintroduce a more nature themed playable race. They could be trained in druidism by the Night Elves to protect the forest from the magic and industrial Horde. And the Wildhammer Dwarves who have a friendship with the High Elves, could teach them shamanism, like they taught it to Bronzebeard Dwarves.

They make no sense of course, as nobody can explain why Alliance High Elves would look so different from Horde Blood Elves despite them being the exact same race.

Kultirans and Lordearon humans are the exact same race, but the playable models look completely different from each other.

[Traycor]

doesn't that mean it was kind of always part of the plan for Blood Elves to join the Horde?

Hey Katchii, thanks for the well reasoned discussion.

If the Blood Elves had been planned as a playable Horde race back when the RPG was being made, then the RPG "High Elves" would not have even been playable and "Blood Elves" would not have been a hostile NPC "monster" race to go fight (Blood Elves were basically described as vampire monsters that had gone psycho). We would have just been told that High Elves had left the Alliance and there were other races to play. Instead of hostile to everyone, "Blood Elves" would have been a neutral race that was part of no faction. There might have been optional rules for High Elves in campaigns set during WCI & WCII.

Even Metzen, when he first announced Blood Elves on Horde admitted that it was wonky lore-wise and they'd have to put some effort into making it workable. As I've said before, they made the right call, but it was not planned to be that way. It was a reaction to a serious game-breaking issue that was killing WoW.

[Obelisk Kai]

So you're saying high elves change their names when they change locations? Jokes aside, that's not a very strong argument, considering the same could be said about void elves, and their already tiny, tiny, tiny group.

Void Elves are confirmed to expand in number by converting adults of other Elven groups. Population arguments therefore do not apply to them as they do to Alliance High Elves, as Blizzard can plausibly handwave away questions about Void Elf numbers by referencing disaffected Blood Elves OR Alliance High Elves who have joined them.

Given that Blizzard has on literally every occasion they have discussed Alliance High Elves brought up their vanishingly low numbers, any High Elf npc who does not have a unique name can be presumed to be a reuse of a previous nameless NPC we have encountered in a previous location. The only Alliance High Elves who can be presumed to be unique are those with unique names.

It still ignores everything that throws a wrench around that. The pirates are mercenaries at best, while the high elves were part of the Alliance for many, many years.

The High Elves left the Alliance, renamed themselves Blood Elves and joined the Horde. A few individuals betrayed their country and still assist the Alliance to this day. Nor am I insisting there has to be a one to one correlation. I am pointing out that there are a group of Kul Tirans who have betrayed their country and are assisting the Horde, so if you insist Alliance High Elves have a credible basis for inclusion, so do these Kul Tirans. For the record, I of course don't believe that.

Source on the "too pitiful to count" claim? I imagine if they're that small a number, it'd be easy to count them.

The turn of phrase does not reference the ease of counting them, it means that despite the ease it isn't worth the effort. And their low population has been cited by Blizzard on every occasion they have discussed them.[/QUOTE]

Irrelevant, since I'm talking about Alleria before she even went to Outland. I'm talking about the Alleria by the time king Anasterian seceded from the Alliance and called all elves home. The Alleria that refused to obey that order.

Alleria even in those days was a maverick. She butted heads with her government over the Horde threat and they sent her south to get rid of her. She defied her government by heading to Outland and taking several High Elves with her after her King withdrew her nation from the Alliance. She started a relationship with a Human and had a child with him, and unlike her sister took no steps to conceal the relationship. Whilst I am sure you could and will argue this demonstrates her loyalty to the Alliance, to the High Elven people it would doubtless look like she was putting Human interests ahead of her own people due to her affection for Turalyon. Alleria has proven time and time again to be completely unrepresentative of the High Elves even up to the modern day where her transformation means she isn't a High Elf at all any more. The honour given to her as a hero of the Alliance by the High Elves following the closure of the dark portal was probably easy, given she was assumed dead and out of the way. And before you decry the feelings of the High Elves, who became the Blood Elves, remember that her primary task upon her return to Silvermoon was yet another entreaty for the Elves to put Human interests first with no consideration of why the Kingdom of Quel'thalas and the Alliance were now enemies.

No one wonder Lor'themar scorned her in disgust so rapidly.

[Katchii]

Hey Katchii, thanks for the well reasoned discussion.

If the Blood Elves had been planned as a playable Horde race back when the RPG was being made, then the RPG "High Elves" would not have even been playable and "Blood Elves" would not have been a hostile NPC "monster" race to go fight (Blood Elves were basically described as vampire monsters that had gone psycho). We would have just been told that High Elves had left the Alliance and there were other races to play. Instead of hostile to everyone, "Blood Elves" would have been a neutral race that was part of no faction. There might have been optional rules for High Elves in campaigns set during WCI & WCII.

Even Metzen, when he first announced Blood Elves on Horde admitted that it was wonky lore-wise and they'd have to put some effort into making it workable. As I've said before, they made the right call, but it was not planned to be that way. It was a reaction to a serious game-breaking issue that was killing WoW.

Based on what you said here, I'm not sure the RPG should be considered as any reliable source for what should or shouldn't have happened. Blood Elves were never psycho vampire monsters, except for the Withered and the San'layn.

The RPG didn't need to tell you the high Elves left the Alliance because they already did, as part of the story line in Warcraft III. However as you've said, there were still some loyal to the Alliance, but those were a splinter of the main High Elven, now Blood Elven, nation.

Also, from what I've read, Metzen had to clarify a few things but never said that they'd have to put effort into the Blood Elf lore to make it workable. He referenced the "creepy elves" in Outland from back in The Frozen Throne, but not the nation of Blood Elves as a whole. He also straight up acknowledged that he fucked up on the lore because he didn't his homework, specifically in relation to the Eredar/Draenei and their interaction with Sargeras. Things change, evolve, or have to be fixed all the time.

Still, the RPG has been taken out of the continuity and shouldn't be considered any kind of source for what should or should not have happened. Obviously, things changed. Latching onto old lore that's been thrown out doesn't really show anything at this point. Though I understand your viewpoint, it still doesn't make sense to refer to the actions and lore within the RPG as any kind of anchor for how things should or should not have occurred.

[Obelisk Kai]

Good question, and there doesn't seem to be an official answer as far as I know but we have some information to speculate.

Gnomes were the last playable race to be added to the game which is why they weren't in the original cinematic.

From the Behind the Scenes :Characters video it is clear that the silhouette's of playable races were very important and the would even change race models to make them more distinc. Since Humans and Night-Elves were decided pretty early on High-Elves would probably have looked too similar in terms of silhouette. I think it's clear that in terms of silhouettes Gnomes are/were more distinctive than High Elves given the other vanilla races.

Goblins were seriously considered both as a neutral and Alliance race though which also explains why they could equip a lot of player armor models already back in vanilla. In an interview John Staats revealed that Goblins were scrapped as a playable race because building their starting zone starting zone Kezan/Undermine was simply too expensive since they didn't have a lot of art assets.

Gnomeregan was planned to be in the game anyway, and perhaps already build before Gnomes became playable so it was probably relatively easy to place them in Tinker Town inside Ironforge using existing art assets. There were no High or Blood Elven art assets in the game, even the lodges in Hinterlands, Plaguelands and Loch Modan are all Night-Elven in style so it could be that building Quel'Thalas for either High or Blood Elves would have been too expensive.

Btw, there is an image of an old map of World of Warcraft from 1999 which shows (High) Elves, Humans and Dwarves as team blue, Orcs, Goblins and Tauren (and perhaps Night-Elves) as team green and Naga, Undead/Forsaken and Demons as team red. This does confirm information from John Staats that blizzard originally planned 9 races including Naga, Goblins and demon shapeshifters and didn't settle on a 2-faction system from the start.

I suspect the reason High Elves were ultimately not chosen is because they had apparently been wiped out in Warcraft 3 or had become the Blood Elves, who left the Alliance and that when they limited themselves to four races per faction, they didn't want to make half the Alliance the Elven faction. At which point they would have been forced to choose who to bring in and they likely REALLY wanted those Night Elves to be playable.

Yet this goes back to the original point. If High Elves WERE so iconic to the Alliance, why has Blizzard taken every opportunity not to add them?
They added Void Elves rather than Alliance High Elves, and it is clear Void Elves were designed as a replacement for Alliance High Elves, because why create Void Elves if you ever intended to add Alliance High Elves.
They added Blood Elves to the Horde and not the Alliance, when the storyline of TBC could have easily been written as a reconciliation between the Alliance and their old allies.
In Vanilla they went a race of purple elves introduced in the previous RTS as an entirely separate faction rather than High Elves.
They still had a slot available for the Alliance and chose Gnomes, a race that hadn't been seen since Warcraft 2 and even then only as pilots of machines.
In Warcraft 3, while they knew they were making an MMO, they wrote the actual plot of the High Elves being decimated and then compounded this by having them leave the Alliance and rename themselves Blood Elves.

Time and time and time again, Blizzard has gone out of their way not to add this 'iconic' race to the Alliance. Perhaps that is because, in their desire to put a genre defying spin on their High Elves, the Blood Elves, the rupture with the Alliance and the loss of that iconic status is as defining as the purple skin is for their wood elf spin, the Night Elves.

[Ielenia]

Void Elves are confirmed to expand in number by converting adults of other Elven groups.

Has it been confirmed that the void elves have refined the process that transformed the original group? As far as I know, still research was being done about that.

Also, what's stopping the high elves from accepting blood elves who no longer agree with the Horde and want to distance themselves from their green-eyed brethren?

The High Elves left the Alliance, renamed themselves Blood Elves and joined the Horde.

Not all of them did, as shown numerous times.

The turn of phrase does not reference the ease of counting them, it means that despite the ease it isn't worth the effort. And their low population has been cited by Blizzard on every occasion they have discussed them.

Yeah, an argument that is, in the end, meaningless considering the idea that some blood elves might no longer agree with what Lor'themar and the Horde are doing and would like to distance themselves from the other blood elves, and decide to join the high elves again.

Alleria even in those days was a maverick. She butted heads with her government over the Horde threat and they sent her south to get rid of her. She defied her government by heading to Outland and taking several High Elves with her after her King withdrew her nation from the Alliance. She started a relationship with a Human and had a child with him, and unlike her sister took no steps to conceal the relationship. Whilst I am sure you could and will argue this demonstrates her loyalty to the Alliance, to the High Elven people it would doubtless look like she was putting Human interests ahead of her own people due to her affection for Turalyon. Alleria has proven time and time again to be completely unrepresentative of the High Elves even up to the modern day where her transformation means she isn't a High Elf at all any more

Oh yeah. The fact that the reason she went against her king's orders because she wanted to end the Horde threat, and not just get inside a human's pants, totally doesn't matter. The fact her disagreement over the Horde threat came long before her relationship with Turalyon is also meaningless.

Regardless of that, she is a representative. Of the high elves who still clung to their loyalties to the Alliance despite everything else.

And before you decry the feelings of the High Elves, who became the Blood Elves, remember that her primary task upon her return to Silvermoon was yet another entreaty for the Elves to put Human interests first with no consideration of why the Kingdom of Quel'thalas and the Alliance were now enemies.

Oh yes. The classic "human potential" nonsense.

Stuff like that really hurts your attempts at argumentation, Kai.

Was Lor'themar also "putting human interests first" when he considered leaving the Horde and joining the Alliance back in MoP?

[RangerDaz]

Oh look what this patch just gave us

Guess what Xalatath's previous body incarnation was!

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Inanis

Inanis is a high elf found in Drustvar, leading a group of novice Deep Watchers in a ritual to harness the power of the Void Stone. She is killed by the adventurer at the behest of Xal'atath, who then coaxes them into unleashing the Void Stone's power, giving her the strength needed to escape the blade and possess Inanis's body, corrupting it in the process. Inanis's final words suggest that she accepted becoming a vessel for Xal'atath as her true purpose.

A high elf with blue eyes? But Ion! I thought there were only Blood Elves out there

Xalatath has an eye for chosing greatness

[DeicideUH]

How do people know if Inanis is a high elf if she's not in the Alliance? Why isn't she a blood elf?

It's almost as if blood and high elves were different enough besides their political allegiances... hmmmm...

[FlubberPuddy]

Oh yeah. The fact that the reason she went against her king's orders because she wanted to end the Horde threat, and not just get inside a human's pants, totally doesn't matter. The fact her disagreement over the Horde threat came long before her relationship with Turalyon is also meaningless.

Regardless of that, she is a representative. Of the high elves who still clung to their loyalties to the Alliance despite everything else.

And not just Alleria, but all the High Elves she took with her as well. As we meet these High Elves in Outland, they describe how hateful they are of Blood Elves. This shows it's not just "Alleria being a maverick" when there's other High Elven NPCs who also went on along with her. Especially when Obelisk is so clearly trying to imply that people of their own race should all be fiercely loyal to their own nation as if that actually exists with big nations IRL.

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Oh look what this patch just gave us

Guess what Xalatath's previous body incarnation was!

https://wow.gamepedia.com/Inanis

Inanis is a high elf found in Drustvar, leading a group of novice Deep Watchers in a ritual to harness the power of the Void Stone. She is killed by the adventurer at the behest of Xal'atath, who then coaxes them into unleashing the Void Stone's power, giving her the strength needed to escape the blade and possess Inanis's body, corrupting it in the process. Inanis's final words suggest that she accepted becoming a vessel for Xal'atath as her true purpose.

A high elf with blue eyes? But Ion! I thought there were only Blood Elves out there

Xalatath has an eye for chosing greatness

It's interesting, I think in BFA there's been more uniquely named High Elves added since Wrath? If this is the case, it is pretty funny considering this is also the same expansion where "Blood Elves are High Elves" meme came about.

[Traycor]

Based on what you said here, I'm not sure the RPG should be considered as any reliable source for what should or shouldn't have happened.

Not using it for that. Just a point of reference for where the franchise was at the time. Changes like these are partly why they declared it non-cannon. But Metzen steered much of the direction of the RPG.

Blood Elves were never psycho vampire monsters, except for the Withered and the San'layn.

By the end of the TFT they were following Illidan, who was considered a demon at the time, and they were sucking mana like vampires. They kinda went crazy (which we see in Kael'Thas in WoW), and their concept art at the time was all goth and evil looking (including early WoW concept art).

It's also important to note that Silvermoon was considered to have been wiped out at the time. There was no "blood elf" nation because they were all dead. The High Elf survivors in the Alliance were all that were left--the evil blood elves were only the ones that followed Kael'Thas. It was later retconned that we had survivors in Silvermoon that also called themselves Blood Elves.

Latching onto old lore that's been thrown out doesn't really show anything at this point.

We were discussing if High Elves were an iconic Alliance race, which they absolutely were from 1995 to 2005. Just because Blizzard makes a change in their game doesn't erase what happens in real life. In actual, real life for 10 years, we as players had High Elves as an iconic Alliance race in our games.

And Blizzard clearly acknowledges this because they've continued to put High Elves on the Alliance side throughout WoW. They've made Blood Elves a Horde thing, which is fine. I actually agree with that decision. But that doesn't erase the iconic High Elves of the Alliance.

Also, from what I've read, Metzen had to clarify a few things but never said that they'd have to put effort into the Blood Elf lore to make it workable.

I'm not going to go digging for the video, but he basically said something to the effect of "this is awkward" and they'll need to do some explaining to make it work. The video has been referenced somewhere back in the 500 pages of this thread.

[FlubberPuddy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...ves_have_been/

This is going on Blizzard's radar for sure lol

A very succinct comic that breaks it all down at the end. More fuel to the High Elf topic that Blizzard will see.

[Katchii]

Not using it for that. Just a point of reference for where the franchise was at the time. Changes like these are partly why they declared it non-cannon. But Metzen steered much of the direction of the RPG.

Fair enough.

By the end of the TFT they were following Illidan, who was considered a demon at the time, and they were sucking mana like vampires. They kinda went crazy (which we see in Kael'Thas in WoW), and their concept art at the time was all goth and evil looking (including early WoW concept art).

It's also important to note that Silvermoon was considered to have been wiped out at the time. There was no "blood elf" nation because they were all dead. The High Elf survivors in the Alliance were all that were left--the evil blood elves were only the ones that followed Kael'Thas. It was later retconned that we had survivors in Silvermoon that also called themselves Blood Elves.

I don't remember there being anything written that said it was wiped out, that may have been an assumption, and a reasonable one I guess, but still an assumption.

Regardless, fair enough, I suppose.

We were discussing if High Elves were an iconic Alliance race, which they absolutely were from 1995 to 2005. Just because Blizzard makes a change in their game doesn't erase what happens in real life. In actual, real life for 10 years, we as players had High Elves as an iconic Alliance race in our games.

And Blizzard clearly acknowledges this because they've continued to put High Elves on the Alliance side throughout WoW. They've made Blood Elves a Horde thing, which is fine. I actually agree with that decision. But that doesn't erase the iconic High Elves of the Alliance.

Again, fair enough.

I'm not going to go digging for the video, but he basically said something to the effect of "this is awkward" and they'll need to do some explaining to make it work. The video has been referenced somewhere back in the 500 pages of this thread.

That's reasonable, not asking to dig it up, maybe just point in the right direction, if you want. I went searching for quotes, not videos, so missed it there but the only quotes I saw did allude to lore being tricky at times and that they've messed up.

The more I read up on this the more unreasonable it seems to actively advocate against High Elves being on the Alliance. The only reasonable arguments at this point are that Void Elves now already exist on the Alliance and have the Thalassian elf model with some recoloring and the differentiation in racial features between them and Blood Elves, because they're literally the same race so shouldn't look any different for the most part, aside from eye color I guess, maybe some tattoo options or something. These seem to be the argument Blizzard is sticking to at the moment, but IMO it's a pretty weak argument. If adding High Elves would help inflate players on the Alliance, I don't see why they shouldn't do it, it really doesn't affect faction identity IMO considering a Void Elf and a Blood Elf in full gear can hardly be differentiated anyway.

But also, because Void Elves now exist and started with a super small population, there isn't really any rational explanation for why High Elves that also have a super small population are automatically disqualified.

[Hellspawn]

Would be blue eyes for night elfs fine too? Finally proper Shen'dralar! Also you would play the real high born.

[Graden]

Would be blue eyes for night elfs fine too? Finally proper Shen'dralar! Also you would play the real high born.

I'd love that. Shen'dralar are one of my favorites, although Blizz seems to have forgotten their existance.