There's... nothing to think about. The Alliance character creation screen doesn't offer High Elves. You said player dissatisfaction isn't important to Blizzard. And, well, this whole High Elf situation does make that clear. They don't care if you're not satisfied, or at least that's how it seems.
I'd go out on a limb and say the entire game reflects that they don't care about player satisfaction. It's barely playable for me without my friends being online. If they fire Ion, the next lead developer may see the benefit instead of the detriment that High Elves could bring.
But that's all I really have to say. Thanks.
Last edited by Black Goat; 2019-06-20 at 06:29 PM.
Yes, you are absolutely correct that the only reason why Blizzard doesn't want to do High Elves is only because they are too similar to Blood Elves. That's it. They don't care whatsoever about anything else. Anything else they tell is just a fluff and nothing more. And all the arguments that people post here regarding population, lore, some kind of rules of why High Elves cannot be playable is nothing more than a waste of time and are absolutely irrelevant because Blizzard couldn't care less about them. During WoD Ion told that he knows of the desire to play High Elves, but the last time he spoke bout the topic he told that people started to want High Elves when they saw Alleria. Why? Because he was forced to comment about the issue and he just spoke random stuff because he couldn't outright tell he just doesn't want to do it.
And not because Blizzard doesn't want identical races on each side, for Blizzard that's not a serious restriction at all. When they decided to add Kul'Tirans, them being just normal humans with no differences from the Stormwind ones didn't stop them. They just added multiple human body types into the game, and made one of them as a "playable Kul Tiran" and that's it - a new playable "race". When they gave Nightborne to the Horde, they didn't care that they are very similar to an Alliance race, that Alliance already had a fantasy of a purple race, and that Nightborne lore and identity was part of a larger Nigh Elf lore that Blizzard themselves focused back in Cataclysm (this is why we have Night Elf mages). All that fluff didn't matter to Blizzard at all. It's just that the lead devs simply don't want High Elves to be playable. And it's exactly the lead devs and not the whole Blizzard because we know that people inside are themselves split on the issue. But the lead devs fall to the anti side, simply because they are proud Horde players (didn't Ion pride himself of only playing Horde?) and hence its personal for them like it is for some Horde players we see here on the forums. That's it.
So I'll tell once again like I did from the very beginning: High Elves will become playable only when WoW will be on the verge of death or when the lead development team with Ion at the head changes.
Last edited by ddi2; 2019-06-20 at 08:29 PM.
Last edited by Aucald; 2019-06-20 at 09:20 PM.
"If you want to play alongside High and Void elves, the Alliance is waiting for you"
They wouldn't. If they were fine with giving Void Elves the High Elf skin tones, they would have added High Elves in the first place.
Also, Blizzard employees were telling before that Allied Races was their most successful feature in BfA. Not sure why are you saying they believe it's a failure. Did something change recently?
There's merit to what you're saying. Ion is human, too, and very capable of being biased. Not sure if you can be biased without a soul, though. That man is soulless. The Kul'tiran and Stormwind Human isn't a great point, considering they're both Alliance. The Night Elf vs. Nightborne issue holds a bit more water, but I think Blizzard did a good job of differentiating them and it makes even LESS sense to me if both Night Elves and Nightborne were on the same faction.
I think if nothing else, we can all agree on one thing. High Elves will most likely be playable in WoW's death-throes. I would be incredibly surprised if they didn't use them in such a sleezy, obvious cash grab. The game is undoubtedly in a bad place right now.
External drama unrelated to this thread shouldn't be a part of this discussion - let's drop the irrelevant aside and return to the thread's actual topic.
"We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see." ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
The Kul'Tiran example showcased that two identical races can suddenly become not identical in gameplay only and in nothing else if there is a will from Blizzard. That means that there is nothing in game or in lore that could have prevented Blizzard to differentiate two identical races that Blizzard would care about. It's just Blizzard doesn't want to add High Elves and it's not because they share the same model with the Blood Elves, but because Ion wants the archetype of "fair skinned elf" to stay pure Horde.
Blizzard didn't "differentiate" Nightborne from Night elves before deciding to add them on Horde. They've came out and said it was a tough decision which faction Nightborne should go to and they knew whoever didn't get Nightborne would be upset.
Nightborne as they are with their society/culture had nothing to do with it.
“We weren’t surprised that [Alliance players] felt betrayed,” Burke says. “We had the same reaction happen internally here. We had to make a choice, and both sides had very interesting arguments to make. We knew whoever didn’t get the Nightborne would feel a tinge of loss.” - Steve Burke
https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/21/18...user-interview
I agree though on your last bit, High Elves are probably going to be akin to a "break glass in case of emergency" situation. The nice thing is people don't have to stay subbed in hopes for it, it'll just happen when its needed.
Well, the Nightborne are, in fact, differentiated from Night Elves. They have a different idle stance and appear to be quite emaciated and also have markings. I didn't say they were worlds apart, just differentiated. It just seems even stranger to me to have Night Elves and then skinnier Night Elves on the same faction, but then you have Kul'tirans so I don't freakin' know anymore...
I really won't pretend to know the exact reasoning why they don't implement them. I can only use the resources I have to determine a "most likely" reasoning and outcome. The few official statements they've made appear to be little more than PR jargon to "silence the masses". I don't agree with a population excuse in a video game... I mean... c'mon. Cat people exist, but we have to have a viable population to let people play a race? So the most likely reason to me is an inner-bias within Blizzard by someone who has sizeable authority. The likelihood of them not wanting to upset the Horde players even seems less likely to me the more I think about it.
Last edited by Black Goat; 2019-06-20 at 10:13 PM.
Well I don't think it's a coincidence that producer Shani Edwards was the one going around talking about the revealed Void Elves and also has an NPC named after herself (and possibly another NPC after her hubby).
But even forgoing that, it's honestly just a timing issue regardless. Void Elves were relatively new at the time of that question. Look how many people still complain about "World of Elfcraft" even though every race since Nightborne and Void Elf have been non-elf.
The timing is just bad, I bet if someone were to ask about Wildhammer Dwarves as an Allied Race in the next Q/A about "why Dark Iron over Wildhammer Dwarves", they'd probably get a similar answer.
Same for anyone trying to request a forest troll, undead elf, human, orc, etc. None of these other variants are happening until we're done with this "first round" of Allied Races in BFA.
I have never said that only Alliance players are deserving of having the High Elf fantasy fulfilled. I'm saying that Alliance players are just as deserving of playing a High Elf Allied race as the Horde is playing a race that was ripped away from the Alliance for the exclusive purpose of balancing the factions in a post-Vanilla environment. The only people denying one side their fun are Horde fans promoting the idea that allowing the Alliance access to one of the faction's own iconic races is the path forward.
Blood Elves are guests as part of the Horde and will always stand apart because they were designed as an Alliance race. High Elves would be an intuitive and native addition to the Alliance's array of playable races. I'm not saying to deny the Horde anything. I'm saying that the Alliance should have access to what's theirs.
I brought up Pandaren in case people bring up the false argument that two playable version of the same race cant be playable. Its false because the game, story and characters treat High and Blood Elves as separate people. Even if you move goalposts, your argument still doesnt work.
Again, Im not sure how the lines haven't already been blurred for the 15 years that High Elves have been both active and passive participants in the story and setting over almost every expansion. And if High Elves blur fraction lines, why does Blizz keep using them over and over? It's hypocritical.
The official high elf petition is the only piece of 'evidence' we can go by that indicates roughly how popular playable high elves are. We have high elfers claiming that they are so popular and would make Blizzard so much money, yet what evidence do we have of this other than the petition? As it stands to date, the high elf petition is the only evidence that show cases some sort of statistic. The forums aren't really an indication cause it's usually the same 15-20 folks arguing back and forth about high elves.. so using the forums as evidence of how vastly popular high elves are is pretty pointless. And as it stands, the high elf petition shows a rather lack luster supporting... I mean it couldn't even reach 1000 signatures.... if high elves were so immensely popular one would think the number of signatures would have been substantially higher.
Like I said, high elf posts on the official WoW forums are usually from the same 15-20 people... so hardly an indication of any sort of popularity. On top of that, several high elfers have been caught out using alts to post to exaggerate how many players are in support of high elves.
Also, high elves are easily the most 'hated' race request by the community in general. What does that tell you? Their may be more requests for high elves than other races, but I guarantee you no other race request faces even half the resistance high elves do. You need to consider both sides of the spectrum when it comes to races, and in the case of high elves, they have extremes on both ends...
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What gives you the right to claim that the Horde is playing a race that was 'ripped' from the Alliance?
I'm sorry to say but your sense of entitlement is baffling.
Blood elves are our high elves - Chris Metzen