Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[FlubberPuddy]

We simply don't know for sure. I think the evidence is against it, but I wouldn't bet on it. We have to wait for Blizzcon to be certain.

Indeed, I simply find it interesting that the situation is uncertain until Blizzcon.

[Neverafter]

Tattoo options and different hair styles are more than sufficient to differentiate them from Blood Elves. Blizzard just doesn't want Alliance players to be able to access on of their faction's defining races.

Taken in a complete vacuum, that could work. Give the Alliance High Elves that use a Blood Elf model with blue eyes but give different hair styles and tattoos.

The biggest problem is there is no reason to preclude any options given to this group of High Elves that can't also be duplicated on Blood Elves. The High Elves currently in game do not use tattoos aside from Alleria and maybe a few more from a time that they share with Blood Elves.

If Blizzard ever does give options for tattoos and hair and eye color to all the races which is something they have hinted at in the past, then this would muddy the water even more.

[Molvonos]

Stop trying to convince the people who won't listen to reality and keeps thinking High elf = Blood elf.
There's no way they haven't understood what people are asking for. It's been derailing this thread for like 400 pages, let's get back to proposing ways to make High elves different enough from Blood elves to be acceptable.

The problem with that, is there aren't enough ways if you sit back and think about it.

I'm not pro or con high-elves, I don't care enough either way, but I looked at it from a character developer standpoint.

Everything you can put into a high elf has been taken from another race. They'd literally be rehashing what they've already developed just to make a high elf, which makes it second-class. Looking at the various Allied Races, they definitely made an effort to try and make them unique... from their racial abilities to their skins (glowing animations/tattoos+unique faces/hair/beards/etc).

Blue eyes? That's literally the only unique, defining factor behind the high elves compared to blood elves, save for their non-corrupted nature.

Unless they did some major revisions and work on the high elves to make them unique (at which point, would they even be high elves anymore?), I don't see a reason or 'purpose' behind it.

Some argue that Void Elves don't serve a purpose, but they do. They help push the Alleria/Void storyline they're trying to get going. Almost every allied race either had a major (recent) storyline or they will. Yes, they could simply 'create' a storyline for high elves, but it'd be... I don't know how to express it... half-assed? Quarter-assed?

I'd argue they'd want silhouettes to be unique, but BE and VE's look very similar from a distance. But the addition of HE's would add a third, very similar, silhouette to the game. Unfortunately, I think the addition of Void Elves killed any and every chance High Elves had to be put in the game.

[Mehrunes]

Garithos's men were raised as forsaken so apparently blood elves don't have issue working with them yet another reason they never should have been part of the horde and only became part so the horde had a pretty race.

Literally when. Sylvanas didn't even gain Val'kyr until ~8 years after Garithos' death.

Stop trying to convince the people who won't listen to reality and keeps thinking High elf = Blood elf.
There's no way they haven't understood what people are asking for. It's been derailing this thread for like 400 pages, let's get back to proposing ways to make High elves different enough from Blood elves to be acceptable.

But they aren't different enough. Literally the only difference they have is eye color.

[Obelisk Kai]

Taken in a complete vacuum, that could work. Give the Alliance High Elves that use a Blood Elf model with blue eyes but give different hair styles and tattoos.

The biggest problem is there is no reason to preclude any options given to this group of High Elves that can't also be duplicated on Blood Elves. The High Elves currently in game do not use tattoos aside from Alleria and maybe a few more from a time that they share with Blood Elves.

If Blizzard ever does give options for tattoos and hair and eye color to all the races which is something they have hinted at in the past, then this would muddy the water even more.

What Allied races taught us is that to qualify as an Allied race, genuine differentiation must occur between a 'parent' race and it's allied race offspring. This is usually expressed as some physical differentiation between the two groups, coupled with a lore explanation explaining why this physical differentiation occurred.

In four of the current eight allied races (the original four), this differentiation was down to an outside force provoking a change in a population of the parent race, producing the Allied race, and that change is not replicable within the parent.

This is why the suggestion of tattoo options and hair styles is not 'more than sufficient', because anything in that vein done by an Alliance High Elf can, as you agree, be done by a Blood Elf.

I expect that eye colour customization will be coming in a future patch. It will be particularly interesting to see how they deal with Blood Elf eye colour, as that is heavily influenced by lore. Blood Elves currently have green and golden eyes. Multiple shades of both primary colours at a minimum would be expected, but will Blizzard go all the way and accede to the blue eyes for Blood Elves request? I can only hope.

[Vasaru]

-snip-

Fuck man. Just give it a rest.. Why do you even bother?

[Gurluas]

so basically you want to turn high elves into something they are not so they can be playable? sounds like void elves to me

The same process, except instead of taking Blood elves and making them even more Blood elfy and emo, I want to take High elves, keep them High elves but change them externally enough so they're separate enough to warrant an allied race spot. Ideologically and culturally the two are already quite different.

I believe it's the only way to get the High elven factions playable without compromising their integrity and thus ruining what makes them interesting to begin with.
Turning the High elves into Void elves, would essentially render the point moot, as the very act of becoming a Void elf would ruin what a High elf is about.

I posted some concepts a few pages back, crystalline elves, plant elves, elemental elves...

[The Silver Covenant]

In four of the current eight allied races (the original four), this differentiation was down to an outside force provoking a change in a population of the parent race, producing the Allied race, and that change is not replicable within the parent.

This is an absolutely asinine and flatly incorrect rationalization of the guidelines Blizzard may have held to for the original four allied races. In the case of both of the Alliance allied races, the process is shown to be replicable and explicitly so in the case of Lightforged Draenei. And while the Highmountain Tauren neatly fall into what you claim here, being the genetic descendants of Huln, the Nightborne's differentiation from Night Elves amounts to having darker skin from living under a bubble because their arcwine addiction is rendered moot by the end of Legion — much like the difference between High Elves and Blood Elves, it comes down to tattoos and biological pigmentation. All you've got is conjecture regarding the arbitrary rules Blizzard might have made, which for some reason only functions to explain why High Elves aren't possible. Everything you say only works to exclude High Elves as a playable race because, in fact, the change that Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei undergo might as well be as simple as getting some tattoos according to the information players are granted in the unlock quests for those races.

[Doffen]

Indeed, I simply find it interesting that the situation is uncertain until Blizzcon.

That interview though, they couldn't go ahead and say that "oh yes in 9.0 both factions can play together" because that would be such a big spoiler.

I don't think factions will be removed. But for the raiding scene? Oh it will be changes. I think thats inevitable at this stage. Merging factions for raiding wouldn't be a bad idea. The horde guilds is getting further(better) and further away from the Alliance guilds when it comes to raiding, so much that the idea of factions is loosening it's grip within those players aka they don't care about which faction they are on anymore.

The recent cinematic could also be a misdirection of course. Seeing that Jaina and Thrall conversation wich almost ended with a green lantern baby was convincing for me.

[FlubberPuddy]

That interview though, they couldn't go ahead and say that "oh yes in 9.0 both factions can play together" because that would be such a big spoiler.

Well yeah obviously they can't give spoilers, but for the most part they've been touting how factions matter in terms of interviews. Although snippets like "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" might be little hints, I think it's getting into "too ahead of ourselves" territory from the player response.

I don't think factions will be removed. But for the raiding scene? Oh it will be changes. I think thats inevitable at this stage. Merging factions for raiding wouldn't be a bad idea. The horde guilds is getting further(better) and further away from the Alliance guilds when it comes to raiding, so much that the idea of factions is loosening it's grip within those players aka they don't care about which faction they are on anymore.

It definitely keeps looking worse and worse to see how skewed the competitive Horde Hall of Fame vs Alliance Hall of Fame keeps going. I'm sure they wouldn't put it past them to see the trickle-down-effect it has. But the main consideration is do they care about that?

I could see them potentially saying in some interview that sure not as many Alliance players are into competitive raiding compared to Horde, then pull up some fact how there's more Alliance doing X activity than Horde. And talk about how essentially there's an equal amount of players on each side.

The recent cinematic could also be a misdirection of course. Seeing that Jaina and Thrall conversation wich almost ended with a green lantern baby was convincing for me.

Yup. Have to remember that these story beats deal with the Horde and Alliance [Leaders] and not the regular jo-schmo Horde and Alliance. For all we know, the majority of each faction are still in "red is dead" mode. They could go all GoT Season 1 and write the story in a way that it essentially incapacitates all these major players that want peace, in an effort to keep continuing the Faction war.

We'll just have to see though.

I think this is the first time in WoW's story where none of us knows exactly how it ends until we get more information. That information will come either through the Azshara raid end cinematic, 8.2.5 PTR War Campaign, 8.3, or at Blizzcon. It can be hit by any of these boxes. Blizzcon obviously we will for sure know.

[Ielenia]

Taken in a complete vacuum, that could work. Give the Alliance High Elves that use a Blood Elf model with blue eyes but give different hair styles and tattoos.

The biggest problem is there is no reason to preclude any options given to this group of High Elves that can't also be duplicated on Blood Elves. The High Elves currently in game do not use tattoos aside from Alleria and maybe a few more from a time that they share with Blood Elves.

If Blizzard ever does give options for tattoos and hair and eye color to all the races which is something they have hinted at in the past, then this would muddy the water even more.

Give those tattoos some cultural significance. That would give reason to not give the BEs the same thing. For example: those tattoos could be similar to how Alleria is tattooed to signify their allegiance with Alleria and the Alliance.

Hair colors can follow a similar premise, with the new color (say, blue and pure white) being the result of some magical event.

[Frenchvince]

What Allied races taught us is that to qualify as an Allied race, genuine differentiation must occur between a 'parent' race and it's allied race offspring. This is usually expressed as some physical differentiation between the two groups, coupled with a lore explanation explaining why this physical differentiation occurred.

In four of the current eight allied races (the original four), this differentiation was down to an outside force provoking a change in a population of the parent race, producing the Allied race, and that change is not replicable within the parent.

This is why the suggestion of tattoo options and hair styles is not 'more than sufficient', because anything in that vein done by an Alliance High Elf can, as you agree, be done by a Blood Elf.

I expect that eye colour customization will be coming in a future patch. It will be particularly interesting to see how they deal with Blood Elf eye colour, as that is heavily influenced by lore. Blood Elves currently have green and golden eyes. Multiple shades of both primary colours at a minimum would be expected, but will Blizzard go all the way and accede to the blue eyes for Blood Elves request? I can only hope.

Blood elves will just have the option of golden eyes for all faces, do not ask too much there.
And yes the golden eyes are only available for 3 faces of men and women, as much to unlock everything ...

Blue Eyes = High Elf NPCs of the alliance do not mix faction landmarks.

[Doffen]

Well yeah obviously they can't give spoilers, but for the most part they've been touting how factions matter in terms of interviews. Although snippets like "we'll cross that bridge when we get to it" might be little hints, I think it's getting into "too ahead of ourselves" territory from the player response.

That's why we can take such statements with a grain of salt, though it is the general statement about the factions too. Making faction-wide raiding makes more sense than mercenary mode for pvp in my book, as you actually fight the other faction in PvP, while in raid you are killing the same bosses(except for 3 bosses in BoD, wich is something new and maybe a little test even to see if there is easy enough to change faction in a raid). They said no to classic too you know...

So for the actual lore, that can go as usual. Mercenary mode for PvP is kind of worse than for raiding. I can easily see them change this, but yeah, we'll see. If the factions doesn't matter so much in PvP that they introduced mercenary mode, why should it matter so much for raiding? Doesn't make sense to me.

Something is up at least, Blizzcon going to be exciting.

[FlubberPuddy]

So for the actual lore, that can go as usual. Mercenary mode for PvP is kind of worse than for raiding. I can easily see them change this, but yeah, we'll see. If the factions doesn't matter so much in PvP that they introduced mercenary mode, why should it matter so much for raiding? Doesn't make sense to me.

Something is up at least, Blizzcon going to be exciting.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. I just realized how weird it is that Ion in his recent comment spoke of "mercenary mode isn't for making social connections" but then before that he's been encouraging people to go play the other faction if a race interests an opposing faction player. He told an Alliance player at the BfA reveal to go ahead and play a Zandalari if that's what they feel is their race that speaks to them. He told High Elf fans that Horde is waiting for them.

Very strange to suggest those things where a player would then be leaving their established social connections for new ones.

But then again the question did ask for a "mercenary modes" of sorts, not necessarily about loosening up the factions.

You're right though, Blizzcon will be exciting (more like interesting to me).

- - - Updated - - -

Blue Eyes = High Elf NPCs of the alliance do not mix faction landmarks.

Also now equals Void Elves, who are "blue eyed blood elves" of the alliance.

[matrix123mko]

They are not playable also getting power hungry eredar would fit sylv and I doubt anyone would have an issue with that as long as we got actual high elves not blueberry fel addicts turned void addicts.

I would have issue if there was no void elves. However, I am glad to hear that someone asks for Eredar on the Horde side.

Garithos's men were raised as forsaken so apparently blood elves don't have issue working with them yet another reason they never should have been part of the horde and only became part so the horde had a pretty race.

Where was it stated? From what I remember, they were eaten by ghouls.

[Xath]

One of the oldest pro High Elf arguments. That it will make Blizzard money.

And yet they created Void Elves rather than cash in. You'd almost think that when they talked about faction diversity mattering, they meant it.

And yes, the signature is subject to change. As I have said, only Blizzard can change what they have said.

But it's absolutely true right now.

That a "I'm so different girl" grew up and became a producer and the rest of blizz was happy to crap on the alliance and please her in the process.

- - - Updated - - -

Fuck man. Just give it a rest.. Why do you even bother?

Look at his signature and realize that what he lives for is attempting to crap on the alliance it's kind of sad honestly

[Vasaru]

That a "I'm so different girl" grew up and became a producer and the rest of blizz was happy to crap on the alliance and please her in the process.

- - - Updated - - -



Look at his signature and realize that what he lives for is attempting to crap on the alliance it's kind of sad honestly

I personally try to be better and I rather not shit on anyone more than I already have but yeah.. It's pretty sad.

[Alixie]

Fuck man. Just give it a rest.. Why do you even bother?

Some people are that obsessed about a tiny part of a video game. There's honestly more people scared about "losing" blood elves, than there are people worried about the strong possibility that the Horde and Alliance will merge into one. So much for the "muh fraction identity" argument.

[FlubberPuddy]

Some people are that obsessed about a tiny part of a video game. There's honestly more people scared about "losing" blood elves, than there are people worried about the strong possibility that the Horde and Alliance will merge into one. So much for the "muh fraction identity" argument.

Nah, I just think the reason it seems that way is because as everyone knows: Blizzard will do what Blizzard wants to do.

So in the case of stuff where it's clear it won't be happening anytime soon (High Elves) or Blizzard hasn't commented on it, then people feel "safer" to voice their opposition.

But when it looks to be the rumblings that Blizzard is inevitably going to do something or does say they have plans for it (like straight back orcs), then people don't feel "safe" anymore to voice their dissent because ultimately no one can change what Blizzard wants to do once they decide to go through it.

Like the straight back orcs for instance, before Blizzard rarely, if ever, commented on it. You'd see a lot of players say "fuck that, go play Alliance if you want straight backs!" but once Blizzard came out and said it's coming for Orcs, you then see muuuuuuch more support and very little dissent.

Because at that point, Blizzard made the decision to add what they wanted, and no amount of "I don't want it" as a player is going to change that.

That's why I feel you don't see a whole lot of people complaining or fussing over the H/A merge. Because it actually has a possibility of happening and people who wouldn't like it more than likely want to wait for confirmation it won't happen before speaking greatly on it. Otherwise they'll end up looking like a fool.

This also goes for the side that wants the merge too, you'll look more like a fool if you start speaking of it happening now and it actually doesn't happen.

People are more concerned with not looking silly

[Alixie]

Nah, I just think the reason it seems that way is because as everyone knows: Blizzard will do what Blizzard wants to do.

So in the case of stuff where it's clear it won't be happening anytime soon (High Elves) or Blizzard hasn't commented on it, then people feel "safer" to voice their opposition.

Because at that point, Blizzard made the decision to add what they wanted, and no amount of "I don't want it" as a player is going to change that.

I disagree. Every time more evidence for Junker Gnomes and Lightforged Undead comes out, the louder the opposition grows. If they dont happen, everyone will be happy that they were wrong. If they're confirmed, I think anger will peak just before release, then come in waves if they become active in the story post release.

But High Elves are different. As long as Ion is lead director, High Elves aint happening. But even with this security, the opposition acts like High Elves have been confirmed and ready to be released next Tuesday. That's an unhealthy obsession for something that probably wont ever happen.