Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Aldo Hawk]

Shadowlands seems to be the expansion where Blizzard blatantly proves they don't care about the world constructed between Orcs & Humans and Legion and begins doing whatever they want without any sort of sense for Warcraft or existing lore justification. Pretty sad.

Yes, I know this is a retcon (yeah, I know about the alternative universe elf), but it seems like they are kind of setting new bases for the franchise with Shadowlands, just right at the start, the cinematic felt strange for us lore lovers because it seemed totally out of place, and now we know that they retconned the Helm of Domination and the Frostmourne so these weren't crafted by the Legion anymore, but stolen from the Shadowlands, giving some sense to what Sylvanas was able to do by breaking the helm...

And now they are extending the quantity of skin colors that races have, even those who aren't even human like Trolls.

If it was for me I would have done just the humans' new customization, since I see it very fitting, given that a human is a human in all shapes and colors and you also erase away any possible controversy about humans of X appearance from Y place (yeah, I know Kul'tirans, the fat and the thin, we will see those models as humans from other nations too), fine to me, almost perfect. But elves aren't humans, neither Dwarves, so it's a clear retcon to what we knew about how they looked like.

But I also have to say that this new standard of giving these colors to races that had human-like skins is not that big of a bad retcon, and it's also beneficial since these are races that people may pick because they look the most 'human' of them all and don't want to pick an actual human, and when someone creates a 'human' (or something resembling it) you might want for it to look a bit like you, as Ion said in the panel. And when you have a game, you want people to be the most comfortable they can playing it, and this way they gave options that will make more people want to play characters that they would have not picked before, this happened to me with the new WoD Orcs, and it was just a visual rework. And remember, one premise that they have is 'gameplay before lore', which I don't agree in it's entirety but it's understandable.

Having that said, I think this is all done in a way of setting a new lore that might culminate in a world revamp the expansion after Shadowlands, that's what I feel about all that was presented in Blizzcon so far, and I hope to be right, since some kind of new start with things polished from level 1 is something this game needs a lot, and if it can come with a proper redesign of the world that more or less respects what we knew about it but giving it a fresh scent to it, the better.

I hope my message helps you clarify the doubts you may have had. Yes, there are retcons, and we all wish for them to be less prominent, but not every retcon is a bad thing, some of them can make things better.

[Manariel]

Well said. But High Elves are Alliance tho, they were exiled after the war of ancients and they turned into High elves when they were highborne. They were Quel'dorei and Kaldorei and they were always more alliance than anytime they would be horde. Blood elves were only on horde after not being accepted, i will repeat this many times. But High Elves were not welcome in Night Elf lands anymore.

This is the timeline:

Dark trolls evolved into Kaldorei in origin, and gave origin to 3 elf races and overtime we got 7 Elf races and then even more elf races:

Kaldorei (Meaning: Children of the Stars) (Night elves) [Alliance]
Quel'dorei (Meaning: Children of the Noble Birth) (Highborne/High Elven - Pure highborne left are not much of those left now, they gave up everything that made them night elves, including moonwells) [Once Alliance, still supporting alliance, they have a bad reception at Alliance, commonly mistaken by blood elves, high elves are now almost extinct.]
Shal'dorei (Meaning: Children of the Night)(Nightborne) [Now Horde because refused by Tyrande]

Sin'dorei (Meaning: Children of the Blood) (Corrupted High elves - Blood elves) [Faction: Horde]
Ren'dorei (Meaning: Children of the Void) (Void Elves) [Faction: Alliance]
Darkfallen (San'layn (Vampyr Blood elves - Used to be with Kael'thas before being raised to undeath by Arthas) [Faction: San'layn]
Felblood elf (Blood elf corrupted with fel) [Faction: Burning Legion]

Pure Highbornes = High Elves = There is not much left. Blood Elves are the majority.

Night elves and Blood elves are on opposite factions, so why would they make that minority almost extincted pure Highborne be part of the Alliance? The pure Highborne left ain't enough to make a race playable. They are likely just meant to be now NPCs. There's other more elf races to be added, and High elves are not one of them. That's why they added void elves instead. This thread is basically closed since void elves were introduced, and makes zero sense to blood elves to gain blue eyes too.

You do realize that the High Elves outnumber vastly the Void Elves, yes ? That they have been more relevant to the Alliance than the Gnomes ever were, just with their appearances in WotLK, MoP and Legion ? And tha political differences can and will harden over time in social and cultural differences. See the case of North and South Korea for instance. Or Rwanda, where colonizers basically created the ethnic divide which led to genocide. or the Palestinian compared to the larger Arab world, who have a clearly distinct history and culture nowadays, compared to the larger Ottoman/arabic one they had until before the creation of Israel.

In WoW, it has been over fifteen (perhaps twenty, I'm not sure?) years spent separated and utterly divided, with scant interactions between the Blood Elves and the High Elves. The latters have taken a very different path than the formers, as seen with the Lodges and even the Silver Covenant. Emphatically, Blood Elves and high Elves are not the same and won't ever be the same in the foreseeable future.

Blizzard can prove once more that it doesn't get nor care about Alliance demands, of course, by giving blood eyes to Blood Elves. I'm sure they will, they are dumb that way. But it'll neither stop me and others to ask for Real High Elves (RHE) and not Fake Horde Elves (FHE). It will, however, hurt the game a little more, because I'm plenty sure a lot of people will be disgruntled enough to discontinue -at least partially- their subs, Alliance side.

Just in my case, I'm waiting to know moe about the BE customization options, because if they do get Blue Eyes, I'll probably won't even bother with Shadowlands, which already seems to be lacking in interesting content.

[Syegfryed]

who did this? is pretty nice but there is some things wrong at least on troll part, sand trolls come from the jungle trolls, and the dark trolls from the forest trolls

Sin'dorei (Meaning: Children of the Blood) (Corrupted High elves - Blood elves) [Faction: Horde]
Quel'dorei (Meaning: Children of the Noble Birth) (Highborne/High Elven - Pure highborne left are not much of those left now, they gave up everything that made them night elves, including moonwells) [Once Alliance, still supporting alliance, they have a bad reception at Alliance, commonly mistaken by blood elves, high elves are now almost extinct.]

there is no such thing of "pure" or "corrupted", this is one of the very reason why they are not becoming a thing, only would validate this fanfiction that the elves in the aliance are the "true" ones, the "pure" the "rightneous" or like already saw "the true legacy of quel'thalas", when its all bs

[Alixie]

Not that this is the Blood Elf Megathread, but so much love for the most popular race by far in the game. I think they should get another exclusive class again. We haven't quite reached 100% Blood Elf saturation. Meanwhile, the 5 of us left on the Alliance will enjoy our new Diaper Gnomes! If I still played that is, lol.

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That's cute, whoever paperclipped Blood Elves with the High Elves. Why do the Blood Elves call themselves a separate race if they're exactly the same as High Elves?

[Rootsbum]

Adding a «worgen-like» transform to HighElf with void-eyes wouldnt bother me mutch.
In fact; It would make the void-skin feel cooler as it would be something activated on fight.

[Shakana]

You do realize that the High Elves outnumber vastly the Void Elves, yes ? That they have been more relevant to the Alliance than the Gnomes ever were, just with their appearances in WotLK, MoP and Legion ? And tha political differences can and will harden over time in social and cultural differences. See the case of North and South Korea for instance. Or Rwanda, where colonizers basically created the ethnic divide which led to genocide. or the Palestinian compared to the larger Arab world, who have a clearly distinct history and culture nowadays, compared to the larger Ottoman/arabic one they had until before the creation of Israel.

In WoW, it has been over fifteen (perhaps twenty, I'm not sure?) years spent separated and utterly divided, with scant interactions between the Blood Elves and the High Elves. The latters have taken a very different path than the formers, as seen with the Lodges and even the Silver Covenant. Emphatically, Blood Elves and high Elves are not the same and won't ever be the same in the foreseeable future.

Blizzard can prove once more that it doesn't get nor care about Alliance demands, of course, by giving blood eyes to Blood Elves. I'm sure they will, they are dumb that way. But it'll neither stop me and others to ask for Real High Elves (RHE) and not Fake Horde Elves (FHE). It will, however, hurt the game a little more, because I'm plenty sure a lot of people will be disgruntled enough to discontinue -at least partially- their subs, Alliance side.

Just in my case, I'm waiting to know moe about the BE customization options, because if they do get Blue Eyes, I'll probably won't even bother with Shadowlands, which already seems to be lacking in interesting content.

When i did this and at past posts that is fine if you don't see cause it's normal i was giving the old lore, not the most recent one lore, and it came to my knowledge by other users that filled me with the new lore, that the void elves are indeed made by a blood elf group that was indeed exiled from Silvermoon but also high elf wayfarers (the part i didn't know), this being said i hope it answers to your question in that sense. I have a vast lore elves knowledge that are old and needed to be updated with the new stories.

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who did this? is pretty nice but there is some things wrong at least on troll part, sand trolls come from the jungle trolls, and the dark trolls from the forest trolls

It was a guy from reddit i dont know where is the source anymore for a long time, I have it saved on my computer. And uploaded it. I'm basically Nobble searching for lore since years. I have the game and huge lore on my computer + chronicles. Also for Secret finding, when i want to make correlations. (But i can do a look by search google images)

there is no such thing of "pure" or "corrupted", this is one of the very reason why they are not becoming a thing, only would validate this fanfiction that the elves in the aliance are the "true" ones, the "pure" the "rightneous" or like already saw "the true legacy of quel'thalas", when its all bs

Actually there is such a thing. Otherwise why you think blood elves have green eyes in the first place? why you think high elves have blue eyes? Or even why you think Nightborne are so sophisticated? There's a reason for those names and the blood elves were known as the evil ones after the sunwell's destruction/corrupted during the Scourge attack by Arthas to ressurect Kelthu'zad as a lich (that you later fight in Naxxramas).

Th green eyes happened later, Blood Elves/High Elves were already corrupted and renamed themselves Blood elves to honor the fallen ones at the war.


The pure that didn't rename themselves Blood Elves, what we know by High Elves, they managed to survive by consuming mana from Draenei artifacts to sate their addiction. While the Blood Elves started to sate their addiction with living creatures.


90% of the survivors after Arthas attack, renamed to Blood Elves and then those Blood Elves have grown hating humans, on opposite side you have the High Elves, exists about 25,000+ by some statistics i saw years ago, those are the pure highborne elf before all this happening.

And The green eyes and what blood elves started to be is due to the Fel exposure from the crystals that Kael'thas sent back with Rommath.

Blood Elves/High Elves were exiled from Alliance when the war happened.

Can't ignore the corruption of the sunwell as it was such a big part of the Story of their separation and from where they got their power from and we use names such as pure and evil to distinct both of them, since the eye colors are the only thing that show us who are the ones that were those High Elves and the ones that renamed Blood Elves.

(Bad time to explain i just woke up, and yesterday i was sleepy when i typed some stuff too, so excuse me if i have something misplaced or poorly explained to your knowledge xD)

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@Syegfryed https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...es_and_trolls/

[Syegfryed]

Actually there is such a thing. Otherwise why you think blood elves have green eyes in the first place? why you think high elves have blue eyes?

green eye is the result of radiation of fel energy, is not Corruption, is side effect, its moot because also there is blood elves with blue eyes

there is no such thing of "pure elves of the alliance, blonde with blue eyes" this narrative will not and should not come to pass for obvious reasons

Or even why you think Nightborne are so sophisticated? There's a reason for those names and the blood elves were known as the evil ones after the sunwell's destruction/corrupted during the Scourge attack by Arthas to ressurect Kelthu'zad as a lich (that you later fight in Naxxramas).

i am 99.9%sure that they didn't got corrupted after the sunwell since i never read something like that

Th green eyes happened later, Blood Elves/High Elves were already corrupted and renamed themselves Blood elves to honor the fallen ones at the war.

but what corruption did happen to then? if this si true then "every single high elf in existence today should be corrupted, and there would be no such thing of pure elves anyway.

@Syegfryed https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...es_and_trolls/

this would be more accurate:

[FlubberPuddy]

Here is a bit of confirmation that AR are most likely going to get future customization.

With these new customizations, will we see improvements to customizations for Allied Races as well? What about Death Knight customizations?

So, with new character customization, we are focusing mainly in the original races, not allied races. we are able to apply new customizations to them, like separate the eyes from the rest of the models, with the help of the Technical team, so you have more options to choose from. We are not touching Allied Races at this time, we are focusing on the main races. There are no plans to expanding custom DK customization at this point.

"At this time" and not a 'Allied Races have a specific look that we want to preserve' or anything of the sort.

https://www.wowhead.com/news=296035/...ing-pathfinder

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Also, from same link. Here's confirmation that there's no lore explanation for the new customization looks.

Will there be any unlock process behind the new customizations coming in Shadowlands?

No, all the customizations come unlocked. Soon as they are available you will be able to visit your barbershop and get them on your character.

[Strippling]

Here is a bit of confirmation that AR are most likely going to get future customization.


"At this time" and not a 'Allied Races have a specific look that we want to preserve' or anything of the sort.

https://www.wowhead.com/news=296035/...ing-pathfinder

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Also, from same link. Here's confirmation that there's no lore explanation for the new customization looks.

They mentioned something like 40 odd customization options will be available to blood elves. I'd dare say this will likely include blue eyes and tattoos (given that dwarves and trolls are getting tattoo options). So I'd say anyone who wants to play a blue eyed thalassian with tattoos will have the option of doing so on the Horde.

When additional customizations are eventually given to ARs (based on Blizz's timing this is likely several years away), I would imagine that void elves would be given additional "void" orientated options, given they're void elves. Would make no sense to give them "fair skin" options when A) they're void elves and B) that would make them more like blood elves, and Blizzard very intentionally gave void elves are purply tint to differentiate them from the fair skin thalassian elves on the Horde

[FlubberPuddy]

When additional customizations are eventually given to ARs (based on Blizz's timing this is likely several years away), I would imagine that void elves would be given additional "void" orientated options, given they're void elves. Would make no sense to give them "fair skin" options when A) they're void elves and B) that would make them more like blood elves, and Blizzard very intentionally gave void elves are purply tint to differentiate them from the fair skin thalassian elves on the Horde

It would actually perfectly line up with Afrasiabi saying about getting High Elf skins on Void Elves.

[Strippling]

It would actually perfectly line up with Afrasiabi saying about getting High Elf skins on Void Elves.

He never said void elves were getting high elf skins. Big exaggeration there.

[Kyphael]

He never said void elves were getting high elf skins. Big exaggeration there.

He hinted it was open to possibility.

[Fyersing]

So I'd say anyone who wants to play a blue eyed thalassian with tattoos will have the option of doing so on the Horde.

As if the only notable characteristic of High Elves is that they've got blue eyes and/or tattoos -- they're High Elves because of their political allegiance to the Alliance, not their coloration.

[Manariel]

As if the only notable characteristic of High Elves is that they've got blue eyes and/or tattoos -- they're High Elves because of their political allegiance to the Alliance, not their coloration.

This. Let the Horde have blue eyed thalassian elves. They'll never be High Elves nonetheless.

[cocomen2]

That's cute, whoever paperclipped Blood Elves with the High Elves. Why do the Blood Elves call themselves a separate race if they're exactly the same as High Elves?

This is mine whole point, why change name of race if all Blood elfs are High elf? This name change has sense only if old members of High elf race still on Alliance side and not some 1-3 people but force that can be called a "RACE". Then to distinguish themselves to be much different race they would need to rename their tribe-race.

Otherwise that would look like this :

TBC patch notes : High Elfs joined Horde........ but this isnt a case?)

[Aldo Hawk]

This is mine whole point, why change name of race if all Blood elfs are High elf? This name change has sense only if old members of High elf race still on Alliance side and not some 1-3 people but force that can be called a "RACE". Then to distinguish themselves to be much different race they would need to rename their tribe-race.

Otherwise that would look like this :

TBC patch notes : High Elfs joined Horde........ but this isnt a case?)

Race is not a 100% correct word that the game uses to describe the playable options, I would not stick to it by what a dictionary may say.

[elbleuet]

As if the only notable characteristic of High Elves is that they've got blue eyes and/or tattoos -- they're High Elves because of their political allegiance to the Alliance, not their coloration.

An Alliance blood elf would still be a blood elf though.

[Strippling]

He hinted it was open to possibility.

Anything is open to possibility. His answer was as non-committal as they get, I wouldn't hold your breath.

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An Alliance blood elf would still be a blood elf though.

With that logic a void elf with high elf skin options would still be a void elf... yet lo and behold alliance players don't care about that so long as they get their fair skinned elf.

[Starla]

It would actually perfectly line up with Afrasiabi saying about getting High Elf skins on Void Elves.

But that wouldn't make them High Elves on the Alliance, would it?

[scubi666stacy]

This. Let the Horde have blue eyed thalassian elves. They'll never be High Elves nonetheless.

They are High Elves. Your "Alliance Elves" are just exiles and renegades, traitors even. They spit on all the people who died protecting their homeland from the Scourge. Just because they delude themselves that they are the "true ones" because they keep the name, they have wronged their people. Honestly, if I would be writing WoW, then the High Elves would all have been exterminated already, if they would not want to return to the restored Sunwell and to Quel'thalas. Vereesa and her brood would have died shortly after Rhonin. Alleria would only have survived because she was away, and now she would be a target for bounty hunters, just like all other Void Elves. Lor'themar is really too soft in this regard.

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But that wouldn't make them High Elves on the Alliance, would it?

You have your NPCs.