Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Gurluas]

I prefer the high elves from the Silver Convenant, simply because their faction has existed since Wrath and had relevance in many known events.
This story is nice, but it will appear the same way the void elves appeared: out of nowhere. No one ever heard this story before, and high elf non supporters will say that this was another "ass pull" from Blizzard (and I will agree with them).

But as i keep saying, it is Blizzard's franchise. They will do what they think it is best for their vision of the game.

Well I'm open for both, I also prefer the Silver Covenant concept although honestly, that concept fits better with the Quel'danil High elves, who stopped using Arcane magic and formed close ties with the Wildhammers. Silver Covenant are very magic inclined as we saw during Wrath and Mop.

[Deleted]

This is what Void Elves should have been.

[Obelisk Kai]

That still doesn't justify the argument that High Elves aren't playable because of population.

If that was the case we wouldn't have Void Elves.

Again, Blizzard is the ones who keep bringing up the population issue. It's the common thread in every High Elf comment. 2005 Caydiem, the Warcraft Encyclopedia and even Ion said it in 2017.

They clearly think it's an issue.

[Obelisk Kai]

It's not a valid argument anymore though, even though blizzard are hypocrites about it.

Here's the thing though.

It's not an argument.

It is word of god.

If it's word of god, there is no debate, it is correct until such time as future word of god contradicts it

[Traycor]

This story is nice, but it will appear the same way the void elves appeared: out of nowhere. (This novel is canon?) No one ever heard this story before ingame, and high elf non supporters will say that this was another "ass pull" from Blizzard (and I will agree with them).

While it wouldn't have to be done like this, the fate of these missing High Elves has never been explained. Kinda of like Alleria, they fell off the map with no further info. When Alleria did appear, it was with a story and fanfare.

Regardless of whether or not High Elves are ever added as an Allied Race, I assume these Outland High Elves will turn up eventually. Other characters from that same novel are in the game, but not Talthressar and his rangers. Another High Elf was swapped out to be the leader of Allerian Stronghold instead of Talthressar. I assume that was done for a reason, so he could turn up again one day.

(This novel is canon?)

I thought all the novels were canon. Is this not correct?
Despite the novel, these missing rangers were from WCII, so it's not out of nowhere.

[Ithekro]

Just dropping in to point out how ridiculous it is to even argue about the lore implications about any of this.

If Blizz wants High Elves, they will make it happen. They would've conjured up some lore that satisfies a starting storyline, and it'd be rolled out. So trying to argue about what you think justifies as the correct way to interpret this situation just comes off as laughable when you're dealing with an entity that has shown time and time again that they're willing to change things on a dime.

The only real factors to look at are demand and the potential faction imbalance this might cause.

Demand is there. Obviously.

Will this cause faction imbalance? Yes. Using realm pop, and filtering by only lvl 110 characters:

Alliance: 3,204,100 (~3.2mil)
Horde: 3,459,876 (~3.5mil)

Blood Elves make up ~1.5mil of the Horde's population, which is ~42% of the Horde's max level population.

If even half of them transfer to Alliance to play out the High Elf fantasy, you're looking at a potential 750k shift. Changing things to:

Alliance: 3,954,100 (~4mil)
Horde: 2,709,876 (~2.7mil)

High Elves are not happening.

And neither will Blood Elves getting blue eyes, because they will not want to destroy the Alliance population.

The only thing you can demand for is to get blizz to destroy this outdated faction system so that we can start enjoying more races without worrying about faction balance.

It is doubtful that so many would race change, as oppose to just having yet another alt which they may or may not play as their main.

The reasoning I have for this is time investment into getting a High Elf as an Allied Race. If all Allied Races behave like the four current ones, than in order to get a playable High Elf, one will need to rep grind to exalted with some (presumably) High Elf faction. Than get a max level Alliance character to play through the unlock quest from the embassy in Stormwind. Only after finishing that can they even make a new level 20 High Elf or race change an existing character to High Elf. That is a time investment. Meaning you will really need to want to have that High Elf if you ever hope to play one. Unlike Blood Elves which you can just make right after buying the game (since you don't have to purchase TBC anymore because it comes with the standard game now since the basic game goes from start to level 100, for $19.99....plus subscription fee, plus eventually needing to buy Legion and BfA).

As for World of Elfcraft....why not add Halflings....short elves (quite literally an elf model scaled down by 50% with no other changes)
As oppose to Gnomes, which are considered short humans...or even shorter humans compared to dwarves.

[Obelisk Kai]

It's hypocritical and stupid, still the word of god, but still stupid and hypocritical of them.

That's your opinion of their stated fact, but it does not diminish that the High Elf population in the Alliance being vanishingly low is stated fact. On multiple occasions. Across twelve years.

You know for a franchise prone to retcons they've been incredibly consistent on this point.

[RangerDaz]

While it wouldn't have to be done like this, the fate of these missing High Elves has never been explained. Kinda of like Alleria, they fell off the map with no further info. When Alleria did appear, it was with a story and fanfare.

Regardless of whether or not High Elves are ever added as an Allied Race, I assume these Outland High Elves will turn up eventually. Other characters from that same novel are in the game, but not Talthressar and his rangers. Another High Elf was swapped out to be the leader of Allerian Stronghold instead of Talthressar. I assume that was done for a reason, so he could turn up again one day.


I thought all the novels were canon. Is this not correct?
Despite the novel, these missing rangers were from WCII, so it's not out of nowhere.

Well, it is true that in the Burning Crusade the fate of the high elves wasn't very well explained. Actually a lot wasn't very well explained.

I for example was extremely sad when I saw Kael'thas, Vashj and Illidan becoming the Burning Crusade's main villains after playing Wacraft 3: Frozen Thone. They were supposed to be the anti heroes, but they became the evil villains of the expansion instead (which in my opinion was exclusively for marketing: they needed famous villains and that trio was perfect to call attention).

Having said that, i thought all High Elves lost in Warcraft II ended either dead, or gathered in the Allerian Stronghold. Blizzard never cared much for them since the Burning Crusade release. Actually, all Outland elves were simply forgotten.

[Obelisk Kai]

I thought all the novels were canon. Is this not correct?
Despite the novel, these missing rangers were from WCII, so it's not out of nowhere.

Novels are canon until specifically retconned. The chronicles have been doing a lot of that lately.

[Traycor]

Well at blizzcon ion referred to them as an "elite squad"

SQUAD
1 : a small organized group of military personnel; especially : a tactical unit that can be easily directed in the field
2 : a small group engaged in a common effort or occupation

The entire green Orc population fit on three boats when they left the Eastern Kingdoms for Kalimdor. AND they had room to pick up the entire Jungle Troll population on the way as their island sank.

We've directly seen in game that High Elves fill more than three boats. You could argue that the remaining High Elf population doubles that of the Orcs and Jungle Trolls.

[Traycor]

Having said that, i thought all High Elves lost in Warcraft II ended either dead, or gathered in the Allerian Stronghold. Blizzard never cared much for them since the Burning Crusade release. Actually, all Outland elves were simply forgotten.

Like Alleria, they just never addressed it. I've been waiting for the WCII High Elf rangers from Outland to show up since Vanilla. It was the #1 thing I was looking forward to in TBC, and it was never mentioned. But all is not lost, it took over 10 years, but they finally brought Alleria back!

[Obelisk Kai]

Which is my entire point.

Population isn't an argument anymore for high elves.

You continue to miss the point.

The population issue isn't an argument you can have a disagreement on. It's a stated fact.

[Obelisk Kai]

Ummm okay? It's stated as fact by blizzard who continue to be hypocritical in the matter. I'm not going to suck them off because it is not a valid argument or "fact" from them.

But until they change their minds and change the fact, the Alliance High Elf population is too low to be viable as a playable race.

That is not debatable.

[RangerDaz]

Like Alleria, they just never addressed it. I've been waiting for the WCII High Elf rangers from Outland to show up since Vanilla. It was the #1 thing I was looking forward to in TBC, and it was never mentioned. But all is not lost, it took over 10 years, but they finally brought Alleria back!

I believe it was never mentioned, because they wanted to focus on the new races of the expansion Blood Elves (horde) and Draenei (alliance), so they sacrificed the high elves from warcraft II instead.


Also related to the canon / non canon novels, there is a very famous case of a character from a novel that people keep asking for and blizzard never addressed it formally, but they unofficially say they prefer that this character would be non-canon: Med'an.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Med%27an

Blizzard even joked about it in chronicles 3, by putting his name in the number 404 page (a joke related to the 404 error, webpage not found).

https://blizzardwatch.com/2018/03/30...aft-chronicle/


So it is quite difficult to know what is canon and what is not. Blizzard also likes these gray zones, because they can pretend they forget lore for gameplay issues, or even bring that story back when they feel its good for the game.

So novels, manga, comics, etc are always a bit problematic.

Another example, this time related to an animated video released by Blizzard: will the vision of old Anduin with Velen in the flying exodar ever happen in the future? It was officially released by Blizzard at the release of legion, but they can decide to retcon it at anytime.

[Garfurion]

Nice image. Maybe consider adding feathers to their hair style to make it really part of their theme (gear can be replaced). Something like this maybe:

Edit: The Beyond the Dark Portal book is still canon and since it was co-written by Christie Golden who now works on WoW I can imagine it will stay canon for a while. It was written in 2008 so after TBC was released so it should not conflict with current lore too much.

[Syegfryed]

[
The entire green Orc population fit on three boats when they left the Eastern Kingdoms for Kalimdor.

this.is.NOT.CANON

argue that the remaining High Elf population doubles that of the Orcs and Jungle Trolls.

and this is blatantly false, rly, stop making false assumptions to back up your nonsense

The HE are few and are not organized, the only thing close to that is the silver covenant and even in MOP they are half human with Jaina

the void elves playable are a squad among other void elves, organized

- - - Updated - - -

It is debatable. If blizzard suddenly said ogres have too low of a population to be playable, but they create void ogres with only 50 members, and make them playable, would you still take the word of "god" or use your brain?

or they could just say there are more void elves than high elves, cause they came from a actually big population of elves

[Traycor]

this is blatantly false, rly, stop making false assumptions to back up your nonsense

It was obviously tongue and cheek to point out how ridiculous the population talking point is. And it's just that, a talking point.
You seem to get very riled up about this. We're just here to have fun and enjoy a game after all.

[protip]

The population of high elves doesn't matter, and calling out Blizzard for those things is entirely pointless. Any lore argument is pointless. The fact that they give it as an excuse is the only thing you need to understand. They have their own reasons for doing things, and population is a deflection because they don't want players to be a part of the real conversation. It's their product, and they make the choices that they think are best for the game.

You can have a problem with the excuse, but it doesn't matter. You can even have a problem with how they make the game, and you've clearly voiced that. They know. What they do with that information is a part of a conversation that they have/have had/will have internally. Blizzard has developed the game this way for a very long time, and it's been very successful. If it's not working for you, perhaps you're one of those they couldn't reach.

[Traycor]

The population of high elves doesn't matter, and calling out Blizzard for those things is entirely pointless. Any lore argument is pointless. The fact that they give it as an excuse is the only thing you need to understand. They have their own reasons for doing things, and population is a deflection because they don't want players to be a part of the real conversation. It's their product, and they make the choices that they think are best for the game.

You can have a problem with the excuse, but it doesn't matter. You can even have a problem with how they make the game, and you've clearly voiced that. They know. What they do with that information is a part of a conversation that they have/have had/will have internally. Blizzard has developed the game this way for a very long time, and it's been very successful. If it's not working for you, perhaps you're one of those they couldn't reach.

Great points all around. I believe the internal reason is design, which is why we're here to discuss new design options.

[Syegfryed]

It was obviously tongue and cheek to point out how ridiculous the population talking point is

no its not ridiculous, you are using game mechanics to prove lore point

if we are using game mechanic the silver covenant would not be 30, and half died in TOT

population still is a point to use, since they never said whattis the HE population number exactly, they just said they are nearly extinct, the players think there are a lot of then, is completely headcanon and part of their fanfic


with this information we can even assume there are more VE than HE: why blizz use BE and not HE to make VE? because there are not enough HE to become even a VE squad

- - - Updated - - -

What do I have to do to get this? Just this.

play horde and mog it in a warrior/paladin