Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[RangerDaz]

Continuing my idea about the War for Quel'thalas: Humans, Worgen, High Elves, Void Elves and Night Elves on one side, Blood Elves, Nightborne, Undead and San'layn / Dark Ranger Elves and Zandalari/Darkspear Trolls on the other side. Dwarves and gnomes help on the alliance provisions, orcs and goblins help on the horde provisions.

I also wrote an idea to make viable new allied races death knights and demon hunters due to a war for Quel'thalas, could be interesting to combine all the ideas together:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...e-through-Lore

[Magnagarde]

That could work, but it plays up the magical side, which creates less distinction between High Elves and Blood Elves. I think it would be great to find out that the Silver Covenant has been working behind the scenes to expand Quel'Danil lodge into a base of operations. The whole Hinterlands zone has been kind of a throwaway zone since the beginning that's inconvenient to quest in because of location.

If it was updated to give cool new things to do, especially with driving out the trolls or some other new threat, that would be great. Maybe they could save Aerie Peak from invasion or something, cementing their close relations of the Wildhammer Dwarfs.

Come to think of it, they could've come together with the Wildhammers and they wouldn't even be required to change two zones, but one zone only.

[Deleted]

If they must be added this seens like an acceptable method. I'd also like scars or something. Basically show them as the vagabond race they are

[chrisisvacant]

You don't seem to get it. Nobody is getting high elves proper.

Horde got fel-addicted high elves (Blood Elves).
Alliance got void-addicted high elves (Void Elves).

Case closed. Next!

[Andromedes]

Also remove duckfaces from males, it helps them to look less cocky

You don't seem to get it. Nobody is getting high elves proper.

Horde got fel-addicted high elves (Blood Elves).
Alliance got void-addicted high elves (Void Elves).

Case closed. Next!

Yes and we want high elves, case closed

[chrisisvacant]

Also remove duckfaces from males, it helps them to look less cocky



Yes and we want high elves, case closed

Refer to the second sentence of my post.

Case reopened and reclosed. Next.

[Andromedes]

what else we arent getting? mister blizzard employee?

[chrisisvacant]

what else we arent getting? mister blizzard employee?

The pacifier and diaper change you so sorely need.

[Andromedes]

Indeed, also we arent getting vanilla wow, zandalari druid forms or demon hunters.

[therealbowser]

There would be no imbalance. High elves are requested by few vocal fanatics. /s

Tell that to the Horde playerbase that is 50% blood elf. In TBC, most of those blood elves were night elf rerolls. Alliance had at least a 3:1 advantage over Horde then. Blood elves are the only reason the Horde playerbase remains stable. Throw in high elves and you will inevitably see a ton of rerolls over time, or even just new characters choosing the pretty Alliance races rather than the ugly Horde races.

Worst of all, it trivializes the entire existence of the blood elven race. The differences between a blood elf and a high elf are essentially a harsher addiction to magic, different political views, and different eye colors. As much as people get riled up over void elves, at least they are significantly different from blood elves.

[therealbowser]

The point of this thread is specifically to discuss design options for High Elves in the Alliance that will work to contrast them from Blood Elves. And it has some mockups to illustrate the ideas. If you have some good ideas, please feel free to contribute.

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I think this is the REAL reason why we don't have High Elves yet. All the other population and lore explanations were created because of this one thing. However, I don't think that's an issue anymore. There are millions of loyal Horde members. They aren't going to leave their faction in droves when they can play a Blood Elf already. AND as an allied race, new players couldn't play a High Elf either, so they would still pick horde if that's what they want.

No faction population issues to be seen. That's why I think the Silver Covenant High Elves need a valid design that let's them be implemented in game.

You'd be surprised. It wouldn't happen overnight -- just like TBC's faction balance didn't happen on launch day. It took a while, but the results were clear.

Even with void elves, I saw blood elves complaining that paladins weren't available for void elves... because they wanted to faction change their main to Alliance.

Void elves are going to have a very big impact on the factions, but it's not going to be so bad that it will risk destroying faction balance. Alliance will likely have significantly more players this expansion (I'd argue 3:2 on average in Ally's favor, but we'll see). If high elves were made playable -- let alone in addition to void elves -- the results would be devastating. Again, it wouldn't be overnight, but you'd see the difference within a given period of time.

And trust me, players aren't 'loyal' to their factions. They play what they want to play. The only thing that will hold someone back is the cost/effort of transferring/rerolling.

[Traycor]

A reskin for the old Quel'dorei mount model would work well. Something like the Palestrider would be nice.


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Also remove duckfaces from males, it helps them to look less cocky

Hahaha! If they got rid of duckface, it certainly WOULD look like a new race. Everyone would be like, "What are those?!"

[Powerogue]

Captain Jack Sunrunner.

I've got to say these look completely ridiculous.

[Chemical Ellis]

Tell that to the Horde playerbase that is 50% blood elf. In TBC, most of those blood elves were night elf rerolls. Alliance had at least a 3:1 advantage over Horde then. Blood elves are the only reason the Horde playerbase remains stable. Throw in high elves and you will inevitably see a ton of rerolls over time, or even just new characters choosing the pretty Alliance races rather than the ugly Horde races.

So, I don't quite buy this argument, but even if we do suppose this is true - why does this matter?

Grouping is all done through shards these days. The new PvP tech renders server faction balance moot. What are we protecting by ensuring that there's an even 50/50 split in population numbers?

[Traycor]

Captain Jack Sunrunner.

I've got to say these look completely ridiculous.

I actually agree that this one was over the top, but that's the best way to get the wheels turning and juices flowing. To make the Silver Covenant unique, we don't have to turn them into mutated monsters. It just takes a little bit of breaking the mold to design something great.

The other direction I'm thinking is "bird" style hairdos. There is currently one of these for Blood Elves already, so it's an idea that could just be expanded upon.



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So, I don't quite buy this argument, but even if we do suppose this is true - why does this matter?

Grouping is all done through shards these days. The new PvP tech renders server faction balance moot. What are we protecting by ensuring that there's an even 50/50 split in population numbers?

It's a very good point. There really is nothing left to hold back High Elves then. Excellent point.

[Vonazak]

What if Blizzard give us a long questline were Blood Elves can turn their eyes blue as they clean the corruption of his eyes?

Then what you will do?, join the Horde?

[KayRule]

These are great OP. With an expansion throwing back heavily to WC2, this would be a great way to add them and give them a unique look especially with a cool Heritage Armor that look like WC2 Ranger.

[therealbowser]

So, I don't quite buy this argument, but even if we do suppose this is true - why does this matter?

Grouping is all done through shards these days. The new PvP tech renders server faction balance moot. What are we protecting by ensuring that there's an even 50/50 split in population numbers?

It matters pretty dramatically. If you have ever played on a server where there are Horde (or Alliance) are outnumbered, in general this means that the faction with less players has barely anyone to do content on. That one side is a ghost town, and due to this, even more people quit/reroll/faction change causing the issue to regress even further.

It directly impacts battleground queues, and the issue of 'oh, just speak to an npc to swap' doesn't solve that problem. Why should you have to? You should be able to PvP as the faction you enjoy playing, and furthermore, that solution only works as maximum level. Dungeon queues are impacted as well, specifically for the lesser faction.

PvP servers are being removed in a sense, but you can still swap to PvP phases. In these cases, the faction at a population disadvantage will be ganked heavily by higher numbers of players and there's really nothing they can do about it. The concept of being able to raid cities and having a good time fighting back would largely be over too, you'd just have the occasional rogue jacking around. Etc.

And these are just some of the daunting problems that faction imbalance causes. Do you think that Blizzard is going to accept these kinds of problems simply because some people really want to play classic High elves on the good guy faction? I really don't think so, personally.

[Andromedes]

With zandalari trolls or straight back orcs, i dont understand the fear of faction imbalance, + we got our thalassian models, how is there no massive exodus?

[Deleted]

No. The Alliance already have Night elves, and Voidelves, which uses the blood elves skeleton. They wont get pretty much the same skin with the same animations twice. Period. it wont happend.