Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[Evilfish]

The funny thing is you think I'm staying subbed for the chance of High Elves when just some pages/posts back I talk about my sub ending in March.

You want to know what else I really wanted to exist in the game and eventually did? Demonhunters.

And I was only subbed to WoW from late Wrath (3.3.x) to Cata Firelands release. Then no sub ever at all until veryy late tail-end of WoD about a month before they released Demonhunters.

I also never went to the forums and spoke about how Demonhunters should be in the game, just let the numerous threads and community members do it all without my input.

So thinking that Helfers are all staying subbed on the chance High Elves get added is actually a really dumb way to think, because it's clear that isn't required by example of me wanting Demonhunters and not having subbed to WoW for more years than actually being subbed to it.

Nice try to imply that people would be spending money on a "chance". You should curb some of that "I know your behavior/mindset" because it's hilarious when you're completely wrong.

I didn't ask for your life story helfboi, I also didn't mean you specifically, there are still some Helfbois spamming the threads on the official forums with sobby stories about personal disappointment as if anyone gives a crap cause they can't handle the belf model without blue eyes and/or pale skin, or under the Horde banner and with the same wishful thinking, or spiteful I suspect, that the Helfs are just about to be launched. I don't care why they stay subbed, the fact is they have a subscription going and yeah, Blizz does not mind them talking about Helfs. Why would they?

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

Blood Elves

are High Elves

[FlubberPuddy]

I didn't ask for your life story helfboi, I also didn't mean you specifically, there are still some Helfbois spamming the threads on the official forums with sobby stories about personal disappointment as if anyone gives a crap cause they can't handle the belf model without blue eyes and/or pale skin, or under the Horde banner and with the same wishful thinking, or spiteful I suspect, that the Helfs are just about to be launched. I don't care why they stay subbed, the fact is they have a subscription going and yeah, Blizz does not mind them talking about Helfs. Why would they?

Oh so you mean like everything else people request/complain about in the game while also staying subbed and giving Blizzard money?

What makes the High Elf request stand out in this regard then?

It’s equivalent to everyone else who’s complaint about things like BfA itself, Titanforging, LFR, Flying, Allied Races, Class Balance, RNG, etc. What’s the difference? Isn’t this the norm?

[Evilfish]

Oh so you mean like everything else people request/complain about in the game while also staying subbed and giving Blizzard money?

What makes the High Elf request stand out in this regard then?

It’s equivalent to everyone else who’s complaint about things like BfA itself, Titanforging, LFR, Flying, Allied Races, Class Balance, RNG, etc. What’s the difference? Isn’t this the norm?

The difference, the element that makes them stand out from the rest is that the rest are not asking blizzard to clone one of the opposing faction races... again which is not reasonable for neither faction, those that might be looking forward to something new and those who are not looking forward to having a race, maybe the one they favor above the others, being pawned off entirely to the Alliance as opposed to partially like it's already occured.

[Strippling]

No, they're not. Blood elves are. Not high elves.


How hard is it to understand that when you sever all ties with a certain group, you lose the right to call yourself as part of said group?


And that is that group of elves that the high elf community wants, not the blood elves in the Horde.

1) Blood elfs are high elfs. To be correct, they are the MAIN high elven society in the warcraft universe. So, yes, high elfs ARE playable on the Horde. A very small off-shoot of this high elven society is aligned with the alliance.

2) The "Alliance high elfs" severed their ties with the main high elven group... they chose to abandon their own kin for the Alliance. I know you love your alliance high elfs... but sorry kiddo they are the ones who severed ties with the governing high elven group.

3) We know you want alliance high elfs, who are a small off-shoot of the main high elven society (known as the blood elfs). But alliance high elfs would detract from the currently already playable high elfs

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And this is relevant to the discussion because?...

There are HE aligned with the alliance, members of that faction. BE do not enter in that dynamic, they are just members of the horde and that's it.

Relevant because A) they are the same race and what people are effectively asking for is to have a race on the alliance that is already playable on the Horde. On top of that, said race is one of the core Horde races

B) faction distinctions is one of the key aspects of WoW. Just because a handful of people want to play a pretty light skinned elfs on the blue side doesn't mean the game should shift the faction boundary rules in favor of this group. Not only would it further blur faction lines but it'd also be downright unfair to the Horde (a myriad of reasons have been provided as to why, but you seem to ignore them so I won't bother relisting these reasons. If you'd like you can read through previous posts in this thread and others like it).

[FlubberPuddy]

The difference, the element that makes them stand out from the rest is that the rest are not asking blizzard to clone one of the opposing faction races... again which is not reasonable for neither faction, those that might be looking forward to something new and those who are not looking forward to having a race, maybe the one they favor above the others, being pawned off entirely to the Alliance as opposed to partially like it's already occured.

So truly no different than people say talk about titanforging and either continuing to stay subbed hoping Blizzard listens to them or unsubbing and talking about it through fansites hoping Blizzard listens.

Or replace titanforging with any of the other topics I previously mentioned, and you get the same routine/outcome aka the norm. Nothing about High Elves as a topic is different from the other things I mentioned other than "a topic".

I rest my case.

[Strippling]

Oh so you mean like everything else people request/complain about in the game while also staying subbed and giving Blizzard money?

What makes the High Elf request stand out in this regard then?

It’s equivalent to everyone else who’s complaint about things like BfA itself, Titanforging, LFR, Flying, Allied Races, Class Balance, RNG, etc. What’s the difference? Isn’t this the norm?

The difference with high elf requests as opposed to the others you've listed is that high elfs would directly detract from the Horde and the Blood Elfs... hence the strong resistance from many people. The other topics you listed affect Horde and Alliance alike.... in the high elf case you have some Alliance players requesting something that would detract from the Horde as a whole, from Blood Elfs as a whole and from key game aspects as a whole (such as notable distinctions between two warring factions, including the races allied to each faction)

[Evilfish]

So truly no different than people say talk about titanforging and either continuing to stay subbed hoping Blizzard listens to them or unsubbing and talking about it through fansites hoping Blizzard listens.

Or replace titanforging with any of the other topics I previously mentioned, and you get the same routine/outcome aka the norm. Nothing about High Elves as a topic is different from the other things I mentioned other than "a topic".

I rest my case.

Helfer bullshit.

They want people to think them demanding Blizz implement their little fetish is no different than, let's say, a somewhat faulty mechanic. No big deal.

[Garfurion]

This might actually be a good way for Blizz to write the High Elf aesthetic into the Void Elves, now that I think about it. Allow them to start learning the secrets of the void from the Void Elves in a scenario similar to the Night Warrior one with the reward being a couple of High Elf skins with similar customization. Give them only light vocal changes from the Blood Elves currently in game, and adjust the tag to say High Elf when that tone is chosen. As they would be learning the void and would not have mastered it, they likely still wouldn't have nearly the same control as Alleria, but they would not have gone through the horrific ordeal that Umbric and his Void Elves did. At this point, you would have given High Elves a place to be playable, you would have furthered their story and the story of the Silver Covenant, you'd almost certainly have more interactions between Alleria and Veressa, and you almost certainly would have recovered some of that trust back. You'd also have actual High Elves, not just a color to appease people. All I see that would be missing would be High Elf Paladins which might be fun as Voidadins, but it's a small loss IMO for the trade off of High Elves being playable in game.

Void Elves are all mental patients. Being a Void Elf or Alleria means constantly hearing voices in your head and probably going insane. Why would anyone willingly want to undergo such a transformation?

I also doubt the Silver Covenant will go Void as long as Vereesa is alive. There is no point in having 2 Windrunner sisters with Void powers.

Blood Elf paladins already broke existing lore when they were introduced in TBC so there really is no lore supporting High Elf paladins at the moment.

[Aldo Hawk]

@Strippling You are making up problems where there aren't, an alliance HE is faction identity too.

Races by itselves aren't faction identity.

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Helfer bullshit.

They want people to think them demanding Blizz implement their little fetish is no different than, let's say, a somewhat faulty mechanic. No big deal.

Calm down bad b0i.

[Strippling]

@Strippling You are making up problems where there aren't, an alliance HE is faction identity too.

Races by itselves aren't faction identity.

Races make up a big part of faction identity. The very first thing you experience when "starting" this game is choose your faction and your race in said faction. It's actually a very integral aspect of the game. Stop trivializing it.

Everything about an Alliance high elf would detract from the Horde and the uniqueness of Blood Elfs. You clearly don't care about the negative implications they would cause, because you just want "muh alliance high elfs". Sorry kiddo, if you want to play a light skinned elf the Horde is waiting for you.

[Ielenia]

1) Blood elfs are high elfs. To be correct, they are the MAIN high elven society in the warcraft universe. So, yes, high elfs ARE playable on the Horde. A very small off-shoot of this high elven society is aligned with the alliance.

No, they're not. Blood elves are. High elves are not. Blood elves completely forsake the right to be considered "high elves" when they re-branded themselves as "blood elves" and kicked out all of those who refused to follow Kael'Thas' teachings

2) The "Alliance high elfs" severed their ties with the main high elven group... they chose to abandon their own kin for the Alliance. I know you love your alliance high elfs... but sorry kiddo they are the ones who severed ties with the governing high elven group.

Actually, you're objectively wrong, here. It wasn't the high elves who severed ties with the blood elves. The blood elves did. Because they did not want to follow Kael'Thas' teachings, the blood elves exiled the high elves and booted them out of Silvermoon.

3) We know you want alliance high elfs, who are a small off-shoot of the main high elven society (known as the blood elfs). But alliance high elfs would detract from the currently already playable high elfs

Luckily, high elves aren't playable, so no issue there.

[Aldo Hawk]

Races make up a big part of faction identity. The very first thing you experience when "starting" this game is choose your faction and your race in said faction. It's actually a very integral aspect of the game. Stop trivializing it.

Everything about an Alliance high elf would detract from the Horde and the uniqueness of Blood Elfs. You clearly don't care about the negative implications they would cause, because you just want "muh alliance high elfs". Sorry kiddo, if you want to play a light skinned elf the Horde is waiting for you.

Races are part of faction identity, just not all of it.

And even giving it the importance you make it up to have it just supports the HE petition further by giving relevance to faction identity through races. HE are an identity that you can find within the Alliance and that makes them fit into the identity criteria.

HE are an Alliance race as much as those who call themselves BE are a Horde race. You can't be serious if you say that people are asking for something that they can already play, it's an stupid statement, people ask for HE because they can't play one.

Denying this for so long is idiotic, seriously.

[Ielenia]

And again, the pro High Elf community does not have a veto on defining what a High Elf is especially considering the way they define it, as excluding Blood Elves, is incorrect. We have multiple Blizzard sources confirming that Blood Elves are High Elves. If you want to specify a specific group of High Elves, you can use a qualifying adjective such as 'Alliance', 'Dalaran' or 'Silver Covenant'. But attempting to define that group as High Elves, and then defining Blood Elves as outside that group, is exactly the sort of problem allowing playable Alliance High Elves cause. Blood Elves are the heirs and successors to the High Elf narrative, which they carry forward within the storyline.

Blood elves call themselves blood elves so they're blood elves. High elves call themselves high elves so they're high elves. To insist that saying "high elves" encompass the blood elves as well in this discussion is simply wrong. Especially when you consider that blood elves actively worked to distance themselves from "high elves".

Blood Elves can no more cut off their racial relationship with High Elves than you or I can cut off our race relationship with Humanity.

In Azeroth you can, and the blood elves did. They re-branded themselves and exiles those who didn't.

Blood Elves ARE High Elves on every single level.

No, they're not. They now have differences in their cultures. They also foster a severe distrust at best, and intense hatred at worst, between each other.

As stated before I reject the right of pro Alliance High Elf zealots to redefine the term High Elf as they see fit.

It's not "as they see fit", it's how the game describes them. Blood elves are called blood elves in the game, not high elves anymore. When you read or hear the name "blood elf" you think of the elves in the Horde, and when you hear or read the name "high elf" you think of the elves in the Alliance. To claim you don't is just a lie. Either lying to us, or to yourself.

And I explained why I did so, 'reductio ad absurdum', because attempting to argue that Void Elves and Blood Elves are identical when viewed at a certain distance leads to an extreme that at a great enough distance, you cannot easily tell apart a Gnome or a Draenei.

No, it doesn't. It's only your absurd attempt at ridicule, that's blowing up in your face. One of the arguments of those against the high elf race for the Alliance goes basically like this: "you just want the Horde blood elf model!" And that raises the very important question of: why are those same people raising pitchforks against the void elves, since they literally are the blood elf model? Void elves are literally indistinguishable from blood elves before you figure out their faction allegiance through the color of their names, health bar, or outline.

Here's a further example as to why this is dumb. If a Shih tzu and a chihuahua are sitting side by side but you are so far away that all you can see is that they are some form of dog, all you can argue is that they are both dogs. You can't argue they are both chihuahuas because from your perspective you can't tell them apart.

The only "dumb" thing here is your example there, because it lacks one thing you continue to ignore: color of name, outline, and/or health bar. This is a key point in my argument: you cannot distinguish the difference between a void elf and a blood elf before you distinguish their faction allegiance through the color of their name, outline, and/or health bar.

You are the one attempting to argue that a Void Elf in armour is equal to a Blood Elf in armour and that this somehow demolishes the faction wall so you are the one pushing this particular argument. To achieve this result, you disregard theme, aesthetics, culture and lore despite how I have consistently mentioned that these are important factors and focus solely on the model. Had the model been what this debate was about, Void Elves would have been a pro High Elf complete victory. Instead you have treated it as a 'slap in the face' and anti high elfers have treated it as a compromise we can live with.

I'm sorry, but I'm not the one who keeps repeating "muh faction identity" and "you just want muh blood elf model" in high elf discussions.

Void Elves do not break the faction wall.

They do.

They are not Blood/High Elves.

They are literally blood elves.

The identity of the Horde and the integrity of the Blood Elves are preserved.

And would remain unaltered even if high elves were to join the Alliance as a playable race.

Of course they are. That's why I refer to them separately as gameplay and lore rather than coining a portmanteau like gamlor or lorplay. But Gameplay and Lore shape each other, they aren't put in boxes that never interact. I have given you several examples where this has happened. You simply restate that that isn't the case.

Except they don't interact. "Core races" and "allied races" aren't lore terms, despite how much you try to tout that idea. And the proof of that is how you have been unable to give a lore distinction between the two.

Again back to the definition of Alliance High Elf, which is wrong how? My definition comes straight from the Game Director. He sort of outranks you and your pals.

Blood elves forsake the name 'high elf' when they re-branded themselves, and when they exiled and cut off all relationships with the ones who did not follow.

Then Germany is the wrong example again. What you want is Cuba. 100% of Cuban territory under Communist rule. Vast majority of Cubans under Communist rule. Small emigre community in Florida pissed that their country is in the wrong camp.

So you're saying Cuba is neutral?

No, the Germany example is perfect, because the crux of your argument is that you're claiming that a race that is 100% divided between two factions is somehow "neutral", since you constantly repeat that adding high elves as a playable race for the Alliance would make the elves "neutral".

Not really. A core race is so intrinsic to the faction you can play them from the get go whereas Allied races have to be earned in game. Their intrinsic nature is a by-product of their lore standing with the faction.

Again, you're using gameplay, not lore. It doesn't matter if a race joins right at the beginning of an expansion, or in the middle of it. Time, in the lore, is not measured in "expansions". Or do you think that, back when Garrosh was still the Horde's warchief, he woke up on the day their naval fleet ran aground in Pandaria, he flipped the page on his calendar, and said: "Hmm... we've entered the era of the Mists of Pandaria."

You are attempting to argue an absolute in a video game and to do so, in your original answer, you left video games altogether and went to a book. It was simply happy chance that that particular moment had been adapted into a video game in the same genre as WoW, allowing me an actual point of comparison.

Please stop avoiding the point, here. The questions given were about lore. No gameplay whatsoever. And on both times you simply talked about gameplay.

[LilSaihah]

So we've had some headway into that area. Whether it continues or not will be based on future AR. But it's ridiculous to say "you don't really get to play as dissidents" because in reality Void Elves are a dissident group of Blood Elves.

They're less of a dissident group and more of an entirely separate species. If you go into the Void Elf fantasy thinking you're playing a High Elf, you're gonna have a bad time. You're a celestial abomination and you should play a celestial abomination.

[Varx]

Simply put, you cant just have helves with tattoos and different hair as there would be no excuse as to why belves cant do the samething.

This is why every AR so far have very distinct physical differences that the parent race can't just copy by painting their skin. It is blizzard's answer to sub races and you cant be a sub race if you're exactly the same.

Fine ill admit kt humans are the same Biological but the playable kt are strictly the fat ones and opt out the accented normal ones. The fatness even have lore justification and weren't added just cuz.

That is the main argument against helves. Even the horde counterpart would have physical differences from the core race if they went the undead nelf route, yet helves would be physically the same. What is so hard to understand from this.

If this wasn't an issue then worgen would be able to fight in their human form and kt would have regular human options too.

[Garfurion]

Races make up a big part of faction identity. The very first thing you experience when "starting" this game is choose your faction and your race in said faction.

Pandaren disagree with you.

Everything about an Alliance high elf would detract from the Horde and the uniqueness of Blood Elfs.

I think you forget that the Alliance lost a lot of unique features to the Horde when Blood Elves were added to the Horde in TBC. It was the most faction blurring action of Blizzard to date but apparently if it benefits the Horde you don't care about that.

Blood Elf Paladins are direct copies of Human Paladins. The Blood Elf Paladin mount is/was a recolor of the Human and Dwarf Paladin mounts (making them no longer unique). Also, with the way the Blood Elf Paladins were implemented the Horde got a light oriented race which until that time was exclusive to the Alliance. Metzen himself has said that giving Blood Elves paladins broke the existing lore.

The Alliance may have gotten Shaman in return, but they didn't get a shamanic race like the Orcs, Trolls or Tauren. Draenei are a Light oriented race with Vindicators (aka Paladins) as their token class. The most notable Alliance shaman is not even from a playable Alliance race but a Broken (Nobundo).

Until TBC, 75% of the Alliance races had a human colored skin-tone. In Classic the Alliance was basically defined as tall, small and tiny humans plus elves. Blood/High Elf models, although based on earlier lore, are essentially mix of these originally classic WoW Alliance core-race features and as such giving them to the Horde reduced faction uniqueness at the expense of the Alliance.

It's also worth noting that High Elf NPCs in vanilla were already friendly/allied to the Alliance while Blood Elves were hostile to both Horde and Alliance.

I can understand that Blizzard prefers different looking races in Horde and Alliance and that the art department prefers designing "new" races, but if they really cared about faction identity and uniqueness they would have designed a new "pretty" race for the Horde in TBC instead giving them Blood Elves.

Arguing that Alliance High Elves should not become playable because they would blur faction identity is therefore hypocritical since Blood Elves blurred those faction lines already when introduced in TBC.

I wonder what people would have said if Blizzard had made upright Mag'har Orcs an Alliance playable race, thereby denying the upright pose to the Horde.

[Obelisk Kai]

Blood elves call themselves blood elves so they're blood elves. High elves call themselves high elves so they're high elves. To insist that saying "high elves" encompass the blood elves as well in this discussion is simply wrong. Especially when you consider that blood elves actively worked to distance themselves from "high elves".

Blood Elves are High Elves and we have word of god confirming this on multiple occasions. Even the character creator racial info box in game starts off by describing them as High Elves. They are the inheritors of the High Elven story and legacy. Alliance High Elves are also High Elves, but they are not a distinct group. Blood Elves have not sought to distance themselves from who they are. During the Burning Crusade, without the Sunwell, they might have been on the trajectory to becoming something different. But with the Sunwell's restoration and the increasing emphasis of the light within their society, they conform more strongly to the High Elf trope now than they have in the past.

In Azeroth you can, and the blood elves did. They re-branded themselves and exiles those who didn't.

So in Azeroth the Defias Brotherhood aren't Human because they don't follow the King of Stormwind?

In Azeroth the Witherbark aren't Trolls because they are outside the Darkspear Tribe?

In Azeroth the Grimtotem Tribe aren't Tauren because they were kicked out of the Horde?

The Blood Elves rebranded themselves. That is all they did. It did not mean they stopped being High Elves.

No, they're not. They now have differences in their cultures. They also foster a severe distrust at best, and intense hatred at worst, between each other.

There are no differences in culture. They use thalassian architecture when they can. They style their leader Ranger General. They conduct pilgrimages to the Sunwell. They title their hunters as Rangers and their mages as Magisters. As for the mutual hatred, so what? Attitude is not a feature of biology.

It's not "as they see fit", it's how the game describes them. Blood elves are called blood elves in the game, not high elves anymore. When you read or hear the name "blood elf" you think of the elves in the Horde, and when you hear or read the name "high elf" you think of the elves in the Alliance. To claim you don't is just a lie. Either lying to us, or to yourself.

Blood Elves have been declared to be High Elves on several occasions. It is a useful shorthand to refer to the vast majority of thalassian elves as Blood Elves and the tiny group of dalaran exiles as High Elves. However, when I do so, it is in no way prejudicing the fact that Blood Elves are in fact High Elves and is merely a reflection of the political state of play. Within this particular debate, specifying that the Alliance High Elves are Alliance High Elves is done because the pro High Elf community seeks to define a High Elf exclusively as one of those Dalaran exiles and thus define a Blood Elf as not a High Elf. This is incorrect and thus on this particular point, precision is warranted.

No, it doesn't. It's only your absurd attempt at ridicule, that's blowing up in your face. One of the arguments of those against the high elf race for the Alliance goes basically like this: "you just want the Horde blood elf model!" And that raises the very important question of: why are those same people raising pitchforks against the void elves, since they literally are the blood elf model? Void elves are literally indistinguishable from blood elves before you figure out their faction allegiance through the color of their names, health bar, or outline.

Well you are right the counter-point is an attempt at ridicule, because your basic point remains ridiculous. That is why ridicule is best for, to mock the ridiculous.
As for your point about the Blood Elf model, that was from an argument from before Blizzcon 2017 when Void Elves were revealed and it is quaint you are bringing it up. Prior to the revelation of Void Elves, people referring to the Blood Elf model assumed it would be the entire package. Model, skin tones, hair colours, lore, aesthetics, theme. You know, all the important stuff. Model therefore referred to everything and the end result was, of course, an Alliance High Elf.

Void Elves were just the model. It was as if you badly wanted the same toy another child had, despite having plenty of toys yourself, and when you finally got it everything but the basic frame had been stripped out and replaced with things that made it different. That is why Void Elves are a compromise, you got the model we'd have preferred to have kept Horde exclusive and in return the Horde keeps everything that makes a High Elf a High Elf in the from of a Blood Elf.

You seem to be arguing that we should be seriously angry over this despite the fact that Void Elves did not break our red lines and that we see them as the compromise they were intended to be. I know you found them to be a slap in the face but anything short of getting 100% percent of what you wanted was going to be a failure. Would I have preferred to have kept even the basic model Horde exclusive? Yep, but that's part of the compromise. We had to give something. We can tolerate that.

The only "dumb" thing here is your example there, because it lacks one thing you continue to ignore: color of name, outline, and/or health bar. This is a key point in my argument: you cannot distinguish the difference between a void elf and a blood elf before you distinguish their faction allegiance through the color of their name, outline, and/or health bar.

Look this argument is patently stupid and I've been trying to let you down gently for the past week on it but you keep coming back to it. I find it intellectually dishonest as if being unable to tell the two apart in heavy armor was in any way important you could clothe a Void Elf in a full body transmog and declare victory. You don't. You know there is more to it than the basic rig.

I'm sorry, but I'm not the one who keeps repeating "muh faction identity" and "you just want muh blood elf model" in high elf discussions.

Maybe if you started talking about your faction identity more perhaps you'd learn to love the Alliance you have rather than the fantasy perfect Alliance you've created in your head with Alliance High Elves. Your perennial dissatisfaction is nobody's problem but yours.

They do.

Yeah. Nobody really believes that.

Firstly we can go back to the April 26th 2018 Q and A with the Game Director. When asked why they introduced Void Elves rather than Alliance High Elves, he said they wanted to give the Alliance something like a Blood Elf to the Alliance with it's own unique flavor. In the same answer he defined Blood Elves AS High Elves and said giving Alliance High Elves to the Alliance would unacceptably blur the lines between the factions. So within the space of a minute of a half he defined Alliance High Elves as a threat to the faction wall and defined Void Elves as their own thing and by implication, they weren't a threat to the faction wall.

So to say 'They do' when they don't is you pushing a subjective opinion in the service of your biased agenda of playable Alliance High Elves. Because if Void Elves broke the faction barrier as you say they did, then nobody should have a problem with Alliance High Elves either. That is a bullshit stance, as is your next pearl of wisdom.

They are literally blood elves.

No, they are not. Theywere Blood/High Elves. They then were subjected to a transformative amount of void energy, a process that was interrupted before it's completion and resulted in the creation of a new race of Void Elves. Void Elves have different coloured eyes, radically different skin tones and hair colours, some have tentacles growing out of their heads and all have some ability to manipulate the void, as expressed in their entropic embrace and spatial rift racials.

So to say they are literally Blood Elves is a lie. That was their past state. Their current state is as the racially distinct Void Elves.

Tnd would remain unaltered even if high elves were to join the Alliance as a playable race.

As you've proven, you define 'High Elf's as exclusionary of the Blood Elves. Alliance High Elves if playable would therefore immediately define themselves as the true High Elves, with Horde Blood Elves in opposition. Horde Blood Elves would no longer be the heirs of the High Elf narrative and legacy. Blood Elven narrative integrity immediately undermined.

The High Elven theme, which is now a part of the Horde identity, would be open to the Alliance. Something unique to the Horde is now shared, diminishing it. The identity of the Horde is damaged.

So no, it would not remain unaltered. The perception of both the race and the faction would be altered and altered in a way that is antithetical to how they should be portrayed. You alone do not have the right to say there would be no damage. Not only because you are wrong but because, as is so often the case, you are a fan with an agenda and you will do or say anything to further that agenda regardless of the impact on anyone else who plays or on the integrity of the game itself.

Except they don't interact. "Core races" and "allied races" aren't lore terms, despite how much you try to tout that idea. And the proof of that is how you have been unable to give a lore distinction between the two.

If you don't accept my definition that's fine but I am not going to limit my definition.

Blood elves forsake the name 'high elf' when they re-branded themselves, and when they exiled and cut off all relationships with the ones who did not follow.

The change in name does not mean they stopped being High Elf. It merely means they changed their name.

So you're saying Cuba is neutral?

No, the Germany example is perfect, because the crux of your argument is that you're claiming that a race that is 100% divided between two factions is somehow "neutral", since you constantly repeat that adding high elves as a playable race for the Alliance would make the elves "neutral".

Frankly you are beginning to confuse me as to whether we are talking about Pandaren or Thalassian Elves on any given point.

The real world analogue of thalassian elves is Cuba as discussed previously.

There is no real world analogue for the Pandaren. Pandaren are a neutral race, but small groups of them join the Alliance and Horde.

Pandaren are a thematically, culturally and biologically identical group available to both factions without differentiation between them. This has proven to be a mistake, as discussed previously.

Alliance High Elves as an option are thematically, culturally and biologically identical to already playable Blood Elves. Allowing them to be played on the Alliance would be the same mistake as Pandaren yet on a vastly grander scale, as while Pandaren were introduced as neutral to both sides at the same time, Blood Elves have been Horde for twelve years.

Again, you're using gameplay, not lore. It doesn't matter if a race joins right at the beginning of an expansion, or in the middle of it. Time, in the lore, is not measured in "expansions". Or do you think that, back when Garrosh was still the Horde's warchief, he woke up on the day their naval fleet ran aground in Pandaria, he flipped the page on his calendar, and said: "Hmm... we've entered the era of the Mists of Pandaria."

I have been explicit that my definition of Core race is reflective of both gameplay and lore. You insist I produce a purely lore based definition. At this point I don't get why you keep trying beyond thinking you've somehow 'got' me. To save myself the bother, I will respond to further requests by copying and pasting my definition. You are free to keep asking.

"A core race is so intrinsic to the faction you can play them from the get go whereas Allied races have to be earned in game. Their intrinsic nature is a by-product of their lore standing with the faction."

Please stop avoiding the point, here. The questions given were about lore. No gameplay whatsoever. And on both times you simply talked about gameplay.

The question revolved around gameplay and lore and how they are linked. You are attempting to isolate them to prove a point. I have actually forgotten what the point you were attempting to prove was, it might have been the core race thing but this has developed along a quite useless tangent so it could have been anything.

Regardless, gameplay and lore are linked and inform each other and cannot be separated into neat little boxes that never interact.

[RangerDaz]

Do you really want 6 elf races in this game, SIX!.

I would love it actually, if they added high elves and sanlayn

[elbleuet]

Void elves are basically void blood elves.

There are also high elves, and blood elves friendly to the Alliance who too, follow the path of Alleria Windrunner.

- - - Updated - - -

No, they are not. Theywere Blood/High Elves. They then were subjected to a transformative amount of void energy, a process that was interrupted before it's completion and resulted in the creation of a new race of Void Elves. Void Elves have different coloured eyes, radically different skin tones and hair colours

Is that what defines a race to you ? Are you serious ?