Why Void Elfs were needed

[Nuba]

So this is a topic I wanted to address that players here on mmo-champion are completely missing the point.

Note that everything I am going to state here is based on US servers alone, and has been a blatant issue since Legion started.

Another note: by "clueless" I mean to say players that aren't so deeply dove into WoW's mechanics as non-clueless players.

if you don't wish to read arguments based on the history of PvP and player faction influx, skip to the next red bold text.

During the entire era of TBC horde completely dominated population, as in Horde racials were completely over the top when compared to the bad alliance racials, that led to a gigantic imbalance towards horde side, which heavily favored it in random BGs and whatnot - everyone wanted to be horde.

This mostly happened not only because the overall racials were superior, but because Undead racial itself was completely overpowered (see, back in TBC if your race could be Undead, you would play undead, there was no middle term to it, i'll get back to this later, just save the (*)), and while most people might argue that "but new players don't care about racials", and I would say you're completely right, the good players always did and so because of this good players always massively flow towards the better racial and the weak players always end up following (just look at (right now) the population of Tichondrius skyrocketing as top PvP players decided to all go horde and transfer to tich, which caused a gigantic influx of player transfer to that server).

Now, during WOTLK Blizzard had to do something about this, as mostly everyone was playing horde and there was basically nobody playing alliance at all besides roleplayers, so Blizzard went on and made Humans (a friendly looking alliance race) completely overpowered while nerfing Undead slightly: A massiver influx of players started to happen during this time from Horde to Alliance, which made Alliance servers overpopulate and a big number of players follow the influx into those servers. If I remember correctly, back then everyone went to Alliance and a lot of top players transfered to Kel'Thuzad server(*).

So time went on and Alliance started to dominate BGs with the passing of years, until Legion added Relentless and nerfed Humans badly, which caused every one of the top players to switch back to horde(*).

And finally we're on today's days: horde wins 65 to 70% of BGs with the exception of AV and Isle, mostly because there is a big number of alliance players who are simply new to wow and you often see a much bigger number of clueless people doing random BGs on alliance than on horde, in the meantime Alliance BG queues are often between 1 and 2 minutes, while horde BG queues are between 10 and 20 minutes.

This obviously means there are more horde players that have a clue than alliance players, despite there being about an equal number of players on the total numbers. I don't know if saying this will hurt someone, but it is a fact: Players that PvP tend to have a clue about how the game works while players that don't PvP, don't have a clue.

Now I know with the separated ratings for glad/hero on both alliance and horde there will always be good players on both sides, as I saw during Legion some players faction changed back to alliance in order to have an easier time obtaining their titles, but in general horde completely dominates the scene right now because:

• Horde racials are currently straight up better than alliance ones.
• Horde has Blood Elfs, which happens to have the best racial in the game, and even if it didn't have the best racial, it would still be highly played just because of the looks, even if just by clueless players.

As a generic conclusion, in order to fix faction intelectual-imbalance caused by this, Blizzard needs to both nerf Horde racials (specifically orc and blood elf) as well as buff a friendly-looking race on alliance side so that it becomes obviously better than any other horde racial in the game.

So here begins the explanation on why High Elves wouldn't fix this issue as good as Void Elfs might.

High Elves, while being cool, they're already playable as Blood Elves, and despite there existing a previous hype for High Elves, it wouldn't be as popular as a newly themed, undiscovered, sub-race as Void Elfs.

You see, new things are often cooler than old things when it comes to video games, so there are likely going to be more people rerolling Void Elfs than there would be High Elves, because people who wanted High Elves are going Void Elves regardless, and people who want new edgy stuff will go Void Elf because it is both new and edgy.

Void Elfs are also the new cool popstar Alliance race(as would high elves), so it will, just by itself, cause an influx of players into Alliance, we all know this and this is a fact that can't and won't be denied.

Basically, Void Elfs will not only bring as many people into the race as High Elves would, but also bring more people into the race as it is a "new and cool" stuff added to the game rather than just an old-already-known-by-everyone race as High Elves.

With PvP talents changing, Orcs won't be as dominant in PvP anymore, as I highly believe that Blizzard won't allow Orcs to dominate another expansion in PvP, they'll change PvP talents and probably rework Relentless.

Meanwhile, I am pretty sure Blizzard will try to fix the intelectual-imbalance by nerfing Blood Elfs racial to the ground. And this will incline players into leaving Blood Elf, giving room for those players to choose what else they want to play, and Void Elfs are quite the appealing option.

This is just a guess, but since Void Elfs activated Racial ability is a mage blink, I would bet that the passive could be offensive enough for it to dominate other racials.

Surely many players on this specific forum will disagree with everything posted here, but I really wanted to post this somewhere so hope you enjoyed the read, also:

[Deleted]

Yeah i agree with your post, but there's a lot of people playing BE.
If Blizzard nerf their racial to the ground, people will riots or worse unsub

[Mister Cheese]

Yeah i agree with your post, but there's a lot of people playing BE.
If Blizzard nerf their racial to the ground, people will riots or worse unsub

They already are I believe. Something about having an aoe silence as a racial being way too strong.

[Lunaprika]

Just remove Arcane Torrent's silence already, and let it be an interrupt.

[Drewbacca]

First of all, only a small percentage of the player base does PvP. A vast majority of the players don’t even look at racials when deciding what to play. The PvP considerations may play a small part in faction imbalance, but I’d wager that it’s much smaller than the population of these forums would estimate. I don’t think Blizzard thinks too much about racials and faction balance when thinking about new Allied Races.

[niil945]

Just remove Arcane Torrent's silence already, and let it be an interrupt.

My guess is they consider an AoE interrupt to be too powerful. We'll have to wait and see til we see the result. We know it's going to be nerfed. The question is how much.

[Keihndeth]

The PvP imbalance is not the reason they added Void Elves. In WoD you forget that Alliance dominated PvP. Why? Because of racials. All the serious PvPers rolled Humans.

In regards to Void Elfs, I made this video. I believe they are probably the Sunreavers and I think it makes High Elves even more likely. Enjoy.



I can't wait 'til Friendlyimmo and the boys come in haha. I think they skulk around the forums just looking for Void Elf and High Elf discussion threads to flame.

[Mirishka]

Gotta love the 'I see a lot of topics talking about this, so Imma make a NEW topic explaining it!' logic around here.

[Shibito]

They added void elves cause the alliance fanboys been whining and crying and bitching since tbc, they didnt wanna give you high elves so you got void elves, now that isnt good enough either.

[Polybius]

They added void elves cause the alliance fanboys been whining and crying and bitching since tbc, they didnt wanna give you high elves so you got void elves, now that isnt good enough either.

Of course it's not. Void Elves are pretty much a last minute iteration with no lore other than Alleria. Why would anyone agree with its current form being good enough?

[Seramore]

The PvP imbalance is not the reason they added Void Elves. In WoD you forget that Alliance dominated PvP. Why? Because of racials. All the serious PvPers rolled Humans.

In regards to Void Elfs, I made this video. I believe they are probably the Sunreavers and I think it makes High Elves even more likely. Enjoy.



I can't wait 'til Friendlyimmo and the boys come in haha. I think they skulk around the forums just looking for Void Elf and High Elf discussion threads to flame.

I'm not watching your sixteen minute video but lore wise they make sense, design wise I have no idea why Blizzard went with it as opposed to just making High Elves for Alliance. Either way, Blizzard themselves has clarified that Void Elves are Blood Elves who were booted out of Sunwell and taken in by Alleria.

[ello]

Of course it's not. Void Elves are pretty much a last minute iteration with no lore other than Alleria. Why would anyone agree with its current form being good enough?

They do have lore, they share it with Blood Elves.The void mutation will be explained in 7.3.5 and they'll have one of the most active racial leaders going forward.

they probably have more lore than belves by 9.0 tbh

[Blamblam41]

I'm not watching your sixteen minute video but lore wise they make sense, design wise I have no idea why Blizzard went with it as opposed to just making High Elves for Alliance. Either way, Blizzard themselves has clarified that Void Elves are Blood Elves who were booted out of Sunwell and taken in by Alleria.

"Lore wise they make sense"

About as much sense as Alleria being able to do what takes Disciplined Priests literally years to master with that extra thicc plot armor.

- - - Updated - - -

They do have lore, they share it with Blood Elves.The void mutation will be explained in 7.3.5 and they'll have one of the most active racial leaders going forward.

they probably have more lore than belves by 9.0 tbh

"They share lore with the blood elves" is a really interesting lore standpoint for an -Alliance- race.

Traitors of traitors of traitors are suuuuper interesting. *rolls eyes*

[Deleted]

They added void elves cause the alliance fanboys been whining and crying and bitching since tbc, they didnt wanna give you high elves so you got void elves, now that isnt good enough either.

They added Void Elves because they wanted to do "something new and cool". That's literally what Blizzard devs told. I guess they also tried to kill two birds with one stone and please High Elf folk with these "new and cool" elves. Because obviously anyone would prefer an edgy race born from the fantasies of a 12-years old emo teen over vanilla elves.

[Marrilaife]

I don't know that much from a pvp standpoint except "human racial was op in WOD pvp", but from pve standpoint top guilds always converged on horde, causing their fans, followers and mimics pick horde too, so we have a mythic raider ratio atm of something like 70:30 in favour of horde, and the higher in ranks you go, the less alliance guilds you see. The fotm racial changed across times (orc > troll > blood elf / goblin recently), but the only race that had "good pve racial" and was accessible on the alliance ever was MOP panda double food buff, but the potency of this racial is dependent on the state of consumables in specific expansions, and it was accessible to horde too.

Same problem with m+ ladder and dominant blood elves. I expect nerfing aoe stuns (like dh stun being changed to disorient) is gonna make the new highmountain racial (stun charge) more in demand as stuns from class abilities are less potent and less common.

I'm not sure if any change now can help, but during Legion I noticed as the raiding population shrank, alliance was depopulating much faster than horde, which was converging on the 4-5 megaservers and still going strong in the EU region I'm playing. No idea if it's any different in the US, feel free to chip in if you know how it is across the pond. But in EU it wasn't an uncommon sight to see an alliance player on wowprogress look for a guild and say he only wants horde guilds to escape his low pop alliance server with no perspectives, and of course horde players would say "alliance guilds I have no interest in".

While Bllizzard took some measures to stop alliance depopulation after nerfing human racial in pvp by saying titles for arena / rbg are gonna be faction split, there is no help so far for pve communities, and obviously a strict stance against letting players of opposite factions group together in pve content (or any content at all, but in pve it would at least be less offensive). At the moment there is literally 1 server on EU English with surviving and healthy Alliance mythic raiding community - Ravencrest. Servers like Silvermoon, Sylvanas or Frostmane that used to be bastions of Alliance raiding have extremely diminished number of successful guilds in comparison to the days long gone. Everything is slowly going towards "horde or die" and I'm not sure if void elves can do anything to stop the trend. Even if racials were removed now (which they won't, as Blizzard is strongly against it), once a faction has superior numbers of noticeable disparity, people are gonna flock to the dominating faction - this is true both in server populations, and in the bigger picture region wide.

Designing complete garbo racials like lightforged Draenei doesn't help the cause. I'm a Draenei fan and I liked the Lightforged appearances from the moment I saw them on the Vindicaar, but I find myself hard pressed to even consider them as an alt because of the clunky idea behind their racials, I'd take my small primary stat buff of a normal Draenei over a targeted, delayed blast that half the time won't land because the target will be moved or die before it fires. And let's be honest, Blizzard won't allow it to scale out of control because of pvp issues ("he stunned me and 1 shot me with racial"), so it's gonna be pathetic like touch of the grave, but half the time won't even land. This is nearly as stupid as quaking palm (don't think anyone ever thinks that was a good racial, melee range single target incapacitate that breaks on damage), but at least pandas get the double food buff.

[Magnagarde]

Blizzard wanted to do Alliance players a favour, but is completely ignorant and oblivious of the fact that they did not and actually did a disfavour. As a result of this, the Horde recieved amazing additions because Blizzard felt like void elves were a huge addition to the game. It is safe to say that void elves will be one of the most disliked races in the game. Horde won't care about them and the Alliance will be bitter whenever they see one.

There will be a lot of people that will love playing as one, but that is mainly because they like Alliance high elves and will take whatever they can get, although these players too would probably love to have proper high elves. Many people wanted a non-Fallout series version of high elves and they got something worse in return.

I'll be making a zandalari troll and a dark iron dwarf. The rest is either underwhelming, doesn't deserve to be a playable race or doesn't make much sense to have in the first place.

[Nuba]

I don't know that much from a pvp standpoint except "human racial was op in WOD pvp", but from pve standpoint top guilds always converged on horde, causing their fans, followers and mimics pick horde too, so we have a mythic raider ratio atm of something like 70:30 in favour of horde, and the higher in ranks you go, the less alliance guilds you see. The fotm racial changed across times (orc > troll > blood elf / goblin recently), but the only race that had "good pve racial" and was accessible on the alliance ever was MOP panda double food buff, but the potency of this racial is dependent on the state of consumables in specific expansions, and it was accessible to horde too.

Same problem with m+ ladder and dominant blood elves. I expect nerfing aoe stuns (like dh stun being changed to disorient) is gonna make the new highmountain racial (stun charge) more in demand as stuns from class abilities are less potent and less common.

I'm not sure if any change now can help, but during Legion I noticed as the raiding population shrank, alliance was depopulating much faster than horde, which was converging on the 4-5 megaservers and still going strong in the EU region I'm playing. No idea if it's any different in the US, feel free to chip in if you know how it is across the pond. But in EU it wasn't an uncommon sight to see an alliance player on wowprogress look for a guild and say he only wants horde guilds to escape his low pop alliance server with no perspectives, and of course horde players would say "alliance guilds I have no interest in".

While Bllizzard took some measures to stop alliance depopulation after nerfing human racial in pvp by saying titles for arena / rbg are gonna be faction split, there is no help so far for pve communities, and obviously a strict stance against letting players of opposite factions group together in pve content (or any content at all, but in pve it would at least be less offensive). At the moment there is literally 1 server on EU English with surviving and healthy Alliance mythic raiding community - Ravencrest. Servers like Silvermoon, Sylvanas or Frostmane that used to be bastions of Alliance raiding have extremely diminished number of successful guilds in comparison to the days long gone. Everything is slowly going towards "horde or die" and I'm not sure if void elves can do anything to stop the trend. Even if racials were removed now (which they won't, as Blizzard is strongly against it), once a faction has superior numbers of noticeable disparity, people are gonna flock to the dominating faction - this is true both in server populations, and in the bigger picture region wide.

Designing complete garbo racials like lightforged Draenei doesn't help the cause. I'm a Draenei fan and I liked the Lightforged appearances from the moment I saw them on the Vindicaar, but I find myself hard pressed to even consider them as an alt because of the clunky idea behind their racials, I'd take my small primary stat buff of a normal Draenei over a targeted, delayed blast that half the time won't land because the target will be moved or die before it fires. And let's be honest, Blizzard won't allow it to scale out of control because of pvp issues ("he stunned me and 1 shot me with racial"), so it's gonna be pathetic like touch of the grave, but half the time won't even land. This is nearly as stupid as quaking palm (don't think anyone ever thinks that was a good racial, melee range single target incapacitate that breaks on damage), but at least pandas get the double food buff.

thanks for a reply that makes sense.

I often see the things through the eyes of a PvPer but as you pointed out, horde racials are also much better than alliance ones in PvE, which causes "players with a clue" to be playing horde while clueless players are often seen on alliance. We obviously see clueless players on horde too, but on alliance its more common as players that understand the game basically flow towards horde for better racials.

[toychristopher]

They really need to get rid of combat racials. They obviously can't ever be balanced and what race you choose should be based on what you like the look of the most, not a 2 minute cooldown for PVP.

[Mirishka]

They really need to get rid of combat racials. They obviously can't ever be balanced and what race you choose should be based on what you like the look of the most, not a 2 minute cooldown for PVP.

This, so much this.

[Monkeymoo]

They added void elves cause the alliance fanboys been whining and crying and bitching since tbc, they didnt wanna give you high elves so you got void elves, now that isnt good enough either.

Or, ya know, they coulda just added the race that players have been asking about for yeeeeaaaaars... it was honestly the absolute perfect time to do it.