Are 'Blood Elf' Void Elf customisation responsible for Horde decline?

Argent Dawn
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I’m keeping myself anonymous because the forums can be a scary place.

Blood Elves made up the majority of Horde RP on the server and (it seems) ever since more High Elf-friendly customisation was introduced to Void Elves, the majority of Blood Elf roleplayers have relocated to Alliance to roleplay a High Elf. This was especially convenient as Alliance has always been more populated, and Stormwind City has always been a massive hub for world RP. But because of this, Horde continues to bleed even more than before.

Although I’m glad we got more customisation, I personally do blame the stuff Void Elves got for the sudden population decline of Horde RP. What about you?

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Responsible might be overstating it, but I’ve little doubt it hasn’t helped.

Also I doubt “the majority” did. Some did. I dunno about “the majority” though.

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More like massive overall decline in Horde RP, as well as not-so friendly blood elven community. On Alliance, at least, you can just blend in with the population and enjoy whatever you want, where as on Horde it is a selected amount of people you can interact with.

Admittedly, introduction of void elves and extra customisation didn’t help, but I do not think they were the major aspect of it - more like an additional blow to the gut.

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Using the term “Responsible” is a bit over the top, though it surely aided in a smoother transition than without.

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Yeah. The blood elf scene has been in decline for a long, long while. It was probably at its peak in Cataclysm/MoP and i’d argue Silvermoon got really damn quiet by mid-WoD. It’s not even really an RP hub any more. At one point if you didn’t get on with a certain group you could simply roleplay with a different crowd.

You can blame it on the community or whatever but roleplayers are some of the cattiest people regardless of ‘scene’. But rather, i’d put a bigger factor down to people simply growing up and moving on. A lot of the folk I played with in Cataclysm simply left the game due to a mix of not enjoying the expansions, work or family requirements. Warcraft is old, 19-ish years on the go. I play it nowhere near as much as I did in my teens.

:older_man:

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I think those customizations have done more to impact the Alliance’s RP scene.

Honestly not a lot has changed in the Horde from before and after those customizations were added.

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The persistent hate Void Elves get from all angles makes me want to play one more. :octopus:

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I dont play High elves because of the faction

i play High elves because its fun being the underdog, living in lodges around azeroth (or Dalaran) and clinging to a old abandonded name and old alliances, like the Wildhammer dwarves. That is what made me play a high elf, given i also roleplay blood and void elves too.

Plus blue is my favorite color :smile:

also this. another reason i love High elves is the constant hate they get from anti-helfers who just want you erased from the game, and the constant debate on the forums

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I can’t say much in terms of the centre of the scene, though I did notice an impact on some of the belf focused stuff amongst guilds I’ve RP’d with quite regularly.

In a way though, difficult as it has been in some respects, it’s kind of helpful in that now there’s not really an excuse to use belves to represent ‘wish these were helves’ style angles and guilds on the Horde any more. It lets people play their belves keeping within the Horde a bit more authentically, I feel.

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Almost all of the old Blood Elf RPers that I occasionally chat with have indicated they quit WoW altogether rather than switched to Alliance RP; most of them actually abhor the idea of going blue. Of course, anecdotal evidence isn’t representative of the whole scene but I think it does paint an interesting picture.

The myth that High Elf customization killed Blood Elf RP is, in my slightly biased opinion, just that: a myth.

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In short; Yes.

When Belf skins was released for velves I feel like it shouldn’t of been done myself and it’s clear to see that it was really bad for our RP server in and of itself. There’s the whole debacle of;
“But the Alliance have all the RP and numbers” - So in the end when Belves was given to Alliance…Why would the Belves stay with a declining Horde population and also where they was faced with bigotry every 2 minutes IC by other races (Orcs / Trolls) i.e. “Pixies” - “Your too weak to do anything against my gigachad Orc Warsong” , etc. All classic lines given to Elves for no other reason but player egotism.

Although, I prefer to stay with my Horde brethren especially now more than ever I will not lie and say I haven’t been tempted in more recent days to just throw in the towel and move to Alliance but, I persevere because on Horde I’ve made a great community, got great friends and we all keep ourselves ticking over. After the many years being on Horde and learning with the community as I go it just feels wrong to me to just switch over. I feel like I wouldn’t get the same satisfaction from Alliance. I’ve tried in the past as diff chars and Alliance RP just isn’t for me personaly. So I kept persevering on because Horde is home and always will be home to me. Even in the “dark ages” as we call them of RP on Horde. (Being very dead).

(And I like Horde racials more for content…)

Edit; As Faelenn says as well here →

We did haemorrhage a lot of players during Shadowlands and before that as well due to changing of times and people getting too busy IRL. There is also a little sneaky server that a lot of RP’ers quit to as well. Epsomething if I recall? But, it ties into the old point as well. They’re too busy to actually pay to play a game that was horrendously bad for them in Shadowlands and BFA.

Though, I still keep to my main point as well that I do believe a lot of people jumped from Horde to Alliance for H-elf RP and V-elf RP…Hell there’s even some people that RP actualy Belves in Stormwind still.

So I can agree that there is a lot of blame we can shift to devs giving Alliance belf skins as well in the end.

I have personally seen many old Belf Rp’ers on Alliance and I have also seen them play both sides as well if they’re Mercenary, etc.

(Yes I know this is hypocritical because I also levelled a char on Alliance under the same name of Felen.)

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Although the customization was a nice thing at the start when it first came out, I look back and think now that it is not on par with the blood elf one now, to play a high elf you are very limited, you can’t play a unique looking character by just customization and that sucks, to be honest. It needs work on the alliance side and more options for both Ren’dorei and Quel’dorei since they won’t release a separate one. Regarding the horde declining, I don’t know what happened, but I think it’s safe to assume it might have been a community matter which I think is recovering slowly. In a short way of putting I don’t think the Void elf thingies are that great and maining one for a while now my soul has been stabbed by my character’s glitchy hairline.

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What they need is actual Void Elf customization and put a complete stop to the low effort junk High Elf cope looks that just make them even more indistinguishable from Blood Elves.

Give an extra cluster of eyes, tendrils, forked tongues, Old God teeth, An eye that’s actually a mouth full of teeth and other forms of nastiness that sets Void Elves (ie. the playable race on Alliance) apart from the rest.

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Argent Dawn IS a major alliance realm. And I doubt that will ever change. Unless the community collectively plays 50-50 Horde/Alliance in RP, this imbalance will never go away.

It is like with depression. It takes a lot of smaller and bigger steps to break the down-spiraling cycle of gravitation that keeps pulling Horde RP down.

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The only reason there was such a demand for those customisations or a high elf race for Alliance as a whole, was because Blizzard kept dangling those elves in front of us since WoW TBC, when the vanilla high elves got updated to resemble the blood elves, after all they are kin. I am quite sure that had Blizzard not done that, the demand for High Elves would never have been as big as it was.

And I will admit, as a result I find it hard to understand those players who would deny these customisations to the Alliance just out of spite.

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I don’t think the people swayed to change factions over the ability to play a blood/high elf in Stormwind were ever the backbone of Horde RP

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They had the perfect opportunity to remove high elves alltogether by simply abiding by their Warcraft 3 lore of them getting renamed to blood elves. But then WoW came and suddenly there were more high elves outside of Quel´Thalas than there were blood elves (I think besides few scattered NPCs, there was only a camp in Azshara, that´s it). Then TBC and Wrath each added a high elf faction fiercely loyal to the Alliance.

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In a weird roundabout way, the High Elf customization made the Void Elves feel more appropriately numbered in the world. They went from FOTM to somewhat of a niche race to encounter in the world which, as far as velves are concerned, fit their lore pretty well.

It does make the “almost extinct” High Elves feel considerably less endangered however. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hugely true, it’s a disgrace that they got 0 actual void elf customization in that new customization wave. What a waste.

It mostly just seems redundant to give them high elves when they already have humans.

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This. I don’t think the horde realize how prevalent Blizzard made high elves as they kept showing them time and time again.

They could’ve used any other race, night elves, Draenei, but no they used High elves. And they thought people wouldn’t ask for them?

Classic: high elves are shown in Stormwind, Areas around and inside theramore, Azshara, Winterspring, and plaguelands

TBC: high elves are shown in Outland (Allerian stronghold) with unique high elf buildings, along with the Hinterlands (Highvale) who are allied with the Wildhammer.

WOTLK: Dalaran had lots of High elves in it, almost as much as humans. The Silver convent helped the alliance throughout northerend and hosted them in the tournament grounds.

Cata: the blood elf ranger general asked the Silver covenant help with dealing with the Amani trolls outside Zul Aman. You can still find them there today as it’s phased during Cata times.

MOP: The Purge of Dalaran + the isle of thunder campaigne where a high elven army joined Jaina and Vereesa in the fight. The alliance campaign only had high elves, with Jaina being the only human.

Legion: The High elves joined the Hunter lodge and lended their aid, one high elf appeared in the Paladin hall too.

The high elves joined the suramar campaign where Elisande insulted them separately from Blood elves and night elves.

2 High elf NPC’s were added in stormwind, to give a tour to 1 void elf NPC around Mage Quarter. (Legion/BFA)

BFA: High elf Mages were seen in the 7th legion army, Boralus, and the Arathi warships.

So yes, Blizzard does use them time and time and time again. And if you play alliance and follow the lore, you know.

Skip the Intro, and watch this video

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