So, what’s with the excessive Denial by the Elf Player Base that Blood Elves aren’t High Elves?
Is it so bad having to Roll a Blood Elf or is it because you lose access to the Alliance RP hubs?
What’s wrong with just rolling an Elf Skinned Void Elf with Blue Eyes?
Why is it so important to have your Tooltip say “High Elf”
Also, what would be the justification for having High Elves, as they would literally be a 1:1 copy of Blood Elves, Racial and all, as they are literally the same race using different names.
It’s not even been 10 years with all the threads asking for blue eyes customization for the BEs, and the goalpost has been moved.
I have no idea what players expected from blizzard to do, copy the models with no green/yellow eyes customization and say that is a small group of high elves? Players will just say they are lazy anyway.
Alliance cities are objectively better-looking than Horde cities (Silvermoon notwithstanding since it’s unfair to compare a 2025 city to 2004 cities, but I wouldn’t put this past Hordies), and not everyone wants to play alongside cows, cannibal trolls, and zombies.
But aside from that, it’s simply that High Elves have been with the Alliance since Vanilla - long before Belves were given to the Horde as a welfare system to keep the monstrous, ugly faction afloat - and so many players want the ability to play as the unfiltered, non-voided version of a race that has been in Alliance hubs since 2004.
The only justification Blizzard and intelligent people care about is money with the least amount of effort required in an age of massive lay-offs and AI breakthroughs.
Your argument is in fact in support of High Elves because you just proved Blizzard would need to do minimal work to please lots of people.
They are not the High Elves who in 2004 were helping the Alliance in Stormwind, Theramore, Loch Modan, and the Hinterlands.
Let’s stop dancing around the issue and get to the fact:
We want the elves who in 2004 were helping the Alliance in Stormwind, Theramore, Loch Modan, and the Hinterlands, YEARS before another, divergent group of elves was given to the Horde which nobody played because Vanilla Horde was ugly and monstrous.
Void Elves have their fanbase and are popular, but they are not what most Helfers wanted, and does this need to be resaid after nearly 9 years?
TBH no, high elves have NOT been in the alliance since vanilla.
The creation of the blood elves has been a thing since WC3, when after the third war and the destruction that Arthas brought. After the scourge invasion the high elves became the blood elves, and only high elves outside the kingdom of Quel danas remained allied with the alliance. After that, the introduction to the horde has been just an alliance of convenience, since they wanted to be more independent, but not be without allies.
Like people can go and play WC3 and its expansion and see why they are not in the alliance.
It can be done, just that those elves will not be high elves. They can be named whatever elves, just as people can get “dalaran elves” which are high elves that remained in the alliance.
The problems are 2:
The blood elves are the high elves, same kingdom and everything. So you cannot have another group in the game be called “high elves”.
I doubt that blizzard just copy/pastes a race without changing anything and gives it to the other faction. Closest they came was with void elves, and people were still not happy.
Or you can go play Classic right now and see that there are indeed Alliance-affiliated High Elf NPCs in Stormwind and Theramore, and they got their own hubs in Alliance-affiliated zones like Loch Modan and the Hinterlands near Aerie Peak.
And pay especially notice to Garithos’ fantastic treatment of the Elves, who just had their most of their race killed and their source of power eradicated.
So because a few straglers weren’t in Silvermoon when it fell, you feel that justifies making a whole race available for them?
We also need a reason for these High Elves to not be allowed in Silvermoon, as simply being Alliance-affliated at this point doesn’t really seem to be a valid reason. And it would be weird to have just 1 Alliance race with access to Silvermoon, while the rest are killed on sight.
Getting a new race that has its own story and origin, with its own leader, its own named NPCs, its own little area that’s visually distinct, and having unique voices and customization options.
It’s a roleplaying game at the end of the day, and whilst you can make most things work with your own power of imagination, it is ultimately more desirable to have Blizzard actually present those things in the game and have them be canonically part of it.
And then sure, the model can be that of another race, as we’re used to, but there’s obviously more to a race than that.
I feel like failing to understand this at a basic level, is honestly pretty stupid.
I mean, why do players want new mounts? Can’t they just pretend that their brown horse is a tyrannosaurus?! Why do players care about transmogrification? Can’t they just pretend they look like Batman?!
That kind of failure to understand basic desires in a video game is honestly pretty stupid.
Yeah but those are not the HIGH ELVES, they are just high elves persons that remained in the alliance and did not return to the kingdom, for all intents and purposes they are deserters.
They cannot introduce them as high elves, but as another sub group, like they did with void elves or suramar elves.
Correct, but that story is the story of the blood elves. The blood elves are the high elves that just renamed themselves. The problem is that there is no unified group of high elves left behind after the rebranding to blood elves.
They do have their own Story and origin. They were once Night Elves that travelled across the Sea, the over thousands of years they become the High Elves. Then one day, a very bad man called Arthas came and destroyed their Fond of power and killed most of their Race. And in Honor of this event the High Elves renamed themselves to Blood Elves.
There is your High Elves Story… You’re literally asking for a Race that already exists. This is the denial I’m talking about… The Blood Elves are the High Elves… They haven’t evolved to become a different race or go through some massive altering transformation like the Void Elves did, they literally just Rebranded themselves.
Blizzard writes the story. They can write a story to accommodate whatever the hell they please.
I mean, Void Elves’ origin story is basically a continuation of them being Blood Elves.
The uncorrupted Orcs – Mag’har – ended up through Blizzard using time travel and alternative universe storyline to transfer them through a portal to our timeline.
So this notion that players can’t have High Elves because they are technically Blood Elves, is ridiculous.
Of course Blizzard could create High Elves in the game if they wanted, and they could easily accommodate the story to make it possible.
I mean, even my non-creative crap imagination can come up with the following:
“…And then Vereesa decided that she and the Silver Covenant would join the Alliance.”
There, now you have High Elves.
“Oh but Jito, that’s just for Alliance. That’s not fair! They should also be available to Horde players!”
Okay.
“…But some of the Elves decided to deflect and join the Horde instead, out of sympathy for their cause.”
Wrong. The Void Elves have a long backstory of being a Spliter-faction within the Blood Elves that studied the void, even thought it was against the law. They also studied Necromancy, which was also outlawed. So when they finally took that full step and become Void Elves, it made sense to exile them from the City. As we saw first-hand what happened when Alleria got to close and she’s one of the Void Elves with the best control of the Void, so why would we let lesser untrained potential void invasions be anywhere near the Sunwell?
It is not a notion that players cannot have high elves, it is the notion that players already have high elves, and they are called blood elves.
Yes but you are asking to rewrite the story, not get new ones.
You can have a new faction that is a subset of high elves, like dalaran elves or w/e, problem is that you cannot have high elves, since that kingdom already exist in quel danas and calls themselves blood elves.
What would be the Story Basis for creating a Race that already exists? Why would there suddenly be a massive group of Exiled High Elves? Where would their Capital be?
Edit: Actually… I know a solution. Blizzard should simply add the option that Blood Elves could choose between being called Blood Elves or High Elves. They would still be affiliated with the Horde either way, but that way the High Elves would get their wish… Oh no wait… They need to be ALLIANCE High Elves… So we can RP in the pretty cities.
“…And on a far-away island that had been isolated since the sundering, a small society of Highborne had continued to practice their way of life, until now where they had sailed out into the world to join forces with The Horde and The Alliance.”
That’s just brand new story for a brand new race that isn’t connected to Blood Elves.
And they would be High Elves.
The reason why I hate having this conversation, and I’ve had it many times over the years, is that people wield the lore and the story as if it is the Bible and it’s somehow sacred and everything in it is law.
But that’s just not how WoW works. Blizzard makes up new lore and story all the time that compliments the existing. The above crap story I just wrote could just as well have been the background story for the Goblins on Kezan, or the Nightborne on Suramar, or the Pandaren on Pandaria.
Blizzard often uses the undiscovered island where unknown races have lived for thousands of years, to wedge a bunch of new story and lore into the game that enables a bunch of new races as well.
So it’s not like Blizzard can’t just keep doing that, because they are! That’s literally the background story for the Haranir. Hidden race living in a hidden place, isolated from everyone else for thousands of years. Now they’ve been discovered, so now we can play them!
It’s not like Blizzard aren’t just winging the story and lore as they go along.
No. It does not re-write the story to take the Silver Covenant and saying that they are now part of The Alliance and players can play them as well. That’s just continuing an on-going story in which new events unfold.
That is literally what Blizzard did with the Nightborne.
The Elves already exist, but Blizzard managed to create story and lore that covered why an entire city of Elves had remained hidden on some random islands for tens of thousands of years.
Blizzard creates whatever story they want to accommodate whatever additions they want to have in the game. They’ve always done that.