Rather than just serving players with the obvious stuff they want, they want to be clever about it and do entirely different stuff just to be different.
And it’s so tiring.
“Can we have x and y?” “No, but you can have z, which is this entirely different thing we just made up.” “But why can’t we just have x and y?” “Have you tried z yet? It’s so cool! You should try it!” “No one asked for z!!”
It’s so tiring. And it’s like that with everything about World of Warcraft. It’s as if the developers consider it defeat if they can’t come up with something smarter than the players - because God forbid that the players know best what they want.
I do see this arguement all the time but honestly as a main belf on horde fan; yes and?
If the lore they wrote around that was bad then I’d be here cheering with you but the lore is actually pretty cool and makes a lot of sense for where things were in the aftermath of Warcraft 3 and its expansion.
Yes, I’m sure what I quote from you was a part of the motivations, but you can’t look at the world map and say they would’ve made sense as alliance based purely on their geographic location and how things developped further between TFT and classic.
If find the whole ‘elves are basically magic leeches’ such a turn off.
Anyway… How about a new source of power?
On the far end of Azeroth. Hey, there’s my old idea again
That’s the thing: To me it IS bad. It felt off for the race and their whole history.
It’s cool you’re happy with it. But not everyone is. And that’s why we’ve had 18 years-ish of complaining and asking for alliance high elves from people (not me, to be clear - but I do understand why they’re doing it).
Ok you’re free to think that but then we simply disagree on that point and its not something you’re going to convince me otherwise of so then it just ends there
I don’t think its entirely fair to lop it in as a counter arguement to playable high elves tho, I imagine a lot of blood elves would think its cool if high elves were playable as they are represented in the lore, me included. I just think you’d harm both blood elves and high elves if the story just turns too and then they reunited as high elves joined the alliance and everything was as if Warcraft 2, 3 and all the expansions after never happened.
Sure. I’m not trying to convince you.
I’m trying to explain how there’s people who have a different view and for some that fuels their desire for high elves in alliance.
I’m not invested, honestly; as I mentioned earlier in the thread.
I’m not looking for high elves in the alliance.
But I do think that the horde blood elf decision was a mistake.
That’s all. Anyone can disagree, that’s all fine, but I stand by my opinion.
I just provided the context and reasoning for Blood Elves being introduced to the Horde in The Burning Crusade, because someone asked about it.
Blizzard came into World of Warcraft with a two faction design. One side was represented by all the monsters and the other side was represented by humanoids.
Which was very true to Warcraft’s design.
I mean, from Warcraft: Orcs & Humans it’s really the monsters versus the humans. And in Warcraft II the orcs become the Horde which just consists of more monsters (ogres, trolls, undead, etc.).
And on the flipside the humans become more humanoid (gnomes, dwarves, elves, etc.).
So the factions in Vanilla harmonize a lot with Warcraft’s history of dividing the races.
But Blizzard runs into the problem that players become envious with the other side, or feel pigeonholed into few options.
It’s Horde having Shamans and Alliance having Paladins and how that feels unfair for thousands of reasons.
It’s Horde not having pretty race options and it’s Alliance being the kids’ faction.
So Blizzard’s solution to that feedback is Blood Elves for the Horde who can become Paladins, and then Draenei who can become Shamans.
Subsequently in Cataclysm Blizzard uses the same feedback from the Alliance about being too cutesy and kid-friendly when they introduce the Worgen, pitching them as a race that adds some ferociousness that the Alliance has been missing.
So I’d say Blizzard quickly abandons their initial monsters versus humanoids lineup in favor of trying to make both factions offer the same options and have more similarities than differences.
And I think that comes to its ultimate expression with the Pandaren who I think Ghostcrawler revealed in an interview was initially intended for the Alliance. But because Blizzard anticipated that Horde players would be upset if they couldn’t also be Pandaren, they ended up being available to both factions and thus cementing this newfound philosophy of treating the factions as equals in all aspects.
And we’ve only seen more of that since.
Dracthyr? Both factions. Why? Equality.
Earthen? Both factions. Why? Equality.
Haranir? Both factions? Why? Equality.
So that’s where we are today. And now Blizzard seemingly wants to reignite the faction conflict with Silvermoon and that’s a bit weird because how do the above races even fit into any kind of story conflict? They’re clearly only part of either faction for reasons relating to gameplay equality and not because they have any kind of story reasons for siding with both factions but for different reasons.
As far as the Blood Elves are concerned? I think they’re cool. I wish Blizzard would have retained more of the fel influence so they kept a little bit of an edge which I think would have suited them – especially in a Horde context. But I do like the fact that they’re still driven by atonement for past sins and a little bit zealous and overcompensating with their newfound devotion to The Light.
It fits their presentation if they’re perfect on the outside but less perfect on the inside.
My one and only point in this thread is still just that Blizzard are tone-deaf because in the past they heard the player feedback and acted by giving players what they wanted – a pretty race for the Horde and the ability to be Paladins. Never seen so many Horde players be so happy all at once, or so many Paladins being made at the same time.
It boggles my mind why Blizzard don’t recognize the same feedback today. Lots of Alliance players would like a pretty elven race of their own, and the opportune moment for introducing such a new race would seem to be the expansion that largely revolves around elves. But for some inexplicable reason Blizzard instead chooses to give everyone bat elves?!
To me that is amateurish product design, because it doesn’t seem like Blizzard understands what their audience wants, despite the fact that they’re saying it very loudly and very clearly.
So that’s my one and only point in all of this, that Blizzard are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They have an incredible opportunity to really go all-in on the elf fantasy with Midnight and just give players a lot to be excited for – especially considering that elves are the most popular player races in the game by far. And despite knowing that, Blizzard seems to only do these half-measures. Midnight doesn’t really come across as very much of an elf expansion as I think many had fantasized it would be. And the absence of High Elves reflects a broader absence of an elven focus in Midnight to me. And I think Midnight would be a more popular and exciting expansion if it had a stronger focus and delivery on elf fantasy rather than what it currently seems to be – which is is a mishmash of different themes with little that connects them.
Fair point, maybe my reaction was a bit knee jerk in hindsight so sorry about that, I’m used to seeing that arguement in the context of and this is why we should abolish blood elves as they are but thats obviously not what you’re saying here going by this post
Personally if its about high elf being introduced as a playable race, I wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t play one either but esp. from a roleplay perspective it’d add something to my blood elf experience too.
There is one thing I disagree with though even as a interesting topic and that’s this:
If this were entirely true I don’t think we would’ve have had faction specific races added after Pandaran, so I’d say while your comment is true for Pandaran, I would strongly argue that the reason why dracthyr, earthen and harronir it was more about simply having less to do which means you could push content, patches, expansions, things people pay money for, faster.
Its a bit of a blackpill take but it makes sense with the talk about increased content cadance Ion was talking about iirc in the aftermath of shadowlands but it could’ve been earlier (a short time after the scandals) and I’d sooner say that blizzard is trying to reacknowledge the existance of the factions (midnight doesn’t feel conflicty to me even with the kill on sight comment) because it probably hurt peoples perspectives of the story or simply have made many quit the game outright. Blizzard has a ton of metrics they never share with us after all so who knows what numbers they are tracking when they make the decisions they do.
What I notice especially is that with every bad patch (think neutral gilneas, neutral bel’ameth, neutral arathi), my friends list of people who are online shrinks and the arathi patch? man that did some damage.
yeah which is why I said I feel like its not equality at this point, but simply a necessity to be able to make their deadlines (maybe imposed by themselves, maybe my microsoft, who knows)
This then also boils down as to why we don’t see high elves as much even as npc’s, they don’t have a lot of time to design things so what are they going to go with, the two races that are playable, or the one that isn’t? its a very logical way of thinking from a business perspective but leaves much to be desired from a narrative one.
Oh for sure. The overarching reason for most features being the way they are today is surely because of budgets, development resources, deadlines, and all those other pesky realities that Blizzard seems to be facing constantly these days. I think you’re 100% right about that.
For Battle for Azeroth where Blizzard introduced Allied Races the first time, it did feel like they were trying to pivot toward this stronger divide between factions again. But because the whole faction war wasn’t received very well they arguably pivoted back again with Dragonflight and The War Within where it’s back to equality and being together as friends and all that.
Now they seem to talk about Midnight as a faction dividing experience again, but eh, let’s wait and see. Outside of the Silvermoon City design I’m not seeing it reflected in the features or the content experience. Haranir for both sides, so what, are they going to murder each other because one Haranir joined the Horde 5 minutes ago and another joined the Alliance? It feels dumb, but we’ll see.
But it is again why I’m a little frustrated at Blizzard’s choices, because if they had given the Alliance their High Elves and the Horde their Amani or Forest Trolls, then I think we’d be looking at a cooler expansion setup than if everyone gets Haranir and we pretend that the faction conflict is real.
It is what it is.
Yeah it was insane how after BFA they dropped everything even remotely faction related, they weren’t featured anywhere even without of the stories, major lore characters were made to sit around in Oribos for a whole patch and they didn’t even offer them a chair to sit on it was so sad.
Strongly agree yeah
I’ll personally have to see more then the division of SMC into horde specific and neutral shared before I think them doing faction conflict talk is more then just a marketing move but it is already nice to just see they actually acknowledged both factions existing in the story simultaniously. I guess TWW has picked up on that too but I’d rather forget then remember the arathi questline.
For me personally, that’s what makes the High/Blood Elves interesting. It’s the little quirk that makes them unique. Without that they’d be nothing more than your basic, boring, low-fantasy generic elves.
It’s their defining aspect. The lore is clear, after their exile as Highborne (when they were basically Night Elf Mages) they created the Sunwell from a vial of water taken from the remnants of the Well of Eternity. They lost the immortality the Night Elves received from Nordrassil and then became hopelessly addicted to the magical energies of the well. This lead to physiological changes, they became smaller, paler, weaker but more attuned to the Arcane.
The Night Elves look down on all thalassian elves for their addiction of course, and this was extended to the Nightborne who were addicted to the energies of the Nightwell.
Void Elves, and this is speculative, must feed on void energy to sate their addiction given I cannot see how they could draw on the light energies of the Sunwell though we may get further clarification on that in the coming expansion.
The fact that both Blood Elves and Alliance High Elves are connected to the Sunwell and thus subject to the same energies is one of the points of argument where the pro High Elf case, which attempts to manufacture difference, fails.
No, people don’t hate High Elves. They just take issue with the fact you deny that Blood Elves are High Elves in an attempt to pretend High Elves have not been added yet, that you insist on perfection when the 95% Void Elf compromise was created for you, and that you attempt to impose your subjective headcanon (that you are a High Elf) on the rest of us when you are clearly a Void Elf objectively.
It’s also somewhat delusional in that you project this stance that ‘High Elves are going to make a major mark’ when Blizzard has only talked about Void Elves and Blood Elves for the expansion, that the Void Elf-Blood (light) Elf split matches the Void-Light split at the heart of the expansion and that the Alliance High Elf group you say are going to make a major mark haven’t been mentioned once.
Now I do expect to see at least one, Veressa should make an appearance if Windrunner Spire is going to be a dungeon, but whether they play a major role in the expansion is yet to be seen. Given Void Elves have rendered Alliance High Elves vestigial (Blizzard uses Void Elves to counter Blood Elves now rather than Alliance High Elves) I think the best story they could tell with them now is that them leaving the stage through death, returning to Silvermoon and becoming Blood Elves or becoming Void Elves.
Perhaps all three factors have been happening (certainly death, Dalaran exploded after all…) and it maybe the group is more or less defunct at this point.
Firstly, people like transmogs. I had a screensaver of a Blood Elf Mage wearing an outfit like this a few years ago so when I could realise it in game I of course did so.
Secondly, you really shouldn’t throw shade about how people transmog in this game. You are sitting here on a forum crying about your pixels going purple every so often whilst you have to use the adjective ‘void’ rather than ‘high’. For someone so invested in their headcanon to criticise other people demonstrates a lack of self-awareness that borders on parody. Surely nobody could be that oblivious to their hypocrisy.
And yet here you are.
Thirdly, my transmog perfectly aligns with that of a Blood Elf Magister. I appreciate the thematic look as a Blood Elf Mage. I would like to remind you that I can play a Blood Elf Mage and everyone else in the game acknowledges I am playing a Blood Elf.
But you? You don’t get to have that. You’ll always be a Void Elf. So whilst my fantasy in game is respected and unquestioned you have to always insist upon yours, knowing everyone else has the right to say ‘no, you’re a Void Elf’. As I do.
You are an active hater of high elves, and for that I slap you in the face. You distort the history of Azeroth, you change the facts about High Elves, so here’s your response
