This might be the final year without playable High Elves in World of Warcraft.
By High Elves, I don’t merely mean the Quel’dorei race, but elves from Quel’thalas who actually still identify as High Elves first and foremost. Not Blood Elves or Void Elves, or any other offshoot.
These are the three possible ways I think Blizzard will go about it:
The conservative approach: Major additions to Void Elves and Blood Elves. New facial tattoos, ranger-themed hairstyles, and more. This method would simply seek to hammer home the idea that Blood Elves and Void Elves are the High Elves we’re looking for, and to erase any potential lingering doubts players might have. We might even get a little label on our nameplates that says “High Elf” above the Void or Blood Elf title.
The ambitious approach: A new neutral Allied Race is added to the game: High Elf. It uses a neutral Silvermoon City as its racial capital, has unique customisation options and racial abilities, a unicorn mount, and more. This race might be the scattered remnants of all Quel’dorei who came back home (Silver Covenant, exiled High Elves, the odd elf from Silvermoon who never joined either the Void Elves or Blood Elves, etc). Current Blood Elf and Void Elf players might even get a free optional race change.
The crazy ambitious approach: Blizzard decides to tackle the entire Allied Race system, by turning existing Allied Races into sub-races of proper races. So for example, you’d pick Dwarf as your race and then select either Earthen, Bronzebeard, Dark Iron, or Wildhammer as your sub-type (effectively a background story and some unique racial abilities). High Elves would simply be added as a third option for a Quel’dorei race, or Blizzard introduces a High Elf race with Void Elf, Blood Elf, and a new third addition that does something unexpected. Perhaps a Sunwell-infused type of High Elf, or something.
What do you guys think, and what are you hoping for?
The ONLY way for playable High Elves to happen is through developing High Elves as a far removed, distant race from the Blood Elves. They are completely void of everything Quel’Thalas, including Silvermoon and the Sunwell as well as Eversong Forest.
They are, like every other core and allied race, made to be fully independent. Without that level of independence, High Elves will never be playable and will only remain as “features” for Blood Elves and Void Elves.
we’ve alrdy got blood elves for horde & void elves for the alliance, both of which can be customized to look like high elves.
use 1 of them & just RP that you’re a high elf.
The conservative approach, minus the label. I am happy to roleplay as a High Elf who joined the Ren’dorei after they joined the Alliance, as seen on Telorgus Rift.
The last thing this game needs is more Elves. We have NE, BE, VE and NB. Anything more can just be customisation options. We need new races not variations on what we already have.
I hope that the high elves either go extinct or get completely absorbed by the belfs/velfs in midnight. I think that’s the only way helf lunatics will shut up about it.
And if the past has taught me anything it’s that even if blizz made the mistake of giving helves, you would still keep on whining until the race could play every class and has the most customizations out of all (including everything belfs have)
Similar to what Punyelf wrote, we have too many elf races already and we need more customization options for existing races. There are other MMORPGs with far less budgets and development resources who have superior character customizations to WoW.
Ion once said about High Elves something in the lines of this: “High Elves would just be Blood Elves but with different eyes”. He is right, and we already have blue High Elf eyes for Blood Elves (possibly Void Elves too, don’t know as I don’t play Alliance that much). High Elves have been argued about to death for years like “mythic+ leavers”. It’s not going to happen, it’s an unnecessary race to add and a waste on development resources. Please just drop it.
The three suggestions are interesting but I would prefer that Blizzard reorganize the character creation (suggestion 3) because the high elves will be added officially but also the Wildhammers, Sand Trolls, Dark Trolls, Man’ari, Darkfallen…
Suggestion 3 would allow the addition of new races more easily such as dragonmaws, frostborn, taunka, forest trolls, san’layn…
Moontear is essentially alone here so IDK for whose authority he speaks for. The bulk of high elf fans are just happy with what the Devs were willing to give them.
