BC Blood Elves had much in common with the reckless Undead and the orc warlocks. Now those Elves could share much with the Nightborne and the taurens who revere the same “Eternal Sun”.
Even if you think it’s odd, there are many reasons why this works in the story.
Do you think the game will explain why, through official quests according to your options? I guess it will not.
So it’ll be either backed by flavor NPCs and “hidden” lore in the official world, or it’ll be fully left to roleplaying and custom fanlore.
Here are the main explanations I would see:
The Legion is defeated and the Sunwell light is strong, so the fel is slowly purged from Quel’Thalas, having the Blood Elves getting previous eye colors back. Let’s call them “Blue-eyed blood elves”.
Groups of hidden neutral high elves pop out (of uncharted places) and join the post-Sylvanas Horde. Let’s call them “custom high elves”.
A faction of known high elves breaks out from the Alliance. As I told in the linked post it may happen as the Void Elves are turning theirs into other Void Elves. Or they befriend their BE counterparts now “cleaned” of Fel.
Which one do you prefer, story-wise? roleplay-wise?
Danuser already clarified that the customisation options implemented for certain races won’t follow on the story presented by the game and will just be visual effects that allow players to imagine what they want to be while they give them additional freedom in the customisation of their characters.
In short, none of these changes are to be considered canon.
Those don’t look like high elves at all though lmao.
High elves have azure eyes and only their iris is colored, look at Vereesa for example. Those guys have fcking light bulbs, which are not even in the correct tone of azure. They look a lot more like death knights.
What is canon - word of god from Danuser or actual facts you witness. I would argue all the Death of the author theory applied to video games.
But thank you for reminding me in one line why I prefer ESO devs’ vision over WoW’s…
Well, Danuser willing it or not… One can also rince and repeat all this question about the more unexpected “black-skinned thalassians”, maybe with some meta views.
They were always here among us and the models up to SL were mere “placeholder” so SL would work as a “visual retcon”. Seems lame and lazy as an explanation because it’s meta.
They’re “not canon”. They’re there but they aren’t, because of you know, LOL. Even lamer and lazier.
They are regular blood/high elves, who suddenly mutated (because of the Sunwell power?)
They were hidden in uncharted part of the world (hidden regions of Quel’Thalas, unknown island, Outland…)
It’s futile to argue this from a lore point of view after Danusers comments in his interview with Taliesin. What’ll be interesting to see though is if they’re truly going to restrict certain customization options for their most played race when they’ll be open to everyone else.
He said he wanted for us to able to express ourselves through our characters and if they’re drawing a line in the sand on eye colors and possibly tattoos then they’re breaking their own word.
But ya know, it’s early alpha so who knows what the final product will be.
Not every race gets every eye color, though. Belfs are obviously getting a few, even a few new ones, including blind and bichromatic options. The only question is if they also get blue eyes.
We obviously haven’t seen every race yet so I agree it was premature for me to say that.
But we’ve seen some WIP on the Forsaken, Humans, Orcs, Gnomes and some others and they’re getting a ton of new colors to choose from while Blood Elves are saddled with 5 different shades of Gold and Green so far.
Well, I can agree that if they don’t get blue eyes, it is a deliberate decision not to anger the Alliance High Elf fans before they found a way to repair the Void Elf desaster, not a lore decision. I mean… if the green can fade to gold, it’s kind of stupid to expect it to be impossible to go back to the original blue, even if it was tainted before.
It makes little difference to have the visuals behind any story, if the lead narrative writer already states that such changes won’t affect in any way the story around you, nor will be addressed as such in any future plot that could tackle them in a significant way.
Canon is partially dictated through what the story tells us and reacts to. If these changes wont cause either, then they will obviously not be canon.
They didn’t restrain themselves with other visual options that clearly hint at relevant factions such as the WH clan, or several troll tribes that are obvious antagonists to our playable ones.
Blue eyes may be much more showy from a media/player perspective given the lengthy discussions and backs and forth between writers and players, so they might refrain themselves. But given the rest of effects, i don’t see why they would.
To be honest, the implications for elves about something as simple as eye colour are big indeed. Almost as much as troll skins or dwarven tattoos.
Having blue eyes in a Blood elf would mean that said individual lacks the characteristic trait that defines their entire playable race.
Its entire background and history would need to differ with that of the race it represents. To the point it would affect his political affiliation.
In short, eye colour would probably have about the same impact as playing an entirely different race.
As a general rule, the Blood elf race is defined by said particular trait. The background of their playable race clearly states under which circumstances they operate.
There will be of course, exceptions to the rule. Be them because of gameplay flaws, or actual examples sustained by lore.
But the majority of the faction follows the same set of characteristics. And those include a past with the Fel, which translates into a physical differentiation through the colour of their eyes.
I don’t think so. The green eyes are of the least important.
Although I tend to say that the only reason a majority of Blood Elves have green eyes even if they should have blue eyes (The vast majority of Sunreavers should have blue eyes) is because the playerbase are too… smooth-brained… to grasp the idea that the green eyes is not what makes a blood elf. So in a sense I agree with you… albeit not entirely and the small amount is quite reluctantly.
Lor’themar’s lines in the blood elf heritage armour pretty much sums up what defines and have defined the Blood Elves for the longest time.
There are two defining traits that marked the race:
The death of most of their population at the hands of the Scourge.
The dependence on Fel as an alternate way to sate their mana addiction after the Scourge tainted the Sunwell.
The second one caused an additional schism that devolved into a political distancing amongst said survivors.
Those that revolted against said practice were forced to leave Silvermoon, and were never physically tainted by the Fel energies that turned the rest of their race eyes green.
And in the long run, it also caused some deep resentment that devolved into open animosity against their kin for abandoning them to live in exile. Causing said groups to openly declare their emnity against both the Blood elves and their Horde allies.
After a few years, and the constant backs and forth between the Horde and the Alliance, said lines may have been blurred in certain places. But stuff like the Silver Covenant and the Sunreavers, still show that said animosity hasn’t disappeared.
In all, i’d say that the green eyes ARE a big deal, because they are but the result of the key elements that mark the elf race.
We have been over this so many times at this point.
There was no dependence on fel.
And even if there was, it was not what caused ‘additional schism’. As noted in the Lor’themar story ‘In the shadow of the sun’ it was the act of siphoning magic from living creatures like ‘vampiric beings’ as was stated by one of the exiled high elves who lived in the Quel’Lithien lodge, before turning wretched in Catalysm.
In regards to the Silver Covenant, it is because the Blood Elves allied themselves with the Horde.
