That does unfortunately seem to be the case… Like with the redshirt guy.
We are talking about a lore team here that have so far discarded 4+ expansions worth of content in just these two expansions alone. Where also one of the lead writers is literally in love with currently wows main character.
Blizzard’s lore teams also gave us the lovely mess that was Diablo 3 “FOOLSISH NEPHALEM” and the drama turned romance of Starcraft 2.
I really was honest
If writer loves Sylvanas so much then maybe she/he will finally turn Silver Covenant into Dark Ranger squad.
Well they did turn some of the night elves into dark rangers… Even when it was previously established back in cataclysm that only humans could be resurrected by the Valkyr.
Yuck @ Kerrigan’s development.
All the signs are there for Sylvanas to be given similar treatment. I hope i’m wrong. I just think you kind of lose the gravitas of writing a character as “yeah, they bad, reeeeal bad” only to have them inadvertantly become the superhero of the universe. It just makes all of their prior lore seem like it was stuck in a waiting room, especially if it’s hinted the evil character in question “knew all along” with regards to where they were going to end up.
Hence this is my take on the High Elf matter:
https://i.ibb.co/c2xJCNV/subrace-customization-mockup-highelf.jpg
We do not need new racial skills… but if fans are really going crazy about this, how about just an alternate demonym connected to an optional customization template and a quick line of text?
“Curious to learn more about the Void, some High Elf Wayfarers have joined their transformed kin.”
Which is why they now have the Void Elf racials. 
Done.
For more info about the fan concept of customization templates being connected to alternate demonyms:
Well I agree on some things you say Fatugly (why you choose that name) an Update on high elves is needed.
If blizzard wants the void elves to be the alliance high elves (upgraded High elves with a new purpose) and be the more magic elves users and the Night elves to be more nature users. Its needs to be seen. Like Alleria windrunner is inviting both High elves of the alliance and blood elves that is leaving the horde who wants to go back to the alliance. (because there are those who spoke out about joining the horde, then there is some silvermoon scholors in telogrus rift who wants to learn about the void) If we could see silver covenent coming to telogrus rift with Veeresa windrunner and Hiren Loresong is setting up shop there. We see
Aethas Sunreaver and Kirin Tor High elves coming to Telgrus rift (Not to join the Ren’dorai but to learn about the void) and
Aethas Sunreaver is always curious about new and dangerous magic as we seen on argus when he talks to Khadgar(if you wondering, why would Aethas go there with Kirin tor, well in the fire mage questline for the fire sword artifact Aethas left the sunreavers and was willing to do anything to only to rejoin the Kirin tor) . And we get see void elves already begun constructing building, New High elf buildings but with a new flare and they also been trying to take over more Islands in telogrus rift. Alleria then will have a speech on what has happend over the years and that they must find a new path in order to survive. And they must choose who shall lead them forward to the future and they all choose Alleria to lead them. And she will then announce them all to be Ren’dorai and ends with “For the Alliance”
Then we could have npcs talking to each other like. After years of siphoning Magic from magic artifact, they feel thin like butter scraped over too much bread. Only cure was to go back to silvermoon but then they have to pledge allegiance to their old enemy the horde. But then Alleria windrunner, a hero veteran from second war came with an “Alternative”. Alleria asked Umbric how many have Sin’dorai have come from silvermoon to telogrus rift. Umrbric says …a few dozens, …sometimes more.
It also needs to be seem Void elf farmers In stormwind near the embassy, helping other farmers since they can’t grow anything in Telogrus rift yet. Void elves being quest givers and military force in some outposts in azeroth working side by side with the other alliance races. Alot more Named NCPS is needed.
I would wish that Spatial Rift was instead a portal you could create anywhere that goes to telgrus rift so you could stay connected to that place. The armor would be more ranger/mage style and would be void blue instead of purple and instead of that bucket on the head it would be a hood. Same on the mount that instead of purple it would be void blue.
Altough I wish the high elves could be what they once was back in WC2, I don’t see it will happen, unless they go same path like blood elves that they use dark magic now and few expansions they redeem themshelves and become High elves again with a new source of power that is more pure. We have seen in N’zoths vision that Alleria and the void elves can go insane by the voices even if Alleria is best at controlling the voices. and we also fixed the titan forge machine that can remove void corruption, even change DNA. But we will see what happends after Shadowlands, Im glad we get High elf customazations for void elves, hopefully long elvish hair. Either high elf hair or brand new that is long but is still elvish without tentacles.
Death gate/zen pilgrimage style?
Or alternatively make it like the camp system for vulpera for “faction balance”, even though that’s a moot point.
TBH this is the most well-thought out and likeable Idea I’ve seen for void elves. I would happily remake my velf alt for this.
The idea of an AR getting a proper capital like this seems intruiging, maybe HMT, lFD and NB get phased versions of their capitals (to avoid conflict with people doing legion content), or maybe somewhere new entirely, albeit on a smaller scale?
Aye a capital for all allied race that doesn’t have that now. Void elves can’t grow anything right now in telogrus Rift but maybe later through magic they could grow, I mean the ethereals had those dome’s in Neatherstorm, a place that nothing grows either and then they could talk to A Draenai botanist how they got plants to grow on their ship and on dead planets (I would guess through magic and the light). But as we seen that the void can take lives it can also restore/give life like what N’zoth did for Queen Azshara. Brought her back to life so there is a possible that the void could be use for good. Which also could give void elves paladin class. By that I mean a fourth spec i talked about in a different thread that paladin could get a fourth spec that is access to all races that have paladin class. A fallen paladin that uses the void to heal and resurrect. The spec could be called Dark or Shadow (Dark knight or Shadow knight) using a mix of both shadow priest skills and Retribution paladin skills. Using a two handed scythe as a weapon. which also can give forsaken paladin class. Like Flash of Light is instead Dark heal or Mend Flesh that heals the player or other players. Consecration instead of coming from the sky, an area turns in to void energy and tentecals grows out of the ground and do Aoe damage etc But those who want to can let the Void elf/Forsaken choose the other 3 specs since its not tied to race but to the class. For those who want to play holy paladin void elf or holy forsaken paladin.
I just watch the Void elf intro that streamer was doing and seeing those buildings in ghostlands. I would like to see void elves have those building but maybe with a new twist. The floating pot plants, magic bromsticks. Maybe in time the void elves could make the telogrus rift look close to the ghostlands. There are trees in Telgrous rift but they look dead or maybe they are alive and growing by siphoning the void, who knows. Maybe Alleria windrunner gives a quest to go to windrunner spire (being homesick or something and finds documents in the spire that has a blueprints for new High elf buildings that got never build) or something.
Well, the thing is the Highmountain Tauren and the Nightborne represent full, distinct civilizations who have led settled existences for many years and have, as a consequence, fully expanded their populations in their respective zones.
Phasing their cities to be fully fledged capitals makes sense, although doing so for the sake of it might be more effort than Blizzard is willing to put in.
But the Lightforged Draenei and the Void Elves don’t have that settled experience. The LFD have just arrived on Azeroth and the Void Elves are a tiny crack squad of elves pursuing dark magics. Both seem to have anchored their bases to Stormwind, but their bases aren’t capitals anymore than the barracks the Mag’har have settled in in Orgrimmar is their capital.
If the Void Elves and the LFD have a capital, it’s Stormwind.
An argument can definitely be made for phasing Shadowforge City and Mechagon though, but that is similar to Highmoutain and Suramar in that a greater purporse than ‘it would just be cool’ would probably have to be found.
Until blizzard find a serious use for Capitals that affects or engages with and relates to gameplay, they’re very hard to justify doing more of. Which is why I came up with a very interesting solution here:
Currently I think they’ll have far less trouble if they:
i.e. share - a void elf city would be nice, but face it, all those cities… for what? I’d rather a great city, with a lot of meaning and use than lots of pointless ones.
If the broken isles was home to NIght elf and Nightborne (capital city Suramar), Highmountain (capital Highmountain) and Night elf worgen (capital Shal’anar Shaladrassil in Val’Sharah) - and they all got on quite well despite having friends in the other faction that would be interesting.
Basically you save yourself building more cities as Suramar is already a masterpiece it’s there, it’s much easier to write how the night elves return to their ancient city and live with the Nightborne than it is to design a totally new city.
If you make the story good and exciting people will love it.
The Nightborne and Night Elves should not share a city. The entire point of being a Night Elf is that they are wood elves. Suramar is the antithesis of what Night Elven civilization currently is. If the Night Elves are to have a new home, and it’s been implied they will one day get one, it should be in the woods of Hyjal and Ashenvale.
As for Silvermoon being ‘shared’ with the void elves and the high elves, sorry but they can sod right off. The high elves…by which I believe is meant the Silver Covenant as both Blood Elves and Void Elves are high elves…are a small band of traitors. The Void Elves are not only traitors, but their void based nature is a threat to the sunwell. So it doesn’t make sense to share Silvermoon on that basis.
On a gameplay basis, Silvermoon is a horde city for horde players. It is perfectly fair and reasonable that Alliance players cannot visit Silvermoon, just as Horde players cannot visit any Alliance city. This is the consequence of the faction system contintuing to exist.
If the Void Elves have a capital, it is Stormwind, the city Lor’themar told Alleria to go back to as he exiled her. It is where the void elves live now. It is their city. A city where they will always be mistrusted and reviled, not only as traitors of a core Horde nation (and traitors are never really trusted, even by those they betrayed their people for ) but because their adherence to the void is likely only barely tolerated by the devout inhabitants of that city.
The Void Elves don’t really have a comfortable place to call their own. Given their nature, I think that is an appropriate situation for them.
The flammable Woods of Hyjal and Ashenvale.
This is what I don’t understand… if they are so “extinct” how come I see high elf NPC’s everywhere In numbers almost equal to that of the Blood elf NPC’s. Showing up as an army at Suramar, showing up as an army at Northern, showing up as an army at pandaria. They are almost relevant in each expansion and blizzard expects people to not ask for them?
Anyway we got high elf customizations now so I’m happy.
High elves were elves who did not agree with Kael Thas, and left early. and so they didn’t hear the “blood elf” speech, meaning they didn’t know. Even if they did, they are elves who are not keen on change. Hence why they refused to have fel, and remained having blue eyes.
Why not? Some high elves have a good reason not to join the horde and stay alliance.
One reason is that Alliance have always been the High elven faction. Many high elves, especially the ones living in Dalaran, have a long history with humans.
Let’s use Vereesa windrunner for example, who’s parents and brother were killed by the Orcish invasions.
It’s confirmation bias. As there are canonically only a few alliance high elves left, and that is something that has been commented on by Blizzard numerous times, then what you are seeing are not separate high elves in each zone, but the same high elves reused again and again. Given the vast majority of what are left of the alliance high elves are the silver covenant in dalaran…and the mages of dalaran…it’s just these same people again and again.
And the Silver Covenant army at Suramar was hardly that. There were something like six npcs, tops.
Nah. Silvermoon belongs to its rightful inhabitants, the Blood Elves, it does not belong to traitors, Void corrupt Traitors or Undead Traitors.
No Traitors for Silvermoon….
Again, it is a Horde city, a -Nightborne- city. It may have been built by Kaldorei, but the Shal’dorei are physically different. I mean Thalyssra actually states this outright in the cinematic when you first join up with her “…We…changed…” Whilst looking hard at her hands. That’s a term and look of someone who has undergone a physical change, not just some socio-political one, the Shal’dorei are no longer the same as the Kaldorei. Basically that would be like saying that Blood Elves should be getting Suramar because they are related to Nightborne too. It doesn’t make sense.
Lets also not forget that Tyrande “Why can’t I stop driving elves into the Horde?” Whisperwind opened her big gob again, and alienated the ruler of Suramar (now) who had spent 10,000 in opposition to the Legion aligned previous ruler. Tyrande turns up for one scrap and then massively disses her. If I was Thalyssra that would be a massive, almost supreme act of disrespect, so I can see why she would never want to see or hear from Tyrande ever again.
So no, I can’t see Night Elves and Nightborne sharing Suramar working out well at all…
Nah. They did not leave then. They were Exiled by -Lor’themar-, not by Kael’thas, we know this from ‘Shadow of the Sun’. It was Lor’themar, and it was after Kael’thas had named the people Blood Elves. For a short time the Exiles would racially have been called Blood Elves themselves! They renamed themselves High Elves, -after- the Exile, so for a short time between Kael’thas adopting the name, and Lor’themar Exiling them, ‘Blood Elf’ was in fact the name for the entire species of Thalassian Elves. Yep, even Vereesa and co.
Ehhh, no, not really.
The Kingdom of High Elves joined the humans only for the Second War, seceding from the Alliance of Lordaeron after that war. So whilst individuals still fought as Alliance troops in the third war, they were like those Americans who went to go and fight for Britain in WWII before the USA joined the War. Quel’thalas was not part of the Alliance of Lordaeron -except- for the duration of the Second War, They were however an aloof but non hostile ally to the Alliance, until certain people famously ruined it all and they joined the Horde.
What I am saying is that the Kingdom of Quel’thalas has actually been -Horde- for longer than it ever was -Alliance-.
Note I’m talking about the Alliance Faction here, Elves and Humans did on rare occasions work together before the Alliance existed, but that’s a different ‘people’ essentially.
In the case of some High Elves, the Silver Covenant and Vereesa basically, they have no choice. If they could not enjoy the protection of the Alliance, they would have nothing. If they even so much as approached Quel’thalas they would be seized and put on trial for their murderous war crimes and most likely executed (and quite rightly too), They can never go home, unless Lor’themar goes beyond repealing the Exile, and also forgives them for their war crimes.
Well we know he repealed the Exile, from ‘Shadow of the Sun’, but there is no mention of War Criminals being allowed back, so we can assume they can’t go back.
Before anyone talks about the Three Sisters comic and how Vereesa does indeed go back to Quel’thalas, then frankly that comic is a bad joke, with a lot of lore mistakes that exists -solely- to make Sylvanas look spooky. Because Blizz always do that,
The thought process seems to go ;
(The names are random, because I can’t actually name any Blizz workers apart from Ion and Bobby K)
“Hey, we need Sylvanas look all brooding and angsty, hmm”
“Hey, lets have her travel to Windrunner Spire, Ghostlands is full of Undead!”
“Uh, Dave, it -was- full of Undead, like about two decades ago,”
“Nuh-uh, they’re all still around, you can see them, and it will make Sylvanas look spooky!”
“Dave…do you remember that development meeting where we sat you down and told you that sometimes the game doesn’t reflect the actual lore setting right? You remember we talked about that?”
“Sure do Joe, crystal as day, and I understand it now, Hogger respawns because we need him to for game purposes, he’s not actually an immortal Gnoll who is reborn every minute or so, and Stormwind doesn’t actually have a population of seventy people, I think you said it was…ummm…Representative?”
“That’s right Dave, OK, so, -Who- lives in Quel’thalas?”
“Zombies!”
“No Dave, not Zombies”
“Zombies and Sylvanas on her emo days!”
“Right OK, Dave, lets help you out here, the people who live in Quel’thalas are called Blood Elves”
“Yeah, they just got massively wiped out by Zombies!”
“Dave, that was twenty years or more ago, in the game, since then they have built up their military strength, they have fought Wars on different Continents all by themselves, and they have done the same in different -planets- and timelines, and were part of a big pan Elven army that retook Suramar, you remember all that right?”
“Sure Joe, but, if all that’s true, how come they didn’t bother to kill the Zombies in their figurative back garden?”
The others shift nervously
“They…probably did”
“Yeah, I agree with Jo, they probably did, nobody, literally -nobody- would not do that. Its like a cardinal rule, if you have Zombies, you kill all the Zombies or you just keep getting Zombies, its like a law or something”
“So why did we never update the area to show that?”
“Dave, you know we don’t talk about Silvermoon, or the Exodar, and why they are not updated…”
Any time Sylvanas and her sisters go to Windrunner Spire, its like the writers just forget that it -is actually owned by a people who are world renowned for the skill of their Farstrider rangers and trackers, which -all- three of the Windrunners belonged to at some time in their lives, and who like, patrol the borders…
Don’t even get me started on Both Windrunner sisters who are alive being totally cool with riding bony ponies. That just makes no sense.
Coughs
Had to get that rant off my chest…
Whilst -some- High Elves could go home, the Silver Covenant and Vereesa cannot.
You are brainier tha-
Nope can’t say that (should never re-purpose Jimmy Carr jokes as compliments). The sentiment still stands though. I would kill to be able to deconstruct an argument as skilfully and eloquently as you.
I am going to concur. Objectively, what is the high elf presence within the Alliance now?
A handful of Kirin Tor Mages, and the Kirin Tor itself is a neutral faction. These Mages may lean Alliance, but they probably can’t act in the Alliance’s favour.
A small militia based in Dalaran. Whilst the Silver Covenant has been held up as the example of the Alliance high elves for years, they seem to be bound up with Dalaran more than the Alliance. Case in point, their complete absence from the battlegrounds of the fourth war, a war in which Dalaran was neutral. It is hard to argue a faction is a part of the Alliance when they don’t bother to show up in a fight with the Alliance’s mortal enemies.
The Void Elves, a small, crack squad of void addled elves who are clearly viewed with mistrust by the rest of the Alliance, given how many Alliance races venerate the light and the void nature of the Void Elves. Umbric is forever walking on eggshells in an attempt to justify how helpful his people can be. As the cleric in the Cathedral implied, they are essentially tolerated because the hero of the Alliance, Alleria Windrunner, has vouched for them. Umbric is walking on eggshells because the eggshells are real.
In contrast, the Horde has the Blood Elves who represent 90%+ of the survivors of the pre third war population. The Horde controls Quel’thalas, the high elf kingdom. The Horde controls the sunwell, the font of power all high elves, whether in Silvermoon or Dalaran, depend on (void elves almost certainly excepted). The government of the high elf kingdom is a member state of the horde. The leader of the high elf kingdom sits on the Horde council. The three major high elf organisations, the magisters, the farstriders and the blood knights, are members of the horde.
If any faction is the high elf faction, it’s the Horde, as possession is nine tenths of the law and the Horde has over nine tenths of the stuff.
Whilst Alliance players are free to roll a high elf variant, a Void Elf, they shouldn’t kid themselves that a bunch of void addled elves are as important a part of their faction as, say, the gnomes, dwarves, draenei or night elves are.
The Void Elves are the odd group out.
That was until MoP where the divine bell incident pushed them to to be one of Alliances fronts into pandaria.
Like the mages protecting the battleship in the Arathi Warfront or the portal master in Borealus.
Which was a completely seperate conflict.
Who said they were silver covenant though? For all we know they could have been independent high elves, or even just an oversight on the devs’ part.