We’re talking about a technique that was employed for approximately 5 years in mainstream Belf society before it was removed as a racial ability at the closing of the Burning Crusade. It’s a blip, an anomaly really in the lifespan of a Blood Elf and given that they are now sustained by a much healthier and sustainable and far more powerful source I don’t see why those teachings would be passed on.
Just seems awfully redundant.
I just still don’t understand why they needed to give a compromise when they could have just given the actual thing instead of void elves. But I don’t want to start an argument and be flagged so just give us some kind of glyph that makes the racials look arcane-y and I will be satisfied.
The model does, originally they didn’t, this was removed to avoid confusion, similarly Alleria, Pre:Void shenanigans should have had green eyes also, unless she was fibbing about this whole ‘Thousand Years of War’ malarkey.
Alleria, Vereesa and the ones who ended up going to Argus have a handwave of spending most of that time on a ship full of Light users. Even Alleria ditched her husband for a floating set of bandages late into their relationship.
It is notable that one of the NPC’s in the Allerian Stronghold has her original text line, Taela Everstride. She states: " I’m a HIGH elf , not a blood elf . Don’t worry, I’m not going to suck all of the magic out of you!"
When you brought it up and when I checked the CDev quote I did go back to see their original models to see if they’d just been switched after the WoD change, but they used a helf-specific skin back in TBC too. If you toss me a source about them being intended to have green eyes, I’d buy it, but looking at it from an in-story lens is missing the point. It’s the expansion where blood elves were introduced and the previous high elf model was that hideous pink night elf reskin, so I’d chalk it up to Blizzard making a joke.
Mind, I actually want to agree with you when it comes to Allerian Stronghold because by all rights they should have green eyes. Ditto, if any blood elf at all would have blue eyes, it’d be parts of the Sunreavers that stuck with Aethas in Dalaran. Especially since Aethas is about as traditional high elf as it gets in all other attitudes. But the text doesn’t touch upon them and I can’t jive the inconsistency of at once claiming that there exists a demographic of blue eyed blood elves because of player models, but that Allerian Stronghold don’t actually have blue eyes, despite the NPCs being such and them being high elves being a major plot point. Even more so because Allerian Stronghold is consistent, whereas the Sunreavers aren’t - they can spawn with either skin as you point out and none of this is ever commented on by any NPC I know of.
Also, I noticed you were right about chopping that bit about elves in Outland being affected from the quote. I was removing hyperlinks at the time because I don’t have permissions and didn’t notice that also axed that part of the quote. It probably made that whole aside about Allerian Stronghold nonsensical, since I’m bringing up these NPCs as further proof of the narrow scope of the CDev answer solely to people you wouldn’t see partaking in any typically corruptive activity.
Just as an aside, they did not use Fel to repair the city, it was Arcane, the Fel Crystals had not yet been delivered to Silvermoon, and nor had the knowledge of how to drain mana from living creatures.
The Fel crystals were needed to ambiently maintain the arcane created buildings, in the same capacity that the Sunwell previously did.
That’s a whole different can of worms. The development clips from TBC had the Burning Crystals be what’s keeping the city going in place of the Sunwell. But whether they repaired it with just regular arcane or with fel is unclear. The Burning Crystals themselves are unclear, since they’re sometimes shown with their post-Fall appearance even when Silvermoon is Dath’remar’s and sometimes they’re blue. Not helped by how despite their appearance and the demonic eyes, no one actually, explicitly says they’re demonic. I think Blizzard were wrangling with that themselves.
For what it’s worth, I consider it to make more sense that Fel was used through the crystals in the reconstruction as well in maintenance. Otherwise you end up in a weird case where the Magisters had enough arcane lying around to rebuild the city and to keep it going for some indeterminate period of time, but later needed fel to maintain it.
As I was typing I found the clip again:
www. youtube. com /watch?v=NE-4Edh3RuM
From 4:40 on.
It mentions that Quel’thalas’ architecture in general is kept up by arcane, hence why it went down after the Sunwell was destroyed, but that the parts the Blood Elves have taken over and are in pristine order are being maintained with fel. How you read this is up to you.
Here’s an interesting one I’d like your take on, as apart from the minutiae of Fel we agree on other aspects of Blood Elf lore, and whilst it has no real in game effect, it does pose a moral quandary if my supposition is correct, but lets see what you think?
Before I give my thoughts, one of the major reasons why draining mana being a demonic technique isn’t something to downplay is because once you move away from the technique being inherently corruptive, even if it’s just in tiny doses if kept to virmin to it just being sort of vaguely icky, the High Elf moral stand loses its punch and becomes more of a tantrum. It’s no longer a section of society decrying morally dubious means even if it keeps them going and it being such a contested issue that a government that practiced mind control at the time nevertheless felt it necessary to exile them, but is instead a bunch of primadonnas being unhappy about something that’s morally equivalent to what they’ve already accepted doing and abandoning their people over it.
Anyhow, that aside, like Dainara said, while the TBC blood elf identity is something I miss too, the Blood Elves are still very conservative and live for at least a few hundred years and several thousand if we go by A Good War. 5 years are a blip on the radar. Like you say, the technique isn’t genetic. My take on it is that it would proliferate, since once the genie is out of the battle you can’t very well put it back in, but that it would not be something they’d feel necessary to pass on. It was a temporary compromise that the Sunwell’s restoration solves and even the people who instituted the exile like Lor’themar ended up reaccepting those who took the stand against the method. He was just rejected only for those idiots to end up overindulging and dying anyway.
The Post-TBC Blood Elf landscape is one of those things that are more fan conjecture than anything else. I don’t know if it was you or someone else who mentioned the Burning Crystals being ditched, but to my knowledge even that isn’t in the text, it’s just something that should be logical now that the Sunwell makes them unnecessary.
Wait, so Void Elves now its just absolutely same as Blood Elves, no faction identity.
I guess Alliance need following options:
Horde already has goblins
That’s why i said:
Oh then i missread. But still we don’t need it, if you got yourselves those vulpera it doesn’t mean that we have to suffer 
We have enough of humans/void elves who consider their chairs high elves already.
I -think- that comes from the Domination Point quests at Revered, the quest is called “Whats in the Box” About a Mogu relic, Rommath remarks that it seems to work like the Fel Crystals they -used- to have in the city. Something like that. He definitely uses past tense. But yeah, logical, as they are simply not needed for that purpose anymore.
But then we have to wonder why the Blood Knights who were draining a Naaru still got more influenced by the presence of fel in Silvermoon than they did from the drainage. Shouldn’t then Alleria be affected by waging a war against the Legion itself instead of be protected by the Army of the Light?
Ultimately it just doesn’t matter, it’s not that hard to believe some elves retained their blue eyes, or actively avoided/protected themselves from fel (heck, even Kael consciously knew demons were bad before he was fully manipulated into serving Kil’jaeden), or just came back home after a while, or decided to cover themselves up in illusions all Thranduil-like. An elf is a Blood Elf if they decide they want to call themselves that.
Draining mana is still not draining life.
Sorry, but it is two entirely different things.
And the siphoning technique is still not producing fel.
Life force is used to fuel fel magic, draining life force does not produce fel magic on it’s own.
And if we go even deeper, siphoning techniques in general are not really exclusive to say… warlocks.
He spoke an incantation, and a strand of white arcane energy shot out from the artifact. It wrapped itself around the whelp, a rope of magic, and began to pull golden life energy from the small dragon. It squeaked in pain. “No!” screamed Kirygosa, lunging forward. The man jerked on the chain, hard. Kirygosa dropped to her knees, hissing in agony. The whelp grew. It opened its mouth and let out a small, squeaking cry as its body spasmed. Thrall could almost hear bones creaking and skin stretching as the mage drained its life energy, aging it quickly.
“Nature magic?” asked Medivh. “Ripening, culling, harvesting? Can you take a seed and pull the youth from it until it becomes a flower?”
Draining life is many things… but it is not a fel technique, and draining life on it’s own does not produce any fel. Lifeforce IS a fuel for fel… but that is about it, it being a fuel for fel does not mean it produces fel automatically.
Believe it or not I can honestly agree with you there, despite of other people in this forum fearing I may have a secret evil masterplan to deny High Elves fans their fun. Yes - I supported the concept of playable High Elves long before Void Elves were a thing, and I am a current lurking member of the Legacy of the Quel’dorei supporters Discord simply because I very much love the fan art.
I just came to peace with the fact that said ship had most likely sailed when Blizzard chose to add the Void Elves instead. I won’t deny that back then they felt like an awkward compromise, but I accepted that Blizzard must have had their reasons and learned to appreciate them in contrast with the Lightforged Draenei. Void and Light were what powered the Vindicaar’s Matrix Core, after all. Shoehorned or not, they were made fit the story somehow, and now they are part of the game together with space goats, pandas and all other oddities. 
This is why I can be very happy to see Blizzard decided to expand on that compromise, giving us extra options that can please most roleplayers. Do I think they could be improved even further? Sure - always - for instance the Void Elves could get blue (and purple?) tattoos and Blood Elves could get them in red (and yellow?). Different patterns, of course.
But since I was not expecting this to come at all, I do not stress about the racial skill and the name tag, whereas at the same time I am happy to support the fans that are politely asking Blizzard for a different racial/demonym based on sub-race templates in connection to the new customization. (Maybe you could check out that thread?)
I simply feel that some people should learn to look at the bright side of things wherever possible, and come to terms with the fact that since Blizzard cannot realistically ever please all of their fanbase, they will not always get exactly what or all that they had asked or hoped for.
Obviously, the fanbase has a right to suggest new game features. The forums are here for that, too. But that should be done politely, and I personally can’t help feeling that displaying fits of rage for ‘lacking’ options when Blizzard is actually handing out free extras is inappropriate, and silly.
It’s like… I get that some people really love chocolate ice cream. It is also their right to ask the restaurant to put it on the menu, if it is missing. But when they place an order for a pizza with no dessert and are brought FREE stracciatella ice-cream after that, they have a choice to smile about the free chocolate bits, taking it as a sign of acknowledgement and care from the cook/management, or act outraged that it’s not what they had asked for in the first place (despite of it not being on the menu).
Personally, I prefer to thank for the free ice cream. Although I might try politely asking the management to put strawberry ice-cream on the menu next time, if chocolate won’t do it for them.
Yeah, that’s the one. Completely forgot about it. Was going through the Quel’delar text to see if I can find it.
Torakk
Yeah, the Alleria bit is entirely fanfiction, nothing in the text goes for it. You’re not meant to think about it. As for there being blue-eyed Blood Elves, the political implications aside, this is exactly the case where the CDev quote is relevant. Even if they abstained from draining from living things, using any kind of fel or what have you, they’d still be in proximity of people that did and magic that did. You’d have to be outside of Quel’thalas and only declare allegiance after TBC for it to make much sense. I.e, you wouldn’t be hidden in blood elf society, you’d be a high elf rejoining.
Savotar
I see your point on the distinction between life force as fuel for fel. I was going to use the A Good War example describing Malf’s powers, but the Last Guardian one is more classic and gets the same point across about how the spending of life by itself isn’t fel. So yeah, I admit my phrasing was off on that point.
That’s why in the prior comments I explained the several ways why that doesn’t change the end result - i.e that a drain life spell does use the drawn life of the enemy as fuel, namely to mend or empower yourself, that in mana wyrms and other intensely magical things when you drain them of mana you also in doing so drain them of life and that the siphoning of mana from living beings was taught by a demon and unknown by even the top mages up to that point and is associated with fel-using classes, demons like felhounds etc. See also the bit above to Brigante regarding how disregarding this makes the high-blood elf schism into nonsense, since this is both prior to the city being restored and maintained with fel and the Blood Elves joining the Horde, yet still constituted a relevant enough moral stand to have exiling the ones involved be a serious action taken.
Presumeably.
Whether Illidan was taught by a demon or not is quite unknown, I doubt it at the point this part of the story takes place. But yes, you are right that draining a living beings mana also includes killing them. Illidan’s defence against the Legion as we learn it during the Legion expansion, was to empower himself by ‘Arcane siphoning’ as the spell is called in the game, his soldiers, this does kill the soldiers.
Unknown or just not deemed ethically correct to use.
I imagine drain life is linked more so to death magic than it is to fel magic, but necromancy is not exactly allowed within Dalaran either way, and is generally frowned upon, it seems, across Azeroth.
It is associated with, indeed.
I do agree with the ethical and moral statement in regards to the usage of such a spell. I just disagree with it being a ‘fel spell’ and that just using any siphoning spell somehow produces fel.
Whether Illidan was taught by a demon or not is quite unknown, I doubt it at the point this part of the story takes place. But yes, you are right that draining a living beings mana also includes killing them. Illidan’s defence against the Legion as we learn it during the Legion expansion, was to empower himself by ‘Arcane siphoning’ as the spell is called in the game, his soldiers, this does kill the soldiers.
By demon I meant Illidan, it’s why I also mentioned that the class generally didn’t use arcane since the fel messes with it per the Illidan book.
Illidan’s main teachers in the arcane were Rhonin, then the Moonguard and the Legion. I will give you though that him already being able to drain his soldiers of both mana and life during the Xe’ra flashback questline throws a spanner in my argument. Since visually and in name it’s entirely arcane but the effects drain both mana and life. So if he was still able to do this and pass that onto the blood elves, then while the effects’d be the same, it wouldn’t be fel. It’d just be functionally indistinguishable from what felhounds, warlocks, etc. do. If he wasn’t, then he’d just be passing on a functionally identical fel technique.
Unknown or just not deemed ethically correct to use.
I imagine drain life is linked more so to death magic than it is to fel magic, but necromancy is not exactly allowed within Dalaran either way, and is generally frowned upon, it seems, across Azeroth.
You can go either way with it. We see Warlocks do it, but that might be left over from the First War necrolytes, who used death magic. Ditto, while it’s never seen in-game, Dark Rangers in WC3 also had drain life. Speaking against that is that Kael was in the Council of Six and while Dalaran bans necromancy, they were aware of it. They misunderstood it as being a type of arcane, but they did know the basic gist. That and at least Chronicle has it that Illidan had to teach it to them, it wasn’t something known before hand.
I do agree with the ethical and moral statement in regards to the usage of such a spell. I just disagree with it being a ‘fel spell’ and that just using any siphoning spell somehow produces fel.
Yeah, I was misremembering the bit from Chronicle as referring to the draining of life being fel rather than drained life being a component of fel magic. It doesn’t make much difference when it comes to this context since any drain mana/life spell has both components, but it was an overall lore mistake on my part.
I still doubt it is a fel technique, if any of it was a fel technique to begin with and not just something which was used commonly by fel practictioners because, well, it is quite useful for fueling their fel magics.
I do think it is a very common fantasy trope to link mana and lifeforce close together. In some fantasies your lifeforce IS your mana regardless of the type of magic.
Mana and life being connected is not unknown to Warcraft. Too much can corrupt you to the point of death; the wretched. In some cases the lack of magic can can make you wither away, turn insane and ultimatively die; the withered.
Of course the latter is linked to withdrawal, an addiction, physical dependency on an arcane source which was taken away.
Arcane (mana) can accelerate aging - Khadgar, or be used to make oneself younger - Aegwynn.
So whether life and mana is linked is… I dunno… I mean, it would be weird if not because an individual in Warcraft is not born with the special ability to use magic, everyone can learn how to use magic.
Dave Kosak was describing mana as water and arcane to be steam, so arcane would be a product of mana being manipulated a certain way, which explains why all magical classes may have mana because they all manipulate ‘mana’ in a different way or infuse mana with a different energy to get different result, nature magic, arcane magic, divine magic, fel magic, death magic, etc.
I think it may be safe to assume that mana and life are actually linked in a sense, not necessarily the same thing, but linked.
Well, you’re whining now…
Wouldn’t giving in to your whines be equally “spineless”?
Thank you so much for making high elves finally playable. Please consider normal hair tones and hair styles. 
Finally we get to play as High Elves. Thank you.
These look great, I’m hyped! And let us inherit hair styles from Blood Elves while you are it please. I mean the style I’m using right now is not too bad, but I’d like to have those curly/wavy styles from Blood Elves which doesn’t cover one eye.
I am hoping that the hairstyles also get to be available to both “races”.
I am already building my High Elf transmog for Alliance, and that requires a very specific hairstyle from the new BE hairstyles.
I can make it work with other hairstyles, but it just looks perfect with the one currently only shown for BE.