They absolutely do this, but that is not applicable here. The NPCs that are taller than average are Shen’dralar NPCs all over Bel’ameth, and back in Cata there was a Highborne added to the Temple of the Moon who was also taller than the playable night elf. None of these are hostile, boss characters or even relevant outside a quest or two.
It’s not consistent all over, but it occurs often enough to be suggestive at least. People can choose how tall their character is, especially with these potions, but I think people wanting to tall-up their Highborne characters do have fairly solid ground to justify it.
Honestly their hillariously good for how they add height variance. With my partners goblin and my goblin standing side by side we compared using 4 down on myself and 4 up on theirs and it finally felt like a realistic height variance with no effort. Very much a good step in the right direction
I had a tour in-game, and I think if we go by these examples it’s still rather inconsistent.
back in Cata there was a Highborne added to the Temple of the Moon who was also taller than the playable night elf.
If you mean Tarelvir the mage trainer chatting with the dwarf at the Temple, he’s indeed taller than the average night elf model. But behind him are also two other Highborne mage trainers, who are regular night elf size. One of these two is Maelir, who we also see reappear in Bel’ameth, and has retained his original size despite using an updated model with different gear, despite standing right next to a bigger Shen’dralar Sorcerer NPC.
The Bel’ameth Mages keeping the connecting portals up appear to be of regular night elf size as well, though we don’t know if they’re Highborne or not.
It could be a remnant of everything in the old Dire Maul dungeons being upscaled, from props to the NPCs to make the place appear more imposing and grandiose during gameplay. Maybe because of that the devs who put the new Shen’dralar NPCs into Bel’ameth upscaled many of them a bit bigger too. But, that too, is merely speculation.
While people are welcome to interpret the in-game model differences as they will, personally I’d be careful about it because the Highborne was a social caste more than an elven sub-race. The Nightborne are the same size as regular Night Elves too, despite their culture being more inspired by the Highborne society than the forest-loving kaldorei.
I don’t know much about that potion in particular, so I’m certainly not saying using it would bring you to any kind of “lore approved” height.
While I agree that differences between the two should be minimal, I’d also categorise a height difference as being only a minimal difference. People from the Netherlands are considered tall, but in all other aspects they don’t really seem distinct from other Western european peoples, to give an example.
This is true, but on the other hand they did just reskin playable night elves.
But I think we can all agree on this. It is inconsistent. But I find it noticeable enough to make you think. For sure there is a lot of interpretation put into it, but I can think of few RP concepts that do not make use of interpretation of one or two all-too-vague lore details.
I actually meant Daros Moonlance inside the Temple. He’s talking to the Archeology trainer Hammon the Jaded, but Tarelvir is a good example, too!
For context - Gazlowe is also a head/half a head taller than all the Goblins you meet in the start of Undermine. Whether that’s a canon thing or just a ‘So he stands out’ thing? No idea.
We also have the likes of Tyrion Fordrings wibbly-wobbly-height adventures throughout Wrath, where in ICC he’s inexplicably obviously chugged some Fire Water and then some
(The sooner the devs add proper height sliders and dismount zones to make smaller NPCs viable again, the better)
Hey there! Thank you very much for making this chart and the spreadsheet - it’s a wonderful resource for everybody who wants to visualise their character’s height better.
I had an idea of making a visual guide to help people see the differences in height (I suppose an in-game height chart resource) between each race, unless someone has done this already on the NA side or even on EU. Would this be something folks would want?
