The Shen’dralar were Highborne who did not live in Zin-Azshari, and remained isolated and secluded to the point that they were never exiled from Kalimdor and did not become High/Blood Elves. Further, they eventually rejoined the Night Elves and are currently in charge of training their new mages.
Since we have been told that the Night Elves undergo some irreversible physical changes from mastering the Arcane that would mark them forever and once the process had begun there would be no way to reverse or stop it, yet Blizzard has never bothered to show us what happens, this has gotten me hope that they can come up with some nice options for the Night Elves in Shadowlands, which will allow us to distinguish (and play as a character through new customizations) that part of the Highborne who returned to the Night Elves after the Cataclysm.
Imagine being able to seperate the Highborne from the Night Elves when you roam through groups of Night Elves… that would be cool?
From the Highborne page on Gamepedia: “According to Brann Bronzebeard, there is little physical difference between the Highborne and the rest of the kaldorei (save perhaps the Highborne being slightly pastier), but they consider themselves different enough.”
A hypothetical ‘Highborne’ customization for the Night Elves could therefore possibly include:
same character model as the night elves
choice of fancy jewelry (thinking earrings and tiaras)
choice of gold glowing eyes (already in game for male Night Elves)
choice of alternative ears, tilted upwards (like the statues in the Highborne city of Eldre’Thalas and both the Nightborne and the old Classic models for High Elves)
choice of extra lighter hair, possibly pink and platinum blonde (like the Nightborne)
choice of extra electric skin tones, possibly blue and purple (like Azshara, possibly connected to magic use)
choice of extra lighter skin tones, possibly lavender and ivory (since most Highborne NPC’s already have white hair and use the fairer and peachiest NE skin tones, which could be either due to isolation/inbreeding or withdrawal from the Well of Eternity)
Link to Concept Art:https://ibb.co/09nKMvG
(Sadly I cannot post proper links or embed images yet!)
The point being, even thought the Shen’dralar Highborne were established by the Classic lore, we don’t even know what their isolation did to them, and it’s kind of weird that they wouldn’t have changed the slightest considering that the same amount of time changed the High Elves and the Nightborne, so the customization revamp could be a good chance for Blizzard to add some variety to Night Elves furthering interest in a storyline they have already developed in Classic and Cataclysm and making use of some graphics they already created for the Nightborne.
Why, as stated above the Shen’dralar are a very specific Highborne group that never became high/blood elves. They are of plain Night Elf heritage, with at most some inbreeding and despicable use of demon magic in the past.
Also, I am not talking about ‘yet another’ elf race. Just some more options for the regular Night Elves, which could be easily explained by the current lore, as these guys have already rejoined the Night Elves and are the ones who have been training them in the arcane ways, making Night Elves mages possible in Cataclysm.
If the Ironforge dwarves can suddenly turn into Wildhammers, and regular Darkspear trolls can turn into Dark and even Blood(!) trolls without any explanation, why can’t someone voice for the Night Elves to have some ‘Highborne’ skins which would be relevant to their canon lore?
Unless all elves are the same to you, or you just hate them in all their shapes and colors. ^^
As much as I love the idea I don’t really thing it would be a thing.
Correct me if I’m wrong but the Highborne were mages, how can you apply those customizations to Night Elves druids? It would be restricted to “Night Elves” mages.
I’d call that overthinking and dare argue that if a totally regular Night Elf who was originally trained in the wilderness as a hunter or whatever else can suddenly learn to be a mage from them, a Shen’dralar Highborne who was welcomed back in the Night Elf community could also have a change of heart and decide to pick up druidism or whichever other occupation after all.
Or even better: think of the dwarves. I believe the shamans were introduced by the Wildhammers… who were not available as customizations. Now the dwarves will get the customizations. But Blizzard won’t restrict the Wildhammer customization. It is just assumed that as the factions have mingled, they have all been teaching each other specialties. We are simply being given customization options which were not added back then.
Oh, and think of the gold eyes option for the blood elves. Not so strong on their lore so I may have understood something wrong, but I believe Blizzard stated somewhere on twitter when they were released, that while that they will only assign the golden eyes to paladins and priest npcs mostly (and other characters more devoted to the light) they leave it up to the player to make up a backstory for their eye colors… which means even a warlock belf can roll golden eyes, if they want.
Highborne looks the same as Night Elf… Its just royal caste of the same race~ Nelf is a pleb. Blood and High Elf should look the same as well and they did till Blizz added Belfs.
(Maybe more skin color options)
Small height is a game issue - not lore… and ears can have many shapes just like goblins.
I may be mistaken, but I thought that the peach colored skin of the high elves did not come because of their actual faith, but because they were banished far away from the Well of Eternity. They simply became paler out of magic withdrawal, before they ever established the Sunwell… and then, in the long term, also shrunk. But I am not talking about shrinking to a high/elf model here. I am not asking for alliance High Elves, I am just making the hypothesis that since the Shen’dralar also lived away from the Well, they may have been suffering of some form of magic withdrawal that affected their looks even before the Sundering.
Then again, the Night Elves already have several pink hues for the skin tone, one of which is not very different from a simple human flesh color. I’d love to see more natural skin hues for them, but it is also not entirely necessary.
Obviously, which is why I am not voicing for an extra allied race but suggesting some simple additional customizations which would allow a player to say that their night elf is an offshoot of the royalty rather than a member of the pleb. And like others said, they could very much use some jewelry like the Nightborne, for instance. Besides, the Nightborne are just isolated Night Elves who became darker and have a more stiff demeanor.
Since the story is already set, and we were told that the Shen’dralar rejoined the Night Elves community already in Cataclysm, I must agre that an allied race would be totally redundant in this case.
But I would totally enjoy some more skin and hair tones, jewelry, and maybe even the option of some different ears, which could make me say that a specific Night Elf is Highborne rather than pleb.
We will get SOME customisations for them. It was promised for non-allied races already. Maybe among this new stuff there will be some fancy upper class jewelry as well~ who knows maybe we will get human-like skin color. Time will tell!
Impossible from lore perspective, but then again (especially with 8.3 spoilers) when it stooped blizzard before. They could not make nelfs mages, because it literally like rocket-scientist Semite/Slav guy on a helm of ww2 germany space program, like totally and utterly against the very fabric on the regime’ss logic/morale and ideals, - yeah just so extreme. But still here we are.
Now they look exactly like Night Elves without any specific traits, because they were established in Vanilla. Just like the High and Blood Elves also looked exactly like the Night Elves, aside from the skin tone, always in Vanilla… However that did not stop Blizzard from creating a new model and adding it for the Blood Elves, switching all the npcs to it.
I mean heck… they are even adding full skin options for the undead, while these have also never been in game!
So think of the Shen’dralar… these are meant to be isolated Highborne arcanists. These guys have been teaching the arcane arts to other Night Elves since Cataclysm… but while we are told that the Night Elves undergo some irreversible physical changes from mastering the Arcane that would “mark them forever” and once the process had begun there would be no way to reverse or stop it, Blizzard has never bothered to show us what happens - while something could, or rather should, be implemented.
We recently have had to deal with the Nightborne, and these guys have ears tilted upwards. The High/Blood elves also have ears tilted upwards, so my best is on the floppy ears to flip up when the Night Elves are ‘energized’ through dabbling with magic. (Lol!)
Not yet set in stone, but easy to fix. If they can change the eye glow for all characters that have it in order to make a character’s eyes customizable independently from the face, they can also do the same for ears.
So a Night Elf Highborne could simply be made recognizable through having the option of one of more of a few optional traits:
upwards ears
pale skin
jewelry
It would allow us to complete the elven lineage becoming the missing link between Night Elven plebs, Nightborne and High/Night Elves, while still remaining a Night Elf as it should, and finally give us an explanation as to the unexplained and unshown changes taking place when a night elf starts using magic, which already happened in Cataclysm.
Intriguing, will have to check it out. Admittedly I have had my Night Elf priest since BC and never bothered to check if the mage customizations were different.
I have a Night Elf Mage and they use all the features the other Night Elf classes can use, barring those special features for Death Knights (Pink Hair) and Demon Hunters (Horns and Black Hair.)
