Yeah it was mostly just exposure to the energy.
With green orcs too they consumed demon blood so it was probably a bit heavier there transformation wise but even then the fel blood elves you see with horns and wings and everything are probably beyond even the fel red orcs in terms of Fel corruption (who, assuming they didn’t change WC3 lore are orcs that took 2 scoops of demon blood)
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The current Orcs are far more corrupted. Remember that uncorrupted Orcs, the Mag’har, qualify as an allied race.
Orcs transformed because they were exposed to a lot more background fel radiation as their people abused fel magic and because they literally drank the blood of Mannoroth, which was a concentrated fel smoothie.
Blood Elves by contrast have received, at best, a very light ‘fel tan’ for want of a better analogy. But none of them exhibited any of the classic signs of transforming into a Felblood Elf (the end point of thalassian elf corruption with the Fel) AND the restoration of an arcane-light sunwell to which they have been connected for a decade and a half is as effective a magical colonic as can be wished for. The fel crystals were like lamps in certain areas…the sunwell is something they are intrinsically tied to and which they can gorge upon to sate their addiction.
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Once they were added they could not be unadded
You can still hearthstone back to your garrison. And by the way, you say that Garrisons do not qualify as housing, and yet, where does hearthstones warp you to? A place with lodging, usually an inn or a tavern.
gameplay system to character customisation is akin to comparing apples to an olympic swimming pool.
- My argument wasn’t about the specifics of the features, but rather the fact that you had a similar feature in the beginning and a more refined version of it later on. Saying “Void elf customisations” are as good as its gets is very similar to telling people who want player housing that Garrisons are as good as it gets and they should shut up and enjoy the latter.
Also, evergreen features can be added upon, and yet I remember you arguing that void elves shouldn’t have more customisations or that void elves can have all the customisations they want, but won’t be high elves. Which one is it?
- How can high elves not work? The fan contributions you can see on the original post elaborates very thoroughly about how they can.
what you are seeking is a stock Tolkien style set up for World of Warcraft, which of course is easily refuted by saying Azeroth is not Middle Earth
Azeroth isn’t Middle Earth, but it has taken a lot of inspiration from Middle Earth and a lot of basis in fantasy from Middle Earth. The Old World (upon which Warcraft is more closely based) isn’t Middle Earth either, and they also have the tolkienesque tropes involved in the High Elves of Ulthuan.
The High Elf fantasy is enjoyable once you pick Blood Elves, a core Horde race
The High Elf fantasy doesn’t exist in the Blood Elf experience. What you play is a subversion of that fantasy (which is OK, some people like it, some people hate it). The high elf fantasy is, as mentioned before, playing as an graceful, but arrogant civilisation that nevertheless fights alongside its dwarven and human allies, not Orcish and Trollish.
And this is not just some solitary deluded wish. It’s a trope that’s been played straight across many fantasy stories.
I get that Blizzard is about subverting the traditional tropes, but subversion shouldn’t be confused with reversing it or turning it on its head. If Blizzard wanted to completely disregard the traditional high elf aesthetic from LOTR (which, let’s be clear, they included in Warcraft 2 and 3), the people of Quel’thalas shouldn’t be calling themselves “elves” in the first place, but something else.
The tattoo idea that has been proposed at multiple times in the past fails because it’s origin is in Warcraft 2, i.e. when everyone today who is a Blood Elf would have called themselves a High Elf and thus there is no reason why the Alliance High Elves would have an exclusive claim to them AND at the end of the day…it’s a tattoo.
Warcraft II is as important to the lore as the other examples in the lore. If it wasn’t, it would be dismissed as not canon. I see no high elf tattoos on any of the modern blood elves.
You don’t build a distinct race using a tattoo
The Lightforged Draenei say “archenon poros!” (sp?).
Also, there are plenty of allied races that exist that are near identical to existing races barring one or two aesthetic differences. You can build a distinct race using moose antlers (HM Tauren) and prosthetic limbs (Mechagnomes).
You can say they’re a mistake, but as you (or someone else mentioned), what’s out of the bag can’t be put back in.
If these small differences justify an AR, I don’t see why some braided hairstyles and blue tattoos don’t.
The Nightborne spent ten millenia bathed in the energies of the Nightwell. They literally drank the stuff. That’s long exposure.
So time is the main factor? Okay, fair point.
from year 22 after the opening of the Dark Portal (when Kael’thas was informed by Illidan that substitutes for their magical addiction were required) to year 26 when the Sunwell was restored. So four years. Four.
Source?
But let’s assume that you’re right. You go on to say:
The current Orcs are far more corrupted. Remember that uncorrupted Orcs, the Mag’har, qualify as an allied race. Orcs transformed because they were exposed to a lot more background fel radiation as their people abused fel magic and because they literally drank the blood of Mannoroth, which was a concentrated fel smoothie.
The Orcs of Draenor turned green after only a short period of time. I don’t have a definite, verifiable number, but it’s certainly shorter than ten millenia.
I anticipate that you will say:
a very light ‘fel tan’ for want of a better analogy
Again, I need a source for this, because the lore material for Burning Crusade has consistently said “the blood elves turned green from their dependence on fel magic, and have resorted to using darker magics to survive”.
And while you may try and invent a woodland culture for the High Elves, this ignores the fact that those lodges have been mostly destroyed
As far as I know the Quel’danil lodge and the other lodges still exist, pending a retcon.
As for the ‘reprecussions’ of a political choice, that is not enough to justify giving one faction in World of Warcraft access to the core race of another faction.
But political choices have led to creation of whole nation-states. The United States of America was born of a political decision, and yet no one rationally would call the Americans Englishmen. They would be correct for saying that they have English society and English customs, but the US has a culture distinct enough that it can be identified as separate from that of the UK
It’s one thing to apply absolutist headcanon to the game, quite another to the company itself.
Do you know what Ion also said? That he and his team want people to play the game however they want. This was at the deep dive panel for Shadowlands in 2019.
And I want to play the game as a traditional, tokienesque high elf. If his words from the 2018 Q&A are holy writ, chapter and verse, then so are these.
What’s your evidence? That something You and those like you really want will generate lots of money for them?
I’ll admit that I do not have any insider information that would point to a direct increase in profit, as I don’t work for the company, nor am I a shareholder, but I do know that this is one of the most popular requests for the game. One that consistently tops the forums here, MMO Champion and elsewhere. One that generates a lot of excitement whenever they are mentioned. One that, even after all this time, has never died down.
I wish I could point you to a direct corrrelation from a board room, but this is the next best thing.
The survey is limited to Classic+ and they are considering it’s implementation in Classic+, but extrapolating that to retail is a stretch
Okay, fine. I never restricted my desire to just retail. If Classic+ had high elves, I’ll be happy too.
On the ‘there’s only room for two’…quoting Orcs and Humans as a counterpoint is like saying ‘banana’ as a counterpoint. It’s nonsensical in the context I was discussing. That is, a thematic dichotomy between light and void, between Blood Elves and Void Elves
So in this light vs. void conflict, it’ll just be void elves and blood elves (which, I do stress, aren’t just “light” elves. They had a conflicted, dark past, one that will be explored in the expansion).
If there are room for two, then what about the remaining races? The Humans (who came to Silvermoon’s rescue in the Intercession cinematic), the dwarves, tauren, and so on? What about the Harronir?
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That fantasy was gone very early in Warcraft Lore because Elves both joined and withdrew from Alliance over the course of the second War. Those that stayed with the Alliance during early Third War were stragglers that lost everything during the second War and had nothing to return to. It’s not until after Silvermoon was sacked, 90% of Quel’dorei population was killed and their king dead that his successor, Kael’thas tried to bring Elves back into the alliance. We know how that ended.
So sadly the fantasy you’re looking for barely exists. High Elves in Warcraft only really work with others on the “need” basis. They’re sadly also not arrogant and aloof considering how eager they are to find themselves human partners. Or maybe that’s just some kind of Windrunner Sisters’ fetish. I dunno.
Ok, if that’s how You define them:
Then Night Elves are there for You. If You want to double down on arrogance, create a mage and roleplay as Highborne of the Shandralar (the ones that rejoined Night Even society).
You know, I have heard the “the alliance already have elves: the Kaldorei!” argument before, and it’s an interesting argument, especially now that they have access to mages and warlocks (which weren’t available during vanilla).
I kind of wish they could be paladins. Delas Moonfang became one during the Paladin class order hall quest in Legion
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And we also have the Void elves. And in the future High Elves.
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You are REALLY reaching trying to defened your Garrisons comparison now if your counterpoint to the fact it is an abandoned gameplay system from a single expansion you are trying to equate with evergreen character customization is that you can hearthstone back to it. And you still aren’t taking on board that Garrisons weren’t player housing or even a precursor, as I have stated twice now they were a callback to the Warcraft RTS base building, not player housing. People know what player housing is.
On the matter of ‘fan contributions’ demonstrating that High Elves can work and your insistence that ‘they can’…no, they don’t. Fan contributions are fan fiction and of no meaning. If they make you think they can work, then the fact you desire High Elves and don’t want to consider the downsides of that decision make your certainty innately biased.
I also don’t place a great deal of weight on your reference to other fantasy worlds and your insistence that Warcraft needs to be forced to conform to that standard. If you want to play Lord of the Rings style elves, I think you should go and play Lord of the Rings Online. The High Elves of this franchise were a lot more sceptical of humanity and remember, during Warcraft 2 they were the last into the Alliance and after Warcraft 2 they were the first out. They didn’t want human and dwarven allies to begin with.
Speaking of Warcraft 2, you are very keen to hype up elements of the lore you feel agree with your stance (the tattoos) whilst ignoring others (the aforementioned attempts by Quel’thalas to stay out of the conflict until their hand was forced). As for this increasingly ridiculous tattoo idea you seem to keep returning to, there is no reason why a few exiles would use them and Blood Elves wouldn’t.
Also, the Lightforged Draenei ‘counterpoint’ can now join the Night Elves, Nightborne and Dark Iron as an Allied race unfairly maligned by a false comparison. Lightforged Draenei…are LIGHTFORGED. The process we saw Xe’ra try to inflict on Illidan without his consent and for which he eye blasted her? A Lightforged Draenei is as much a Draenei as a Void Elf is a Blood Elf…in other words, there is a measure of differentiation that justifies the Lightforged Draenei as an Allied race.
Seriously are you going to cite every single allied race there is in a sequence of ‘gotcha’ moments only for me to have to explain why each and every citation is bogus or based on false premises? Zandalari Trolls are regarded as ‘the High Elves of Trolldom’ and have maintained a distinct civlization for millenia…Earthen are rock based lifeforms that were the precursors to modern Dwarves who were transformed by the curse of flesh…Vulpera are self-explanatory…Mecha-gnomes are half robots who lived in isolation for thousands of year…the HM Tauren were blessed by Cenarius…I can go on.
The High Elves you propose are, once again, biologically and culturally identical to Blood Elves and separated only by a political opinion. The reason why braided hairstyles and blue tattoos don’t is that there is no reason a random Blood Elf couldn’t show up with the same braided hairstyles and blue tattoos.
And yes! Time is most definitely a factor, particularly when that time is ten millenia. Human recorded history barely reaches back five in reality!
Also you need a source for the timeline? Really? You mean you’ve been arguing timeframes without being aware how long the fel was used?
Google the timeline on Warcraft Wiki. Or listen to the Opening cinematic of World of Warcraft which reminds you that ‘Four years have passed since the mortal races stood united against the threat of the Burning Legion’. Warcraft 3 took place in year 21 where the Sunwell was corrupted. The Frozen Throne was year 22, when Kael learned of the Fel and sent messanges back to Silvermoon. World of Warcraft took place over a year, year 25, and the Burning Crusade took place over the following year, year 26, which culminated in the restoration of the Sunwell.
Four years.
And of course the Orcs turned green. They literally drank the blood of a demon, engaged in fel magic once their Warlocks ran wild and the planet was dying due to the immense level of fel corruption. That was why they needed to invade Azeroth in the first place.
As for the Blood Elves
" On several occasions after the Sunwell’s defilement, Kael’thas publicly asserted that his people would die unless they found a new source of magic. There can be no doubt that withdrawal from prolonged exposure to arcane magic is a very unpleasant process: to this day it is not impossible that a high elf might choose to give in to the addiction and become one of the blood elves. Technically, though, the prince was mistaken. According to the top priests and medics on Azeroth, the only high elves who perished due to the Sunwell’s loss were the very old, the very young, and elves who were already in poor health.
This is not to say, however, that withdrawal from magic would leave the blood elves unharmed. On the contrary, permanent mental or physical damage is possible.
Even so, the prince’s relatively quick acceptance of dire measures (e.g., draining magic from demons) is by no means characteristic of blood elves in general. The blood elves of Outland have by now discovered Kael’thas’ agreement with Illidan, and they have for the most part become convinced of its necessity. Most blood elves still live on Azeroth, though. Few of these elves know of Kael’thas’ pact with Illidan, and many would be horrified if they discovered it. Draining magic from small mana-bearing vermin is a far cry from draining magic from demons. Yet, as their hunger grows, blood elves–particularly those in Outland–are becoming increasingly inured to the things they must do in order to obtain more magic."
The Elves in Outland did drain fel from Demons and ended up as Felblood Elves. Maybe as the Elves on Azeroth grew more desperate they MIGHT have given in, but that passage was written just before TBC launched and as we know the Sunwell got fixed a few months later.
Quel’Danil is the last lodge. Quel’lithien is destroyed, Theramore destoryed, Dalaran destroyed. All the places listed as ‘high elf population centres’.
And yes, Ion said that. And then gave Void Elves those normal customisations, just as they gave Wildhammer Dwarf customisations to Bronzebeard Dwarves and Sand Troll customisations to Darkspear. Now they may have compromised that by depicting Void Elf NPCs with those customisations out in the world, but that statement was one that placed the roleplay squarely on the player, not the game or the other players. You may pretend to be a Wildhammer, or a Sand Troll, OR a High Elf in the Alliance using these options so long as you don’t expect everyone else to objectively agree.
On the matter of hypothetical profit you have no evidence. It would generate a modest spike as some folk did race change, and then that would be it but they’d have compromised some other core game features such as faction diversity. You are incentivised to inflate how profitable this is. The fact they’ve not done it means the cost does not outweight whatever financial gain they would reap. They DO have insider information after all.
On Classic+ I literally don’t care. It won’t be the real game and will be, at best, an alterante timeline. If that gives what you want it won’t affect me.
Finally, the other races are obviously going to participate. The dichotomy is between the shadow and light thalassian elves in the thalassian elf homeland, given the expansion is set there.
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You are REALLY reaching trying to defened your Garrisons comparison now if your counterpoint to the fact it is an abandoned gameplay system from a single expansion you are trying to equate with evergreen character customization is that you can hearthstone back to it. And you still aren’t taking on board that Garrisons weren’t player housing or even a precursor, as I have stated twice now they were a callback to the Warcraft RTS base building, not player housing. People know what player housing is.
The Garrison, at the end of the day, was a response to a player request for a personal, bespoke space that you could go home to outside of a capital city. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it’s a duck.
Wowhead has mentioned that Garrisons were intended to introduce “housing in a Warcraft way”. Warcraft’s base building had an objective where you could produce units and fight other enemy bases, not customise your own living space.
What we can agree on is that Garrisons were not successful in their intention, and have been largely forgotten, although some of their features ended up becoming evergreen, such as the mission table.
The truth is, the Garrison was meant to be a space for your player character to have a base in, to return to after questing. That qualifies as housing, however imperfect it is.
People know what player housing is.
And most people know what a High Elf is.
Fan contributions are fan fiction and of no meaning.
My point is that Blizzard has had a track record of taking feedback and acting on it. If fan concepts and contributions mean nothing, transmogrifications wouldn’t be a thing, Falstad would never return to the game after the Red Shirt Guy took the dev team to task on whether or not he was alive, the Pandaren would not be a playable (or even introduced into Warcraft) and mounts like the Honeyback Harvester and Jigglesworth wouldn’t be added.
If the fans are so unimportant, why the need for beta testing and surveys? Why the need for an annual convention that invites people from all over the world to test their new products and give their input on it? There are plenty of game companies that happily put up a wall between them and their fans, like Nintendo, but Blizzard is not one of them.
If you want to play Lord of the Rings style elves, I think you should go and play Lord of the Rings Online. The High Elves of this franchise were a lot more sceptical of humanity and remember, during Warcraft 2 they were the last into the Alliance and after Warcraft 2 they were the first out. They didn’t want human and dwarven allies to begin with.
Honestly, the lack of High Elves in Warcraft has made me curious about trying different MMOs where that fantasy does exist.
There are people who like to quote that Anasterian was a more reluctant member of the alliance but there were High Elves who were very gung ho about joining up with them to fight the Horde, some of them so gung ho that one of them followed the Alliance through the Dark Portal to finish the fight. She ended up having a child with one of them and is now a main character in the Worldsoul Saga.
Likewise, the US chose to stay out of helping Britain and China, but that did not stop American volunteers from helping both countries out against the Germans and Japanese respectively. We can talk about Thalassian politics til the unicorns come home, but the reality is while Anasterian was sceptical, there were significant members of his population who were not.
As for this increasingly ridiculous tattoo idea you seem to keep returning to, there is no reason why a few exiles would use them and Blood Elves wouldn’t.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing. There are historic examples of a rump government or an exiled culture holding onto customs and traditions forgotten by the new regime.
Also, the Lightforged Draenei ‘counterpoint’ can now join the Night Elves, Nightborne and Dark Iron as an Allied race unfairly maligned by a false comparison. Lightforged Draenei…are LIGHTFORGED
My point is that tattoos can be a differentiator between a core race and an allied race. Lightforged Draenei just have different skin tones, eye colour and some light tattoos. Furthermore, you could make a regular Draenei look like a lightforged Draenei in the skin selection.
Seriously are you going to cite every single allied race there is
Yes.
The argument that High Elves can’t be playable because they’re too biologically identical to Blood Elves falls apart when you have Zandalari, who have very little biological variation from their Darkspear cousins.
have maintained a distinct civlization for millenia
Oh? Is that to suggest that they have… a different culture based on different environments and context? That reminds me of a certain unplayable race that exists in the alliance.
You’ve carefully listed out every reason why each allied race is different from the core race. How is this any different from High Elves from being the precursor to the Blood Elves and instead of submitting to corruption and mana tapping, they refused to do so?
biologically and culturally identical to Blood Elves and separated only by a political opinion
Again. Many nation states, civilisations, and entities have formed due to a disagreement in opinion. If you think about it, the High Elves and Nightborne had a different opinion on magic than the Night Elves. The Forsaken also have a “different opinion” than their scourge counterparts. Would you argue that because they simply disagreed about magic, they don’t deserve to be their own cultures?
Elisande, during her speech, referred to the Quel’dorei separately from the Kaldorei and Sin’dorei. She mentions that the Quel’dorei have become too comfortable mingling with “lesser races”. The point is, spending time exiled from Silvermoon and among the human kingdoms has probably given them a culture distinct from the Blood Elves
The Frozen Throne was year 22, when Kael learned of the Fel and sent messanges back to Silvermoon. World of Warcraft took place over a year, year 25, and the Burning Crusade took place over the following year, year 26, which culminated in the restoration of the Sunwell.
Wowpedia states that Warcraft 3 took place in 20 ADP. Going by that source, TBC was around 26. So six years. Granted, not a big different but I also remember that you said 7 years is a lot of time. And besides, any former smoker/recovering drug addict will tell you that they don’t just suddenly stop and go cold turkey after 6 years of consistently doing it (at least, not without a lot of suffering).
This is not to say, however, that withdrawal from magic would leave the blood elves unharmed. On the contrary, permanent mental or physical damage is possible.
Ah, there we go, I’m glad we agree somewhere.
Even so, the prince’s relatively quick acceptance of dire measures (e.g., draining magic from demons) is by no means characteristic of blood elves in general.
Just as how the mismanagement of Kael’thas’ soldiers by Garithos is by no means characteristic of humans in general. But that’s beside the point.
The Blood Elves followed Kael’thas and were eagerly awaiting his return and relied on his methods of mana tapping and building fel crystals around the city to sustain themselves. The fact is the blood elves pre-2.4 were more than willing to dabble into dark magics and fel.
If someone decides to put radioactive chemical facilities in the city, would people be slightly exposed and “tanned”? No. There’s a reason why people are very careful when exploring Pripyat in Ukraine (well, before the war that is)
And a change in energies coming out of your eyes qualifies as more than just a “slight” change. If the Blood Elves of Silvermoon and Quel’thalas didn’t rely on fel that much, their eyes would have stayed white while Kael’thas and his people’s eyes turned green.
Quel’Danil is the last lodge. Quel’lithien is destroyed, Theramore destoryed, Dalaran destroyed. All the places listed as ‘high elf population centres’.
Allerian Stronghold and Farstrider Lodge are still around. There are still High Elves living in Stormwind and other human settlements, and it is possible that there are High Elves settlements in places we have yet to discover.
You may pretend to be a Wildhammer, or a Sand Troll, OR a High Elf in the Alliance using these options so long as you don’t expect everyone else to objectively agree.
I personally agree with the sentiment that non-voidy void elves aren’t the same as high elves, but again, if there are a set of customisations that can be unlocked later on and void elves are given more classes, that would suffice for me. I don’t need other people to objectively agree, I just want to play the game however I want.
The fact they’ve not done it means the cost does not outweight whatever financial gain they would reap. They DO have insider information after all.
Of course they have insider information, because they’re on the inside! But just as I have no insider information that profits will happen, you don’t have information that profits won’t happen. And it bears repeating: just because it won’t happen now, doesn’t mean it will never happen. Ion said so before at Blizzcon one time. He even said “anything can happen” right after that quote that people who are against alliance high elves enjoy quoting.
On Classic+ I literally don’t care. It won’t be the real game and will be, at best, an alterante timeline. If that gives what you want it won’t affect me.
Cool. Agree to disagree on that. I personally think Classic + is an oxymoron but if it has playable High Elves, I’ll give it a go.
Finally, the other races are obviously going to participate. The dichotomy is between the shadow and light thalassian elves in the thalassian elf homeland, given the expansion is set there.
Keith Riley mentioned in his tweet that the High Elves (not void, nor blood) will, at the very least, make an appearance.
EDIT: I’m going to issue a retraction. Wowpedia mentioned page 159 about the addiction to fel magic, but after reading it, I don’t really see a direct quote. If I do find a direct I will update this post
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Hey, would You be able to tell me which section/chapter of the book? My brother has them (but not in english, hence i’m not asking about specific page), i’d like to see that quote. Also:
Wowpedia isn’t a good source of information, the original creators have moved to warcraft.wiki.gg, if You’d like an explanation, I believe here it can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/176e0jq/wowpedia_has_moved_we_are_now_warcraft_wiki/
Thank you. I saw that the page is 159 on wowpedia (which you just said is out of date), so I’ve issued a retraction after reading it.
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that is mainly a Windrunner sister kink, and maybe keal’thas to an extend.
Pre TWW I’d agree, but now that we have Arathi, I’m no longer sure about that. We’ll need to learn more about them.
Oh gods you are right.
its spreading!
There’s just something about human men that’s irresistable to elven women. 
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I found arathi to be an interesting case study to the future of high elves all things considered
that’d probably be the outcome in a few hundred years of the ones that integrated into human society
did humans and gilneans ever get their ear options?
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wondered if they would add it once I saw the arathi for the first time.
confused gilneans with kul’tirans again
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Maybe they were tired of their elven “husbands” overshadowing them in the beauty department and wearing their dresses better.
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I guess its not entierly impossible they could sneak in high elves through the arathi, but I doubt it will make anyone happy. 
Could even make them different by using the modified night elf skeleton rig they used on nightborn, so we have some pale thalassian looking nightborn elves instead of yet another blood elf rig.