On the Garrison comparison: The Garrisons were not player housing, as such your comparison breaks down. This particular Duck was in fact a Turkey. Again, they were a call back to Warcraft RTS base building. You had workers gathering resources. You placed buildings. You are attempting to insist they were a precursor to player housing to support your argument with Void Elves possibly being a precursor to High Elves. I don’t accept the comparison and I think you’re not only scraping the barrel in an attempt to force it, you’ve gone through the barrel, the floor, the layers of earth beneath the floor and are now approaching the bedrock.
On the feedback: And once again, you have loaded your response with loads of non-comparable items to try and justify your point.
Transmogrifications were an inevitability, most MMOs allow you control over the appearance of your character in some fashion, some of which predated transmogrification in Warcraft and which didn’t rely on Warcraft fans to suggest.
Falstad was brought back because red shirt guy identified a discrepancy in the lore and it was corrected and it became a viral moment. It was corrected because it was pointed out that it was wrong and they had nothing against adding mounts or the Pandaren (who were slated to be the Alliance race in TBC originally).
Now where I should have been clearer when I said Fan contributions are fan fiction and of no meaning, is that I really mean that in relation to this particular request. On the one hand, you say Blizzard has a track record of acting on feedback. On the other hand, you keep pointing out you’ve waited twenty years for this. But you never want to bring those facts together because I believe you don’t like the conclusion that is drawn…IF you’ve been offering feedback on this for as many years as you have…and IF they’ve not acted on it…the conclusion drawn is that they themselves don’t want to do it. You have proven it is possible to only yourself and those who share your belief.
On the High Elves who were gung ho to join the Alliance: That I believe is the origin of the Silver Covenant. One of the aspects of that organisation I really should highlight more is that they are treated as some kind of comprehensive organisation drawing from all walks of life when in reality they are mostly exiled Farstriders with a smattering of members from other classes. They are so heavily Hunter dominated that they were represented at the Hunter Class Hall.
Now, those High Elves who signed up with the Alliance were the token force Anasterian sent to assist the Alliance when Lothar invoked the blood oath the Elves had pledged to his bloodline. Anasterian sent a token force comprising those Elves who WANTED to help the Alliance to get them out of his hair and so he could argue he had fulfilled his oath. It was not a significant section of the population either, it was mostly Farstriders for a reason. Loners who stalked the outskirts of Quel’thalas, away from Silvermoon, hunting Trolls and most likely to encounter Humans and Dwarves entering their lands. Whilst not officially stated, it isn’t too hard to speculate why Farstrider Lodge in Loch Modan exists and why it is mostly full of Dwarves.
And while Alleria was the leader, and I have to remind you she is no longer a High Elf.
The main character of the Worldsoul Saga is the face of the Void Elves.
On the Lightforged Draenei: So the Lightforged ONLY have a suite of unique skin tones, eye colours, unique light tattoos that lorewise are the product of their lightforging, a backstory that emphasises the fact that they are lightforged and millenia upon millenia of separation from other Draenei where they journeyed with the Naaru whilst battling the Legion. Look, I am not a fan of the Allied race system, I think it is a transparent method of creating uninspiring sub-races that are only marginally different from their parent race that would have been better served by being put onto their parent races as extra customisations, but EVERY single Allied race that has a parent is in some way meaningfully different from that parent.
On the Zandalari you should read the Vol’Jin novel where he is captured by and spends some time with the Zandalari Trolls, where he notes how different they seem to other Trolls. He is the one who termed them ‘the high elves of Trolls’ as he observed them. That and the millenia of separation from the other Troll tribes and the development of their golden civilization in Dazar’alor means that they are meaningfully different.
High Elves fail because they don’t have a unique culture, they are exiled from their homeland, not a separate race. They are not biologically distinct, all the Blood Elves did was drain mana from vermin…the High Elves drained it from relics they found. They BOTH feed on the Sunwell, the same Light-Arcane energy source. And the fel excuse you keep reverting to was extremely limited. The average Alliance Warlock has probably dabbled with the Fel to a greater degree than any non Warlock/Demon Hunter Blood Elf and they aren’t excluded from their respective races. We know what a fel mutated Blood/High Elf becomes. They become Felblood Elves. There are horns.
On using a disagreement as the basis: You are citing real world examples when that isn’t the problem. The issue is what you are demanding is de facto making a core race of the Horde neutral and being able to share a fantasy that has been restricted to the Horde faction for nearly two decades open to the Alliance. This is a problem because the game, like it or not, is predicated on two mutually antagonistic factions and it is profoundly unfair to demand a major component of one faction be opened to the other. You will note that Void Elves and Nightborne, the only allied races whose parents are on the opposite faction, have been profoundly changed from those parents. In fact, culturally both are as far from their parents as you can probably get, they are not just meaningfully different, but PROFOUNDLY different. Nightborne are urban, arcane loving elves in contrast to the woodland, nature orientated Night Elves. Void Elven culture, nascent and limited as it is, is predicated entirely on the void in contrast to the light that is now the dominat theme of the Blood Elves. We have riftblades, riftwalkers and shadowguards in place of Blood Knights and Farstriders. About the only title they share is Magister.
On the Dates: The difference between four and six is miniscule, but my source was Warcraft Wiki which I believe is more up to date. Also, I was counting from when the Blood Elves were told of how to drain mana and use the fel, which happened the year after Warcraft 3 and which I then counted towards the end of the TBC. It was four years between the Battle of Mount Hyjal and the beginning of WoW, and it was another year till TBC, and most of another year for the events of TBC to take place, so we are talking 4-5 years for the Blood Elves to drain mana from vermin and use fel crystals in Silvermoon. Furthermore, Illidan pointed out that there was no cure for the addiction, they never went cold turkey. That’s why they were draining mana from vermin.
On the Eye colour change: Elven eyes are incredibly fickle. Some have regained their blue eyes. Some have gained golden eyes such as Liadrin. In other words, using the eye colour as a barometer of differentiation fails on two levels…firstly, it changes too often and secondly, as High Elves are connected to the same Sunwell the Blood Elves are feeding on (remember, same race!) then High Elf eyes will now have the same range as Blood Elves.
On the Lodges: Did you know if you look up Farstrider lodge on Warcraft Wiki there is only a single High Elf NPC listed there? I am going to just say it, it doesn’t count.
Allerian Stronghold is named after Alleria but that doesn’t mean it’s a thriving High Elf settlement. Most of the inhabitants are in fact Dwarves. And let’s not start inventing mysteriously missing High Elf settlements that could be uncovered, that isn’t going to happen.
On Void Elf customisations: I disagree, you want the game world to be bent in such a way that you can play how you want without consideration of how that impacts the rest of the player base and which disrespects the faction divide. Case in point, you talk about a set of customisations that can be ‘unlocked’. What more needs to be unlocked on Void Elves than what you already have? Is it red blood? How is that fair to Void Elf players who need to see a race they may actually prefer continually bastardised to be a vector for your fantasy simply because you don’t want to take the full fat High Elf fantasy on offer in the Horde?