Honestly I do agree that Void Elves came really off the left field. Sure the dev team and story writings tried to give them a more distinct culture compared to Sin’dorei but tying them down to the Race’s biggest traitor really does not help their cause.
Now the main problem with High Elves is that WoW Writing team did not do anything to truly differentiate them from Blood Elves. Their only difference as of now is their allegiance. And that’s not enough to build even allied race off.
Unless any recent lore has changed it, in regards to Quel’thalas elves, marriage and relationships between human and elf were rare, even more rare was half elves, so much so you can count the number of true half elves on one hand in the lore prior to TWW when we learned about the arathi.
If Pandaren can choose between the factions, so should blood & high elves.
We have several identical races on both factions, there’s simply no argument.
There’s a very distinct culture between Quel’dorei and Sin’dorei at this point, we’ve had several expansions build on the premise that they’re not one and the same anymore.
Could You elaborate? Last I checked they used the same language, held the same things in high regard (Sunwell), kept their pre third war architecture (didn’t develop new architectural style), kept the same titles (ranger general, magister) - what exactly are those cultural differences?
Like? I really can’t find anything different about them. They both consider Silvermoon their capital, they both use the same ranks within their society which is why Vereesa used the “Ranger-General” title for her rank as a leader of Silver Covenant. The only difference is that Sin’dorei ultimately decided to stay and embrace the Horde once the negotiations with Varian fell through as the result of Dalaran’s Purge and the Darkspear rebels offering Blood Elves the third path, while High Elves remain on alliance side. High elves don’t even have a settlement to call their own instead living mostly within human cities.
To understand it you must also understand the lore, and the implications of what it really meant to follow Kael’thas after the Sunwell was originally destroyed.
Many of the prominent high elves we know today refused to follow in his steps, where sating your hunger was the highest priority, no matter what. To the point where they’d start to drain the land and creatures of their magic, to siphon fel magic.
It got so bad that they had an elite force (Blood Knights) that drained the powers of a Naaru.
These weren’t evil characters, but that’s where they were as a society at that point.
And though the blood elves were redeemed by that very same Naaru (M’uru), that philosophical rift remained.
Both the blood and high elves are sated through the renewed Sunwell in Modern WoW, but the history isn’t so easily washed away.
That’s the beginning, then there are the conflicts that happened afterwards, be it in Wrath, Mists of Pandaria, etc that furthered the divide. That built on that divide. Again, read up on the lore.
On the Garrison comparison: The Garrison had a hearthstone because it was your main base of operations for the expansion. Why did we get a hearthstone for Dalaran in the following expansion? And please don’t reach with the comparison with placing furniture, we were placing buildings literally how you do in an RTS.
On asking for other features but not High Elves: I thought it was obvious? It’s a two faction game and high elves are a duplicate of a core Horde race. You aren’t asking for something new, you are asking for access to something that was expressly reserved for the Horde and is a core part of Horde faction identity.
On the wait for High Elves: As we discussed previously, the developers say ‘anything can happen’ as an empty response the vast majority of the time on things they have no interest or intention of ever doing, but they say it because if they ever say no and on the off-chance ever change their minds, that will be thrown back in their faces forever more. Look at how often you and other pro High Elf folks throw back the initial rejection of classic at them in response to this issue? As for your examples, you seem to ignore the big difference between all those other requests and this one. What you seek is already playable, just not on the faction you want it to be. It is materially different in other words. Even housing was a question of effort rather than a question of will, and housing doesn’t damage a fundamental gameplay system (the faction system).
On the proof for their opposition: Ion’s 2018 comments stand, you can cite all the other examples were you feel they changed their mind you want, but until they change their mind on this you can’t reach out to these other examples because they prove nothing. Those examples are relevant only to themselves, not to this request, which is materially different than the other requests. The proof they don’t want to do it is
1.) They said Blood Elves are High Elves. That is a statement of fact. Blood Elves are High Elves, High Elves are playable.
2.) They went to the bother of creating Void Elves. An odd choice of a race sure, but one meaningfully differentiated from the Blood Elves, who are the true High Elves. They fact they went to the bother of creating the variant is a demonstration that they don’t want to do it.
3.) That they weren’t added in Midnight: The reason this debate has kicked off again is that there was a possibility that if they were ever going to do it, Midnight was the time with it’s focus on the Elves.
On the Nature of the Silver Covenant: Yet I didn’t say they were all Hunters, I said they were mostly Hunters, and were considered a Hunter organisation during Legion as they were in the class hall. That the next biggest group would be Mages is unsurprising given they were based in Dalaran.
On the High Elven response during the Second War: That is what happened. Anasterian sent a token force when the war was distant and far away, and only joined the Alliance fully once Quel’thalas itself was threatened. Once the threat receded, he bailed. Alleria and those Elves who accompanied her to Outland faced censure back home for continuing to assist the Alliance. Your comparison breaks down after this, particularly with Genn Greymane and Gilneas. Genn is alive, Anasterian is dead. And while the Kingfom of Gilneas returned to the Alliance, the Kingdom of Quel’thalas has joined the Horde. You have as much right to play High Elves as Horde players do to play Worgen exiles.
On the Allied race system: The faction lines were not blurred by the addition of the Blood Elves because they were ‘pretty’, Blood Elves were a distinct race. The faction lines were also not blurred by opening up Paladins and Shamans to the other factions, as that was a choice regarding classes that completely failed. Neutral races are conceived of and implemented as such, with the common story being the player is an individual of that race who has opted to join the Alliance or the Horde, whilst their society has not. In contrast, the Kingdom of Quel’thalas is a core Horde member.
On the Zandalari: The Zandalari are somewhat biologically different from other Trolls. Again, read the Vol’Jin novel where he comments on this. They are taller and stronger than members of the other tribes and possess a unique range of skin tones. Each Allied race is meaningfully differentiated from their parent race in some form. The closest biologically is going to be the Kul Tirans, who ARE Humans (unless we ever receive confirmation they have some Drust blood in them) but that is ameliorated by them having a unique Kul Tiran culture, by them being on the same faction, and because the intent was clearly to provide the Alliance with a bigger, bulkier Human model.
On Warlocks using fel: No source, but common sense. If you are using fel magic regularly, then when compared to someone who was lightly exposed to fel magic across a few years, you’ve probably plumbed the depths to a greater extent. Partiuclarly as Blood and High Elves are now receiving a daily dose of light and arcane energy. During the days the Fel crystals were in Silvermoon and Blood Elves had to drain mana from living beings, there was no constant pressure of other magical forces against the fel as there is now.
On Elven eye colour: It has been sixteen years though and elven eyes are fickle. Liadrin’s for example have now gone golden. It will be interesting to see how many Elves in Silvermoon retain the green eye colour in the updated city, I would say enough but I also expect plenty of blue and gold and purple.
On Alleria: Alleria is certainly a Void Elf. Attempts to argue otherwise are disingenuous. She ate a void naaru and transformed before our eyes. She is the Void Elf racial leader.
As for the Lightforged Draenei I think they are in a situation analagous to the Mechagnomes, who acknowledge Mekkatorque as the overall racial leader of all Gnomes. By which I mean, from the Draenei heritage armour quests, they, like the repentant Eredar, defer to Velen as the overall leader of the Draenei race. Turalyon isn’t a racial leader, he is the leader of the military organisation known as the Army of the Light of which the Lightforged Draenei are members. It’s a minor distinction but an important one.
On Nightborne and Blood Elves: I am not contrasting Nightborne with Blood Elves though, as Blood Elves are not the parent race of Nightborne. This is a false dichotomy.
On Blizzard ignoring High Elven culture when Void Elves gets more attention: Except they’re not. Blood Elves are High Elves, High Elven culture is doing just fine. The problem is you refuse to accept that Blood Elves ARE the playable High Elves.
On 7 years being a long time to hold a vigil: You may nitpick, but 7 years is a long time for fans to hold a vigil in real life, nothing at all when talking of a fictional video game race who live for millenia. This is, in other words, another false dichotomy. But the fel is fading and is no longer the definitive aspect of their culture. They are now presented as light elves in contrast to the more explicitly named Void Elves. The green eyes are the mildest of legacies from that time.
On the possibility of new High Elven settlements: The idea is a reach for an isolationist species and not a serious counter-point. Where have they been the past twenty years is the most obvious question. And why wouldn’t they join with Silvermoon if they were ‘rediscovered’. The obvious answer is because they don’t exist. The only extant population of thalassian descent are the Arathi Empire, and they are mixed race Elves and Humans and already aligned to a faction who are clearly being set up as the big bads for after the world soul saga.
On Closing Arguments: The Blood Elf fantasy IS the High Elf fantasy. It maybe a subversion of the traditional fantasy in OTHER fantasy universes, but only regards their alignment in the world. In every other respect, they are analogous to traditional High Elves. Magical elves, holy knights, rangers out in the wild and a fairyland city…check, check, check and check. It is just that the Orcs are welcome and the Humans aren’t where the subversion occurs.
The Void Elves are an even bigger subversion of a High Elf because they subvert what a High Elf IS rather than whom a High Elf hangs out with.
And there are no immense RP opportunities, you are trying to confect a conflict with the Blood Elves that is no longer relevant. The opposite of a Blood Elf is a Void Elf. Whatever you imagine in terms of RP opportunities, that is already sated by the existence of a traitorous, Alliance supporting void mutant in contrast to a loyal, Horde member light elf. The Void Elves have supplanted the High Elves in the story (whose last meaningful contribution was the purge of Dalaran, and that was really a Jaina story) and the story is probably better for it.
That’s the issue at stake here. You are trying to argue that the real High Elves aren’t playable and that by allowing them to be playable, everyone else can carve out their unique niches.
That is false. The Blood Elves don’t NEED to carve out their own culture. They already have one. And you can’t come up with anything beyond a political opinion to justify the existence of a distinct High Elf allied race, particularly when Void Elves exist and particularly when Void Elves were granted enough customisations for you to approximate one on the Alliance.
On the Void Elf joke: The Void Elf jokes shows the progress of change, though the change from Blood Elf to Void Elf was more profound than adopting a new adjective in your name.
On Caydiem’s post being debunked I would like to cite Hitchen’s Razor: Whatever is cited without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. We both acknowledge the existence of the Caydiem post, meaning I don’t have to dig it out, but you will need to provide a citation from whatever lore book you said debunks that post before I accept it has been altered.
Arathis are not half elves
They have some mixed blood
You can litteraly count half elves with one hand
Arator
Vereesa kids (not in the game)
Warcraft rpg
Ah you promote apartheid. No, that’s not how democracy works, else you really need to go back to the warchief model and eliminate all the racial leaders.
I will need to dig a while before finding these things again, but I believe, pre-legion, that there were in total more High Elves than gnomes in lore, including the ones displaced on outland and in the twisting nether. There would be between 7.500-10.000 high elves according to that lore. Gnomes back in said day were only a group of 6.000 or so. When Gnomergan fell 80% of it’s population was lost.
I disagree on this, if you look at the original roadmap of “vanilla” wow, you will find that back in the day, the datamined game files had a faction called: Remnants of Silvermoon, which was an Alliance only faction, with the playable race of High Elves.
Pulled from WoWHead:
The Silver Covenant is a militant core of high elves that reject the admission of blood elves into the Kirin Tor. They have united under the banner of Vereesa Windrunner and joined the Alliance Vanguard to oppose the Lich King.The Covenant control the Alliance district of Dalaran, the Silver Enclave. The guards they employ are Silver Covenant Guardian Mages, who will expel Horde players once they get too close to the Alliance district.
Their make up is no where specified of it being a majority of hunters or mages. One of their prominant mage figures however is: Arcanist Braedin.
The minor issue I have with this is, if it wasn’t for Jaina going rampart in Dalaran during MoP (which she did as leader of the Kirin’Tor in that position and not on orders of the Alliance) to round up the Sin’dorei, while Varian Wrynn (may he* rest in peace), was negotiating for blood elves to return back to the Alliance. So there was, at one point intent. Let’s not forget, before you bring up, Jaina being the bid bag Alliance mage, that it were the Blood Elves that made the mana bomb that Garrosh dropped on Theramore, the blood elves knew what it was meant for. Don’t forget there was an inside blood elf, on the Alliance that helped them achieve this. She forgave Theramore, but couldn’t handle the second betrayal. I am not saying it’s justified, but you reap what you sow and this ALWAYS gets conveniently left out by all Blood Elven players and sympathizers.
By that logic, high elves could start in any human starting area. As the majority still live within human cities.
Murder’s Row will be a dungeon dedicated to elves that keep using the fel magic and even forbidden ones from back in Outlands that people will get to optimize for their mythic key runs 
Pulled from WoWhead: https://www.wowhead.com/guide/lore-lorthemar-theron
A few days later, Lor’themar journeyed to Quel’Lithien Lodge in the Plaguelands, where he visited those BloodElves he had exiled for refusing to suck arcane magic from living creatures. He spoke with Ranger Lord Hawkspear and Aurora Skycaller, shocking them with the news of Kael’thas’s betrayal and death and the Sunwell’s restoration. Now that the Blood Elves no longer had to rely on draining magic from living creatures, Lor’themar’s intention was make amends, offering aid and supplies. Hawkspear was not having any, still blaming Lor’themar for banishing them in the first place, and angry that the Blood Elves’ new undead allies in the form of Nathanos Blightcaller had attacked the lodge. He even threatened to kill Lor’themar and send his head to Sylvanas.
I don’t think ANY High Elf would want to rejoin that kingdom with it’s current regent lord. Maybe if he steps down then I could see it happen, but as long as Lor’Themar stays active, I don’t see it happen, lore wise.
Again modern wowhead:
Overview: The blood elves are a proud, haughty race, joining the Horde in Burning Crusade. They represent a faction of former high elves, split off from the rest of elven society; they are also survivors of Arthas’ assault on Silvermoon. Blood elves are fully dependent on magic, having revelled in its power for so long that they suffer horrible withdrawal if it were to be taken away.
And Blood Elves are still that a subvert of High Elves, your racial says it all:
Arcane Torrent: Remove 1 beneficial effect from all enemies within 8 yards and restore 3% of your Mana, 15 Energy, 15 Rage, 15 Focus, 1 Holy Power, 1 Chi, or 20 Runic Power.
Your racial is based on devouring and devouring creatures around you. Your starting zone even has a quest called: Thirst Unending, which is the whole stick of the Blood Elves.
Quest flavor text:
If there is only one lesson you deign to remember from your time on Sunstrider Isle , let it be this - control your thirst for magic. It is a thirst unending, - what you absorb must be controlled and released via Arcane Torrent. Failure is to become one of the Wretched… hopelessly addicted and insane.
Seek out a mana wyrm and unleash your Arcane Torrent upon it. Learn to master your power. When you have sufficiently released an Arcane Torrent, return to me.
I am sure, REAL High Elves would have never done this.
My above evidence debunks your gut feeling.
I agree, they have their own culture, which is a slight sub culture of the High elves, they didn’t lose their ability to build or how they build and that is ok. I personally, for my stake am not asking for Quel’thalas to become Alliance or even Neutral, you as Blood Elves, lore wise have it. I’ll be happy to make a High Elf and share a starting zone with another race or get a small patch in exisiting Alliance zone to start out of. Where they have some unique High Elven buildings ala Allerian Stronghold.
Before you say that they made the buildings blue because of the Alliance, you will see in the updated zone that Windrunner Spire (dungeon, aka ruins) will be themed in the blue colour and if you go to Youtube and lookup: Alleria: Light and Shadow | The War Within | World of Warcraft, you will see Silvermoon City and any TRUE High Elven building to be blue.
I stick with what I said, true High Elves would have been a better addition to the Alliance as Allied race, there are options for them to join it over the Void Elves, I think Void Elves lore wise have a very weak connection to join the Alliance other than Alleria pulling them out of a hole and getting them into the Alliance to give them strength through unity.
With the current balance beeing two of the Windrunner sisters being part of the Alliance. and a handful of Umbric and followers that are Void Elves. Plus the unplayable High Elves.
I think, for many RP players, who are really hell bent on playing High Elf a good solution would be to share the hairstyles of Blood Elves and Void Elves in full, potentially a glyph to change the entropic embrace proc to something arcane/sunwell like and allow a setting to toggle the void elf voice without the “voidy” sound to it.
Lore wise High elves are exiled from Quel’thalas and voluntarily remained so, even after Lor’themar gave them a warm hand. However during the Zandalari uprising, when Vereesa showed up with her* rangers, he sent a messenger to her, requesting for them to leave (bit of a mixed feeling right there, is it a political thing because she is Windrunner and he fears* people will go against him over her? - this is me speculating). So I personally don’t think High Elves should be able to go to Quel’thalas other than to be allowed to pilgrimages to the Sunwell as Lor’themar allowed Alleria to do.
So for my 2 cents:
Criticism: lore wise, High Elves would have been the better pick for an Allied race over Void Elves, because right now it feels like they are designing lore around Void Elves, to justify them.
This post also got way too long for my liking, but I hope I covered most of the things.
Where did i promote apartheid?
Do you understand words you re using?
The void is disturbing your mind, ren’dorei.
The pandaren are different though, the alliance and horde pandaren follow two very different, oppesite even, schools of philosophy.
There just isn’t any sort of difference between the quel’dorei and the sin’dorei least not any meaningful one.
Indeed
Blizzard like their subversions.
Orcs aren’t evil
Goblins are fairly advanced
The minotaur (tauren) are peaceful
and the tolkin eleves befriended the orcs.
That is what a half breed is…
I do agree we should probably consider them different from regular half elves though.
And Alodi
Thats 4 true half elves, 5 if you consider kalec’s humanoid form.
Is not canon and can be disregarded (a shame in some circumstances)
Half elf :
One human parent
One elf parent
Everything else is just mixed blood
Alodi is dead
Kalec is not an elf -_-
Are you serious mate?
Apartheid:
Apartheid: racial segregation. If they don’t join, they don’t belong, your words not mine.
The fel energies have addled your brains Sin’dorei.
Not every reply is a rebuttal.
I was adding two more names to your list.
Eh no? any craeture with one elven parent is half elf.
thats how crossbreeding works
some of them may have special names but a mule is still half horse regardless of what you call it.
There is no racial segregation cause alliance quel dorei are the same race as sin dorei.
Its just fact
I am not going to compose a massive response here, so I will try and keep this brief.
On High Elf numbers, I believe you are misremembering data from the Warcraft RPG which accorded the High Elves a population of some 20,000 individuals and which was itself cited in opposition to the Caydiem post a few years ago. The Warcraft RPG is CONFIRMED to be non-canon. Gnomes greatly outnumber High Elves.
On the Remnant of Silvermoon: Irrelevant, if they didn’t make it into the live game they don’t count. The Blood Elves did and were implemented as a core Horde race.
On Blood Elves being High Elves: Blood Elves are the true High Elves by virtue of being the same people they were before the Sunwell was destroyed. You cannot ‘disenfranchise’ High Elves by an appeal to some supposed moral superiority.
On classes: Priests already ARE available to all races are they not? Paladins are limited partly for reasons of lore, partly because all Paladin races have to have a unique mount designed for them.
On the Silver Covenant: Yet nothing you have written disqualifies them as being primarily a Hunter organisation, which makes sense given most of the exiles from Quel’thalas were former Farstriders. They were welcomed into the Hunter class hall. They title their leader ‘Ranger-General’.
On the Allied Race system: Except High Elves cannot be an allied race, as they are already playable as Blood Elves. This is why Void Elves were created in their stead.
On Murder’s Row: We will have to see how that one pans out, but an underclass seeking to use Fel to get high now that they have their Sunwell back is not an implausible outcome.
On the High Elf settlements: That hypothetical is not one I am seriously entertaining, merely teasing out the consequnces. After all, if they are still hidden after 20 years then there has be to an explanation. But as they don’t exist, the question is moot.
On Arcane Torrent: The racial that represented the addiction was mana tap, and the blood elf starting zone is frozen in time at a moment the Blood Elves were without a source of magic. It is not relevant post restoration, though I have to point out that Alliance High Elves had the same unending thirst, just a different way of sating it. And real High Elves did do it. They just called themselves Blood Elves at the time.
Arcane Torrent does not devour spellcasting, it disrupts it.
On your evidence: What you have submitted is highly subjective spin meant to prove High Elves and the High Elf fantasy are still not available, when everything from the word of God of the developers to how the narrative has progressed show that to be mistaken.
On your solutions: Just, no. No glyph or toggle for racials. Your Void Elf is a void elf. You speak with a reverb, you proc shadow and you bleed purple. Void Elves are not your vector to be a real High Elf, and they shouldn’t be continually bastardised just so that you can get closer to your ideal.
Your ideal doesn’t exist in World of Warcraft. Well, it does as a Blood Elf, but you’d have to be Horde. And a Void Elf is meaningfully different, but is on the Alliance. And Void Elves increasingly feel like the right choice. It makes sense for them to be on K’aresh and in the Voidstorm. They are actually interesting in contrast to a sad elf who talks about things that occurred 20 years ago.
High Elf: In World of Warcraft , High Elves (quel’dorei ) are a race of arcane users descended from the Night Elf Highborne who settled in the Eastern Kingdoms and founded the kingdom of Quel’Thalas
Blood Elf: The blood elves are a proud, haughty race, joining the Horde in Burning Crusade. They represent a faction of former high elves, split off from the rest of elven society; they are also survivors of Arthas’ assault on Silvermoon. Blood elves are fully dependent on magic, having revelled in its power for so long that they suffer horrible withdrawal if it were to be taken away.
No you are spreading your own gutfeeling, that’s not a fact, that’s a feeling you have that you want to be factual. Get your facts right.
Else provide me your sources (like I have been doing in my last post).
So you re saying that sin dorei are biologicaly not the same race as alliance quel dorei
The entire forum is facepalming
Look up the NPC: Taela Everstride, her flavor text:
No, don’t feel bad. I get that a lot.
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.
You just proven the point that it is your personal gut feeling letting you from Alliance players having their High Elven fantasy. My solutions are within reason and not out of the question. Blood Elf doesn’t feel High elven to me as their culture is different enough to be considered a different race from high elves. To let me flip the argument on it’s head and have it blow up in your face, by your logic there are no high elves, we are all still night trolls with different features, because we evolved from them. Don’t forget that the Quel’dorei settlers were Kaldorei who devolved because they no longer had their well of eternity. So yes, if you want to walk down that path, we can just say: Night elves, Nightborne, High Elves, Blood Elves and Void elves don’t exist and there are only night trolls, who up on dying turned to grass.
These are a few of the things that make a “race”.
Blood Elf: The blood elves are a proud, haughty race, joining the Horde in Burning Crusade. They represent a faction of former high elves , split off from the rest of elven society; they are also survivors of Arthas’ assault on Silvermoon. Blood elves are fully dependent on magic, having revelled in its power for so long that they suffer horrible withdrawal if it were to be taken away.
Let me remind you what Lor’themar his original title was before becoming regent lord. He was a ranger and second-in-command to Sylvanas Windrunner during the Second War. So by your reasoning I can say all Blood Elves were mainly hunters too.