Quel’dorei High Elves as an Alliance allied race - 2024 (Part 1)

Community General Discussion
4717

She devoured a Void God and didn’t turn purple. So it’s a given that you don’t have to.

No, she came by her powers by following Locust Walker, she already used the Void before absorbing L’ura. Absorbing L’ura was just the last step - and for some reason, didn’t turn her purple permanently. (Which, again, is something that Blizzard could have done to move away from playable High Elves. But they didn’t.)

Now compare it to the Silver Covenant’s story and then tell me that the Vulpera story qualifies them as an Allied Race, but the Covenant’s contributions do not.

The Wildhammer Dwarves joined the Alliance in the 2nd war, but the players couldn’t really distinctly visually represent them until Blizzard added the Wildhammer tattoos for Dwarves.

The Dark Irons joined the Alliance in Cataclysm, so the Wildhammer have been in the alliance for almost 40 years, while the Dark Irons joined roughly 12 years ago - still over a decade. Since I listed them both in one sentence, “decades” is not wrong. But hey, semantics.

You mean their green fel sigil?

Not the point I was trying to make.

These brown skinned Orcs are a literal variant, coming from an alternate universe, they are being led by an alternate variant of Thrall :laughing:

My point was: The criteria and origins for Allied Races are all over the place already! Storywise, High Elves would basically on the same tier as Dark Iron Dwarves.

Just like the Blood Elves were a variant of the High Elves, due to their green eyes, sure! :slight_smile:
See, I can understand your POV, I just don’t see the “Race X belongs to one faction!”-aspect (That’s why I main a Pandaren). There would be enough lore to support the Blood Elves being a neutral race. But just as Blizzard decided to put the Sin’dorei into the Horde for player balance reasons, they decided to implement Void Elves into the Alliance. Even though I love the compromise, I agree that from a tactical standpoint, that was a bad choice, because they undermined their own arguments by doing it. Now, the door is opened, can’t be closed and they bascially have to live with the noise from outside. :person_shrugging:

This.

edit:
Sorry for the ton of typos, I had a long day X_X

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4718

I have no issue with Classic+ either. It will be a fresh timeline. If there are enough High Elves in that timeline to justify being a part of the Alliance then that is that timeline.

But the core timeline is clear. The High Elves renamed themselves Blood Elves, left the Alliance and joined the Horde. A small group of Blood Elves and Alliance High Elves have been infused with the void and become Void Elves and they have sided with the Alliance.

She has a void form. But, again, she is the only one who HAS devoured a Void God. She is the exception. All other Void Elves at least bleed purple.

Very easily. The Vulpera passed the first requirement by NOT ALREADY BEING PLAYABLE, meaning they were a brand new option. They also had a viable population, with multiple caravans and settlements across Vol’Dun. They had a unique story in their home zone. They have a defined leadership.

Which was implemented on an already existing Alliance race and thus did not compromise the faction identity of the Alliance.

Semantics are important. The Dark Iron were shaped by centuries of enslavement to Ragnaros and living under a volcano, which led to their differentiation and qualification as an allied race.

Which is still called ‘Gift of the Naaru’ (not blessing as I said earlier). Which means they have been gifted a self heal by beings of holy light. Hence, they are repentant (as we saw in the questline introducing the option) and using the same technique as all other Draenei.

They are actually what an Orc should be. Just as a Blood Elf is what a High Elf should be. It is Void Elves and our green skinned Orcs who are the variants.

If this were true, Blizzard would not have created Void Elves, nor would they have said that the reason Alliance High Elves weren’t added is because they are identical to Blood Elves.

An Alliance High Elf exposed to enough fel would manifest green eyes due to how their biology works. Nor were Blood Elves infused by fel, they were exposed to it. There is a difference between getting sunburned (the effective intensity of what happened to Blood Elves with fel) and setting yourself on fire (the level of infusion Void Elves endured).

There is not. As a Pandaren, you as an individual chose to join the Alliance. The Blood Elf STATE and the Blood Elf nation joined the Horde. The vast majority of Pandaren are neutral. The vast, overwhelming majority of non void thalassian Elves are Horde. Races introduced as neutral are not comparable to core races introduced as faction locked.

Why can’t the door be closed? That implies that complaining about something inevitably yields results. The compromise took 15 years to achieve and only then in the context of a sub-race system. Nothing has been heard since. Were anything to have been gained by constant complaining, you’d have gotten them in Midnight.

We now know we are not getting them in Midnight.

You will get them in Classic+.

Classic+ is not the real game.

4719

So in order for your body to NOT be altered by the Void permanently, you just have to absorb a being of concentrated void energy. Makes… sense? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Their story is “being nomads” and “having wagons”. They don’t have a defined leadership, since they live in wandering caravans, Kiro is more like a liaison for the Horde.
They are basically a toothless trader version of the early Tauren.

A valid point - were it not for the Silver Covenant, who was established as an Alliance High Elf faction back in WotLk. Nobody complained back then, because storywise, it made sense for them to be there.

Or maybe, it’s for the same reason why Man’ari Paladin’s dont combust instantly, why “exorcism” didn’t work on Forsaken despite them being undead or why Lightforged Draenei Shadowpriests don’t turn into Black Holes when they use their powers: Because it wouldn’t be worth the effort to create a whole new spell for them. :wink:

Just to show you how stupid that “uncorrupted” and “what they should be”-talk is:
If you go all the way with that argument, you have to race change into a troll or in Midnight, a Haranir - after all, they are, what “Elves should have been”, before they were changed / mutated by magic(al beings).

I said storywise. The only reason why we don’t have playable “normal” Alliance High Elves yet is that Blizzard had decided to give Blood Elves to the Horde. So the decision is not based in the story (that would ALSO justify Alliance HE), but on the meta-level (player choice).

Not necessarily, just look at the different versions of the Orcs and their levels of Fel corruption. And not every Void Elf has purple skin constantly. But I get what you mean.

I misspoke, I meant, there would have been enough lore, back then, in Vanilla, when Blizzard made the decision. Storywise, the Blood Elves could as well have rejoined the Alliance, it wasn’t set in stone that they had to go Horde after WC3. Garithos on one side of the argument, Orcs and Trolls on the other; although both factions had changed by then.

And that is basically the ultimate core question that we can both agree on, you as someone who wants to keep the High Elves exclusively to the Horde, myself as someone who wants to see at least some transmogs and customizations for the already existing Alliance compromise, to roleplay as a Quel’dorei:

Why doesn’t Blizzard end the Alliance Quel’dorei story in order to focus on their legacy?
Make the Silver Covenant officially join the Ren’dorei and make them accept the Void, maybe throw in some old Alliance High Elf transmogs and put their “faction” to rest, let’s just have “Light Elves” and “Void Elves” in Quel’Thalas. Hell, they could even integrate the Silver-Blue color scheme into the Ren’dorei colors, they would match quite well.
But by keeping the Quel’dorei around and prominent, yet keeping them separate, it looks like Blizzard wants to keep all options on the table - which means, people look at it and then, of course, think “There must be a reason why they don’t close that book for good!”

tl;dr
We basically agree that the “Playable High Elf” topic needs to be resolved for good in Midnight. Still, if you want to blame the “HE crowd” for being “too vocal”, you also have to take into account that Blizzard keeps baiting them in a way.

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4720

No, merely that she cannot be used as a precedent given how she attained her powers is so different from everyone else.

Yet they still had a story. They still have a defined leadership, with Kiro being recognised as the Vulpera leader on the Horde Council. Whether you like that story or not is immaterial, they still have one. In contrast the Alliance High Elves don’t really have a story. They played a part in the Dalaran story during MOP (Jaina’s story) and a part of Legion. Veressa sometimes plays a supporting role in her family’s story.

The Silver Covenant only really appeared as a militia of Dalaran, albeit Alliance friendly, same as the Sunreavers because the Kirin Tor embraced neutrality to gain Horde help against Malygos. Individual members of the Kirin Tor may have felt defending the Alliance was a part of their mandate, but that didn’t extend to the state as a whole (after all, Horde member Aethas Sunreaver was on the ruling council of six for a time and I doubt he counted defending the Alliance as part of his mission). The Silver Covenant was deployed during the purge, then as part of Dalaran forces on the Isle of Thunder under Jaina Proudmoore, then was seen in Legion when Dalaran assisted the Horde and Alliance in attacking Suramar.

It has been explained that individuals infused with a certain power can wield those powers with enough discipline and fortitude, the classic example is the Undead Priest wielding light. Man’ari Draenei probably don’t enjoy using Gift of the Naaru but it gets the job done.

This argument does not hold water. The shifts from Troll to Night Elf to High Elf were documented as taking enormous periods of time and produced enormous physical changes. Those changes resulted in new default states for each race.

You said the criteria for Allied races were all over the place, a verdict on the mechanics. And yes, the reason High Elves aren’t playable is because they are a Horde core race. That’s always been the reason. The lore reason is just the story justification for the mechanical decision. It is why all the lore debate that occurs in these posts is pointless. Yet as soon as you point out the reason it never happened, someone reflexively goes back to the lore in an attempt to argue why storywise they make sense, when storywise doesn’t matter. It never did. The story justification was added to justify a decision taken on a mechanical level.

And in fairness, the story justification is pretty solid. They are almost all dead and they aren’t a major force in the Alliance.

The Orcs DRANK the stuff. I am not sure you can get much more intense than that, the clearly the Fel Orcs somehow managed it to go a step even further beyond. As for the Void Elves, remember the skin tones are misleading. They bleed purple. Each and every single one of them.

The lore back in vanilla was that the choice for a thalassian elf was to consume magic or die. Had that been stuck to, there would be no Alliance High Elves at all. Instead, it seems they were preserved for the sake of nostalgia, similar to how Ogres are kept around.

They can accept the void. We know from Ennas the Faithfallen that any thalassian elf who chooses to can become a void elf. And enough customisations were granted to Void Elves on this matter. Other Void Elf fans actually want more void-themed customisations and don’t want their race to be bastardised for pretend High Elves.

I don’t expect them to be so neat as to retire the Alliance High Elves. I do expect the Alliance High Elves to more or less vanish after this, as Dalaran isn’t around to move the same fifty elves around and create the illusion of more. There will be some in the Last Titan as they were at the Tournament Grounds. This will be datamined in about eighteen months. Someone will create a topic going ‘LOOK, HIGH ELVES!’ and nothing will come of it as always.

4721

Obviously, she can; otherwise, Blizzard wouldn’t have added the uncorrupted skin tones.

If the Man’ari sigil still comes from the Naaru (meaning, a Naaru “gifting” Fel magic to a demon to heal him), then this part of the game engine is also lore :man_shrugging:

So there’s a representative / known NPC. That doesn’t automatically give him authority over the Vulpera. The Alliance High Elves do have a story, starting in WC2 with Alleria, going on (and off) until now with Vereesa. The Alliance had Quel’dorei in their ranks before WoW / the Vulpera even existed, so… that’s not really up for debate.

far more often than the Vulpera, whom it also predates, thank you.

Doesn’t change that if we assume “engine = lore”, anything is possible.

in a very superficial and unspecific way, in a source that is questionable anyway (Thank you, Steve Danuser). Was it magic radiation? Divine intervention? A virus? A ritual that spread among them, like the Night Warrior did? Nobody really knows, not even if we talk about “coincidental natural evolution” or “mutation by design”.

Unfortunately, Blizzard created a new allied race out of a few dozen Blood Elves. Numbers never mattered; and if they do, we’ll just discover a half-elven kingdom on the other side of the world :zany_face:

Or were just near other Orcs who drank that stuff. Or drank different stuff that lead them to be taller and spikey. Or red. Whatever the writers wanted or needed.

Yeah, but never close to the Horde. But hey, Stone Dwarfs, Lok’tar ogar! :face_vomiting:

You call it bastardised, I call it “Shaped after the example of the first Void Elf.” Agree to disagree. :man_shrugging:

Just as it didn’t with the Ren’dorei.

Good night.

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4722

On a side note I should probably change my avatar… she’s female, I’m male.

Funny, I never really played female characters in RPGs until I picked up World of Warcraft. Took me a few days on my mage to get hit on.

Precisely. You understood the analogy perfectly. There was a popular dish that was discontinued and we want it back. Meanwhile, the chef is telling us that if we want pizza, it has to come with pineapple, if we want mapo tofu, it must have stinky tofu in the recipe, etc.

There are fans of pineapple pizza and fans of stinky tofu, but I’m not one of them, and as the old adage goes: the customer is always right in matters of taste

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4723

Except what you want is already available in the menu. It’s just served on a red plate and you want a blue plate. Blood Elves and High Elves are effectively the exact same beings, physically, culturally and ability wise just served on a different color.

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4724

Not quite. The dish is there, but it’s served with some very strange sides. Like the aforementioned pizza with pineapples on it, or a plate of kung pao chicken interspersed with stinky tofu.

Of course, you can try to eat the dish on its own and fish out the offending ingredients, but after a while, it’s very hard to ignore, and no matter how much you try to enjoy it, you just can’t.

That’s where I stand with Blood Elves. I like them, but I just can’t bring myself to go on and play in Horde zones and do Horde quests.

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4725

And on this we disagree. You see Horde and Alliance as part of the dish. I see them as a plate they’re served on. And as we go on the plate matters less and less. Because you know what? They rework the Exile Reach again in Midnight. The changes are small: Thrall and Jaina accompany you depending on the side, the undead dragon part is now replaced with Ogres trying to enslave Kalecgos and the entire introduction will drop you directly onto Dragon Isles. They no longer want you to level in BFA by default. Instead we’re dropped onto the modern singular storyline where our faction matters very little.

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4726

Kiro is the leader of the Vulpera. But is this pettyfogging approach really doing you any favours? Pro Alliance High Elf folks have done this for an eternity, find either a parallel or a supposed hypocrisy in some other race in the game and attempt to argue that because that race is doing or not doing THAT, then Alliance High Elves should be a thing. I mean step back for a second and consider what we are actually debating…whether Kiro is the leader of the Vulpera or not.

What would it achieve for one moment if you were proven to be right? Would Alliance High Elves suddenly become playable? I mean do pro High Elf folks dream of some unimpeachable ‘gotcha’ moment where they point something out in the lore that nobody else, not even Blizzard can counter? Do you think Blizzard would look at that and say ‘you’re right, we should add Alliance High Elves?’.

Frankly if a plot hole that big was found they’d just be far likelier to shrug their shoulders and either ignore it or retcon it.

The problem, for the umpteenth, millionth time, is that because Blood Elves are High Elves, High Elves are already playable and they don’t want to give that exact same race to the Alliance because it is a core part of the Horde faction. That is the only point that actually matters. Everything else is meaningless.

And you can’t solve that problem because it is insoluable. If you try and make Alliance High Elves different enough, you end up with something on the level of Void Elves, which has already been done. And in fact, it is not even a problem. So you can’t play a traditional High Elf on the Alliance side? So what in the grand scheme of things?

What you do is

1.) Accept Blood Elves are High Elves and are the High Elf option in WoW.

2.) Accept Void Elves are a void-infused variant, a type of High Elf but not the traditional kind.

3.) That Blizzard is going to add Alliance High Elves to Classic+ as a big selling point, which will be a bigger selling point due to their continued absence from Retail.

4.) That if they were going to move on Alliance High Elves, they would have done so in Midnight and they didn’t. Use that to accept it isn’t going to happen, just as Amani fans are beginning to accept their dreams are now unlikely.

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4727

keep being happy with the VE compromise we’ve already got - as I’ve stated multiple times during this conversation. :wink:

I just took issue with some your arguments, because you were ignoring f.e. that there’s already a precedent for a visually changed racial that is linked to customization options, where the name doesn’t seem to fit the visual. So people talking about it or wishing for it with VE is not as outlandish as you claimed it was.

In short: Some of your arguments are not as bulletproof as you think, that’s what I pointed out.

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4728

My arguments are fine and your critiques don’t work. But I am happy to admit that the entire edifice of conversation is meaningless given there is only one reason Alliance High Elves aren’t playable and that one reason can never be answered.

4729

Red fel orcs (and I pressume the black ones from WoD) is what happens when you take a 2nd sippy from the forbidden mountain demon dew.
this has been a constant throughout the game since WC3
more fel = more demonic
it is true that some orcs (and for the sake of this topic some blood elves) turned green from just casually being near fel, such as thrall who was born from a pair of green orcs.

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4730

Sin’dorei exist in game and are playable.

Ren’dorei exist in game and are playable.

Quel’dorei exist in game but are not playable.

No matter how many topics the anti-helfers bring up, how many personal opinions are inserted into the topic, it doesn’t change the fact that playable Alliance High Elves is long overdue.

Blizzard keeps making the distinction between the three elves in game, over and over. Thus the “but Blood Elves are High Elves!” argument is void. The three have a unique identity.

Antis love to talk everyone in circles, but it’s really not that deep.

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4731

This is hypocrisy.

You are literally inserting your own personal opinion as fact whilst saying everyone else is just using their own personal opinion.

The argument is not void, because it is fact. Blood Elves are High Elves and there is nothing that differentiates a Blood Elf from the folks clustering in Silverglade Refuge than a political opinion. Were one of those refugees ever to get homesick, accept the Horde and move back to Silvermoon, nobody would ever know the difference.

And that is the key point.

4732

It’s void because you’re arguing against Blizzard themselves.

It’s not my opinion.

Blizzard is saying the elven tribes share a history, but are unique in themselves.

Blizzard is saying there’s Quel’dorei, Sin’dorei and Ren’dorei.

I’m saying they should all be playable.

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4733

Blizzard’s focus is on the Blood Elves and the Void Elves.

The Alliance High Elves are a minor tribe, but not differentiated via true divergence but through political opinion. Should they change that opinion, then there is nothing that marks them out as different.

And both major tribes of thalassian elf are playable. There is therefore no issue.

4734

A. Quel’dorei are more numerous than Ren’dorei. Ren’dorei are essentially a small entity of former Blood Elves (originally) who dabbled in the void, and were exiled because they posed a threat to the Sunwell.

B. Majority of Quel’dorei are aligned with the Alliance, they have never been tainted by fel or void.

C. Blizzard keeps making the distinction between all three in game, no matter how much you want to argue against it. All Sin’dorei were once Quel’dorei, but all not all Quel’dorei are Sin’dorei. Again, it’s not deep.

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4735

They are playable in two flavours
The night elf mages and the blood elves.
You are just weirdly hung up on neither option being the exact one you want.

No matter how many topics the pro-helfers make on the forum, the fact of the matter is, its been adressed long ago and we aren’t getting them.

Blizzard has made it clear there isn’t a distinction between the two groups in-game, over and over. Thus the “but Blood Elves are High Elves!” argument is valid.

Stans love to talk everyone in circles, but it’s really not that deep.

:dracthyr_no2:

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4736

This is pettyfogging.

As I said to Senti, the reason Alliance High Elves are not playable is because they are identical to Blood Elves, a core and iconic Horde race and Blizzard doesn’t want to give that race to the Alliance.

Do you know that the population issue came from a post that was made about a month or so before when Blood Elves were revealed as the new Horde race for TBC? In other words, while the lore rationale for them not being playable stands as the lore reason, it was almost certainly created to explain why Blood Elves were playable and Alliance High Elves weren’t.

Your attempts to manufacture difference aren’t going to work, because there is nothing you can manufacture that stands up to scrutiny. Even Blizzard couldn’t make it work, which is why they created Void Elves with the Allied race system.

And I bring this up because whilst I am pointing out everything other than the fact Blood Elves are High Elves is ultimately irrelevant, you are literally bringing up discredited point after discredited point in your response i.e. talking in circles.