Its gotten better at least
we know have regular time skips between expansions, something like 2 years on average I think.
Still it has been a long 10 or so years of near total destruction, hasn’t it?
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We literally have Midnight disproving your point, with the Blood Elves’ NPCs being disproportionately young. And also now having repopulated all of their Kingdom barring a mere few portions.
Stop inventing things, I’m begging you! This is the least outstanding part, but everything you write is absurd headcanon. Attach some sources.
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Yeeeep. Deathwing, Garrosh, Garrosh again, Legion… And people wonder why I write my character off from the 4th war until Sylvanas gives absolutely zero chance for that. And then Shadowlands
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First War of the Ancients Book has Vereesa mention that Elves Rarely have Children and twins are even rarer.
That description is often mis-quoted, and it’s more that Rhonin is afraid that Vereesa will die at childbirth - because mothers die trying to give birth of Half Elves - and that we haven’t had a succesful birth in centuries, let alone half-elven twins (from his perspective). He wasn’t aware of Alleria at that point, somehow.
This is further emphasized in BfA’s Before the Storm where Half Elves are so astronomically rare that Dragons are more common of a sight.
Obviously, now with the Elven-blooded Arathi, it’s likely been minimized, but still. Doesn’t change the fact that we’ve had 4 Half-Elves in all of Warcraft up until Midnight. It’s a case of old lore from 22 years ago that has been glossed or skimmed over.
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The reason numbers are used is that it is the argument Blizzard themselves deployed to explain why they aren’t playable. If this was a debate about something to do with Star Wars, and George Lucas had said something on that topic, you better believe that what he said would be used by those within the debate to burnish their own position.
In fairness though the low population is the lore reason, and it was deployed shortly before Blood Elves were revealed as a Horde race in TBC so it was clearly preparing the ground.
The true reason is that High Elves are identical to Blood Elves, Blood Elves are a core Horde race and Blizzard don’t want to put that race unaltered on the Alliance, which is what Alliance High Elves would be and which is why Void Elves were created. And we know that is why Void Elves were created because, again, they told us.
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I recall this, but considering they don’t keep track and add races with seemingly far less numbers regardless tells me we shouldn’t consider it a valid point.
I can’t speak for what Blizzard will do, most recent races we gotten tells me they are slowly working towards removing the faction wall, we now have dwarves on both teams after all (in a void elf round about way)
But I believe as you do, the reason we don’t have high elves is because blizzard considers high elfs and blood elves one and the same, and the horde got them.
I don’t think void elves was a good comprimse, I rather we had gotten Broken as opposed to lightforged and void elves but we know blizzard is a monkies paw at this point.
And now we have Elves on both sides with Haranir. Problem solved right? /s
We already did with the nightborn in place of night elves.
But elves are known across fiction for splitting into a million afshoots with minor to medium differences.
Looking at DnDs about 10 different subraces of elf.
4-5 elder scrolls elves
and wows close to 10 odd eleven subgroups.
What is it with elves and mutating into different subgroups?
I think we should. Each and every other race brought up as a purported counter-point has an explanation. Even the playable race that is probably on the same level population wise as the Alliance High Elves, the Void Elves, sidestep the issue as they can always recruit from the Blood Elf population (and the Alliance High Elf population, further putting pressure on their numbers). The lore reason as to why they aren’t playable is important.
I think Blizzard is very reluctant to go much farther in removing the barriers between the factions. The franchise was built on the conflict between the Horde and the Alliance and an enormous amount of player sentiment has been invested in that.
As for what they should have done…give the Alliance Nightborne (the plotline could have been written to accommodate that), give the Horde Undead Elves and call it a day. But whilst that is what I think SHOULD have been done, I am also self-aware enough to realise that Nightborne were likely created to give the Horde access to a Night Elf variant and thus justify the Alliance getting the Blood Elf variant of Void Elves in the first place. The sub-race system had been discussed as early as the WOD reveal after all. Were it not for the sub-race system, and were it not for the need to give the Horde a Night Elf variant, I figure the Nightborne would have just been normal Night Elves.
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Elder Scrolls probably has the greatest variety of them, with about 12 races of Elves.
WoW’s a bit less diverse, since 3 of those Elven races are just High Elves.
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Oh right yeah I forgot the lesser known elven subraces like snow elves, left handed elves etc.
You would think so
But Naga and satyrs are also elves.
Night elves to be exact, of whom the nightborn is an off shoot and the nightborn have the spider nightborn as another off shoot of an off shoot.
Thats not touching on High elves who are former night elves, and have themselves split into blood, high and void elves.
AND if you want to go even further.
banshees and Darkfallen are also elven 
We aren’t even through all of them yet.
because we also have the fel blood elves and I suppose you could argue the Illidari is different enough to be their own thing as well.
I think I missed a few.
The Haranir are for all I can gather trolls, but elves are themselves an off shoot from trolls so we could expand it further by going backwards and tag, the darkspear, amani, zandalari, sand, snow and other jungle trolls as another elven adjcent group.
And I know I am pushing it now, the dracthyr with thier visage is at least half elven.
which brings me to concept of Half-elves and the Arathi who don’t consider themselves half-elves but just a collective group known as Arathi.
Why are there so many elves?
Are the Defias Brotherhood a different race from Stormwind Humans?
Are Grimtotem Tauren a different race from Tauren?
Are the various Goblin cartels all different races from each other?
There are two thalassian elven races. Blood Elves (of whom Alliance High Elves are a group of political dissidents) and Void Elves (void infused mutants).
As per my comment above.
there are actually four, not counting the fel blood elves and illidari.
The Arathi are made up of thalassian elves and humans, they are at least half thalassian.
and Darkfallen are made up mainly (or were anyway) from kael’thas sunfry who died trying to stop Arthas from getting to the Icecrown.
Can’t wait for the “We already have 4 races of Elves in-game, we can’t have more” crowd to hear that the Harranir are the 5th Elven race, called “Wild Elves”. And that’s not counting the Dracthyr visage forms which as you’re arguing, are pretty Half-Elven in appearance. Or the Elven-blooded Arathi customization options.
You’re repeating exactly what I’ve stated, and you’re now quoting? Did I argue otherwise?
But WoW races don’t need to be biologically different and instead can rely on cultural or magical ones. Kul Tirans aren’t in any capacity different from Stormwind Humans - and before you mention Drust, no they don’t have any Drust in them.
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Didn’t the Elves that died in Northrend get turned into San’layn? Thought most of darkfallen we have available were mostly made by Sylvanas during the 4th war considering the customization is available for Nelfs as well.
actually the Grimtotem thing is true. We sitll don’t have their tatoos to use for normal players cuz Blizzard treats them as villains.
The San’layn was turned into a faction but the over all “race” name for undead elves is Darkfallen
Draktyr are not humans or elves or half elves
Visage form is an illusion, a magic trick.
Didn’t Pink Floyd have a song about “we don’t need no high elves here” ? “Another thread in the wall”?