Having read a bit more than the basic post at that point, I think that the poster may be a dangerous person with a very unhealthy view on people of different ethnicities,
So…I am kind of a bit reluctant to give any credence to their views on Blonde, Blue Eyed High Elves as being perfect?
It’s the usual look everyone strives for.
Welp… I’ll take my brown eyes and dark brownish black hair and leave…
We know when we’re not wanted 
It’s bit too early to discuss about the character customization until we know what they actually get in the end. I don’t think I’ll make a blond haired hunter elf either because you can’t use some of the better bows on the Alliance-side.
I agree with you. I don’t see adding helf skins in itself as a threat to the void elf narrative. But where people start asking for the name to change, or racials to change, then it does.
Having options to pick from is fine, because they don’t necessarily compete, although I fear that if too many options are extended it sets the precedent that these are now helf with velf customisations which is the converse of reality. If blizz are really unhappy with their decision, they need to have the balls to follow it up. Halfway housing things satisfies nobody
As much as I’d be sad for velf to be retconned out and replaced with velf, a it’s preferable to having “two races in one” without any clarity as to what is being represented here, which simply makes the narrative even less clear. In this situation blizz, if they’re maintaining they are “all” void elves, should then run with my 3) scenario to make it unambiguous.
They’re spinning too many plates atm, however they do it they need to drop one of the alliance thalassians or make it clear they’ve been consumed into the other.
It’s gotten 35 updoots so far by the same people who were calling for a compromise solution two weeks ago. I’m not going to name and shame anyone for all obvious reasons which unfortunately makes it look like I’m calling out everyone in the Helf community but it’s so obvious to me what their goals are and it deserves to be called out.
Do I think it will happen? No I don’t because the suggestion is just so absurd and out of the realm of what Blizzard is doing with this customization pass.
I was just making a lame joke : P
Ok, I’ve been misjudging your comments then. Apologies.
I think if you do this, you need to do the same for dwarves, darkspear trolls and their variants, mag har orcs and their various skins. It’s wrong to give one race this option and not others. Helf-velf are not a “special unique case” in objective terms. The only difference is their fanbase is larger and louder, which shouldn’t dictate content decisions for obvious reasons.
Besides, the thread assumes the pale skins are helf proper. We have no reason to believe they’re not velf with a different appearence. It’s unlikely the void elves whom teach belf will allow them to continue behaving as if they’re belf, so they would they allow Helf to? Far more reasonable to assume “if we teach you this, you’re one of us now” than legit helf had suddenly decided to deploy adventurers out of the blue after not doing so for over 15 years.
My comments are mainly directed at the people who were the biggest detractors of Void Elves by far and are now latching on to them for dear life in an attempt to hijack their racial narrative and mold it into their perfect image of a High Elf.
This is why I raised the notion that blizzard need to place it in the lore obviously, with ringing bells attached, what is going on here.
Part of me thinks they were considering writing my 3) scenario, a la writing it so all remaining high elves eventually are subsumed into the void elf group, despite retaining their prior appearence, and now embrace their new powers, in order to unify all alliance supporting thalassian powers into one group. It would definitively “end” high elf lore.
But the other part of me knows they’ll have seen the threads in the wake of these new customisation options and now feel compromised on what they can and can’t write. If they “introduce faux helf” to redefine them as velf, they’ll be accused of “spitting in people’s faces” or whatever dramatic flairs people can come up with.
Their thalassian lorewriters must feel like they’re writing with a gun to their head. Yeah you can write the lore anyway you like except this way, that way, or that way because otherwise they invite uproar from a group whom have somehow convinced themselves they are owed a particular piece of narrative, and anything less than it is betrayal. It’s actually quite astounding.
I understand disliking the direction lore takes. Heck knows I’ve been on the receiving end of that in enough franchises. But being “owed” a particular lore? It’s a mindset completely foreign to me.
All we’re owed is rights to rent server space to place characters of a predetermined roster into a virtual world. We are not owed anything regarding that roster, or how that world looks (perhaps how it works in playability terms). A developer will listen to inform these things, but nobody is owed anything. That’s not rolling over- it’s a statement of fact.
Some datamines suggest this direction the game is headed for.
They are a special case, otherwise you have to question why the Dark Iron dwarves aren’t molded into the Bronzebeard dwarves as well despite having some slight Dark Iron grey tones in their customization options.
Very likely but not yet confirmed despite we having some NPCs in their starting zone.
I meant they are no more a special case than other “sub races” represented through customisation alone (assuming the pale skins are meant to represent this, looking at the fact that the velf blue options use a completely different eye texture to the belf one tells me the blue eyes is possibly a manifestation of void use rather than representing OG Helf eyes, as they share eye textures with current velf eyes. Why would belf and held have different eye textures going on if the magic affecting their eyes is identical?)
The issue of whether DID should have been similarly achieved is an altogether different issue probably stemming from the blizzard didn’t want to set a “customisation affects racials” precedent, because base dwarf racials are clearly inappropriate for dark irons given frost resistance so they would have to have changed them and set the precedent they perhaps wanted to avoid? I don’t know this is all speculation.
Racial glyphs and customizations should be a thing long time ago but if they will do that just to make those wannabe happy then I will be unsubbing mad. Everything or nothing!
but first make highelves playable for the alliance.
Imagine going into a thread of something you don’t like to hear about and complaining about it HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry lad, there’s more that’s lacking, so people is asking for it.
So last night, as they were datamining. they found something unusual in the Void Elf files. An option for ‘Secondary Skins’ and ‘Secondary Hair Colours’. As they dug further, they found there was only one option within this, the entropic embrace effect. So what this could be is what I said yesterday is what they shouldn’t do, offer a toggle for entropic embrace. So this could be that after all.
But what if it is something else?
I’m just speculating here, but why build in separate hair and skin sliders for entropic embrace when a single binary choice, on and off, would have sufficed? I guess to allow people to limit the effect, say having the hair only go off while the body remained the same or even the body going off whilst the hair remained the same, but I think both of those just wouldn’t look right.
Now I’m not a coder or a graphics artist so what I assume is that Entropic embrace is an overlay applied to Void Elves when the conditions for the effect are met, with an overlay for the body effect and an overlay for the hair effect.
But isn’t that what skin tones are? Texture overlays onto the base model?
What if Blizzard isn’t introducing the blood elf options to void elves they way we assumed they were, dumping them into the skin tones selection for Void Elves alongside the existing six blue tones? Soulsobreezy did a video looking at void elf customisation and all he found were the eye colours, the skin tones from Blood Elves weren’t hooked up yet.
What if they are planning on implementing normal skin tones and hair tones via the Alleria/Worgen approach?
Under this approach, Void Elves would have two appearances. They would have a normal blood elf/high elf look out of combat if they chose, and in combat they would turn into the Void Elves we know them as today. This is precisely the approach Alleria uses after all, and she is the first Void Elf. Perhaps the lore would be she teaches the void elves how to repress their transformation and appear normal outside of combat, just as she does?
Now this is just speculation based on that new option. It could simply be an off toggle for entropic embrace. But it might be something else too.
It is likely a colorization option but it’s way too early to talk about the datamine. According to some other dataminers the Alliance will likely get playable thin Kul Tirans as well.
Currently it bothers me more how useless the US community is when it comes to their argumentations. Some of them still think that the discussion is about “removing” the trait from the Void Elves while it’s rather about disabling a graphical effect.
It’s all speculation of course.
As for entropic embrace I remain of the opinion that disabling the graphical effect is just a means to enable people to pretend they aren’t what they have chosen to be.
That maybe in the offing, that is definitely what this new option could represent and if it is, then it is what it is. But it doesn’t sit right with me that Blizzard might do this. I don’t like Blizzard faciliating this denial of what a Void Elf is to this extent.
Perhaps that is why I find the idea of a Worgen type approach, which while speculative would fit this datamined option, so appealing. It would still allow people who wish for high elf skins to have those skins, but they would still have to be void elves in combat. I don’t think that should be an upsetting idea, considering the race is called void elves, but that is just me.
Still, time will tell on this matter. For the moment all I got is an option and a theory that fits that option. Other theories less to my liking also fit the option. We will know soon enough.
The circle jerking in this thread is never ending.And given with the recent development i have no idea why GM’s do not close this thread,more so after every party just sinks into name calling.Also talk about deja vu when you are reading the same comments every 20. post.
And some people just need to learn not to take the bait from trolls in this thread.