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

Community General Discussion
1773

“The Horde could not stop the attack on Zandalar, a failure I took in stride, believing that when we had recovered, we could take the fight to the Alliance, to the Proudmoores,” Talanji continued, her voice shaking with emotion. “Peace with the Alliance means peace with the Proudmoores, with Jaina. I was foolish to believe my people would have their revenge.”

Thrall squeezed the bridge of his nose. And it had all been going so smoothly. Perhaps he should have expected this. They were all so different, these assembled leaders, with conflicting ideas on what it meant to be part of the Horde, and no doubt their visions of the future varied as well. The tide of uneasy voices in the room began to crest.

Before he could offer something mollifying to the new queen, Lilian was quick to respond. “Derek is one of us now. You will have to accept that.”

If Derek is part of the Forsaken then I don’t see why Calia would not be. The former makes a hundred times less sense than the latter.

1774

I mean I am glad that you guys got a new leader.

1775

I’m not. She and Derek both suck.

But I cant ignore the obvious.

1776

Already addressed:

Beyond that, she’d be an Alliance character that they’re shoving into the Horde for arbitrary, out-of-universe reasons.

It’s not exactly the first time Blizzard would be doing this, and it’s exactly the reason I want the two-faction system removed - there’s no room for complexity, you’re either CT Blue or T Red.

1777

Well at least she’s a much better person than Sylvanas. Even when she was alive it seems she cared for the Undead. She told them all to run for their lives during that Human-undead meeting, while Sylvanas started shooting down her own people.

2 Likes
1778

Yep or using the blight on her own soldiers

1779

But really I just hope we get some nice Hair colors before the prepatch

2 Likes
1780

New hair colors really would close the debate for a lot of people, and frankly the only reason I see against it is the whole red vs blue OOC drama. Both factions have valid reasons to be upset right now but I think void elves getting blood elf hair options would be the least of people’s worries.

I see the point that it’s unfair to prioritize one Allied Race above the rest, though, and support Lightforged Draenei getting the new Draenei options, Highmountain getting the new tauren options, etc. which should be pretty easy to do (as should hairstyles and hair colors for the Void Elves).

Really the whole debate could be avoided if Blizz hadn’t dangled a considerable Alliance High Elf NPC faction for years and given an “almost High Elf” option to us a couple of years ago. Most people would be happy if they could just play a non-void-infused cosmetic form of high elves.

1 Like
1781

Thats why I made this thread to make everyone happy. High elves and blood elf Customization's

1782

Steve “i love the Forsaken” Danuser has just categorically confirmed that Calia is -Not- the new Forsaken leader in an Interview. There are a few other snippets there, but yeah, check out Wowhead, and I think its actually mentioned in the title of the interview, Lore, Sylvanas, Calia etc etc…

But yep, Forsaken leader she ain’t, she’s there for her own personal reasons, which actually make sense when you read the interview, which I won’t go into as it does involve SPoilers.

Ehh, I’ve already got my own Gnome, He’s a grizzled GCO Tunnel rat/sapper.

We do -see- Leper Gnomes in the Horde, but the majority of them are slaves in a Silvermoon sweat shop dating back to TBC era, and I think there is one who works with the Forsaken in Tirisfal if I remember rightly.

You’d also end up with a weird situation where The Leper Gnomes home city would be Gnomeregan, so you’d have a Horde Capital and an Alliance capital right next to each other in the same zone.

Can’t see that working out well. (Plus it would rule out the ‘real’ Gnomes ever getting their city back, which would be a bit of a blow after all these years)

Yep, Valeera also has her own interests, but might not actually make the final cut apparently, according to Danuser.

On the contrary, that sounds like a -very- Tyrande thing to do. I agree, her Faction allegiance (if any) is very nebulous right now, but when Calia uses words like ‘Us’ it sounds like she means ‘Us’ as in the Forsaken ‘species’, not ‘Us’ as in the Horde.

I’m not so sure about that. If Derek Proudmoore was Horde, then why would Calia say he could intervene? Surely he would be in no position to do so, if he was also a Forsaken and therefore Horde.

I mean if you want to sink a boat full of zombies the words of one Zombie are not going to sway if if that Zombie is a member of the Horde…

Pretty sure that like Calia, he is neutral, otherwise the statement makes little sense.

I mean I could be wrong, but it does seem that “Derek is one of us” is more Calia trying to calm Talanji down, and make her rage against the Proudmoore’s subside.

1783

Doesn’t mean she wont end up being.
Either way though doesn’t change that shes not alliance which was why I said it :slight_smile:

1784

If their a allied race they will prob get a hub like the Void elves did tbh not Gnomergan.

1785

I’d prefer fully undead gnomes to leper gnomes, personally. Not unthinkable that there’d be some small gnomish community in Lordaeron that got Scourge’d, or risen by the Val’kyr.

If they got a “hub” like Telogrus, maybe just make some little village in the northern part of the continent for them to start out in – even that might not be necessary.

Actually, I wonder if adding undead gnomes/Night Elves/High Elves would be a good justification for adding yet another Thalassian reskin on the Alliance side (High Elves). Then there wouldn’t be any accusations of the Alliance getting an extra race, or the Alliance getting yet another reskin while the Horde got something original (when they add truly new models, it could be something like Sethrak/Jinyu vs Naga/Ogres)

1786

Leper gnomes should be a customisation for normal gnomes and nothing else. It makes no sense that upon gaining enough sanity to stop squawking “TROGGS” they’d sign up for the horde. Gnomes are notorious for having very little infighting as a race, outside of the bonkers Thermaplugg and his equally crazed followers (and Mechagon and his programmed cronies), gnomes don’t fight each other. So you’d have to rip out one of the races defining features to justify when Leper Gnomes sane enough to do something like become an adventurer would choose to side with the horde. The only reason Gnomes attack Leper Gnomes is because Leper Gnomes attack them, they don’t oppose them on principle, they want to cure them. So it’d be hard to imagine why a sane Leper Gnome would decide to turn their back on their kin, and not only that, decide they actively want to oppose them by joining the horde (who like the alliance, have also sent adventurers to trash their city and have spilled their blood). Other than an extremely forced “omg we’re kinda like forsaken I suppose?” I don’t get it.

There is canonically one leper gnome hordeside, the one in tirisfal, and even then, it’s alluded to vaguely “this fellow suffers from a disease not unlike us”. Alliance have Haggle (yes he counts). Most “leper gnomes” we see in game are actually undead/corrupted gnomes, they all share the same model. Presumebly this is because 99.9% of leper gnomes are completely nuts so for them to make it beyond Gnomeregan would be quite difficult.

So nah, leper gnomes if they appear are alliance. You wanna nick alliance stuff to call it even, be my guest, but let’s not deprive the racial community that continually get urinated on by all others in the game of one thing they’ve asked for because “gnomes”.

Tbh I’d give belf the velf hairstyles and swap void tentacles for arcane glows where appropriate and watch the bloodshed ensue. That would be fun.

2 Likes
1787

Then I would do the same for the belf hairstyles for velfs.

2 Likes
1788

Yeah that point was made with that being assumed.

2 Likes
1789

As long as everyone gets new options, I can’t see why people wouldn’t be happy with that. :wink:

Agreed that “leper gnomes” aren’t all that grounded, and would rather make them full-out undead gnomes if there’s ever going to be a gnome option Horde-side.

1 Like
1790

I can’t imagine that would be a popular horde choice, gnomes are one of those races I’m fairly sure most of horde don’t want in any way shape or form. Undead nelf, maybe, or more Human like undead, I can see those, but undead gnomes is like possibly even less popular than mechagnomes given its a niche of an already unpopular race, but on a faction without a dedicated racial community.

It’s similar to the idea of say goblins on alliance. There is no real ask for them, so to add them would be a massive ?.

Elves I get, because elves are faction jumping glamourpusses. So it in a way, it makes sense there’s some form of them on both factions, because the race has (at different points) been committed to each faction.

But gnomes, dwarves, draenei, goblins, orcs, trolls, tauren etc, these races have only committed to their factions, excepting a few rogue outliers. It doesn’t really make sense to me to give opposite factions copies of them, the precedent is too low, and it could just come across as a “for the sake of it” rather than genuine.

I’m also of the mind that as an alliance player, I don’t get orcs or trolls, nor should I just because I wanna play blue but like trolls say. Life is full of choices and if I like trolls, I play horde. Same vice versa for gnomes etc.

I’m not massively caught up on the faction war being a competitive thing (I’d be happy for the factions to be able to do some pve together) but I’d like those factions to remain distinct even if they can work together. You may as well just write the factions out entirely if both of them get many shared races because they’ll fail to represent anything distinct at that point imo.

1 Like
1791

Frankly, I don’t know where the faction conflict is even going. In all expansions so far, there’s been a side-conflict that’s kept things fresh for people into the conflict, but right now it seems the next step of our journey is the cosmic planes of existence. Settling another planet in another universe is one thing, but I find it hard to believe there’ll be much of faction conflict in the physical Shadowlands and any other realms.

In any case, I do think Undead Night Elves would be much more popular and have been set up with recent questlines, and Undead High Elves have been there for ages. They’re the natural option to introduce alongside High Elves for the Alliance. But if there was a hypothetical way to introduce the gnome model for the Horde, then undead gnomes would be the best way for them.

1 Like
1792

Tbh I think the solution to this “wanna play, but can’t” is joint faction pve. That way your faction only becomes about PvP, lore and cities. For those who like race X but their friends play other faction, it provides a way forward.

I’d be more than happy to group with horde players. As you said scaling cosmic planes and being introduced to “Titan Plus Plus” levels of power makes the faction war as a main theme seem…trivial. like we’re happy to band together to end a death god figure, but nobody self reflects on that enough to realise threatening to end eachother over some trees, land or whatever seems a bit stupid?

I mean we don’t have to be chums, but it should open the doors enough to have a “some adventurers are of the mind that the main goal is preserving Azeroth irrespective of all else” and thus an option for X faction is there. It’s a totally different discussion though.

1 Like