I think it’s pretty clear that remaining High elves are being absorbed into the Void Elf bubble.
Let’s wait and see what the next customizations say about World of Elfcraft. My current stance is that we’re going to play Belves in the Alliance which is also fine by me.
Fair skinned light haired, blue eyed.I’m happy with this kind of Belves in the Alliance.
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"Giving that race directly to the Alliance would have blurred a lot of the lines between the two factions, but also there isn’t a clear example of who or what High Elves are as a larger group which remains in Azeroth. There’s a couple… We just met Alleria again… But they’re not out there in the same way. "
There you go, so they know the problem and they did it anyways.
Good job fixing that one Activision.
Same here. Whilst of course ideally I want High Elves to:
- be entirely seperate on the character creation screen
- have all variants of eyes high-elf npcs have (most notably the ones with white sclera one which is missing currently from the Blizzard annoucement)
- have non-void hairstyles and hair colours
- have non-void voices
- have their own mount (seperate from the one that requires an Argent tournament grind)
- have their own racial abilities
- be called high elf in npc/quest dialog
- have their own introductory quest experience (even if it’s just a matter of handing in a single quest in Stormwind like the other allied races have)
If that stuff is all off the table then simply having Blizzard state officially that the fair-skinned Void Elves are actually High Elves in lore it would be a big consolation. Otherwise the uncertainty is letting it remain a point of tension indefinitely because:
- A lot of High-elf haters will insist they aren’t high elves because they don’t want to allow them to be playable in any capacity
- A lot of Alliance haters and blood-elf enthusiasts will insist only blue-eyed blood elves are high elves, especially the kinds of Blood Elves who think having playable High Elves is an attack on their identity somehow (I never got this logic but it’s very common)
- Trolls will insist they aren’t high elves just for the fun of it
- Many Void Elf fans and High Elf fans will get upset/mad when they see large numbers of Void Elves identifying/RPing as High Elves if they think it’s not legitimate
What’s more is that the “it’s not a real high elf” mentality is a self-fulfilling prophecy because many who originally counted it as a High Elf might come to view it differently if enough people around them insist that’s not true.
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Which is why some of us are voicing for optional sub-race templates to be added as a part of the new customization screen. Former Allied Races could also be easily integrated there once they remove the unlocking requirements, as they can easily tie the different racials to the demonym and specific appearence.
Such as:
https://i.ibb.co/b5wzt92/subrace-customization-mockup.jpg
I don’t know how accurate this is but someone datamined some kind of subrace-template in the game files:
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Oh yes! I have seen that one (and pretty much fell off my chair)
As a matter of facts it is even linked in the first post of the thread I shared.
I know you said ‘ideally’ so I’m not trying to demolish your points here, just point out the problems with it.
That’s essentially asking for an extra race on Alliance, there would therefore need to be a Horde equivalent. The direct equivalent (Part of the faction since the start pretty much but not playable, has been asked for since Vanilla) would be Ogres. Can you -imagine- how the forums would explode about Horde bias if Alliance got a reskin of a Blood/Void Elf and Horde got a new race?
Personally I would go further, Blue eyes, but also Gold eyes, because High Elves can feel the ‘Light’ aspect of the Sunwell, even from far away (Source: Priestess Aurora in ‘Shadow of the Sun’), but also those sexy green peepers, because Blizzard confirmed how they work, and any Alliance High Elf who spent time on Outlands would have that eye colour, no matter how committed a member of the Alliance they were.
I originally thought whinging about hair colour was just utterly petty and needy, until it turned out that they don’t actually get black and white hair colours. If they had, I would have little sympathy, but because the only concession seems to be they have ‘non tentacle’ hair, then yeah, I can see that, that’s a reasonable request.
I don’t buy that. I play on a Roleplay realm, so as you can imagine, character personalisation is key to me. I don’t think of the voice sound, that just isn’t a factor, they say what I /say and they sound like what I want. Your boy Brigante for example has an accent that is a weird mash up of Irish and Welsh sounding, not the bizarre Transatlantic upper class accent that all Blood Elf Males have. It sounds like a ridiculously counter intuitive thing for me to say, as my profession is 100% based around my voice, but to be honest, the sound effects for your race have no impact on your roleplay, and if you’re not roleplaying, then does it even matter?
That’s not going to be possible as things are currently, as logically that would be asking for Void Elves to have two racial mounts, something no race, even the main races have. If it -were- possible, then you are asking for a complete separate race, with the attendant problems I listed previously.
I had some pretty good ideas for High Elf Racials (Or at least people here thought they were good) but as things stand, again, that isn’t going to happen, because they are a High Elf skin for the Void Elf race.
Doesn’t matter. Won’t happen because the actual race is Void Elf, but it just doesn’t matter. We’re playing fictional characters who belong to a fictional species, on a fictional world. There is a thing in Roleplay and LARP for that matter called ‘Suspension of Belief’ It is what lets you rationalise the fact that Stormwind seems to have the same population as just one street in a sleepy UK Village, It is what lets LARP’ers just ‘tune out’ an aeroplane going overhead, and not drop to their knees quaking going “Gadzooks, what manner of metal Dragon is that!” I mean for a start, no one speaks like that at LARP, and if they did, their character would likely have inherited a six foot deep plot of earth before the day was through.
Likewise, Suspension of Disbelief. Many of us will have played the Warcraft Games. Did we never stop to wonder why Humans and Orcs built houses that were too small to live in? Why a boat that can cross an ocean was the effective size of a canoe, and what the everliving heck was going on with Garithos’ chin. (And he had the nerve to call Elves ‘Inhuman’! 
)
Overlooking the word ‘Void’ and mentally replacing it with ‘High’ is small fry in comparison.
Again, the problem there is that it would de facto be a separate race. It isn’t. If you want to make a Wildhammer Dwarf, your starting quest experience is going to have been identical to a Bronzebeard, because the differences are purely cosmetic. -if- they were a separate race, then yes, but then again that comes back to the problems I detailed earlier.
I think that would be a pretty petty approach, If my Gnome, Draenei or Humans saw a thing that looked like a high elf, and said they were a high elf, then they’d be inclined to go “That’s a High Elf”, even if it was a Void Elf using the High Elf skin.
To be fair, that attitude, whilst I do not subscribe to it, stemmed from the point in time when (mostly US posters to be fair) were saying that High Elves should have a more muscular model than Blood Elves, and basically showing their complete ignorance of Wow Lore and desire to play Legolas rip offs. The reasoning was.
- Blood Elves live in luxury, High Elves had to struggle to survive in the wilderness.
Umm, wat? The Blood Elves -are- the ones who had to struggle, standing alone as a neutral nation , whilst the High Elves beggared off to the Alliance. The lifestyle was identical. Some Blood/High Elves lived comfortable lives in cities, like Silvermoon, Dalaran and Stormwind, Some Blood/High Elves are rugged outdoors types, like the Farstriders and the Highvale Rangers. The lifestyle of the two were identical, but for some reason some people thought that all High Elves were rangers and so should have extra options Blood Elves don’t have, despite there probably being more Farstrider Rangers alive than there are High Elves in their entirety…
If you mean the race, well I suppose if great great grandpa says so… If you mean the spiteful internet type of Troll, then who cares what they think, they are a mindless irrelevance.
That’s a problem that the community is going to have to resolve itself. Again, if it walks like a High Elf, looks like a High Elf, calls itself a High Elf, then its a High Elf. If some Void Elf players can’t let go of that, then they’re failing at Suspension of Belief.
That is -only- going to be a problem on RP realms, as lets face it, Raiders and PvP’ers don’t care about such distinctions, I would make the bold statement therefore, that any Roleplayer who sees a visual depiction looking, talking and acting like a High Elf, yet gets hung up about the fact that the Allied race is called Void Elf, is not in fact, a very good roleplayer at all, because they are falling at the first hurdle.
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I have to agree on that.
Said that, very sadly, there are many of such ‘roleplayers’… 
I wish I could say you were wrong.
At the risk of sounding pretentious (and I am aware that I can come across as arrogant at times especially in purely text based statements where context and tone are missing) I think I understand Roleplay quite well, I’ve been a tabletop gamer for more than thirty years, a LARPer for thirty years, and an online RP’er for fifteen or so. The essence of Roleplay is just that, Playing a Role in a Setting. The Setting is important, you could be someone who is absolutely awesome at roleplaying an Imperial Stormtrooper from the Star Wars franchise, you could be the worlds best at it, but if you try to play it in a setting like Stormwind, you would still be a very poor Roleplayer. Because Stormtroopers like that have no place in Azeroth.
Likewise in the setting we know High Elves exist, we know that many of them are in the Alliance, or at least Alliance friendly, so if someone is using a character model that -looks- like a High Elf, -acts- like a High Elf, and -calls- themselves a High Elf, then what possible reason would you have , to not then regard them as a High Elf. Who gives a fig what it says on their character creation screen? Its not like they are playing a Tauren who claims to be a Gnome, because that is silly. (OK, I mean someone -could- play a Tauren who thinks they are a Gnome, but it would be readily apparent that they are not).
If someone looks like what they are trying to play, and acts like it, then our characters can no more see the race on their character selection screen than they can see floating blue text over their heads saying their name, You go with the role they are playing, so long as they actually look like one.
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“It’s totally unfair that the Alliance got High Elves!”
“This is a spit in the face of every Alliance Player!”
Also High Elf fans.
Your point?
I cannot imagine it. If it would be truly a Helf/Ogres distribution, then everything would have been alright.
No, the Alliance had High Elves since Void Elves were added. These are still Void Elves even if they have normal skin tones. It’s still a type of high elf after all.
Does anyone know for sure if the Void Elves are getting ALL Blood Elf skin tones though or just a few though? Seems weird and a bit unfair if Void Elves not only have their own customisations but every single Blood Elf one as well.
The official text says the following:
Additionally, Blood Elves will have the option to choose from a variety of new skin colors and Void Elves will inherit the skin color options that are available to Blood Elves.
Looks like you’ll get full-fledged Blood Elves skin-customizations.
I don’t see a problem in the Alliance getting more than the Horde (for now). It’s not like the developers haven’t realized how horrible the player treatment constantly was.
Hmmm it does seem to suggest that, so that will probably be outcome.
It is unfair to Blood Elf players though in that all the customisation work being put into their race is to be shared with the Void Elves. It probably would have been better to share, say, the three skins in the preview. More than enough for the Void Elves to have those normal skin tones they craved while allowing the blood elves to have a far wider selection.
It’s also weird in that there are going to be over twice as many non void tones as void tones. People may have different ideas about the void elves being voidy, but this has to be a first in Blizzard offering customisations to people so that they can attempt to deny what they actually are.
Even a Dwarf with wildhammer tattoos isn’t going to be going around attempting to claim they aren’t a Dwarf.
You’ve got a fair point, it leaves us with the following options:
- High Elves were added without a Horde race, but give Blood Elves more customisation than High Elves as consolation
- High Elves were added with an entirely seperate Horde race as consolation (e.g Ogres)
- High Elves are added with another race that isn’t entirely new on the Horde (e.g dark rangers)
Personally I think the final option would be the most balanced for both factions as it means they both get something that’s a bit-different rather than 1 faction getting something entirely different (like Ogres) and the other faction only getting something only a bit-different (High Elves). But everyone will have a different preference and every option will rub some players the wrong way.
However, I think it’s worth pointing out:
- If High Elves aren’t added properly then that’s a permanent issue for both High Elf fans and people who hate High Elf discussion taking over the forums. It would be permanent because High Elves will continue to want the race until it’s added, and with each passing year they don’t get it they will justifiably even more annoyed and get more intense with their posting.
- If High Elves are added it will only be temporary issue for people who prefer other races. It would be temporary because most people will come to accept it and not even think about it in the long-run when lots of other ARs have been added to both factions.
So given the choice between a permanent problem and us being forced in this nightmare groundhog day on the forums of repeating the same arguments for High Elves for eternity - or just having a temporary annoyance people willl move on from, the temporary option sounds a million times better to me, and I bet a lot of people who aren’t High Elf fans would also prefer to end this tiresome debate.
Lore-wise you are correct that High Elves could have gold eyes from the holy cleansing of the Sunwell, but many Horde players get mad even at Alliance players getting something that’s always been part of the Alliance elves since vanilla (blue eyes), so they’re going to get really mad at Alliance players getting something that’s only ever been part of Horde elves (gold eyes).
Personally I wouldn’t mind the addition, but I know it would make adding High Elves far less likely becuase of the added controversy, so I’d rather not lower my chances of getting High Elves at all over that, particularly given that gold eyes aren’t even something most High Elf fans have asked for.
As for green eyes I’m not sure I agree that spending time on Outlands woud turn their eyes green, as if that were the case then other races in Outland would be the same, especially other Elves like Night Elves. If you’re right though, I’d still think it’d be a bad idea because of the same reasons I explained for Gold eyes, but these two reasons on top of that too:
- Blood Elves have even more attachment to green eyes because they’ve had green eyes since the start
- High Elves are defined in large part by their refusal to dabble in fel magic, so even if there’s lore-jusification for green eyes it would feel wrong to many High Elf fans I think (myself included).
I’m glad we agree on that. I understand that some Blood Elf players will feel it’s stealing from their uniqueness to give High Elves the same styles, so if that would stop me getting High Elves I’d be happy with seperate hairstyles from Blood Elves or even if they’re just un-voidy versions of the void elf hairstyles as a compromise.
Your Irish-Welsh voice is something that’s unusual for Blood Elves to have whilst High Elf fans are asking for a voice which is the opposite of unusual, because they’re asking for the voice that most High Elves would have lore-wise (not sure what that would be exactly in all honesty as currently the NPCs have a placeholder night elf voices in game, but it definitely wouldn’t sound voidy because regular High Elves are uncorrupted by the void). So I think it’s a false equivalance to say wanting your unusual accent choice is comparable to wanting the most common accent of the race.
I disagree. Every time I heard void audio I’d be reminded that I’m not a regular High Elf and that I’m just in denial to pretend otherwise, and every time I interact with voice emotes with other players they will hear me that way too. An MMO is a social genre so how others hear you is important too, especially on RP realms.
I think it does matter. First of all “because the actual race is void elf” - I know that, and that’s why I see it as another thing on the list for why fully-seperated High Elves would be preferable. You are right that suspension of disbelief is a thing, but it shouldn’t be necessary as High Elves are already well-established in the lore.
Well personally I think it was wrong that Wildhammers weren’t seperated too because I don’t see any reason why it would be a problem to do so. Whilst they are functionally the same as Bronzebeard Dwarves they are different in lore too. It seems completely arbitrary to me for Blizzard to give Dark Irons an AR slot and not Wildhammers. In an ideal game I think all races should have sub-options to pick from like this (I can’t add links, so remove the space before .co for the link to work):
i.ibb .co/b5wzt92/subrace-customization-mockup.jpg
I’m not demanding an entirely new questing zone/s, just spawning in a lore-appropriate zone/base (such as Quel’Danil lodge for High Elves and Aerie Peak for Wildhammers) and then have them hand in a single quest in Stormwind to officialise their entry into the Alliance. It would be very easy for Blizzard to do, so I don’t know why they don’t do this wherever possible. It’s not as if it’d be filling up too much of Blizzard’s time, and if the UI was changed to allow a second layer of options like image I linked, then Blizzard wouldn’t need to worry about the screen getting too full of options either.
Also wildhammers and high elves aren’t perfect analogies either because people a Bronzebeard Dwarf RPing as a Wildhammer would rarely be met with resistance of not being a “true wildhammer”, whereas a Void elf RPing as a High Elf would be met with resistance all the time due to the void looks, voice, racial etc.
First of all it wouldn’t look like a High Elf properly because it would have void-hair and glow purply occassionally in combat. Secondly I’d still be bothered by people saying I wasn’t a High Elf because I have my own doubts that it even counts in the first place, which they’d be reinforcing.
Unfortunately not all trolls are obvious though because they can pose as having genuine opinions.
Again I’d point out that they don’t look entirely like a High Elf and they don’t talk like a High Elf either. As for suspension of disbelief, I don’t see why that should be necessary.
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The problem is and always was that these Void Elves shouldn’t have been made in the first place. People have been asking for the Alliance High Elves for over a decade and it’s just fair that the get them to play.
The developers shoehorned the Helves/Belves options into the velf-customization which they shouldn’t have done.
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Most of this post is sensible, but I disagree with your binary “end the debate” choices.
- is current situation, what I call “door ajar” because Helf are in narrative, but unavailable “purely”.
- is “door open”, allowing helf playable recementing them in lore.
You missed 3) blizzard could write the narrative to helf are undebatably eliminated through a combination if either joining belf, or velf, all of their prior names relinquished and copious lore statements to reinforce this fact. “Door shut” situation. This way “imperfect” Helf as velf is legitimised by the lore, and there is no longer any legitimate grounds to ask for “pure Helf” as they no longer exist.
At this point fans may continue to spam threads, but this would be different to other AR requests as blizzard would have definitively written Helf out of the lore consciously so as to consider their reintroduction implausible. Continuing to campaign for it at this point would purposeless trolling because of dislike of lore.
The current situation the campaigning is legit because the door is ajar.