The truth is that High Elves are already playable on both sides, each with their own particularity. Blood Elves carry one legacy, Void Elves another, and together they cover the breadth of what the Quel’dorei have become.
And even then, the lore makes it clear there are High Elves who remain unaffiliated with either Alliance or Horde.
Which only proves the point: no single label will ever capture the entirety of the Quel’dorei.
In practice, the most viable solution isn’t adding yet another “playable elf race” to the Alliance, but refining customisation. Additional options and perhaps even a glyph to mask the Void Elves racial effect would go a lot further than splitting hairs over names.
Show me where in-game there’s a playable race labelled “High Elf.”
That is the only truth you need to concern yourself with.
No, your point was that it’s fine to have an in-game race labelled “Undead” which does not encompass nearly the majority of the Undead in the world.
Not to mention how Void Elves don’t cover the identity of an untainted, Alliance High Elf who has been in Stormwind since 2004, but at this point it’s clear Anti-Helfers do not understand.
Ohh now Blizzard remmbers there was an “Uniting of the scattered elven tribes” in Midnight, days after gamescon.
If that happens there won’t need to be more threads. Im fully ok for Void elves to be neutral aswell as they are mostly Blood elves from Silvermoon anyway and has more common with the Horde with Darker power and Void is the most darkest magic/power. Sure I would like to seen Crystalsong forest built as their own but 20 years have past and not getting any younger. Im tired of waiting but also Silvermoon is home to all the Children of the Highborne as it is their ancient home.
Just want our old friends to be playable and stand side by side.
It was the Blood elves “original idea” back in 2005 that the Blood elves with go for more Darker path, seek darker powers beyond Azeroth and be on collision course with the Horde. To be more of a Dark elf as seen on the Original concept art. From Fel to the Void would have been the next step as Void is more powerful then Fel.
It’s pointless, these anti-Helfer peoples never played Vanilla. If they did they didn’t pay attention and don’t even bother to get their lore right.
Once, there was an anti-Helfer who literally told me “there’s no evidence those NPCs are High Elves besides a mention in a fan-made wiki” (the officially-recognized Warcraft Wiki).
And yet, by that same logic, you’d also have to deny that Blood Elves are High Elves despite the game and the lore confirming it time and time again.
In the end, what’s missing isn’t playability, but simply a character creation button that says “High Elf.” That’s no longer a matter of lore, but of marketing.
That is the paradox: no playable race in the game truly represents the majority of its people in lore.
The Forsaken do not encompass all undead; playable Humans are not every Human in Azeroth; the same goes for Orcs and Trolls. The name on the character creation screen has never captured the entirety of a race.
The same applies to the Quel’dorei: they already exist on both sides — as Sin’dorei within the Horde and as Ren’dorei within the Alliance. Naturally, some may not identify fully with either faction, but creating yet another playable race solely for the sake of a different label hardly seems the most viable solution.
If being called an “Anti-Helfer” simply means I’m not asking Blizzard to create a redundant race slot for something already represented in-game, then I’ll wear the label gladly.
My stance has always been simple: Quel’dorei are already present, just expressed differently across both factions. If that doesn’t align with the narrow definition some wish to impose, that hardly makes me “anti” anything, only pragmatic.
Besides, if I truly were an “Anti-Helfer,” I would hardly have rolled a Sin’dorei in the first place, don’t you think?
That only means that person never played wow Vanilla. They can however start a character in Wow Classic as those NPCs are still there. And Blood elves are Hostile NPCs towards both factions.
Even in Ghostlands in Goldenmist village the Old High elves models (Based of Night elves models) are still there as ghosts. Blizzard never changed them to the new TBC models.
Again, it’s your logic. You’re the one who pointed out that there is indeed a Horde race in the game labelled “Undead” despite multiple Undead groups in the Alliance.
Show me where in the game there is a race labelled “High Elf.”
I make this request for like the fourth time.
In-game races are not “simply a character creation button.”
Correct, so an in-game race labelled “High Elf” doesn’t have to represent ALL High Elves.
It’s always funny when oblivious Anti-Helfers end up using Pro-Helfer arguments lol.
Haha, funny joke, it’s only like the one millionth time an Anti-Helfer has done it.
If it truly is the “millionth time,” then I suppose that only proves the debate has been going in circles for nearly two decades.
At this point, nothing new is being said… only the same lines rehearsed endlessly.
But that’s fine by all means, keep opening High Elf threads for another twenty years. Who knows? Perhaps one day, by sheer luck, the Quel’dorei might finally slip into a patch and when it happens, I’ll be enjoying it all the same.
So it all rests on the magic “High Elf” button… until that appears on the character screen, the wheel keeps spinning and the threads keep piling up. Tbh, that’s half the fun.
Have a good day and here’s hoping they add that magic button soon…
If every racial, mount and emote truly defined the essence of the Quel’dorei, we wouldn’t still be circling this debate two decades on.
The “button” is just shorthand for a discussion that never ends.
Let it keep spinning for another twenty years if it must though, as I’ve already said, when Blizzard finally drops it in a patch, I’ll enjoy it all the same.
The debate is tiresome, I will give you that. Look how finely sliced the distinction is now between Void Elves and Blood Elves. Void Elves ARE distinct, but they can come close enough for the average player. In practical terms a High Elf would be virtually indistinguishable from a Void Elf and completely indistinguishable from a Bloof Elf.
And I guarantee you, the opportunity cost of adding a copy of an existing race to the other faction would piss off players hoping for something new and different, piss off the other faction and all to please an extremely vocal minority who have rejected every compromise thrown their way and for whom it fundamentally it now comes down to an adjective.
I refer to it as absolutist headcanon because the players advocating for this refuse to accept that Blood Elves ARE the High Elves they seek despite twenty years of the franchise, the addition of the Blood Elves to the Horde, the developers stating on multiple occasions that Blood Elves ARE High Elves, the addition of Void Elves as a close enough but not quite compromise AND the fact they’ve passed up every opportunity to add Alliance Blood Elves (which is what these High Elves would be).
You’ve summed it up very well, and I agree with you on that point.
But here’s the part I’ve never fully understood… whenever people talk about the ‘traditional’ traits of the High Elves, why are the sin’dorei so often excluded from that picture? They didn’t stop being Quel’dorei, they chose a different path, quite right, but the heritage is undeniably the same.
