#Quel’dorei2025 💙

Community General Discussion
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Citing Classic (subject of 'you think you want it but you don’t) is a perfect example of why Blizzard never says no to anything anymore. Here you are taking the most infamous time they said no to something, only to backtrack on, and using it to suggest that their minds can be changed. That should really inform you thinking on the tweet you quoted above.
Of course on the topic of playable Alliance High Elves they have said no for longer than they did to Classic, so that is something to bear in mind.

Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if High Elves for the Alliance ARE in fact added as part of the now widely expected Classic+ (probably announced at Blizzcon next year) but Classic+ won’t be retail, won’t be the ‘one true timeline’ and will be a different game overall.

People who argued against Demon Hunters did so because Warlocks had been built using components from Warcraft 3 Demon Hunters, particularly Metamorphosis. Blizzard had to demolish the Demonology spec and rebuild it from the ground up to create design space for Demon Hunters, so scepticism at the time was warranted. Transforming a class is expected though, even if the scale of the Demonology rework was considerable at the time. Note what they did they do, they had to take the substance of the spec to create the class. Are you suggesting they take the substance of an existing player race, Blood Elves and change it into something different than what Blood Elf players signed up for to faciliate the introduction of Alliance High Elves? Because that is the equivalence of the example you are using.

And cross faction play took the game nearly burning down for them to take a look at their core assumptions and reassess, the same process of reassessment that led to Void Elves getting those normal skin tones to enhance the compromise. The dumpster fire of Shadowlands caused a lot of hard rethinking but while they moved on so many different issues, they never actually moved on Alliance High Elves, did they?

Draenei weren’t announced at the TBC reveal because Blizzard changed their minds about adding Pandaren and extra time was needed to create a new Alliance race. This delay is almost certainly responsible for the delay in announcing Alliance Shamans and Horde Paladins…

As for the idea that they are saving a High Elf announcement…which seems to be the last refuge of the damned here…

The Draenei were revealed in May 2006 and the ending of Paladin and Shaman exclusivity was announced barely two months later. One was clearly delayed by the other. Hard to announce Draenei are getting Shamans if nobody knows what a Draenei is.

Augmentation Evokers are a unique experiment, I do not see them as a precedent. The Evoker class was the big headline feature of Dragonflight after all.

As for your scenarios where the debate ends, 1 is likelier than 2, because 2 would need them to ignore why they created Void Elves in the first place, why they gave Void Elves all those incongruous customisations and to place as much weight on an adjective as those seeking High Elves do. After all, Void Elves already HAVE High Elf customisations…they just cannot make other people agree that they are High Elves (bleeding purple and being engulfed by void every 30 seconds does that).

I do expect High Elf narrative content in Midnight, even if that content is to do Veressa alone in Windrunner Spire or interacting with her sister. But I actually don’t expect them to have a major focus unless that focus IS on their retirement from the scene in some fashion.

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No you are delusional people who will never get their demands cuz you ara crazy and radical minority.

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Of course on the topic of playable Alliance High Elves they have said no for longer than they did to Classic, so that is something to bear in mind.

They never said “no” until Ion’s response to the Q&A Weekly Reset in 2018. People (myself included) thought it was a very distant possibility since they were too similar to blood elves, but Blizzard never said “no” to it. Hell, Ion himself when interviewed about WoD mentioned about the idea of “sub races” and mentioned High Elves as an idea and how it really excites the art team.

Classic+

Hot take. I think Classic + is a stupid idea. It’s basically alternate timelines, which retail already has with WoD, the Caverns of Time, and various questlines. Classic + is people wanting to have their cake and eat it too which HD graphics but also the vanilla experience.

But you can’t really say “one true timeline” when the story took us to an altered timeline and even invited a race from that altered timeline.

Speaking of which… Mag’har Orcs. Why are they playable? Didn’t the Horde already have the regular Orcs to play as? That’s food for thought.

1 is likelier than 2, because 2 would need them to ignore why they created Void Elves in the first place, why they gave Void Elves all those incongruous customisations and to place as much weight on an adjective as those seeking High Elves do

Blizzard does “attempted genocide” in their stories but there hasn’t been a point in the story where a species goes extinct. Granted, maybe you think a more “peaceful, go quietly into the night” thing might happen, but if that’s the case, we wouldn’t be seeing so many high elf npcs.

As for the “ignore void elves”, using that logic, we shouldn’t need housing, because garrisons exist. Just improve the garrison in Draenor and bob’s your uncle!

EDIT: I forgot to mention, while you go through each example I’ve listed, there is one recurring theme. Blizzard is capable of changing their minds. Just because they didn’t want to add high elves in BFA doesn’t mean they’ll never do it. Hell, someone at Blizzcon 2018 asked him personally and he said “just because it won’t happen now doesn’t mean it’ll never happen”

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There is a loophole in the High Elf lore that Blizzard can take advantage of. The Lich King only attacked Lordaeron and Quel’Thalas. They say 90% of High Elves were killed. That’s 90% of the High Elves that resided in Quel’Thalas. Nothing was said about the High Elves who lived in other parts of Azeroth like Dalaran, Stormwind and the Hinterlands.

In any case Void Elves are probably an even smaller group (at least at the start) than the surviving High Elves are. They totally deserve to be their own race or at least via Void Elf customization and a High Elf nameplate, regardless what haters want to say.

I really want some Void Elf hairstyles, a starcursed hair toggle and some tattoos for Void Elves though. Here’s hoping we’ll see them in Midnight.

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There’s also a piece of unexplored land north of Stratholme that Blizzard has never touched… :wink:

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I will not stay silent when people propose depriving Blood Elves of their High Elven heritage and it’s not about any kind of hate. Blood Elves have every claim to all of High Elven heritage from before the third war, and that can’t be denied - they are mostly literally the very same people!

You can’t just name some small group (REAL TRUE) HIGH ELVES™, thus legitimising their claim to High Elven heritage over the Blood Elves.

And I’m not saying this because I hate the idea of adding another elven “race” to the Alliance. I’m saying this this because I appreciate current Blood Elven lore, and don’t want it diminished.

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You can’t just name some small group (REAL TRUE) HIGH ELVES ™, thus legitimising their claim to High Elven heritage over the Blood Elves.

Neither can you completely ignore and erase the existence of the elves who have stayed loyal to the Alliance and refused to engage in mana siphoning and using fel. When people say “blood elves are high elves”, they’re deliberately refusing to acknowledge their existence at best and engage in revisionism at worst

Blood Elves can have their identity of being the main thalassian faction with their capital in silvermoon. But the truth is that High Elves have their own identity that is different from their horde-aligned counterparts. In fact, I think the presence of alliance high elves enriches the blood elf identity in some cases

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Blood elves are the true high elves. They stayed true to pgramistism and surival first and gained their nation back on their own effort. Something Highelfers would never understand since they are busy selling their bodies out to their human overlors.

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Is this one of those posts like what kids do, they keep on crying and crying until they get what they want?

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Yes. This been going on for a while and everyone is annoyed by it.

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We got Classic, player housing, Demon Hunters, and many other features because people kept “crying and crying”. Or were you happy not having those?

Have you never heard of this concept called “consumer rights”? If you’ve paid for a product or service, you have every right to give feedback and complain if it’s not up to your standard.

I don’t get the argument that “you should be happy with what you’ve got”. Assuming you aren’t demanding beyond the bounds of reason, you as a consumer have the right to demand more for your product

Blood elves are the true high elves.

Ok, Kargath!

Spoken like a future raid boss…

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The fact they didn’t add them was a no.

The fact they gave them to the Horde was a no.

Ion mentioning them when discussing sub-races was about the most positive response you’ve ever gotten and that was a over a decade ago…and we saw where that ended up with Allied Races and Void Elves.

The fact they went to the bother of creating a variant nobody had ever heard of before and then loading them with customisations so you could approximate a High Elf was a no. And the reason isn’t that they were ‘too similar’ to Blood Elves. It’s that they are Blood Elves with a different political opinion.

The One True Timeline is a direct quote from the Titans to Nozdormu, emphasising that the current ‘retail’ timeline supercedes all others. Classic+ may involve High Elves for the Alliance, but like all other timelines it’ll just be a shadow of the real one.

Mag’har Orcs are a.) uncorrupted by the Fel becasue they didn’t drink the blood of Mannoroth and, because they didn’t form the Horde the same way as they did in the true timeline, they still retain the clan based social structure modern Orcs lack. They more than qualify as an Allied race because they are distinct, which is where Alliance High Elves fall down, because Alliance High Elves ARE identical. I mean, Void Elves are as different from Blood (High) Elves as Mag’har are different from ordinary Orcs. It’s the self-evident reason Void Elves were created in the first place rather than going with a duplicate of an existing race.

The disapperance of retirement of the High Elves wouldn’t be a genocide in the same way a guild disbanding is not a genocide. Alliance High Elves are a renegade political faction of the Blood Elves, and them retiring or leaving the stage would be a dissolution, not a genocide. Even if they were all killed that would not be a genocide because they are all a part of the same race as Blood Elves. And ‘so many high elf npcs’ is not accurate…they have grown rarer and rarer over the years, primarily appearing when Dalaran is involved. There are a few wandering Dornogal, but I remember when pro High Elf folks insisted Dalaran was the High Elf capital…so of course there would be a few survivors after the city’s destruction. Far more pressing though is how many of the staggeringly few that are left did not survive the city’s destruction, compounding their problems?

As for Blizzard changing their mind that is true, but until they do so we are left with their unerring constancy on this. As for your fellow at Blizzcon 2018…that was seven years ago. That’s a big chunk of a human lifetime. Will you cite the same example in another seven years as you maintain this vigil? Frankly I hope they put the Alliance High Elves out to pasture for your sake in Midnight. Allow you all to move on and enjoy the characters you have rather than pining for the one you can’t.

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genocide does feel a bit exagerated yeah

and they already gave us an example of the outcome of some elves and mostly humans joining together in a single citizenry (paralel to high elves being absorbed in alliance cities)

you get the arathi: mostly humans with a bit of elf, a few centuries later, that’s not genocide, thats just two different genetic pools uniting under a single culture.

I don’t agree with the high elves and blood elves being the same tho, sure biologically but I think its a bit silly to give that as a reply to people who are talking societal and cultural differences that have developed ever since what we now call high elves branched off from what we now call blood elves

The only people who I see argue that belves are genetically different from helves are the ones that think blood elves consumed fel for the sake of sating their addiction, which is just incorrect as a general statement about all or even most blood elves.

I think it would be neat if they reflected this by having like some random high elves dotted around human armies and npc’s and in places of governance I guess, maybe have them give some different flavour text where they have something to say in context of their heritage

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They are a race who measure their lifetimes in thousands of years and the philosophical point that caused the split, the consumption of arcane magic from, essentially, rodents to survive occurred less than three decades ago was resolved shortly afterwards with the restoration of the Sunwell.

There are not enough of them to constitute a distinct culture and the timeframe was too short regardless. Most of those who formed the Silver Covenant where either a few long term Mage residents in Dalaran and renegade Farstriders. The Silver Covenant itself was a very limited organisation as a result, it wasn’t a mirror of the Blood Elves it was a mirror of the Farstriders, going so far as to label their leader as ‘Ranger-General’.

This is akin to arguing you are different and distinct from your brother if you voted one way at a recent election and he went with the other party.

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J Allen Brack said “you think you want it, but you don’t” to classic servers. That was a no.

Ion Hazzikostas said that cross faction grouping would ruin faction immersion. That was a no.

Some dev whose name I can’t recall said that the Pandaren being neutral was a mistake. That was also a no to future neutral races.

Classic+ may involve High Elves for the Alliance, but like all other timelines it’ll just be a shadow of the real one.

So what about alternate Draenor, and the crossover that happened? Would you consider that a “shadow behind the ‘real’ timeline”, out of curiosity.

Mag’har Orcs were uncorrupted. But do you know who else were uncorrupted? The High Elves! Blood Elves were High Elves who resorted to using demonic magic and were physiologically altered as a result, just as how the green Orcs were Mag’har Orcs who resorted to using demonic magic and were physiologically altered. I don’t see how the argument can be made that High Elves are identical to Blood Elves, but Mag’har Orcs aren’t identical to green Orcs. It’s just a difference in colour between skin, eyes, and attitudes towards the use of fel.

The reality is, the Silver Covenant could just have been a Wrath-only faction. But they weren’t. They played a role in Mists of Pandaria, carrying out the Purge of Dalaran. They supplied war materiel and personnel during the Second Siege of Orgrimmar. Hell, Xal’atath’s body is that of a high elf!

There are a few wandering Dornogal, but I remember when pro High Elf folks insisted Dalaran was the High Elf capital…so of course there would be a few survivors after the city’s destruction

You know who lost their city recently? The Night Elves, and yet they still factor greatly in the alliance forces. They even have a new capital city, Bel’ameth. But igoring that, the Forsaken don’t even have a capital anymore. Would you argue for them to go quietly into the night, too?

that was seven years ago. That’s a big chunk of a human lifetime. Will you cite the same example in another seven years as you maintain this vigil?

It doesn’t bother some people to keep parroting Ion’s “Blood elves are high elves”, which was also seven years ago, so yes.

Frankly I hope they put the Alliance High Elves out to pasture for your sake in Midnight. Allow you all to move on and enjoy the characters you have rather than pining for the one you can’t.

If that comes to pass, then perhaps it would be time for me to bid an old friend farewell. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out” you may say. Don’t worry, I won’t if it ever comes to that.

But I don’t think it will. Blizzard has had a track record of listening to its fans, and it may drag its feet on big requests, but history has proven that they usually give the fans what they want.

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Maybe my knowledge is dated here, but from what I understood for blood elves it was more like hundreds, but those who actively worked with arcane and imbued themselves with it to the level of magisters could get older, or rather that the one who did get older, there was an element of arcane that could be pointed too as the reason.

I don’t see them being so long lived as a valid excuse as to why they couldn’t distinguish their own cultures a bit more, sure I assume there is a lot of overlap, but high elves already are kicked out of quel’thalas, many were forced to change how they do things in order to simply survive outside of the culture.

For example; it wasn’t high elf culture to live among humans and be absorebed in their city, but high elves have had too (the ones that didn’t have a lodge to turn too I imagine)

this is just the biological arguement repackaged

yeah ofcourse I’d be biologically similar to my brother, but my brother if I had one would indeed be a different person with different values and different likes in spite of the same growing up and raising we had, one of the ways this could express itself is indeed in how we vote. I’m not denying overlap here, what came out would still be similar if helves had enough people to continue their culture with, but it would not be the same. Estranged brothers come to think of it is a good parallel for them

Them not having the numbers to keep their own culture alive is also a reason why I say their cultures are different now, yes those high elves adopted the human cultures of the cities they integrated in, probably brought some of their own with them as it usually goes when individuals from different cultures mingle. I will still call them high elves because thats what I recognize them to be.

edit: the main timeline (retail or classic+) will be the version of the game that makes the most money mark my words

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I don’t like using real world arguments but you have examples of people who speak the same language, have the same ethnic makeup, but still have a different culture altogether due to geographic sociopolitical circumstances.

Britain and Australia
North and South Korea
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
Austria and Germany
The United States and Canada
India and Pakistan
The People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China

If you were to go around in any of those countries saying “oh, it’s all the same thing” there’s a strong chance you will not make it out in one piece.

And what bothers me is that so many people who are against alliance high elves refuse to acknowledge them in the first place. In the real world this would be called revisionism

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Lorash Sunbeam…according to Warcraft Wiki"Lorash claimed to have been born in the Tirisfal Glades during the exile of the Highborne. During the winter in which the Highborne were trapped in the mountains, Lorash’s father went out hunting despite the cold, losing two fingers to frostbite and eventually not returning at all. Lorash lived through centuries of warfare with the Amani trolls, during which he saw pieces of his childhood friends decorating Amani villages. Years later, during the Scourge invasion of Quel’Thalas, his mother was killed and raised into undeath."

Anyone who was alive to be born in Tirisfal and participate in the conquest of the lands that would become Quel’thalas strongly indicates Elves have an immense lifespan. The separation therefore between Alliance High Elves and Blood Elves is the blink of an eye.

And I am afraid you cannot dismiss the biology argument, it is critical to understanding why High Elves cannot be playable on the Alliance. Every Allied race is, in some fashion, biologically distinct from their parents. Mag’har are uncontaminated by Fel, Nightborne are changed by millenia of exposure to the Nightwell, Void Elves are transformed by void energy and even bleed purple. The only exception are the Kul’Tirans, who use a different model to regular Humans, but they are justified as an Allied Race precisely because they appear different rather than having a different set of values,though they have a unique Kul Tiran culture as well. Most Human kingdoms were bulldozed by the Horde during the Second War or the Scourge in the Third War.

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Thanks for the explanation, I do recall them making land in what is now Lordaeron before going further north and finding quel’thalas, didn’t think they still had people walking around since then.

Its hard to find good lore sources, I remember once following a bunch of claims on the wowwiki lore to the listed sources of those claims only to find out that for a lot of those claims, the alledged sources mention nothing like the claims so I’m always open to different sources of lore I may have missed out on, its a big world after all.

I’m not argueing why high elves can/can’t be played in the alliance, I am argueing why I think it is silly enter a discussion about differences between blood elf and high elf which usually revolve around mannerisms of individuals, cultures and societal behaviour (not just culture I guess in hindsight then). I tried to state this as a more general statement and not as a reaction to any ongoing debate maybe thats where wires got crossed a bit.

The claim about what allied races are, are not entirely true tho, first of all vulpera have no biological ties to anything and all allied races were, was a method for blizzard to add a new race without having to design a starter zone and starter experience for them. There is no real hard lore requirements for when something is an allied race and when it is a core race, this is more of a game mechanics thing then a lore thing.

I am unconvinced because I disagree with the notion that all allied races have to have existing biological ties to existing ones, nor was I really argueing that.

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Both Wowwiki and Wowpedia should be ignored as they have been abandoned since being acquired by Fandom. Warcraft Wiki is the best resource. Lorash Sunbeam is a character in the Horde ‘War of Thorns’ short story that preceded BFA and he describes why he hates Night Elves so much.

Personally I do find the idea that Elves can live for millenia a bit silly but it is what it is.

Biology cannot be discounted as a factor. Vulpera are an exception, but not one that counts given they are a wholly different race to the Goblins whose skeleton they are based off. This particular debate is about being a duplicate. It would be akin to people arguing for the Steamwheele Cartel to join the Alliance (though with a better case admittedly).

As for the debate, the entire thing is silly. It has reached this level of nuance entirely because those who seek High Elves are determined to prove their is some difference that is wide enough to justify their inclusion as an Allied race. Every miniscule perceived difference is therefore inflated, and those opposed to the idea have to point out why the difference is either irrelvant or exaggerated.

In truth what is left is a question of objectivity and subjectivity. Void Elves were clearly created as a compromise, and one loaded with customisations to allow a very close approximation. But a Void Elf is not a High Elf, and no matter how hard a Void Elf roleplays as a High Elf they cannot compel other players to acknowledge them as such. Only a name tag that says ‘High Elf’ for EVERYONE when the character is moused over will suffice, because then a compromise designed to allow them to roleplay subjectively will be imposed on everyone objectively.

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