Personally, I would have thought it an obvious choice for Blizzard to introduce playable High Elves (and Forest Trolls) coming with the launch of Midnight. But since that’s not the case, I’d like to propose the best compromise I could think of for the time being.
In Midnight, introduce a quest that’s exclusive to Blood Elves and Void Elves.
Each race begins the quest under different circumstances, letting players explore both their High Elven heritage and their more recent past. It’ll involve everything from Outland (including Kael’Thas and the Allerian Stronghold) to Quel’Thalas, Dalaran, and the various lodges scattered around Azeroth today.
Naturally, players will also run into Alleria, Vereesa, and Sylvanas.
But along the way, their separate paths begin to merge into one. Eventually, they are forced to confront their differences and similarities as they work together for a common good.
At the end of their journey, both races unlock a bunch of cool rewards:
- Quel’dorei Heritage Transmog - Both races gain access to some new elven transmog dyed in red, blue, green, purple, and silver variants. This set is meant to represent their shared history.
- Shared Character Customisation - Both races gain access to their respective hairstyle options as well as new tattoos inspired by Warcraft 2 and 3. A few old and new options remain exclusive, such as Void Elf tentacles and void-scars, as well as Blood Elf jewellry and fel-scars. (Although to be completely honest, they could probably justify a few Light- and Void-themed options for both races given the theme of the expansion.)
- Shared High Elf Race Tags - Both races get the option to display simply “High Elf” or “Quel’dorei” instead of “Void Elf” or “Blood Elf” on their name tags. This will affect what NPCs and in-game UI refer to your character as.
- New Titles - Both races can unlock new titles including Ranger, Enchantress, and Farstrider. (Some of these will be come available to all races.)
- Customisable Racial Abilities - This one will probably appeal to Void Elves more, but at the very least there will be an option to change the appearance of your racial abilities to tone down all the voidy effects. If they want to take it one (admittedly major) step foward, they could introduce a neutral set of racial abilities available to both Blood Elves and Void Elves.
- Shared Sanctum - Finally, both races gain access to their own special sanctum within Silvermoon, letting them both feel at home within the city. There might be an important NPC present, actively working to continously improve relations between the two groups.
Outcome
At the end of all this, my hope is that both groups of players would feel satisfied.
Void Elves would no longer have to feel voidy unless they wanted to, and while their journey began while answering Alleria’s summons to Telogrus Rift, they might not have undergone any type of transformation.
Blood Elves, meanwhile, wouldn’t feel forced into the whole “deceptive and cunning” vibe originally imprinted on Blood Elves in TBC. They could get to feel like their character arc finally came full circle by regaining some of its past identity, now that things have simmered down in Quel’Thalas.
