I disagree. The original intent was clearly for Blood Elves to be the High Elves. The problem was for sentimental reasons Blizzard didn’t follow through on the consequences of their own lore and have those who refused to drain mana from other beings die off from withdrawal.
This led to a silly retcon where it turns out the withdrawal wasn’t as bad as they first thought and some survived it. Blizzard should have treated their lore better and had those who refused to do what was necessary die off, because by not doing that it paints the Blood Elves as weak willed.
Still we are where we are, by not killing off that group it’s lead to the present situation. But it’s not too hard to figure out what this means. Blood Elves are the High Elves, the ones with an actual future in the warcraft IP. If they did a timeskip and did a World of Warcraft 2, you’d expect to see the Blood Elves there.
Void Elves don’t really have a future, I can’t imagine they can procreate given the void would be all over any child before birth as it formed and they themselves are waging a war of attrition. Their numbers are so few, and let us be frank their numbers are likely by far the lowest of any of the played races that the sole reason they are treated as a race by the game is probably for player convenience, that any loss in combat or due to going mad is likely an irreplacable loss. Void Elves exist in the here and now for a specific need. When the franchise moves beyond WoW I wouldn’t give them much of a chance of turning up in it.
More power to them indeed, but your problem is caused because headcanon only goes so far. You can only suspend your own disbelief, not everyone else’s. Without the game forcing others to acknowledge they are a high elf, the suspension of disbelief shatters. They are free to believe what they want of course.
But to me, they are Void Elves. To 99% of players, they are Void Elves. And a Void Elf is not a classical high elf. They don’t hear voices as well as all the other differences. I mean Void Elves bleed purple, even with normal skin tones don’t they? That’s a dead give away. All these customisations they’ve received are ultimately only skin deep.
The original intent was probably for Blood Elves to be Blood Elves, with half of the dev team not getting the difference and ignoring corrections. Just like was documented with the Forsaken/Scourge.
And as they used to state, Blood Elves are high elves and are still high elves.
In fact, the light orientated Blood Elves who control Silvermoon, Quel’thalas and the Sunwell are differentiated from the high elves of old by a single adjective. They’ve a far better claim to it than the Void corrupted elves who betrayed their country.
Didn’t they have centuries of divergence based on clan and the interactions of the Dark Irons with the Fire Lords leading to profound skin tone and cultural changes from other Dwarves?
And weren’t the Dark Irons calling themselves Dark Irons even back before the War of the Three Hammers?
It’s not a good comparison when the rename to Blood Elves occurred less than 20 years ago in game to a race that lives for thousands.
The problem with your answer is that you are attempting to drawn an equivalence between a group who diverged from other Dwarves across centuries of history with the Blood Elves whose huge dramatic shift from high elves was that they changed their name.
The only thing that has changed with the Blood Elves compared to the high elves is that they have become even more light focused due to the influence of the Sunwell, and given any remaining high elves in the Alliance are connected to that same sunwell, those high elves are also similarly increasingly attuned to the light.
I don’t think there is a world where it is somehow acceptable for Void Elf players to agitate to be called high elves whilst Blood Elf players would be denied that despite their substantially better claim.
What evidence otherwise? It seems to me you are just trying to believe Blood Elves are no longer high elves when the sum demonstrable thing Blood Elves do differently is they have a different name. Name changing is in vogue in Blizzard right now, perhaps when the Cowboy gets his new name in Overwatch he can be informed it has completely changed in every aspect so that he no longer is what he was before?
pretty much this, for many alliance high elf fans, introdcuing the void elfs, where a mega slap in the face, and almost like Blizzard told the high elf fanst to go screw them selfs.
Orcs didn’t change when they went from mag’har to fel corrupted beasts either. They are exactljy the same
But a difference between the high elves and blood elves when they changed their name was the arcane vampirism (pre-tbc to end-tbc), pragmatism, and willingness to work with the Horde to reach their goal, while the high elves kept to their Light-worship (as seen at Quel’lithien Lodge), kept to their ideals of not sucking mana out of living creatures (Silver Covenant, Quel’lithien Lodge and Highvale), remained aligned with the Alliance.
“However, a few high elves did not rename themselves blood elves. High elves and blood elves are physiologically the same race, and the difference between high and blood elves is only political.“
Correct me if I’m wrong, but besides Arthas, the trolls and all the mud that happened to them, weren’t the humans who prisoned Kael and were racist towards the high elven community and wanted to kill them? I do understand that some high elves stayed in the Alliance, or in touch with them, but tbh I wouldn’t want to make an ally with someone who wanted to purge me out of this world.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if they would go down the same rabbit hole as Sylvanas: they can’t reproduce just as the Forsaken, and eventually that will be a problem as they are not immortal. And to be fair: with the void they even have more reason to go frenzy about it than the banshee as they seem to be crazier.
However I look at Garithos, he’s very human to me…
Also, sure, say that all the blood elves are Legion supporters despite the fact that they named Kael as a traitor, but the same goes for the night elves for Illidan, or the Draenei… and these dudes have 2 muppets to try to eradicate them! Or the orca for Gul’dan, the Forsaken for the plague etc. Not to mention the scare crow Medivh…
However I look at Kael’thas, he’s very blood elven to me…
So all blood elves must be Legion servants.
Look, Garithos was an racist that got what he deserved but saying that Garithos did it. he was a human, so all humans must be guilty is a bad look and weird take.
And Mathias Shaw admitted in the most recent Exploring Azeroth: Eastern Kingdoms book that Garithos was wrong for what he did and dishonoured the Alliance. (No idea how the Alliance fits into it since it was basicly non-existent but that’s Blizzard for you).
Never stated all humans are racist. They did the same with the forsaken too. You are the one stating that because of Karl’s desperate move all of them are the legion’s admirers
Yet, here you state that it was the humans who imprisoned Kael and were murder racists that wanted to kill the high elven community (also they were already blood elves by this point) so its odd that the high elves wanted to stay allies with the humans. But it was just one human, and afaik he didn’t even want to purge them from the world, just from Lordaeron.
Who did what to the Forsaken?
Well yes, if humans wanted to purge high elves (and Kael’s blood elves) from the world because of Garithos then all blood elves are Legion servants because of what Kael’thas did.
Sorry for that then, but i still stand with my point: making this “race” was a huge mistake. Also in defence of Kael he wanted a cure for his people’s addiction and he believed someone that he would help.
But knowing your point of view about the whole belf community being “legion pawns” then all the races should be purged because at some point all of them were in contact with something bad…
We should be destined for the Maw and all hail to Zovaal since we used our planet’s blood for our own advantage. Yes, helped with the sword but damn…
Also why would high elves like what their people do with the void? If blood elves banished them for playing with it, why would they appreciate it?
As someone who has gone from a blood elf, to a void elf, to a high elf RPer, I see this as two groups of exiled Thalassians rallying together under the Alliance banner, and a fabled hero of the Second War, Alleria.
My warlock was a sorceress from Silvermoon who came with the first group, and got transformed. I’m a Silver Covenant veteran who joined during the Fourth War, to fight Sylvanas. Although I wield some Void powers, I mostly rely on my bow and arrows.
