it seems in Exploring Azeroth: Eastern Kingdoms, Shaw did say that the actions of Garithos and the remnants of his army of Humans in Lordaeron are to be considered effectively part of the Alliance, as their actions “sullied the name of the Alliance” and “cost the Alliance the Sin’dorei who cast their lot in the Horde” (notice he doesn’t blame them for joining the Horde either). Also he sounds happy that Garithos had been killed in that terrible way and he still refers to the Sin’dorei group of Kael as “Quel’dorei”
So as even some important Alliance characters, they say that Garithos was effectively 100% part of the Alliance, and his army sullied the name of the Alliance and cost the Alliance the Blood Elves, there’s little room to argue against this now. He and his actions are to be considered Alliance and not a splinter group or the actions of a single person, even for Blizzard who finally clarified it.
They are both exiled groups so it’s easier for them to find a common ground against the Blood Elves, despite the Void Elves are now inherently corrupted with a kind of magic that could just be even worse and more dangerous than the fel who corrupted the Blood Elves themselves. But as I said just because they were both exiled and both are enemies of the Blood Elves and the Horde, even something like the Void will be fine now. Kinda hypocritical way of thinking though…
Warlocks are “pretty” evil individuals in a constant search of personal power so I was quite skeptical that Blizzard included them as a Void Elf class, as they require a big suspension of disbelief to work, probably they just did that for class “balance” reasons . As I said most Warlocks are all about personal powers, so why would some Blood Elf warlocks join the group of Umbric (and then later Alleria and the Alliance) just for researching and study the Void in order to defend Quel’thalas and Azeroth with it? They should not care one bit about what the Void Elves are trying to achieve with the study of the Void anyway, they just want more Void powers for themselves, but that they could get staying in Silvermoon anyway (Sin’dorei void-users like Warlocks and Shadow Priests are not currently exiled like the Void Elves as long as they are not a threat for the Sunwell I guess)
It doesn’t really make much sense, not to mention that an individual wielding both huge amounts of demonic fel powers AND Void powers should go crazy/evil in like less than a week, because even just one of these two destructive cosmic powers will likely corrupt and make the individual evil eventually, just imagine wielding them both at the SAME time…no matter their willpower, it’s just not realistic. Not to mention the Quel’dorei High Elves who were exiled from Quel’thalas for refusing to absorb arcane magic or for the mild use of fel magic in Burning Crystals around the kingdom, they are now stuck with former Blood Elf warlocks anyway
There’s a common misconception that all warlocks wield fel magic. Only the most skilled destruction warlocks have mastered that art, which is the lore explanation for the Green Fire quest. My Forsaken warlock did just that, and is still searching for more power.
I’m an affliction warlock. We use shadow magic, which isn’t that far from Void magic. It’s not as destructive as fel magic, but it can cause agonizing pain to our enemies, and the most skilled of us even have the power to ensnare a tiny fragment of our enemy’s soul. That fragment can be used to fuel our most potent spells, or as leverage.
I know most consider us evil, but to us it’s a necessary evil. The Alliance and Horde knows this, the Sin’dorei even more so. But after the Sunwell was restored, they started following the Light, and we became just as despised as elsewhere. When Umbric was exiled for studying the Void, I knew Lor’themar had made a mistake rejecting this power, so I followed Umbric, and here we are. Sure, my Quel’dorei allies despise me, but it’s not like I’m forcing shadow magic down their throats.
Even if you are affliction I’m sure you still use fire/fel magic regularly in some basic capacity. Even for spells who are not for the purpose of attacking the enemy, creating healthstones for yourself and allies and making demonic portals/teleports on the battlefield, not to mention the summoning of Demons (I won’t believe you only ever summoned Voidwalkers, sorry ) makes your knowledge and usage of fel magic quite deep, or at very least, quite common in your life.
So…yes. You know and wield both powers while realistically managing to stay sane and not overly corrupted (and trusted by a faction like the Alliance where warlocks should have even a more difficult and oppressed existence than in the Horde), while we know even just a single one of these two cosmic powers is enough to corrupt a Titan, imagine wielding both of them. Either your willpower is stronger than Sargeras’ or it’s just…completely unrealistic, sorry
Indeed, and there’s another BIG example of the reason for me it’s so difficult to take Void Elves seriously in the story…they affected negatively Sin’dorei characters, too.
Realistically, Lor’themar and Rommath WOULDN’T have exiled them in the Ghostlands, like at all. Umbric and his followers would simply be forbidden to come close to the Sunwell but they would still be able to live in Silvermoon in order to study the Void there if they really wanted to defend Quel’thalas with it. If Umbric and his followers disliked the Horde then it would have made sense that they chose a self-exile in the Ghostlands, not that the Blood Elves, a race that is very not known to put strict rules against forbidden magical powers, forcing the exile on them.
Or in the worst case realistically Rommath and Lor’themar would just arrest them, or execute them for disregarding their orders. A simple exile requires a huge suspension of disbelief for Sin’dorei fans/players and the knowledge that their characters could now act dumb at any time if it serves the purpose of helping the Alliance, like introducing a new race for them using the Thalassian models, where they should have created the Void Elves only from the pool of the remaining group of High Elves in the Alliance, leaving the Blood Elves out of this silly story/fanfiction completely.
There’s high elves in the alliance
That’s good enough for me considering you can get wildhammer customization on a bronzebeard dwarf (yes the PC dwarf is a bronzebeard specifically), a bunch of different troll tribes as darkspear (the pc troll is a darkspear) and highbourne through Night Elf (those elves in Dire Maul)
If anything the void elves need some padding on the origins lore which I’d welcome either way, high elves defo don’t
Void elves are stealing stuff from the blood elves. This is clearly alliance bias. Once again the alliance gets catered to on the expense of a horde race. Shame on blizzard for allowing this. Shame SHAME!
Upon discovering recently that Void Elves bleed purple regardless of their skin tone, I now believe that the new cosmetics are a projection, the ‘high elf’ look is skin deep at best. I don’t know about you but if someone bled purple rather than red in real life, I’d have questions.
Either the projection is deliberate by the Void Elf in question, or the Void Elf has gone a little crazy and in their denial projecting a look they can’t have. This is the only reasonable way to reconcile what is available with how the void elf is in game. We cannot argue that only the parts that people like, the high elf customisations, are valid but that the parts we don’t are not.
But between bleeding purple, speaking with the reverb, referring to themselves as void elves in their emotes and flirts and going full on Void creature at random intervals, there is no way a Void Elf can be conflated with a high elf really. These changes are a convenience to allow players to approximate one, but at the end of the day they cannot be.
The issue is that while some can suspend their disbelief and pretend they are a traditional high elf, others are frustrated by these remaining aspects that mean the game itself refuses to agree with them.
I can’t do a thing to ail your frustration, personally I don’t experience any from the idea as High Elf customization options on Void elf.
As an RPer it’s more customization option which means more ways to diversify your RP character as an RPer and as someone who plays the game it’s one less racial to have to worry about balancing
As for the look being skindeep; So is the wildhammer look, the sand troll look, the highbourne look, yet people still make wonderful creations with them.
That said I have no plans on playing a void elf even with high elf customization options, I like my Thalassians as they are; a part of the Horde
Oh I’m not frustrated, I am merely trying to reconcile what I see in game with what it means. I have reached my conclusion, that the new customisations may aid certain people in suspending their disbelief but that what an individual believes about their character does not mean that has to be accepted by everyone else.
The entire package strongly suggests if you play a Void Elf, no matter how close to a high elf you make it look, it’s still a void elf.
Blueberries - > first gen velves
More belf/helf looking ones - > second gen velves who got taught by them but were not transformed by the ethereals
I guess. Or just don’t overthink it. Blizzard clearly doesn’t.
This is true and it is actually something I thought about when I was writing my post. I was a bit torn on the matter so I avoided it, focusing more on the gameplay experience. I’m still a bit torn on the issue. In my previous post I come across as anti-customization options, but that’s not necessarily the truth. I’d say I’m in favour of more customization options – so long as they make sense. Blizzard giving Blood Elves the option to have blue eyes felt like way for them to force the High Elf/Blood Elf issue to an end. The Blood Elves had green eyes for a reason.
… and I suppose it’s a bit hypocritical of me to say that as I’m sporting an avatar with golden eyes. It made some sense for the elves to have golden eyes – especially the paladins, even if it is a development I actually disliked. I could live with the Blood Elves becoming Holy Elves, but Blizzard just ceasing the existence of the High Elves as a thing is tougher to swallow.
I see what you mean, but this damage was done way back at the very beginning of World of Warcraft. For years we’ve lived with the reality of High Elves somehow surviving the catastrophe that claimed so many Blood Elves lives. It is definitely something that can be criticized, but it is far too late to simply say that Blood Elves and High Elves are the exact same when they’ve been shown to have very different allegiances over the years.
Perhaps the real issue is that Blizzard decided that the one race that would go on to become the most popular race in the game is also the race that should have the smallest population.
It’s very easy to say they are the exact same. Same race, both feeding on the same source of light-arcane power in the Sunwell. Allegiences do not define races, if someone in my country worked with an enemy country against the interests of my country, they don’t change races. They change from being a citizen to a traitor.
Lorewise though, the void elves and the alliance high elves have by far the lowest canonical population. I don’t think they can even be considered races as the other ones can be, they are merely treated as such for player convenience.
They were preserved for sentimental reasons in lore, likely because Chris Metzen had a soft spot for them. Chris Metzen could tell great stories, but the man was a terrible world-builder, often doing things because he felt they were ‘cool’ rather than consistent. Play Warcraft 3 TFT and listen to Kael and Illidan after all, the clear implication is that not dealing with the addiction would be fatal. As it is, preserving these tiny groups must be something they regret at this point given their long, long resistance to giving the alliance these options and only finally giving in because the game is on fire.
Should they timeskip into the future of the franchise in a future game, I think they’ll just kill the alliance high and void elves off, which is their likeliest canonical fate due to their incredibly low numbers for the former and connection to the insanity peddling void lords for the later.
I think allegiance is more interesting than race for world building. Taking a look at a real life example: South Koreans and North Koreans speak the same language, have the same history and cultural heritage. The people of both countires are Korean – yet the distinction of south versus north is quite significant.
I agree that it was weak world building to have the High Elves survive, but it’s too late to undo that decision. An identity for the High Elves was created and that identity caught quite the fan following. To retcon it at this stage, well… I think the backlash kind of speaks for itself. Now we’re in this awkard situation where Void Elves can look like High Elves but can’t ever be High Elves. The game won’t ever recognize them as such. However, the High Elf will endure in the imagination of roleplaying Void Elves.
The Korean example doesn’t really hold as the Korean peninsula has been divided for nearly 80 years and the population base of both countries is in the millions. Both Koreas are also located in their homeland.
In contrast the alliance high elves have a population numbering in the low hundreds at best and they are resident in cities hostile to their homeland where they support the governments there in actions against their homeland as they do not have a government or state of their own. They aren’t a distinct race, they are traitors by any reasonable interpretation of their status and their distinction with the Blood Elves is political, not biological. The low numbers, continuing attrition and a behind the scenes determintion to avoid this arising ever again are why i suspect a timeskip to whatever warcraft game comes in future will have them dying off.
It is a messy situation. As you acknowledge whilst all these customisations allow a Void Elf to look like a high elf, they are not a high elf. But it is also reasonable to assume that there is a maximum line beyond which Blizzard will not be pushed, and that is likely adding a separate high elf race. At this point the people upset at the remaining, minute differences are obsessing over details so small that Blizzard will easily ignore them.
My goal with this thread was to reconcile the customisations now offered with what a Void Elf is, as whilst it can look like a high elf it is clearly not.
My own conclusion remains, the customisations are a projection, a disguise, a lie. Cut a Void Elf enough to bleed and you see how deep the high elf is, literally skin only. If blizzard introduces a new void elf NPC using normal skin tones, then that would even further demonstrate that anyone using them is a Void Elf and not a high elf. And if they don’t, and keep all NPCs as blue skinned, then the projection theory remains because high elves bleed red.
What some people want, to be a high elf in this game using void elves as a vector, is not currently possible. Blizzard has offered enough options for players to suspend their disbelief and pretend. What they have not done is forced the entire playerbase to acknowledge that decision.
Thinking about it, there’s actually a way Blizzard could force all the remaining High Elves to join and become Void Elves in lore…the Blood Elves could find a way to cut the High Elves of the Alliance -or any other Elf of Quel’thalas that is not on their side- from the power of the Sunwell, so that they aren’t connected to its energies anymore and the Sunwell only works for the Blood Elves.
This is actually not impossible, as Dar’khan did something similar to the old Sunwell so that the High Elves of Silvermoon couldn’t use its full power against the Scourge until Arthas reached it for Kel’thuzad.
So if the Blood Elves cut the High Elves from the Sunwell, they would suffer from the addiction and be in the same situation of the Blood Elves before TBC, either find a new source or slowly die off.
And the new source would be the void energy and joining the Void Elves of course, as I think they are not sustained by the power of the Sunwell anymore but by void energies. In lore the Void Elves are also looking to recreate the original process of transformation that hit Umbric and the first batch of their people, which means in lore the Void Elves actually prefer to have people who are totally transformed by the Void in their ranks, rather than Quel’dorei/Sin’dorei scholars who only wield the void but look just like High Elves (which suggests the fact Blizzard themselves probably regard the customization as non-canon like you were saying, because the Void Elves are making efforts to recreate the first ritual and process of transformation for everyone of their people).
Or the fact that the Blood Elves cut the High Elves from the power of the Sunwell could also be used as a catalyst/lore reason for an Alliance invasion of Quel’thalas (either making a new warfront or even better, finally update the whole zone) as Alleria and the Void Elves would want to try and capture the Sunwell so that their high elven brethren in the Alliance aren’t cut off and don’t suffer because of it…
To be fair I think Blizzard gives this less thought than their community do. I believe they sorely regret keeping the alliance high elves around and just bunged the customisations onto Void Elves as a way of shutting people up. The reason they broke on the matter in the past year or so, rather than in all the time before, is because the game has been on fire since BFA crashed and burned and Shadowlands cratering next to it has left them in a complete panic.
It is difficult to know whether the customisations are canon or not. As stated, my belief is that they are in fact a sort of ‘projection’ to disguise the blueberry beneath, as this is the only way in my mind to reconcile these new customisations with the fact they bleed purple.
That they bleed purple, along with all the other hints, clearly communicates these aren’t high elves who wield the void but full on Void Elves. If Blizzard ever adds a Void Elf NPC with these customisations that would mean they accept them as canon, albeit not disproving the projection explanation (which is admittedly head canon designed to reconcile what Blizzard has put in the game with everything else but nerds do that with contradictory information; attempt to make sense of it) but if they go out of their way to avoid adding Void Elves with those customisations it would tell me that they really are for player use only and mean squat beyond that.
I do find the logic behind the fact that normal looking Void Elves are the so called second generation as very sound to be honest.
The very idea that initial customization of that race was to represent Umbric and his rejects when they became severly and hideously mutated by the corrupting powers of the Void is quite intriguing.
Afterwards came normal Thalassian Elves that merely embraced the Void by studying it’s magic and thus their changes although noticable are not anywhere near as advanced as those of the “first” Ren’dorei.
Still Blizzard has gone way too far in giving them non-void customizations. Like they have more options to look normal rather than corrupted.
It’s like giving Lightforged Draenei the look of regular Draenei which is redundant as both races are in the same faction.
It is as if Blizzard introduced Felblood Elves with their blood red skin, horns and small black feathered wings on their backs…and then out of the blue gave them normal look.
To me “normal” look of a Void Elf is nothing but mask like the one Exarch Othaar wore before he was revealed to be Socrethar, a full Man’ari Eredar. Which in this case could allow the more corrupted Ren’dorei to hide their malformed appearance.
Or it is a lingering corruption that hasn’t taken hold yet. Still their blood is already purple and their voice has this shadowy echo. And when they fight, their true colors are revealed.
Overall it is an interesting concept worth of exploring.
And if anything it is a tool to finally close shut the jaws of Alliance players are full on High Elf course.
) makes your knowledge and usage of fel magic quite deep, or at very least, quite common in your life.