I can’t believe this concept hasn’t materialised during one of Blizzard’s internal meetings yet. It seems like such an obvious solution to all of our High Elf-related woes.
In the Character Creation screen, pick your race. In this case, it is “High Elf” (or “Quel’dorei”).
In the next step, your are asked to pick a backstory for your elf. Each one is presented to you with a flavourful text, a couple of racial ability icons, and perhaps an image. Pretty much how they present Specializations in-game.
High Elf - as a true survivor of many conflicts, your committment is to the ideals of your people and its rich legacy first and foremost. The majority of the remaining High Elves come from all over Azeroth and beyond, where they’ve remained in seclusion and exile for many years, until now.
Void Elf - as a follower of Alleria Windrunner, you bravely peered behind the veil to empower yourself with Void magic. While some Void Elves underwent a magical transformation to fuse themselves with the Void, others preferred to simply join Alleria’s cause as she ventured into the dark beyond.
Blood Elf - as a loyal defender of Silvermoon and Quel’Thalas, you represent a noble people which had to rise from the ashes of their ruined homeland. Abandoned by your Prince and desperate for survival, your path took you on a dangerous journey–one which almost caused you to lose sight of yourself. Like a phoenix, you’ve burst into a radiant flame of renewal.
Next, you pick your faction. I guess what makes the most sense is for Blood and Void Elves to remain faction-exclusive while High Elves are neutral and available to both sides.
Finally, customise your character, pick a name, and select a class. Off you go!
I am more inclined to believe that ideas get shot down in Blizzard’s internal meetings, rather than they get brought up.
But sure, in a fantasy world where Blizzard wants to show an iota of ambition toward their own product, there’s definitely an opportunity for more in this area. And what you’re suggesting is certainly an interesting idea, especially if Blizzard are still moving the story in the direction of uniting the elven tribes or whatever it was.
Practically speaking, I think Blizzard are more looking toward efficiency in new features these days.
We get Haranir because the Haranir are already made and used for other purposes.
We got the Earthen because the Earthen were already made and used for other purposes.
Same with the Dracthyr, Mechagnomes, and so forth.
Blizzard makes the zones first and populate them with NPCs and creatures and so forth, and if they’ve then also made some new NPC races that look cool and seem varied enough in appearance, then they can quickly turn them into new playable races as well – which is what they’ve done and continue to do.
It doesn’t really seem as if High Elves will really be part of Midnight, so Blizzard haven’t made a bunch of High Elves to populate Midnight with, and therefore they don’t have a drawer filled with High Elves that they can easily turn into a new playable race either.
And they’re not going to make High Elves from scratch just to be a playable race, because that’s not an efficient approach to game production – and Blizzard seem all about efficiency these days.
You see, this is exactly what I was talking about in other threads. At first glance, You seem to recognize Blood Elves as High Elves, but then You proceed to make a group of proper High Elves who have real claim to over six thousand years of Quel’Dorei legacy, effectively making them the TRUE HIGH ELVES™ and some offshoots who abandoned that legacy. Meanwhile, the Blood Elf intro clearly refers to THEIR High Elven legacy.
https://youtu.be/OjSQHefwywg?feature=shared
Since You already created “High Elves” as the main choice, Your first subgroup should be called “Village Elves” in honor of the lodges they live in, or “Immigrant Elves” if You’d rather refer to the ones that settled in Human kingdoms. And leave Quel’Dorei legacy out of their description - rather focus on abandoning their people in their time of greatest need, or choosing Humans over their own nation.
Leve Quel’Dorei legacy where it is - in Quel’Thalas, maintained by the Blood Elves.
This seems more on the level of Baldur’s Gate 3, which leans heavily into the role play aspect. As much as I would like this system, this would require a major overhaul of existing systems, and it would also make other similar races redundant (Draenei/LF Draenei, Dwarves/Dark Irons/Earthen, Tauren/Highmountain, Orcs/Mag’har, etc).
This rework would be very ambitious in scope but I would support it
For once I agree with a high elf topic, this is a cool idea and there’s no real reason to be against it. Generally speaking I really like the concept of expanding choices during character creation to sub-races or proper backgrounds (nations, factions, clans). You chose human, but which type of human?
What bliz should’ve done as per all allied races is sub races. Say pick dwarf and you pick either wild hammer, dark iron, bronzebeard etc. allowing you to freely switch. Means you can add in more like frost dwarfs and earthen.
I love the option of choosing a racial character and having an available questing path to follow which explains who they are, where they are from and follows development and interactions with other races and political factions over time.
This would offer a cohesive option to explain each story for a particular group, while picking up their threads alongside main quests over all expansions. It also allows a chance to play through the different stories for other races.
The starting zones although presenting an issue for grouped players (who chose different races) gave a unique sense of a character’s racial identity. The Worgen one was particularly clear and immersive.
The biggest problem to this, is the far too long pauses where some races just seem to stagnate, with little to no development in either their plans, location or culture without minor continuous story updates.
Also, main expansion stories are ok, but can be detrimental outside of each expansion as races become flavour of the month and then feel abandoned for very long periods.
Playing devils advocate I would argue probably because they’d have to overhaul the character creation process to install that
I would argue high elves only make sense as true neutral (not a part of either faction, simply looking out for themselves, maybe in highbourne ruins or woodland lodges) or alliance, but not on horde at all.
I would make high elf alliance exclusive too (cause neutral is not an option with how the game works, you have to choose a faction)
Proper solution would have been for the devs to not been petty and just given players what they wanted. What blizzard themselves have been dangling in front of the playerbase since damn vanilla.
I doubt its pettyness, I know I see a few players try to argue as if its a dislike or pettyness from wow devs but that makes very little sense to me.
I think its genuinely a case of more people collectively want something that isn’t already available to both factions aesthetically then there are people that want the high elf race hard added. Now I do no think that this majority of people who want something ‘unique’ agree on what that new unique thing should be, other then it not being high elves.
This is a weird divide, I feel like if you gave players an ability to vote what race they would like to see the most and which one they would not like to see at all, High Elf would probably win both of those votes.
Had it not been pettiness, they wouldn’t have been parading high elves as members of the alliance for every expansion save WoD.
They have actively and consistently broken every argument they themselves have made against them and instead of just doing the right thing and adding them, they went with a monkeys paw. Adding a faction that wasn’t even related in any way to the one that already existed in the alliance.
This entire topic has always been a non-issue they have made into an issue. No one would die had they done the right thing in the first place instead of digging their heels and taunting the player base.
idk man, I can only think of the expansions that strongly featured dalaran with the silver covenant, so wrath, pandaria (dalaran purge) and legion from the top of my head
for example cataclysm doing that bit about high elves in winterspring doesn’t exactly feel like a backhanded wink wink nudge nudge there will be playable high elves soon type of deal.
The only arguement I can think of was the population one, considering void elves are indeed of a smaller population, I don’t recall any other arguements tho but to be fair its been more then a decade I think since they last gave reasons, or atleast the last time I tuned in for them.
I don’t think it is a non issue esp considering that as many people want high elves, there are also plenty of people resisting against it, I am truely convinced the last sentance of my previous post is whats going on and what makes this harder for blizzard to act on.