Which discounts the desire for faction diversity, which was implicit in the game from the get go. Whilst we have received neutral races since, and it seems they maybe the standard going forward, those races were conceived of and introduced as neutral.
Besides which, Void Elves are a near duplicate. Still different enough to not count as a High Elf, but close enough that all but the most determined to get 100% of what they seek should be satisfied.
Aren’t high elves, blood elves? I’m not to big on lore but 90% of High elves became blood elves.
Then high elves are really rare and driven to the point of extinction from the scourge?
If you want a birds-eye, simplified view of the game, then yes, Blood Elves are High Elves. But it’s not as simple as that.
If you quest around Outland, the Hinterlands, Crystalsong Forest and other places, you’ll find lots of Thalassian elves who still fight under the alliance banner. One High Elf NPC in Terrokar forest makes mention that she does not want to associate with the fel-addicted, mana-sucking Blood Elves. There’s a whole section in Dalaran during Wrath of the Lich King dedicated to the surviving High Elves under Vereesa Windrunner’s leadership. Hell, one of the protagonists of the War Within is a High Elf herself!
The population thing is arbitarily done by Blizzard’s writers, but even if we set that aside, we have plenty of races that would be disqualified if population was what justified playability. There’s fewer void elves than High Elves. The Night Elves were devastated after the destruction of Teldrassil, and only a handful of Mag’har Orcs made it from alternate Draenor.
Well, if You consider Alleria, a Void Elf, to be High Elf, then I believe we can finally close the subject of playable, Alliance affiliated High Elves for good!
Alleria is a Void Elf, not a High Elf.
On population, Blizzard are the ones who keep returning to that explanation and that was in CLASSIC. Since then, the lodges, Theramore and Dalaran have all been destroyed, which were the traditional population ‘centres’ people arguing for High Elves kept citing.
High Elves have also become Void Elves, as the High Elf Wayfarers in Telrogus indicated.
In other words, a consistent downwards pressure on already low population numbers. Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is not that all these other races have low numbers so High Elves should not be singled out for the population excuse…but that all those races have low numbers and High Elves are probably even lower still in comparison.
As for the cited races…Void Elves are created from Blood Elves (and Alliance High Elves, but mostly Blood Elves as there are so few Alliance High Elves). They sidestep the population argument because so long as there are Elves willing to be transformed it means there can always be Void Elves.
The evacuation of Teldrassil went on for days, and it was pointed out every space in Stormwind was overflowing with refugees. Many died, yes, but it was not a complete destruction and enough Night Elves survived that the race will continue.
The Mag’har Orcs player is from an alternate timeline, but there are also Mag’har Orcs from Outland who are much higher supply they can and likely have interacted with.
The Alliance High Elves are NOT a distinct race. They are a grouping defined by opposition to the current political stance of Silvermoon. Alliance players have as much right to playing them as Horde players do to play Kul Tirans because that band of pirates helped them in BFA.
Sadly, factions were actually a last minute addition to the game. Not to mention that having he in alliance and be in horde would actually build more upon the respective factions, since you would have two groups with competing ideals which you know… makes factions.
Unlike whatever mess we have now.
Also void elves are more aligned with blood elves than high elves considering their entire void addiction replacing their fel addiciton. Unlike HE which have staved off the different addiction sources.
And when blizzard release Blood Elves, they also included a major blood elf faction alliance could work with, along with a major high elf settlement in outland. Only to reinforce the alliance with even more high elves in Wotlk through the silver covenant. AKA from the go they should have had the pick you faction treatment pandaren had. (Same could go for draenei, by having them chose to continue following velen or not).
Much of early World of Warcraft was a mess, plauged by a lack of direction in what was actually being done. The initial game was scoped to include Northrend, Outland and the Emerald Dream with some prototyping done on the later two before the team got some much needed focus and began focusing on delivering the game. Some elements of the lack of experience with the MMO genre, particularly 40 man raiding (which was essentially a random number picked because it felt epic) survived into classic…whereupon the reason 40 man was a bad idea became immediately apparent and it was nixxed in TBC.
Part of this process was the switch to the faction system of Alliance and Horde. This was directly inspired by the three faction system present in Dark Age of Camelot. You can find the details in the October 2001 chapter of John Staats ‘The WoW diary’.
“At the meeting, Alen Adham announced a resolution for the subject of good/evil races playing together. He thought the concept of “us and them” reinforced a system of community and camraderie, and by prohibiting orcs and humans to group or communicate within the world, the races inherited more personality. This philosophy was directly influenced by his experience playing Dark Age of Camelot…”
The game shipped THREE years after this decision. Hardly last minute, nor does this invalidate my statement. Once the faction split was decided upon, diversity and differentiation were implicit in giving those factions narrative weight.
Attempting to argue having BEs and HEs in their respective factions would contribute to faction character is nonsensical given we now have a whole cadre of neutral races in the Pandaren, Earthen, Dracthyr and shortly the Haronir. Whilst they are definitely neutral, conceived of and introduced as such, the cost effectiveness of introducing the same race to both factions does slowly degrade the differences between them. This is alleviated by the fact that these ‘neutral races’ are individuals joining the factions rather than their societies and states but not eliminated.
The Void Elves, whom I am sure we can all agree are not High Elves, normal skin tones be damned, achieve the goal of having a faction of elves with competing ideals to the Blood Elves and in a far more interesting fashion. Void vs Light is implicitly more interesting than ‘a decade ago you drained magic from mana wyrms for a year or two’. In other words, they render your argument about HE making the Alliance more interesting redundant. It’s like arguing for a candle when you have a lightbulb.
The Alliance High Elves have never been numerous in Alliance lands.
The ‘major’ settlement in Outland is NAMED after a particular elf and is mostly inhabited by Humans.
The Silver Covenant is a grouping mostly comprised of rangers (hence why the leader is the Ranger General), some mages and a few individuals from other classes. They are not a functioning society. And all the places people argued Alliance High Elves were numerous have been destroyed, from the lodges to Theramore to Dalaran itself.
And they weren’t introduced as neutral. They were introduced as a core Horde race, which makes sense as every neutral race starts with the same origin and the player is tasked with making a decision on where to go by their society, that society however is perceived as being outside the Alliance and the Horde.
The Pandaren, Earthen and Haronir are not members of either faction, individuals within those factions are AND they can always go home again afterwards. The Dracthyr have aligned distinct wings with each of the factions, but there is no sense that the Dracthyr as a whole are aligned with either faction.
In contrast, the Kingdom of Quel’thalas, the vast majority of the people, the city of Silvermoon, the Farstriders, the Magisters and the Sunwell are all Horde aligned or Horde territory.
The Blood Elves aren’t a neutral race because they just aren’t neutral. They are Horde.
To argue otherwise on the back of a handful of traitors is ludicrous.
Delusional crybabies still complaining about the same thing after 20 years. Pathetic.
depends on who you ask, imo biologically yes but they are different enough from eachother that you can tell them apart and often when people say high elves they don’t mean blood elves so if you assume they mean blood elves that just makes the conversation confusing.
so from my perspective
high elves: alliance or unaffiliated thalassian elves that are exiled from quel’thalas, not represented as its own race, but psuedo playable as a customization to void elves.
blood elves: horde thalassian elves that control quel’thalas, playable core (non AR) race
if I see high elves, I assume the above
if I see blood elves, I assume the below
We really need a containment thread like the old days. Why did that stop?
#quel’dorei2025 
No. You won’t get them. Give it up already. Blizzard is clear on this.
Maybe you should do some self-reflection and check that hatred of yours. It’s not a good look mate.
it is easy to hate them if they remind you every 5 days of their demands for a very long time.
That’s not an excuse to talk that way to people. And the forums are there to make requests. This is an elf centered expansion coming up, ofcourse you will see more requests like these.
of course it is. In their fanatism they make up new lore that isn’t supported by facts.
Nah man, also not made up. It’s all on wowpedia / wikipedia
the orcs never destroyed the high elves. That is a straight lie.
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