WoW X11 - Midnight (What if?)

[Alaryon-outland]

@Clawcious-draenor

@Alaryon-outland

High Elves to be an Alliance pillar

@Alaryon-outland

• Some want to be able to look like classic High Elves without any downsides, like green eyes or voidy hair or whatever.
• Some want the whole package of a complete Allied Race. A fitting mount, heritage armour set, racial abilities, and starting zone. Not a mix of different sub-cultures.

But… As others have mentioned, aren’t this already a customization option for void elves? And blood elves could look super similar apart from maybe the eyes?

So it would essentially be Ctrl C + Ctrl V of the Void Elves in a different starting zone?
And what, after lvl 10 they would roam around the “normal world” like the rest of us, their Capital City would be like every other race apart from Human and Orc, empty apart from a few RP’ers going there from time to time?

I don’t really see the game breaking argument as to why we should have a completely new race around this, when:

@Alaryon-outland

Vrykul, Haranir, Half-Elves, or Forest Trolls

Stuff like this is also in the mix?
You want High Elves to be the center point of Midnight… I would personally feel it was a super weak selling point, given the points mentioned above. Would feel so lazy from the Devs

Sadly, Void Elves don’t feel all that much like High Elves. I say this as someone who got very excited back when they added Void Elves to the game.

Basically, there’s a reason players kept begging for years to get additional cosmetic options to make their Void Elves look more like High Elves. From the ability to hide tentacles, to having more regular hair and skin, and blue eyes. But a lot of players still feel that Blizzard didn’t do enough. Partly because the list of available hairstyles is still quite short, but also because you turn completely blue sometimes in combat.

In short, even if you sometimes look almost indistinguishable from a regular old High Elf of the Second War, you still don’t really feel like one.

This is a dividing topic though, because to a lot of players all of what I just wrote is complete nonsense, and what matters most to them is having fun and challenging raid content, cool encounters, etc. But to a significant section of the playerbase, the nuances of cosmetics and shaping your own character are very important.

As for High Elves being central to Midnight, I would have thought that was a given already? Chris Metzen’s pitch at BlizzCon was basically all about returning to the good olden days in Quel’thalas, where all the elves would be united against the darkness. I think as long as we also get some Forest Troll action, most people will be satisfied with this theme.

[Linaria-steamwheedle-cartel]

Then why not ask for more customizations for void elves instead? Then the new race can actually be something unique…

[Tesladin-draenor]

aaaand the thread is becomin qualdorei thread2.0

[Clawcious-draenor]

@Alaryon-outland

Basically, there’s a reason players kept begging for years to get additional cosmetic options

But this is it… “Cosmetic options” So your wish basically boils down to Void elves are High elves, if they stop turning blue in combat. Do you see how small of a difference this is for them to make a WHOLE new race?

I get it, RP’ing is essential in any MMORPG… But… Imagine the Dev hours that would have to be spent for them to actually make racials, balancing them, etc. etc. only for the distinguishment between Void Elf and High Elf being one of them turns blue in combat and High Elves having more hair styles.

For me, this has nothing to do with wanting raid or dungeons… But the shear fact that:

@Helvetier-silvermoon

Blood elves are High Elves. By introducing high elves they would just make blood elf players, especially mages, feel bad. Blood elves are literally the same people as High Elves, and they only renamed themselves after the scourge nearly wiped them out. Their fel corruption has been gone long ago story-wise

@Alaryon-outland

What Allied Races are about is offering a new flavour of something

True… But copy pasting a race and adding new hair style and turning off “turning blue during combat” is not flavor… It’s a lazy design and would for me be the equivalent of them adding 15 bird mounts all of them being a re-colour of each other… That’s not flavor, that’s laziness and bloat.

@Alaryon-outland

less effort required for development

falls a little to the ground when:

@Alaryon-outland

There’s definitely enough you could do to make High Elves stand apart from Void and Blood Elves, too.

• Give them a cool silvery armour set and weapons. Perhaps a mount based on the Unicorn. Or go in the direction of earthy colours, like green and brown. It depends a bit, if you want High Elves to feel more like survivors in the wilds, exiles, and rangers, of if you want them to be more like the Silver Covenant spellcasters of Dalaran, dressed in silver and white.
• Restrict them from being Demon Hunters but perhaps give them the Shaman class since many of them lived alongside the Wildhammer Dwarves.
• Offer unique tattoos and war paint for each Quel’dorei sub-race, to distinguish them further. Void Elves could have ones like what Alleria has in TWW, while High Elves could have the ones she used to have. Blood Elves might have some beautiful Arcane runes or something.
• Racial abilities wouldn’t be based around stealing mana and such, but perhaps more to do with being rangers of the forest, combined a little bit with spellcasting and the arcane. Maybe something to do with the Light? At least one of them should pay homage to their former status of being exiles and survivors, forcing them to survive in the wilds. Perhaps a cool enchanted campfire, or being able to conjure some playful arcane spirit from the trees?

Specially the racial part… You can’t “just” make a racial about stealing mana, that needs balancing in PVP too. You remember the old belf racial that acted as an interrupt? That got revamped because it was too OP.

Have you seen a lot of Kul Tiran or troll druids in high end pvp or M+? no? well probably because Shadowmeld is so much better…

The problem with this is we don’t think all the way through and how adding stuff interacts with the game overall. What for you seem like a “Swift easy addition” to the game, actually requires more for so little benefit.

At the end, you only want it for the “feeling” and not because it doesn’t exist already.

@Alaryon-outland

As for High Elves being central to Midnight, I would have thought that was a given already? Chris Metzen’s pitch at BlizzCon was basically all about returning to the good olden days in Quel’thalas, where all the elves would be united against the darkness. I think as long as we also get some Forest Troll action, most people will be satisfied with this theme.

Again… Something can be a part without being the selling point. We can go to Quel’thalas as blood elves, without the selling point of Midnight being “Oh new race! High Elves!”

@Linaria-steamwheedle-cartel

Then why not ask for more customizations for void elves instead? Then the new race can actually be something unique…

Would much more prefer this… Just like how the did with the red draenei’s… No one seem to complain about that?

[Richardhuntr-silvermoon]

So we have another thinly veiled high elf and for bonus “Not gonna happen” points, player housing thread.

6/10, some effort made to hide the purpose of the thread, but the apparent “yet another high elf” thread appears for the eleventy hundredth time since 2004.

[Alaryon-outland]

@Richardhuntr-silvermoon

So we have another thinly veiled high elf and for bonus “Not gonna happen” points, player housing thread.

6/10, some effort made to hide the purpose of the thread, but the apparent “yet another high elf” thread appears for the eleventy hundredth time since 2004.

To be fair, I’m not the one making it all about High Elves. That was just part of the OP, then everybody started discussing those specifically, prompting me to respond.

[Richardhuntr-silvermoon]

People do seem to have jumped on the high elf component, however in many people’s views (including mine) the thread lost all credibility with that component.

Whether people want them or not, the fact we’ve not had them for 20 years despite consistent requests, tells me they aren’t coming.

[Mazuvias-stormrage]

if Blizzard were gonna give us High Elves as a full playable race, we would have gotten them instead of Void Elves during Legion at the latest.

[Alaryon-outland]

I don’t know, Blizzard seems to be of a new mindset these days. We never thought we’d get account-wide reps, either.

[Martwin-draenor]

We don’t need more elves.

[Leeches-aggramar]

@Sinergy-turalyon

Stopped reading right here.

NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

it probably will happen not that it should, but because blizzard loves these ‘customisation option’ races that are impossible to distinguish between each other unless you remove their helmet or look at their tooltip.

maghar orc should have been orc customisation.

void elf should have been like night warrior / san’layn for blood elves.

dark iron should have been dwarf

high mountain tauren, tauren

and so on.

[Tesladin-draenor]

@Alaryon-outland

New Feature: Player Housing. Settle in one of the many locations available within Quel’thalas. Do you prefer snowy peaks or cosy hamlets secluded by forests and lakes? The choice is yours in World of Warcraft: Midnight!

this is the dream

[Sylvare-argent-dawn (Sylvare)]

@Alaryon-outland

these High Elves become available to players as a neutral Allied Race.

More canon then people claming they should be alliance even tho Anestarian pulled the elves OUT of the alliance between warcraft 2 and 3 and they never rejoined (your wc3 elves are from Dalaran) but even then, why even? Too much lore would have to be rewritten, high elves would not be allowed back into quel’thalas due to them abandoning quel’thalas in its greatest hour of need before the Horde was even in the picture in any real capacity.

I’m assuming your ‘new region’ bit is mostly just the old regions revamped?
Where is ghostland, where is the scar? lush forrests? half of it was blighted.

In general no thank you to all changes to make it feel more neutral, QT should remain a horde capital zone

Also High elves would canonically not be welcome in Silvermoon city, they left the city to fend for itself after its destruction by the scourge BEFORE the blood elves joined the horde.

They have already abandoned their home and are not numerous enough to make any serious claim on QT as long as the blood elves still live there.

[Richardhuntr-silvermoon]

But if they did that you don’t have some quest to grind for no reason! /sarcasm

[Cptncarrots-ravencrest]

@Helvetier-silvermoon

and imagine in your head

Brother reading most of the topics here i am pretty sure they are already imagining in their heads.

[Sheep-kazzak]

Is this a high elf copium thread disguised as a whole expansion speculation? Literally 4 elf races in the game now, just slap some blue googly eyes on your monitor and pretend you’re a high elf. We’re good with elf related things for a while, give us something cooler.

[Cptncarrots-ravencrest]

@Sheep-kazzak

give us something cooler

I want tortollans.

Tortollan Balance Druid named Okboomer.

[Valhella-stormscale]

It wont be an allied race i could see them making High elf for the alliance and the horde getting another race Ascended nerubians for the horde would be cool

[Alaryon-outland]

@Valhella-stormscale

It wont be an allied race i could see them making High elf for the alliance and the horde getting another race Ascended nerubians for the horde would be cool

If they do one for each faction, I would bet on Forest Trolls for the Horde. Long-requested fan favourite with a deep history on the Horde, and one that would look cool as hell, too.