If you were going to talk about the most player-requested "sub-races," the feature that would come to form eventually as Allied Races, I think that you would probably list Mag'har Orcs, Dark Iron Dwarves, and probably the most requested: High Elves.
After all, High Elves have been around since Warcraft II. It wasn't until the Frozen Throne expansion that we started to see Blood Elves as a thing. With Mag'har and Dark Irons coming in 8.0, this is the one that is probably most requested, but also probably the least likely to actually happen.
Because there's a big, tentacled elephant in the room.
Void Elves are, of course, former High Elves, as well as former Blood Elves. The Alliance has a race of elves from Quel'thalas with the lithe elf look, as opposed to the brawnier Night Elf/Nightborne look.
Allied races are all based on existing races, and while we're going to see more physiological variation with the Zandalari Trolls and Kul Tiran humans, most of them are, cosmetically, mainly defined by a new color palette. Lightforged Draenei go from the blue-on-blue scheme of the standard Exodar residents and replaces it with gold-on-grey.
The Void Elves take the Blood Elves, who tend to have pink skin and green eyes, and turns them blue or purple with blue eyes. It's a pretty radical and instantly-recognizable departure from the standard Blood Elf model.
High Elves have two problems, though one might be a symptom of the other.
The first is that they just look too damned similar to Blood Elves. The only real visible difference is that High Elves have blue eyes while Blood Elves have green. And with Blood Elves getting holy-themed golden eyes as an option in 8.0, even that distinction may collapse.
Lore-wise, the High Elves are still permitted to commune with the Sunwell - Quel'danas, post demon invasion, is neutral territory because Lor'themar doesn't want to be held responsible for allowing his politically opposed kinsmen devolve horribly into Wretched. The Void Elves don't need that connection, as they sate their magic addiction by channeling the Void, and indeed, they are not permitted to visit the Sunwell's font of now both Arcane and Holy magic, for fear of tainting it.
So presumably, with the Holy magic coming from the Sunwell now, High Elves would have an equal chance to derive those holy-golden eyes to complement their arcane-blue ones, which would make some indistinguishable visually from some Blood Elves. Granted, in a post-Pandaren WoW, I don't know how much of a problem that is.
The other big problem is that the Alliance already has Void Elves. Now, certainly, the very existence of Allied Races means that Blizzard clearly doesn't have a problem with factions having two races that look very similar to one another, and so the notion of High Elves and Void Elves existing together on the Alliance is not inherently absurd. But on the other hand, this would mean not only a fifth Elf race, but also a third race from Quel'thalas.
If they ever decide to make, say, Wildhammer Dwarves or Grimtotem Tauren as a playable race, this would be a great time to add in High Elves, but at the moment, Quel'thalas has enough going on.
So is it likely? I think not. But on the other hand, would it be such a bad thing?
I'll just come out and say that I've never been much of a fan of playing elf characters for whatever reason. I don't know - something about the arrogance and the pretty-boy looks probably clashes with some element of my personality that formed from always being a big, stocky, hairy guy. But I'm clearly a minority, as people freaking love playing elves (we've got two in my D&D group.)
I guarantee you that if they added High Elves, even with Void Elves already existing, you'd get a ton of players making High Elf characters.
And I think the challenge of giving them a distinctive visual look from Blood Elves might produce some cool ideas. What if male High Elves were able to grow full beards? You could really play with the idea that High Elves, unlike both Blood and Void Elves, have spent far more time with humanity, perhaps adopting some of their styles and looks.
Likewise, you might imagine that the High Elves had taken more of an effort to reconnect with the Night Elves. Perhaps these Highborne descendants look at what has happened with the Blood Elves and have decided that they really want to explore a connection to nature through Druidism.
Lastly, I think there's the potential for a really interesting plot development:
Silvermoon has been Horde territory since Burning Crusade, but that was thanks to the fact that the vast majority of Blood Elves resented the Alliance enough to join the Horde. The High Elves are a fragmentary remnant of Alliance loyalists, but now they have the Void Elves - exiles who were brought into the Alliance by Alleria. If Quel'dorei and Ren'dorei were to move in concert, they might be able to challenge Sin'dorei dominance of Quel'thalas.
Now, I'm not advocating taking Silvermoon away from the Horde. But what if it were to become a neutral, Sanctuary city?
The Draenei and Blood Elf starting zones got essentially no change during Cataclysm, and they definitely show their age. They're also in this bizarre state where they're connected to the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor lore-wise, but are actually on the Burning Crusade/Outland world servers.
I don't know what kind of plot would justify it, but what if these zones were to be remade, and part of that remake would show the progress of time. Imagine a Silvermoon rebuilt thanks to the defeat of the Scourge, but in this case, the western half of the city (which is currently in ruins) is now the Ren'dorei/Quel'dorei district.
If Battle for Azeroth is meant to "resolve" the Alliance/Horde conflict, then maybe the elves of Quel'thalas could have something of a rapprochement, or at least a very shaky peace agreement. And I'd love to see the subtle distinctions between what the three groups in the city want out of their districts.
And then, of course, you'd get something that I'm always a fan of - a city of intrigue. It'd be like Berlin during the Cold War, but you know, fantasy and not real so less horrible!
So you wind up pleasing a big part of the fanbase (and pleasing the other parts because that first group will finally shut up) and then have a really cool story hook for the future.
I've really kind of talked myself into this as a good idea...
No comments:
Post a Comment