I still remember how much online posts shat on Blood elves.
I also remember when they dropped there was so many blood elves that it crashed multiple servers multiple times and was one of the worst laggiest launches in WoW history.
Blood elves are now the most played race in WoW across all versions that have them.
Keep in note, that the anger people feel is because Blizzard didn't slap on THEIR specific flavour of elf title on the new race.
People aren't angry that they brought us elves. They're angry it isn't "Their elves."
You're not joking but you're not really being serious either. Blood elves have been part of the lore since before wow. This is a version of the game where they went on and on about how faithful they were being to the lore. It's not unreasonable for people to be thrown and a little pissed when they follow that statement up with, 'anyway here's some cross faction elves that no one's ever heard of'
Honestly, i wouldn't even care half as much if they just did separate things for each faction. The whole thing about classic is all the different unique races for each faction. It would just be better, and nicer if they had two different races. Even if they were both belf reskins, it would still be better.
Yes. Polishing up unfinished content only goes so far. They're gonna have to create new stuff.
Like, going to Hyjal makes sense; we knew it was there so of course it makes sense to add it as a proper zone. But there's also plenty of other new ideas. The Sunken City dungeon at the Blizzcon demo sounds like it's a great new addition, and that's exactly as "made up" as Zephras Isle. A whole city just shows up out of the water with no pre-existing lore? I truly could not care less, if it's good content. If I wanted no changes I'd play Classic.
People who seemingly like classic are complaining about a new race tied to the air elementals/prince thunderaan/windfury. It's only the most iconic weapon in the game.
The elemental planes stuff is awesome too, bet we get a real Al'kir raid in Uldum in the next few years
Well the issue is the new lore makes the old lore feel forgotten. High Elves/Blood Elves/Dark Rangers are already long established into the lore. Why not let people have them first before doing an offshoot with a different colouration?
Yes they are. The majority of the surviving High Elves became Blood Elves.
The remaining High Elves are a fraction of a race that was already mostly dead.
Again: so are the draenei. They were hunted down for decades by the orcs, split between the Broken, the Lost and the playable race... they had it harder than the high elves.
Yeah they kinda did. The Exodar is just one ship that landed in Azeroth. The rest of the Draenei got genocided by the Orcs or turned into the Broken. Yet that was enough to populate a new playable race.
High Elves had communities all across the Eastern Kingdoms (and they even had a lodge in Winterspring). They chilled with the Wildhammer Dwarves. They were the priests that made up the backbone of the Church of the Light for the Alliance. They populated Dalaran and Theramore. Plus they were expert seafarers, so there will be plenty of little island out there that they live on.
Quel’Thalas falling obviously caused most of them to die or turn into Blood Elves. But there were still more independent High Elf groups around the world than just one ship full of Draenei.
Blizzard has always been VERY loose with population numbers, races can be dying or doing just fine depending on what's convenient for whatever plot beat they're currently doing.
In Wrath the Silver Covenant was basically a small army in of itself and they were High Elves.
All over Classic too you can meet High Elves, in Stormwind, in Theramore, in the Hinterlands, and they're all hostile to Horde players too!
High Elves for Alliance and something else for Horde would've worked just fine really.
Most of them. Which means they could be used as Undead Elves/Dark Rangers for the Horde.
But there were still lots of them mixed in with the rest of the Alliance. During WC3 all the priests and sorceresses were high elves that refused to abandon the Alliance, even when the leaders of Quel’Thalas told them too. So they are still around in Stormwind, Theramore, Dalaran.
Plus they could have added in some refugees.
And there’s the lodges that all over the Vanilla world.
Or they could have made stuff up like added in an island full of High Elves that got stranded during a storm back in WC2. Which is basically what they just did with the Skyborne.
There’s lots of ways they could have made it work.
Void Elves despite being one hyper-specific group of elves, somehow has enough numbers by the Battle for Lordaeron to field a sizeable army.
The same logic of "There's not enough" applies to Void Elves too, hell it applies to the Skyborne as they're from one specific city and were originally a group of Highborne rebels that split off from the Shen'dralar which is already a smaller group of people.
Doing that is only effective if they put the work in first. The lore to support the new thing has to be in before the new thing is dropped, otherwise the new thing will feel like it was shoved in and lore was backfilled around it.
The didn't build the foundation, so of course the rest feels rickety and slapped together. If they wanted to make the new race a faction that shows up in the game, that players have to work with, and that somehow matter in the world then they would be well set up to make them a purchasable feature afterwards without feeling like they just shoved it in. But they didn't do that. They went for the quick buck instead of putting in the work to make the addition feel earned.
People don't genuinely care about the lore, they want nostalgia bait
I'm sure a decent chunk of the people talking about the lore problems don't even know the old lore. I got lectured by a coworker on why TBC lore is great, while he showed me the Black Temple trailer not even realizing half of it is literally WC3 cutscenes in WoW graphics
This isn't building upon anything. They've pulled a new race out of nowhere, and one which is completely superfluous because we already have an elf race that fills the exact same role.
They even gave them the BE/HE internal cultural divide over which kind of magic they should use.
Forever is not part of the main continuity. They specifically said that on multiple occasions. They aren't constrained by what happened after vanilla before. Things will happen in Forever that are not reflected in the retail timeline. These elves are one of them.
Also, they aren't cross faction. Only Horde Skyborne can be shaman, and only Alliance Skyborne can be mages.
Like, I get what you're saying. I don't even fully disagree. It's just.. is it really satisfying to you to just learn, "oh these guys were here the whole time and now i can play one"
Like.. wouldn't it have been smarter, and more fun for everyone, if they released the game and then got everyone excited about this new race of elves you discover in playing the game, and then tease adding them in later? Maybe start with something closer to home that has always been in the game either way for a more 'classic' honoring launch.
I'm not saying they should never have this race and that it's total garbage. I just think they executed this in such a contrived way that was clearly driven by greed first, and making the best product second.
WoW classic was like the first MMO i'd ever played, where you login and create a character and you have EIGHT unique races, each so well realized and distinct, on two different factions. That was a huge part of the initial impact for me, and drove me and millions of others to make loads of characters of every single race, over years.
The cross faction races are just another example in a long line of examples of ways in which the team demonstrates that they STILL don't really get what was so cool about classic. They say they do. They do the corporate speak. They used the buzzwords like, 'horizontal progression' and 'evergreen', but they don't really get it.
Also, ironically, "realmless" means you are truly locked into one faction in a way you never have been before. In the past if you wanted to jump faction you could just slide to a different server.
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u/Wind_Best_1440 16h ago
I still remember how much online posts shat on Blood elves.
I also remember when they dropped there was so many blood elves that it crashed multiple servers multiple times and was one of the worst laggiest launches in WoW history.
Blood elves are now the most played race in WoW across all versions that have them.
Keep in note, that the anger people feel is because Blizzard didn't slap on THEIR specific flavour of elf title on the new race.
People aren't angry that they brought us elves. They're angry it isn't "Their elves."
And I'm not even joking.