Cortyn from MeinMMO has a problem with the elves in WoW: Shadowlands. When everyone can look the same, individuality is lost.
For many players, it was surely great news. Blizzard has finally responded to the long-standing requests of the fans and is giving both sides, the Horde and the Alliance, the visual option to play high elves. Blood elves can now dye their eyes blue, and void elves can use the skin tones of blood elves. But is that really wise?
I like the story of World of Warcraft, the lore of the game world. It’s important to me and makes up a large part of the fun of playing. Sure, the lore changes from time to time, and that’s something you have to live with – it’s part of it. But I find it sad that Blizzard is simply giving “high elves” to everyone.
On one hand, this surely makes many players very happy, who have long wished for it. Since Warcraft II, many have dreamed of finally being able to play a high elf, and now it’s finally coming true.
On the other hand, Blizzard is burying a wish of the community. Because with the option of “void elves as high elves,” the idea of standalone high elves as an allied race with their own abilities, heritage armor, and questline is likely dead.
Everything gets more specialized, just not elves
With Shadowlands, World of Warcraft brings many pretty cool innovations for character customization:
- Trolls can choose new tattoos.
- Undead can determine their decay.
- Draenei can choose longer tails.
- Humans get Asian and African American faces and skin tones as well as new face shapes.
- Almost everyone gets many new hairstyles.
This is pretty cool. Almost always, these new options ensure that the character becomes even a bit more individual and shows a bit more of its origins. The tattoos of dwarves reveal their clan affiliation, the skin tones of trolls their ancestral tribe. Each race gets the opportunity to visually “specialize” within its race, and that’s damn cool!
But here, I am bothered by what Blizzard is doing with blood elves and void elves. Sure, the two groups were the same race until recently. That’s why they have the same model. But the new customization options would have been an opportunity to give the void elves a “new culture” and show how they differ from their former brothers and sisters.
It would have been great if the two races had further individualized and that would have been visually clear.
“New” elves or story adjustment?
That void elves now simply get a large part of the customizations of blood elves – especially regarding skin color – I find quite weak. Furthermore, the existing high elves have their pale, blue to gray skin color from their backstory; after all, that’s due to an accident in research. To now go back and say, “Yes, there are also void elves with the normal skin colors of blood elves” is, in my view, the wrong way.
More options are generally a good thing, which I welcome. But if more options mean that the individual races differentiate less from each other, especially when they belong to two different factions, then I find that sad and it’s a step in the wrong direction for me.
Sure, I am happy for the many people who just wanted “elves with blue eyes.” They will now be happy and can finally live out their dreams or appropriately embody high elves in the roleplay of Stormwind.
But I’m not really happy because I find this “everyone gets everything” thing sad. I would have wished for more differences between the two races, not more equality.
Or what do you think?
