The existence of Night Elves in World of Warcraft is not a given. Only a few people at Blizzard liked the “purple elves.”
Night Elves are one of the major hallmarks of the Warcraft franchise. Even those who don’t play Warcraft probably know the face of Tyrande or could directly associate a Priestess of Elune with Warcraft. However, this was not a given. In fact, it was difficult to make the developers at Blizzard fond of the Night Elves.
Where did this information come from? A few days ago, there was a Warcraft Summit where many interviews were conducted and various aspects of Warcraft were revealed. Much was said about the origin story of the Warcraft universe. Samwise Didier, who is responsible for many concept art pieces related to Warcraft, spoke about the Night Elves there.
Night Elves were a mix of Forest and Dark Elves: Didier commented on the subject of Night Elves:
“We wanted to create Night Elves. Night Elves were, to my knowledge, something completely new in the fantasy genre. We invented them. They have purple skin, are seven feet tall, and have long blue or green hair.
All we actually did was: “What if we combine Forest Elves with Dark Elves? (…) Boom, we had Night Elves. And then for some reason, we made them purple.”
Blizzard employees were hard to convince: Didier further explains that Night Elves were “hard to sell” among colleagues at Blizzard. It is said:
“The world accepted Night Elves better than most members [of Blizzard]. People were used to the Legolas-type, the typical elves – blonde-brown hair, while we chose blue, green, and purple. That was a radical difference, but what it really took was an image to convince people.”
Ultimately, it seems the imagery played a significant role in the existence of Night Elves.
“If you have a good image, you can convince people of almost anything. If we had a bad image for it, there would probably only be Forest Elves today.”
Could you imagine a Warcraft without Night Elves? Would it perhaps be better off without Night Elves? Or have you embraced the tree-huggers?
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