Half-elves, what do you think?

So, the title is fairly self-explanatory. What is your opinion on half-elves, or half-breeds in general when it comes to role-playing.

My own opinion:
Looking aside from the average Mary-sue, I believe the concept to be quite plausible if you role-play it properly. Although the issue has always been regarded as something controversial, or so it seems to me, but perhaps I've misjudged people's approach to the concept entirely.

So what do you think?

Plausible in Stormwind, but not plausible in Silvermoon, where their mere existence would be seen as an affront to the blood of a near-extinct race that values it so much of late. There are many references to this in the lore and frankly, it's not hard to decipher from the Sin'dorei attitude and way of thinking that half-humans would be expelled at best, and lynched at worst.

Naturally, since we're talking about a "high fantasy" that ridicules biology, many other kinds of "half-elves" are also possible, but resorting to roleplaying such a character would be pretty much alike to the one-in-a-million kind of poor roleplay as "I was the personal apprentice of Illidan 10 000 years ago", or "I am the bastard child of King Varian! Honest!".

Two sides in it. The social accepting and the actual possibility. Just because Sin'dorei society would look down to a halfbreed / chase it / want to kill it /whatever, doesn't mean it's not possible, does it? Just because someone's social circle might not approve of him being an Atheist or an Agnostic, surely it doesn't mean they HAVE to be part of a religion, right? Baseline is: is a half-elf possible? Eh yes? Get an elf and something else to fornicate, wait, and there you have your half-elf. Will it be accepted? *shrug* Many people are not able to be accepted in social circles irl either. Doesn't mean they have to go jump off a cliff or something.

My general "rule of thumb" is: If you roleplay it well, even the most unlikely concept can be fine. If you roleplay it bad, even the most common concept can be "meh".

Its plausible and doable, but if the society doesn't react, its rather dull.
Half-beeds are generally frowned upon by any population, be it human or elf and scorned and steered clear from, this is however not the case with most halfbreeds as people treat them nice and normal.

Nayan wrote:Just because Sin'dorei society would look down to a halfbreed / chase it / want to kill it /whatever, doesn't mean it's not possible, does it?

1, Sin'dorei don't breed with humans now. At all.
2, If you're an ordinary half-High Elf, you don't walk into persecution. You walk out of it.

Always going for the possible-but-extremely-rare-and-unlikely exceptions is in the vast majority of cases the sign of a bad, or very new roleplayer.

I guess it wasn't implied by my original post, but I was more wondering about your ooc-view on the subject, rather than the implications of playing such a character icly.

Oh. OOC views. Well I don't want to demotivate you but there's so many off them. So many half-elves atleast Alliance side.
Playing a normal avarage char with a interesting personality and cool story can be fun too! Not everyone has to be a special lil billy half-elf like so many are!

Aesthetic wrote:Oh. OOC views. Well I don't want to demotivate you but there's so many off them. So many half-elves atleast Alliance side.
Playing a normal avarage char with a interesting personality and cool story can be fun too! Not everyone has to be a special lil billy half-elf like so many are!

Hehe no, I'm not considering playing a half-elf. I was just curious to your views because I saw one yesterday. Herette or something in Silvermoon. I quite enjoy my Night Elf and Troll as they are.

Do note half-elves resemble humans more than their elven counterparts in most cases. They would probably easily be seen as a human and slain on the spot, when walking amongst Silvermoon.

Its tolerated in Stormwind, though. Note: Tolerated.

Always going for the possible-but-extremely-rare-and-unlikely exceptions is in the vast majority of cases the sign of a bad, or very new roleplayer.

To that I can't agree more. I've always said that it's sad how overplayed some "rare" things are, to the point they become immersion-breaking themselves. Classical example is the 99.999999% miscarriage incidents. But the question wasn't about how overplayed it is, it was how possible it is. And it is -possible-, sorry. Yes, for Sin'dorei/Human too.

Don't get me wrong here, most of (if not all) my chars absolutely loathe the idea of mating with another race. But if I find the grounds for something like that to happen ICly, I don't see why such an absolute bubble of air should obstruct me. "Sin'dorei don't breed with humans" tells me as much as "Sin'dorei breed with humans all the time". That's your view. And, as much as I respect it, it doesn't make it a god-given fact. I play a Sin'dorei too, and I have the power to change that "statement" at any point, if I deem it appropriate for my char.

Personally, I think they'd get an even worse treatment in Quel'Thalas than mere humans, because they'd be seen as an abominable shame to the bloodline that all the Sin'dorei's gifts and powers originate from. A legacy of the Quel'dorei that needs to be eradicated.
In Stormwind, they're okay, and "accepted more and more", according to WoWWiki, but in Silvermoon, I won't pick up the gauntlet by interacting with such "roleplayers". There's a reason why the Wayfarer's Rest is so often called Silvershire.

As for the OOC part, I much prefer Warhammer (40k and fantasy), where distinct, vastly different species are, quite realistically, unable to inter-breed.

Sinnadrin wrote:As for the OOC part, I much prefer Warhammer (40k and fantasy), where distinct, vastly different species are, quite realistically, unable to inter-breed.

Alot of animals, if not most, can interbreed. So realisticly why can't humanoids interbreed? Dogs can, cats can whatever can!
EDIT: Animals of the same 'type'.

It makes sense, and the most dominant gene to date is that of orcs, as can be seen in many, if not all, half-orcs.

I think half-breeds add a cool factor to the WC universe except in RP.

I remember this half-orc.. and Ath would insult him all the time and try to chase him away, I mean half-orcs look more like orcs. The half-orc himself didn't mind and appreciated someone acutally bothered acting like it'd really go, since most people ignored it and actually defended a half-orc over a human inside Stormwind.

Since that time I stopped bothering with half-breeds myself! I won't ignore them, but I'll try to avoid them, as they attract white-knights like flies.

Aesthetic wrote:Alot of animals, if not most, can interbreed. So realisticly why can't humanoids interbreed? Dogs can, cats can whatever can!

Where do you get this outlandish idea from? Different races and sub-species of the same species can, sure, no problem, even species that are genetically close to each other (tigers & lions, horses & donkeys, though the results of these are usually sterile). But ever seen a dog and a cat succesfully reproduce? A hare and a fox? Both are mammals, both are of the roughly same size, yet... nature says no.

Here, we've got species entirely different organically, living hundreds, or thousand of years and having senses and attributes vastly different from human measures.
The developers of Warhammer took that into consideration.

Half elves are perfectly plausible, we even have Half elf NPCs, so why not?
Delicious WOWWIKI Info

I have a half-quel'dorei character myself. On Alliance side ofcourse. Not because I wanted a "omg half elves are liek so special!1111" -character, but because I was asked to play the bastard daughter of a friend of mine who is a Blood elf (=former high elf).

Ah! Read the edit. I meant the same species, like different types of dogs. Such is the same for say.. humanoids. Orcs are practically big green humans. Dwarves small fat humans. Elves tall purple ones.. we're all humans, just slightly different, subspecies mostly.

Of course draenei and tauren and such are very different.

Aesthetic wrote:Ah! Read the edit. I meant the same species, like different types of dogs. Such is the same for say.. humanoids. Orcs are practically big green humans. Dwarves small fat humans. Elves tall purple ones.. we're all humans, just slightly different, subspecies mostly.

Of course draenei and tauren and such are very different.

If I look at the possibility, apply RL biology and throw in sum lore for good measure, I get the following answer:
All playable races are created from the same basic template by the titans, strangely enough didn't mutate to far away from each other (how the nether?!) and them titans sure got around alot.