One thing about the lore that have never agreed with is the maturation of races, specifically those that have long lifespans. I'll use the night elf as an example, since they are known for living quite a long time (assuming they can live a whole life without being decapitated or something equally deadly).
A healthy night elf can live to be 700 hundred at least. This I don't have a problem with, they're magically and what not. What always irks me is that a night elf doesn't reach adulthood until they are 300 years old. It appeared to me while I was looking at the age list, that most races spend close to the same percentage of their lives in childhood, adulthood, old age etc. This kinda seems odd to me. Why does an elf, who is physiologically similar to a human, mature over 10 times slower? It would make more sense to me that the maturation of races is close to the same length, and those with long lifespans have extremely long adulthood.
Another thing that I personally (though politely) disagree with is that it appears that the children of long living races have the same intelligence/psychology of a human child (for example). It seems to that they are treated as children by society as well. I find it unusual that a 150 year old night elf is the same as a ten year old human. Even assuming a night elf's brain develops over 300 years, they would still be able to amass wisdom, even if they lacked intellect/maturity.
Just wanted to throw my concerns out there...
I've always agreed, actually. It seems odd to me, physiologically speaking.
The only defense I can think of is to say that the intellegence, vocabulary, etc of a 100-year-old Night Elf might very well be that of an adult, but they don't physically mature to adulthood until well past that point. As to their society's view of them, I think that might be more about perception based on how old the child is comparatively to someone who's thousands of years their senior.
That said, I don't necessarily think it's going to change, barring a server-wide lore policy change.
I don't understand it either. You're talking about Night Elves, look at the draenei, tens of thousands of years, and they can't fly a spaceship without crashing it?
I'm only joking, but I agree completely. It makes some of the longer-living races look juvenile. I could understand slow brain development, but most of the races seem to be very smart otherwise. I dunno. The lore behind it is still really foggy beyond charts.
Hmm, well with this in general I have actually depicted my newest human character, Flavius, as being inquisitive as to why and how humanity is able to grasp concepts that are "seemingly" and "apparently" takes the more elder and long lived races thousands of years to grasp advanced concepts. I have actually depicted my character as finally coming to the conclusion that humanity is a superior race, for their rate of maturity and ability to understand the same amount of things is much greater than say that of a Night Elf.
However, that is not the point of this thread, at least not intended or entirely... the point is that I have come to a few terms on my own concerning these sorts of things in general for races.
Trolls: Trolls have an incredible rate of regeneration that I can only assume has to do with their metabolism. It would make sense that their metabolic rate is in relation to the Night Elves having a slowed down version of the metabolic rate - since you know Night Elves are mutated trolls and all.
With that said Trolls logically would do just about everything in terms of biological growth more quickly.
Night Elves: Night Elves are mutated trollslolol, I personally believe that the Well of Eternity simply slowed down the rate of their metabolism and increased the size of their brain or something.. yeah.. scratch that maybe. :P Naw, but I do believe that they have a slowed down version of their ancestor's metabolic rate.
Draenei: This is just likely Blizzard being silly... no comment.
Humans: Same thing as us, so if you know anything about human anatomy then you know what needs to be inserted here.
________
Anyway that is just my two cents on the subject since those seem to be the longest living playable races; not humans or trolls, just use them for relation and cause I typed it and now feel like it should still be in there for some reason.
I honestly think that they few them as children because they haven't experienced nearly as much as they others.
Rom the orphanage questline that comes up once a hear, if you try the little Draenei girl, she makes a comment about how much she likes you, even though she probably is ten times your age. Or... Something along those lines!
I'm on my iPhone right now or I'd give a link and such...
Yeah I think it's a view of society. Because even in humans there are 12 year olds who have been through more stuff than most 20 year olds and have become mature because of it. Having somewhat a "adult" mentality. But they aren't viewed as an adult until much later. Publicly.
I wondered the same thing, because for BE's for example they "mature" around 110 or something. So I was wondering if they could have kids younger, like when they're 50 - 75. It would probably be like teen pregnancy now. But they are still capable of doing so, and depending on their mentality may just succeed.
HHhmmm..
A very interesting topic indeed..
But I agree with what ThePharaoh said,
It's all about maturity,
I'll give you an example,
At a certain age nearly all kids in an area or maybe worldwide will be crazy over one show on the tele... like.. Ben 10?
As they grow older they lose interest in that and others begin to like it, mainly because they mature.
Nightelf and Draenei kids may have something like this, but rather than maturing and losing interest, they just lose interest, because they've been around too long to appreciate it anymore (Or maybe Ben 10 ran outta' episodes :P)
So maturity takes far longer for Nightelf and Draenei kids to develop, but their wise-ness and intellect is something very different.
We haven't actually observed a Night elf/Draenei child that accurately, so whilst cute, harmless and innocent on the outside, they could know more than a 20 year old human.
But that leads to the question...
What of Adult Night elf/Draenei-s?
Aren't they supposed to be like Einstein because of this?
Well, who knows?
Personally, My nightelf, Asetrix, has been around for 3400 years, so I consider him wise, pretty smart and to know the land, and survive just about anywhere with he's druid forms.
But what of... Curious
Yeah.. Curious Nightelf females we see??
Yeah, don't know how to explain that,
can't blame people who choose to roll a Nightelf, make her look sexy in-game then make her look dumb.
Has a good effect but has a resemblance with Human/Blood elf Blondes.
This is a deep mystery, and would involve quite some research before we fully understand it.
We are just a part of the way through.
I have to also say,
Blizzard has done well with the lore but I hate when they don't make things like this clear!
Honestly, the main problem I have with the prolonged youth is that I need to add more years to my characters in order for them to be considered an adult. Take a dwarf character I am going to make after the reset. He could easily be a trained hunter at age 25 (starting at "adulthood" at 18, this would give him 7 solid years of practicing), but in order to have him considered an adult to others, I need to add at least twenty-some years to his life. /rant
I'm in no way an expert but something I was thinking about a couple of days ago was how it has changed in our own society, I mean it used to be people viewed a person as adult at a younger age than today, I've allways had the impression that kids matured faster back then, probably due to being viewed as responsible for their actions, being thrown in shit earlier etc. But now we're viewed as comming of age at around 18-20 and even that is kinda tentative with laws restricting you intil a certain age, maybe part of the reason for that is that live longer?
So maybe a Night Eld living in Ashenvale, pretty much in constant conflict with the Horde, satyrs and other threats, would mature faster than one who live in the secluded and safe areas further into the forests?
Well, logically, it doesn't make sense for a creature to be stuck at physical immaturity for such an extended period of time. It's counterproductive; it would mean that individuals would have to spend more time ensuring the well-being of their young. I just can't see creatures being able to thrive like that.
Consider a handful of other long-lived species in our own world.
- The bowhead whale is consider the longest-lived mammalian species. They've found whales that have lived for over two centuries. However, they enter sexual maturity around the age of, phew, fifteen or so?
- A number of tortoises are capable of living one or even two centuries. Many of them begin reproducing within a dozen years -- if not earlier.
- Some fish can live over a hundred years, including the rougheye rockfish, one of which was documented at being two hundred years old. They often reach maturity within their second decade of life.
I've always taken the ages to mean that they reach physical maturity (ie, early teenage years) fairly early, perhaps within the first couple of decades. At this point, they're essentially teenagers for an extended period of time. They're deemed to be adults once they reach the first couple of centuries of life, which is when they have more life experience.
Then again, I formulated this partially thanks to the writings of Steven Brust, a fiction writer. Many of his novels take place on the world of Dragaera. He has elves in his books (they're called Dragaerans) who live upwards of 3,000 years. They tend to reach physical maturity fairly quickly, but have an extended period of time during which they're considered teenagers. For example, a character became empress of the splintered empire shortly after the age of 200. While she wasn't necessarily considered an adult at that time, she was more or less at physical maturity.
I see a lot of, "He did
what at 50? You realize that he would have still been a baby at the time!" I have to chuckle a little, because I don't think that they'd still be physically toddlers at that age, regarding at what age maturity is obtained.
I think this topic is something that we'll never really be able to figure out. You'd have to look into why us humans stop growing after puberty and then apply those same rules to humanoids from a world that doesn't exist, that we know very little about.
I think it's just gonna have to be one of those things we reluctantly accept. Humans tend to stop growing once their sexual organs/glands start working properly, so maybe Night-Elves/Draenei have rubbish sexual glands? I guess a 20 year old Human would be as intelligent as a 20 year old Night-Elf, except the Night-Elf would still be a toddler.
Like I said, we just can't figure this one out without help from Blizzard. Night-Elves are still kids at the age of 80... we just have to accept it...
...as ridiculous as it is.
Grayl Wrote:I guess a 20 year old Human would be as intelligent as a 20 year old Night-Elf, except the Night-Elf would still be a toddler.
Absolutely not true. Know how we know?
Shandris Feathermoon. This current general of the Sentinels was a whopping
sixteen during the War of the Ancients.
Sixteen. At this age, she managed to escape and survive an attack by the Burning Legion, accompany Tyrande Whisperwind on her and her sisters' journeys, and even save Malfurion Stormrage's life with a timely shot made with her bow.
A toddler would not be able to do this.
As I had guessed -- and now hopefully confirmed, as evidenced in the War of the Ancients Trilogy -- night elves reach physical maturity within the first few decades of life but are not considered adults until well into their second or third century of life.
Valeera Sanguinar, a blood elf, is supposed to be fairly young as well.
This reminded me about an old thread on the same topic,
here.
Mikain Wrote:Well, as there is nothing official on how elves age, we can't say yay or nay on whether or not they actually take 100 years physically or maturity wise. The only thing I can think of is in the WoW comic when Varian is talking to Valeera and she says "I'm young for an elf, but our kind age differently than you humans do." Which indicates to me that they do physically take longer to grow. (She looks very young and Varian calls her a child.)
Quote:
Is there anyone who could link the comic page(s) this all played out in? Would be interesting to see the whole context.
A species that takes two centuries to mature would die out relatively quick.
In fact, I find that the age thing of WoW is a bit unrefined.
Probably need to do one of those "let's just mod this a bit." Things.