Loxmardin Ponders: The Immortal Races and Immortality

[Loxmardin]

Hello CotH!

This is something I've been mulling over a lot and I thought I would write a blog post about it to open it up for discussion. ... See, many of the playable races in WoW have very long lifespans. Not all of them are necessarily immortal, per say, but they live long enough that they could well be considered immortal by human standards. The High/Blood Elves are capable of living as long as 2000 years and the Night Elves and Draenei multiplies that by so many times it's not even funny. Even the Dwarves and the Gnomes can hang in there for a few hundred years, which is hard for us humans to fathom since we'll be surprised if someone lives past 100.

... So, due to lacking resources on the topic and being human ourselves with our limited lifespan, I think it'd difficult for us to really comprehend what such a long life will do to somebody's mind. It's also a very common misconception, I've noticed, that someone who is aeons old would naturally know everything and be automatically better than the younger species at everything he does. I disagree, and I'll be explaining why in a little bit.

On CotH, we have plenty of characters who are many thousands of years old. Many of them don't act their age, and some seem to fail to consider the race's past when evaluating just how much they know about the world they are interacting with. ... In this post, I'm going to focus mainly on the Night Elves, Blood Elves and the Draenei. While the Gnomes and Dwarves could probably be addressed in similar manners, I want to focus on the aforementioned three species.

Night Elves

Spoiler:

Night Elves were, until recently, immortal. Many of them are over ten thousand years old (at least in the CotH playerbase). There are those who were around to see the Sundering and the exile of the Highborne, and might even remember what the world looked like before the Maelstrom and the continent split in two parts; Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.

As a species however, the Night Elves have always been rather reclusive. They keep to themselves, honor their traditions and their lands and the "sacred duty" of their people as watchers of the old World Tree. They really didn't move around much in all their years, their population was rather static and it was very likely that childbirth was pretty rare all those years ago. The men were deep in the Emerald Dream for hundreds of years at a time with the women and the scarce few men lacking the Gift defending the rest of their society, keeping the community stable and alive. They guarded the forests, their kin, and defended from intruders whenever they came and whoever they were.

They really didn't have much in the ways of interactions with other species lest they were hostile. Night Elves weren't exactly known for being friendly, either. Shoot first and ask later; an intruder's an intruder regardless of the shape it comes in.

So, what happens in the mind of a Night Elf who lives for, say, ten thousand years?

The men? They sleep most of that time away. They don't really interact much with the outside world; only the perfect and undisturbed version deep inside the Emerald Dream in the presence of the Green Dragons. They will know the Emerald Dream and its mysteries and be well versed in the magicks of nature, but they wouldn't know the world outside. It might even come as an unpleasant shock to them when they wake up to see what has become of it while they were sleeping. It's like waking up into a living nightmare, I imagine. While the Emerald Dream had its own share of problems once the Nightmare started corrupting it, it was nothing compared to what waited for them in present-time Azeroth. Since they could be gone for hundreds if not thousands of years at a time, when they suddenly were startled awake... It must've come as a shock?

How do you even interact with the world after such an experience? Try to imagine living your whole life passing by the window in your kitchen and there's this beautiful oak tree standing right outside. You see it every day and you don't question that it's there. Then suddenly one day, it's gone and all you see is a yellow fence and a construction site on the other side. It's difficult to imagine such a situation and compare it to the Night Elves' waking up from the dream, but give it a shot. What would you feel or think, if suddenly one day you woke up and that beautful oak tree was gone?

For the Night Elf women and the men who weren't talented or born with the Gift, the situation was most likely different. They were always around for all that time to watch the forest grow, the old trees wither and die and for children to grow up into adults and eventually, perhaps, have their own children. Their lives most likely looked very much like a human life. Now, don't hang me just yet, but I think their lives were actually very similar to a normal human's life. Sure, they lived for thousands of years instead of a hundred, but, consider this...

Does time really move as fast for someone who isn't in a hurry anywhere?

Humans only have a few moments to live, in comparison. Their lives move much quicker. They are forced to grow up quickly, learn to survive and fend for themselves to make a place in the world where they can grow, settle and form new families so they can carry on the legacy of their species. They don't have the luxury of sitting around for thousands of years without worrying for the continuation for your race since you're still well and alive, and so's your parents, siblings, their parents and cousins, aunts and grandchildren. Night Elves aren't in a rush because there's no real threat to their longevity.

Thus, it'd be logical to believe that time passed much slower for them. Time likely passed for them much like it passed for the trees. Slowly but steadily. So, to clarify... Night Elves and Humans most likely lived mostly the same lives, only Night Elves lived theirs in slow motion. Night Elves most likely didn't even count the days, or the hours. They would settle for counting the years, if even that. Why would they need to count at all? And without counting, would they truly move their lives on at any considerable pace?

A human learns quickly because he has to. Night Elves don't need to. They have all the time in the world. Or had, at least.

... And then, suddenly, they met the humans. And the orcs. And the other races come the Wars and the sacrifice of the World Tree. They probably had limited interactions with the Trolls in the past, but really... This was the first time in so many years that they started interacting with the more fast-paced species. The Orcs started tearing down their beloved forests that they'd watched grow for millenia.

Imagine the shock. And think back to that beautiful oak tree outside your kitchen window, again.

Now, what of the younger Night Elves? Those born in recent years who aren't even 100 years old yet? You could imagine those Elves being strangely alienated from the rest of their society. Their lives started in a time where life had suddenly become more fast-paced. Old habits die hard, as they say, as the oldest Night Elves most likely wouldn't be able to adapt at the same speed as a young Night Elf would.

How would a young Night Elf react to the inaction and passiveness of their older kin? Food for thought.

High/Blood Elves

Spoiler:

Now, the High/Blood Elves... I'll just keep referring to them as Blood Elves from now on. They are also fairly long-lived. Not as long as the Night Elves, but still significantly long-lived. The oldest of them could most likely remember the young years of the human kingdoms or had parents who were alive long before the seven kingdoms started forming. Perhaps they are even related to someone who helped first teach the humans magic, or knows someone who is. Many are also old enough to remember the Troll Wars... or knows someone who does.

Most of the Blood Elves suffered the same isolation as the Night Elves, however. While many still travelled into the human kingdoms and beyon to lend their services to the humans, dwarves and whatnot, most of the Blood Elf population stayed in Quel'thalas. They remained in their beautiful kingdom and groomed it over the years, practicing their magical arts and flourishing in their eternally golden forests. Time moved slowly for them as well while they were closed off inside their own little corner of the universe, independent of most everything else with the occasional discomfort of an emissary or merchant passing by to exhange trade secrets or goods for the wellbeing of either society and the prosperity of elvenkind.

They wouldn't really have noticed how time flew by. Not even the Trolls would've made the elves more observant to the time passing by since they couldn't see any difference from Troll to Troll, ,and the short lifespans of the Amani had no real impact on the way an Elf would continue living their long lives. Death was always present for them, however, and people did die from old age. Not every single elf died as old as 2000 years old, after all, and the reality of their own mortality was always something they had to live with. They wouldn't necessarily accept it, but it was nonetheless a great part of their culture and mentality. Not only did age claim the lives of their relatives, but so did their strifes with the Amani. In a whole different way than for the Night Elves, the Blood Elves would've been disillusioned. They would die eventually, even if not for a long time.

Nevertheless, most of them holed themselves up in their cities and villages and carried on with their lives in peace. They prospered and had plenty of time on their hands. Enough time to make time pass much slower for them. They weren't in a hurry. Not compared to the humans, anyway.

Now, there were those Blood Elves who lived for the mostpart of their lives amongst the younger races. Humans, more specifically. How would that change the way that they look on the world around them? How would you imagine it feels to be an elf amongst humans, perhaps growing up with a few human friends who grow older while you remain youthful even when they wither, grow old and grow grey hairs until the finally pass away from old age. Death would suddenly become something much more significant in your life since it's all around you. Lives come and go in what could feel like a moment or a few years, to you. At what point does a Blood Elf in this kind of situation break, seclude himself, or fall into some form of depression as it dawns upon them that they have to watch their surroundings grow up and die time and time again while they, themselves, remain young and alive.

The would most likely grow more acutely aware of the passage of time and start to either cherish the smaller things and take good care of the shorter and more precious moments, or they would withdraw and cease association with the short-lived races while watching time slip through their fingers like finely grinded sand.

How do you imagine that feels? Have you ever had a pet? Like a rat, a hamster or a guinea pig? Maybe even a rabbit?

Do you think that's a valid and relevant comparison? What are your thoughts on that, if you agree/disagree with the comparison?

What about a favourite spring flower? You watch it bloom, wither and die. Is that comparable, in any way?

Draenei

Spoiler:

Oh, the Draenei are another piece of cake, entirely. They are virtually immortal, legally, seeing as none have been known to ever die of old age before. We don't really have a lot of lore regarding them and what they were like while they live back on Argus 20,000 years ago or whichever number that was. It was big; that's all I really know for sure right now.

We have no real way of knowing what their old lives were like. We know that they were most likely a magically excellent race with a deep understanding and knowlege for the arcane arts, which is what drew the Legion to them in the first place and made them prominent members of their army and... respected and feared adversaries. Being as long-lived as they were, however, it's safe to assume their society didn't work like ours. None of the Draenei treat age like any important matter at all and it doesn't seem to be a significant part of their surviving culture, either.

Death doesn't really seem to have been a significant part of their lives until recently, either. Not until they landed on Draenor and the slaughter began, at the very least. They lost many of their family members and friends when fleeing from Argus, but... That only really concerns those who are old enough to have lived there. Those who were born on the Oshu'gun or any of the inbetween worlds they traversed in their flight from the Burning Legion never really had that as a major part of their lives. They were just running away, endlessly, while caring for their ship, raising their families and doing their utmost to keep old traditions and their culture alive by speaking of them with their children. These children would grow up into a Light-worshipping and small community aboard the Naaru vessel, intimately familiar with the Light as a force and the Naaru as creatures and saviors of their kind.

... But that's it. Until Draenor, nothing else really happened in their lives. So what would they really have been doing for all those years? They allegedly celebrated each birth like it was a joyous community event with Velen himself presiding over many of them because it was such a big deal. They didn't really have much else to do aboard the ship than to socialize with their families, and start preparing themselves for joining the Army of the Light like they'd pledged when they were first saved. Otherwise, their lives were entirely uneventful.

... Maybe they were fine with that, though. Immortal as they were, they probably didn't even notice the thousands of years that passed by before they arrived on Draenor, finally. They didn't live there for very long at all compared to where they'd been before. Many Draenei were most likely born on Draenor, however, and how would that've affected their mentality later compared to a Draenei who was born either on Oshu'gun, or on Argus? Would they have the same perception of time, considering their interactions with the Orcs on Draenor prior to the massacres?

... What of a Draenei who was born shortly before the massacres begun, or even during them? Their few years in life would've been very eventful, between being born and then crash-landing on Azeroth when the Exodar malfunctioned. Wouldn't their mentality, technically, develop to be more akin to that of a humanoid on Azeroth? As opposed to their immortal and stuck-in-their-habits brethren?

What would "immortality" even mean to such a young Draenei? Would they be able to conceptualize it at all?

... So, with all that said... I hope that is enough to spark some ideas and start a discussion here. I think it's interesting to think about and I hope I've given more people food for thought on the subject. I'll finish this already massive post with another inquiry, to give even more food for thought...

What significance do you imagine these terms would have to a Human, Blood/High Elf, Night Elf or Draenei?:

• ...a second?
  ...a minute?
  ...a half-hour?
  ...an hour?
  ...half a day?
  ...a day?
  ...a week?
  ...a month?
  ...a year?
  ...ten years?
  ...a hundred years?
  ...a thousand years?
  ...ten thousand years?

How do you imagine their concepts of "a moment" would differ? Or "a lifetime"?

... I'll leave you to it!

Love,
Loxmardin

[DaveM]

I've thought about it a whole lot, and my conclusion is that a being over 500 years old, not to mention a hundred, and acting so much like a 'mainstream' human is automatically unrealistic.

How I explain it (with a stretch) why some races do act 'mainstream', my characters as well as those of others are:

- Characters living in the now. The kind of people that have a base way of being and do not relate to the passage of time a lot - these would judge each day and moment at a time regardless of their life span.

- Characters panicked inside about the loss of immortality - I have to get my living in now! Infinity versus hundreds must feel to them like it feels to a human that they have weeks left to live.

- Characters panicked inside about the potential of being killed - This can be a cultural fear and a strong one. Act like the human mortals because so many of your kin -functionally- have seemed a lot more mortal than the lifespan because of the dangerous world.

Esentially, the typical night elf and draenei, realistically, to me, should be unrelatable in the slightest to a human or troll, but that'd mean no fun, so we allow for these stretches, but let's be thinking about them while we RP so as to not over-stretch.

[Reigen]

There is a reason most of my longer lived races dislikes interacting and growing close to the shorter lived ones.

Though, there should be something noted for Death Knights who are suddenly, to their knowledge, immortal as well. Any race can be one, so how would it feel suddenly knowing that you will be around to watch as everyone you knew and loved will now pass away in what will essentially become a blink of an eye? How would you start going around to make sure that they don't just fade from memory like a dream when you first wake up? How about knowing that to stay sane, you have to kill people and so long as you are 'alive', others will have to die to keep you sane. What about suddenly everything you enjoyed before being bleak and tasteless?

It's no wonder why so many Death Knights, at least for the younger races, are always so broody and depressed while on the flip-side, others are trying to desperately 'live' as much as possible to fill an empty void that they become confused over proper interactions again.

[Xigo]

Spoiler:

I'd argue that people should play the 'typical draenei or night elf', and instead delegate character concepts that fit other races to the other races. Fun bubbly night elf sentinels and clumsy childish draenei are just so... weird. Sure, a 'here and now' character of those races would be interesting if they weren't already so common. Few blood elves think or act like blood elves.

It's possible to play one of these ancient races without delving so far into 'never interact with lesser races' or 'wohoho party all day all night'. Just because your character is likely more aware of the ramifications of his/her actions than a human or goblin does not make him/her completely unrelatable to them. A soldier still sees a soldier in another man. A tailor can still admire the works of another. You can still sit down and have a drink with this person who you will most certainly outlive and outlast. It's an experience. Perhaps an experience you've had before in the past, but certainly still an experience to be had.

And you can still play these old races in different and unique ways. The characters in these races can have differing viewpoints on the same subject. One might wish to shun the young races, another guide them. One might be all about keeping tradition, another about experimenting and innovating. In any case, you can play both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between without coming off as a two-dimensional joke of a character.

Imagine, if you would, if there was an additional member of the Fellowship of the Ring. Steferan, an elf who just loved to party and shunned elf society. An elf who... doesn't act like an elf at all. How would that make Legolas look? How would that mess with the entire image of elves in the Tolkein novels?

To bring up something that flammos brought up a while back, blood elves on CotH are treated as a joke OOCly. Rarely does blood elf roleplay actually feel like elves. They just feel like spoiled teenagers or pricks all gathered together in the same room to snark at eachother. There's no culture. Most elves might as well just be humans. In my opinion, most elves are better off as humans. And House Whiteshore is very happy to take in your newly rolled human characters, *cough* *cough*. Sure, elves are arrogant and what not. But if I want that kind of arrogance I can just go to my local high school and chat with all the juniors there. I feel bad for the people who try to roleplay blood elves like they're blood elves, because they get a really bad image and reputation due to the vast swaths of non-elfy elves.

I know I rant about elves with relative frequency, but nothing's changing. 'Humanelves' are the majority on the server. I'm sure if suddenly high elves were released on CotH and there was an IC 'cure for blood elves', a ton of our player characters would hop ship.

Anywho, done with that tangent/rant with no real direction.

Long-lived races should be roleplayed as being aware of their long lifespans (without it just being 'I will live a long time'). Otherwise the character is probably not the right race.

Nice guide, Lox.

[Loxmardin]

Herpaderp.

I just noticed I'd written "Western" instead of "Eastern" Kingdoms.

I'm surprised no one commented on that.

It's gone now, though.

*shifty eyes*

[landashua]

I've always considered my longest-lived character Arntae to be relatively assimilated from a lifetime with the humans. She's nearing 700, and, she feels, the end of her life. In her background she was hidden from the outside world into her late twenties, living at the leisured pace of a Sin'dorei within the confines of Silvermoon. It wasn't until almost her thirtieth birthday that she saw death, let alone in the form of a natural passing from old age. Before that she had gone thirty years considering herself neigh immortal. I tried to think back to the first time I really learned about death, it was when I was 3 or so at my grandfather's funeral. I didn't understand the sadness. I didn't get why he wasn't coming back, or why I couldn't do the silly dance with grandpa anymore. That had to be explained to me, and as a child I'm not sure I understood it even after it was explained.

It happens that I come form a very large family, though, and death is unfortunately an ever present thing. I joke with some relatives that the only time we see each other is weddings and funerals. I wasn't in the dark for long when it came to death, my other grandfather passing away when I was 9, and by then I recall having a very serious understanding. I put myself in that hurting place when I wrote Arntae's profile, trying to imagine what it would be like for a grown person, having experience all there is to life except one thing to suddenly be told about death. It would undo everything you had come to expect about life, completely reshape your world view. Nothing you ever do would be the same again, suddenly the things you do have meaning, suddenly you have a concept of time and of wasted time (thirty years, in Arntae's case), suddenly you realize the people you love won't always be there.

How would you handle that? It's a hard tell, being asked to put yourself into that place. I know in Arntae's case she simply wandered. Walking Azeroth, straddling the line between life and death as an ascetic, discovering what it truly meant to be alive, rather than living. For the first time her actions were backed with the knowledge that they had lasting effects. She survived partially on the kindness of strangers in her wandering years and each incident had a deeper meaning than she could imagine. She felt in touch with the world for the first time. It wasn't long after her return to civilization that she began studying the arcane, which eventually led to her association with the Kirin'Tor. She spent centuries there, living amongst the most brilliant minds each culture had to offer, and watching many of those brilliant minds fade away, only to be replaced shortly after.

Had she not wandered and discovered the valuable lesson that small things can have large impacts first hand, I think that the knowledge of death/age would have warped her in a way Loxy suggested. But some might have a different understanding of things, look back fondly on the lives they've touched and been touched by, knowing that they made an impression. But Arntae accepts that things, lives, come and go, and that her life is included in that cycle. That's the greater scheme of things in her eyes. One can seek immortality or long life at the price of -living- a full life, or one can move ahead, understanding, trying to carve out their niche in the endless cycle of life and death.

Also, in your response to your comparisons, I don't think they're quite accurate. I've never had a conversation with a pet, I've never truly understood them the way a sentient being could understand another. The comparisons are fair enough, if only considering age, but that ignores what I see as an important factor: It's not always the number of years that matter, but the content of the years. Can you truly have as good a relationship with a hamster as you could with another human being? I don't think so, in that even if you do stuff together, you're not sharing the experience. You don't take a hamster to the lake to watch a sunset, then go home later knowing that the hamster had an entirely different set of thoughts as you about the sunset, pondering its own problems, its own life. You don't have a conversation with the hamster about what the sunset makes them feel. The hamster is simply there, while another being (elf, troll, orc, human, whatever,) feels, communicates, understands, questions, shares.

But that's about all my body will allow me to wax poetic in one sitting. Gotta go lift some weights or something.

[Loxmardin]

Also, in your response to your comparisons, I don't think they're quite accurate. I've never had a conversation with a pet, I've never truly understood them the way a sentient being could understand another. The comparisons are fair enough, if only considering age, but that ignores what I see as an important factor: It's not always the number of years that matter, but the content of the years. Can you truly have as good a relationship with a hamster as you could with another human being? I don't think so, in that even if you do stuff together, you're not sharing the experience. You don't take a hamster to the lake to watch a sunset, then go home later knowing that the hamster had an entirely different set of thoughts as you about the sunset, pondering its own problems, its own life. You don't have a conversation with the hamster about what the sunset makes them feel. The hamster is simply there, while another being (elf, troll, orc, human, whatever,) feels, communicates, understands, questions, shares.

:3

*steeples fingers*

Yes, indeed.

Glad you picked on those comparisons. Comparing the people you pass by in life as pets or even plants is a very... dissociative way of looking at it. You distance yourself from the objects (or people, in this case) by minimalizing their impact on your life as much as possible, in my example. It's one way of dealing with the losses of those around you if it happens all too often. Something you might remember fondly like your favourite pet dog that stuck with you for a few years when you were a kid, or your very first hamster.

Another comparison I was hesitant about pulling up would be family or friends passing away prematurely due to any kind of disease. But even then, that wouldn't quite compare to the kind of loss you feel or the alienation you might experience from simply... outliving everyone around you many times over.

There really isn't any truly good comparison available to really describe the feeling it probably gives someone who has lived that long. We can only guess and rest on the closest alternative.

[landashua]

Of course Loxy, picking on points is what I'm here for. This is a good subject, though, and I'm glad it's getting some real attention. There has been some pretty heavy stuff popping up on the forums lately in regards to lore. Glad to see that. Keep questioning, CotH.

[Beltharean]

"As we age, the same time period seems to us shorter, than it seemed before. Thus, as we age, “the rate of living” decreases in an organism, but time subjectively “runs faster”. 2. Our hypothesis is that the rate of living and the subjective sense of time are inversely related in an individual organism, and this relation has biological (i.e. not only psychological) background."
- A study from the Max Planck Institute

And then to build on that...

"For instance, the age-related decrease in metabolic rate means that a smaller number of metabolic events passes per unit of time in an organism with age. So, the efficiency of time utilization decreases with age. As a result, a year subjectively pass faster for an elder than for a child. "


From the same study. Take from it what you will...




I do think though, that there's a bit of confusion about how it all works as far as fantasy races go. You can look at the Ents from Tolkien's world, and -they- would in my opinion, be the ones to judge things in terms of years. They don't have bodily functions that force them to act 'in the now' so to speak, they can sit in the same spot for a century and have a single conversation.

Flesh races, don't exactly work like that.

Time is usually perceived, when we're not using a watch, as the thing that connects two events. While an Ent, like I used as an example above, might take a year to have a discussion with one of its close friends, an Elf wouldn't. They still speak at the same rate we do, and they still have bodily functions to deal with; Eating, sleeping, defecation, breathing, etc. etc. If a year was like a day to them, they just wouldn't be able to function, they would die. The series of events in their lives still require daily action, where a few hours still makes the difference between being comfortable full and being uncomfortable hungry.

If they're staring at a pot, waiting for it to boil, they're still most likely going to get impatient... If a Night Elf is hungry and they want to ask someone to go to dinner, they're not going to say "Hey, wanna grab a bite next year?" They'll ask to get up and walk out the door at a normal, human-like pace, and then eat at a normal speed, before going to bed for a normal amount of time. They still have to deal with the daily routine, and if an hour went by to them like a snap of a finger, they just couldn't function properly.

But! That's only considering the perception of time at that moment. Looking back on past events, a human and an Elf would view it completely different. Not seeing someone for ten years might be a huge deal for a human since that's a huge chunk of your life, but for an Elf it's probably kind of inconsequential. Still though, a lot can happen in ten years even for elves.



... That ended up pretty scattered, but I think I shoved everything I think in there, hopefully it's intelligible.

[Delta]

There are some points I disagree on, but with limited time, I'll just grab one to talk about for now.

Among the long-lived races, there are those who spent every day of their lives training in spell or sword with determination equal to, if not greater than, a member of a short-lived race training the same way. I do believe they would know their technique, their weapon, their incantations or their tactics more intimately. Nonetheless, it's not really accurate to say they'd always be better or would certainly win if the example individuals were to clash, because there's a lady we're not factoring in, and she's called Fortune. Luck. Chance. You can't count on certain victory when something unexpected presents itself.

That aside, ever noticed something when rolling humans in... oh, pretty much -any- setting? They're always given 'adaptability' bonuses. They can go any which way, combatively and professionally. A human's advantage is her ability to change her approach in accordance with the situation. She might not have had ten thousand years of sword training, and she might not know how to move through the forests as silently as some, but she can alter her fighting style as easily as the wind turns, and when she's caught creeping, she's seldom astonished by the fact and can react immediately.

It's not necessarily about being 'better', it's just rock, paper, and scissors.

[Loxmardin]

Among the long-lived races, there are those who spent every day of their lives training in spell or sword with determination equal to, if not greater than, a member of a short-lived race training the same way. I do believe they would know their technique, their weapon, their incantations or their tactics more intimately. Nonetheless, it's not really accurate to say they'd always be better or would certainly win if the example individuals were to clash, because there's a lady we're not factoring in, and she's called Fortune. Luck. Chance. You can't count on certain victory when something unexpected presents itself.

Oh, yes!

I agree with you there!

They have many, many years to perfect the arts that they trained in. They spend a lot of time practicing; time that the younger races don't have. At the same time, this locks them down in a set number of routines and chances are they'll be as stumped as anyone else when encountering someone, like a human, who uses techniques and fights in ways that the Night Elves failed to imagine before. After all, you can't truly learn anything new unless you try your techniques on someone who isn't trained the exact same way as you are, or had access to the exact same resources or pools of knowledge.

[Ural]

Glad you picked on those comparisons. Comparing the people you pass by in life as pets or even plants is a very... dissociative way of looking at it. You distance yourself from the objects (or people, in this case) by minimalizing their impact on your life as much as possible, in my example. It's one way of dealing with the losses of those around you if it happens all too often. Something you might remember fondly like your favourite pet dog that stuck with you for a few years when you were a kid, or your very first hamster.

How many dogs can one have in a single lifetime? What sort of impact does each have on your life, if any? If you only had one dog, would the loss of it seem greater than if you had fifty? I believe it would, if your pet was less a pet and more like a companion. That well-trained animal constantly looking to you for direction. You ask, he lies down. You throw, and he fetches. If you yell at him, he understands your tone and humbles himself to the floor. Mass Effect touched on this topic slightly when Ashley Williams is talking about the alien races. She said if you're attacked by a bear and the only way to escape is to sic your dog on it and run, you'll do it.

I believe there's something unique to each species that is only viable with members of the same species. An innate trust and understanding. Who knows the long-sufferings of all the elf/troll wars better than the surviving elves themselves? What is it to dream, desire and drive to your future than a Human? And who can screw that up quicker than humans? Probably something only grasped by the older members, and lost to the younger ones. Youth's edge is adaptability.

[Loxmardin]

Continuation on my response to Delta:

You learn a certain style and to predict certain things, and in turn how to deal with them. The mistake that I've seen many players make when it comes to ancient characters going up against the younger races is that they assume themselves to be superior based entirely on the fact that they've been practicing their fighting style for so long, as if all of those years gives a free ticket to martial superiority (or superiority in any other area, too). That is not so, in my opinion. When two different players meet eachother in a Versus game, for example... If they've never played with eachother before, there's no way of telling how it's going to end up since they don't know eachothers' playing styles and the experience they might have from before won't be as detrimental (it may and will make some difference, but it won't automatically win you the fight).

... For example, using myself.

I played in a Soul Calibur 2 tournament once. I payed against many other players who had years of practice and who just... played the game a lot. Yet, somehow, I managed to beat every single one of my opponents up until the finals through improvisation alone, no matter how well the others knew the game. I improvised and got very, very far on that.

I lost in the finals due to a misclick. My opponent said himself that if I'd been able to hit off my attack combo a second sooner, I most likely would've won. He was an expert; I was a rookie.

Of course, this isn't a completely valid comparison to, say, actual fighting. But it is relevant to consider that the ancient races are very skilled in what they know and have practiced their arts and techniques for so long that, in those particular arts and techniques, the younger races could never hope to match them. But, in WoW, the playing field isn't that leveled. Night Elves or Draenei wouldn't know how to predict or deal with fighting styles, for instance, that they've never had to study before. The idea of complete improvisation is probably lost on them since they're so set in their routines.

That train of thought make any sense?

[Aphetoros]

I am just now seeing this and I had to stop and post because I'm really sad now. I have an oak tree that you can see from the kitchen window... and I just got... so sad.

[c0rzilla]

Night Elves or Draenei wouldn't know how to predict or deal with fighting styles, for instance, that they've never had to study before. The idea of complete improvisation is probably lost on them since they're so set in their routines.

...But, wouldn't this be a complete counter to the night elves' adaptation to nature? Nature is, after all, a grand game of improvisation in order to survive. The sentinels fight with guerilla tactics. So well that Grom Hellscream states, when battling the sentinels for the first time:

"These women fight with unmatched savagery! I've never seen their equal. They are... perfect warriors."