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Post by Linuviel Featherstride on Jan 23, 2007 22:42:47 GMT 1
I am finally typing down my character profile (have only had it in my head before) and have come to some difficulties. Regarding kaldorei characters age.. Linuviel is young. She has only been by herself for about a year and I am having trouble to figure out how old she is. I have read and heard that about 200-250 years on a kaldorei equalls a human 18 year old. To be rough. That just feels strange for me. Is an elf so slow growing and do their development take so long time. I would rather like to se them slightly slower than humans in the growth and development. Say 18 years (human) = 30-40 years as a kaldorei. It feels strange that a kaldorei kid is a kid for 200+ years. Another way to see it would be that their culture is to stay home under their parents protection for a very long time and that they later on move out. But then it is not really about maturity. At least not in a physical meaning, I presume that their minds are evolving during their entire life like all other humanoids.
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Post by Morthgael on Jan 24, 2007 10:22:04 GMT 1
Night elf maturity. Night Elves mature at about 150 years, and live up to 8000-10,000 years. So think carefully about the age of your characters when roleplaying them.
Maturity here seems like humans hitting the age when they able to reproduce, ie around 14-15. And around 250-300 I'd see them becoming mentally mature, ie considered as a proper adult.
That's what the lore says, so that's something that is better stick to. Than to make own explanations. Like it is impossible to have your character be born in Teldrassil unless she was tiny toddler.
It's better not to compare night elves for humans. They're totally different race and considering they were immortal for ages, they're pretty different than humans when it comes to aging etc. Some elf might be 1500 years, still living with her parents, "not seen the world" and would a lot less mature in a way, than say, 300 years old elf who's been thrown around the world. The time doesn't flow to elves like it does for humans. Elves can, as someone said, have spent "500 years eating, drinking, fishing and visiting their friends" and not having major drama of their life;P
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Lana
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Post by Lana on Jan 24, 2007 23:57:23 GMT 1
Good ol' professor T wrote in one of his books the "comparison" between elves and men. Even though it is very far from Warcraft, it might be worth pondering over.
Their minds develop quicker than their bodies; by their first year, they can speak, walk and even dance, and their quicker onset of mental maturity makes young Elves seem older than they really are. Physical puberty comes in around their fiftieth to one hundredth year (by age fifty they reach their adult height), and by their first hundred years of life outside the womb all Elves are fully grown.
Tolkien was unclear on how fast Elves actually grew. In Laws and Customs, he states that Elves' bodies develop slower than Men from the start. By the age of twenty, they might still appear physically seven years old, whereas Men at the same age are physically mature.
This has basically been the model for all elves in fantasy ever since and WoW is no exception. When calculating from human to elven/elven to human years, you always used the number 144. Elven years were 144 times longer then human, since their lifespan were so different.
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Post by Ilaran on Jan 25, 2007 15:57:09 GMT 1
Not to correct since I have nothing to say in this anymore but... Tolkien and WoW has nothing to do with each other ,,, If Blizzards states they develop differently that is then the rule in this game... Tolkien is being copied often but just as often lovers of him appear to think that every poor elf or orc has something to do with him in some way... and sorry but they don't neccesarily do.. and no he didnt invent elf's in general since they were all around before he made his books.. So how elves are seen upon doesn't nessesarily be as Tolkien elf... - Just a comment -
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Lana
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Post by Lana on Jan 30, 2007 9:15:43 GMT 1
Not to correct since I have nothing to say in this anymore but... Tolkien and WoW has nothing to do with each other ,,, If Blizzards states they develop differently that is then the rule in this game... Tolkien is being copied often but just as often lovers of him appear to think that every poor elf or orc has something to do with him in some way... and sorry but they don't neccesarily do.. and no he didnt invent elf's in general since they were all around before he made his books.. So how elves are seen upon doesn't nessesarily be as Tolkien elf... - Just a comment - Tolkien and WoW doesn't have anything to do with each other, correct. Elves (of almost any kind) and Tolkien, however: do. Take a look at night elven culture, their view on the world and the other races as well as their connection to nature (though extremeley enchanced, night elves share this with Elves too). And yes, Illie, he did invent the "modern" elf. Ergo, the type of elf that stands tall, strong and looks quite good. Before him there were only small elves (spelled 'elfs') that lived in flowers and flew around with their wings (much like Shakespeares and such). Someone once said that Tolkien wasn't the father of today's fantasy, but the nanny. - Just an answer
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Post by elrohm on Jan 30, 2007 14:09:16 GMT 1
The traditional folklore image of elves that Tolkien changed was of creatures that could pass as humans at times but were fey, unpredictable and very dangerous, prone to stealing babies, cursing crops and livestock and killing people who tresspassed where they shouldn't.
For a fantasy version of elves much closer to the old view try 'The Broken Sword' by Poul Anderson.
And for any Tolkien fans - Lissenen ar maska'lalaith tenna lye omentuva
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Post by Morthgael on Jan 31, 2007 14:06:05 GMT 1
Tolkien and WoW doesn't have anything to do with each other, correct. Elves (of almost any kind) and Tolkien, however: do. Ilaran is right, so's Lanande to some level. however I fully agree with Ilaran that no matter how much wow elves or any other elves are like Tolkien's, if WoW itself offers explanation for their age and aging, that is something we should go with. Not the 'tolkien way' just because wow copies tolkien. Tolkien himself wished that his works could be used as a base for new stories, new worlds, new ideas and so forth. Which happened:)
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Lana
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Post by Lana on Jan 31, 2007 22:12:00 GMT 1
You're perfectly right Morthgael, though I feel as you misunderstood me a little: the quote from one of his books was not meant as a rule that goes for all elves, it was more my way of saying that a human ages faster then an elf, and an elf ages slower in body but faster in mind.
Oh, and Elrohm: Garo vronwe ar istathach bâd chîn.
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Post by Feralan on Feb 3, 2007 16:53:39 GMT 1
I admit the idea of elves taking 100+ years to reach maturity has always bothered me a bit. Just what takes them so long? Physical growth? Wouldn't it imply some massive metabolical deficits if it takes an elf five to ten times as long to grow to adulthood as a human? Not to mention the incredible strain it would put on the parents/society. Is the mental development slowed to a crawl? Same problems. Maybe I'm looking at the issue with two much of a biologist's mindset, but I can't help it -- I like some logic in my fantasy, and if the rules just state that elves reach adulthood at 100+ years without saying why, it bugs me. Personally, I like to explain it as a mixture of physical and cultural issues. I'm not sure where Syren found the statement that Kaldorei mature at roughly 150 years but if we take that as our "official" figure I would consider a 150-year-old elf to be a fully functional, trained, independent adult. 50 years could roughly be the time when puberty begins (matching Lana's Tolkien quote), maybe the equivalent of a human kid of 10-12 years. At 100 years, a Kaldorei could be fully physically mature like we are at about 16-18 years. And the last 50 years would be when they polish off their apprenticeship in whatever path of life they pursue (similar to our university studies or job training) before proving that they have learned enough to be a responsible, dependable and skilled member of their society.
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Post by tahkeelah on Feb 4, 2007 23:28:24 GMT 1
I love this discussion. Ever since I looked at the ages for role playing warcraft elves, I've been thinking about this. World of Warcraft is very vague in it's lore because people take their info from different sources. The old games, books, d&d etc. And since the only game I played before WoW was the first Warcraft Strategy and I never read any of the books (and try to ignore the D&D input), I have developed the opinion that blizzard is simply not that worried about the details of such things when they have things like gameplay and graphics to worry about.
From a realism stand point... Humans mature extremely slowly compared to other creatures. Dogs and cats can mature in a year or two, smaller creatures can mature in a matter of months, weeks, days. If we talk about insects it just gets silly. So no, I don't think it's unrealistic to suggest elves take and extroardinarily long time to mature compared to humans.
Slow physical maturity suggests slow mental maturity. One reason humans take so long to mature is because the brain needs time to grow. Many animals are born and are almost as mentally mature as their parents in a few minutes. It's important for them to survive. However, the human brain is very large compared to most other animals and when we're born it's, I think about 1/4 the mature size. I've heard it suggested that this is because it would be impossible to give birth to babies with bigger heads. Ouch.
Another reason humans take so long to mature is that a lot of our behaviour is learned rather than instinct. Kaldorei culture is probably much more complicated than human culture. This means that even if Kaldorei can mature physically, they may still have a lot to learn. It is likely that they have had a more relaxed pace for thousands of years, due to their immortality. For now, I think the result should be that Kaldorei are very slow to learn new things and to mature psychologically compared to humans.
I'm sure the tolkien way works as well, but what's the point in role playing a race that doesn't have a few faults... y'know... besides the self righteousness and general racism?
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Post by Elendrel on Feb 20, 2007 4:29:09 GMT 1
I've also been wondering about night elf ages recently, trying to decide how old Elendrel is and i read somewhere that there ages go something like this: Adulthood: 300 Middle Age: 500 Old: 650 Venerable: 700 At first i thought thats a bit strange because The War of the Ancients was over 10000 years before warcraft 1 but Tyrande, Malfurion, Illidan and others where present and who are still alive now when according to this they should be dead by now. However i then read on and it suggested that because of thier immortallity they remained youthful at about 300 years old which made more sense, now the night elves have lost their immortality though that should mean we start to age again. So if we are over 300 years old in age then we should be age 306 (6 years since we lost our immortality in warcraft 3 and if because of our immortaility we stayed youthful we would "stop ageing" in a sense at 300 years old). So if my character was born 7326 years ago just before the high elfs where exiled then would i refer to my age as 7326 or 306 because i stopped ageing at 300 years of age and have only just begun to again in the past 6 years? Sorry for the length i seem to have got a bit carried away but i'm slightly confused at this age thing, hopefully i haven't confused other people as well now with this new theory .
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Post by Yenlui Starwind on Feb 20, 2007 19:16:59 GMT 1
your age is your age, just because the boons of Nordrassil prevented your metabolism from deterioration doesn't mean that you have lost the years that have passed. on the whole tolkien issue though: The Elves of Tolkien's middle earth is not an invention of his own, nor is the Valar, or the Maya.
The Eldar (Sindarin: 'First Born') is a cut and paste copy of the 'Ljusalver' lit. 'light elves' of norse myth, these elves lived in the lands 'between' 'Asgård' (the realm of the Aesir gods; Thor, Freyah, Njord and so on) and 'Midgård' (midgaard or lit. Middle-earth) wich is the realm of men. Their kin is the 'Svartalfer' ('Black Elves') , where the 'lightelves are of fair complexion with golden hair and all, the blackelves lives beneath the mountain, have ashen skin and dark hair yet are otherwise similar to their surface-dwelling kin. they are also great smiths and craftsmen, rivalled only by the Dwarven master-smiths.
Both of these elvenkin are neutral in the struggle between the Aseir and their Giant and troll enemies, nor do they take part in the cataclysm of Ragnarök, only the Aesir, vanir and the human Erinhärjar warriors of Valhall fight in the last battle,.. the elvs and dwarves just try to hide from it.
..... and now we're far far from the point where we started.. so I'll just shut up =)
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Lana
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Post by Lana on Feb 21, 2007 10:44:44 GMT 1
Bof, as the french say. True that Tolkien drew heavy from Norse myth (junk), but in overall Scandinavian and old British as well (they had "elves" too, however these were just very beautiful, wise and often forebode a great event), so to say that it's a "cut and paste" is very wrong. And there is also a difference between "alf" and "alv" (both translates as "elf"), since the "alf" was more of an "added race" that didn't have a greater role to play in the myths (just Tor and Odin all over the place...)
Further more, "Ljusalver" and "Svaralfer" resemble the Vanyar (note: Eldar was the name of all elves that passed the sea to Valinor, whilst those who stayed in Beleriand were the Sindarin. Those who dídn't even leave the Waters of Wakening were called Avari, the Unwilling) and the Noldor, though all three "clans", namely Noldor, Vanyar and Teleri (Sindar) were "fair and tall, each skilled in the craft they held at heart". Vanyar liked song, but were still skilled blacksmiths. Noldor were master-smiths, and only the dwarves could rival their armor and weaponmaking. Teleri exceeded in ship-making but were very fond of song, mainly the reason the were called the "Lindar" during their early days (Linda: singer). And the elves of Tolkien were good, in the meaning that they fought evil and actually lived in Elvenhome, Valinor, Eldamar, Tirion and all the names it had. Also, the Valar and Mayar have likeness to the Norse Gods (Asagudar), but unlike the Norse Gods, the Valar were just guardians of the world, Eä, not the rulers of it. The Mayar were also "spirits" that were between Valar and Elf.
Yes, Tolkien did draw from the Myths, he even wrote it on several accounts. But to say that it's a "cut and paste", is offensive to those who took his work to heart.
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Post by Feralan on Feb 21, 2007 11:31:35 GMT 1
Whoa, mythology and Tolkien buffs ... I'm totally clueless about both. Elendrel, I'd be dubious about those figures since Kaldorei live much longer than 700 years. I think the numbers are "another D&D-related inconsistency" (insert rant about the damn d20 system here). Proportionally, a human would be venerable at 40 or so. Tyrande, Malfurion and Illidan were all at least 3000 years old during the Sundering, and apparently still considered rather young then. Granted, the Well of Eternity was influencing the Kaldorei in those days ... but I think it would be odd to say the least if the night elves did not even live a thousand years anymore now, with almost half of their lifetime spent as children and adolescents before plunging into rapid deterioration.
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Lana
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Post by Lana on Feb 22, 2007 10:23:41 GMT 1
Sorry for being a postaholic but just wanted to add something that Feralan wrote on the "rapid deterioration". Namely, the years between the Sundering and the creation of Nordrassil. According to the timeline, it was roughly 1000 years between, without the Well or any other source of immortality, so as Fer said: 700 years is not enough.
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