So i was reading the LotR again, and onto the Silmarrillion and Unifinished tales, and it kept striking me repeatedly, esp in the Council of Elrond chapter and other sections that spoke of the Elves that this is how i expected night elves to be a lot more like.
Elrond and co in his description typifies how i would expect beings that have lived thousands of years and are considered wise and to have accomplished great deeds to behave and to be described. Both in martial and magical splendour too. The way he describes their magic too seems an almost natural craft rather than explosive magic, again putting me in remembrance of the night elves and their great care to work in harmony with nature to enhance and preserve it. This i feel was a great thing to have in warcraft, alongside high and blood elves which were developed into deviations from this, where arcane was almost an intense and unnatural twisting and manipulating of the fabric of nature to achieve ends, somethinig that altho may have been common practice once a long long time ago, was viewed as disruptive, seductive and natural, a course that the elves had abandoned, but amongst them was still much power, stature and wisdom. IT seemed more natural and more appealing and authentic like this. Showing they got the right jist of it, but disappointed when they went into detail in some of the novels which I have read nearly all of.
The way Tolkein describs them, ..in LotR much of the lines dedicated to them looks at the distant past, yet, their current state since no less diminished.
Unlike the night elves in warcraft, they don't in one telling appear, fierce, strong and wise, and then in another telling (i.e. cataclysm and beyond) seem so inept and foolish.
It's really sad to me, for i really do like warcraft for having such a detailed uuniverse, and 3 almost 4 distinct type of elves, night elves, high elves, blood elves and highbourne .. i like that there are lots of other races, and you get to go into them too, goblins, orcs, tauren, trolls, forsaken etc, they're ot just thrown in your face or used only as plot devices to display the grevity of evil.
But the nihgt elves for their background have been disappointingly and poorly handled of late . I find this sad, and every time i read LotR or any of the other tolkein works, I can't shake but feel they should be more like that.. this is how i would expect beingst hat are thousands of years old and have fought and prevailed against the increidble odds that the warcraft story gave them.
when you look at the set up of the sunering, the legion, how the story goes, the power, the dread, i really expect much more from the night elven race when written into the storyline in game or in the books. Having immortality woudl have been nice, but not essential, it needn't have gone for balance purposes at all, fi it was a plot device purely, then great, use it, tell a great tale from it, but if it was because being playable means that they had to be made crap, then that seems like poor decision making to me. Furthermore i do not see why the stature, wisdom , courage, or sheer remakrableness of the nihght elven people need to be diminished at all because they are playable. Why? becuase it seems to such a sd and un-necessary loss to rob Azeroth of that calibre, even if you were t o write a rising again, to numerous and too poor have been too many of the decisions and actions the night elves of Azeroth have been wrtitten to make in recent time. yet it isn't unsalvaageable.
So, do they feel that writing such courage into a people or group would be unrealistic or improper? because the way tolkein writes it, it flows so well, and when they were introduced in warcraft, it seemed greater still would be the night elves of the west. Alas, Richard Knaak is no Tolkein, and the character and description of elves, was not handled with such skill, eloquence or wisdom sadly.
And sad it is, for the current character and description of night elves as they have been appearing of late, does not match at all that of those whose deeds were made known to us and witnessed in warcraft 3 and the story told before wow. In fact, they seem two completely different groups of people, which is frustrating to see, because it is quite so obviously a bad realization.
Whoever has been writing the role of the night elves in wow since cataclysm, either has not really done his due diligence or cares little for them, or is just not very skilled. Chris Metzen should enver have allowed those quests to go out like that, and demanded they be re-writtne fitting the original concept of the night elves that had been put out in wc3 and the stories told just before wow.
Yet i puzzles me they can write so badly about this and so unfavourably when clearly when telling the story of blood elves, orcs and humans you can see a much imroved quality.
Finally I would point out, it is not the quantity of night elven focus that concerns me, it is the quality. Tolkein in LotR and Hobbit, wrote little of them, but wrote them very well. HOw do you realize beings that are thousands of years old, who constnatly , (Welll at least up to the ctaclysm) performed deeds of great valor, might and courage, of great wisdom too - well, read how tolkein writes when he writes of Elrond, or Glorfindel, or Gilgalad, or Luhien etc, etc, and it is with such sagely wisdom, stature, valor and might you would expect to be clearly seen inthe Malfurion's, Tyrande's, Shandris, Jared Shadowsong's, Broll Bearmantle's, Mordent Evenshade etc etc and co.
That is the bearing of an ancient and wise being who has triumphed in great peril with deeds of great valor. Yes the elves are great, but they don't seem impossibly so too either, and not all of them to a man are like that, but amongst them you have the highest concentration of valor, wisdom, strength and fairness. And the way he writes them, men certainly can and do rise t match their deeds, you never think that men are lesser because they are just plain inferrior, but more because of the choices and are shown to be able to be just as good as Elves, without making the Elves look silly and stupid. Look at how he writes in Arargorn in the Lord of the rings.. the book mind moreso than the film cos you get a more in-depth look, Altho GLorfindel might have an edge in fairness , and wisdom, Arargorn is certainly worthy of a place among the kingly type Elven Lord as an example, and he's not alone.
This is how you write it. It doesn't have to be identical, but you would have some care in the portray for which what i have witnessed in warcraft just bitterly disappoints to the extent it annoys me so to see any night elf, and dread rather than look with excitement when they play a part in the story.