Do you think a WoW race could ever extinguish?

[Deleted]

In the future Warcraft, do you think any of the actual playable races can extinguish?

I see Night Elves, sadly, a race close to extinction due to their wildness and their link to the suffering nature (think at Ashenvale).
Also Taurens like NEs.

[Deadmedic]

lore wise? there are prolly 10 darkspear trolls left, hell they started with a small force on a ravished island. game wise? never, why would you piss of your playerbase like that

[echoSAW]

I would also think the night elves. As you mentioned, Ashenvale is in a bad way. There are many fires that need extinguishing.

[Ciddy]

In lore, Draenei have been close to extinction more than once. Only a small handful of the entire Draenei population escaped Argus. Then they got just a little bit comfortable on Draenor, and demon-crazed Orcs hunted them down to near extinction. I imagine they probably had a few deaths when the Exodar crashed. I'd be curious to know what their actual population number is right now.

High Elves came very close as well. Almost all of their race was wiped out when Arthas went after them, and most of the survivors became Blood Elves. There are very few of the original Alliance-loyal High Elves remaining. But the OP said PLAYABLE races, so you can't really count High Elves.

[Kelthos]

Since about half of the player races have faced near-extinction at one point or another, I'd say probably not... in the case of Night Elves, with their immortality gone, I'm sure they've come to view procreation as pretty darn important and are working to rectify that.

[mahonisaya]

If any race was to die off it would definetly be trolls because of how few are left. The elves would survive because although they are in tune with nature they do not die when it does. I dont know where that idea came from but they areonly connected to nature by the world tree keeping them immortal which it no longer does. For playable races, they wouldn't kill a race off because people would get angry even if lore allows it.

[Deleted]

Night Elves seem in a perfectly good spot to me. They've got Ashenvale back now and are probably the second most powerful force in the Alliance after the Dwarves. I doubt they'll ever have a race, playable or not go extinct. Even when we're extinguishing the Black Dragonflight they still leave things open with Wrathion (and more implicitly Sabellion.). The High Elves are probably in the most danger of dying out, but the prominence in the Alliance is ever increasing. If and when they become playable (either as a fully fledged race or a sub race) they'll be safe from extinction because of gameplay.

[Deleted]

lore wise? there are prolly 10 darkspear trolls left, hell they started with a small force on a ravished island. game wise? never, why would you piss of your playerbase like that

I didn't understand anything about this comment

[greysaber]

i'd love to see trolls and orcs disappear, for obvious reasons.

[Tastyfish]

I think the blood elves are the most viable. They would not stop being, just go back to non fel tainted high elves. Aren't we seeing that anyhow with the Light+arcane sunwell influence anyhow?

[TheWindWalker]

Okay so like when Mists was new and I was leveling alongside my friend, we had gotten to the top right of Kun-Lai and ran into the Troll invasion quests and saw a "Farraki" and I actually stopped and said "I can't kill her. That'd be genocide. She's the only one left."

[Tastyfish]

I didn't understand anything about this comment

Dark Spear started off as a small tribe offshoot of the larger troll race. The amount of PC characters do not represent the apparent reality of the clan, which is much much smaller?

[Deleted]

Okay so like when Mists was new and I was leveling alongside my friend, we had gotten to the top right of Kun-Lai and ran into the Troll invasion quests and saw a "Farraki" and I actually stopped and said "I can't kill her. That'd be genocide. She's the only one left."

I'd say the Farraki are probably one of the strongest Troll tribe at the moment, along with the Darkspear and the Zandalari. They took some hits years ago in Zul'farrak and then sent a few forces to Pandaria. I don't think Trolls in general are in danger of going extinct, but each individual tribe is pretty dire. Darkspears where only a small tribe to begin with, and took casualties from the Naga, Zalazane and most recently the Rebellion. I'd put them at 200 at call it generous. Their power derives only from the rest of the Horde. The Zandalari are in dire straits after the Cataclysm, but I think their tribe was so powerful that even after all of their losses they remain one of the strongest. The Amani and Gurubashi both took serious hits in BC/Vanilla respectively and then both in Cata and Mists. And the Drakari...Well, they were virtually extinct by the end of Wrath. The forces in ToT must have been their last reserves. If there's any more than a few dozen left I'd be very surprised.

[TheWindWalker]

I'd say the Farraki are probably one of the strongest Troll tribe at the moment, along with the Darkspear and the Zandalari. They took some hits years ago in Zul'farrak and then sent a few forces to Pandaria.

Unless there's something in the books I missed, you're gonna need to source this one. Tanaris was already, in their owns words, "a wasteland" and Zul'Farakk was cleared out by adventurers a long time ago. There's virtually no Trolls farther than a few camps in front of the door and canonically they've been raided to recover a lost artifact weapon. It's an empty desert with very little food or water and they've been surrounded by Horde and Alliance forces.

And the Drakari...Well, they were virtually extinct by the end of Wrath. The forces in ToT must have been their last reserves. If there's any more than a few dozen left I'd be very surprised.

I'd say you have Farakki and Drakkari reversed, honestly. Zul'drak got hit hard by the Scourge but to quote one of their dungeon bosses "We fought back the Scourge, what chance you thinkin you got?" Zul'drak is a fairly large quadrant of Northrend and borders Grizzly Hills which is ripe with food, water and unscourged woods.

[shoc]

Bilgewater Goblins are all from the same slave-boat, there are probably only like, 20 of them in the lore. Player wise, that is.

[Karnak]

No, absolutely not. It isn't possible for a PC race in any MMO to go extinct because that would require either the deletion of player characters or the radical alteration of player characters. My Draenei Shaman main would, if the Draenei were made extinct, need to be either deleted or forcibly changed to a Dwarf. Either would make me unhappy.

It also isn't possible for a race to change factions in a faction based MMO because it would break guilds up.

[Mihalik]

Forsaken can't reproduce reliably. Now with the Valkyrs they are able to replenish their numbers to some extent, but their Valkyrs are a finite resource, having only a handful of them, something that can be taken from them relatively easily. Especially of the living races decide to do so.

The Tauren are also in a relatively bad shape, as Thrall and his Horde literally pulled them back from the brink of extermination when they arrived to Kalimdor.

Of the Alliance races more then half of them are on the brink of immediate extinction. The Gilneans (Worgen) are only a tiny refugee population, that barely has any meaningful presence in Darnassus, and some leftovers in Gilneas, with no major settlement or population center left.

The Gnomes have been a refugee population as well for years now, with no major population center or concentration of Gnomes left.

And the Draenei, which have been on the brink of extinction for ages. They lost most of their population when the Orcs massacred them on Draenor. Also they don't seem to be a particularly fertile race like Goblins, but their near limitless natural lifespans are a major factor for their survival so far. They would be the easiest to kill off as a race. Destroy Exodar and what is left of their scattered populations would simply fade away eventually.