Last edited by mordale; 2013-01-20 at 09:35 PM.
I think that it's a gameplay issue first and foremost. If elves were playable as they should be based on their history then they would be on totally different levels of combat prowess than any other race. Nothing can beat a seven thousand year old warrior. You just can't get better than him no matter your natural gifts and practise. But then, almost everyone would pick elves to be exactly that powerful.
The other problem is the game's writers. They don't seem to be especially good at writing stories and keeping things in order. So the same thousand year old characters do some incredily stupid mistakes or get bested by theoretically much weaker opponents.
I think that the problem could be resolved if playable characters were presented as young elves, who merely begin their adventures, while the older elves are written as they deserve. But in a way that their powers don't make the rest of the races represantatives seem unnecessary.
I wouldn't say nothing, a stray bullet or arrow, an explosive, shrapnel, etc. are the bad luck of the battlefield. Still, highly trained and extremely skilled real world military forces can still suffer losses at the hands of unskilled opponents, it's just rare and the ratio of their kills to losses is much higher.
I do agree, in single combat and even coordinated missions, veteran Sentinels should be a force to be reckoned with, an exceptionally tough enemy for any other military force, but in WoW they aren't, which is a problem. They barely hold ground in their home turf against Orc conscripts. Their supposed arrogance is written as just that, all bluster and no teeth. The teeth and confidence you'd expect centuries if not millennia of training and battle that *anyone* should have is not there. Blizz cdev team hates the concepts of veterans and experienced experts, and prefers the self-esteem boosting "anyone can do anything if they have their heart set on it" approach. Still this is aside from the player aspect.
In many cases players are stronger and tougher than NPCs. Really strong guards are really strong purely to immediately suppress potential zone disruptions, it's not tied in to lore. Players should not be forced into the lot of portraying a young anything, regardless of race, especially when there are plenty of older and weathered looking faces for all races. And then you have to accept that someone starting their adventure doesn't need to be a youth. Say your night elf (example) lead a dull and mundane life of 1500 years as a meat vendor, or whatever. Then you are inspired to strike out and pick up a path. Not every last Night Elf needs to fall into some in game class. There are and should be, a whole lot of mere citizens. Not adventurers or soldiers or druids or priestesses, etc. Just people selling wares, working infrastructure etc. These people live and die unspoken in the story but have to be there for things like cities to work.I think that the problem could be resolved if playable characters were presented as young elves, who merely begin their adventures, while the older elves are written as they deserve
Last edited by Justignoreme; 2013-01-20 at 09:58 PM.
I was not talking about accidental deaths. These can happen to almost everyone, at any moment. I am talking about how they would fare against an adversary from another race. For example a blood elf spellbreaker against an orc warrior. Or a night elf huntress against a troll hunter.
Real word military forces have little to do with this matter in my opinion, since we have nothing to go on other than vague, and quite wrong-to-use parallels. There are no humans with thousands of years of personal skill and experience in real life.
The problem the developers face to me seems to be that they either don't know how to write powerful elves correctly or just are not smart enough to think of what the lore means for elves.
I think that in the beginning they have to. They don't have to be young age-wise, but young in adventuring surely. Otherwise it seems weird that a character starts so weak and with so few abilities. I agree that not all NPCs shoudl be some class or other.
Last edited by Drithien; 2013-01-20 at 10:20 PM.
No, but there are humans with years of training and combat experience and thats all they need to be superior in any given situation to someone fresh out of training or even someone with years of being a thug with a gun harassing and terrorising unarmed people. Longer and larger time frames should improve things more so but there has to be a limit and no one is a "God" is my point.
Blood Elves seem to be written fine though, they *can* right powerful elves. With Night Elves, the problem I see it, is poor leadership development (Tyrande is crap), overbearing focus on one aspect, Druidism, which is neither martial nor loyal to the Kal'dorei people, and a third, harder to "prove" image that a race with strong female roles need to be shown in constant defeat and submission to everything. Most "night elf art" is showing a scantly clad slain night elf woman being defeated by some hulking male Orc or (insert Horde race). Very rarely do you ever see the opposite, and if you do, it's fan art.The problem the developers face to me seems to be that they either don't know how to write powerful elves correctly or just are not smart enough to think of what the lore means for elves.
Ya, new and inexperienced in their role as an adventurer sure, thats forced by way of you have to level up to unlock new abilities and talents, or even choose a specialisation. But still it's a limiting procedure. Thats as much game mechanics, as it is immersion and lore. More so to the prior as RPers don't care about the level they are at, but rather their knowledge of the story.I think that in the beginning they have to. They don't have to be young age-wise, but young in adventuring surely. Otherwise it seems weird that a character starts so weak and with so few abilities. I agree that not all NPCs shoudl be some class or other.
Tolkein elves are a bit mary suish and too perfect. While I would love to see the night elves given some love, I think making them 'super humans' that are always wise would be boring.
Here's the problem - if you have a race of beautiful, incredibly power and quasi-immortal characters, everyone plays them.
This has happened in all fantasy settings with these types of elves, perhaps most hilarious is the implementation of Drow in aDnD after R.A. Salvatore introduced Drizzt to the Forgotten Realms.
So everyone played Night Elves and Night Elves only in WC3? No one was a fan of humans, orcs and undead at all? I think it's a bit absurd. People might not want to be purple, and therefore won't play them.
You can have them written as beautiful, powerful and long-lived, just so long as it doesn't manifest to a level 90 Night Elf player requires an army of non-Night Elves to take down and can solo current 25 man HC content.
I quite enjoy the fact that Blood Elves are being developed as an intelligent, effective and efficient race (which you called "strong and mystical"), but few in numbers in order not to tip the balance. I'm also glad they moved away from the "evil" aura they had for most of TBC, to a point they really are not kinder or meaner than other races, like Humans.
The vision of elves, so different to Tolkien, is what makes me like Warcraft above other games. I like the more egalitarian outlook of the races, they are pretty much in the same playfield.
I'm not really a fan of Tolkien elves, they were just too removed from the world, content with keeping their secrets and awaiting the end. It wasn't until warcraft III that I started liking elves, the kaldorei fascinated me, and Sylvanas had sass; and then the blood elves in the expansion, they where really different to the elves I had seen.
Except that Warcraft 3 is an RTS, and each faction has distinct enough qualities to draw players to each of them. In WoW, well, we have an overwhelming population of Blood Elves on Horde, and Humans are jacked up so high because of Every Man for Himself.
Nelves do need distinction from their current status of Useless Idiots. Belves seem mostly fine.
Factions of WC3 have been changed over to races. WC3 Night Elves were a race of beautiful, powerful, immortals. Now they aren't. A lot of people rolled a Night Elf because of the WC3 portayal, of beautiful, powerful, immortals, not because they had great racials like Orcs and Trolls. A lot of people who did are incredibly annoyed with the turn of events for their favourite race and disillusioned with the cdevs ability to ever bring back that image they had. And when cdev's response to complaints and suggestions on the official forums is to mock fans by way of in-game diss, there's clearly no love for the race nor considerations for the fans. But then I think there was data somewhere that had a whole lot of formerly night elf hunters, rogues, warriors and druids going worgen in cata. Worgen appeared cool, and even though Blizz made them suck in lore too, at least the racials were better.
A lot of good he does with it. I'm sure if Tyrande gets shot down by the Horde in Temple of the Moon he will cry a flash flood and drown all those trying to defend.Actually, one of the strongest if not the strongest mortal in Azeroth is NE. His power was said to rival the Dreamer.
the elves live for hundreds to thousands of years..... and dont even have cars.........
jokes aside
the humans master everything in a life time (80-100 yrs in wow i think) and the elves are bumbling fools even after a few human life times
heck technology wise the humans are equal to the blood elves at least.
Last edited by GennGreymane; 2013-01-21 at 05:05 AM.
I could not agree more. "They have to be weaker than humans to let humans be the best Alliance race" - dev logic. Ferocious guerilla turned into damsels in distress. As for BE, I find them good. I believe they could've used some French vibe, considering their Highborne origin, avoidance of manual labor and a penchant for mannerisms and intrigue.
Last edited by Haven; 2013-01-21 at 05:22 AM.
i'm inclined to agree with you Drithiend on this point. It certainly seems the case in wow that they don't. For me it is coming off more as either neglect or don't care. Because i find it hard to believe they could be that bad, they just haven't been thorough enough to properly think out their own concee#pts, making ordinary youngsters like myself easily spot the flaws and inconsistencies or at least feel, "hang on, this doesn't seem right, how can a 9,000 year old being be so sloppy or so foolish - especially after dominating a world and achieving some amazing feats like discover and learn magic, the only group to have beaten the burning legion to date, twice too, an empire that has never been matched in splednour etc.. the superlatives go on), not to mention their bad ass introduction in wc3, and then when you pick up wow and play through the re-done cataclysm zones and head into pandera, you're like what is this.. are these the same group of people? dod someone cast mass confusion on the nelves??
you soon realize that everything you believed about them is being undone, how wise cna you be, if you supposedly knew teh deeps ecrets of the world, but were wrong, you ddidn't even know you came from trolls, you proclaimed your goddess, and vehementaly denied she was a naaru which she turned otu to be. bacially almost everything you've been built around has been undermined, thrown into question, proved false, from your beleif structure right through to every cool thing about you stripped away comprehensively.
it doesn't add up.
Bring back the matriarchal society and the amazon warriors that are the true night elves.