Not all species should age at the same rate. They shouldn’t have a ‘universal age’ where they all suddenly reach adulthood.
That, honestly, would be a lot weirder. Every single race reaching adulthood by age 21, no matter whether they’re Orcs, Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Trolls, Dragons. That, IMO, would be weird.
As long as they’re physically mature, and have actually reached ‘adulthood’ and are not still kids who are now ‘considered to be women/men because you live in a harsh world’ it shouldn’t matter to us if the age they reach adulthood is 10, 18, 21 or 30. It’s just a number.
I treat it the same way I treat animals reaching adulthood IRL. A cat is a mature adult the moment they hit 7 years old, a dog’s ‘mature adult’ age varies depending on breed, but they’re no longer considered to be puppies after 1 to 2 years. Horses generally reach full maturity after 5 years. On the flip side of that, a Tortoise will not reach adulthood until they’re 20, a Crocodile reaches maturity at 16.
Each species is going to age at a different rate, is my point. That’s not something we should consider abnormal.
While you’re not wrong, we have to consider that this is a fantasy setting, so deciding these rules have a bigger effect.
Yes, dogs for instance fully mature in 1 or 2 years, but for instance, they don’t “grow up” in a human sense, because they aren’t humans.
But, warcraft races, and most fantasy races have more or less human aspects, because the ones that designed said races are, well, human, so much so that said races make relationships and bonds with humans of friendship, romance, rivalry, hate and anger.
We have seen dragons form all of those with humans and other races in Warcraft, Kalecgos dated Jaina, Malygos took vendetta on all mortal kind due to their usage of magic and so on.
TL:DR. Makes sense for fantasy races to have different rates of maturity and aging, but it also makes sense for players to feel weird about it and neither side is wrong. For instance there is a Fighting game series that has a human king that whose wife is from another race, and she is like 5 years old, and their son is like 3 and he is also full grown. People will get weirded out by that even if in universe makes sense.
As long as they are ‘adults’ as in, they’ve reached physical and mental maturity, the age they reach that is irrelevant.
If an Orc reaches adulthood at 13, proper adulthood, both physical and mental, then they’re adults. End of story. That goes both ways. Gnomes for example are still considered teenagers when they’re 22, so they won’t reach adulthood until a while after that, possibly not until they’re 30 or older. But once they reach adulthood, they’re adults.
People need to stop associating real life humans with fantasy races in video games. Outside of cultural inspirations, they’re nothing alike. Are there tall, lanky humans that exist? Absolutely. Do any of them have blue skin, massive feet with two toes and huge tusks? No, no they don’t. So treating them like they’re real life human beings and thus have to follow real life human ageing/maturity standards is honestly stupid.
Obviously there are limits to this, we have to assume in some cases based on lack of information or rely on non-canon info like the Warcraft RPG since most races don’t have defined ages outside of that. Because of that lack of info, most folks use the Warcraft RPG anyway since the rule of thumb is:
Canon Information > Non-Canon Information > No Information
And in the Warcraft RPG, ages of maturity vary considerably. 40 for Dwarves and Gnomes, 20 for Goblins, 15 (or 50) for a Tauren etc etc.
I think it’s honestly pretty stupid to be weirded out over a fantasy race reaching maturity faster than IRL humans do. But hey, that’s just me. To each their own.
Flametongue = title for dragonspawn that have “exceptional skill in combat, strategy, and leadership”; they are again described with “superior intellect” lmao
Scalebane = “veterans who have mastered all levels of their offensive and defensive training”
Pretty sure this is old RPG lore, so that’s cool to see.
In regards to the earlier discussion about night elves and first druids, it’s been a weird mess since Legion. That introduced a group of pre-Malfurion “nature users” in Suramar with the arcan’dor, who seemed exactly like druids in every way but somehow didn’t qualify as druids? Around the same time Chronicle also said Cenarius taught the tauren nature magic pre-night elf empire but also reiterated that Malfurion was still the first druid, so there seems to be something that separates “nature magic users” and “druids”. Maybe it’s access to the Emerald Dream?
I’m pretty sure the idea from the old website’s encyclopedia is initially night elves lived in harmony with Cenarius but as they grew more focused on the arcane they withdrew from him and Cenarius respected their wishes and stayed distant, so I guess that’s what this book is referring to? The War of the Ancients books also alluded to this briefly by saying Cenarius once had night elf followers but they don’t count as night elves anymore because they’d been changed by his magic (the implication at the time was keepers of the grove and dryads, though I think nowadays they’re more literally Cenarius’s children than that).
It’s noted specifically as a legend. Like most legends, there’s often a kernel of truth, but they’re not always accurate.
Only Dark Trolls are mentioned specifically. Not any other type of troll. Which means the Zandalari, Amani, Gurubashi and Drakkari (all the empire builders who made large cities) are not part of the legend.
It does not say that the trolls are inferior in any way. At worst the passage describes their encampments as ‘rustic’. This fits with Chronicle lore however, which specifically states that Dark Trolls did not build large cities and instead chose to be closer to nature. So their encampments would reflect that and likely be made from wood, branches and leaves, rather than stone and precious metals.
I think the wording could’ve been better. Superior intellect basically implies brain development disparity via WoE/titan magic diffusion. It sets the implication that access to magic = intelligence. So that makes me question that entire framework cause then those races that couldn’t be Mages (e.g. Vanilla Dwarves, Orcs, Tauren) aren’t intelligent? And then what about those races with access to magic then get overwhelmed by non-mages? Just say having access to magic made the Night Elves formidable at that time period because there was no precedent or knowledge on how to handle that. Simple as that.
Perhaps. Although we do know that titan blood/order magic has drastic effects on those exposed to it. When you think about the Dark Trolls who camped around the Well of Eternity. They were 100% exposed to the energies of that blood.
It actually reminds me of what happened with the Orcs and Mannoroth in a way. Even Orcs who didn’t drink the blood, like Orgrim and Durotan, had their skin turn green simply by being exposed to the fel energy, which demon blood is filled with.
Headcanon theory time: With the Dark Trolls settling around the well, chances are they were not only exposed to the energy of the well, but also drank from the waters themselves. If drinking demon blood makes one stronger, more aggressive, vicious and brutal. Could it be feasible that drinking Titan blood would make one smarter, give them raw arcane power and make them more agile?
No, what’s a legend is the story of how the Dark Trolls came to evolve into Nelves, the meta commentary about their intellectual superiority isn’t part of the legend, it’s a modern appreciation of the Dark Troll VS Nelf comparison
Irrelevant because the only Dark Troll we’ve ever met (Speaker Ik’nal) was as intelligent as any other Troll + Troll subtypes are literally only a matter of environmental adaptation, so absolutely zero reason for Dark Trolls to be less intelligent than the other groups
Meaning that any comment regarding Dark Trolls’ intelligence applies to all Trollkind
(also the presence or absence of a monumental architecture tradition says nothing of intelligence anyway)
“superior” is an adjective with a comparative meaning. Who are the Nelves superior to then ?
I am a fairly intelligent individual. When I did my military entrance examinations to determine what roles I could apply for, I scored among the top 10%, qualifying for positions in military intelligence.
I have a fairly high IQ as well.
But if you were to compare me to the late Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein, they’d have run circles around me and made me look like the class dunce. It’s true that I am ‘inferior’ to them. But that doesn’t mean I’m not intelligent. It doesn’t mean I’m a slackjawed moron. It just means they were far smarter than I am.
We can’t deal in absolutes here. And saying “Well if someone else is intellectually superior to you, that means you’re an idiot.” well that’s an absolute. All of us, I’d wager, are intelligent individuals. But are any of us Stephen Hawking levels of intelligent? Probably not. That’s not a mark against us. We’re not stupid. We’re just not as smart as he was.
But I think there are definitely folks looking at this through a lense of racial prejudice and that is making them see racist intent where there isn’t any. It’s been happening a lot lately too. Now granted, there have been 100% valid cases where there has been racist stuff in the game. I’m thinking of the Quashi incident, which I and many others pushed back against and demanded be changed. (the whole Quashi thing was implemented in Cataclysm but wasn’t changed until earlier this year because it was overlooked by the developers when they went through the game clearing up inappropriate content).
But do I think that there is some racist bloke working on Blizzard books who is trying to see how much racism he can cram into the pages before he gets fired? No.
I can see why people think it’s racist though. I mean, intentional or not, it is suggesting the dark trolls were pretty stupid before coming into contact with the well
