Night Elves are technically trolls, they’re just mutated by magic lol
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But like you mentioned how your tank isn’t canon. it literally doesn’t matter. the champion could be the tank, the crap dps, the healer. whoever. the point is that the champion doesn’t go in there alone and can’t do it alone.
well in that case we know they lived on hyial blizzard said the twilights attacked them
Khadgar never told me to bring friends, either did jaina when I did the dazalor quests
i been saying this!
night elf culture is basically like troll culture too only the story goes out of its way to make it sound more “civilized”… they don’t talk with the kinda problematic accents, they call things gods instead of loa, stuff like that lol etc.
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Do you think you did either of those alone?
storywise yeah
I might be rehashing a dead argument, but I’ve been thinking about this, and it’s pretty interesting.
TL;DR: The night elves wrongfully took the lands from the trolls initially. However, they’ve spent many resources maintaining/preserving the lands for 10,000 years, thus establishing their own claim by conceptually (and physically) transforming the lands into something different. Additionally, the lands were OOCly established as “night elf lands”, so “night elf fans” would feel slighted if they were to lose them.
Complete Thoughts (it's to long, and I'm too lazy to condense)
I’m going to neglect a few arguments that have been made in favor of the night elves, because, ultimately, my argument does favor the night elves. So, I’m ignoring:
- The map showing the troll empire probably didn’t extend into what is now Ashenvale
- The night elves might not have forcefully taken any land from the trolls
- Today’s night elves are no the same faction within the race that initiated the conquering
Ultimately, I do not believe this is a question that can be answered with WoW Lore. Because…
It’s a question around the philosophy of economics, which perhaps manages to be even more vague than WoW lore. However, it’s fun to toss around in my head. The core question is: “where does ownership come from?” I’m by no means well-versed on philosophy or economics, but I understand just enough to get it all wrong, so, by forums standards, I’m basically an expert.
There are certain schools of philosophy that define ownership as “derived from labor”, at least originally. I won’t go into full context, because that’s giving a little too much hatefuel to the forums. However, suffice to say, what it means is “ownership can be gained by exchanging a resource for an object.” in the immediate, it feels right, and it’s a good enough definition for WoW lore.
Here’s an idealized, hypothetical metaphor to explain. Go back before every inch of land was claimed by someone. There’s a newly discovered forest. In said forest, a settler finds a tree. The tree is owned by no one. He cuts the tree down, hews it into lumber, and then turns the lumber into a chair. Thus, he now owns the chair based on two criteria. First, it was unowned prior. Second, he has given a resource (his labor) to increase the value of the wood.
However, he can bestow ownership rights to another person - i.e. he can give the chair to someone. He could, for example, sell the chair. Wherein the buyer owns money, and he owns the chair, so the buyer can exchange ownership rights of the money for ownership rights of the chair. All is well, because ownership rights were given/exchanged willingly.
Now, were someone to take the chair, because those “rights” were never given, the original settler still owns the chair.
Now, expand this to the “troll v. night elf” lore. What it suggests is that, yes, the Trolls still own the land. They never ceded ownership rights to the night elves, so the night elves have no claim.
Except… That doesn’t feel right for the night elves’ claim to Ashenvale or any land. There’s an in-universe and out-of-universe reason for that. The in-universe explanation relies on that philosophy, and the out-of-universe explanation has to do with our favorite topic: retcons.
Back to the philosophy… As I said, ownership is derived from resources, wherein labor is a resource. Thusly, on the scale of 10,000 years… It feels as though there is a time component to this.
Go back to my chair metaphor. Let’s say the thief keeps the chair in his family for generations, hundreds of years. It’s become an antique! They’ve spent money and time maintaining the chair. Now, let’s say a descendant of the settler comes to those of the thief and says, “I want my chair back.” The thief’s descendants would respond with, “No. We’ve kept it safe and protected for hundreds of years!”
I’d argue, though the thief had no right to the chair, his family, in this situation, does. Why? Because it’s no longer just a chair. It’s an antique. They had to expend resources to maintain and preserve the chair, thus transforming it from the original item. Despite the fact that it is physically the same chair, it is conceptually different. And… I feel like this is sufficient, because “ownership” is conceptual. There is no physical law of nature that defines ownership, it’s a man-made idea.
Thus, it feels like the settler’s family’s original claim to the chair has waned, even though the original theft was undeniably wrong.
One might argue that the “family of the thief” and “the thief” are different people, and his descendants can’t be held accountable for his actions; however, the night elves were the same people that took the land. My argument to that is that doesn’t matter in that case, because the right to ownership is based on resources spent to maintain cause the territory to change conceptually from troll to night elf lands.
Then… There’s the out-of-universe explanation. It’s about the history of World of Warcraft, and recent revisions of the lore.
The simplest, and weakest, component of this is… And, let’s be honest. It feels like Night Elf land, because it looks like Night Elf lands. When you create a Night Elf, they show you the beautiful, enchanted forests of Teldrassil. Then, Ashenvale is basically copied-and-pasted from that, with a few orcs mucking about. Troll lands are seen everywhere, and their aesthetic is usually some pseudo-pre-colonial-Mezoamerican architecture with da voodoo tossed in there.
But, then, let’s look at the out-of-universe development. First, we’re shown Kalimdor’s northern forests in WCIII. Definitely night elf territory there. Then, WoW starts, and yes… Teldrassil and Ashenvale look almost identical. Definitely night elf still. There’s night elf ruins all throughout Northern Kalimdor. No hints of trolls, other than one village of party-goers that you aren’t even supposed to access.
Then, there’s hints that the night elves may have evolved from Trolls. And finally, Chronicle comes out and confirms that. Oh! And also, here’s a map, the trolls basically owned everything at one point. (So did the Old Gods, but no one is arguing they have a claim, nor the Elementals before them.)
So, again, outside of universe, in terms of game design… Night Elf fans were lead to attach to those territories - to call them night elf lands. Which is why players feels like they’ve lost something, even if, in the current canon, the night elves wrongfully took the land.
That’s why if the Horde come knocking on Ashenvale’s door, to night elf fans, it feels bad. The night elves wrongfully took the land from trolls. However, they have an in-universe claim to the land via the resources they’ve expended in maintaining it. Additionally, the players have been lead to attach to those lands, and don’t want to lose them because of a few sentences in a lore book released more than a decade after they were told “this is yours”.
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But nelves are trolls
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you’re looking to troll me, I can tell you I don’t have have any sense… but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my sanity go now, that will be the end of it - I will not look for you, I will not pursue you… but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you… and I will correct you.
Until I get tired and/or distracted, that is.
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As a purely intellectual exercise… where exactly is the dividing line between when elves were trolls and when elves were elves and not trolls anymore?
Was it biological? “You’ve got too many toes, you’re not allowed in the troll club anymore.”
Was it cultural? “Yeah, well, we don’t call ourselves trolls anymore anyway, so nyeh!”
Was it a mix of them? “My great-grandfather says his father had tusks, but I think he was just joking because we’re elves, not trolls. Wonder where he got that idea from?”
If it is physical, can the Darkspear or other tribes, as trolls, lay claim to previously troll-owned land whose inhabitants either died or left?
If it’s cultural, does the claim only count if the previous inhabitants care about getting it back? Can claims be abandoned? Do they have to consistently want to get the land back, or can a great-great-great-great-great grandkid decide one day that “hey, no one else cares, but I think I want that old place back” have his/her claim taken seriously? If that amount of time has elapsed, what’s the big difference between time-changed troll descendants and Well-changed night elf descendants? If the night elves say, “sure, we’ll call ourselves trolls again”, does that mean they get a claim to troll land?
There are a lot of fascinating - and potentially unanswerable - questions to be had. I don’t think this setting is so chock-full of detail to give answers to them, however.
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Nelfs are trolls, read the lore you cant take land from yourself
I mean… Troll decedents. According to Chronicle, they are more graceful and more intelligent than trolls. Culturally, they are quite different as well, Nelves borrowing from various pre-Christian European cultures, Trolls barrowing from various African, Caribbean islander, Indigenous American cultures.
But sure… as decedents of the trolls that came before them, they have claim as much as any other troll.
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they arent decedents they are literally trolls that got turned into elves by magic
I think we have yet to meet any elf who remembers being a Troll. In fact, I am pretty sure most elves reject the very idea of it.
they know now at least, the horde was making fun of them in 7.1
I mean, it is known but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a widely accepted belief. I could see elves writing it off as hogwash.
But I don’t think that matters… I don’t think we can call elves trolls, because like I said, none of them remember being a troll. It wasn’t a “Poof, we are elves now.” it was a slow and gradual process that took some-odd 500 years.
So… when you say
This is incorrect. They are the decedents of trolls, not literal trolls themselves.
Night Elves are apparently somewhat in denial about the whole troll thing and tend to find it offensive. Ironically the BEs seem less bothered by it.
Anyway, give Ashenvale back to the NEs. God knows we don’t need to maintain any further justifications to force the Horde into the role of bad guys again for future faction conflicts. Let the Horde, just once, not be to blame for everything.
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at some point there was nelves who are literally trolls who transformed
A very interesting question reminiscent of “The Ship of Theseus”. Wherein, Theseus was a great and ancient hero who captained a ship. They take the ship off the waters and preserve it as a museum. However, over time, the planks rot, so they replace one of the planks. One-by-one, all the planks get replaced until the ship is no longer composed of any original materials. Is it still Theseus’ ship? If not, when does it stop being Theseus’ ship?
It’s a question that can be asked of the evolution of species in real-life. When did dogs stop being wolves? Humans stop being primapes? Chickens stop being dinosaurs? At some point there is definitely an animal that is a chicken, and at an earlier point there is definitely an animal that is a dinosaur, but there’s a very large gradient between them. The definition of a “species” is being able to make fertile off-spring, so… Probably when two groups of individual proto-chickens could no longer meet that criteria. With the aide of the Well of Eternity, the Troll → Night Elf transformation probably happened in a matter of only several generations, rather than thousands of generations.
Ultimately, I’d say, in terms of land claims, it’s probably more when the night elves organized as a faction separate from the existing troll empires. (They were “dark trolls”, not necessarily a group belonging to a pre-established empire. So, it could have very well gone back further than their being night elves.) Likely, this was spurred by the physical changes, but ultimately, it’s whenever they could look outside their sphere of influence and say, “This is definitely ours, and that is definitely yours, but we want it.”
This is what I debated in my head for a while. Ultimately, I couldn’t shake the feeling that “man, that great-great-great-great-great-great grandkid just doesn’t have a stake in the claim.” And, my primary rationalization is… “Ownership” is purely conceptual. So… when the concept of the thing has changed via manipulation by some persons, that persons has a claim to the new thing, whereas the old owner has forfeit their rights.
Additionally, it feels very… ignorant of the great-great-great-great-great grandkid. Like… “If you didn’t want/need it for three hundred years, why do you want/need it now?” Ultimately, their answer boils down to, “because I feel like I deserve it because my family did something.” Ehh… Not really satisfying.
I’ve always assumed trolls live a long time. I’m not sure if it’s specified that the Well of Eternity altered existing trolls into night elves, or if it just magically hastened evolution. Ultimately, because Night Elves reject the notion that they were once trolls… I’d have to lean on it being a generational change. Otherwise, there’d be more clear records and maybe memories. However, again, in its truest sense, that’s speculation, because the Wiki has this to say:
Which, literally interpreted, seems to support the “individuals were transformed” argument. In truth, maybe it was a bit of both? Think about growing out your hair. Day-to-day, the changes are impossible to notice, but after months or years, it’s definitely different. With the Well of Eternity, maybe that’s what happened with physical traits? People were transformed as individuals over the course of their lives, but whatever traits they currently had were given to their children. Slowly, the adaptations are inherited forward with a mechanism very much different from real-world evolution.
I will say that I do believe though that they are fundamentally different from trolls now. It’s weird because… As I mentioned earlier, “species” are individuals that can produce fertile off-spring, but it seems that every sentient race can meet that criteria with every other sentient race. They feel (again, an aesthetic/subjective thing) like they are more than just magically-enhanced trolls. Nightborne feel like magically-enhanced Night Elves, whereas Night Elves feel like something truly different from trolls.
Actually, I’d suggest that the word “transforms” implies that they are different.
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