It not so much the age itself and whether it’s possible or not (I’m aware it is), it’s that it rarely seems to do anything for the character.
Like do they really need a range of 10,000 years of ‘going off on their own to study magic’? What’s the difference in how someone would write the character between that and spending 9,000 years going off on their own to study magic while ignoring the rest of the world? Or 8,000, or 7, 6…etc etc.
A good example, imo, is Draenei chargen where there’s a choice to make: Are they old enough to remember their homeworld in all its splendor or were they born on the run? That’s a choice to make depending on how someone wants to roleplay the character and what kind of growth and choices they want 'em to struggle with.
Yeah! That. And it’s one of those things that ultimately doesn’t really matter cause in the end it’s just a number in a TRP profile someone probably just facerolled out because they needed to fill that space in with **something…**But pet, meet peeve.
With Draenei, it’s somewhat odd if they’re only a few hundred years old. They’d have to be at least 13,000-ish to remember living on Argus and the Draenei schism. Nili here only ever lived on Draenor and is only about 250 years old, but that makes her - from a Draenic societal point of view - very young. Like, “sure you’re an adult sweetie, but maybe get a few thousand more years under your belt before you can be in charge of anything”.
My other main Draenei is about 10,000 years old. He was born after Argus, but well into the “fleeing” part of Draenic history. He didn’t spend that time studying the magic arts and becoming a super-expert or anything, he spent that time…running. Bopping from world to world, setting up, having the Legion find them, fleeing again, lather, rinse, repeat. He didn’t get good at doing anything but surviving one day after another, and never got to a point where he’d take himself so seriously that he wouldn’t hit up a bar or sit in the relative peace of Stormwind and watch the people.
I wouldn’t overestimate the amount of gravitas that living functionally a really long time would give people, especially if their society revolves around very long lifespans. Ultimately, though, it’s Blizzard’s fault for putting all these immortal races and events happening default of 10k years ago when it was just completely not necessary
This is not a WoW-exclusive problem - everything with Tolkien-derived long-lived Elves, Dwarves etc. experiences the exact same question: If you’ve been alive for a dozen human lifetimes, what are you doing acting like this? Instead of digging into the actual answer (that most people doing this aren’t thinking about it that deeply; it’s just the low end of the roleplay bell curve), I’d rather highlight some character traits from some good fiction that feature long-lived characters.
As you get older, even through your 20s, you’ll probably experience at some point the sense that you’ve “met someone before”. In a few seconds of meeting them and sizing them up, you can know their background, their interests, their problems. It might only happen once or twice, but it’s a very normal experience. Experience is why the elderly are often unsettlingly good judges of character and intent.
Now imagine living around shorter-lived races for lifetime after lifetime. There is nothing new under the sun, and a 300 year old character is well aware of it. It could manifest in different ways - patronizing attitudes, politely feigning interest, so on… Look at Lestat in the Vampire Diaries books. He’s a master manipulator because he’s seen it all before - every man, every woman, a hundred times over.
I agree, but it can also manifest in weird ways. The T’lan Imass in the Malazan novels are also good examples of what happens to conscious beings when they live for thousands and thousands of years. They have nothing to say. It’s been said. They’re here because they continue to exist and they have duties to undertake. It’s like a psychological coping mechanism for losing access to nuance/novel experience, which is what drives a lot of the human mind.
Backstory can play a very important part. A lot of true Highborne culture and knowledge was lost in the sundering with places being torn apart, Zin’ashari being sunk and sundered. My character is a highborne arcane spell smith. Most of his knowledge was pre-sundering, and he used the magic radiating off the well of eternity to fuel his creations.
His backstory justifies his age, given where he was from and the knowledge he has.
Well, as a matter of perspective… consider what living that long would do to a person? Eventually you’d either look for any source of novelty and whimsy…or lose your sanity as everything became monotonous and boring.
If you have any sort of power it’s worse, a Titan should be absolutely fascinated with a form of new life they’ve never seen before, a Druid might find interest in a newly evolved plant that hasn’t been here the last 20k years, etc.
Finding ever new ways to amuse themselves would be one of the few ways such a long lived entity could even retain sanity.
Only if…you’ve got a human mind geared around living 100 years or so. Time is relative, and it would be odd if a species evolved to go crazed for non-biological reasons after a while. There’s a very good chance that the brains of Draenei and other extremely long lived species in the universe that Azeroth exist in just don’t have that kind of problem.
Also, the Draenei didn’t sit around playing tiddlywinks and making light conversation about the weather for the last 13k years, trying to discover new patterns in the snowflakes and veins of leaves. They’ve been constantly on the run, constantly under threat, constantly on new worlds, that’s a lot of novelty. They’ve only been on Azeroth for 16 years now, that’s basically the blink of an eye to them. They haven’t had time to get tired of Stormwind’s bars yet
True, we’re assuming a prolonged lifespan means they even process things the same, though the problem with RPing a 100+ year old is that it’s fiction, there’s no point of reference for being 10,000 years old.
This is a double edged sword, on one hand it means you can’t realistically say how someone that old would act, on the other hand… most entities capable of living that long would also have free range to act just about any way they pleased.
Dragons are a good example… Vox Machina, WoW, DnD, Tolkien? Dragons are proud ancient things that in MOST fictional settings could obliterate whole towns in seconds, do they really have to worry about how they act?
In most settings there’s this rare and terrifying breed of mortal called an adventurer…
Adventurers are capable of feats that most mortals can’t manage and driven by everything from moral standards, regardless of the spectrum, that make even the most stuck in gods blush in envy to baser desires that make one wonder about their sanity and yet… despite being mortal, mostly, they manage to overcome and frequently kill even the strongest of dragons with some rumored to be capable of killing gods.
Thing is, even Warhammer doesn’t do it this bad, the ‘creation of the world stuff’ is at most 15k years ago and anything actually relevant happens within the last 5-7k years (and is actually spread out). So actually less than WoW’s whole ‘ten thousand years of nothing since the Sundering before back to back stuff every year for the last few decades’.
it certainly doesn’t help that the warcraft writers themselves often make their millennia-old characters speak, act, and seemingly think in exactly the same ways as regular ol’ humans.
in rp, i think it mostly just boils down to aesthetics. it’s a “subtle” way of suggesting “this character is powerful ” without really thinking about things like narrative consequence.
This is a very particular pet peeve of mine and while it’s only come up a few times specifically on this character specifically in WoW, it has dogged all of my combat roleplaying when partnering with someone.
No Selling.
Sure a “God Moder” is annoying but if they are giving me stuff to play off of it at least is engaging. Dice Rolls being completely one sided is just rng and lets me practice my flexibility. But when both people agree to play out a fight scene, have a method in which results will be determined but then just “I Hit you with my sword.” or “The Arrow Misses.”
I can understand maybe not being comfortable with combat scenes or wanting to be snappy, but give me something to work with! Just recording exactly what happened is the job of a stenographer, we’re roleplayers acting out a fight, give me some wwe drama to it!
I enjoy playing Kaan because of the sheer exposition of History that I can fill in through bullshiite storys on Legion conquest, races conquered, and things that have happened in such a grand span of time that most species can’t comprehend. Then again I use them less in a ‘This is my characters story’ manner and more of a Raymond Reddington ‘Vacation Story Escapade’ style.
To be fair it’s one of the few places I won’t be shanked.
I have been watching this show recently entirely through youtube shorts and from what I can tell, love this dude. Never knew he was the voice of Ultron either.
That. And it’s one of those things that ultimately doesn’t really matter cause in the end it’s just a number in a TRP profile someone probably just facerolled out because they needed to fill that space in with **something…**But pet, meet peeve.
powerful