Okay Blizzard is kind of wishy-washy on this but I’ve had other RPers argue to high heaven about this.
What is the age Draenei can get to to be considered ‘elderly’? What is too young?
I had my gal here at 4000 but was told that’s too young, but had her then at like, 40,000 and was told that was too old.
How long were the Draenei on Draenor and the Exodar? I couldn’t have been THAT long, right?
I’m trying to get it right so I don’t have my fellow RPers blowing up.
Velen is like 20k+ yrs old and he’s considered to be quite ancient by draenei standards. Being a immortal race, it’s hard to get the age just right. I say 5k yrs old seems like a fair number,
I thought he was 50k?
He might be. I know he’s really ancient for a draenei.
Eh it’s up in the air. For one thing, the date of the draenei exodus from Argus has changed. Originally it happened 25,000 years ago. Then in Legion, quest text changed it to 13,000 years ago. Given how much Velen aged between them leaving and the current day, it’s a pretty big difference one way or the other.
It’s all academic though, because there are other named draenei who were alive on Argus and look fine, so we’d need to know how old Velen was when he left in order to figure it out.
A few hundred years, no?
They were on Draenor for about 200 years or so, which was the longest they’d ever remained on a planet. Prior to that they spent thousands of years world-hopping and traversing the Nether aboard the Genedar. They’ve only really been on the Exodar since TBC, so maybe ten to twelve years across the span of each expansion since and the varying intermissions between them. Their time flying on the Exodar was very short; they captured it from Kael’thas’ followers and dimensionally “jumped” from Outland to Azeroth right away to escape (since the rest of the Tempest Keep complex was still controlled by the enemy), then crashed on Azuremyst Isle because the blood elves still on board had sabotaged the engines.
Moreover one’s experience of time’s rate of progression is inconstant while in the Twisting Nether, so however many millennia passed in the Great Dark between their flight from Argus and landing on Draenor, it may well have been even longer for the draenei themselves, since they were subjected to the Nether’s variable passage of time whenever they were aboard the Genedar between worlds.
iirc Velen is 25,000 years old, and he fled from Argus comparatively close to that time ago, though he was an adult with a partner and child when that happened.
Draenei are very long-lived and only some have attained immortality, including Velen.
Well, there hasn’t been a draenei that has died from old age, that we know of anyway. I think the draenei are just naturally immortal
How the concept of “elder” applies to a seemingly immortal race is beyond me LMAO
I mean, you can still get killed of course… Though pre-Legion Argus doesn’t exactly strike me as a dangerous planet. Wasn’t it pretty much entirely tamed and under Eredar control ?
It was basically a planet full of magical cities and awesome magitech
Maybe after 10k years alive you just get bored and start doing reckless stuff
Well again, I’ve had people say Dedaru being ‘4000’ years old make’s her ‘not of adult age comparatively’ and if I make her roughly 10k, she’d be as old as Velen.
I just don’t wanna be ‘that guy’ when it comes to RP, the fail RP.
I can tell you at least that draenei reach adulthood at a human-ish rate.
Isel is an adult in BC:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Caregiver_Isel
And a child 35 years prior in WoD:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Isel
Honestly I don’t worry too much about character age in RP.
I had a 3k year old Belf but that was only in service of making him partially responsible for teaching humans magic after the Troll Wars. It made him feel a sense of culpability for Quel’thalas’s desolation. Perhaps if he’d never helped teach those creatures magic they’d never have grown powerful enough to be a threat.
But again this was only to add some context for the characters worldview. He was very mistrustful toward short lived races. An Orc or Troll could themselves be quite honorable and trustworthy. But anything given to them could be passed down from generation to generation. So perhaps this Tauren or Goblin could be trusted with arcane secrets or powerful artifacts. But could the same be said for their great, great, great granddaughter?
Beyond that his age actually just made things weirder. Because Azeroth as a setting has entire millenias where barely anything of note happens. So your character will have spent entire epochs just dead bone chilling only to have like 900 different adventures in the span of less than 2 decades.
Suffice to say I wouldnt worry about it unless you want your character to have been a witness to some important historical event. And tbh in my experience RPers who get too worked up about these things tend to be way more concerned about origins than creating an engaging and memorable character to interact with in the moment.
I had a random person put me on ignore this morning due to my character being a half orc. Was funny, because some people are so sad they will literally judge you before even bothering to interact with you and find out anything about your character.
Says a lot about how these people treat others
He was considered middle aged around 25,000 years ago. He’s now seen as older. When you look at the Argus cinematics of him fleeing Argus. His beard and eyebrows were black. So he’s what 50,000+ years old? How do we even begin to classify “old” for an immortal race that doesn’t die from old age. I think it’s relative.
Draenei are older than most sentient species on Azeroth. You could be older than the oldest Kaldorei and be considered middle age by your fellow Draenei. You can be older than Kaldorei civilization itself and have debates on how old is old?
I say, “You’re 10,000 years young? You’re an adult and maybe seen as middle aged.” That’s just one perspective. I just don’t know if Draenei themselves recognize old age as mortals do.
It’s really not an issue unless you’re trying to throw your age around for status.
With Draenei, Valen is pretty much the only one considered “elderly” so you’re either a child, adult, or their one and only patriarch.
Had people read my TRP and call me a fail roleplayer, just tired of all the drama.
Those people likely don’t even know draenei lore to begin with. Most of the people who tend to be harsh concerning other peoples TRPs, tend to be really ignorant of the lore.
Best bet is to laugh at them and go about your business 