Blog Azeroth

An age old question between the those of the bored and those who likes the Lore.



Elf vs Human (We save Gnome and Dri for later)

Looking at the points of both the elves like all traditional elves were the first people of Azeroth or Faerun or Middle Earth or whatever generic fantasy world that has happen they time of glory has faded from the times and now they guild the "Lesser races" to a path of learning and good for the world most notable the humans.


The Humans on the other hand can be anything they they can be the greatest most goodly figure in the world or as cruel as Arthas and anything in between.

As the dwarf Battlehammer in my favorite Dark Elf Seris says as only a battlehammer can say
"Dwarf a Dwarf" "Elf an elf" "I don't like man cause never know what they are"

I'm having a bit of trouble with this anyone care to put some input

Interesting question. I recently just rerolled human from a long string of night elf toons and it's so very true how different the experience is. While the elves are obviously a diverse people, there are more restraints on their society and the expected decorum is much more defined. The differences between well played night elf characters are not immediately obvious, I think the key term for night elves (perhaps elves in general) is subtlety. However, subtle doesn't get you very far in WoW.
Humans on the other hand are a crazy, rainbow spasm of lore and characteristics. They're almost indescribable on some level because, as you said, they can be anything to anyone.
While I do think night elf culture is more elegant (not to mention their aesthetic appeal is definitely much higher to me, especially aspects of their architecture), humans are infinitely easier to roleplay both for beginners and experienced RPers who wish to create something a bit unusual.

That needs to be on a shirt. Or at least a bumper sticker.

I agree though that humans are easier to RP for beginners since you have more...."wiggle room" in what you can sculpt your character to be, whereas Night Elves have stricter roles that go with their classes (i.e. gender rules for druids). Despite this, my first toon was a Night Elf on a roleplay server, purely based on "she looks pretty" and the server was low pop in my timezone. It just happened to play out perfectly -.^

Personally I prefer having a more ancient civilization to work with than a newer, modern one. Night Elves are the oldest or one of the oldest races, and they have a rich history. Perhaps this is my love of ancient Rome showing, but "traditional" is more my vibe than modern.

Night elves role play always gives me a "paradise lost" feeling. They were once glorious people, but fell to ruin multiple times. Their history is a lot more twisted than say...gnome or dwarves. But most of all, their isolation and arrogance lead to their downfall. They are notoriously racist in the lore to be honest, and that just made them a lot less appealing to me than humans, who respected and got along well with the other races. I play a priest, and I chose human. I view human priests as the "priests of light/humanity" instead of the night elf counterpart - "priests of the moon/Elune/immortality".

No offense to any Night Elf toons though.

ps. by looks Night Elves win all the way

Er, night elves aren't the oldest race on Azeroth, not by a long shot. This isn't Middle Earth.

This is pretty explicitly spelled out in Ulduman, Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, Storm Peaks and Halls of Stone. Other lore sources make it clear that they're a younger race than trolls (who they may be descended from) and Tauren as well.

The High Elves briefly guided humans in the use of magic, but humans quickly raced ahead in ability.

Night Elves, who were reclusive and essentially unknown to anyone on Azeroth by the Tauren until about six years ago, didn't guide anyone, other than perhaps a few poor beleaguered furbolg.

I think that some of the confusion about night elves being "older" is that the ancient Kaldorei looked like what night elves look like now. The Highborne (upper class) grew to look different from the rest of the Kaldorei, and split off to study arcane magic. There are still some Kaldorei NPCs in the game, mainly in and around Dire Maul, and they're easily mistook for Night Elves, (being that they use the same models and all.