World of Warcraft®

@Kyalin

Taking a guess, he's going by what he sees in game. And while I've noticed a few wisps, there isn't many floating around.

@Kyalin

Taking a guess, he's going by what he sees in game. And while I've noticed a few wisps, there isn't many floating around.

I suppose Ironforge has a serious housing shortage then.

As a race? They've never had a right to immortality. They received it by settling near and screwing around with a fount of arcane power they should never have touched and they lost it by destroying said fount to prevent the world from being entered and destroyed by the dark entity their race attracted with their unwise meddling.

And so how does this make them undeserving of it now, since they ostensibly have sacrificed their immortality twice to save the world? Is there any other race that has done an equally selfless act? However, if Nozdormu was willing to grant them immortality a second time which is the time period of the Long Vigil, how were they not deserving of that when they sacrificed it to save the world before this time period, and were using the renewed immortality as a means of protecting it eternally, hence the name "The Long Vigil"?

What "deserves" immortality? As for whether anyone else has made an equally selfless act. . . everyone who dies in an activity that saves others? Every single soldier who has sacrificed their life that someone else might live? Their lives are not made more special because they screwed around with magic and managed to make themselves live longer.

And I didn't address the other questions because they're irrelevant if what I suggest regarding Nozdormu's motivation is taken to be the case, that they were granted immortality so that they'd be there to engage in the actions resisting the Legion which we saw in Warcraft 3. Note I'm not talking about a general "stop the Burning Legion whenever they come" but that the guy in charge of time, who we know spends time looking at the future (as per End Time, among others), specifically wanted Archimonde to be stopped when he came with the Scourge. Their immortality served a specific function which has now been fulfilled, leaving no reason for them to still have immortality.

I would like to add to that, why did he then grant immortality to the whole race, and not just to those few? Maybe because the race itself needed to possess this knowledge, possibly?

Maybe they wouldn't have been able to pull it off with just those few and then newer generations. Heck, maybe if just a couple had immortality, other, non-immortal night elves would have ended up killing them somehow from jealousy, trying to seize such longevity for themselves. It's not like they're all handling non-immortality well now, why would we every single one of them to have been just fine with it back then, with the example of others who hadn't lost it right in front of them?

If they would need it at the end of the Long Vigil, wouldn't they need it in the future? Even if the rest of the world didn't need the Night Elves collectively to have immortality, wouldn't the world as a whole benefit from them having continued possession of it? If not, why? Why wouldn't a race that operates under the benefaction and direct guidance of life preserving and nourishing forces (the Ancient Guardians and the Dragon Aspects themselves), who have shown that they can be responsible with immortality for 10,000 years, be deserving of immortality when it is a tool they use to protect and nourish the world as a whole?

Well, now there's another race nearby that's effectively immortal and are apparently damn near paragons of Good. How many do you think you need?

And...how is that a bad thing?

Hey, if they want to seek it go ahead. But that doesn't mean others ought to expend their power to grant it to them or that it's something they deserve.

Maiev's not exactly ... stable.

The world we have today, our standards of living, at least if you're a reasonably well off American, would be considered "good enough" by almost anyone in any society in history, yet we continue trying to improve Veloran. Do you condemn us for that as well?

Did you just compare living in America to immortality?

Because that's a pretty freaking stupid comparison to make about this situation, if so.

How so? Some had it, some didn't.

Some people have drinkable water, some don't.

In either case, one is going to die from it, the other isn't. Mortality is pretty similar.

Some people starve. Others are shot, or stabbed, or die from disease, or pass away quietly in their sleep.

But in the end, both the middle-class American suburbanite and the Dark Ages pauper die. It doesn't matter how, or when, but they die regardless of what happened in their lives.

To quote:

http://youtu.be/Cb7QJwQ58T0?t=3m54s

To argue that the Night Elves somehow deserve immortality is like saying that all Night Elves deserve to be Gods.

09/09/2013 11:52 AMPosted by Lilyphoebe

Why didn't he?

My theory on why Nozdormu did not restore the Night Elves immortality, (it is unsubstantiated but I think it makes sense) is that he couldn't anymore. After being missing for so long, attempting to deal with the disruption to the time ways, and having to conserve strength to fight Deathwing he may not have been able to grant an entire species immortality again.

As for why Maiev made the claim she did.

1. She has never been a very stable person.

2. She could have thought Malfurion had the chance to restore immortality and was wrong in that assumption. It is not out of the realm of possibility that a character can be wrong about something (certainly happens to me in rl plenty of times :).

3. There may be more to the story that has not be revealed yet (admittedly this one is unlikely).

09/09/2013 06:18 PMPosted by Kyalin

Adding to Dierle's comment, Blizzard also shoehorned this idea of random Dorian-Grey-aging on certain Night Elves. I guess they didn't pray enough.

Source, please?

09/09/2013 12:36 PMPosted by Scryll

I would like to continue a bit on Nozdormu's actions and motivations though. Yes, he laid the original blessing on Nordrassil granting the night elves immortality. He had a reason for doing so, because the night elves were called upon to protect the new Well of Eternity one of their own had so rashly recreated. Nozdormu being Lord of Time that he is, presumably was aware that the actions the night elves and Malfurion took in Warcraft 3 would be needed. This fulfilled their duty and consequently their need for immortality. The Well is now defended by other peoples as well now, and its existence is no longer quite so secret.

I wouldn't mind this explanation to be honest, but, if you don't mind me asking as you yourself have asked others, do you have a source for this idea? I spent some time trying to look stuff up that might be related to it, but I haven't found anything supporting this idea yet. Though I might have missed something.

09/09/2013 07:17 PMPosted by Danseis

My theory on why Nozdormu did not restore the Night Elves immortality, (it is unsubstantiated but I think it makes sense) is that he couldn't anymore. After being missing for so long, attempting to deal with the disruption to the time ways, and having to conserve strength to fight Deathwing he may not have been able to grant an entire species immortality again.

I believe this or something similar was probably the most likely reason, yes.

09/09/2013 07:17 PMPosted by Danseis

2. She could have thought Malfurion had the chance to restore immortality and was wrong in that assumption. It is not out of the realm of possibility that a character can be wrong about something (certainly happens to me in rl plenty of times :).

This was ultimately my reason for making this thread. Everyone seems to be going around saying that Malfurion thinks he knows better or what's best for everyone and turned down immortality for everyone, when in actuality Malfurion never likely would have even gotten the chance to reject immortality, if he even would want to.

Whether the Night Elves should keep trying to get their immortality back or whether they deserve it really isn't what I was trying to address with this thread.

Some people starve. Others are shot, or stabbed, or die from disease, or pass away quietly in their sleep.

But in the end, both the middle-class American suburbanite and the Dark Ages pauper die. It doesn't matter how, or when, but they die regardless of what happened in their lives.

To quote:

http://youtu.be/Cb7QJwQ58T0?t=3m54s

To argue that the Night Elves somehow deserve immortality is like saying that all Night Elves deserve to be Gods.

Well, a couple problems with your point. First of all, quoting the catchphrases of an egotistical grim reaper with a goofy flanging voice does not make you right.

Secondly, immortal or not, the night elves WILL ultimately die, whether by accident, violence, the eventual supernova of Azeroth's star, or even the heat death of the universe, they're not LITERALLY immortal, they just don't age. So comparing them to Gods is asinine. Whether or not Draenei are technically immortal, which they appear to be but Blizzard has not conclusively answered, there are examples of their race far older than any living night elf, yet I would hardly liken the level 15 quest giver in bloodmyst to a God, even though he's so old he can remember Argus and still shows no signs of aging.

And moreover, I've said before that deserving has little to do with it, I simply see no inherent wrong in their seeking it simply because the pursuit is selfish, so long as they don't start harming others in the effort, and am baffled by the apparent OFFENSE you seem to take at the fact that they want it.

Lastly, I think when you talk about a sense of the night elves feeling like they "deserve" immortality or have a "right" to it, you are conflating the attitudes of the actual night elves with the attitudes and desires of their fans. When night elf players and fans talk about deserving their immortality back, as far as I can tell, few are actually speaking "in character" for the night elves as a race. Most, rather, are addressing the idea of deserving it from a NARRATIVE perspective, a completely different issue. The idea of blizzard owing immortality to night elf players rather than the world of Azeroth owing it to the night elves themselves more stems from a sense of story progression and closure. Remember my first post about all the different selfish things the various races wanted? Well, a lot of them GOT those things. The dwarves learned their origins. The draenei fixed their spaceship. The trolls took back the echo isles, the blood elves got their sunwell back, BETTER than it was before. Yet immortality has been set up since vanilla as a carrot for the night elves to chase, only to be denied it time and again by blizzard, to the point that even when things happen that logically SHOULD restore it, it is arbitrarily refused, and players never even are given a sense that the night elves are making measurable progress towards restoring it. Rather, Blizzard seems to go in the opposite direction, ignoring the night elves natural long lifespans in recent materials and aging them at a pace that would seem exaggerated even for humans. This, of course, leaves fans of the race feeling shafted as they watch other races reach their goals and progress their stories while they are forever condemned by Blizzard to chase the unattainable, creating a sense of entitlement to a satisfying conclusion to their story arc, and for many people, the only conclusion they COULD find satisfying, is to finally catch the carrot they've been chasing all this time.

Come to think of it, Wolfheart and all that business regarding the Night Elves mortality is mostly early Cataclysm. Nozdormu was the one who put the blessing on the first tree that gave the Night Elves immortality, and was out of action until late-Cataclysm. Is it possible that he could have gotten around to it at some point after Thrall gave him the ol' wakey-wakey? Or alternatively, no longer even has the power to enforce such blessings?

I mean, it's kind of an unfair one to lump on Malfurion. I just checked out Stormrage, and there's not a single mention of Nozdormu in the later half of the book, and Malfurion doesn't specifically say anything about the Night Elves immortality, beyond it being used as an excuse by Staghelm to consolidate power around himself.

He had it right in Warcraft III. The Night Elves discarded their immortality once to save the world from the madness wrought by their own power. That they got it back was fortunate, but not an obligation by any means. If discarding it again to save the world is to give them pause, then perhaps they've lived long enough as is.

To argue that the Night Elves somehow deserve immortality is like saying that all Night Elves deserve to be Gods.

I don't think deserve really has anything to do with it. A lot of the bad guys are immortal and they certainly don't deserve it.

It also doesn't make them gods, unless you want to consider the draenei(or at least Velen) to be gods.

Well...Velen you can actually argue could be perceived as God-like, though clearly is not literally a deity. Average run of the mill draenei though, certainly not.

09/09/2013 09:01 PMPosted by Vesran

If discarding it again to save the world is to give them pause, then perhaps they've lived long enough as is.

09/09/2013 09:07 PMPosted by Ferlion

And no, he didn't have it right in WC3. She wasn't even saying don't do it.

I wouldn't really put much focus on that line from WCIII. All I would really interpret it down to is Malfurion commenting that saving the world is more important than not aging. Which we know Tyrande probably agreed with him, as she agreed with him ten thousand years before on the same matter.

09/09/2013 04:56 PMPosted by Lilyphoebe

His companions, knowing that the Well was the source of their immortality and powers, were horrified by the rash notion. Yet Tyrande saw the wisdom of Malfurion's theory, so she convinced Cenarius and their comrades to storm Azshara's temple and find a way to shut the Well down for good.

[quote]

I am not seeing any justification for the Night Elves being refused their immortality, save the characterizations posed by certain authors, having nothing to do with the history of the Night Elves, and completely failing to address the perspectives of their benefactors beyond Malfurion. I am seeing rationalizations, but the Dragon Aspects should be well beyond that. And if Ferlion is right, and the Night Elves were not tasked with protecting the well, what did they do or fail to do that made them undeserving of reattaining their immortality, especially when it was a means for them to do some of the most unselfish acts a group of people can do?

Immortality was no benefit to the Night Elves, it was a curse. It made them static, unprepared for the fall of the Mists of Kalimdor, and for the Night Elves that's death in an Azeroth that is rapidly changing. Immortality was given for the Night Elves as their task was to guard the World Tree in solitude and isolation. The Night Elves are no longer in isolation, and more importantly, it's no longer thier solitary duty.

But the clinching line and reason was Alexstrazsa's last line in Cataclysm. "The Age of the Aspects is over, it is now the Age of Mortals". Not Aspects, Not Eternals, Not immortals.... Mortals. The Night Elves remaining mortal ensures that they remain a part of the coming age, Not a race locked in stasis, but an evolving changing mortal race to fit in an evolving changing world. Which means that the Night Elves should be concentrating on breeding more little Night Elves into the world now, and looking towards the future instead of trying to recreate the past.

This is mostly a lighthearted response to Thelandrea, but if it helps any, the original Night Elf intro for World of Warcraft ended with, "As one of the few Night Elves still left in the world, it is your sword duty defend Darnassus and the wild children of nature," but looking around the game and lore we have now, we sure seem to have a whole mess ton of Night Elves around now. Now our intro ends with "It falls to Night Elves like you to stand strong and protect the enduring legacy of your people."