Don’t make me switch to my human avatar. You wouldn’t survive the stroke of sacred light purging your heresy via human potential 
No one here can match Arctur for human potential.
That is called character progression. Actions speak for the words. After Legion Maiev has fought alongside Arcane mage, freed her enemies to save the world, led the charge of wardens vs Legion, came back for Tyrande, fought for her people (including Highborne) and Tyrande putting her in charge of the assault because of her experience and skills that are unmatched.
And after she would definitely turn around and massacre those poor Highborne again.
Oh was I not talking about Sylvanas??? Hmm nvm then.
Thanks for the read. Just some additional insights if you don’t mind. The legion that just ended their civilization and nearly destroyed the world would far dominate the change that group made than trying to stop addiction that wa more a prevalent problem for the biggest arcane users than it would be for everyone.
The heretics would be those who had sided with the Legion condoning the creation of portals and the Legions agenda, which because using the arcane was the only way to bring them back, and that community had decided it would not use the arcane to prevent them from returning…therefore anyone like Illidan or a night elf that sought to use the arcane forcefully would be considered a heretic.
The thing is the arcane was not evil, not to the night elves except perhaps Maiev. It was dangerous primarily because it s use could bring back the Legion who would destroy thenworld. This is HUGE far bigger than possibly getting addicted. Addiction was a relatively new phenomena, for all they knew, a bit of abstinence or control would solve it. Towards the end of Azshara’s reign, they didn’t know their were any harmful drawbacks of using the arcane. Therefore she didnt think to guard against addiction and probably ignored the warnings of the highborne noticing this as trivial and something she didn’t have to worry about.
For a night elf of that era, the arcane had only been good, extending life indefintely, making you bigger, stronger, smarter, using it creatied wonderful things, cities, forests, food, it boosted nature Tec…you can imagine arrogant Azshara thinking it had no drawbacks that could be surmounted.
The legion was not a drawback of the arcane, just the only means to call or attract them. Addiction was a drawback, not a big enough one to avoid using it altogether as opposed to finding a solution.
The ban was necessary because the world’s survival depended on it and ultimately, the nightnelves were smart enough to know that both them and thenworld could survive without the arcane being used.
Notice I said survive without the arcane being used, not survive without the arcane. In Warcraft, the arcane is integral to everything and is intertwined in upholding life and order. Arcane and nature go well together to create, order, sustain and enhance life.
No one needed to solve an addiction problem if the thing couldn’t be used anyway, but the reason is not addiction, it is the Legion. It is interesting that once the Legion returns and the no arcane ban is meaningless, the quest for solving addiction continues to help the Shal’dorei, and it is found and perfected in the Arcan’dor a nature arcane device tree created 10,000 years ago and worked on but came too late to help or save the queen. Development not needed if elves weren’t going to use the arcane.
Addiction was solvable and not really a threat, the Legion had no solution but to not use the arcane.
Btw, you do know that using the arcane makes you visible in the twisting nether, so using large amounts of it via the well made the whole planet visible in the twisting nether, and demons feed on and are drawn to it, this is how the Legion finds Azeroth.
Once the night elves discover this, stopping to use the arcane is the only known solution. Preventing anyone from learning it and inadvertently calling them back is a top priority too. The high elves hid the signature of their magic use with the Ban’dinoriel, the Shen’dralar had their pylons and Suramar the shield, but these elves knew the dangers and had working solutions, once working the vigil kaldorei would not detect them or need to deter them. It would be legion agents like the Satyr and rogue mages drawn to the mistakes of Azshara…
I never saw wc3 night elves as savages. Sentinels and demon hunters can fight savagely, but they aren’t savages, and kaldorei culture of the long vigil wasn’t savage it was basic, having no arcane use permitted to rebuild or restore life like normal.
After the long vigil this changes. Wc3 marks the end, and the current culture is post vigil - civilization, arcane magic and out of isolation have happened, mixing with night elves of the old culture.
Maiev believes everyone inferior, this is based on the level of advancement of the night elves. The highborne are inferior because they were stupid enough to let the legion in and lose control, toying with things too grest for them to comprehend - her thought process is revealed in the novels WotA 3, Wolfheart and Illidan.
She is also shown to be isolated in her extreme views
Very interesting. Yeah I guess Legion was the greatest threat back then. Their duty to protect the World Tree. IT was new beginning. It makes sense.
Nah I dont believe Arcane is evil. As said it is element of Order. But grinding too deep in any power does not have a positive effect of wielder. That was what happened to Azshara I believe. Yrel and her Lightborne worshipping the Light also had similar extreme results.
Its all about the balance I think.
As for Maiev I think thats where she started to hate the magic, to see how deep Azshara went and what her reckless actions brought to her people.
Thats new.
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They believed using it DANGEROUS. Not that the arcane was bad (as in evil).
And it is very well known why. Which makes it easy to see why after wc3, this all changes and is no longer.
Indeed, blizzard finally revealed this outright… But a lot of people weren’t sure and a far few still thought there was something evil about it until this finally confirmed outright what people like me had been saying and trying to show via the night elf account.
Now there are quite a few people who haven’t read chronicles, and they still think the arcane is evil and the Night elves hate it and stopped using it because it is bad. These people have key info missing and think night elf mages make no sense.
Usually cos their info on night elves is restricted to wc3 and classic portrayal and they don’t know about the Shen’dralar surviving or the real nature of the arcane.
Indeed, the destruction of Suramar by the Legion is what makes her snap, she saw the Legion slaughter family and friends, hated the highborne because Azshara and her palace highborne brought them, then hated Illidan because he nearly killed Jarod after creating the 2nd Well, convinced he was a legion agent for wanting to restore the well.
I highly recommend a 're read of WotA. You easily see why the long vigil was so important and necessary, and what a brave thing to do, but at the same time you see how the night elves were over cautious and could have embraced their magic properly instead of ban it if they trusted Illidan.
You also see why they didn’t, and how they made the mistake of thinking him betrayed, it isn’t until Illidan the novel you understand how and why Illidan lost it momentarily atop Hyjal killing those mages and soldiers and nearly ki
It’s amazing how a key piece of knowledge changes everything. This was revealed in War of the Ancients Trilogy…
It is why USING the arcane for spells, rather than the actual arcane itself is so dangerous and banned on penalty of death…because it can draw the legion back and is the only power source capable of creating portals for the Legion to return…hence why the period without it…the long vigil the ban.
It was never some arcane hating group - they have the 2nd Well of Eternity for 10k years guarding it and using it to make moonwells to boost life and nature. They just don’t use it.
Which is why after wc3, everything changes and you would expect a return of their original civilization and magic. Night elves were only without arcane for the lo g vigil era, and without nature for the end of the pre sundering era… both these states are not night elves at normal or max – the children of Cenarius half night elves are the pure forest long vigil state group, and the nightborne appear to be the pure arcane group based on the period where it was just arcane. But the rest of the night elves are not in either state, but a state that is combining both the arcane via the highborne and nature via the druids as well as the divine via the priests and even fel by the recently vindicated.
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Yes, exactly.
Isn’t it a case of limited character creation rather? This seems a bit weird to me.
Hard disagree here. If you compare the skull of a Show Pekingese and a working german shepherd, you would believe they are different species. And yet!
https://i.imgur.com/0eSgsFb.jpg
The only real biological difference is the color of their blood (purple for kaldorei, red for thalassian elves except void elves, and I think we don’t know for nightborne?) which I am tempted to resume to “Blizzard is lazy and doesn’t think about worldbuilding” rather than calling them different -species-. Different races, certainly. (The fact that the Thalassian elves are hooked from… birth to a magic well across time and space could be an argument for new specie too. I just don’t accept the skeleton one.)
Or, and i hate to write this, a few thousand years of Neighbourship to the Humans led to some mingling… just think: thousands of years of Windrunner-sisters ;D
(just a joke)
Hard disagree here. If you compare the skull of a Show Pekingese and a working german shepherd, you would believe they are different species. And yet!
and still, both are not wolves 
All Elves are inferior to Shelves. There, I said it.
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Heh, yeah, that was what I was going for. You would be able to tell that they were Canis Domesticus, but you would -know- they were not Canis Lupus, you would however know they were of the Canis genus. So to take that example you wouldn’t be able to go ‘that is a Blood Elf’ or ‘That is a High Elf’ Because they are physically identical. You would however be able to go “That is -not- a Night Elf”. The deviation is sufficient that by any test conceivable, including just plain looking at them, you could go “No, these are not the same species. They are both Elves, but they are not the same species.”
I think part of the problem is that blizzard use the word ‘Race’ when they do in fact mean ‘Species’. Gnomes and Dwarves are not different Races, they are different -Species- for example.
In fairness to Blizzard that has always happened in fantasy settings and literature, the conflation of ‘Race’ and ‘Species’
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It is. Blizzard themselves stated it was still rare, but was occurring more frequently than before, and some turned amber from silver because they were gifted with nature. As most of the nature users were male before wc3, blizzard said they fixed male as Amber in character creation, but in lore only few actual have those eyes, the increased number is due to more nature talent, and great nature proficiency is meant to be able to turneyes from silver to amber- which is what the hero druid would be.
What bliźard should do is default night elf druids male and female to amber eyes, then have the rest silver.
That or make it a choice…afterall, night elves are now known to have 5 eye colours now. Silver for the majority, purple tinged silver, amber, emerald green for emerald dream proficient druids and black for Night warriors
That was fixed, Kaldorei have red blood since shortly after wc3. They changed it back.
I don’t know if Draenei have blue blood tho
Haha, if only if it was just that. Race is used for several things, both for different species but also different factions, being a playable race is not necessarily a different species, or even sub species, but sometimes it is.
There isn’t one fixed meaning of the term or definition. In US society, the term race is used to mean ethnic groups (UK equivalent we call ethnicity, they call race which is an incorrect use of the word race, but they use it officially) to sometimes even very minor skin color variations humans (Americans are obsessed with skin colour on a whole other level to us). The term is also used to mean different species, the scientific term and definition isn’t always or only used version of the term.
But this happens with a lot of words inlanguages. Context and other information can provide what they really mean.
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Depends, no in the same way that humans aren’t apes IRL, sure they’re our common ancestors but we’re not the same species anymore
On the other hand, elves in wow can still interbreed so at the very least they belong to the same category
I’d say that kal’dorei, sin’dorei and shal’dorei are more cultural differentiations, the race is dorei, what follows before started mostly as a cultural distinction but over time turned into full blown subclass of species
Cave elves*
All Kaldorei are Elves, but not all Elves are Kaldorei.
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No All elves can be tracked back down to the Trolls.
All humans are Vrykul.
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All Orcs are Magnaron 
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All elves are trolls.
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thought about writing that, but went for Orcs instead.
But we could go for all Humans, Gnomes and dwarves are Titan-constructs ;D
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Robots. I think robots work.
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Or we could just say “defect” without specifying.
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