I like figuring out the environmental factors to portray the discomforts and perils of travel that my characters can then react to. Cold rain, blistering heat, fungus spore lung…
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My explanation to this is that immortal races have a low birthrate in general; this includes Draenei, etc. as well.
Part of this is inherent, whether a biological or magical effect, they just have trouble conceiving in general. Part of it is cultural, with far less emphasis being put on creating offspring than in short-lived species like humans.
As a corollary I do wonder if Night Elves or Draenei have either much reduced libidos or a more prudish culture compared to other races. Night Elves had no problem sending most of their males to sleep for ten millenia, and draenei have the whole religious zealot thing going, so I could see either being far less keen on it. Possibly this changed in recent decades with exposure to other cultures and radical changes to their own.
Of course, it’s also possible, especially with Night Elves, that they just have a much higher rate of bi- or homosexuality than humans, which would also contribute to reduced birth rates. Considering the Night Elves had the all-female Sentinels for millenia, and druids are overwhelmingly men (at least until recently), I could see this being the case.
A common misconception. Druids are and have always been a minority of the population.
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You say misconception, I say original Warcraft 3 canon.
Where were all these men in Warcraft 3 anyway… Like, where did all the Elves even live? I kinda got the impression they were all just Sentinels sleeping in trees.
WC3: RoC didn’t show any night elf civilians, simply because it focused on the military side of the equation. The towns were off screen. This doesn’t mean they weren’t meant to exist.
TFT was the first time we saw an actual night elf settlement — specifically, Nendis in Azshara.
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I think it is entirely cultural. This applies to Draenei, Elves in all manner of fantasy settings, and Elf-equivalents like the Asari in Mass Effect. It does not really make biological sense that a species would have low birth rates to “compensate” for long lifespans as that is not a beneficial adaptation, rather it would have to be something that developed culturally as a result of longevity.
In the case of Asari and Draenei, for example, you get characters who are “still little more than a child” from a cultural perspective, but physically certainly capable of reproducing - kinda like how in reality, we’d not consider it appropriate for someone to have kids in their teens, even if they’re technically able to. Birth rates in real life drop where the pressure to have children is reduced, as observed in a lot of our current societies.
To emphasize the biological side of it though, I’ll discuss two examples of long-lived species:
Elephants have a lifespan similar to a modern human, often reaching 60, 70 or even 80 years old. Now as one might expect, they don’t reproduce very fast - an elephant cow is pregnant for 2 years, before giving birth to a single calf! Now this sounds like it supports the idea of longevity and low birth rates, right? But not so fast: Elephants are extremely large (Newborn elephant calves weigh between 90 and 200kg!) and so that is why they take so long to develop.
On the other hand, we have tortoises. The larger of these beasties can live for well over 100 years in the wild, with some record-holders at 186 (currently alive!) and 255 (died in 2006), though it is quite difficult to verify such a thing. Still, at twice the age of an elephant, surely tortoises would reproduce quite slowly indeed?
Not so: A female Galapagos tortoise can lay up to sixteen eggs in a clutch, as many as four times in one single season! Now, as we’ve all been taught by Scrollsage Nola, not all these little ones survive - but the question is, if Galapagos tortoises developed the intelligence to protect their eggs and hatchlings, would that somehow lead to fewer eggs being laid to compensate? I think the population spike of humans the past century tells us the truth of that.
Now, what’s the point of this armchair biology lesson? Well, I was going to post this in the Pet Peeves thread but this is where the discussion happens: Stop biological misinformation!
Elves and Draenei most likely have fewer children by choice, not by biology. They’re slightly larger than humans, and so likely have slightly longer pregnancies - but not by more than a month or so. If Blizzard’s retcons are to be believed, the Draenei population on Draenor (estimated in the millions) grew from a few hundred people on a single ship over just 200 years!
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Blizzard was never good with numbers. And consistency.
I never particularly liked the 200 years thing. It feels too short a time for such a long-lived race. If they’ve been on Draenor for such a tiny fraction of their time since leaving Argus, why does it hold such a cultural significance? It also means that only very young draenei could have been born on Draenor, yet the numbers would make them the vast majority of their population.
Here’s some headcanon, though.
Part of the settlement terms of the Treaty of Orgrimmar, which marked the end of the Alliance-Horde war in MoP, was the demilitarization of Pandaria, and it was Taran Zhu who heavily lobbied for it. Alliance and Horde military camps throughout Pandaria were dismantled and the troops sent home. The Alliance and the Horde were allowed to keep Lion’s Landing and Domination Point, respectively, but mostly for the purposes of civilian trade and travel.
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How is that not beneficial? If long-lived species reproduced faster, they’d be at a constant struggle for resources and the population would boom massively. Populations with lower birth rates would actually be more stable.
Consider that in real life, humans even in ancient times had maybe a dozen kids during their lifetimes. Elephants are comparable. Now contrast this with dogs or pigs; or even shorter, salmon or flies even. The longer lived a species, the lower the birth rate, as a general rule.
Maybe not in modern times, but it was certainly considered more ''appropriate" in medieval or ancient times. Since mortality was so much higher, people had an incentive to begin reproducing at a younger age. It was not uncommon for women to have at least one child by the age of 20.
Yes, which is exactly what happened to primates. Some species ‘choose’ a more scattershot approach, but these generally have high infant mortality (tortoises); others, especially mammals, will choose to invest more energy in a single/small number of children. If a tortoise lays 10 eggs and 10% survives, vs. a primate having 1 baby and 100% surviving, they get the same overall result.
We didn’t suddenly develop intelligence in the past century, and evolution doesn’t work over such a small timescale anyway. If anything, the population spike shows how the natural balance breaks if we find ways to overcome the factors that limited our population during evolution.
This is actually a fairly interesting problem to calculate mathematically, considering immortality. Humans usually only make babies for ~20-30 years before they become too old or die, but do draenei keep making babies ad infinitum? Would a 200 year old draenei have like a hundred kids?
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Considering Dark Irons never had flaming hair pre-BfA, and now they suddenly do… my headcanon is as follows;
Dark Irons that don’t have flaming hair; were never really affiliated with Ragnaros, thus never really corrupted. Think of the Thorium Brotherhood that just gave Ragnaros the finger and left Blackrock Mountain.
Dark Irons that do have flaming hair; probably didn’t escape servitude to Ragnaros. And I suppose it’d be more common as well for magic users, shamans, warlocks, etc. to have flaming hair, rather than the warriors and rogues.
I suppose that is the only IC explanation I can give as to why Sainur doesn’t have flaming hair IC… I just hate Blizzard’s guts for not having an option for Dark Irons to have either glowing, flaming, disco hair or just normal hair. Like how hard can it be?
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This is somewhat of a misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution does not push a “stable” population - it is the adaptations for successful reproduction and thus, the consumption of resources. This is why, introduced into an environment with no natural predators or strong competition, animals like rabbits, toads, starlings and lionfish will just demolish their new habitat.
This is actually why the natural balance is so fragile. Balance only exists as a result of multiple species combating each other’s progress, like the population of deer is kept down by predation from wolves. If left alone, deer would happily eat the entire forest until it collapsed and they all starved to death.
As pointed out with the Elephants vs. Tortoises comparison, average lifespan isn’t the deciding factor, size (of the young) is. Elephants live on average as long as a modern human, but reproduce much slower because of their massive size and live birth.
Animals that expend less resources on each young are able to produce more of them, so spurting out a million eggs is the ideal way for a lot of fish, even though they themselves can live to ages of 30, 50 or even higher, depending on the species. Predation keeps many of the eggs from hatching at all, and the young are supremely vulnerable - but this is not a factor of the fish’s own evolution, but its competitors.
Again, this is based on a false assumption: That evolution “balances” itself.
If Galapagos tortoises developed intelligence that allowed them to protect their young, it is true that they would need to lay fewer eggs - however, this does not mean they would. There is no biological mechanism that balances things out within the species, the only balance comes from competition or predation from another species.
If tortoises start protecting their hatchlings, there may develop a new predator that specializes in hunting the suddenly abundant juvenile tortoises, thus keeping the total tortoise population in check, but otherwise the tortoises will simply keep reproducing exponentially until they outstrip their resources.
That’s exactly the thing. There is no inherent balancing factor in ourselves, only our inability to access resources and predation from other creatures.
Early humans did not have a large population because they subsisted mostly on harvesting nuts, fruits and whatever else they could find, as they lacked sharp bits that could be used to obtain richer foods. About 2.7mya some enterprising hominin discovered the ability to create sharp bits, and how to use them to get more food.
While it might not seem like it compared to later population explosions, this early development of stone tools had a massive impact, as our ability to obtain resources and protect against predators rose along with the sharpness of our bits. Entire species of exceptionally adapted animals that had been successful for millions of years went extinct because they could not compete, because a meter-tall monkey with a stone hand axe is just too much for evolution to handle.
This is how our genus of humans went from as few as a few thousand (estimates between 1000 and 10,000) just 70,000 years ago, to several million by the time we figured out how to grow our own food around 10,000 years ago. The population continued to skyrocket to 200-300 million by just 2000 years ago, and an estimated 1.5 billion by 100 years ago. And then we came to two major breakthroughs: Vaccines, and also not killing each other as often (after the World Wars made wars no longer cool and hip). And so, we’re at a ridiculous 7 billion today.
The only thing keeping us from a Malthusian catastrophe caused by our big brains allowing us to kill off all our competition, is those same big brains realizing that it would be very, very bad to exhaust all of our resources. Remember to go green.
This is why to my mind the notion that long-lived races simply “breed slowly” is ridiculous. It has to be a choice, and it is the correct one to not destroy yourself with the weight of your own babies.
Speaking of invasive species outbreeding their resources, some actual headcanon on the subject!
Harpies! (And also Sirens; I agree with the notion that they are somehow related to Harpies, perhaps something between a Harpy and a Naga?)
Harpies are a species of all-female, egg-laying flying mammals. In-universe rumor and myth holds that they reproduce by kidnapping males of other species and… coercing them. This does not really make much sense biologically, nor does it explain the strange abundance of harpies and how their populations rapidly become verminous infestations. Harpies, obviously, can breed amongst themselves.
But if only girls, how is babby formed? The answer, and my headcanon, is Parthenogenesis - where the mother produces eggs entirely from her own genetic materials. This occurs very rarely in vertebrates in real life, such as certain sharks, lizards and snakes, but it is a real phenomenon and results in offspring that are, essentially, genetic clones of their mother - and as such, able to reproduce the same way.
Evidence for this headcanon theory is quite good: Harpies tend to form massive groups that build nests and lay numerous eggs, far more than could be explained by standard sexual reproduction, let alone one wherein new males have to be kidnapped, considering harpy nests are often far away from population centers.
Harpies also congregate around a Matriarch, such as a Harpy Queen, and sometimes form a hierarchy of daughters where the Matriarch’s young themselves hold rank above their own children, and so forth. This is also evidenced in the Sirens of Kul Tiras, where especially large and powerful Sirens form the core of a colony.
And so, my headcanon is that harpy colonies are created by a single strong individual (or several individuals) moving into a new area and laying a clutch of eggs. This clutch hatches and imprints on their mother, the Matriarch/Harpy Queen, creating the necessary social bonds and a loyalty to their leader(s).
The young harpies mature, and lay their own clutches - and so in a single generation, you have a fully-fledged infestation on your hands, as the population immediately booms with harpies possessing substantial intelligence in addition to rapid breeding and longevity (no evidence that they’ve lost their Elven lifespans, which, while not immortal, are certainly long) and seemingly little regard for the natural balance - the harpy subzone in the Northern Barrens, for example, is filled with dead trees and not much else.
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Very nice harpy/siren headcanon.
And incase any one wanders there is a great ted talk in this link about how birth rates decline when you move to a more resourceful society/status as seen in africa compared to developed countries.
https ://www.ted.com/talks/ hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth
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(Coincidentally related to the above)
Azeroth has some kind of hyper-evolution effect on the entire planet; basically the speed of evolution is increased all-around. This explains why isolated populations after the Sundering so rapidly filled all niches: Zandalar is full of almost exclusively reptiles, for example. We also see many humanoid species who are very adapted to their environments, from Tuskarr to Dwarves, even Kul Tirans; admittedly some of these might be purposefully designed too, but even then we see subspecies like the Dark Irons adapting rapidly. The timeframe is far too short for any of this to be natural evolution, but I like to think all species on Azeroth evolve exceptionally fast, either due to Titan or Old God meddling… possibly both.
I actually really like the fact Zandalar is almost exclusively reptiles, but they fill a lot of the same roles mammals fill in other areas: you even have weird lizard-boars and stuff. The fact Zandalari druids turn into reptiles underlines this too.
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Elves all prefer extremely light clothing, and many are outright nudists. This applies both to Night Elves and High Elves, even the original Highborne.
This is because they are generally far more sensitive than the other races: they enjoy feeling a minute breeze or change in light on their skin, and they feel incredibly confined in thick clothing that doesn’t permit this. They’re helped by the fact all Elven lands are (mostly magically) permanently temperate, never any harsh winters or summers. I also like to think whatever magic keeps them immortal also makes them feel warmer, which is why they are fine even in frigid Northrend with very little clothing. (As an additional bit of headcanon, I like to think the same energy keeps them healthy, youthful and beautiful; this is partly the reason Wretched look so sickly and wrinkled, with the magic keeping them young and healthy cut off.)
Elven men enjoy going bare-chested, or at most in a chest-exposing jacket of sorts. They wear robes on their lower halves, which doesn’t limit movement much; they do not wear any underwear… in fact, underwear isn’t even a concept known to Elves until introduced by other races.
Elven women usually enjoy light dresses; these are extremely thin, often requiring magically enchanted fabrics just to keep them from tearing too easily. Pure white mooncloth robes like what Tyrande wears (if more plain) are popular: these are quite see-through, especially when contrasted to the dark skin of Night Elves, which often causes some awkwardness for non-Elves meeting Elves for the first time… a lot of Stormwind wives have been smacking their husbands to keep their eyes straight lately.
Elves generally prefer to go barefoot as well, feeling the grass, leaves and rocks under their feet. This also helps them move more graciously, highly sensitive feet assisting with balance. Elves who require additional protection will wear sandals or thin leather boots.
This is, of course, reflected in their armor as well: kept extremely light and revealing, it allows Elven soldiers to move much more freely through their forests, preferring a more agile style of combat, relying on dodges and flanking over the protection of armor. While their armor may seem impractical if you consider a Human or Orcish fighting doctrine, it works very well with their preferred fighting style.
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I think either Titan meddling does it, or it’s just the inherent magic of the setting, but this isn’t just Azeroth. Draenor has the same thing, where we went from the gigantic Magnaron to the tiny tiny Orcs in the span of… I think just a few thousand years, according to Chronicles?
Evolution in WarCraft may have direct help from magic sometimes (Dark Iron Dwarves, High Elves, Naga, Broken/Lost One Draenei) but it clearly moves damn fast even without it!
It’s a good headcanon, shame it’s not factual.
Elves seem perfectly comfortable in winter cloth or heavy armor 
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Thats why its a headcanon… D:
I stand by the possibility that they in fact are, in a sense; being sabertusks who ascended via titan interference into bipedal high cognition just like how raccoons turned into pandaren. Zandalari still have scales on their shoulders and the beasts in question are the only viable local fauna with tusks.
TRP Race: Evolved Sabertusk.
Vulpera are incredibly adaptable, similar to trolls. While primarily desert-dwellers now, they can become natural inhabitants of almost any biome within a few generations.
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I said “Zandalar is”. As in, the island. Almost all the fauna on the island is reptiles; there are some birds and birdsnakes (which are also dinosaurs, and thus reptiles, ofc). The one outlier is there seem to be some gorillas/apes around.
I’m potentially down with the idea of Zandalari Trolls being reptiles (who give live birth) though! But that would make all Trolls reptiles too… including all Elves.
Which brings up the obvious question… are elves secretly dinosaurs?!