The question is about World of Warcraft in general. Yes, I know all races except the Humans got their lore and “culture” ignored for the sake of gameplay. But I think the situation is the worst when it comes to Night Elves.
(wall of text incoming)
First of all, Night Elves have a strictly gender segregated society. And that was completely ignored for gameplay reasons.
The Sentinels, basically their military, led by Priestesses of the Moon, are strictly female, and that was ignored so there could be playable male Night Elven Warriors, Hunters and Priests. But most of the NPCs are female, so I give them credits for that, there are a few males though.
The same thing can be said about the Watchers. I don’t remember any male Watcher NPC though, but they were made able to be male so that there could be male Night Elf Rogues.
Furthermore, for gameplay reasons, they’ve made their Priestess, NPCs, basically into playable Priests. Well, from lore point of view, that couldn’t be more wrong. Playable Priests are Human Priests in lore, as simple as that. Priestesses of the Moon, lore wise, aren’t even “Priestesses”. They are Huntresses and Warriors! Maybe not traditional, or playable Hunters and Warriors (again playable Warriors and Hunters are Human Warriors and Hunters in lore), but definitely Huntressess and Warriors. Using glaves instead of swords or spears, bows instead of guns etc… They also have that Balance Druid Starfalling aspect, but more on that in my next point.
Than there are the Druids. Lore wise, Druids should be exclusively Night Elf males. But for gameplay reasons, they’ve made them able to be female. But here, unlike with the Sentinels, there are even as many female NPCs as male. There are even female ancient Archdruids, which is ridiculous lore wise. To make both factions able to be Druids, they made Tauren able to be Druids, and as many Tauren NPC druids as Night Elves, which literally doesn’t make any sense lore wise. And than later, for gameplay reasons again, they’ve made Trolls and Humans (including the Worgen) able to be Druids, makes even less sense than Tauren. They could’ve done it like they did with Monks, sure more races can be Monks, but almost all NPCs and trainers are Pandaren. Furthermore they “expanded” their powers. Balance Druids were obviously invented when they realised that they won’t be able to make Priestess of the Moon a playable Class, but they wanted to implement that Starfalling aspect in game, so they made a Balance Druid spec. Balance Druids don’t make a lot of sense in lore. Druids don’t worship Elune (it’s a Priestess of the Moon thing), they worship Wild Gods or Ancient Guardians (Cenarius, Malorne, Aesinna etc…).
Than came Cataclysm. And they excepted the Highborne back into their society, only so they could be Mages. But again lore wise makes no sense. Night Elves despise magic, and the Highborne, who slaughtered them during WotA, and are responsible for most of Night Elven problems (Satyrs, Naga etc…)
The last point are the Demon Hunters. Again, when Blood Elves allied with Illidan, they allied for the sake of sating their magical addiction. But Illidan never trusted them. He thought his arts of combat only to his pupils, those he trusted at fully. And they were Night Elves exclusively (both genders this time). He didn’t trust other races. Hence why there are no Naga, Broken or Satyr Demon Hunters. (Murloc Demon Hunters are a joke) Yet for gameplay reasons they’ve made Blood Elves able to be Demon Hunters, lore wise makes no sense.
Why are human mages as powerful as or more powerful than elven mages? Or why aren’t draenei priests the most powerful priests? Blizzard doesn’t care, it’s far from the best writing but this is how their world works.
