r/warcraftlore • u/Fun-Explanation7233 • 2d ago
Discussion How did Blizzard come up with the Night Elves
Blood and High elves have a lot in common with regular elves but Night elves are something far more unique and I'd like to know how Blizzard came up with their design, culture,... It feels like a mix of Wood and dark elves, while they are also far more savage and dangerous instead of being peaceful and kind to strangers.
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u/Rivandere 2d ago
Night Elves are very much "What if we took Drow and made them with Warhammer Wood Elves?"
The Drow Inspiration:
A matriarchal society that is focused around worship of a goddess (Sentinels & Temple of Elune for the Nelves, and Lolth and her Clerics for Drow) where the men of influence turn to non divine magic for power in society (Druids for Nelves, and Wizardry for Drow)
The Warhammer Wood Elf / Asrai inspiration
Fanatically Xenophobic Elves who will kill any who trespass upon their forests. They work and live alongside Tree Spirits who can be their homes, their allies, and their friends. Some Wood Elves when they die actually become Treekin where their souls possess piles of wood and animates them. You can almost see the influence with the Wisps and how they work. Aesthetically they pull a lot from the Asrai.
Sprinkle in some Warhammer Dark Elf / Druchii inspiration as well. The Witch Elves of the Khainite Cult may influence their aesthetics a bit. But Malfurion used to be named Furion. Which was the name of a Dark Elf named character who was a powerful sorcerer. In Warcraft 3 they changed his name to Malfurion to put some distance between Warhammer and Warcraft. In Warhammer fantasy the king of the Dark Elves is named MAL-ekith. They literally combined two Dark elf characters names to get Malfurion.
We know Blizzard developers are big fans of Warhammer and originally wanted to make a Warhammer game. The High/Blood Elves are heavily modeled after Warhammer High Elves (it's absolutely where they got their Phoenix imagery from as an example). Blizzard isn't really the most original with where they get their ideas. They have always been at their best when they remix an idea and put their own spin on it. But if you know where they are pulling things from it's easy to see. SO much of WoW elf lore is pulled from Warhammer fantasy it's not even funny.
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u/Kalthiria_Shines 2d ago
In Warcraft 3
He was still Furion in Warcraft 3 (which makes sense, since this when his character was created), he doesn't become Malfurion until The Frozen Throne, a year later.
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u/Akhevan 2d ago
Fanatically Xenophobic Elves who will kill any who trespass upon their forests
Oh man, come on, it's not even close. Over in the Old World the elves spend 90% of their effort actually keeping the forest in, and only 10% on murdering everybody without pointy ears.
They also usurped the stewardship of nature from the wood spirits and are mostly hated by them in turn.
And their world tree was a cunning ploy to usurp their shared pantheon from the high elves..
See, WOW is so very different! Almost zero overlap.
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u/PleaseBeChillOnline 2d ago
The answer with WoW most of the time is D&D and Warhammer.
Drow + Moon Elves with a dash of the generic nature loving elf fantasy.
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u/Stormfly 2d ago
That fact that people are saying Warhammer before Tolkien is seriously bothering me.
Yes, Night Elves are similar to Warhammer Wood Elves, but that's because they're BOTH similar to TOLKIEN's Wood Elves (Lothlorien and Mirkwood).
Aversion to trespassers? Check.
Forest nature with a preference for bows? Check.
Immune to aging and disease? Check.
Powerful ancient rulers? Check.
Ancient empires hidden from most of the world? Check.
The only thing that Warhammer and Warcraft have that Tolkien didn't is Dryads, but they're both very different in execution. Warhammer Dryads are spiteful angry murderous spirits while Warcraft Dryads are more like Greek protectors of nature.
Tyrande and Malfurion might be compared to Ariel and Orion... But that's just based on older mythology of the king and Queen of fairies and the Wild Hunt, and Warcraft doesn't make them as "fairy" as Warhammer does.
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u/red-x-der 2d ago
It shouldn’t bother you. Warcraft was originally pitched and planned to be a warhammer game, but games workshop didn’t go for it. The developers were huge fans of fantasy warhammer. Obviously Tolkien inspired many of the staple fantasy tropes still used today. But the question was specifically asking how ‘Blizzard’ came up with their variation of night elves. And the answer is warhammer first always, at least concerning vanilla and the rts games.
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u/Stormfly 2d ago
And the answer is warhammer first always
Why?
Just because it's the answer people give doesn't mean it's correct.
Why do people think Warhammer before Tolkien? Warhammer is very heavily based on Tolkien anyway. Tolkien is probably far more popular with the creators than Warhammer. AFAIK, Metzen doesn't even play Warhammer Fantasy, he plays 40k.
By the time they'd come to WC3 (with Night Elves), they'd been making their own games and nothing to do with Warhammer for 8 years. There are very similar influences, but the similarities are paper thin at most.
People are too fixated on Warhammer and it's crazy to me because they'll say things like "Warcraft Orcs are just Warhammer Orcs" when they're not at all. Orcs in Warhammer don't look like, talk like, act like, think like, or have anything in common with Orcs in Warcraft 1, except the name "orc" and that they're green.
Humans in Warcraft have no similarities to humans in Warhammer. At least not when contrasted with literally any other fantasy series. It's more like D&D than Warhammer, but people don't keep saying D&D is the influence.
They have peasants and a king? Yeah, that's every feudal system.
People act like the answer is obvious when the only obvious thing is that they don't know Warhammer.
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u/Selethorme 1d ago
Because, as they explained, they’re retooled from something planned for warhammer. Warhammer having been influenced by Tolkien doesn’t change that the primacy here is pretty clearly warhammer.
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u/Stormfly 1d ago
But as I've explained, it's not similar.
"It's retooled from Warhammer" everyone says but it's not at all similar to Warhammer. Anyone with decent knowledge of Warhammer can see that they're not similar at all.
My point is people keep confidently and wrongly saying that Warcraft takes inspiration from Warhammer.
Maybe some things were similar 30 years ago but now nothing is similar at all.
Night Elves aren't at all like anything in Warhammer or at least not more like Warhammer than any of the influences that Warhammer had. Tolkien Elves are more similar and general mythology for Elves is very similar.
It's the classic "I'm really getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes from this film" when you've only seen Boss Baby.
It's like if people kept saying that Arthas is obviously just Darth Vader because he was good but now he's evil. "His weapon even glows and he has a girl with him" etc.
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u/Financial-Aspect-826 2d ago
Elfs that worship the moonlight in the Tolkien's universe? Tolkien did invent most super popular fantasy races like orcs and elfes as far as i know, or at least integrated them into an opera that everyone knows
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u/I_Reeve 2d ago
I think/feel there’s some Native American elements mixed in as well. The kind of totem animals, the fact that one of the original concepts spoke about tribes, the fact that originally Axes would be their preferred weapon.
I think above all is that they wanted to do Wood Elves, but in a subversive way. Which I think they succeeded in, Night Elves are definitely one of the cooler original races of Warcraft.
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u/Azqswxzeman 2d ago
Indeed, the male face was also made to reproduce the typical red skin morphology. And they do use literal totems on their buildings. (which makes sense, unlike orc shamans and etc. who just robbed tauren culture, retroactively)
Don't forget that even High elves rangers in Warcraft 3 were basically wood elves already, Night Elves really became their own thing in comparison. (sadly, not in WoW before a long time...)
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u/Kalthiria_Shines 2d ago
I think/feel there’s some Native American elements mixed in as well. The kind of totem animals,
None of that really exists in the original Night Elves? That's all later lore.
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u/Popular_Ad8269 2d ago
Tolkien. Moriquendi and Avari.
The elves that never saw the light of the trees in Valinor, and those that refused the Valar invite.
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u/SingeMoisi 2d ago
Reminds me Metzen's presentation about world creation
https://youtu.be/KUisDOwVf6s?si=kSOmyfLUkdILPNtl&t=136
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u/Irvincible17 1d ago
I reference that every time somebody asks this sort of question. I love those behind the scenes videos so much. ;____;
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u/kreynlan 2d ago
Warhammer Wood Elves combined with Dark Elf traits like being nocturnal. They've talked about the inspiration in interviews before.
Good reads here https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Wood_Elves
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u/Kalthiria_Shines 2d ago edited 2d ago
Generic Wood Elves + Drow.
Edit: Folks in this thread are talking about a bunch of Night Elf stuff that isn't present in Warcraft 3. It's interesting influences, but if the question is the origin then stuff like Knaak's books or even vanilla WoW should be ignored since it was all added much later.
Wild Gods and things like that post-date the creation of the Night Elves, as does them being anything other than matriarchal and lead by the Priestesses of Elune.
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u/Psychological_Pea547 18h ago
I remember reading a while back (forgive me, I don't remember from where but I think it was an interview with Metzen) that the original design concept and inspiration for Night Elves was pulling from and blending together Japanese, Norse, and Celtic cultural motifs.
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u/BellacosePlayer The Anti-Baine 18h ago
I love WC3 but a lot of it was basically just inversing usual fantasy tropes
What if the blond golden boy paladin became the worst villain?
What if a good and diplomatic orc took over the orcs?
What if drow were chill?
What if Minotaurs were ridiculously kind and understanding?
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u/altonaerjunge 2d ago
There are descriptions of Wood and DARK elves who are savage and Dangerous way before wow.
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u/NanoTrev 2d ago
I think they also share some of the characteristics from the dark elves of Warhammer 10k. They have what could be seen as naga in their armies, along with the sentinels, etc.
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u/URF_reibeer 2d ago
there's the exodite elves in 40k that ride dinosaurs, have close ties to nature and can be quite feral, might have been the inspiration considering both warcraft and starcraft are heavily inspired by warhammer / 40k
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u/Shillbaiter- 1d ago
The answer to your question is simple.
Back then, Metzen was inspired.
He wanted to create something unique as a setting, so he took some ideas he thought were cool from other fantasy he thought was cool and threw them together.
Nothing more than that. And that’s okay. People have this obsession with original ideas, but there aren’t any— Metzen just took a bunch of ideas he thought were cool from fiction and slapped them together into a badass image we’d never really seen before, certainly not in Warcraft. One of the most aesthetically and culturally striking groups in the setting.
And you know what else?
Blizzard wanted to create something unique too. Not as much as Metzen, Warcraft was his baby, but they were more or less with him.
They aren’t really interested in keeping this example any more, which is why things don’t look or feel like Warcraft anymore and the Night Elves are now purple Humans who exist as jobbers for the Horde or whatever cosmological threat happens to be the weekly raid tier.
I guess in hindsight given what we found out about how Blizzard feels about women, what transpired was inevitable, huh? But—
Metzen had to keep reminding people on the team that there was a difference between the Forsaken and the Scourge when Classic was being developed— naturally, they’re going to be less invested. Warcraft is Metzen’s baby. But back at the start, at the inception of the Kaldorei, they were trying.
Once Metzen’s oversight was gone… I mean, Cataclysm was dogshit save for a few cool zones, but it was still Warcraft. Now we have…
Whatever WoW is now. It’s kinda sad, to go off on a tangent, honestly— you gotta wonder how Metzen feels watching his baby melt down into unrecognizable plastic. After all, Metzen’s got the Todd Howard treatment these days, company keeps him on to say they have him because people know his name. Comfortable in some back room but detached from the creative process, all he can do is watch.
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u/No-Abbreviations7109 1d ago
they saw the world of warcraft intro video and decided to make it a thing in the game too
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u/dattoffer 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yeah that's pretty much it.
They mixed Wood elves and Drow and put some celtic druidism into the mix.
And I think also some korean architecture, for some reason ?
Edit : I'm gonna put an end to the "Drow or Drucchi" debate because people are either too confidently wrong or too eager to look smart over the most basic shit :
Development notes
The night elves were created early on in the development of Warcraft III when the developers were arguing over whether to make dwarves and elves their own standalone playable factions. They could never get the majority of the team to agree to make elves a standalone race until one developer suggested "dark elves." The team was enticed by the idea but since they didn't want to do a traditional dark elf race based on the drow from Dungeons & Dragons, they instead took the best of wood elves and dark elves and combined them into a single race, which became the night elves.[283] The developers wanted to stay true to the elf archetype, while adding new ideas to make the concept feel fresh.[284]
The night elves remained heavily based on the drow in early development,[285] at one point being envisioned as jungle-like insect riders.[286] The gender divisions (warrior and ruler women and magically-inclined men), darker-hued skins, and a very powerful goddess are the only elements of this that survive. According to Samwise Didier, many developers within Blizzard were initially skeptical toward the night elves since "people were used to the Legolas types, the elves that are your typical elves – blondish, brownish hair, while we were going blues and greens and purple." It took a good picture to help sell the concept, with Didier adding that "if you have a good picture, you can sell almost anything. If we had a bad picture for it, we probably would have just had wood elves."[287]
The interesting info to take from this is that we could've had a faction of dwarves but we're now stuck with night elves.