Question a bout Night elves

So we had this discussion in the guild chat, it was a bit messy. Misunderstandings and I explained myself incorrectly, so I decided to bring it up here for clarification (because now I am unsure myself too, and I'd like to have the correct information). I hope to get some answers from experienced Kaldorei roleplayers, or others who know something about the matter.

I always believed the following:

Let's say, just for the sake of it, that an elf of 800 years is considered to be an adult within the night elf society/culture. However, that does not mean the night elf equals a 21 year old human. It is due to "night elf beliefs" or due to their culture, however I have to call it in this case, that the 800 year elf is considered as addult. Not because the elf is only now finally stopping with his immature behaviour. Surely the night elves are able to act just as mature on the age of 21 just like a 21 years old human.

Would this be correct?

I dare say at 21 years old, the elf is still an infant/child

And I thought Blizz was going by 300= Maturity age, not 800 (Sources are conflicting, yet most Kaldorei use 300 to my knowledge).

So, physical maturity=300.

Well,
I'll now put aside the never ending dispute of whether Nigth Elves mutated from trolls or have totaly different origin. However night elves were at some point aging mortals (and are again now as far as I've noticed). So I'm very favourable to the idea that elves get in fact to be mature ....or physicaly and mentaly developed much earlier. So I'll separete those two concepts:
1, Phisicall maturity
2. Status of being considered full adult member of the society.

The second is in fact arbitrary chosen age. Like being allowed to vote at the age of 18, 21 or 31.

In fact saying that elves develop much slower would be serious factor hindering their competitivens in the past ages before they even raised to power.

Age is very tricky in WoW, especially elven. Now that they are not immortal I believe the adulthood begins at 110 now. As far as I understand, Night Elves physically age slower. So they'd only reach young childhood after say, a decade? And scale as such. That has been my understanding as one who totally immersed herself in Kaldorei lore.

I've seen people argue it both ways. Personally I like the idea that Kaldorei physically and mentally mature at a slower pace than races with a shorter life span, as is reflected in mammals other than humans.

But I don't really mind how people play it, so long as I don't have a 12,000 year old Hello Kitty schoolgirl on my hands.

There is prehaps also another thing. If you grow in an environment which treats you like less-responsible individual, you'll tend to act to these expectations. So even thought an indiviadual could be physiclly mature (able to procreate) he/she can act in "childish" way longer if the environment treats hi/her like that. I'm now 25 an in the medieval ages I'll probably have already like 10 years old kids. However these days, I can live carefree life until 35 or like that. Which is simply because the life expectancy is not 30-40 years in average but 70-80.

When it comes to elves in WoW, of both kind. I see that they might mature a bit slower, but no where near as it takes a hundred years for them to grow to an adult stature. But maybe they won't reach their full hight until they are thirty/fourty instead of reaching it some where between fifteen and twentyfive.
For me, in any plausible way I see it I can only see the elven "adult" to be a social acceptance of maturity.
And I judge that on the fact that I as a human of soon twenty four can at times have trouble trying to get people that are around seventy, eighty, to listen and take some things I say seriously. Something I can fully understand, they have after all lived more than three times as long as I have.

Now, take this and change the numbers so instead we have someone who is eighty years old, who is dealing with a group of people who have lived for over five thousand years.
Yea, you stand there, having had one job for thirty years, after studying for some decades before that. Trying to convince them that they are wrong in an issue they fundamentally believe to be correct in.
To take a real life example, I had a discussion about beer with my parents, and a friends parents where they had it twisted on the fermentation processes for different types of beer. I was right, but they just waved me away since I (at the time) was only nineteen years and couldn't know this better than them.
Figure it being something as simple as that, but change the span of years from roughly thirty to a few thousand. One might argue that with age comes wisdom, and yes it does. But it also set's you very firm in your believes and make's it so that it takes the old one a longer time to accept that someone is adult and what she/he says might indeed be worth listening too.

PS: About the "other long lived mammals also grow slower than humans". This is true, but also, most of those mammals are also far times the size of humans. For our size we are extremely slow to develop and fully dependent on our parents, while an infant giraffe can stand and walk around within two hours of it's birth.

I mean mental wise / wisdom wise / intelligent wise.

I can see that an elf his body grows slower, to put it simple. However, elves are a wise race. Why would they raise their children in such a way that their mental maturity is only full grown at 300 ( thanks Raelan ) years old?

Is it not logical that an elf of say 30 is as just as developed as a 30 years old human when it comes to speach / walking / writing etc? Is it not just that it's the elves simply saying that they are only an addult at the age of 300, where a human would simply say that an elf is an addult at the age of 21? I sense during typing that I still have a hard time to make myself clear =p

So I'll use Genevieve's though

I've seen people argue it both ways. Personally I like the idea that Kaldorei physically and mentally mature at a slower pace than races with a shorter life span,

Would that mean that when a human child learns to speak at two, an elf does not, simply because the elf has a longer life span?
Would that also mean that a 50 years old human is further developed when it comes to the mentallity and wisdom etc then a 200 years old elf, while the elf is considered teenager at the Kaldorei?

Other than that, are there no official sources?

Thanks for the repplies so far, but I am still confused

I agree with Muzjhath on that the primary reason for elves to be considered adults at a later age than humans would be social acceptance by older members of their race.

Biological aging might be slower such that a 50-year old night elf still looks like an adolescent, but I think mental aging would be pretty much on the same pace as humans, such that the average 50-year old adolescent night elf would be just as wise and knowledgeable as the average 50 year old human (provided human and night elves grow up in roughly the same circumstances)

Aye Saev that's exactly what I mean. All I need to know is wether it is true or not ;p

The "maturity age" of 300 is not meant to be a physical growing aspect - otherwise we'd have a major nightelf issue after the loss of immortality. If that was the case, then -every- single nightelf born after the loss, would end up dying underdeveloped. No, it's a social/cultural standard. A matter of acceptance.

They ought to have physically grown way before that. However, there is not a single clue out there telling us just "how old" that age is. We can only assume it's roughly a quarter of their current lifespan.

For Blood Elves, I see the physical aging maybe a bit slower (a human needs 18 years where a Belf would need 21 years for exampel). But in a society where everyone is several hundred years old, a 21 year old won't have much to do but learn how everything works. That's going to take time, but with the current state of the world and the last couple of years of history, younger individuals have had more chance to make a mark.

Note, that Blood Elves, High Elves and Night Elves have more or less the same (non-immortal) lifespan, so it wouldn't be that far off that they have more or less the same social view on maturity.

well I see it as simple 300 years is the social acceptence of the human equivilant to 18-21 phisicaly i rp my elf as having matured physicaly fully by 100 (that is the ability to bare children) and seems i seem to fall in line with most peoples oppinions there

Just to toss something in here...
In WoW, you're considered "mature" and "adult" at the age of 15, not 18.

exactly in the world of medievil times physical maturity was classed as the age you could have healthy children threw and threw

I'd say Muzjhath put it very well how I think about it.

Just remember that nothing is set in stone. Lore is rather unclear about age and such things; so to your saying of: "I need to know wether it's true or not". You'll never know wether it's true or not until Blizzard actually says what is what and even then there'll be speculation and assumtions. It enriches lore, storytelling and rp!

Things are pretty clear to me, most of what's been said is what I thought.. more or less. I want to thank you all =)

I'm just curious where you got the idea that humans stop being immature at 21. <_>

Shandris had a boyfriend and was running around wanting to shoot people with her bow in WotA when she was only 16. So yes, I would say night elves age like humans do but then they stop aging at around 21 and are only accepted as adults at 300.

Humans are considered to mentally mature first at the age of 21-24.

I'd say It depends a lot on the culture, and so, aye. I play a pen&paper game called 'Eon' and there's a race there called 'Missla' (Think a gnome, but with night elf ears) - They are considered children until they give birth to a child.

I play a pen&paper game called 'Eon'

Stop making me jealous.....

Jehorius/Jezzek wrote:I'd say It depends a lot on the culture, and so, aye. I play a pen&paper game called 'Eon' and there's a race there called 'Missla' (Think a gnome, but with night elf ears) - They are considered children until they give birth to a child.

.. Pedophilia must be everywhere in their culture... *shudders*

Depends on how you look at it, they don't quite work like humans. To begin with they don't quite understand human irony, and they almost take it for granted that people are nice. Speaking of such intimacy is rude, and will make most of them blush. However, I could go on for -pages- with information, as I have an entire book about 'em.

Shaelyssa wrote:Shandris had a boyfriend and was running around wanting to shoot people with her bow in WotA when she was only 16. So yes, I would say night elves age like humans do but then they stop aging at around 21 and are only accepted as adults at 300.

Thanks, Knaak.