Racial Ages

[Efluvious]

Orcs used to live a lot longer, too. My neighbor (he's a big green orc) had a relative that lived to be over 200 years old!




C'mon guys, its a game :crazysmile:

[Guest]

Something bugs me about the ages in WoW I mean this is evidently a pretty primitive world where they are just discovering mechanics and the such and a long tim ago IRL humans used to live for hundreds of years and a 400 year old person was abit over middle aged so why do the WoW humans have a life exspectancy of modern day humans who only live for such a short amount of time is because we have made evolved viruses and diseases that didn't exsist way back when and such?

The only place that this is true is religious reality (I do not mean to denigrate anyone religious views here, I am simply making a distinction). If we're talking scientific reality, then you're just regular old wrong. If anything, human life expectancy has tripled (or even quintupled) since prehistoric times. Take it from an archaeologist.

[Guest]

Take it from an archaeologist.

...and a non-practicing but educated anthropologist. What the heck? Seriously. We'd like to know.

[Sound]

I third and fourth that.

Taken from Wikipedia:

Humans by Era - Average Lifespan at Birth (years)
Neanderthal - 20
Upper Paleolithic - 33
Neolithic - 20
Bronze Age - 18
Classical Greece - 20-30
Classical Rome - 20-30
Pre-Colombian North America - 25-35
Medieval Britain - 20-30
Early 20th Century - 30-40
Current world average - 67

While Wikipedia isn't completely factual and the numbers above are only averages.. It's a bit obvious we live longer now than we did in the prehistoric days. Or at least that's what I was continually taught growing up. :) 400 years is a huuuuge stretch. Did you actually mean lore wise, Bloodbound?

[Guest]

Plus that lore-wise would only be in the OT of the bible before Noah's flood. Shaky at best, plus I doubt blizz would base the human racials on the OT when a nice long modern day human lifespan is easier to calculate and work with in a rp. It's hard enough to think of what the longer living races where doing during the crucial times of previous warcraft games,, but throwing in a 400+ year old average human in there would make it even more wonky

[Logros]

and a long tim ago IRL humans used to live for hundreds of years and a 400 year old person was abit over middle aged so why do the WoW humans have a life exspectancy of modern day humans who only live for such a short amount of time is because we have made evolved viruses and diseases that didn't exsist way back when and such?

hock: hock: hock:

BB, whatever you're on, shame on you for not sharing.

Human life expectancy these days is very high compared to even 100 years ago, and LE is going up, not down.

[Anca]

I believe that Life Expectancy averages from the past must be tempered by some situations that were common in the past but are not so common now. If someone more knowledgeable than myself can correct me, please do.

Averages can be thrown off by the fact that many, many children and babies died. Larger families were a necessity for many cultural groups because so many people never made it to adolescence. However, if you could make it past 10 years old, you had a pretty good chance of making it to adulthood and even being 'old.'

The numbers can also be skewed by the number of young mothers dying during childbirth. But still, a sixteen-year-old mother dying won't throw averages off nearly as much as that one-month-old baby.

Throw in the number that die before birth, and the LE average drops even faster.

Childhood used to be a lot more dangerous than it is now with vaccines and CPS.

[Guest]

Wing, this can be especially true in some cultures. There are (and have been in the past) many places and times where the chances of a child living were so low that you didn't name it until it was two years old and had passed the first round of diseases. Then, in Roman times, you hit another round of them as a teenager, and then another around 20. After that, you're golden until like... thirty? fourty? And then you're done.

[Guest]

One. Life Exspectancy averages were also thrown off by the fact that humans had more natural enemys and not the right tools to protect themselves, the eviroment was very harsh and many children died(as was said before this post), and there were exeedingly more large scale wars in the older world.

Two. Moses a biblical character who has been proven to have existed by archaeologists was about 400 years old when he died and he wasn't even considered "old".

Three. I don't really have anything for three and don't know why I posted this like it is....... >.>

[Sound]

Ah, you meant a biblical figure. I know from past experiences Ironsong tries to avoid religious debates (as they are typically hurtful, never ending and we all have differing beliefs), however I have a request.

Moses a biblical character who has been proven to have existed by archaeologists was about 400 years old when he died and he wasn't even considered "old".

Show me ONE source worthy website, book [link it] or archaeological study [also link it] that says this, please. All the various records I've looked at claimed he died at the age of 120 years. I'd like to believe you.. but everything is going against what you say.

[Logros]

I'd settle for anything at all that construes him as not being old.

One. Life Exspectancy averages were also thrown off by the fact

That's not "throwing off", that's a function of LE. If your odds of not making it to 30 because something was likely to eat you are high, then that means lower LE.

[Eruadan]

Why dont you all stop this topic where it is before it gets out of hand...This is about racial ages in Warcraft, not ages in the real world.

[Fleethoof]

Why dont you all stop this topic where it is before it gets out of hand...This is about racial ages in Warcraft, not ages in the real world.

Yes, let's all please get back to talking about ages in Warcraft lore and drop the historical/religious bit. I'd hate for this thread to have get yanked.

[Guest]

The Thorium Brotherhood wiki has an article about Horde life expectancies that offers these figures:

Orcs: 82-100 years
Forsaken: 72-90 years
Tauren: 114-150 years (wow!)
Trolls: 70-89 years
Blood Elves: 700-2000 years

I'm not sure how much I agree with these estimates, but they're interesting.
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[Mitawa]

I will dust off my Warcraft RPG Sourcebooks here and answer this question in what hopefully won't be too intimidating of a way. Generally speaking, I will be combining the tables from pages...*looks* ...173 and 174 of the 2005 Re-release of the main rulebook, after they put it under Sword and Sorcery.


The Forsaken
The forsaken are first because their information is...unique. They are not born, they do not age, and they do not die of old age. The Plague holds their bodies in a crazy magical stasis until acted upon by an outside force. (Like an axe to the head, or a Pyroblast. You know, the normal stuff we all face every day, right?) If a body in motion stays in motion and so on...well, so do Forsaken, and we just have to pull appropriate numbers off of human tables for when they were infected.

The Humans
Yes, you already know this. You (Well, theoretically. I can't technically know for sure.) are human, but hey, resources are resources because they're complete, no?

Maturity: 15 years Middle Age: 35 Old: 53 Venerable: 70 Max: 80-95 or so.
Priests, Warriors, and Paladins finish training at about 18 years (give or take).
Rogues and similar at 20-25 or so.
Mages and the like at 18-21.

The Orcs
Ah, the lovable green guys. Interestingly, for all their passionate and frequently violent lives, they seem to have a better expectancy than humans.

Maturity: 20 Middle Age: 40 Old: 65 Venerable: 80 Max: 85-105
Healers, Warriors finish training at 22-28
Rogues, et al.: 24-30
Casters: 24-30

The Trolls
Blue guys with tusks. Sort of comparable to humans, sort of not. Here’s the numbers.

Maturity: 17 Middle Age: 30 Old: 47 Venerable: 69 Max: ~79
Healers, Warriors finish training at 19-22
Rogues, et al.: 20-26
Casters: 19-22

The Tauren
Ah, my first love. The people of the Earthmother. Tauren live long, relaxing, fulfilling lives according to my information here. Similar to modern hunter-gatherer tribes, they have a distinct absence of stress in their lives which keeps them well preserved.

Maturity: 50 Middle Age: 75 Old: 95 Venerable: 110 Max: 115-150
Healers, Warriors finish training at ~52.
Hunters, Scouts, et al.: 54-60
Casters: 53-55

The Blood Elves
This book was actually published a little while before the advent of the Burning Crusade, but Blood Elves are generally High Elves who all aligned together under a different government/socio-structure and have decided to channel their magic addiction a bit differently. So…

Maturity: 60 Middle Age: 175 Old: 263 Venerable: 350 Max: 360-390
Healers, Warriors, Paladins finish training at 64-84
Rogue, Scout, et al.: 70-100
Casters: 66-90


I’ve also got the lot of Alliance races sans draenei, though this is a Horde guild and I won’t post ‘em unless someone would actually like me to. These charts also include some average heights and weights for all races, male and female…but hey, that’s a different topic altogether.

Cheers,
Mitawa