One of the somewhat frustrating things that can occur in-game is that certain races get focused on more than others. Chris Metzen, who is in charge of the story for the game (I forget his actual job title, but I think he's the VP in charge of their Creative department) has stated that at its core, Warcraft is all about Orcs vs. Humans, just as the subtitle of the first game implied.
But in a game with thirteen playable races, it's easy to feel a bit left out. Granted, some races also get quite a bit of lore. The Night Elves have featured prominently in most of the expansions, and we tend to get a lot of stuff about the druids (while there are now four druid-capable races, it's clear that the Night Elves have the strongest influence on the lore of the class.) The Trolls also tend to be featured a lot, even if it is often not the Darkspear. Granted, it helps when you have a civilization that has been on Azeroth for an incredibly huge amount of time. Though I don't have numbers in front of me, it's clear that the Trolls and the Night Elves were all around far earlier than the other playable races - though we can also add Pandaren to that list, with the caveat that most of Pandaren culture has been locked away from the world by the Mists for most of that time.
The dwarfs, gnomes, and humans (and their related races, the Worgen and Undead) can all trace their ancestry to Titan creations, though when exactly they changed into the races they are today is not exactly clear. The Blood Elves are the very same people as the High Elves, and we know that they can trace back the origins of their race as something separate from the Night Elves to a very specific event that living Night Elves remember personally (thanks to the until-recent immortality thing.) In the case of the Tauren, we don't really have a clear history because they did not leave behind much in the way of ruins, passing down their history orally. And finally, with the Goblins, we know a bit of how they became what they are, but what they were before (pygmy trolls perhaps? I'm just spitballing here) eludes us.
The Orcs don't have any history in Azeroth dating back more than 30-odd years, because of course they were on a different planet. We see a bit of their ruins there, but none of it seems profoundly ancient.
So that leaves us with the Draenei.
We know that the Draenei are old, but it's easy to forget just how absurdly, ridiculously old they are. It's actually something that did not occur to me until I created my Death Knight back in the fall of '08, and was given the task of slaying a fellow Draenei to prove my loyalty to the Scourge. The thing that struck me was that he and my DK, Oterro, were old friends, and he reminded me of how they had both grown up in the hills of Argus.
Argus, the planet the draenei left 25,000 years ago.
Now, of course, this should have occurred to me earlier, seeing as the whole backstory of Velen involved being the dissenting voice among the Eredar triumvirate, and thus had to lead his people away from their homeworld while their friends and family were turning into demons. Every Death Knight gets this story, so it stands to reason that a fairly large proportion of the Draenei population is over 25,000 years old.
One result of this is that whenever a questgiver refers to me as "Young Death Knight," or "Young Mage" (if I'm not on the Troll) I kind of laugh to myself, thinking "um... no, not young."
But there are some interesting implications. The War of the Ancients, for example, where Malfurion, Tyrande, and Illidan beat back Azshara and the Burning Legion, occurred long after the Draenei fled Argus. Even the Night Elves, with their super-ancient culture, are relative newcomers compared with the Draenei.
We know that the Draenei have hopped around from world to world, and that Draenor was only the second-to-last of their settlements in a huge, long history of running from the Legion. You see what happened to Draenor. If I understand correctly, it fared better than most of the places the Draenei found. Now, the Draenei didn't need to show up to make to Legion aware of Azeroth, but it does mean Azeroth could (and will, obviously, because Blizzard isn't going to let the Legion destroy the freaking world) be the place where the Legion finally gets stopped. In the run-up to the Cataclysm, Velen made the suggestion that they flee the planet, taking the Alliance with them. It makes sense - to them, this could very well just be one more pitstop on the road from Argus.
Frankly, it's a wonder that Draenei characters even remember the names of the various races, given how many they must have come across over the years.
It also means that the genocide committed against them by the Orcs is extremely recent history (equivalent to something like yesterday) for them, and the fact that the Draenei tend to be one of the more forgiving voices in the Alliance is damned impressive. Then again, it's possible they've had it worse than their treatment by the Orcs, just very long ago.
The Draenei must have a profound understanding of the universe. I wonder, for instance, if the other places they've visited had Old Gods or Titans. Might there be other cosmic forces at work? (we don't know much about the origins of demons, other than that they live in the Twisting Nether (hyperspace) instead of the Great Dark Beyond (normal, spacey space.)
The Draenei have not gotten much exposure since Burning Crusade, though this is actually supported by the fact that much of the Alliance doesn't really know what to make of them. In Borean Tundra, for instance, the Scourge uses this to their advantage, manipulating the commander of Valiance Keep (or is it Valgarde? Always mix those up) into ignoring the Draenei's advice when hunting down agents of the Cult of the Damned. They seem to get along ok with also super-ancient Night Elves (even if the first interaction with them in Azuremyst is less than ideal, given the fact that the Draenei not-too-surpringly look like Eredar.)
When Blizzard came out with the faction-leader short stories, I actually gave them a look (free is always good!) and the Velen one was quite interesting. First of all, Velen is constantly seeing telepathically various planets targeted and destroyed by the Burning Legion - we may have fended them off, but they're still working hard eradicating life throughout the universe. The other interesting development? The Exodar has been fixed. If the Draenei so chose, they could leave Azeroth.
So where is this all headed? Well, the Draenei might not have a huge role to play at the moment, beyond being members of the Alliance, but the next time we take on the Burning Legion, I would be surprised if we did not see the Draenei play a prominent role in taking the fight to the demons. Indeed, in a future expansion we might travel to Argus itself, and see if Mac'aree is still standing after 25 millennia.
The core of the game may be the conflict between Orcs and Humans, but a much larger narrative has grown out of that. The Draenei have a crucial part to play, and I look forward to delving farther into their history.
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