The Night Elves are one of the major races and factions in the Warcraft universe…prior to WoW. After WoW…l-let’s not talk about that.
The Nelves also happen to be among my favorite elves in fiction. In fact…I struggle to think of any other kind of elf I like more…or even just as much.
The Nelfs were originally very cool. When they were introduced in The Reign of Chaos, the Nelfs had a segregated society along gender lines. All the males went to bed as the Druids while all the females remained awake to watch over them and the forest they inhabited. And after thousands of years of rigorous and disciplined training…the Sentinels became a serious force to be reckoned with.
Though, in actuality, this portrayal probably isn’t 100% accurate. It’s probably the case that there were at least a few non-soldier and non-druid Night Elves running around. The main piece of evidence suggesting this are the destroyed villages in The Frozen Throne.
The main thing to keep in mind is this segregation: only females became warriors and only males became druids.
This has since been retconned…by Vanilla WoW. Another thing that WoW likely retconned was their power level. In Warcraft 3, it’s shown (and implied) that the Nelves were on the same level as the Alliance and Horde individually…basically, like they were their own entire faction. In WoW, the Night Elves join the Alliance for no explicable reason. Though this was obviously to perpetuate the pointless faction war in WoW.
The Night Elves are definitely my favorite faction in Warcraft and this has been the case since…possibly since I first started playing Warcraft III.A) The reasons I like them? Well, they’re sexy warrior women elves who worship the Moon, have Japan-esque architecture and they can produce infinite lumber. It’s mostly the boobs though. Y’know, Warcraft 3 left an excellent impression on my young mind.
Because I like the Nelfs so much, I’m not very happy with what has been done with them post-Frozen Throne. So basically everything in WoW.
Another note of note is that the Nelfs are directly related to the Naga. The latter are mutated from the former.