The other day I posted that I very rarely play as the bad guy in games. Well, I rarely play any games these days, but when I used to be more of a gamer many years ago I would rarely pick the bad guy. Even in the harmless and fantasy setting of a game world, I just find it hard to do bad actions. I know, I'm weird.

Hive account@bozz reminded me of something, though. He made a comment that he didn't enjoy playing as the horde in WOW (World of Warcraft). Even though from Warcraft III on, the orc horde was made somewhat sympathetic characters and not the pure evil ones that they were in past games, I still never played as them in WOW so I can't compare. However, that comment reminded me that I did pick a somewhat morally ambiguous character back in the Everquest days. Do you remember that game? It was pretty popular before WOW came out. My roommate in college was a big fan and he got me into it by gifting me several months of free play. I think I actually stopped playing after those free months were over, but I did enjoy it during that time.

In that game I picked a dark elf. I don't remember well, to be honest, but I'm sure the dark elves in that game were morally ambiguous, leaning towards being bad guys. Most fantasy uses the term Dark Elf for evil elves. It wasn't always so.

^{1866 painting Elfplay by August Malmström}

When JRR Tolkien introduced the idea of dark elves, he called them the Moriquendi, "Elves of Darkness". Here dark didn't refer to their moral alignment but rather the fact that they never went to Valinor in the first age to see the light of the trees. It'd probably take a long time to explain that fully. Let me try...

In short: in Tolkien's world there were two trees in Valinor in the first age, usually referred as The Two Trees. Valinor was the land of the gods, it was "The West" that all the elves are returning to in Lord of the Rings (which is the 3rd age), which I assume most of you have watched. In the first age these trees glowed and gave light to the world, or at least that part of the world. The gods invited the elves to their land in the first age and any elves that came and saw The Two Trees were granted almost supernatural powers, making them much greater than the elves that stayed behind and never saw the trees. The trees were later destroyed by a giant spider and the evil god (the boss of Lord of the Ring's great evil, Sauron) and the "light elves" started killing each other and came back to Middle Earth. A lot to unpack in that last line, but it's not important right now.

It's more complicated than that, but that's the short short version. This is all in the LotR prequel called The Silmarillion, which is an amazing story, but is a very dense and difficult read so most people who try it quickly give up.

Tolkien's dark elves could be good or bad, just as the other elves and just as men, as "dark" was only referring to the fact that they hadn't see the light of the trees. This was Tolkien's attempt to explain the dark and light elves of Norse mythology (the Dökkálfar and Ljósálfar). Tolkien loved Norse mythology and based a lot of his universe on it.

When the fantasy genre in general started copying everything Tolkien created, they usually took the "dark" as moral alignment and thus dark elves came to mean evil elves. Dungeons and Dragons thought of them that way, though Wikipedia tells me that the latest edition of D&D has changed that to make dark elves capable of any alignment, even good. Good to see D&D returning more closely to Tolkien's ideas which they originally stole.

That brings us back to Everquest. To be honest, I don't remember anything about the game other than choosing a dark elf for my character. So I asked ChatGPT. It tells me that the dark elves of Everquest are a malevolent race, one of the great evils of the world. Their creation myth says that their god of hate, Innoruuk, created them by corrupting one of the ancient good elven races.

That's funny, because that is one of the origins Tolkien gave for orcs, that they were created by Morgoth (the aforementioned boss of Sauron) by corrupting some of the dark elves while the other elves were chilling out in Valinor. It's funny how all of fantasy still copies from Tolkien. Tolkien, the professor of ancient languages who only created his world originally as the background to the artificial languages he created—and professional writers who do nothing but write and think still can't outdo him and steal his ideas.

ChatGPT goes on to say that although the dark elves in general are evil, players had the freedom to play them as good, although doing so would be challenging because the other good races would attack you on sight until you managed to gain enough trust with them. I'd like to think I played my dark elf as good, but I have no memory of it at all. If it was like most MMORPGs then I'm sure I spent most of my time battling small insects.

Anyway, so there we are. I guess I have played as bad guys in video games before.

Did anyone reading this also play Everquest back in the day?

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.