Because things like SoE'ing into each other's town and learning each others classes would have major political ramifications (Imagine people being able to teleport into the middle of the white house after having been trained by our own soldiers) for the races as a whole, but that doesn't mean that each and ever DE or LE hate the others guts, just that politically they are enemies.
The Real Answer:
Because it would hardly be fair to those who choose to play an elf to not be able to party or clan with any other elves when every other race can do it just fine. It would simply makes things much to difficult and annoying from the player's perspective.
Because things like SoE'ing into each other's town and learning each others classes would have major political ramifications (Imagine people being able to teleport into the middle of the white house after having been trained by our own soldiers) for the races as a whole, but that doesn't mean that each and ever DE or LE hate the others guts, just that politically they are enemies.
A better RP answer would be that because of their spiritual alignment and racial attributes they do not have the capacity to learn the skills of the other race’s classes. As for the porting, it would be logical that if they were archenemies there would be some kind of magical barrier blocking them from using transportation spells into one another’s town. The political reference is off-base.
The Real Answer:
Because it would hardly be fair to those who choose to play an elf to not be able to party or clan with any other elves when every other race can do it just fine. It would simply makes things much to difficult and annoying from the player's perspective.
Yet this same unfairness is evident in the subclass system, where DE and LEs can’t choose classes from one another’s class tree because of a racial divide that plays no other role in the game save some references to it here or there through the Lineage mythos.
Mmm...Dark Elves should be able subclass to learn Light Elf talents...surely there is one or two among them that are not so completely lost to us that they could never return.
Light Elves are not so much unable as unwilling to travel down the dark roads a Dark Elf must in order to gain mastery over his evil arts...although I doubt that Shillen would take well to a Light Elf as her priest, unless she allowed it simply to be cruel to the lost one's family.
I would also question a Light Elf's ability to summon and control the shadows...such monstrosities exude so much dark energy and exact such a terrible toll on their masters that our people would be sorely pressed to survive it...you'll see that while Dark Elves take some perverse pleasure in the pain they suffer at the hands of their own magic and by the will of their foreboding goddess that they are not as hale as their light skinned cousins...
The laws of magic are such that the healing arts of the light elves are returned to them by granting them long years and a great deal of inner peace before they finally accept the warm embrace of the mother...and that the powers of the dark elves, used always for personal gain or the glory of Shillen, while making them powerful and allowing them to cling to life longer than some of the other races will forever be a grave burden that will eventually become so heavy that it rips them from this world.
To this day, there has been not a single Dark Elf who has returned to their birthplace that was a true convert, what few that have come back to the elven lands have all (some sooner, some later) been shown to be spies and malcontents.
Light Elves might have pushed their dark kin from their homelands...but they aren't so far away that we can't see the terrible devastation following their ways would wreck on our people.
Part of the progress is playing in a field with ponies somewhere, trying to remember songs! :D
I personally think that you can't say LEs are unwilling to learn the dark arts - you have to remebmer that all that is corrupt and dark about the dark elves directly stems from the humans, but a light elf can very well sub necormancer or dark avenger - does that make sense?
There's honestly no thorough, good RP explanation for the subclass restriction, although I buy the magic barrier thing for ports (except it should work on every other race and send them back to Gludio also).
Basically they can party togeather because they reached a truce. They are not at war anymore, but both still carry a grudge.
You don't really just wanna show up in a place that is known to harbor bad feelings for you. Plus I don't think they like each other enough to teach their racial secrets.
But when in a clan or whatnot they can still be friends...
Basically from reading some L2 lore I would make this my best guess.
So, hereby you are implying that orcs respect humans (and elves, haha) enough to induce them into the secret of their magic as well as their fighting style?
Really, I don't know why they go on the elven/dark elven rift so much. Certainly, it is the most recent, but it is most definitely not the most deep-running.
Ahh, yea I was actually gonna mention that. I was gonna say then humans and orcs shouldn't be able to sub each other, but I didn't want to side track it too much.
Nobody should be able to subclass anything but a human if you go by lore reasons - all the races guard their secrets far too jealously. Can you really see elves teaching human magic again after what happened the last time? They're self-righteous, not complete ******s.
Well here is something else to think about. Blade dancers get the dance of light which does sacred damage and the funny thing is it’s the 2nd dance they get (at lvl 43) so it’s not like I guarded secret. To my knowledge LE do not have a dark attack.
Their racial specialities aren't the sacred or dark elements though - it's a bit more complex than that. What of 'magic that strikes many foes'? For a long time, each race had its own approach to this - but the dark elves of the ivory tower were inattentive, and now humans and elves, too, have learned how to wield magic with the kind of effect that was once unique to the dark kin.
Their secrets are other things - I would believe that the voice training elves receive is unique - it's most obvious in Spellsingers and Swordsingers, of course; but I imagine Temple Knights have a strong voiced component in their use of Hate, and that Elders' prayers are of exceptional beauty also. The unicorns, too, as creatures of the Lady of Song, likely would not heed to the orcers of an orc with its brutish voice.
I simply do not realistically see subclassing as possible once you start thinking about the lore, and as such, since it is possible, it should happen without too much regard to the lore.
i always had this vision, and maybe its a bit odd, but anyways. i thought SwS used bubbleswords. very ornately crafted swords with special holes in the blade, kind of like a cross between a flute and a wand you use to make bubbles with. at they swing the swords, the wind blows in the sword, making a sort of melodious yet forboding music. i never really thought they sang with their mouth, so to speak. it would be interesting if only dwarves could subclass all the other races, and humans/elfs/darkelfs/orc races could only subclass the classes allowed to their race. it would certainly add some balancing, in a sort of odd way.
I haven't read any sub-classing dialog so this might be way off, but I tend to see sub-classing as something very special, lore-wise, where someone has attained great status throughout the lands and found a few very good friends of other races... that will help train them "subclass" out of friendship, not because of some inter-racial clause or truce.
Apparently elves and dark elves have a far bigger problem in teaching eachother than any other combination of races, even if there's friendship involved, and it's kinda plausable as well looking back at their history as one that might be just one tidbit more grudgeful than any other racial grudge in the lore..?
Part of the progress is playing in a field with ponies somewhere, trying to remember songs! :D
I personally think that you can't say LEs are unwilling to learn the dark arts - you have to remebmer that all that is corrupt and dark about the dark elves directly stems from the humans, but a light elf can very well sub necormancer or dark avenger - does that make sense?
There's honestly no thorough, good RP explanation for the subclass restriction, although I buy the magic barrier thing for ports (except it should work on every other race and send them back to Gludio also).