As far as I'm concerned the Super Elf thing has nothing to do with levels. As fast as life threatening encounters causes you to learn and grow in power (in D&D) than any character with a busy enough schedual will be epic and beyond within a decade. After you reach a certain point NO CHARACTER should get anywhere near the 40 to 50 range. Their simply isn't anything in the cosmos challanging enough to give that kind of XP.
My problem comes as this. Elves should be better without levels. At first level a 16 year old human commoner is more skilled (insanely skilled after you account for the feat) than an elf of the same exact build. This elf has been around for about a century! He has seen at least a lifetime of events and history by human standards and well over 5 times what this 16 year old kid has done. Elves do not sit in easy chairs all their lives. They are portrait as lively and lovers of song, dance, games, and swordplay and archery. These are skills every elf should have great skill in do to their love of them and ample time to practice. But an elf bard who's strummed the harp for close to a century is beaten in skill by a human who hasn't held it for a decade? Sorry but that is not an accurate depiction of the human learning process, that's and elf with a severe learning disorder.
The only way to account for a elfs lack of a vastly superior intellect and collection of skills is that they learn very slowly. But when you live more than six times longer than a human "slow" learning doesn't account for the substantial gap. mental retardation however, does. But elves aren't retards. Most of them are highly intelligent. They also gain xp at the same rate so their learning ability seems to be just fine.
To help with my description I know a certain young man who has down syndrom. In math and most other testable abilities he has about the skill of a typical 12 year old. He is nearly 20. So he requires not quite twice the time it takes a normal human to master skills and abilities. Multiply the severity of his problems by 3 and you have the elf brain as the rules seem to describe. Gnomes, dwarves, and many other races would share this problem as well albeit to a lesser extent.
It is broken in my opinion. But I don't like elves all that much so I won't watse my time trying to correct it. I just let the logistical problems slip by without worrying about them.
Hmm; superelfs are a problem; maybe most elf races don't want to enslave the other races; but drow would. In the old game I didnt believe in strict level limits; I just doubled the exps needed to level. If you take all the long lived races to the conclusion proposed by the original poster; yes this could be a serious problem. Can we really depend on the Dwarfs to keep us free of the Elven yoke? I guess elves; not reproducing as fast as other shorter lived races would more or less take over. I really dont know of anyone who plays over that span of time; it would seem the world would already be in this conclusion before most people played unless elves and such races have some check or balance or are new to the world. Hmm; is a nice problem to think about and how I will handle it in my world; thanks for bringing it up.
Actually, I think that is the Githyank Lich Queen who culls folks before they get strong enough to challenge her. Lolth is already a goddess: a vile, putrescent, loathesome abomination of a goddess, but a goddess nonetheless.I stand corrected.
Actually, the drow do have something similar. It was detailed in Dragon magazine, possibly issue #298.
Like the test at level 6 where those who fail become driders, drow who would become epic level have to face an aspect of Lolth in a duel. It's strictly one-on-one, but no drow are stupid or honest enough to stick to that rule - it's not even reasonably fair, so most candidates actually show up with entire armies.