>>717333483
Isolating themselves is a common trope, but they are also often very involved in worldly affairs. Also, often before isolating themselves, they were very much the top-dogs in many settings and doing most of the important stuff in the lore.
Elves are cool because they often have a massive impact (for better or worse) on their settings world. Unfortunately, most settings focus on the time that comes afterwards, because we just need humans to be always the protagonists for self-insert reasons.