Are there really only one Archimonde and Kil'Jaeden?

[Eats Compost]

I had it explained to me in a way that makes it seem less bullshit; the WoD Draenor is a little pocket dimension that only really consists of Draenor itself, and it's been copy-pasted somewhere in our universe. Consequently, when Gul'dan starts communicating with the Legion, he's not actually communicating with an AU Legion. He just gets gets in touch with ours instead. The only complication would be demons that already existed on Draenor at the moment in which Kairoz brought this thing into existence (Mannoroth, maybe?) but that can be explained away easily enough.

In that case, it's not just the AU Legion that's not threre, it's everything off world. So, you wouldn't expect AU Ethereals to start popping up either, or AU Azerothians. I think that makes a lot of sense because it's consistent with how the Caverns of Time tends to treat the past, containing it within bubbles that only go so far.

I can't remember if this is supported by anything ingame, but it makes it make more sense. Given that demons physically exist somewhere outside of the nether a lot of the time, it wouldn't make sense if it was one legion across two entirely separate realities and timelines. It makes more sense if that Draenor was just created in our reality.

[Qualia]

The multitude of key characters/heroes that could perpetually be pulled from alternate timelines by the bronze dragonflight to solve all our problems seems like the biggest issue to me.

Technically they can, seeing that we've already faced / seen alternate versions of many characters in War Crimes / Twilight of the Aspects. However, the bronze dragonflight probably don't want to do it as they were charged with guarding the timeways and restoring them, not distorting / changing them by pulling characters out of the timeways to protect the main one. They aren't supposed to change what did / will happen unless someone else interfered with time too, even if that'd result in Azeroth being doomed. The only exception we've seen was Nozdormu bringing us back to the past (not even an alternate universe) to "borrow" the Demon Soul to defeat Deathwing and prevent the doom of our world - and even in that case, he was notably hesitating because that'd make him no different from Murozond.

It'd be another matter with the Kairozdormu's faction in the Bronze (which believed to become the Infinite Dragonflight later). They clearly don't have any problem with it (seeing that Kairoz summoned alternate versions of characters already, and he was planning to recruit infinite Horde from infinite AUs before getting killed). Why they haven't done so? We don't know. The answer is probably "because it wouldn't make a story when we have an infinite army of powerful characters", but if you want a lore-related answer, then we can assume that the Bronze Dragonflight interfered and prevented them from doing it as much as possible.

I had it explained to me in a way that makes it seem less bullshit; the WoD Draenor is a little pocket dimension that only really consists of Draenor itself, and it's been copy-pasted somewhere in our universe. Consequently, when Gul'dan starts communicating with the Legion, he's not actually communicating with an AU Legion. He just gets gets in touch with ours instead. The only complication would be demons that already existed on Draenor at the moment in which Kairoz brought this thing into existence (Mannoroth, maybe?) but that can be explained away easily enough.

That is wrong. Afrasiabi already said in an interview that there is an AU Azeroth to go with AU Draenor at least. They just don't have any plan to visit that at the moment.
(There is no AU Legion anyway, since there is only one - Gul'dan will get in touch with our Legion even if the AU is an entire universe and not just a pocket dimension)

Given that demons physically exist somewhere outside of the nether a lot of the time, it wouldn't make sense if it was one legion across two entirely separate realities and timelines.

Why wouldn't it? It's not like they exist at the same time (using Nether time as the benchmark since it exists outside of all universes) anyway.

[BananaHandsB]

Technically they can, seeing that we've already faced / seen alternate versions of many characters in War Crimes / Twilight of the Aspects. However, the bronze dragonflight probably don't want to do it as they were charged with guarding the timeways and restoring them, not distorting / changing them by pulling characters out of the timeways to protect the main one. They aren't supposed to change what did / will happen unless someone else interfered with time too, even if that'd result in Azeroth being doomed. The only exception we've seen was Nozdormu bringing us back to the past (not even an alternate universe) to "borrow" the Demon Soul to defeat Deathwing and prevent the doom of our world - and even in that case, he was notably hesitating because that'd make him no different from Murozond.

It'd be another matter with the Kairozdormu's faction in the Bronze (which believed to become the Infinite Dragonflight later). They clearly don't have any problem with it (seeing that Kairoz summoned alternate versions of characters already, and he was planning to recruit infinite Horde from infinite AUs before getting killed). Why they haven't done so? We don't know. The asnwer is probably "because it wouldn't make a story when we have an infinite army of powerful characters", but if you want a lore-related answer, then we can assume that the Bronze Dragonflight interfered and prevented them from doing it as much as possible.

Ya, I'd say the bronze dragonflight kinda forwent that philosophy with WoD.

[Cronovey]

What about the aspects/dragon soul/etc in other timelines? If the timelines are infinite, the same/similar things could happen in every timeline/universe.

I would assume that in the other timelines, similar stories would play out where the dragons also lose their power due to stopping Deathwing. The only alternative I could see would be a timeline where the Old Gods didn't land on Azeroth to try and corrupt the world soul within, and sign me up for that timeline instead. No Deathwing, no Sundering, no problems with bugs everywhere. Hell, in that timeline even Sargeras might be a friendly guy because there's zero chance of the world soul being corrupted. Unless Sargeras counts as a demon now instead of a Titan, in which case who fucking knows any more. This time travel nonsense is just ridiculous.

Realistically, they could have introduced the whole "demons can't die" thing and just said Gul'dan was so corrupted he became a full fledged demon, and we could have avoided this whole damn mess of timeline shifting.

[BananaHandsB]

I would assume that in the other timelines, similar stories would play out where the dragons also lose their power due to stopping Deathwing. The only alternative I could see would be a timeline where the Old Gods didn't land on Azeroth to try and corrupt the world soul within, and sign me up for that timeline instead. No Deathwing, no Sundering, no problems with bugs everywhere. Hell, in that timeline even Sargeras might be a friendly guy because there's zero chance of the world soul being corrupted. Unless Sargeras counts as a demon now instead of a Titan, in which case who fucking knows any more. This time travel nonsense is just ridiculous.

Realistically, they could have introduced the whole "demons can't die" thing and just said Gul'dan was so corrupted he became a full fledged demon, and we could have avoided this whole damn mess of timeline shifting.

Just seems the legion barely stands a chance against a single azeroth. Infinite azeroths? 1 legion transcending timelines, trying to take over the "infinite" timelines/universes of azeroth, stands no chance. Timelines have to be limited.

[Qualia]

Ya, I'd say the bronze dragonflight kinda forwent that philosophy with WoD.

Not really, unless you meant Kairoz and his faction (with unknown members) only. I don't remember the other normal bronze dragons giving up that idea (yet) in WoD, unless I'm missing anything? And even if they do, seeing that the bronze dragonflight can technically even interfere with future events, a past bronze dragonflight who still keep that philosophy would prevent them from messing with time anyway (that's pretty much the Bronze Dragonflight vs Infinite Dragonflight conflict)

Edit: also, missed this

Just seems the legion barely stands a chance against a single azeroth. Infinite azeroths? 1 legion transcending timelines, trying to take over the "infinite" timelines/universes of azeroth, stands no chance. Timelines have to be limited.

They are far from "barely stands a chance". If they could get their full army here, or their top generals were serious enough at destroying us (Archimonde / KJ) we'd have already been dead. Also, a reminder that the Legion only need to defeat our MU Azeroth and all AU Azeroth will automatically fall, if we are to go by what was described in "Illidan". It's not like they need to go through all versions of Azeroth one after another.

[Deleted]

They shoudlnt mumbled with time travel to begin with. Warcraft lore was shitty and inconsistent enough already without that

You inability to understand it != it being shitty and inconsistent.

Sorry

[Deleted]

oh you think wow lore is not shitty and inconsistent? ok then i never want to reach your plane of understanding because seems like you lose the ability to have sense there

I actually follow and understand the lore. Sometimes they change things to further the story and make interesting plot lines. Is that what you mean by inconsistent?

My "ability to have sense" is working just fine thank you. Its quite normal for people who simply have a hard time concentrating for longer periods of time to understand and process a work as big as warcraft is now. That doesnt make it shitty though.

[Fincayra]

Honestly at this point in the lore, the more interesting question is whether there is more than one Sargeras.

[Deleted]

If in alternate reality let's say, Thrall submits to the Legion and becomes a demon, does that mean our universe's Thrall would become demon too?

[Qualia]

If in alternate reality let's say, Thrall submits to the Legion and becomes a demon, does that mean our universe's Thrall would become demon too?

Blizzard has never given us an explanation how the single Legion thing works, so I'm afraid you wouldn't get any solid answer at the moment. They did say that Legion will address the single Legion vs multiple Legion debate, so we'd need to wait for that answer to pop up.

(there are a few theories, though, but they're pretty much fan theories / headcanons for now)

[Koloss]

We can't state one or the other there has been stories about many authors and the whole thing became pretty chaotic. I think i'm gonna buy the Chronicles Vol.1 let's see if it is making stuff clear as it is supposed to be.

[Deleted]

When we kill Archimonde in mythic, it's done inside the Twisting Nether, which is the place that demons can be killed permanently, so Archimonde should be completely dead.

As far as I know, Mythic Archimonde is not canon. The cutscene shows him dying on Draenor, not in Twisting Nether, so that's canon.

[Zoidie]

The legion may have already destroyed the other Azeroths for all we know. Regardless of that fact though, our Azeroth is still a threat, to them and the void lords, hence the conflict.

Remember, it's not easy for the Legion to get to our world, otherwise they would have no use for people like Guldan. I'm going with the logic that demons can't just traverse space and time so easily and that a connection needs to be made to the twisting nether for them to be able to manifest on worlds. If nobody makes that connection, they aint getting in. This is why the legion needs Guldan, and its why they needed the sunwell. They need a font of power and somebody to power it so it opens a gateway, without it, they are just stuck in the twisting nether looking out.

[Qualia]

As far as I know, Mythic Archimonde is not canon. The cutscene shows him dying on Draenor, not in Twisting Nether, so that's canon.

I thought so for a while too, especially given that he was always stuck at 1HP at the end of the fight for my guild in the Nether. However, at Blizzcon, Blizzard said that the original idea was that Archimonde died there and would be "dead dead for good", just that it didn't come across well enough in game. So current canon is Archimonde's dead. However, Kosak also stated that "*MAYBE* we will change that. Maybe we'll change the canon of that, but that's the idea we were working with", so well - maybe he isn't dead after all.

Still, for now, it's canon that Archimonde is dead. We don't know if they changed that. We don't even know if Kosak's "that" (in his "Maybe we will change that") was referring to Archimonde's status, or the fact that it didn't come across well in game for that matter. Although, Gul'dan called the player character "slayer of Archimonde" if you have Mythic achievement - that seem to indicate that Archimonde is indeed dead.

[Eats Compost]

That is wrong. Afrasiabi already said in an interview that there is an AU Azeroth to go with AU Draenor at least. They just don't have any plan to visit that at the moment.
(There is no AU Legion anyway, since there is only one - Gul'dan will get in touch with our Legion even if the AU is an entire universe and not just a pocket dimension)

Why wouldn't it? It's not like they exist at the same time (using Nether time as the benchmark since it exists outside of all universes) anyway.

There's a few problems with having a single Legion that operates on its own, separate timeframe. Specifically, the timeline in question, the flow of time, and how those two things interact with eachother. For duplicates, I'll use Archimonde as an example. He got blown up by Malfurion's wisp army, which would've sent his soul to the nether.

Presumably, he was still in the nether when we went back in time in CoT. When we went to Hyjal, there was an Archimonde physically there. Now, at that moment, if nether time is not anchored to our own time and operates irrespective of it (as the Draenor situation would suggest), does that mean that there was an Archimonde in the nether and a different Archimonde on Azeroth at the same time? (Worth noting; this would apply to any demon, and I only use Archimonde as an example because he was in a specific place at a specific time. We can also use it as a general "what if" to explore the implications of an all-timelines/realities/whatever Legion or Nether)


If we say yes, then that'd mean there's many copies of each demon from different timelines (where they died in the mortal plane and were sent back to the single, not-on-our-timeline nether) and we'd have to have some kind of system that re-unifies versions of a demon when they get back to the nether. Or, there'd have to be a single version of a demon that's the "real" one that goes back to the nether, whereas the others are shit outta luck.

We could say that no, nether time actually is synced to our own time (meaning that going back in time in our own world also goes back in the nether's time), which then then eliminates the problem of duplicates (as by going back into the past, we're back in the nether's past too). That raises another difficult question, though; if the nether is synced to the time that you are in, why is the Legion that's up-to-date with us getting summoned in Draenor?

Then, we can explain that by saying that Draenor is a different kind of time travel with different rules (which it is, as we already know) which then raises another question; does that mean that the Legion is synced specifically to our timeline? If so, does that mean that it's more accurate to say that our timeline is the only one in sync with the nether, acting as a master record of what's going on at any given stage?

Then we've got all the questions about why the Legion keeps coming back in sequence with our own timeline, why they don't have precognition or supposedly unattainable information about various things (as they did have in Draenor 2.0, but not in other examples of travel in time or timelines) and why none of the other potential problems with a single Legion have come up.

Time travel is always a bit nonsense when it comes to applying reason and causality, but the existence of only a single Legion is just impossible to reconcile. To me, it only really makes sense if the Draenor Legion was simply our Legion instead, or if the nether we know is rooted to our own timeline but has access to others (which'd require further reconciliation to explain why the Legion got through to Draenor 2.0 anyway). That's why I don't think that can be the case.

That's why it makes a lot more sense to me that Draenor 2.0 would simply be a thing that exists somewhere within our own timeline, timeframe and reality, with our own Legion accessing it in a similar way to how we did (and Kairoz's actions being less about travelling through time/timelines and more about copying something from another). It eliminates the messy, endless complications that arise from the Legion being in every version of everywhere and operating on their own sync. Again, not actually supported by any sources that I know of, but I just can't rationally reconcile the Legion interacting with time and timelines the way they've suggested that they have.

[Deleted]

I thought so for a while too, especially given that he was always stuck at 1HP at the end of the fight for my guild in the Nether. However, at Blizzcon, Blizzard said that the original idea was that Archimonde died there and would be "dead dead for good", just that it didn't come across well enough in game. So current canon is Archimonde's dead. However, Kosak also stated that "*MAYBE* we will change that. Maybe we'll change the canon of that, but that's the idea we were working with", so well - maybe he isn't dead after all.

Still, for now, it's canon that Archimonde is dead. We don't know if they changed that. We don't even know if Kosak's "that" (in his "Maybe we will change that") was referring to Archimonde's status, or the fact that it didn't come across well in game for that matter. Although, Gul'dan called the player character "slayer of Archimonde" if you have Mythic achievement - that seem to indicate that Archimonde is indeed dead.

Yeah, I checked the video and he starts the answer with "this might not be canon" and keeps saying that it was the idea originally, but now it's neither here nor there. So I'm guessing as you say, if we don't hear from him again, he's probably dead, but it can change at any time (which is kinda dumb).

[Qualia]

Presumably, he was still in the nether when we went back in time in CoT. When we went to Hyjal, there was an Archimonde physically there. Now, at that moment, if nether time is not anchored to our own time and operates irrespective of it (as the Draenor situation would suggest), does that mean that there was an Archimonde in the nether and a different Archimonde on Azeroth at the same time? (Worth noting; this would apply to any demon, and I only use Archimonde as an example because he was in a specific place at a specific time. We can also use it as a general "what if" to explore the implications of an all-timelines/realities/whatever Legion or Nether)

I think you are misunderstanding CoT. It's true that, as you said, Nether time is not anchored to our time (or any universes' time for that matter) and operates independently. However, Battle for Mt. Hyjal in CoT doesn't mean that there are two different Archimonde at the same time.

Why? Because the nature of CoT is different from WoD. In CoT, we are travelling back on our own timeline to the past of our universe. The Hyjal battle there didn't happen in our present (unlike WoD), but in our past instead. Similarly, that Archimonde (or other CoT events' characters for that matter - with the exception of DS raid as Blizzard said) didn't exist in our "present" (by the moment we entered CoT Hyjal), he existed in the past - the one and only during our Mt. Hyjal battle. The "present" Archimonde (back when we entered CoT) was still in the Nether only. As far as I know, there hasn't been any example of any demon existing at two places at the same time - using Nether time as a benchmark (not counting any illusion, clone, body splitting magic, of course).

It's hard to address the rest of your argument since the premises (either "there was an Archimonde in the nether and a different Archimonde on Azeroth at the same time" or "nether time actually is synced to our own time") aren't necessarily the case here.

Edit: what you said about Draenor are true, though. The Legion in WoD is our Legion (the one and only). And Nether time exists independently, but have access / is connected to all other timelines (with the Nether existing outside of all realities / universes time and space, but are connected to them).

[Jackkernaut]

When a demon dies he's soul trapped in the Nether, so technically Archimonde haven't vanquished entirely.
There is a theory claims that during the Mana Bombing The nether realm been briefly breached and Varimathras managed to slipped through(into Jaina?)
There is still lore regards to the Void and the nether realm (maybe they are the same). The Priest Artifact quest line shed some info.

[Maylander]

So.. why didn't just Aman'Thul go back in time and get an army of himself that could spread out across the galaxy and secure everything, instead of sending Sargeras off alone? He's way beyond the Bronze Dragonflight in terms of time travel; he gave them their powers after all. There is not a problem presented in WC lore that Aman'Thul couldn't handle alone with his control over time, whether it's the Burning Legion, Void Lords or a baby Titan being corrupted. Just do a little time travel, get a billion Titans from various timelines and alternate universes, and secure the entire universe and every possible multiverse. No problem. It's like instant cloning.

This is just one absurd example off the top of my head. I can think of many more, as others have already done in this topic. The bottom line is: Time travel and alternate universes always turn the story into Swiss cheese. I have never seen an example where that didn't happen; where you couldn't go "what if" and basically break the main story.