Do any Prime Timeline meet their Alternate Timeline version?

[Tarrlogar]

and it is an alternate Draenor, that is, compared to Outland... almost 35 years in the past... so yes, it is timetravel expansion. heck, the damn trailer started with 35 years ago, with garrosh there. if that isnt timetravel to you...

The point is that Blizzard did this expansion because Azeroth has mostly been explored (minus Azshara and the last two old gods) and the world of Draenor was destroyed in lore and they wanted to restore Draenor so we could explore it and the other continents. We could have went to Argus too, but Draenor has orc lore, ogre lore, draenei lore, arrakoa lore, and is kind of a more significant planet with room to expand upon while Argus seems to be just demons and the old draenei home and a lot of new lore will have to be made to develop that planet. It is "technically" time travel but the premise is that we have a new planet to explore and Blizzard is making it as little about time travel as possible. But you just want to say it is "time travel" in the same way Chrono Trigger has time travel, so you can flame blizzard for not being as good at it when their intention was to restore an old planet they regret destroying in lore after how successfully and long lived WoW has been.

[Kayb]

I'd say it was more a grab at nostalgia subs :P and it worked perfectly!

As for ontopic, I highly doubt any of the MU will meet with their AU selves. If they were going to I think we'd have already known about it by now.

[Venant]

But once it was open, destroying the portal on the Azeroth side (end of WCII) didn't prevent it being reopened from Draenor (BTDP expansion). So exact same situation, if we destroyed the Dark Portal on either end the Iron Horde could simply rebuild it.

Don't confuse the portal construct with the dimensional rift itself. The rift is permanent (apparently). In the original lore several Orcs crossed into Azeroth through the rift before it was widened and constructed into the first Dark Portal.

Wait if the rift is permanent then why hasn't the Burning Legion completely invaded Azeroth through the portal at the Sunwell. If we were able to stop Kil'Jaeden then why can't we stop the Iron Horde, which lore wise should be nowhere near as powerful as the legion.

Also, if Garrosh went back in time 30 years to stop the orcs from drinking Mannoroth's blood, does that mean that he has been in alternate Draenor for 30 years? If the portal between WoD and Azeroth also enables time travel, it seems to completely ignore the already established mechanics of how time magic works in WoW. (Not to mention they are doing time travel on a massive scale without a bronze dragon? )

[TheTaurenOrc]

I am not 100% sure but isn't the Warlord Zaela on Draenor from our timeline anyway?

[MasterDinadan]

There's no time travel. The events in AU Draenor do not happen "before" the events in MU Azeroth/Outland. They are completely independent and connected only by portals.
Imagine AU Draenor as a completely different world which is just by coincidence very similar to MU Outland and has orcs who are very similar to orcs from MU history. Except it isn't coincidence - Kairoz picked this universe because of these similarities.

There are infinitely many universes. If he wanted, he could have taken Garrosh to a universe where humans drank blood and invaded Draenor, or one where the Draenei became the dominant force in Draenor, or even one where none of the people had any equivalent whatsoever from main universe.

He picked the world he did because it would seem significant to Garrosh. The differences (people that didn't die or weren't born) werent really important - all he needed was something similar enough to our Draenor that it would motivate Garrosh to act.

[BarosanuNr1]

But once it was open, destroying the portal on the Azeroth side (end of WCII) didn't prevent it being reopened from Draenor (BTDP expansion). So exact same situation, if we destroyed the Dark Portal on either end the Iron Horde could simply rebuild it.

Don't confuse the portal construct with the dimensional rift itself. The rift is permanent (apparently). In the original lore several Orcs crossed into Azeroth through the rift before it was widened and constructed into the first Dark Portal.

I'm not sure if the rift is permanent as you say. At the end of BTDP they closed it (from Draenor side) and it staid closed, until Lord Kazzak helped reopen it with some sort of powerful artifact just before TBC (him being on the Azeroth side and his demon friends on the Outland side).
It would be possible that closing the portal also requires casters on both sides, which in turn requires the same faction to simultaniously hold both sides. In the intro event if looked like Khadgar's party tried just that (freeing Gul'dan as a first step in closing the portal), got overwhelmed, then decided for the second best option: destroy the physical portal in order to buy some time to deal with the rift.

I think the portal serves to stabilize the rift somehow and make it permanent while the physical portal exists. For example Illidan used portals to travel between Azeroth and Outland, including for the blood elf army, but those portals closed once their casters stopped channeling them.

What I don't understand is the current situation with Outland. I assume we've temporarily (?) lost reliable and permanent contact with them, having to rely on ad-hoc portals until AU Draenor gets sorted out?

[Talen]

The point is that Blizzard did this expansion because Azeroth has mostly been explored

No - they did it because they wanted to explore Garroshes daddy issues.

There is PLENTY of room for new land in Azeroth.....place pandaria on the equator for example and you have an entire Hemisphere to play with. Then there is the far side of the world, the Forbidden Sea. They could have Azshara raise the lands that sunk to create a new landmass in the cantre of the map. And so on. In short, Blizzrad can easily quadruple (at least) the land mass we can explore on Azeroth

. We could have went to Argus too, but Draenor has orc lore, ogre lore, draenei lore, arrakoa lore

And given none of it is relevant to the main storyline, all of it is disposable. That's what happens when you go with an Alternate Universe - none of the lore we see on Draenor is of any use to the MU. Not for the Draenei. Not for the orcs. Not for the Arrakoa. Not for the Ogres. It is THIER lore, THEIR history....and totally separate and independent from that of the MU.

It is "technically" time travel

No - it isn't. It's a dimensional crossover.

EJL

[Mimir]

This game is one big writhing mass of plot holes; as long as you don't think about it too hard, it shouldn't affect your enjoyment of the game too negatively. I don't think the writing in the Warcraft series has ever been anything more than a tool to move along game-play, as opposed to game-play around a story like a Final Fantasy, or Uncharted, or Bioshock Infinite, or Half Life.