One Archimonde is Impossible.

[Radaney]

Just posted a smaller version of this in the Sargeras vs Old God post. But I'll go all out here.

Is Archimonde really dead?
I can tell you our idea behind that. We might change it. This might not be canon. This might be something that we decide we're gonna tinker with. I'll try and explain what the thinking was. The idea was that the demons in the Burning Legion, they're kind of immortal in that they can exist across all the planes, unless they're killed in the actual Twisting Nether itself. So killing Archimonde at the World Tree in Warcraft 3... well, he was killed on Azeroth, but he would re-coalesce in the Twisting Nether and come back to haunt us again. And the idea was if you played in Mythic and defeated Archimonde, you actually defeated him in the Nether and that he'd be dead dead for good. That was the idea that we played with. We tried to explain that and I don't know if... that certainly doesn't come across in-game because it's not necessarily explained in-game. Maybe we'll change that. Maybe we'll change the canon of that. But that was the idea that we were working with... was unless you rip these demons out and take them to the Twisting Nether and kill them there, they'll always keep coming back. But maybe that's not canon. Maybe we'll tinker with that idea.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yat...outu.be&t=4m6s

I know it's stated and even underlined that it isn't official canon yet but this is for the sake of discussion.

This has no doubt been discussed to death because it makes absolutely no sense and it still doesn't. There is one giant inconsistency with Blizzard saying that when Demons die, they return to the Nether until killed inside the Nether. Prior to the absolute Lore ravaging which occurred in Warlords of Draenor and the introduction to idiotic time travel, alternative universe nonsensical madness the only beings that resurrected as such were Dreadlords who were the only known confirmed Demons to actually return to the Nether on Death and certain Godlike beings such as Cenarius have returned also although apparently characters like Malorne and Agamaggan who both died in the War of the Ancients, Agamaggans bones are currently present in game in the Barrens and his Spirit is part of a quest in said Bones and hell even Sargeras after his body was presumably annihilated after the Well of Eternity imploded, although he is basically a God so his 'spirit' remained are oddly still physically dead or MIA. Strangely inconsistent.

Now the mention of Dreadlords is important, when they have died in previous games or in World of Warcraft their corpses vanish in a trail of bats and leave their armour behind and their souls or such return to the Nether. This unrelenting resurrection was also one of the causes of Sargeras' fall to madness because they were evil beings that simply could not be vanquished. Pretty consistent throughout all of Warcraft.

Now here's the one somewhat major flaw in the one Archimonde, one Demon across the entire Timeline Universe nonsense plot which makes it basically entirely nonsensical, hell it makes all of Warcrafts Lore nonsensical and utterly pointless.

This one flaw is Mannoroth the Destructor, Mannoroth is one of the Burning Legions most powerful lieutenants, he is one of Archimonde's and Kil'jaedens favourite enforcers and was even a spearhead of the Burning Legion in the War of the Ancients and thus one of the most powerful Demons currently known. Mannoroth in our Universe died, in his death the Orcs bloodrage totally subsided and Grom was hailed a Hero of the entire Orcish race. Currently his Skull and the entirety of his Corpse is being hanged in Orgrimmar for everyone to see. His bones were also worn by Garrosh in a set of badass Shoulderplates and his shattered weapon displayed in Ashenvale. Basically, Mannoroth died in our Universe.

Yet, apparently he returned in AU Draenor. He died in the cinematic and didn't disappear back into the Nether instead Gul'dan collected his bones and resurrected him back into form on our fight on Hellfire Citadel and it wasn't some Soul into Body shenanigans it was some total physical reconstruction because Pit Lords tend to explode when they die, although he didn't seem to dissolve into a pile a blood in our Universe as his entire corpse is on display. Basically, there are two Mannoroths. One in our timeline and one in AU Draenor.

Why is there apparently one Archimonde spanning across all the Timeline Universe's? It doesn't make any sense. One could argue that it could be a Pitlord trait, when Pitlords die they don't go back to the Nether. Well that doesn't really stay consistent in the fact that before you fight Archimonde in Hellfire Citadel you fight Anetheron, Kaz'rogal and Azgalor another familiar Pit Lord from the Battle of Mt. Hyjal. So apparently Azgalor, one of Mannoroth's lieutenants has this magical Nether resurrection ability whilst Mannoroth doesn't? Basically it's just inconsistent nonsense.

Another reason this whole thing is nonsense is because if you look at it, it has created a major dissonance problem with the whole Warcraft Lore. If there are infinite Demons and infinite Azeroths and infinite Draenors. This means that Kil'jaeden, Mannoroth and the rest of the Burning Legion could recruit an unlimited number of Iron Hordes. This makes the entire story completely and utterly nonsensical and pointless. They could just keep doing the Warlords of Draenor story over and over and over inf. again. This is why Timetravel and alternative universe nonsense should stay out of any storytelling and whenever it is included the story turns into absolute garbage.

Hell if there is only one Archimonde and he died in the past in a separate Universe then how was he in the future in order to do the entirety of the plot of Warcraft 1, 2 and 3? If Archimonde died in the past in the Nether then everything past that point would of changed and the entirety of Warcraft Lore on our Azeroth would be completely entirely different. Just think about that, what we are doing in AU Draenor is in the past and apparently we killed Archimonde for good...in the past.

Timetravel Alternative Universe stuff is total nonsensical garbage and shouldn't of happened. As a fan of the stories of Starcraft 1, Diablo 2, Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 it really is upsetting to me what has happened to Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft because the previous games stories were actually incredible, some of the best in gaming in fact now they are a joke.

It has to be two Archimonde's. Being one spanning all timelines and universes is impossible without retconning everything in the entire Warcraft story, may as well go full Warhammer and destroy the universe at that point.

[iamthedevil]

Some demons bodies go back with them (Nathrezim) while some don't (Pit Lord, Eredar). At least, this is how we've seen it happen.

This is science-fiction literature, nothing is impossible.

*Time travel and infinite beings are pretty retarded though.

[Katie45]

IT has to be, but blizzard said its not

[Elbob]

Gonna open with this, I 100% agree with bringing time travel into lore is a surefire way to blow up existing lore and wish blizzard didn't touch it.
But just to play a little blizzfanboy mode (more like trying to not hate the game for what they did to lore) what if the token pitlord explosion on death is their essence returning to the nether, and the form they take is just a preferred appearance.
OR maybe his corpse was just used as a source to help re-summon him back into the AU universe after he died(his body?) in it, and it wasn't a resurrection but more a summon back into his previously used body.

I dunno though I'm just taking shots in the dark cause I like wow lore but I wish this expac didn't exist.

[Deleted]

well,from what gather is that it is too late to change "demons can only be killed in the Nether" thing because there is a lot of that in Legion.anyway,I always come up with a theory that the Twisting Nether is not bound by time or anything so you can summon them in a certain era but they will be "the same one" or better yet the original one.

[Malkaedus]

Once a demon dies, its soul goes back to the twisting nether, where it takes time to create a new body for the soul to inhabit. Resurrecting Mannoroth returned him to service faster than letting him reconstitute a body would have. Previous corpses left on worlds have nothing to do with the actual soul being sent back to the twisting nether. Bodies are just biological suits, not the driver. I don't see a problem.

[Jokubas]

The Dreadlord thing really bothers me, because it was a unique trait of them that still had a lot of potential. Not only did the Nether respawning thing massively dilute the Dreadlords, it made the rest of it make no sense.

Just for the record, I'd like to talk about how some of these things are relatively recent developments. If I remember correctly, even the Dreadlords had no implication of an ability to respawn in Warcraft III. Tichondrius was destroyed by Illidan, Mal'Ganis was surprised by the Lich King's betrayal, and they were pretty scared when Sylvanas had them kill each other.

Balnazzar's return in Classic was a pretty big reveal, and it was controversial as it was at the time.

I don't think other demons being able to come back in the Nether was mentioned until Burning Crusade, and it was an off-hand mention that had no evidence unlike the Dreadlords (and not something I even remember reading, just something other people have referenced on and off over the years).

Just because Blizzard is trying to make something canon now, doesn't mean it was always canon. And just as the new canon might contradict something old, we can always hope that new canon will eventually be retconned once more.

The Dreadlord retcon worked, because it didn't necessarily contradict anything we knew while fleshing them out. The same thing applying to the rest of the demons is the worst kind of retcon, because it contradicts major parts of the story and devalues the rest.

[zknm7]

We went to the past Draenor... not necessarily the past Azeroth. That being said, the majority of your arguments are valid. I just don't think too hard about it, because, ultimately, it's just a game that I enjoy, and I love to play it. However, I am glad that we're returning to the current timeline Azeroth in Legion... Hopefully we'll be leaving this "time and space travel bullshit" behind us for good.

[Gref]

I agree %100. All this alternate universe made it bullshit. Time travel was ok. but alternate universe is wtf. You remember the dungeon where we saved thrall from hillsbrad? thats how time travel should work.

now we have a fucking another universe. whats gonna happen to it? too much bs.

at this point i would apologize for making such a bs expansion and ask players to see it as a filler which has no official story in it, then seppuku and another person continues the story.

[SL1200]

Warcraft lore so stupid, learn to tell a story blizz

[shoc]

OKAY HERE WE GO WITH AN EXPLANATION THAT DOESNT SUCK

We play on the Prime Azeroth, in the Prime Universe. The Alpha Azeroth. The Main Azeroth. Whatever you want to call it. Our Azeroth is more important than any other Azeroth in the Multiverse for reasons we do not understand. We'll probably find out when all this lore gets fleshed out with the release of Warcraft: Chronicles Volume 1.

Other Alternative Azeroths, while plenty, are meaningless and conquering them is a pointless, futile effort. Think of Prime Azeroth as the Mona Lisa, and every other Universe is a gift shop copy. If we assume that every Alternate Universe is simply a derivative of our Prime Universe, then it could also be assumed that as Alternate Universes deviate further and further away from the Prime Timeline, the more unstable and just overall shitty they get.

This explains why, despite being an infinite number of Archimondes in the Universe, their power level doesn't come close enough to Prime Archimonde's power for him to give a shit about their existence. They are cheap Made in China knockoffs while he is a priceless masterpiece. And if there are a limited number of Multiverses (and not an infinite number) then it wouldn't be too far fetched if Prime Archimonde just went on a killing spree for a few years to ensure that he was the only Archimonde in the Multiverse because having copies of yourself out there is understandably weird.

This also explains why WoD felt like a cheap shitty WoW expansion because it took place in an Alternate Universe in which everything is just a little bit inherently crappy. Grom sucked because he was not Prime Grom. Velen sucked because he was not Prime Velen. Durotan wasn't bad but only because Prime Azeroth's Durotan was just so good.

But it was important for us to go through the whole WoD plot because Wrathion and Kairozstasz' fuckery with the Shards of Time and the Timeways and the shitty fucking portal bullshit caused Alternate Draenor to become a back door to our Prime Azeroth.

[WolfRider]

Nice thread, but it could be resumed like this :
- Two Velen = Two Archimonde and two Kil'Jaeden.
Eredars (and their planet) are part of the "physical" Universe, like Azeroth.
By opening a portal through time, Garrosh created another time layer, with its own small differences but with the same achievements.

I mean, it's Free Will Versus Fate, Grommash lost his wife, didn't have a son, chose to refuse Gul'Dan's help but it didn't change the course of time : Burning Legion's will to use Orcs against Draeneis (in a first step) and then it would have led to the invasion of their Azeroth.

I thought Blizzard were clear about that in the first place, when they said it would have some differencies but in the end we couldn't change what will have to happen.

And the multiverse isn't that relevant, it's just an event to bring Gul'Dan back to Prime Azeroth.

[Irian]

I agree with what you're saying, but I'm gonna be honest...don't try to figure it out.

Blizzard isn't interested in consistency, they've kind of poked at a lot of retcons, inconsistencies and weird lore "wtf" moments in the past but WoD took it to a whole new level. To be blunt, I think the best thing you can do with Warlords of Draenor is pretend it didn't happen because I get the strong feeling that, save for Yrel and maybe Grom, nobody from that timeline is going to be showing their faces in MU.

If I had to guess, this entire "one Archimonde" explanation started because they wanted an excuse for it to make sense that Gul'dan is now in our timeline and he seems to know of Illidan despite the fact that - at best - his MU soul met him (and even that's questionable). In truth, the reality of WoD's lore is "We wanted an excuse to bring back Gul'dan and Grommash and stop thinking too hard into it. Archimonde is dead, you killed him, he's probably not coming back and the stuff you did somehow mattered despite alternate timelines."

[Nelson Unit]

What if the Twisting Nether isn't apart of any Universe. Essentially its it's own thing and the Demons in it can be summoned to any number of infinite Universes.But when they die there they return back to this Twisting Nether Realm that exists beyond any comprehension.

[Ratyrel]

In lore no demon has ever been in two places at the same time. Remains are not relevant. What happened with MU and AU Draenor is exceptional imo, but even here no demon was duplicated, as Blizzard took care not to do so.

[Soeroah]

Tme travel and AUs don't automatically make a story badmor nonsensical. The issue is when they are done poorly, or thrown into a long established property without it having been planned from the beginning.

There are ways to make WoD make sense, timewise, but it's complicated enough that it's unlikely to be canon. I've put a lot more effort into coming up with answers to all the usual questions than I believe Blizzard ever did, so it's almost not worth explainngnhow it can all be consistent.

For Mannoroth, though, Gul'Dan was summoning him from the Nether in HFC before he had fully reconstituted. That's why he was complaining about being weak. Gul'dan Ragnaros'd him. Mannoroth would have been reborn in the Nether given enough time and/or power, just like any other demon.

[Deleted]

As far as I get it, the OP doesn't like that all demons don't just explode/turn ito bats/have ther bodies evaporate after death and as far as I am aware, it doesn't matter since the soul goes to the nether (where presumably it forms a body around it with magic or something) not the entire body. If I am not mistaken, the major religions don't say that the body must be burned or destroyed so that the soul can ascend to the afterlife, so why is this a hard concept to grasp(I am not getting ito debates over if any of these religions are or aren't real, I don't care, I just gave an example)?

And about all demons going to the Nether after they die, this is not new either. In TBC, you get a quest from the Ogri'la guys that says that the demons up in there go to the Nether after they die, so you have to use a prism or whatever to banish them forever. And then you have the warlock pets argument that someone brough up above me.

In my oppinion, they came up with this last minute. I say this because there are some clues thowards it being true. One of them would be Archimonde saying the same thing that he said in WC3 when he was summoned by Kel'Thuzad and Mannoroth also using some WC3 quotes. It would be pretty lame for a supervillain to shout the same things everytime he fights new people, wouldn't it? Also, we have the WoD intro cinematic, where Mannoroth kind of does the same mistake he did in WC3 and the fact that his death there was supposed to be a throwback to his death in WC3. And the biggest one: this even wasn't mentioned before Afrasiabi's now famous tweet. No official story person gave us anythig to belive that there is 1 legion and thet demons reincarnate. I think that they introduced these things just to better brigde the story betwen WoD and Legion, explain why AU Gul'dan is working with our legion, why Archimonde isn't dead and why he came to AU Draenor.

And yes, having 1 legion over every timeline doesn't make sense for the reasons people gave. The best thing to fix this that comes up to mind is to say that this timeline didn't have a legion and that our legion got in there because of Kairoz's time travel. One legion could have worked if they stuck to their original plan: having Garrosh's time travel create a copy of the past Draenor and have no alternate timelines.

I also have to say I am tired of people saying that ALL of story of WoD sucked or that the time travel/alternate timeline thing was used poorly for the ENTIRE expansion and not just for 6.2. What was wrong with this things before the whole "one legion, nobody remembers that Grom is a bad guy, not even himself" fiasco? I was really sad when I saw the original Blizzcon WoD trailer and found out that we were going to go into the past, but I got past it when they said this was not our past. And then in the "Hellscream" short story we were told it was an alternate timeline. It made sense and it wasnt bad, up until 6.2. People are just bitter because the expansion sucked and they take 6.2's story and lore problems as the whole expac's. And I am also tired of people using "fancy" phrases like "Prior to the Lore RAVAGING which occurred in Warlords of Draenor and the introduction to IDIOTIC time travel, alternative universe NONSENSICAL MADNESS" to seem smarter than your average MMO Champ poster or Blizzard themselves and stroke their ego while expressing their hatred.

And, oh, yeah, the Grom problem could have been easily fixed if he said during HFC: "Oh, hey guys, I have seen my mistakes since Gul'dan showed me that Garrosh was an asshole. He did more wrong than good to the orcs and now I want to make amends for my crimes." So why didn't they do this? I don't know, maybe they couldn't be bothered.

[Rathbourne]

I like to think of alternate universes as something that doesn't exist unless someone makes it exist.Chromie says that Kairoz created "this" world (refering to Draenor).

Think of the main universe as a ripple in water.Its the only ripple that exists unless someone causes a second ripple and unless that second ripple is kept alive in some way it will eventually fade away and dissapear leaving only the original ripple.UNLESS,The ripples crossover each other and effect each other's flow......yeah..yeah..

[Aquamonkey]

Another reason this whole thing is nonsense is because if you look at it, it has created a major dissonance problem with the whole Warcraft Lore. If there are infinite Demons and infinite Azeroths and infinite Draenors. This means that Kil'jaeden, Mannoroth and the rest of the Burning Legion could recruit an unlimited number of Iron Hordes. This makes the entire story completely and utterly nonsensical and pointless. They could just keep doing the Warlords of Draenor story over and over and over inf. again. This is why Timetravel and alternative universe nonsense should stay out of any storytelling and whenever it is included the story turns into absolute garbage.

WoD hardly introduced time travel or the multiverse into Warcraft. The Legion doesn't want to recruit Iron Hordes, they want corrupted Hordes like the one in MU and what they were trying to do in AU. Recruiting infinite uncorrupted Hordes was Kairoz's plan for fighting the Legion.

Hell if there is only one Archimonde and he died in the past in a separate Universe then how was he in the future in order to do the entirety of the plot of Warcraft 1, 2 and 3? If Archimonde died in the past in the Nether then everything past that point would of changed and the entirety of Warcraft Lore on our Azeroth would be completely entirely different. Just think about that, what we are doing in AU Draenor is in the past and apparently we killed Archimonde for good...in the past.

It's our Archimonde. Sargeras reformed him after the Battle for Mount Hyjal and he went back in time to AU Draenor.

It has to be two Archimonde's. Being one spanning all timelines and universes is impossible without retconning everything in the entire Warcraft story, may as well go full Warhammer and destroy the universe at that point.

That was the original intent while WoD was in beta. They tossed that out the window for HFC.

Question, with the Draenor we travel to in WoD. Is this Draenor connected to our Twisting nether, or an alternate one?
Likely an entire separate universe, but we're not addressing it in the expansion. Focus is Draenor! (DaveKosak)

- - - Updated - - -

I like to think of alternate universes as something that doesn't exist unless someone makes it exist.Chromie says that Kairoz created "this" world (refering to Draenor).

Kairoz didn't literally create that world. He discovered it in the multiverse. He created it in the sense that his interference completely changed how the world was.

[Icedcoffeee]

I like to think of alternate universes as something that doesn't exist unless someone makes it exist.Chromie says that Kairoz created "this" world (refering to Draenor).

Agreed.

Making it one Universe with infinite "potential universes" simplifies the lore greatly.