Originally Posted by
Amnaught
As of right now, we all know that WoW's timeline isn't exactly consistent.
But I have a solution.
Create an expansion, 8.0, that revamps Northrend, as a campaign that follows after the events of Legion.
Levels 1-60 remain unchanged, Cataclysm.
Levels 60-70 are replaced with the current 80-85 progression, Cataclysm. Death Knights have a revamped starting zone which has them start as Knights of the Ebon Blade, free from Arthas' grasp and hesitant to serve Bolvar. They arrive to Orgimmar to greet Garrosh Hellscream, and continue in Cataclysm content.
Levels 70-80 are replaced with the current 85-90 progression, Mists of Pandaria.
Levels 80-90 are replaced with the current 90-100 content, Warlords of Draenor.
Legion becomes level 90-100.
Here's the kicker. Northrend, in its entirety, is a level 100 continent. You are free to progress through each zone as you would in The Broken Isles; whichever order you want. The final zone, however, is gated and reserved for people who have maxed out their Northrend artifacts. That's right, since you'll lose all of your Broken Isles Artifact abilities, it makes sense for them to add a new artifact for you to progress through. What this means for 9.0 is that you'll be able to skip Northrend entirely. With the help of gear scaling, your Northrend gear will scale down to mythic Legion item levels outside of Northrend content. So would 9.0's gear, so you're free to go back and complete Northrend's story at any time, and still have it be something you can progress through. Ideally, this would work for *all* expansions' content, but it would be the easiest to just add this as an effect going forward. Exclusive transmog items, mounts, and titles would still be available to the raids of the current expansion, so there would still be more people running 9.0 raids than 8.0 raids, but you could still actually see a functioning Northrend raiding guild at max level.
Old Northrend would either be removed, or be accessible through the Caverns of Time, as Outland should be.
This means at every level, you'll be drawn to the most recent content in the story. If Cataclysm starts to look dated, and they decide to update those zones, fuck all of the work on this.