We can ABSOLUTELY pretend WoD never happened

[TheFirstOnes]

Right clearly a troll, really glad this forum has a block feature.

Who said I was trolling? You're just fanboying a bad Expansion.

[Donald Hellscream]

Sure in your own headcanon you can pretend it never happened and make up your own wierd story, doesn't mean it didn't happen though.

Personally I am more than fine with acknowledging that it happened as the only thing that was a major letdown for me was the lack of any meaningful endgame besides trashcan and raiding, I was well satisfied with the story.

[Zulkhan]

Keep whining, fanboy.

WoD sucked, deal with it.

I mean, I strongly disliked WoD myself but your behavior is fucking childish to say the least.

[Aucald]

Who said I was trolling? You're just fanboying a bad Expansion.

I don't like WoD myself, and consider it a low bar for WoW as a whole, but liking something I don't personally like doesn't make someone a "fanboy." Your eagerness makes you unseemly, and impolite. WoD does have some positives after all, even if in the final accounting I found it to be detrimental and ill-plotted.

[TheFirstOnes]

I don't like WoD myself, and consider it a low bar for WoW as a whole, but liking something I don't personally like doesn't make someone a "fanboy." Your eagerness makes you unseemly, and impolite. WoD does have some positives after all, even if in the final accounting I found it to be detrimental and ill-plotted.

Yeah, I was just fucking with him. My bad.

Also, real talk, I did love the WoD Raids, and I also LOVED the Leveling. However, everything else just felt lack-luster, ya know? :/

[Wildberry]

Don't tanking warriors have even less buttons now.

Don't know, don't care. Tanking's for losers anyway. Beyond that, is the only defense of WoD that you people are capable of mounting "but muh Legion is worse." Legion, like I've said before in this thread, is a garbage expansion too. Playing whataboutism with it doesn't make WoD any less bad.

Is it really so hard for you to accept some people liked it, some hated it, It probably was the least popular expansion wow has had but it still had millions of subs.

They still lost over half of their subscribers in less than a year. If that happened at any other company heads would have rolled.

[anaxie]

The consensus, is WOD sucked. The vast majority of people hated it.

Bellulargaming even did a video where he theorised that Blizzard knew before release that the systems they had designed for WOD were just not going to work, so they made a deliberate decision to cut the expansion as quickly as possible and rush towards getting Legion out the door. Whilst speculation, I found his reasoning plausible and in hindsight, what he suggests genuinely could have happened.

However this thread does not focus on the shitshow of WOD the expansion, but the problem with the setting.

Blizzard thought an alternate timeline set on a pre destroyed Draenor was a cool concept. However, trying to get that to fit in with the rest of the game proved impossible. There was no sense of threat to our world from anything happening on alt-Draenor, nor any feeling of consequence should anything go wrong.

Blizzard then compounded this sense of detachment by letting us know there were an infinite number of timelines all of which were under siege by the Burning Legion in an attempt to eradicate all life in the wider multiverse.

And then introduced duplicates of known characters, whilst explicitly stating the Legion transcended all realities so we ended up with the nonsensical situation of there being multiple Prophet Velens (there has to be if we take the multiverse theory at face value) yet only one Kil'Jaeden and one Archimonde.

Blizzard has two choices here.

They can either simply ignore what alt Draenor is and just use it as yet another location whenever they feel like it, or they can try and 'fix' what alt Draenor is in regards to the rest of the game. They will probably pick the former.

IF the were to pick the later though, I would do the following, and make this explict as canon.

Firstly, I would go back to the first principle regarding time in the Warcraft universe, as said to Nozdormu by Aman'thul.

'Unto you is charged the great task of keeping the purity of time. Know that there is ONLY ONE TRUE TIMELINE, though there are those who would have it otherwise. You must protect it. Without the truth of time as it is meant to unfold, MORE WILL BE LOST THAN YOU CAN PROBABLY IMAGINE. The fabric of reality will unravel. It is a heavy task--the base of all tasks of this world, for nothing can transpire without time.'

In other words, all the other timelines we have glimpsed in all the other fiction, from the ones Thrall saw and visited in the prelude to Cataclysm novel, to the alternate versions of Azeroth's leaders summoned at the end of the War Crimes book to the visions of all worlds in all timelines falling before the Legion that that Demon Hunter had...all of them should be explicitly stated to be shadows. Possible futures that have no substance, that aren't real.

The only true timeline is this one. This explains why there is only one Legion, and only one Kil'Jaeden and one Archimonde. Shadows of them may exist in other timelines, but again they would be just shadows.

Secondly, I would turn to alt Draenor and what exactly it is. I would say that the ritual used by Garrosh and Kairoz to travel to alt-Draenor was not them breaching the barrier between universes.

Rather, I would say that what their ritual did was pick one of the infinite number of alternate Draenors that exist in the infinite number of shadowy, unreal timelines and that it brought a single alternate Draenor into our universe and in doing so, made it real. This would explain the existence of the duplicates on alternate Draenor, it would give our adventures on alternate Draenor meaning, it would explain the interest of the Legion AND it would redeem Draenor as a setting.

It would also close the door on any more ridiculous notions of alternate timeline shenanigans and they could disown the offhand twitter comment that some Dev made stating alterate Draenor was out there too.

That is what I would do to repair Draenor within the lore.

could you just erase the post? Thats some grade A vomit

[cparle87]

-We not talking about wc2, wc2 most of its lore is already retconned and changed, i talk about rise of the horde, as for AU shit, we do have official lore that is clear that KJ didn't do anything at all, he just appeared to Gul'dan, telling him to gather the orcs (why would they listen to him?) and then drink blood, that disgusting straight forward, it doesn't only show KJ as stupid, it fucked all blizz work on showing orcs as actual honorable shamanistic ppl and turn them to warmonger lovers, what alliance always like to call orcs are and what wc3/pre-wod wow was showing opposite
-again it is blizz statement not mine, they said that AU is 'same' as our MU with 'small difference', when ppl started to point out that those 'tiny difference' is everything except Durotan himself (the only one who act same MU and AU), blizz 'answer' was to retcon MU lore and change it to fit AU, no facepalm in world is enough for that 'answer', regardless i like it or hate it, official lore now AU is actually closer to MU, blizz fucked MU lore with the weird AU crap to make them similar
-again that happened after blizz one line in WoD hellfire citadel raid, not before it, that includes KJ talk with Gul'dan about fel blood, not to mention it doesn't explain why KJ didn't use his - already successful - plan to lure orcs to drink blood and enslave them, instead of try who "should" been peaceful race to go genocide innocent race like Draenei, and most important it doesn't explain how exactly KJ from AU who become demon 30 years late than our MU happen, how 'demon process' work, because there is another universe now where KJ is still an eredar and it is velen who decide to obey Sargeras, and most important KJ obeys which Sargeras, since blizz was clear that Titans are NOT the same in all universes, that means the lower species of demons who are Sargeras underlings are the one and same across universes, while their boss the mighty Sargeras has a version in each universe
-then if our fight with him is non-canon, how exactly his line in journal clearly states he learned from 'fighting with us' ? i do know they did say they want us to relive it but they didn't say (more accurate to say i don't know) it isn't lore-canon the fight, since it does exist in wow and we can do it

Now why'd you have to go and ruin a good conversation with all of that? When you have to use profanity to try to put make your point you've already lost the argument. Sad, I was having a good time too.

[Captain Kennedy]

The issue is that people are treating WoD Draenor like its the entire universe. I believe it was stated the only thing that got pulled out of sync was Draenor itself, due to Bronze Dragonflight shenanigans. Keeping in mind that the dragonflights derive their abilities directly from the Titan's gifts, and likely work very similarly, that this AU Draenor is literally in its own little bubble, kind of like the Elemental Planes were, which kept the elements in check. It took a lot of power to create that bubble, which was (I believe) stationed near where Outlands was, thus putting it in closer proximity to Legion forces.

Source?

When the heros of Azeroth took down Archimonde, it wasn't in the Twisting Nether, so he wasn't dead permanently, neither were the high ranking demons that helped him (as seen in the Defense of Hyjal raid/WC3). So it's pretty viable that they'd be the ones to pop up in WoD, especially given Archimonde's irritation with Kil'Jaedin Smith's failure to corrupt the orcs a second time.

That's another story point i dislike entirely, but not what I was getting at. What I was getting at was how does WoD time travel logic effect all previous timetravel? Now that we're also jumping around space to parallel worlds.

[Obelisk Kai]

could you just erase the post? Thats some grade A vomit

No. I'd leave my response at that except there's a ten character minimum for a response.

[De Lupe]

WoD, while ultimately a disappointing addition to the game, DID have good elements. The questing, several of the characters, the (not-fel) aesthetics, many of the races, and the lore, etc.

So, no. We can't pretend it didn't happen.

[Deleted]

Everything is made up anyway and can change as soon as someone at Blizzard wants it to change.

Only lore that ever seems relevant are the current and future lore. Anything that happened previously constantly changes.

[Messinna]

all the shit u talk about WOD....il remind u troll... before ppl say same about MOP....8 mo4hs from now youl be yere shiting on Legion.....because thats your "job"...im not sayng was great....but jesuse to start a whole shananigen about it how phatetic and no life person must be....yo u think ul do better? try to make a mobile game start with that....then build a game to hang on so much years....ppl burn out off course they did that generation got older subscription is logic are drop ....because today are so much option in MMO....

[sarkarin]

Allowing WoD to have a continuing presence and relevance to the Warcraft lore and universe has absolute dire consequences on the narrative and story of the game. It opens up hundreds of plot holes and HUGELY devalues Warcraft lore. I'll explain:

My most personal gripe with WoD is it completely takes a shit on Orcish story development. Up til WoD Orcs were immigrants fleeing from a planet that was wrecked by alien invaders. The Orcish race were led to destruction by corrupt leaders that colluded with alien beings (demons). Draenor blows up and becomes Outland a harsh, wrecked and twisted world barely able to support life. The consequences of what happened were very serious and forced the Horde to remain on Azeroth where they would eventually forge a new identity and life in this strange new exotic land of which they were all 100% strangers to the environment. They had no choice to "Go home" because it was gone. KABOOM! You know? Allowing WoD to exist essentially undoes the meaning of all of that.

- All Orcs who died with purpose and meaning are now alive again so that undoes SO MUCH meaningful story.

- Grom died heroically and released the orcs from their blood curse. Now we have a second Grom walking around who's head should be on a spike because he invaded Azeroth and killed people. I mean WTF. Now when you mention the name Grom Hellscream you have to clarify if you're talking about the 'Wee wul nevor be slaaaaavezzz' one or the legend of Warsong, the guy who mentored Thrall, avoided capture by Alliance and saved all orcs from blood slavery. This is just a single example of what I am talking about. Not even to mention Drek'thar2, Chogall2, Mulverick2, Gul'dan2, Ner'zul2, Gorefiend2, Manaroth2 etc.

- The existence of Durotan and Draka massively undermines Thrall's character. A major part of his development is he is raised by Humans and doesn't have the faintest clue about his parents other than what old man Drek'thar tells him and various other old orcs who knew them. Thrall is inspired by them and emulates their example even though he did not know them which is good and does a lot to explain his actions and mistakes. Now because of WoD he can go visit them anytime he likes. Not the exact same but 99.9% copies. Their characters and their souls are there to be talked to and interacted with in principal. This fact alone will always hang over his character and story arc.

- If Alt Dreanor is here to stay why doesn't the Alliance seriously consider strategically dismantling the Horde and forcing the Orcs to migrate to Alt Draenor. After all it's their home and from the Alliance perspective an Orcish led Horde has been killing them and antagonising them for years non-stop. They lived in relative peace before that apparently. The camps weren't a good solution but now they conveniently have access to exact replica of the Orc homeworld so this becomes a legitimate plot point.

- Now that the Dark Portal has been hijacked by Alt Draenor link can anybody tell me how canonically would you would travel to Outland? Has Outland been cut off from us permanently? There are lots of serious questions raised by this alone.

- The Burning Legion on Alt Dreanor being the same Legion of our universe is completely off the fucking charts ridiculous lore breaking. I am sorry but that is FUCKED. What possible explanation could be given for the Legion being even remotely interested in Alt Dreanor? How would they even get there? It's supposed to be a pocket dimension or a time bubble or some bullshit. How would OUR 'one and only' Legion even gain access to it let alone want to invade it. Utter ridiculous rubbish.

If WoD is going to be here permanently then there will be permanent damage to the integrity of the lore.

I honestly could go on and on. They should ONLY bring back Alt Draenor to write it out permanently and castrate it's continuing impact on the lore. That's not to say we should lose everything. Merge as much as we can to existing Outland and be done with it. I hope Christie Golden comes to this thread and reads my post because I seriously worry about the health of this games lore. Warcraft used to be very grounded but these days it's a make-it-up-as-you-go free for all that is completely out of control.

[Qualia]

The issue is that people are treating WoD Draenor like its the entire universe. I believe it was stated the only thing that got pulled out of sync was Draenor itself, due to Bronze Dragonflight shenanigans. Keeping in mind that the dragonflights derive their abilities directly from the Titan's gifts, and likely work very similarly, that this AU Draenor is literally in its own little bubble, kind of like the Elemental Planes were, which kept the elements in check. It took a lot of power to create that bubble, which was (I believe) stationed near where Outlands was, thus putting it in closer proximity to Legion forces.

Source?

There is no source as it's just his fan theory - or if we are to look at it negatively, headcanon. In fact, canonically, it was the other way around. Blizzard (in particular, Afrasiabi) already said there is a multiverse, it's another universe and there is an AU Azeroth to go with AU Draenor as well, they (Blizzard) just have no plan for it back then (and probably now as well).

That mistaken theory came when Blizzard said AU Draenor will replace Outland as the destination of the Dark Portal, while Outland will be accessible in CoT during Blizzcon. Not only they changed their mind to make Outland easier to access, but the original statement were talking about how to access AU Draenor / Outland instead of their locations. Some people misunderstood it as AU Draenor appearing in our universe and replace Outland - which was wrong, but the theory never died down just like plenty of others.

Personally, I wouldn't argue whether people think dislike the storytelling or settings of WoD or not, but 99% of "WoD timey wimey is illogical" complaints I've seen so far are just there because people couldn't think of an answer, not that there weren't any possible answer (although they might sound forced).

[Molvonos]

Source?


That's another story point i dislike entirely, but not what I was getting at. What I was getting at was how does WoD time travel logic effect all previous timetravel? Now that we're also jumping around space to parallel worlds.

No source. It's me taking what evidence, information and lore we have and meshing it into something cohesive. Like we see Alexstraza use her fire at Wrath gate, for example, and greenery grows everywhere the fire touches, whereas the Titan that bestowed her with that power, Eonar, does the same thing (Though with less fire).

The titans created the Elemental Planes to imprison/house the Elemental Lords and their minions within the Twisting Nether. But they also created the Emerald Dream as Azeroth's template, which functions similarly (though less prisony). Elementals/Emerald Dream Denizens who (generally) die on the mortal plane (Azeroth) is returned to the plane they're ultimately bound to. Since the Emerald Dream is more like a 'Heavenly' realm of being, even those killed within the Dream (such as when we went to the Emerald Nightmare) still have a chance of returning to life, albeit at a slower pace (Ursoc, Cenarius repeatedly, etc), while the Elemental Planes, being a 'Hellish' realm, offers no such respite when they're killed there (Ragnaros, Al'akir).

Now, when applying that logic to AU-Draenor, the Bronze Dragonflight (or rather, just one with immense power that we supplied him with) went back in time, to Draenor, prior to its destruction, and sought to do whatever it was he was trying to do (aside from being an assclown). This is the same thing that the Infinite Dragonflight keeps attempting to do throughout the Caverns of Time at Murozond's behest. Fortunately, Azeroth, and the timeline we're currently in, is the Prime timeline and it cannot and should not be tampered with. Azeroth has Titan-empowered guardians to protect it (Bronze Dragonflight) and us, the Players. So we go back to where the Infinite Dragonflight were trying to change/alter history, specifically so there weren't Splinter/Parallel Azeroths.

But no such guardians exist on Draenor, so the chucklehead that went back, was able to twist and splinter AU-Draenor off, creating its own little place in the Twisting Nether (which also explains why AU-Draenor and the Outlands can exist simultaneously. It also explains how the demons were able to get to it so quickly, since it (should) be stationed somewhere near the Outlands, which the Demons have already visited and created portals and all that jazz to.

I believe (I don't have time to search for a source at the moment) that the Blues have stated that AU-Draenor is unique and stands alone. As in there's no AU-Azeroth (likely because it houses a Titan Soul, while Draenor didn't).

Yea, time-shenanigans are weird, but I like Dr. Who and fiction, so I enjoy trying to create information where it's lacking. I'd love if Blizz actually published the mechanics behind it, whether or not they fall in line with my ideas.

And I might be completely wrong in this, and i'm ok with that, but it seems the most plausible in my opinion.

[Qualia]

I believe (I don't have time to search for a source at the moment) that the Blues have stated that AU-Draenor is unique and stands alone. As in there's no AU-Azeroth (likely because it houses a Titan Soul, while Draenor didn't).
<...>
And I might be completely wrong in this, and i'm ok with that, but it seems the most plausible in my opinion.

While I wouldn't argue that some of the fans' theories might seem easier to use to explain various plot points, unfortunately, that wasn't Blizzard's explanation. This is the answer Afrasiabi gave in the interview at Blizzcon:

Q: I still get the same question over and over again -- is there an alternate Azeroth to go with the alternate Draenor?
AA: Yes!

Q: Are we going to see it?
AA: I would never say never, but it's not planned right now.

Q: I'm kind of wondering what that place looks like. I imagine it's really interesting.
AA: Absolutely, and this is a precedent here, that there are alternate worlds across the multiverse. There is a multiverse, right, I mean it's something we bounced around the previous Caverns of Time stuff sort of -- like we kind of skirted it -- and we embraced it with this one. Like this is what we're talking about here, right. And if you're a true time travel nerd, you understand that's the only way time travel works anyway.

Q: The whole idea of alt universe and time jump -- were there ever any concerns that this was taking it too far away from that story that we've been playing the past ten years, the one on Azeroth, with the Aspects and the Old Gods and everything else? Is this removing it too far, or is this actually going to tie back into all of that in a cohesive way?

AA: Well at its most basic, at its simplest level, it absolutely ties back into it, right, because why would we go back there in the first place? We had to go back there though as a reaction to Garrosh pushing forth, or the Iron Horde as it were. It was an active an immediate threat to Azeroth. So in that regard, in its simplest form, there was a grander threat. Just like every expansion. (Source)

It's also consistent to what Kairoz said when he first brought Garrosh to AU Draenor - that he searched through the timeways, and it was the most suitable one. He didn't create or summon it to our universe. Essentially, he opened a portal / made a connection between two universes (space) and to the past of the alternate universe (time) instead of just going back in time of our universe like the Bronze Dragonflight did.

While there isn't any confirmation, there are also signs of Alternate Azeroths housing world-souls as well, based on the AU versions of Azeroth heroes that Kairoz summoned in "War Crimes". At very least, we know there is a Sunwell, there are dragonflights, and the NE experienced the Sundering in those AUs - making it very likely that there was an Well of Eternity over there, and the WoE wouldn't have existed (at least based on our Azeroth) without the World Soul's blood.

[Ithekro]

I actually want WoD to be remembered. But I also want us to revisit it and complete some of those story arcs that got scrapped. I want Yrel to lead her army into Azeroth and come to our aid like they suggested they would. I want the rest of her story. it sounded like it was going to be awesome, and Yrel and Durotan had one really cool cutscene near Shattrath. It is just Blizzard dropped too much of the story after launch. Questing there was originally fun and interesting...than the grinding started, and the lack of new content. Than the story shifted towards Legion and didn't stop....and its still going until we fix the Giant Sword sticking into Azeroth problem and go back to killing each other over Titan Blood deposits.

[-primordial]

For me WoD will forever patch-like content rather than an expansion, if Blizz had planned WoD as a patch / content filler between expansions, it wud've suited much better.

hindsight is 2020 !

[Ielenia]

I would like to pretend to. What I'm worried about is the leak for Draenor Orcs for a new allied race...

Hopefully we're going to our Draenor and not "Draenor".

"Our" Draenor has always been referred to as 'Outland', so with him saying 'Draenor orcs' really gives the impression he's talking about WoD's orc clans.