Why isn’t their a time skip after each expansion ?

[Tirale]

It works much better than how they’ve done it.

After watching LoL arcane and doing some wow catching up reading, I am miffed that these threats keep happening like clock work every two years.

Is there a reason this has to be the case in game? That it has to match real time?

I think it would have been far more interesting if they time skipped a little or a lot each time and not matched real time to game time.

What’s the logic of that? It just limits you unnecessarily from a narrative POV. There isn’t any technical reason the in game time line has to match real time, is there?

[Khaza-R]

For some characters its not an issue. But for an average human or orc, time skipping decades as a time would draw questions as to why the PC isn't withered or dead.

Edit : But I agree. Having some many crazy insane events in a short time period really makes the WoW timeline look wonky as hell. It needs major retcons if the story ever moves pass WoW into a different series.

[Alvito]

They have skipped for a few. The biggest block of doing that would be the age of NPCs

[Hellobolis]

pretty sure the real life calandar and in universe calendar aren't the same.

been lots of small timeskips. 4 years between war3 and wow is the most well known one, but iirc most expansions similarly have a couple years of peace in between them.

on the other hand also wouldn't be surprised if they "fixed" the timeline around the time they did chronicles.

[Cosmic Janitor]

WoW is built in a way that only the current expansion is relevant, that includes everything, story, lore, characters, systems, content, you name it.

It wouldn't really matter how much time passes between expansions.

[Dracullus]

pretty sure the real life calandar and in universe calendar aren't the same.

been lots of small timeskips. 4 years between war3 and wow is the most well known one, but iirc most expansions similarly have a couple years of peace in between them.

on the other hand also wouldn't be surprised if they "fixed" the timeline around the time they did chronicles.

Problem is, not really. W3 -> WoW was only timeskip and so far just 1 year pass between most expansions, so it's even faster in lore than in real life. Azeroth is literally a hellhole when new world war happen every year and without foreign invasion we just start killing each other.

[Hellobolis]

Problem is, not really. W3 -> WoW was only timeskip and so far just 1 year pass between most expansions, so it's even faster in lore than in real life. Azeroth is literally a hellhole when new world war happen every year and without foreign invasion we just start killing each other.

sure if you look at the timeline on wowpedia. but i'm pretty sure i read several novels 10-15 years ago where it was more like "its been x years since y event".

hence my suggestion they probably retcon/fixed it at some point.

[Beloren]

For some characters its not an issue. But for an average human or orc, time skipping decades as a time would draw questions as to why the PC isn't withered or dead.

Edit : But I agree. Having some many crazy insane events in a short time period really makes the WoW timeline look wonky as hell. It needs major retcons if the story ever moves pass WoW into a different series.

I think time skipping and getting rid of some old characters would be a good thing. Prevents them from being over used, gives better perspective on the time line, time frame and better frames longer lived races for what they are.

Besides, imagine coming back 20 years later, w- you could write interesting things about those who've died of old age, also see a different perspective of a character that was a child when you first met them and now an adult.

It creates more interesting situations on top of being realistic for some of the threats they deal with.
@Tirale - I would also add that some expansions should not happen over tow years literally in game, some can be just a few months, some can be a span of 10-20 years during the expansion cycle, with each patch either having a time skip, or during the questing you move forward in time.

you do such things when the story demands it and it makes sense.. silly rules like having to be real time, or everyone in the horde having to be different or hate the alliance ruin the game.. look how ridiculous it is that the horde can't speak to the alliance, when you literally have forsaken and blood elves who you know can understand humans and night elves and vice versa.

It just casues both quality and respect for the work to nose dive if you ask me.

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pretty sure the real life calandar and in universe calendar aren't the same.

been lots of small timeskips. 4 years between war3 and wow is the most well known one, but iirc most expansions similarly have a couple years of peace in between them.

on the other hand also wouldn't be surprised if they "fixed" the timeline around the time they did chronicles.

I don't think this is true.

W3 to WoW is a change of game. And the opening cinematic tells you "4 years has passed..." so you know.

However after that, it's real time "like clockwork" (as OP puts it), for how the timeline goes in wow.

[Cosmic Janitor]

sure if you look at the timeline on wowpedia. but i'm pretty sure i read several novels 10-15 years ago where it was more like "its been x years since y event".

hence my suggestion they probably retcon/fixed it at some point.

I'm pretty sure you remember that wrong, because I read them as well and many others too and no one seems to recall the timeline being that stretched. Draculus is right, the only notable timeskip that is explicitly mentioned happened after the WC3 and we only know of that because of the classic intro. In fact some details even seem to not properly align, like Anduins age, he essentially aged while other sources state barely any time had passed.

[LordKharon]

Sure would be good, but look at the WoW lore, its a total trainwreck. We killed dozens of superpowers and save the universe like every patch. WoW expansions (and the lore) are like summer blockbuster movies, big/fun/flashy but completely irrelevant the second its over.

[Lucetia]

Is there a reason this has to be the case in game? That it has to match real time?

They have had various time skips in between each expansion.

[huth]

It works much better than how they’ve done it.

After watching LoL arcane and doing some wow catching up reading, I am miffed that these threats keep happening like clock work every two years.

Is there a reason this has to be the case in game? That it has to match real time?

I think it would have been far more interesting if they time skipped a little or a lot each time and not matched real time to game time.

What’s the logic of that? It just limits you unnecessarily from a narrative POV. There isn’t any technical reason the in game time line has to match real time, is there?

It's even worse in-universe. Most expansions only last about 1 year in lore. Would be better if we had 2-3 years in between each, so there's at least a little time for things to happen and not just be one big unbreaking line of disasters.

They have had various time skips in between each expansion.

What? No. Quite the opposite. There have been no time skips whatsoever, even when it would have been narratively more sensible, like before BfA. Sylvanas pretty much marched on Teldrassil almost immediately upon returning from Argus.

[Lucetia]

What? No. Quite the opposite. There have been no time skips whatsoever, even when it would have been narratively more sensible, like before BfA. Sylvanas pretty much marched on Teldrassil almost immediately upon returning from Argus.

Not every expansion has had a time skip, Legion through Shadowlands hasn't since it's all a continuous story / time frame that is happening. Wrath -> Cataclysm had a several year time skip for instance, along with other expansions. Unless you think Garrosh rebuilt all of Orgrimmar in a single day when he became war chief (despite that's how it happened in-game for obvious reasons), but lore wise it didn't.

[Hobbidaggy]

It works much better than how they’ve done it.

After watching LoL arcane and doing some wow catching up reading, I am miffed that these threats keep happening like clock work every two years.

Is there a reason this has to be the case in game? That it has to match real time?

I think it would have been far more interesting if they time skipped a little or a lot each time and not matched real time to game time.

What’s the logic of that? It just limits you unnecessarily from a narrative POV. There isn’t any technical reason the in game time line has to match real time, is there?

Well some of the reasons that things happen is because something else has happened. Cataclysm caused the Mist around pandaria to dissipate, garrosh jumping through time at his trial between Mists and WoD caused him to trigger the WoD scenario, which in turn allowed Guldan to trigger the legion invasion, that lead to the faction war for Azerite after the sword was stabbed into Azeroth. This war was triggered to also increase the body count to the jailer and gave Sylvanis enough time to get her forces aligned and then flew off to Shadowlands once she was strong enough to rip apart the helm.

The triggers in the early expansions didn’t work because the story team didn’t really look too far ahead like that but then they started to come cataclysm onwards and allowed the expansions events to trigger the next one

[Kiivar86]

Wrath -> Cataclysm had a several year time skip for instance, along with other expansions.

No it didn't.

Warcraft Chronicles vol 3 had a timeline. WotLK took place in year 27 (year 0 being the year the Dark Portal opened). Cataclysm in year 28 (and into 29).

Timeline. In fact it has generally been one year per expansion, though some of hte more recent ones bleed over into the next.

[Lucetia]

No it didn't.

Warcraft Chronicles vol 3 had a timeline. WotLK took place in year 27 (year 0 being the year the Dark Portal opened). Cataclysm in year 28 (and into 29).

Timeline. In fact it has generally been one year per expansion, though some of hte more recent ones bleed over into the next.

Maybe if Chronicles retroactively changed it. Many years ago the devs mentioned that it was approximately a 5 year time skip between Wrath and Cataclysm.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Time does advance. As of Shadowlands, it has been 8 years since the events of Vanilla WoW. For reference, the latest GW2 storyline, Icebrood Saga, takes place 9 years after vanilla GW2's story.

I do agree that it's rather preposterous that there have been several dozen world ending crises all within an 8 year period (and WoW doesn't have the excuse that it was because of a chain reaction like GW2's story does with the Elder Dragon magic), but I do like how time does advance in WoW, at least in the lore. You saw Anduin grow up. You saw the passing of different racial leaders. Cities in the lore have been built up, destroyed, and rebuilt again.

[Utrrabbit]

No it didn't.

Warcraft Chronicles vol 3 had a timeline. WotLK took place in year 27 (year 0 being the year the Dark Portal opened). Cataclysm in year 28 (and into 29).

Timeline. In fact it has generally been one year per expansion, though some of hte more recent ones bleed over into the next.

Lmao your following chronicles? Something that is notoriously awful for getting nearly everything wrong.

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Time does advance. As of Shadowlands, it has been 8 years since the events of Vanilla WoW. For reference, the latest GW2 storyline, Icebrood Saga, takes place 9 years after vanilla GW2's story.

I do agree that it's rather preposterous that there have been several dozen world ending crises all within an 8 year period (and WoW doesn't have the excuse that it was because of a chain reaction like GW2's story does with the Elder Dragon magic), but I do like how time does advance in WoW, at least in the lore. You saw Anduin grow up. You saw the passing of different racial leaders. Cities in the lore have been built up, destroyed, and rebuilt again.

Actually it has been closer to over 20 years.

The events of vanilla took around 3 years
Tbc events took around 4 years
Wrath events took around 3 to 4 years
Before cata their was about a 5 year gap between us killing arthas and deathwing coming (thus all the changes to infrastructe not only to ogrimmar but the forsaken buildings
Cata took place for about another 5 years.
Mop was another few years.

The only and I do mean ONLY expansions that havr had no time skips gave been from bfa to shadowlands

Legion to bfa had a 2 year time skip.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Maybe if Chronicles retroactively changed it. Many years ago the devs mentioned that it was approximately a 5 year time skip between Wrath and Cataclysm.

Well, since the writers can't keep their own lore straight, we can take a look at Anduin. In Vanilla, he looked like this:



He looks 6 or 7 years old, maybe 8 max. Compare him to this:



This dude is well into his mid to late 20s, possibly early 30s. So at the very least, 15 years have passed since Vanilla.

[Caerule]

Okay, I'm not sure where people are getting that there have been time skips.

There have never been, and never will be, time skips!

Eeeevery expansion there's unsourced claims that "definitely confirm" there is a time skip. And before you know it, the whole community is personally convinced that they saw Blizzard itself state this.

Never the case. The ironic thing is that the Blizzard timeline is actually -shorter- than real life.

WoW is 17 years old now. Lorewise, it was the year 25 when it started. Last we got confirmation on the time, it was the year 33, at the start of Battle for Azeroth.

That's right! Patch 8.0 was 8 years after the events of WoW Classic. If we're generous, and we give both BfA and what we've seen of Shadowlands a year, it's now the year 35. 10 years, not 17 years, after things began.

Now is that dumb? It's done that it's not been 17 years. But it's not dumb that it's not been more. Here's why:

People struggle with characters changing to begin with. As time passes and characters do new things, the majority of people feel the character gets "ruined".
Even more so, there's a great dislike of missing out on the development of these characters. Past Blizz was notorious about doing all character development in books.

But at least books were something. A timeskip would skip past it all. We've seen how much characters have changed in the last "10 years". Now imagine a 10 year timeskip, where we return and the characters have changed that much again. Their lives lived. Hardships faced. Relationships and friendships lost and gained. Training archs past. People dying, starting families, being born. Victories, losses and scars suffered. And all without us having any impact or role in the world for those years. No part in the story.

It would suck. And for a ton of people it would be the disconnect that just makes them say "Well, I guess I'm stepping out now".

People think they want a time skip. But what they usually want is just to see the world progressed to the next stage. But we don't need a time skip for that. Cataclysm was in 3.0. Soon we get 10.0. Blizzard has every excuse to progress the game world if they want, without doing a timeskip.

At any rate, Blizz has made the choice for WoW to have a continuous story. It just gets a little hard to fathom sometimes, because the content only appears to us step-wise. If they update a city, this will be done in one patch. They're not making three different versions of the city being slowly constructed over time. No, you'll get it poof-done. It's the limits of the medium. If they do another remake, then yeah, we'll return in 10.0 to find the world changed! But that won't mean all those changes happened overnight, and time skipped forward. The implication is that much of those changes happened in the time between 3.0 and 10.0. They just largely weren't able to show that to you.