So, time skip incoming?

[Orby]

We need a time skip just to give Azeroth some peace and quiet.

How long has it been since the opening of the Dark Portal? 35 years? In those 35 years Azeroth has had the first, second and third wars, a scourge invasion, a demon invasion, another scourge invasion with the war on the Lich King, A Cataclysm that destroyed and changed most of the world, The Alliance + Horde war, the iron Horde invasion, Another demon invasion, the war on the Draenei homeworld, Azeroth getting stabbed by a giant sword, ANOTHER horde v alliance war, and lastly an old god attack.

What 30 years in our history has thas this much conflict? lol. Azeroth might need a break. :P

[huth]

That's a fine opinion. But that doesn't mean it's actually happening. Veering off a consistent storyline on a world where something new happens every year, to take us out of that story for years, is opening a whole new can of worms.

No, it doesn't. But i never said it did.

I disagree on "veering off", though. The entire point of doing a timeskip is avoiding a situation where nothing happens for a while without taking you out of the story.

- - - Updated - - -

We need a time skip just to give Azeroth some peace and quiet.

How long has it been since the opening of the Dark Portal? 35 years? In those 35 years Azeroth has had the first, second and third wars, a scourge invasion, a demon invasion, another scourge invasion with the war on the Lich King, A Cataclysm that destroyed and changed most of the world, The Alliance + Horde war, the iron Horde invasion, Another demon invasion, the war on the Draenei homeworld, Azeroth getting stabbed by a giant sword, ANOTHER horde v alliance war, and lastly an old god attack.

What 30 years in our history has thas this much conflict? lol. Azeroth might need a break. :P

You forgot the first Old God attack that happened before the first of the two demon invasions.

[Maxilian]

Technology in warcraft is more the same for several millennia. time skip will change nothing about it.

At least the Alliance have a good excuse to have an increase in their technology with the LF Draneai and the Mechagnomes.

[Kronn]

Hello Everyone!

If I were Blizzard, I would do a 10-15 year time skip after Shadowlands. This way, they don't have to kill off any character or drastically change the dynamics of the factions.

Obviously, redoing the whole world would be impossible, but maybe they could do an expansion with 2 parts. WoW: New Beginnings part 1 could be on Kalimdor (an expansion with a normal timespan of an expansion, so around 2 year) and WoW: New Beginnings part 2 with the Eastern Kingdoms. You could level to max on these redone continents, but there would be maximum level only zones too.
These two new expansion would be a light restart: no world-ending threats or enemies, more self-contained stories for the zones, which can lead to further developments. The reason why you can't make contact with other continents would be the return of Azshara and she making sea travel (and long distance teleportation) impossible.

The "old world" could be visitable through the Caverns of Time.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Take the TLoZ: OO route and do a 7 year skip. Young characters can be adults and have the chance to be written/portrayed differently in the story (*cough* Anduin) and old/older characters can be the same or even be wiser.


At least to me, 7 years seems like the perfect amount of time.

[tromage2]

I would like it more Garroshy.

Totally, Garrosh actually made that city in a stronghold, before him it was a city of wood and stones.

[matrix123mko]

Totally, Garrosh actually made that city in a stronghold, before him it was a city of wood and stones.

Old Orgrimmar was a bunch of tents.

[Soon-TM]

SL over.

Finally get back to Azeroth.

The entire planet is covered in hives.

Silithid back again!

WRONG.

We find out Azeroth is in the Koprulu Sector.

It's the Zerg.

Welcome to World of StarCraft.

Will I be able to roll an Ultralisk? Pretty please... Although a High Templar might also be neat

But in all honesty, the old world is so !@#$ed up (along with the lore), that it desperately needs a soft reboot imo. Every major continent/world (Outland, Pandaria, etc.) is trapped in its own time bubble, and EK/Kalimdor are maybe the worst offenders. A 20-30 years time jump could work wonders.

Even better, they wouldn't have to suffer from the "Cataclysm syndrome", i.e. all the revamped zones becoming useless for max level toons. With the new phasing, ANY zone could be used for endgame activities.

[ParanoiD84]

Warcraft 40k. The God-Emperor rules the heavens atop his actually used Vindicaar. Back on Azeroth, the night elves are still farming pumpkins.

Or AoS it's also insane in scale compared to even old warhammer or settings like wow, pretty much high fantasy taken to the extreme. Armies are stupidly large there too the ironjaws alone numbers in the billions and factions there are op as fuck.

God beasts so big they coil around the sun some as big as moons etc and the God King Sigmar one shots some of those god beasts with Ghal Maraz. Didnt really enjoy it in the beginning but after reading some novels it's badass and a very sucessful setting for GW.













Just to show some scale.

[shoc]

I see it as N'zoth's ultimate plan. Bring the heroes out of Azeroth, so that he and the other old gods can deal with Azeroth while it's defenders are gone.

I'd link it to the Anduin comic where he was seen old on a ship with Velen, where the reason why he is there and old is not because they have been fighting the legion, but escaping Azeroth due to the Old gods finally coming to power.

They have been saying that Death is not the same for a old god as other creatures, a presumption could be that N'zoth, Yogg-Saron, C'thun and Y'shaarj are still "alive", just not in the way we would look at biological life to exist.

If there is a time skip, I'd see it as us coming back to a Azeroth controlled by the Black Empire again, and the Titan soul being completely corrupted, leaving us little choice but to destroy it in order to save the planet itself. Or perhaps the essence we filled the Heart of Azeroth will come into play again, and give us a fighting chance to purify the titan soul.

It's either something like that, or just us coming back to a world where certain world leaders absence into the Shadowlands have caused complete chaos, leading us into a fifth great war.

N'zoth is busted, but Xal's plan to rid Azeroth of its champions could be just as sinister.

[Benitora]

N'zoth is busted, but Xal's plan to rid Azeroth of its champions could be just as sinister.

I am more or less thinking about N'zoth's plan not being for himself, but for the Old gods ultimate goal of corrupting a Titan soul.
If it's N'zoth or Xal'atath, I'm fine with it either way.

Their minions do say that the Old gods work outside of the usual cycle of life and death, and the developers have sorta confirmed that by the statement:
"So if you think about other magical creatures and think what happens when you kill them on Azeroth, where do they go? There's the potential for things like that to kind of happen. We try to have this cosmology of the way things work, and that's something that you can apply to other things. And I think the old gods are an interesting case where, you know, we've defeated one version of them and who knows if another manifestation will eventually take place."

Which is from a interview from Steve Danuser in november in 2019.

I just would love to see the warcraft universe be faced with what is essentially a fucked up situation where there is absolutely no happy ending. That while we as player characters still work as we do, but the world and lore itself take a extremely heavy hit from us being away from it for too long due to time dialiation in the Shadowlands.

[Hellobolis]

time ran like 1000x slower in argus too, yet that never affected us.

[cparle87]

All I'm really hoping for is that Orgrimmar becomes less Garroshy.

Yeah, I was really hoping Vol'jin would revert it back, at least a little.

[Stelio Kontos]

I'm stoked because that hopefully means we get:

Revamped old zones
No more Horde and Alliance bullshit
Resettled Gilneas
Reclaimed Gnomeregan
New home for the Night Elves (maybe Broken isles?)

[huth]

time ran like 1000x slower in argus too, yet that never affected us.

Because it isn't Argus, it's the Twisting Nether where time is wonky. Besides, we didn't spend all that much time on Argus, and even less in the Nether.

[Caerule]

time ran like 1000x slower in argus too, yet that never affected us.

Time actually didn't ran slower or faster on Argus. It's connected strongly to the Twisting Nether, tied deeply with it. But it's not technically inside it.

And even inside the Twisting Nether, there's portions deeper into the realm of chaos where the time distortion is strong. And areas where it's not.

And most importantly, even if time on Argus would have been effected, it would have gone faster, not slower. We'd have come back sooner than expected.


Ion describes Shadowlands as a similar realm of chaos. If anything, time should run faster there. Which both the question to Ion and his answer also suggests.

We don't need a time skip to justify a world update though. It's already long overdue.

[Gamevizier]

I actually support a 10-20 year time skip. That's enough for dramatic changes to take place within Azeroth but not too much to cause a feeling of disconnection with the world. With the old world undergoing dramatic changes (like a cataclysm 2.0 but minus the destruction) Though tbh, in my perfect world, I think Blizzard should end WoW with Shadowlands and start WoW 2 right after.

Why? Because shadowlands to me seems to be the perfect ending for WoW. Our character is literally going to where the dead souls go to to fight the jailer and save the souls that are trapped within the maw. I can think of no more poetic ways to end our god-like character rather than make them ascend into WoW afterlife and battle the keeper of the dead souls.

I don't think WoW's engine is strong enough to support the changes they wish to implement on the game. There are so many limitations with WoW's engine that I just don't think it's feasible to keep upgrading the decades old engine. We can't have ship battles, mount battles, sky battles, water combat or anything because of technical limitations with WoW's engine. heck we can't even have our character climb a ladder. so to me its' better to just kill WoW retail and continue with Classic/BC/WotLK and then work on WoW2.

Heck, I would love to have a fresh start to experience the old zones again with brand new quest chains and storylines and a brand new engine.

So yes, ditch WoW and build WoW 2 after this imo.

[Yooginava182]

I'd say a time jump of 5-15 year range.

There's a whole lot of potential. The Scarlet Crusade has been active again. Would be cool to see that whole area being back under Human ( Scarlet Crusade ) Control. Making Lordaeron capital a raid for them. Could see how / where the night elves end up after Tyrande goes to the shadowlands with us. The new horde and their new councils. Could give the game the opportunity to bring the world back to life. All new Threats, not really any big bad. But just exploring this new altered world.

[Soon-TM]

I'd say a time jump of 5-15 year range.

There's a whole lot of potential. The Scarlet Crusade has been active again. Would be cool to see that whole area being back under Human ( Scarlet Crusade ) Control. Making Lordaeron capital a raid for them. Could see how / where the night elves end up after Tyrande goes to the shadowlands with us. The new horde and their new councils. Could give the game the opportunity to bring the world back to life. All new Threats, not really any big bad. But just exploring this new altered world.

I pretty much agree. But what you (and me too, tbh) are asking for is a Vanilla 2.0 of sorts, as far as presentation and world building go. Can you imagine an expansion where you have to go through, say, 30 or 40 levels to cap, instead of the usual 10? As much as I'd love that, I really doubt Blizzard can (or even wants) to do all that work.

[Shoggoth]

If only. It's the only thing it would make me come back to WoW because sure as hell I ain't for Shadowlands.