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  1. #1

    Steve Danuser confirms a Dragonflight Timeskip

    Steve Danuser confirms a Dragonflight Timeskip
    Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
    Hello friends,

    I wanted to take a moment to address the topic of time passage between Shadowlands and Dragonflight.

    There has always been some amount of time passing between expansions, though rarely has it been called out in game. We maintain an internal timeline of what year each expansion begins, and the gap between them has either been one year (as with earlier expansions) or two years (as with most of the later ones). But NPCs in the world don’t talk about how the Burning Crusade took place in the year 26 after the Dark Portal opened, or how we rediscovered Pandaria in the year 30.

    When you look back at the Warcraft timeline, one of the things you’ll notice is that a lot of massive, world-changing events were tightly clustered together. This is especially true for WoW, which since launch has seen a multitude of invasions and catastrophes back-to-back in the chronology.

    With Shadowlands representing the closing of one book in the Warcraft saga (as we mentioned in interviews around the release of our Eternity’s End update), it felt like an opportunity to give Azeroth and its inhabitants a bit of breathing room before Dragonflight ushers in the start of our next major storyline.

    Shadowlands began in the year 35 after the opening of the Dark Portal, and Dragonflight will begin in the year 40.

    Given that the events of Shadowlands took place over the course of two years, that leaves a few additional years that we are fast-forwarding through. Our purpose here is not to have a litany of events take place outside the game that you need to read about in a novel or other media to understand the state of the world. The goal of the fast-forward is to provide the people of Azeroth with a slice of “normal” life without a major threat looming over their heads.

    When our heroes return from the Realms of Death, you can imagine them easing back into their lives and duties without an immediate crisis to address or enemy to fight. With the Alliance and Horde honoring the truce signed after the Fourth War, the average Azerothian citizen will be able to enjoy a time of stability and reflection.

    That said, we plan to offer a digital short story on our website that details one particularly joyous occasion which has been referenced in the alpha build. It’s going to be a fun and charming read, but it won’t be necessary in order to understand the events of Dragonflight.

    Besides stretching out the WoW timeline a bit, another benefit of this fast-forward is that it will let our younger characters get a little older, allowing some of them to take a larger role in future storylines. Yet not so much time will be passing that you’d expect characters who are already adults to look significantly different.

    As for changes to the world that have been discussed or foreshadowed, such as the resettlement of Gilneas, those will not be happening during the fast-forward. As cool as it is to show locations and populations evolving because of story progression, we want events of this importance to be in-game questing that our players experience for themselves (as with the reclaiming of the Ruins of Lordaeron in the 9.2.5 update) rather than having it happen off-camera.

    For your player characters, it has always been left to your own interpretation how much time had passed when they log in after the arrival of a major update or new expansion. Dragonflight is no exception. You are free to imagine what your characters have been doing in that time of respite as you look forward to the arrival of the Dragonflight pre-patch.

    Hopefully this post helps clear up confusion about the timeline and explains our goals for having a few more years pass than we normally would.

    –Steve Danuser, Narrative Lead

  2. #2
    one particularly joyous occasion which has been referenced in the alpha build
    Wedding between Lor'themar and Thalyssra, I'm guessing?

  3. #3
    They probably want to involve throwback npcs like Salandria and others that might be grown up by now.

  4. #4
    3 years? Not nearly enough in my opinion.

  5. #5
    So all of Outland, Northrend and Cata took place in 4 years? That seems.. wrong. Way way too much in a short period of time.

  6. #6
    The Lightbringer Sanguinerd's Avatar
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    Not to complain but 5 years feel like a bit of a wasted oppertunity here, a bigger timeskip would've allowed for Azeroth (and the old continents) to evolve and change much more and also given them the excuse to update the old world a bit. Thinking more like 10/20+ years here.
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  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Sanguinerd View Post
    Not to complain but 5 years feel like a bit of a wasted oppertunity here, a bigger timeskip would've allowed for Azeroth (and the old continents) to evolve and change much more and also given them the excuse to update the old world a bit. Thinking more like 10/20+ years here.
    I think the point they're making was that a time skip THAT large couldn't just be handwaved in an expansion transition - it's precisely those big changes you mention that wouldn't allow it, because they'd have to actually, well, SHOW those changes.

    This way they can just add some dialogue here and there and be done, not a lot of work for that kind of skip.

  8. #8
    The Lightbringer Sanguinerd's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Biomega View Post
    I think the point they're making was that a time skip THAT large couldn't just be handwaved in an expansion transition - it's precisely those big changes you mention that wouldn't allow it, because they'd have to actually, well, SHOW those changes.

    This way they can just add some dialogue here and there and be done, not a lot of work for that kind of skip.
    Just looking for ways to have the old zones updated as they're really starting to look their age nowadays and feel useless which is such a shame.
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  9. #9
    I too would have liked a longer skip but the issue is NPC and Player character aging out of being able to fight range.

  10. #10
    With the Alliance and Horde honoring the truce signed after the Fourth War, the average Azerothian citizen will be able to enjoy a time of stability and reflection.
    Except for the night elves who are still refugees and will still have no proper home during this time lmao


  11. #11
    I think it's kinda funny how they make a big deal about the timeline but they never add anything cool to the lore, just blab on about "actually it's been 5 years" and "Shadowlands was a 3 part symphony" . How about making some cool moments of lore, when is that gonna happen?

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Ezyah View Post
    I too would have liked a longer skip but the issue is NPC and Player character aging out of being able to fight range.
    Not for all races though.

  13. #13
    Cool.

    Even though this is all meaningless fluff without a proper world revamp (No, the courtyard above Undercity getting repopulated by 15 NPCs is not a world revamp), it does at least offer some RP opportunities and the chance to maybe overhaul your TRP3 profile a little bit.

  14. #14
    So all of the expansions up till now have only been like 10 years in game.
    Do you hear the voices too?

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Rezzyk View Post
    So all of Outland, Northrend and Cata took place in 4 years? That seems.. wrong. Way way too much in a short period of time.
    That's been known lore since Cataclysm, maybe earlier.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Sanguinerd View Post
    Just looking for ways to have the old zones updated as they're really starting to look their age nowadays and feel useless which is such a shame.
    Oh I'm with you on that, it's just unlikely to happen. They tried with Cataclysm (and it's good that they did) but the result was simply the realization that it's almost impossible to turn into a profitable cost/benefit proposition. It takes ENORMOUS amounts of work to reword old zones, but at the end of the day, what are they doing it for? Just the new people leveling through one or two of those?

    It may never happen again at this point.

  17. #17
    Warchief Progenitor Aquarius's Avatar
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    26, 30, 40 years since the Dark Portal. An interesting chronology The funny thing is that he didn’t say which year Legion occurred.
    Last edited by Progenitor Aquarius; 2022-08-19 at 11:05 PM.

  18. #18
    It doesn't matter if it's 1, 5, 10, 100 years time skip. The story will still be shit, it's nowadays Blizzard after all.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Sanguinerd View Post
    Just looking for ways to have the old zones updated as they're really starting to look their age nowadays and feel useless which is such a shame.
    They didn't need any more time than a few expansions/years to justify the Cata update. It's been a lot longer since then. They don't need a timeskip to justify an update. Honestly, shorter might even be more interesting, as we could see remnants of all the recent conflicts still around.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Biomega View Post
    Oh I'm with you on that, it's just unlikely to happen. They tried with Cataclysm (and it's good that they did) but the result was simply the realization that it's almost impossible to turn into a profitable cost/benefit proposition. It takes ENORMOUS amounts of work to reword old zones, but at the end of the day, what are they doing it for? Just the new people leveling through one or two of those?

    It may never happen again at this point.
    It can be justified to do again, but only if those updated zones would also be the relevant ones for the endgame content. Which is something they could do. Cata didn't do this. You really only saw the new zones while leveling up. This was before World Quests were even a thing. I'm sure it could be a valid concept if they do it again, but with endgame also in mind for it.

  20. #20
    so...... boring . seems to be there theme of DF . we coudl already see it with how boring DF trailer was. this is just extnding it.

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