The Draenor Problem - Cataclysm 2.0

[Deleted]

Well when you put it like that, they could make an expansion dubbed "Heroes of Argus" yet let the player gather apples and mediate with a bunch of elderly Draenei for the course of the expansion. Granted, that example is a bit far-fetched, however when you put a place in a name, you expect to go there.

It'd be like mists of pandaria only adding pandaren as a race and nothing else. It doesn't make sense.

Didn't think of that yet. But going to Draenor can mean a lot of things (timetravel, current outland...)

[Deleted]

This thread is built on the premise that past Draenor and the Outland are very similar to each other. They are not, besides the geography of the continent (I say continent because that's the only landmass we know of Draenor) and two zones, Draenor and Outland are nothing alike.

IF Warlords of Draenor is about past-Draenor, than a completely new land will be built, sharing the geography of Outland at max.

[Duridi]

There's only a few days until we'll know what's coming. Let's calm down and wait for that instead of wasting energy on worries about things we worry might come. We don't know anything.

[dope_danny]

The problem with cataclysm was they didnt just have 5 80-85 zones, they had the entirety of the kalimdor and eastern kindgoms 1-60 experience. Outland is 6 zones for 60-70 and already set up for flying mounts. That is a massive difference in time needed to update it. And thats before adding in the increased team size and the fact that they learnt from cataclysm. They wouldnt make the same mistakes.

[Lemmiwink]

Timetravelling is a popular way of retconning. A retcon is much needed in WoW, in my opinion and many others as well. We could, for all we know, have been playing in an alternate timeline all along requireing us to back to the original timeline to prevent the parallel dimensions consuming eachother. Time travel has a big place in WoW lore and it would make perfect sense to base an expansion around it to retcon elements the weren't happy with in the first place.

[Sildor]

A Draenor expansion doesn't necessarily mean Outland rehash. Blizzard might touch it up a bit or re-use some of it, but they won't repeat the mistake with Cataclysm.

[Cooper]

As for Draenor itself, it's rumored through leaks that we're going back in time when Draenor wasn't shattered to stop the orcs from drinking demon blood,

There is no way. Just no way. Stopping the Orcs from drinking demon blood changes virtually EVERYTHING about Azeroth's history over the past 20 or 30 years or whatever. We already have an instance where we have to HELP Medivh open the Dark Portal, because if the Orcs don't show up, the Burning Legion wins. Even ignoring that, not drinking Demon Blood means there is no Hellscream legacy which basically means Mists of Pandaria never happens, IF there are Orcs on Azeroth at all. It means Varian probably isn't kidnapped and forced to become a gladiator slave to the Orcs, making him a TOTALLY different person. And that's just the beginning of stuff that changes.

I mean I guess Blizzard could try to do this, but there is no way it works.

[Deleted]

Then there's the Infinite Flight, though we wrapped up that story in Cataclysm with the death of Murozond so it seems unlikely unless Blizzard wants to pull another Kael'thas.

Well, we killed Murozond in the future where Deathwing destroyed the world. That future didn't happen, so Murozond won't die. But yeah, time travel in games is usually annoying and confusing. I hope I'll be surprised though!

[Dnusha]

Hey OP, why do you think they will revamp Outland? Outland is just a part of the Planet. If it will be "time travel" back in the First or Second War or earlier it would be awesome imho. The whole new world to explore. WC1-2 Characters. Maybe we will stop Ner'Zul from destroying the Draenor, who knows what will happen.

[Lemmiwink]

There is no way. Just no way. Stopping the Orcs from drinking demon blood changes virtually EVERYTHING about Azeroth's history over the past 20 or 30 years or whatever. We already have an instance where we have to HELP Medivh open the Dark Portal, because if the Orcs don't show up, the Burning Legion wins. Even ignoring that, not drinking Demon Blood means there is no Hellscream legacy which basically means Mists of Pandaria never happens, IF there are Orcs on Azeroth at all.

I mean I guess Blizzard could try to do this, but there is no way it works.

A reason to retcon away pandaria? A theme that was clearly not well received by the player base. There are many twists they can pull off to get it working so that the Horde still exists at the point where vanilla starts. Perfect crime if they pull it off.

[Deleted]

The problem with OP is that you're comparing 2 entire continents' worth of content revamp, with 1 "small" continent's worth of "revamp" (assuming they use roughly the same size as Outland and Pandaria use).

That's not going to suck nearly as many resources, nor would the leveling be disjointed since we'd be on.. Draenor the whole time.

The time-travel theory implies we'll see a pre-destruction Draenor. If that is the case, think of it not as a "revamp of old content", but just business as usual; a new (if familiar) land-mass for us to quest through.

[Yarathir]

There is no way. Just no way. Stopping the Orcs from drinking demon blood changes virtually EVERYTHING about Azeroth's history over the past 20 or 30 years or whatever. We already have an instance where we have to HELP Medivh open the Dark Portal, because if the Orcs don't show up, the Burning Legion wins. Even ignoring that, not drinking Demon Blood means there is no Hellscream legacy which basically means Mists of Pandaria never happens, IF there are Orcs on Azeroth at all. It means Varian probably isn't kidnapped and forced to become a gladiator slave to the Orcs, making him a TOTALLY different person. And that's just the beginning of stuff that changes.

I mean I guess Blizzard could try to do this, but there is no way it works.

Thanks for mentioning this in a more in-depth way. This is another reason why it would be horrible if the alleged leaks on the plotline are true.

[zealo]

Didn't think of that yet. But going to Draenor can mean a lot of things (timetravel, current outland...)

I have a hard time seeing them pulling off revamping current outland since they would need new zones for people lvl 60-70 to quest in, all the revamps in cata kept the original intended level for the zone intact.

Time travel could also be quite hard to pull off without bending lore to the extreme since changing things in the past is highly likely to cause the future to play out differently, and well..

If this is an expansion, i do not think the name reflects the place where it plays out.

[Deleted]

I think the OP in the other thread said that what we have now is not the reality. What if they pull a dream-card on us? Everything we have done was only just a dream, or maybe a trick by the Bronze Dragonflight to see what would happen if... and now they are done with the experiment.

This would be even in line with the ilvl squish - which was said by that Chinese thread would be intergrated into the story! -, as in everything we have gotten in that "dream" isn't that powerful in reality.

Thoughts? Or im just way over in my head now

[Rob D]

There is no way. Just no way. Stopping the Orcs from drinking demon blood changes virtually EVERYTHING about Azeroth's history over the past 20 or 30 years or whatever. We already have an instance where we have to HELP Medivh open the Dark Portal, because if the Orcs don't show up, the Burning Legion wins. Even ignoring that, not drinking Demon Blood means there is no Hellscream legacy which basically means Mists of Pandaria never happens, IF there are Orcs on Azeroth at all. It means Varian probably isn't kidnapped and forced to become a gladiator slave to the Orcs, making him a TOTALLY different person. And that's just the beginning of stuff that changes.

I mean I guess Blizzard could try to do this, but there is no way it works.

Or, players are sent back to PREVENT someone messing with the timeline.

[megasus]

I honestly don't see the issue with them revamping Outlands. The problem with revamping Azeroth was that there was some 30 zones and they completely used up all their resources. Outlands only consists of 7 zones, so essentially it's the amount of new zones one expects with a new expansion.

I wouldn't see a great impact on the end game either, if they were going to revamp outland (for lvl 60-70).
Imo the quest and level design team did an awesome job with cataclysm. I don't think that cataclysm had substantially less endgame content than mists. If you look closely, you will realize that all new cataclysm zones together are nearly the same size as all mop zones. Those cataclysm zones were pretty good in terms of quality, imo.

As some people already pointed out: Revamping Outland wouldn't take as much resources than it took to revamp azeroth with 4.0.
In addition this wouldn't necessarily mean that the new high end zones won't be part of one 'continent'.

[Yarathir]

Or, players are sent back to PREVENT someone messing with the timeline.

Great for a scenario, dungeon, or maybe even one raid, but not for an entire expansion.

[Deleted]

Hey OP, why do you think they will revamp Outland? Outland is just a part of the Planet. If it will be "time travel" back in the First or Second War or earlier it would be awesome imho. The whole new world to explore. WC1-2 Characters. Maybe we will stop Ner'Zul from destroying the Draenor, who knows what will happen.

Those games were set on present day Outland.

[Raven]

There's only a few days until we'll know what's coming. Let's calm down and wait for that instead of wasting energy on worries about things we worry might come. We don't know anything.

But its so much more fun to go full retard and get annoyed and angry over stuff we can imagine they will do instead of waiting and see what they actually will do

[Deleted]

You cannot compare revamping Outlands to revamping Azeroth.
Outlands to Draenor rather is like comparing post-Cata Azeroth to pre-Sundering Azeroth... its a completely different world.

There are zones that completely disappeared when Draenor got destroyed by Nerzhul and became Outland. And the other zones had a completely different setting.