10 years, really?

Tamanii-wyrmrest-accord · June 4, 2020, 2:52pm

Iranim:

I’ve said this before, context matters.

Is Blizzard Planning a Soft Reboot?

Q: It looks like time runs differently in the Shadowlands than in Azeroth. Maybe that’s why Uther, Kael’thas and other characters have been there for ages when it has been just a few years in Azeroth. How does time go by in Shadowlands and what does that mean for our characters.

A: So, I had to, this is something I’ve actually been actually asking our lead narrative designer Steve Danuser about because I had this same question a couple of weeks ago. The answer is complicated. It’s not like some science fiction movies where in a black hole or something time just moves faster. But time is different in the Shadowlands. Time is a construct of order and structure. And things in the Shadowlands are more chaotic in a lot of ways. Think about how times moves in a dream where there isn’t necessarily a fixed amount of time or things move and bounce around. So the souls that have been in the Shadowlands, to them it might feel like they’ve been here for a very, very long time as they’ve gone on their own personal journies of discovery and evolution. But it’s not necessarily 2x faster or 3x faster, time is different. And what does that mean for our characters? Well that’s something we’ll have to see as we come out the other end.

The answer was in response to why some characters said they’d been in the Shadowlands a while. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll have a significant impact after.

I think it’s also worth nothing that in this example, doesn’t make the case for a time skip. Quite the opposite. If time moves much faster in the Shadowlands to the point where ages in the Shadowlands = Years on Azeorth, then it’s more the case that we’re go and spend a couple of years in Shadowlands and return to Azeroth to find that only a few hours/days/weeks/months have gone by!

It’s not year outside, hour inside. It’s not like cryogenic freezing rules.

It’s year inside, hour outside. Aka Hyperbolic Time Chamber rules.

I think it’s best to just go with the wonky time shennanigans lets them kind of do whatever they want.

And it’s not like Blizzard has to introduce the conceit of traveling to the afterlife. Time travel shennanigans have been a thing in game for a while, thanks to the Bronze Dragonflight.

Once you’ve reach levelcap on a character in the next expansion, your new characters have the option to visit Chromie and choose “when/where” to level up. Create a Demon Hunter or Zandalari, and want to level from 1-50 entirely in Wrath of the Lich King or MoP and never so much as look at Cata, Legion or BfA? You can do it.