Nozdormu and his flight were tasked with preserving a One True Timeline (intoning voice, Michael Bay explosions, toilet flushes in the next room). Murozond and his flight want to disrupt it. I’m honestly still unclear on if that dynamic is actually resolved or we just averted this possible Murozond, and unclear on if Chromie’s new pal is an indication of both flights coming together or just an exception. Regardless, not super important.
Two things worth keeping in mind here: 1.) Preserving this timeline does not necessarily mean preventing any meddling with it. 2.) The Mag’har reinforce that notion every second they are permitted to remain here.
In other words: One True Timeline is not a limiter on when and where timeywimey nonsense can be arsepulled. If the Infinites staged a large scale timebreak invasion on our reality, they could literally bring back characters that were … criminally mishandled. We could put out the fires of whatever crisis loomed, and what we’re left with is part of that One True Timeline, because the goal of this timeline is some unnamed result Aman’thul wants to happen that doesn’t preclude other timelines breaching ours.
Which is all a preamble to ask (and suggest) which characters could be timelined into our timeline in time to line time with lime tines:
- Kael’thas. Top of the list for me. Have his Sunfury supporters come with, before they were going behind Illidan’s back to shake hands with demonic beef and begin their irrational villain arc.
- Dranosh Saurfang. I always kinda viewed him as the not garbage orc version of Garrosh—war hero, zug zugs with the best, but none of the random leaps into orc supremacy nationalism.
- Zaela. Maybe the most competent orc in the room until she got googoo eyes for Garrosh and turned into a protodrake-riding villain cliché. She had center stage potential, and could be a bridge for The Dragonmaw to leave the fugue plane of maybe existing somewhere Idunno.
- Sylvanas. Not my personal cup of tea, not even before BFA or Cata, but whatever that thing in The Maw is, it is not The Banshee Queen. Not being my cup of tea doesn’t really change that she was iconic.
- Tirion Fordring. As hilarious as “The Light will… AAAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAH!” was to me, having him job to a mid tier mid boss just to get the Ashbringer away from him was weak.
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I really, REALLY don’t think you want that. I know I certainly don’t. That kind of ‘let’s do anything’ is going to take away stakes, destroy cohesion, and ruin any sort of story telling. Limiting the scope of what time travel can happen is required not to turn everything into a incoherent mess. If you think the story telling is bad now…wait till they add timey whimey nonsense.
To what point and purpose? Setting aside that whether a character is mishandled is a entirely subjective judgement call.
Bringing back a character wouldn’t change any past ‘mishandling.’ At best it would just be nostalgia bait. And far more often you are going to be stuck with either repeating that ‘mishandling’ or changing their character. Which, likely means you then not only have the first mishandling, but you also have a new way to screw up the character and story.
They opened the door—not me. If they are going to use it for negative things, might as well use it for positive things. And as mentioned, it isn’t that all timeline incursions are fine, just certain, Titan approved ones. Someone returning can be a domino falling that is somehow imperative in resulting in THE ONE TRUE TIMELINE (cats howling, thunder rolls, Wilhelm Scream).
You are right in that trust to handle the characters any better than previously is very low. If the premise is not one you can stomach, just pretend it reads “which characters would you bring back if you could?”
I was not speaking from a lore point of view, rather from a story structure point of view. Once you introduce ‘bring back whoever you want’ to the narrative structure you degrade all future story telling.
Honestly, none. The story needs to move forward with new characters. Bring back old characters to try and fit them into the story without sacrificing their old characterizations, while also changing them enough to not be ‘mishandled’ is a fools errand. There is no way it would feel good in the story.
Zaela’s was an underrated character assassination. I feel the phantom pain of my 2013 facepalm at those first Escalation screenshots of dead Darkspear at her feet.
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Because this is dumb and makes deaths irrelevant? What, are we just going to let Horde/Horde tangent characters back? What about Alliance? Why should you guys get all the fun when we can have say Liam Graymane, or Varian or Terenas to come back? Death becomes even less of an inconvenience.
Let’s go out of our way to establish her as the smartest and most capable orc in her clan, not prone to the same fits of rash and wanton bloodlust that most of her contemporaries are notorious for.
“GARROSH GREATEST WARCHIEF, SO HANDSOME, BURN THE WORLD!”
sigh
i turn my brain off when time travel is involved
Iridikron:
“Tell me, little one … Have you ever questioned … Why the titans preserve – THIS – timeline?”
It’d be interesting to see Nozdormu later presented with the outcome of the future with the titans & their end-goal — revealing the timeline they’re currently on course with, has the destination of their plans to unfold to a very particular fate that’s tremendously severe & dire to us — but good for them … and thus, to change the timeline & save everyone – Have it that he ultimately chose to become Murozond! 
