I’m a bit confused about this since Sylvanas dropped a line about the ‘way to Draenor being closed’, but several quests have sent you back there and if I’m not mistaken the mage portals weren’t just a mechanic for convenience, considering they were opened to progress the story more than once.
What’s the deal with all that? Is it still possible to return there?
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Gameplay wise yes, story wise not at this time on any regular basis. There is the Mag’har orc recruitment quest that will allow the return to Draenor but it is a special exception.
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Bronze Dragonflight helped us get the Maghar, also if blizz wills it anything is possible to be cannon.
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While absolutely true, I think when discussing things like this it is better to cage things as “at this time”, which I am going to amend at on my post.
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Correct. Lorewise, Draenor is inaccessible.
In other WoW stories with timeline shenanigans, keeping alternate pathways open lead to destabilization of our time, which is bad. Likely why the way needs to remain closed.
That is very much true so in light of things it seems that with the help of the bronze dragonflight and a mage strong in dealing with portals it can be done to head to draenor.
Yup, Lorewise, Draenor is inaccessible.
The only reason the Horde is allowed to go there and essentially rescue the remainder of the non-Lightbound Orcs, Ogre’s and Gronn (which I assume there are far more than are represented in game) is because of the Bronze Dragonflight intervening. They send us to a period in WoD Draenor’s timeline that is equivalent to our own (30 years later in WoD terms) … still not quite sure what to make of their intervention however?
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While true, I believe the only reason for this was to allow the retrieval of the Mag’har of that timeline for the racial unlock quest, hence why they closed it and emphasized how much effort was required.
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Darn, that’s a bit disappointing to hear. There’s a lot of RP potential in Draenor just aesthetically speaking that you can’t find elsewhere. It makes sense in a manner of speaking, but we also saw archmages other than Khadgar open portals to Stormwind through WOD when we were supposedly meant to be stuck there. I can’t quite wrap my head around why that’s no longer possible in the reverse.
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Why did the Bronze Dragonflight choose to have us intervene after the fact instead of before? That timeline is clearly unbound from ours, and clearly not subject to the “This timeline has plot armor because no matter how many genocides the Horde commit, the world needs them! This is the best timeline trust us.” rule. So why not just send people back to before stuff hits the fan? Why not right after we had just left? Why not talk to Yrel right after the fight in Hellfire when she’s still everyone’s friend?
I hate Blizz and time travel so much.
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Very much true, unless the bronze dragons have lost so much of their power that they don’t have much control over such things anymore. A blue dragon in Azsuna stated that all the dragons have been “greatly weakened” after the fall of Deathwing.
Could they not just find another alternate timeway with a strong healthy pro-Horde orc population though?
Here the doyalist answer is the only real reason. Because it was needed to highlight the potential tyranny of the light divorced from the immediacy of WoD (hence the period of peace).
They should make it work work like DBZ, where you use time travel it creates a portal between timelines in parallel, so you can only go into the future a little at most. That solved the issue of time travel in fiction forever.
…
NEVER make Time Travel the mechanical focus of your story.
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Meh, now its just a alternate timeline story. To Blizz’s credit they did sort of potentially fix he problem by time-skipping AU Draenor into running parallel with our universe. Yeah, Yrel might have gone Light Happy (but there is an interesting story there I’ll admit; the downsides of the Light is a potentially compelling avenue to explore) … but I actually do like “theme-wize” how the AU Mag’har joined the Horde (even if I question the Bronze Dragonflight’s input).
TBH, who knows? They may think the AU Mag’har are necessary in some way to save Azeroth? Or they may have just felt like giving a life-boat to a faction of people who were screwed by the looks of things.
Also, the “time-travel” and “alternate-timeline” thing has always been rather screwy … but I’ll buy it for now that both universes are running chronologically parallel now (and they just don’t have access to any time period they want on another universes time line).
As for Yrel, with the entire middle of her story arc cut during WoD she was never that interesting of a character. Now though? Sounds like she got Xe’rad … and its unclear as to whether her being bound was willing or not (or if she knew what she was giving up if it was willing).
Honestly, I don’t see the orcs in that situation as being the victims. It just wasn’t the impression I got from looking at the events despite the orcs’ rhetoric. I’d really like to see the scenario play out from the draenei perspective. That aside, though, the whole thing really is kind of disappointing for me. I hope if nothing else they do something more with the alternate Draenor. I know a lot of people don’t like it, but it’s a part of the story and I hope Blizzard doesn’t intend to just leave it in the dirt now that the Mag’har are an allied race.
Lesson of the day: never toy with time travel unless you’re Marty McFly
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There are neccessary disconnects between lore canon, game canon, and even individual player canon.
Hmmm…the Bronze managed to create an AU…does that mean that they or anyone else that masters time travel can create new AUs after the previous one completely collapses?
Imagine, a character dies. You go back in time before they died, pull that version out of that alternate timeline and bring it to yours. The philosophical and ethical implications of this.
I’m going to say no. The mechanics haven’t been explained, the reasoning is not available. But between the time jump, the hoops we had to jump through to recruit the Mag’har and the definite air of finality as we left Grom to his fate, it’s pretty clear. As of some point after WoD, Draenor is not casually available and any trips your character makes there now are either not canonical or anachronistic.