Could they use Murozond and the dragon isles to basically do to the timeline what Deathwing did to the physical map.
We spend the expansion doing a new version of time walking but we are never fully successful and thus we change history . This way we clean up lore discrepancies and setup a whole new world to play in where the current Dev can excel in their sandbox (I’ve enjoyed their zone stories just not overarching plotlines tying into old lore)
Teldrassil burning in response to sacking Undercity - that can now be done
Garrosh becomes a great leader - that can now be done
The last expansion to heavily feature time travel in any sense was Warlords of Draenor. It did not work out very well. The mechanics of time travel established there has left ongoing unanswered questions and logical problems.
In my opinion, it’s best if they just leave time travel alone.
Zovaal needs to die so tampering with the True Timeline is a no no.
Making AUs permanent(via tampering with them like Garrosh did with AU Draenor) on the other hand…
Blizzard was able to make new versions of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor on top of Cataclysms own Zones so they can simply take 2 already existing Continents and redesign them multiple times and stuff all the redesigns into a Pre-launch as Alternate Timelines and call it a day easily!
They can even make the 7 Human Kingdoms at their peak as one AU to visit.
An Orc-dominated Kalimdor would be interesting to say the least.
A Night Elf-dominated Kalimdor is possible.
A Black Empire version of Azeroth is also in the cards.
Of course the Pre-Sundering Kalimdor would be out of the Question considering how big a Continent it is!
Draenor dominated by Lightbound, Apexis, Ogres or Sporemounds is also doable.
I really don’t think they’ll ever touch time travel in a major way like that. It’s just such a complicated story mechanic and really hard to do right. And after WoD we’re at the limit of messing with alternate timelines.
Dragon Isles yes total possibility. Story with Nozdormu also very possible, we haven’t seen him since Cata.
But time shenanigans is so weird and can go wrong in so many ways that it’s not really worth it. If we were to ever go to the Dragon Isles then just let it be about exploring their secrets and whatever’s over there. We don’t need a timey world revamp or anything else.
I feel like time travel should honestly be kept limited to the Caverns of Time premise of visiting past events to help the Bronzes (and now their mortal Timewalker allies, presumably) make sure they still occur as they’re meant to. That is, if the CoT ever gets revisited again.
Though if they ever do that much again I could do without them overly relying on the “helping make sure a historical atrocity happens 'cuz causality and stuff” twist. It’s cute once or twice (and with the Dark Portal/Culling of Stratholme we’ve had twice), but beyond that just feels like a cheap attempt at being dark and ironic.
Whatever they do, maintaining the premise that the here-and-now as it exists is how things are supposed to be is the only reliable way to prevent any time travel angles from completely screwing things up and becoming entirely incomprehensible. Break that grounding principle and nothing matters in-universe anymore because literally everything becomes a paradox and nothing makes sense because there’s no longer any cause and effect.
One of my problems with the Shadowlands expansions before it launched was an informed presupposition :
People are just going to get sick of a dreary, gloomy, depressing, death realm. The bones and spikes and similar color schemes. Too much dour death stuff served on a boring plate.
I sort of feel the same way about Expansions that are too focused on a theme.
Legion and BfA had a lot going on all over the place. But Shadowlands and WoD feel too insular. Too focused on places we aren’t even sure should even exist. Places we don’t really care too much about, and that we will leave totally different than when we came.
I think an expansion focused on time would be the same way. It seems expansive, because you have tons of opportunities for backdrops. But it is also limiting, in that it would feel apart from the lore we know, instead of being a part of it - if you will.
But Blizzard has laid the ground work for some sort of time shenanigans. Time works differently in the Shadowlands, or some such. Maybe they mentioned that just to keep their options open, or maybe it will be important to what comes next.
So Zoval-anos uses the infinity sigils to remake the universe, but is stopped by a bunch of heroes so Wrathion can come to bargain with Nuz-dormammu to stop the multiverse of madness?
God, I hope not.
The only way I would see it working is if they did this:
We died to N’zoth
This was all a void nightmare
Zovaal is killing the corrupted Azeroth, resetting reality
Zovaal kills the Titan Azeroth which causes the planet to begin to destroy itself like Dreanor
We go to the Dragon Isles, open a portal back in time to the Black Empire pre-sunder days.
This is our new life now.
-No going back and forth, nothing. That’s all gone, and we have WoW:2.
Hmm, while I’m not conceptually against a return of the Infinite Dragonflight in some capacity, I kinda feel like part of why they’ve always remained a tertiary enemy is because design-wise they look purposefully “glitchy” and improperly textured.
A deliberate design choice that works for them as they’ve been used so far, off to the side as less centrally focused villains, but something that would start looking like a lazy and broken artistic design if an entire expansion revolved around them being all over the place as major antagonists with their flaking particle effects and minimal color palette.
At the same time, they’d also have to account for how the Infinite Dragonflight can still traverse the timeways when the Bronzes can’t. It’s been implied that to at least some degree the past is no longer fully accessible ever since the Bronze Flight lost much of their power, likely to justify why modern Bronzes need to rely more on mortal allies and why past, fully empowered Nozdormu and crew aren’t still able to come forward and do their thing in the present. As soon as the timeways are made accessible again, we’re faced with the question of why the Bronze Dragonflight being largely de-powered is an issue at all when an accessible timeway means their past pre-Cataclysm selves can still be policing and repairing Time in the here-and-now.
Nozdormu shatters the timeways and lives outside of time when he goes crazy. Not hard to have something like that allow the Infinites access to time travel.
Also, the Bronze in the past could come to the future to fix things. They just don’t because plot, I mean, the True Timeline must be preserved. It’s the same reason Nozdormu knows he’s going to become Murozond and isn’t trying to stop it.
Well except for Murozond and Timecap’n Hooktail. They used updated dragon models for them. Murozond being a retextured Nozdormu model for obvious reasons and Timecap’n Hooktail having a new model from what I can see. Might be a retextured Vexiona model though.
Regular dragons, mainly drakes, fully grown dragons and even other dragonkin such as Dragonspawn and Drakonids really need new HD models. Which I can see them doing if the Dragon Isles are part of the next expansion.
Side note. We don’t have an origin story for Dragonspawn. Drakonids are mortals that become empowered by dragon essence (willingly or otherwise). Which we see in game, such as the Corla fight in Blackrock caverns.
I was using my random mount button and I got the Emerald Drake followed by the Infinite Timereaver and it really hit home how outdated the various dragonkin models really are.
Whatever the next expansion is, I really hope they update the dragon models.
Not cuz the expansion was inherently trash, but cuz they dropped half its’ plot. WoD could’ve been great if they just followed through on it and finding a coherent way to close the AU bubble instead of the awkward plot-contrivance we have today.
I suspect the physical map might change, or at very least what is going on in each zone on Azeroth will be updated.
I doubt they will update any lore significantly. They might do their normal retcons, but I don’t think they will completely change the history of Azeroth as we know it.
Honestly, the biggest failing of WoD, for me, was not establishing the “Time Travel Rules” early on, double checking that those rules wouldn’t create logic holes, reworking as needed, and sticking with it.
“There’s only one, single Burning Legion across all timelines” sounds good and imposing, but the very first question I think of is “then what happens to all the AU Archimondes who make deals with Sargeras? When they do make those deals, do they cease to exist because there can only be one Archimonde? Do they combine into a Mega-Archimonde?”
And believe me, I could go on for days, easily for days, with examples of how this becomes problematic. If there’s only one pan-temporal Sargeras, this means individual titans are also pan-temporal. So is there no Azeroth in any other timeline then? Or are those Azeroths just empty shells? Which they can’t be if there are night elves, because those night elves only exist because the Well of Eternity (a titan’s blood) mutated them.
Ahem. I’m’a stop myself now.
Additionally WoD suffered the problem of “why does this matter”. By the time we’re building our garrisons, we’ve eliminated the threat of the Iron Horde invading Azeroth, and it never comes back. From that moment until Gul’dan gets tossed across time and space to Azeroth, the stakes for us are lowered. Saving this world doesn’t affect our own. These people dying is meaningless to us, because the people on our world are still alive or still dead. Copy Velen isn’t Real Velen. If Draenor falls, it has no impact on us; it’s just another alt timeline gone wrong.
The Void Revenant in Shadowmoon Burial Grounds mentions us swarming to the corpse of a dying God and in Mag’har Allied Race Scenario the Sermon of the High Exarch mentions the Lightmother trying to purge the taint keeping AU Draenor’s Heart whole.
AU Draenor seems to be a Titan unlike MU Draenor(despite the whole point of Draenor’s Breakers being that Draenor turned out to not be a Titan and instead a Planet rich with Spirit thus needing a trimming)… Possibly even the Final Titan… Saving it suddenly becomes just as much a priority as saving the First Titan Azeroth.
That said Aman’Thul does have power over Time and thus could have grabbed quite a few Titans from the various Timelines for all we know. Them not protecting said Timelines means little since the Alternate Timelines are just breeding grounds for Titans and will eventually fade from existence if not modified.
The First Ones sneaking Titans into AUs is an interesting concept to say the least.
Naw. Because word of god says AU timelines are temporary bubbles that eventually pop. The only timeline of any importance in the main one, according to the devs. All other ones are brief affairs, trimmed and purged by the Bronze Dragonflight.
Which is a whole other weird setup for a whole different rant.
Chronicle outright states that AU Timelines that are tampered with become Permanent! AU Draenor is only dying because the Naaru are removing the Spirit so that the Titan is rebuilt! They see Spirit as a corruption that threatens Titans ever since Illidan’s rebellion!
The Bronze Dragonflight isn’t the source of AUs fading! Nowhere in the Lore is this stated! They observe Timelines they expect to fade yet aren’t the cause of it!
In any case if the Legion gets their paws on AU Draenor they get another Titan to bring into the Twisting Nether to join Argus which is why it is of interest to them(while Kil’jaeden seeks to include Vengeance against the Draenei into his schemes for it)! More interest than MU Draenor which was just a source of an Army to them!
Of course if they give attention to an AU Draenor for having a Titan then they will ignore an AU Argus for not being a Titan!
Fun fact if you do Netherwing rep farm. You discover blood of Draenor oozes who remind me a lot of Azeroth and Argus’ blood. So, it appears that they’ve been toying with this idea since BC. I think when Outland’s creation happened the planet’s world soul died with it. AU Draenor is very much alive, or potentially is.