Now, for those not aware, one of the bigger ‘leaks’, and I use the term loosely, was that there’s going to be a new WoW line, starting right after Vanilla, wherein we don’t go to outland.
We’re effectively toning down the nonsense and staying truer to the RTS and Vanilla themes. Ogres for the Horde. High Elves for the Alliance … except there’s a lot of things that we only won because we were forced into the partnerships and awkward alliances we now cherish today.
If the Sin’dorei rejoined the Alliance, that squeeze the Forsaken between two three flanks, leading to their role within the Horde being untenable because the only reason the Forsaken joined with the Horde was for mutual military assistance. With the Forsaken squeezed by the Scourge, Quel’thalas and the Alliance, the Horde’s stronghold in the Eastern Kingdoms becomes a liability, not a strength.
Likewise, the lack of the Draenei on Team BLU will come back to bite us in several future events, namely the Scourge War in Northrend, and the inevitable conflicts to come, the Alliance is fundamentally weaker without Velen and the Draenei’s relentless courage in the face of overwhelming odds, and their counsel and guidance to the Alliance during times of great spiritual darkness and despair.
No Saurfang the Younger means Varian never sees Saurfang the Elder grieving over his son’s mangled body, and never grows that grudging respect for the Horde that allows him to agree to cease-fires. No Garrosh to help lead the Horde forces to victory in Northrend, or start the Pandaria Offensive. Anduin does not go to Pandaria, Wrathion is never created, the Heroes of Azeroth do not purge their Anger, Fear, Doubt, Hatred and Pride under the Trials of the Pandarian Celestials.
We never go to Draenor and AU Gul’dan doesn’t come to our Universe. We never recover the Pillars and use them to permanently block the Legion from ever just magically appearing in our world, they will have to trek here the long way via Starships. Old Gods are never sealed back up or hit with YEET YEET SPELL DELETE from our Mac’Guffinite Necklaces, and I can literally go on for hours about how us changing this one single part of the Timeline will dramatically screw Future Us over in all of the worst ways and none of the fun ones.
But, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
If they tie it into that we will eventually go do these things, then we head into some fun paradox moments. How much worse would the Scourge/Old God fights of Northrend be when Yogg’Saron has had years more to corrupt and infest the living mortal races of Northrend? How much worse is the Lich King going to be with a few more years of Zovaal in his head going “DO IT!” over and over, and what little shreds of his Humanity and willpower are pounded into sand in the process?
Without our interference, how much more damage could Illidan have done to the Legion? Would Xe’ra have decided to divert her Crusade in the Twisting Nether to instead go and aid Illidan? Would he have taken the Light into himself without the ill-defined amount of time he spent as a bodiless spirit in the Twisting Nether forcing him to re-live and re-examine his every action over and over again while facing the Legion’s most relentless hunters and agents trying to hunt him down?
How much more dangerous would Deathwing be with his armor fully intact, and not just partially assembled like what we faced in the Cataclysm? With all three Old Gods pressing down on his mind, not just N’zoth pulling his strings, they could have held him down long enough to finish the work and get the Chromatic and Twilight Flights fully prepped and ready to go, and imagine how terrifying the Twilight Brood Mother would be with spawn of literal actual Deathwing to call on to protect their mother?
As much as this potential re-work of the story could fix so much tragedy, it has the potential to sow so much more chaos, death and destruction that I am dreading the concept almost as much as it excites me. Before Dragonflight, I would have been “Yeah, whatever, you literally could not do worse than the current timeline, go nut.”
But now, we have hope. We have healing. There’s a possible future ahead that’s not just a slow relentless grind towards entropy, needless death and barbarism for the sake of it. If we undo all of that, are we sure that the new timeline won’t be even worse? We’ll have no way to judge, no way to weigh the costs against the gains because we’ve lost so much just to hang on to the bitter end and finally earn a hint of happiness, and presumably, Warcraft : Awakened won’t have any way for us to tell our past selves and leaders just how terrible the future is and why we have to do this horrible thing here so X doesn’t become Y, which will lead to Z, which results in nuclear winters across the face of Azeroth.
I think its a neat idea, but it would … on the one hand, we can just handwave all the nonsense and start fresh. And yet BC and Wrath were not the Nonsense Expansions, that started with Cataclysm and never bloody stopped, with each Expansion after that doubling down on the blood, death, destruction and needless suffering for the sake of lulz and giving flimsy excuses for Dungeons and Raids for the duffers in the leadership roles at Blizzard who are responsible for dozens of confirmed SA charges as well as a horribly toxic environment at Blizz HQ.
I’m fine with a re-write from Cataclysm onwards, but … how much can we re-write, with all that has happened because we went through all that nonsense, before this carefully stacked house of cards comes crumbling down ontop of us?