In taking notes on the lore, I’ve realized that Cataclysm is complete insanity and I am very confused as to what did and did not happen in Classic WoW.
Zul’Farrak has been, by far, the most confusing example, as the mercenary band, Gahz’rilla (who died in Cata’s pre-event), and the Hydromancer Velratha (who was referenced as likely being dead in the same pre-event) are all still present and referenced by the Cata dungeon quests for Zul’Farrak.
Even if we assume that these select bosses aren’t canon and their attached quests are just there for game mechanics, everyone else in the dungeon being referenced to still be alive by the Tanaris quest npc Mazoga means that only like 20% of Zul’Farrak was canonically done in Classic.
And from here it just spirals out of control, as we have examples like Uldaman which were seemingly retconned from happening in Classic to happening in Cataclysm entirely, given that the Archaedeas and Ironya appear to still be alive in Cata.
Or how the living side of Stratholme wasn’t done by the players, as the Dungeon Journal says that Balnazzar was the one to kill and raise the Scarlet Crusaders there.
Honestly I could probably continue, but this weirdness was a staple of Cataclysm, including its quests, making me wonder how many of Classic’s dungeons and questlines are even still canon at this point.
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Even the Quest that killed Warden Stillwater in Cataclysm itself turned out to be Non-Canon as he is still alive.
A Questline and Dungeon’s Canonicity is determined by if it is referenced in a later Expansion.
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I’ve noticed that most expansions are fairly reliable, with the primary outliers being Classic and Cata with Cata either overwriting Classic’s events or having some of its own overwritten (in the case of Cata’s Scarlet Monastery quests)
Cataclysm is very weird because it was actually pretty haphazard in how they updated pretty much everything, but especially the dungeons. Orgrimmar, for example, was totally updated and overhauled, but Stormwind was only updated somewhat, with some of the NPCs not aging at all (the kids who steal each other’s toy, and the mage trio). Elwynn is totally the same just with references to Defias taken out, except for Northshire which was totally updated.
Dungeons it’s definitely worse, Scarlet Monastery is ironically actually updated, with the explanation being that Whitemane resurrected a bunch of the leadership. Scholomance and Blackfathom are also updated canonically too. Generally the only vaguely canon versions we have are mentions in Chronicle that list which factions killed which dungeon bosses or raid bosses. But those aren’t all mentioned.
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BFA was really atrocious for this. Did you do a quest in Cata? Nope, the whole questline is now a table mission.
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didnt know that, never really interacted with the mission table
thanks for the note, having that in mind will definitely prepare me for that once I start digging further into this part of the lore
Legion also had it’s Pre-Launch Event where Stillwater is alive and well.
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Canon is the kind of pedantry that should be left for Trekkies to argue about.
The Dungeons are what you choose to make of them in your personal stories.
Well, either that or the table mission in BfA that implied he’s still alive is the non-canon event. I tend to think game quests get precedence over table missions in canonicity, especially BfA table missions, which were weird in a lot of ways. They had Teldrassil being continuously evacuated over the course of the whole expansion, for example.
it annoys me that varian killed onyxia
quests on both factions and reraiding her in wrath, but the kill goes to varian instead
Yes it’s canon.
The Chronicles confirmed which faction killed which bosses.
Some dungeons in Cata take place during classic, others during Cata.