Narratively, this "time-skip" doesn't make any sense

Community General Discussion
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The whole reason you do a time-skip in a story, is to shift the story in some meaningful way. That’s clearly not what’s happening in the alpha, and it just feels wildly unnecessary.

Based on the wording, the time-skip could be anywhere from 3 to probably ten years (probably 3-4). That’s not long enough for any meaningful development from what we’ve seen, yet it DOES suddenly bring into question “just HOW OLD are our characters getting now?”

I mean, WoW started out with Anduin as a small child. Vanilla through Cataclysm I believe was stated to be 2 years. But now, we’ve got a full grown Anduin, and we’re skipping ANOTHER 3-4 years? At this point, our characters are starting to get on up their in age. There’s certainly nobody qualifying as a “youthful adventurer” anymore.

But also, it doesn’t even look like anything actually happened in the time-skip, other than Lor’themar and Thalryssa (sp?) are married, which is almost worse because I think a lot of people really liked the dynamic of seeing her trying to get his attention.

I definitely think WoW needs a time-skip, but it needs to be a DRAMATIC time-skip. We’re instead being told, from one patch to another, that our characters just… settled down to live the easy life for 3-4 years? We didn’t go on ANY adventures, or work on ANY other issues?

That’s completely meaningless, and thus pointless.

I’d honestly suggest just removing those lines completely. Far as I can tell, there isn’t anything that actually hinges upon it. Thalryssa and Lor’themar could totally have gotten married while we were busy in BFA or Shadowlands anyways (although again, I think drawing out their relationship a bit would be more fun anyways).

Here’s the reason it’s important:

I actually DO think WoW needs a time-skip. But that’s not a card you get to play multiple times. Here’s how I WOULD suggest doing a time-skip.

Right now, “Azeroth” has become kind of boring. The Horde and Alliance have both grown too large and too powerful, they’re literally global superpowers. That’s not fun or interesting. Instead, have some kind of cataclysmic event that threatens to wipe out all life, but presumably Azeroth (the Titan) awakens and puts us in some sort of “stasis”, where we awaken like a THOUSAND years later, where the world had largely been reclaimed by nature, or all-new threats.

For one, this gives you a reason to revamp the game’s world again (and give ample time for a new “World Tree” to have grown), which I think we would all agree is overdue anyways. Also, it’s an opportunity to introduce new characters and factions (or do away with others; ie. “Baine lived a long and prosperous life, but the Bloodhoof clan are now led by , who is more forceful in how he protects his people”), but still preserve our old favorites (ie. Thrall and Jaina also being “put on ice” along with us, maybe Sylvanas has carried on her work in the Maw and is now seen as a sorrowful deity that shepherds lost souls to the afterlife).

Because THAT would be the kind of time-skip that has some actual gravity. But 3-4 years of peace? That just feels totally pointless.

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It’s just a way to give characters a canon break, and for some small things in the world to advance.

It’s not totally necessary, but it fits the energy of the expansion.

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we do that literally all the time

This would be a massive undertaking and may as well be wow 2.

Edit: meant to edit this into my previous post but eh it is what it is now

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I think the line they are going for trying to use is time is meaningless in the shadowlands when compared with the mortal world/s. Like 1 year in the shadow lands could be 5, 10, 15, 20, or more in the mortal realms, or it could be not one iota of time has passed in those realms.

Blizzard is jut going for a period of time where things have changed but most things are still the same so our characters are not dropped into a world they are retuning to yet everything they knew no longer exists.

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Just play a Draenei or Forsaken so age doesn’t matter.

Edit: or elves, I guess? Sorry, orcs and humans. Step aside.

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Well any one playing a mortal type race could be made immortal like elves due to being enchanted with power all the time. Could be how we don’t age and how Varian and now Anduin doesn’t due to the magic sword.

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That’s not how it is. This time skip happens after we leave. We come back to Azeroth, then a few years pass, and then dragonflight happens.

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At this point a Titan could do it if they wanted.

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I’m demanding ‘old folk’ grey beards and wrinkled brows in the barbershop so we get representation just like everyone else, otherwise, they are guilty of ageism. <-tongue in cheek…

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Note, I did say try to use, but that also leaves the question of how much time passed before we came back. Like it might be 3-4 years total, but we were in the shadowlands for 1-2 of those years.

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It’s none. They said that time in the shadowlands works the same as it does in our world. Otherwise people from our world would not have been popping in and out regularly.

Time just has no meaning to the inhabitants of the shadowlands because they’re dead and immortal now. 50 years could pass them by and they wouldn’t flinch.

It also depends on where you are, some afterlives mess with your perception of time. The Maw was designed to slow your perception of time to pack even more torment into your stay. And the venthyr also do this when they lock somebody up for a few centuries.

When doing the SL intro quest. The people you’re rescuing can’t quite tell if they’ve been there for a few months, a few years, or a few days.

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Human Problems.

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You are a death knight, you don’t really think you age do you?

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Nothing says that every character has to have participated in every event/war. It’d be easy to RP a new adventurer just getting their start.

Sorry but I think that’d be really stupid and wouldn’t be WoW anymore.

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Blizzard tells stories by showing us the final scenes. None of the build-up. They show us a marriage, and believe that to be the equivalent to actually showing us these characters grow together to that point.

It’s like watching a highlight reel of a TV show you’ve never seen or a sport you don’t understand.

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Oh my gosh don’t get me started. I’ve been on a tear about this for some time, but even in RP communities where character continuity and timelines are important people are reacting with a big shrug. Some are excited to have the opportunity to pull some crazy narrative twist in the last poorly-defined “several” years, some are in denial that it will happen or are waiting on final confirmation, but I don’t think most people get just what a massive impact on RP storylines a timeskip is going to end up having.

Honestly? The people who are the least concerned tend to play fast and loose with continuity anyway, having kids one day and in a few months having them be full-grown, or who don’t have a lot going on so they can be like, “Hey, now my character’s gonna have a mustache and an eyepatch to show the passage of time!” But for anyone that plays out continuous storylines and plots in groups of multiple people like projects, guilds and friend groups, this is going to be a massive headache.

From the point of view of a roleplayer, we’re being told that we’re going to go ahead and fast forward over some unspecified number of years in our characters’ lives, and that is going to throw ongoing plots and server projects into chaos. Some people will ignore the timeskip and just go on as usual. People will interpret the passage of time to be a different amount of time. In RP where it’s usually necessary to get everyone on a commonly-agreed-on page for continuity, this timeskip is a hand grenade for characters, projects and plots. I’m still working out with the people that I write with frequently to see what we’re going to do - ignore it, or try and bring all of our ongoing plots to a point of stasis where things would hold or can be skimmed over, missing out on getting to play out all the things that happen in the meantime.

Anyway, all that nerd-ery aside, what really chafes me is that there’s not a single good reason for the timeskip narratively. It’s tossed in like an ‘oh, why not?’ to have Anduin have been missing for some vague amount of time, when the same goal could’ve been accomplished in a number of other ways.

Most people won’t care. The writers don’t care. It’s something most people who don’t really think about things like their character being a person in the world instead of a graphical convenience for telling if you get hit by an AOE while you fight a boss in a dungeon. A lot of roleplayers won’t care, because they don’t do the kind of tight-knit high-continuity daily RP that some prefer.

I realize that my issue is such a niche issue. But the timeskip makes me want to punt kittens, especially with how vague it is, and the fact that there’s not a real hard narrative requirement that it happen beyond “Muuuhh?” just really grinds my gears.

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It does irritate a good chunk of the non-RPers as well. Not significantly, but you can only take so many annoyances before you check out.

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Why? I can’t think of a single reason to care about it beyond RP.

Personally I just want to see if they put their money where their mouth is and actually update some stuff. Maybe that bridge in Lakeshire will finally be finished.

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You can want to have a character that makes sense in the context of the game world without actually role-playing as that character.

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I’m pretty sure there are a significant number of people who play a MMORPG as a MMORPG and consider their character to be a character in the ongoing story even if they don’t actively roleplay with other people.

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