Now I had thought that these were descendants of an expedition by the original Arathi Empire that left the Eastern Kingdoms some time before the empire’s collapse 1200 years ago. And since they were half-elves they were immortal and with no day/night cycle underground they hadn’t realized how much time passed and thought it had only been a few decades since they left when it had actually been millenia. Which is why they thought they could just go home once they had portal magic.
Which felt cool because it put events on the timeline of Azeroth a little more in our face rather than treating everything between the War of the Ancients and the Dark Portal as part of a timeskip.
But apparently they’re part of some offshoot of the empire on a landmass we SOMEHOW didn’t know about and the EK Arathi just had no documentation on this at all either? Or something?
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Pretty much. Here is the timeline, so we have the empire of arathor thousands of years ago, a group of them sails away to find new lands, finds a new continent and settles there forming an empire, then around 20 years ago in the story there emperor sent an expedition back to the lands we know to find a holy light, and that expedition is the one we meet
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That’s not as much fun as what I was imagining imo.
It just sounds like bootleg Pandaria
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The point here is to set up a mysterious empire beyond the storming seas (we canonically cannot sail beyond Kalimdor without dying) so we can get there in the future and destroy yet another civilization to get some boots that makes me fire my gun faster
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The Empire is an Empire of Half Elves therefore the Continent it’s on will go with the Quel’Thalas Revamp(which doesn’t have enough Zones to make an Expansion) in Midnight.
2,800 years ago: Foundation of the Empire of Arathor and the Troll Wars.
At some point in the next 1,600 years: A group of Arathi with mixed Human-High elf blood (the humans and high elves had fought together in the Troll Wars and become close allies) split off from the main empire in the Eastern Kingdoms and establish their own empire on some unknown continent (most likely Avaloren).
1,200 years ago: Fragmentation of the Empire of Arathor in Strom and creation of the Seven Kingdoms in the Eastern Kingdoms. The new empire on some unknown continent remains untouched.
15 years ago: The empire on the unknown continent sends an expedition to Hallowfall driven by visions of the Light and the final war with the Shadow. This is around the time of the Burning Crusade/Sunwell Plateau, which took place in the Year 26.
Which is why I speculate that they are setting up the Arathi to appear in Midnight and be tied in some way to the Sunwell and its cleansing through the Naaru M’uru, also because Midnight will be centred around the Sunwell. 
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It’s a buttpull by Blizzard to shoehorn in humans into an expansion that otherwise would have little to do with humans.
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I suspect they’re banking on the Scarlet Crusade nostalgia. 
I am still confused that we were in SPACE and still couldn’t figure out which land masses we had not “discovered” yet. Where is this empire going to be hiding??? In another underground cavern?
Would not this empire have been affected when Deathwing arrived with all his destruction? What about seeing a massive sword fall from the sky? Or a bright red star in the sky? So many questions.
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They are on from the back side of the planet, so a whole “new world”. Likely at least one continent. It’s their easy solution for the map getting too full: Just make a new blank map.
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We don’t know how long Arathi live, but they’re not immortal.
They’re from some far off land, perhaps behind the wall of storms that they set up in DF. Most likely the land named Avaloren. Which would make sense since they have some middle-english inspired naming schemes like Flamestonge. Which, I mean, if Avaloren gives off Dragon’s Dogma vibes I’m all in.
I’m really hoping that Avaloren is actually on another world, and that the Arathi empire actually hopped planes into another place, but I think I know too much about WoW writing to expect that. They’re from yet another landmass shrouded from being explored and they’ve only been in Hallowfall for about 20-30 years.
So what your saying is the Draenei space ship stayed in geosynchronous orbit the whole time and we only floated above, say Dalaran.
I can see that as a way to say “hahaha! You couldn’t see the whole planet rotating”.
Something to consider is the possibility that since it never left the sky while open (rather than moving around each day like the sun or moons), Illidan’s Portal to Argus might have been created as geostationary so it would remain above and accessible to the same (our) hemisphere, meaning that we’d always be looking down at the same facing half of the planet while we were on Argus looking “back.”
Especially if one accounts for the possibility that it may have been anchored on Azeroth’s side by way of the Tomb’s portal, which could keep it always situated directly above the Broken Isles.
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Oh the planet rotates, but the model of Azeroth suffers from the fact they make up the map as they go. The dragon isles are missing from it as well. To their credit the back side the planet was mostly covered in clouds.
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That’s a good take. The portal being part of the force keeping the space ship rotating geosynchronous. Ship would still need to be under thrust that whole time so we didn’t plummet to the ground from portal magic pull.
Still want to see this next “empire” with Deathwing damage and Red Star rumors. Even if they missed out on Save the World, couldn’t have missed that. What Deathwing only flew over half the planet? Doubtful?
You could say that of any civilization that we suddenly discover. Heck, did you make this same complaint when we found Mechagon?
In any case, a good chunk of people seem to like Hallowfall’s story so by that metric it was a good idea to add it.
Hallowfall had an excellent storyline. Faerin is also a great character. Hope we see more of her down the line.
But I can understand why some people are turned off by it
Seems like at the very least there should be evidence of past damage from the Shattering. It’s still dumb that immediately after the largest demonic invasion in Azeroth’s history, it turned out that the Burning Legion just ignored Kul Tiras and Zandalar entirely, such that nobody in either kingdom even seems to acknowledge that the demons invaded at all.
Some signs of wreckage from Legion citadel ships and maybe smatterings of leftover demons would have at least presented a sense that they were successfully repelled in such previously unvisited parts of the world that don’t have the excuse of magical concealment keeping them undiscovered, but instead there’s this bizarre sense that the villains of given expansions deliberately avoid marring places that will become future content.
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We have space ships.
I rest my case, your honor.
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