Opening a Can of Worlds; Your Alternate Azeroth

Sorry, this is a bit of a long-winded post and I didn’t realize it would be until I looked up to see if was an hour and a half later.

One of my favorite features of this expansion has been Time Rifts or more importantly, the fact there are other versions of our beloved Azeroth out there…some terrific and some terrible. We’ve been host to some of their inhabitants and even completed quests for a few alternate timeline characters.

I ask you dear reader, do you currently have any alternate Azeroth denizens living here on this Azeroth? If so, which Azeroth? What makes them different? What makes them the same? Any other little neat facts you’re willing to share?

TLDR readers: You can stop here. Below are just some of the headcanon alternate versions of Azeroth I’ve made.

I have several different headcanon versions of alternate Azeroth worlds. For the sake of simplicity and game mechanics, the characters I have from those worlds have character classes that still operate within the capabilities of this world…for the most part. There are several characters who found themselves cut off from certain abilities here, only to discover newfound powers.

To start with, I refer to this Azeroth not as, “the one true version of Azeroth”, but Nexus Azeroth or just Azeroth-N for short since this is point where the other versions are connected. The majority of my characters are from Azeroth-N.

Next, there’s a version of Azeroth where the Darkfallen were released unto Azeroth instead of the Scourge. I call this vampiric version Azeroth=V. I have a few Deathknight characters, as well some of the elves with the San’layn/Dark Ranger appearance options. They’re different because they originated as a result of slightly different processes, yet the same since they were able to cast off their yoke of oppression in order to become free beings.

I also have a version of Azeroth where the Burning Legion were actually the good guys. This “demonic” version of Azeroth, or Azeroth-D was home to several other characters of mine. They’re different because Sargeras was the “good guy”, while Aman’Thul was the villain. They’re also the same because we know the Titans serve their own means and as long as our plans align with theirs, we’re simply tolerated because the Titans have more pressing concerns.

Azeroth-O (Azeroth Omega) is a post-apocalyptic version of Azeroth due mainly to the fact it no longer has a living World Soul. I currently have a couple of characters from this world. It’s different because magic doesn’t quite work as it once did, the two main factions no longer exist, there are more blended races, and other cosmic forces no longer find Azeroth interesting enough to manipulate or conquer. It’s still the same in there are still some classes that exist, but have different names or more primal sources of power.

Then there’s the melded Azeroth or Azeroth-M. This is version of Azeroth where several different versions of the Azerothian cosmology collided, resulting into a “conjoining” of sorts. I went off the rails in this one, but the several characters I have from this world have classes which still operate mechanically the same. It’s different because the cosmology chart is a whole lot cleaner now :sweat_smile:. The schools of magic have changed drastically, are more uncommon, and are used as a modifier in some sciences. They’re the same in basic terms of struggles and conflict.

In any case, I’d love to know if you have anything similar!
Whoops…I hit the delete topic button by mistake with my gorilla fingers…my bad!

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I don’t have a specific alt world, other than the D&D game where I made Calia the Lich Queen. Other than having the Scarlets be more heroes than not, we didn’t get deep enough into the lore to see the other changes, so I didn’t put them through.

I do have headcanon though that WrA and MG are two separate alt worlds that somehow branched after BFA. While most main events are the same, it’s how I explain the population differences.

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When I started RPing and created Axiann, I had toyed with the idea that he had come from an alternate version of the world where he had just survived the destruction/fall of Dalaran by falling into a portal as the world around him exploded, ripping through the fabric of reality.

I forget if I ever even shared this with anyone back in the day.

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Back when we were still Picks and Pints on WRA, we had an event and Juspion accidentally peered into the multiverse and went crazy. Using his knowledge and background as an Artificer he would have off-screen timey wimey adventures.

I never put thought into alternate Azeroth’s but more like, how Juspion would enter a portal and then come out as an Eredar warlord and then enter another portal and come out as a Broken and act like that’s how its always been.

I do joke and say Juspion did in fact go to Azmerloth, saved the Murlocs but also subsequently doomed their timeline by taking the Heart of Azmerloth. So when N’murgglll appears there is no hero with the Heart of Azmerloth to stop him and that Azeroth falls to the Old God. Now Juspion is hunted by angry Murlocs from that timeline that seek to retake the Heart of Azmerloth.

Anyway, instead of an alternate Azeroth there is an alternate Argus that never falls to the Legion. The Eredar utopian civilization reached great heights of prosperity but it does not go unnoticed by the various cosmic forces. They would eventually all come for the Eredar but all are defeated by the unified Triumvirate. With all threats disposed, the Eredar soon ascend beyond not just Argus but the physical realm as a whole, becoming creators and shapers of their own cosmic universe. Idk something like the Ancients in Stargate and Juspion becomes a space ghost.

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I’ve written two.

A “Shattered Glass” version of Azeroth where, when my gaggle of incompetent omnisexual kleptomaniacal characters were in the Warlords of Draenor expansion, found a group of Draenei extremists who hadn’t sided with the Legion but had lost faith with Velen, and the Naaru, and were determined to keep running, and after learning of the world known as ‘Azeroth’, and studying the Dark Portal, made their own, much smaller gateway for a one-way jump to their version of Azeroth, screw the cost to Draenor.

And they powered it by attacking a Iron Horde Creche, where the children and those too old or too injured to fight, and at the time of the story, those who were fleeing the Iron Horde as Gul’dan attempted to convert all the Orcs still loyal to the cause into Fel Orcs, and chaining hundreds of Orcs together to ‘boost’ the Gate.

Characters failed to stop the ritual, and were sucked through the collapsing Gate due to the splinter-sect of Draenei messed up the ritual due to rushing, and found themselves on AU Azeroth, where Azshara had swiped left instead of right when she was approached by the Legion, but Xavius being a nightmarish :poop:-:crown: in every reality, the Well of Eternity was still forced open, but without Azshara’s support, the rebellion was ended without the Sundering sinking the majority of Kalimdor … but it did splinter the Kaldorei Empire, and the other races on Azeroth were likewise affected.

Azshara and her Highborne ruled over what remained of the Kaldorei Empire to the west and north and individual city-states scattered around the continent of Kaldorei who rejected anyone else’s rule but their own, the Trolls rallied around Zandalar and rebuilt their Divine Empire to the Eastern coast which had been separated slightly from the mainland and doubled down on serving the Loa who had stepped up during the Sundering, the Mogu had become benevolent overlords under a Lei Shen who had sought guidance from the Celestials and had never struck down Ra’den, and turned Pandaria into a military meritocracy and the Keepers in Northrend still held control of the continent, as Loken had taken the end of his affair with Sif with maturity and chosen exile rather than allow the whispers to manipulate him into a murderer, leaving Thorim to become the new Prime Designate of Azeroth.

So with the whole planet unrecognizeable and everybody up in arms because a Gate means Burning Legion, and Azshara’s daughter, now the Empress of her mother’s domain, had taken and was interrogating the Draenei splinter-sect, seeing them only as more Eredar demons and not people. The resulting political firestorm, and the AU Burning Legion kick-starting a second Sundering because they still want that damn World Soul.

And being the AU Version of Azeroth, it only has a massive well of self-renewing arcane energy, not a proper World Soul, but there was so much of it that both Titans and Demons believed it was the real deal, so as the Legion invaded and started sucking up the energy trying to get to the World Soul, and the Kaldorei factions who still, for the most part excluding Illidan’s faction of Druids and Demon Hunters and Tyrande’s … people … (No spoilering), relied too heavily upon the arcane, also started drawing on far too much arcane energy to push the Demons back, and caused an actual Sundering as the strain of so much arcane energy being pulled through the ley-lines started quite literally disintegrating the continent under everyone’s feet.

Due to being addicts, having never developed the Moonwells and being Demons, both Legion and Kaldorei still kept going and it ended up a End-Of-Days scenario with the Mogu, Trolls, Non-Arcane Kaldorei and Vrykul, alongside what Humans, Dwarves and Tauren still existed due to various circumstances that predated the start of the story, fighting at the last remaining Daughter Well on Kalimdor as the Mother Well and the other Daughter Wells all started imploding and sucking huge chunks of the mantle down to ‘plug’ the holes, including whole city-states, and entire armies, and fighting off both Demons trying to take the last Daughter Well, and then desperate and strung-out Kaldorei who had just got hit with their first ever encounter with being cut-off from magic and had started draining the life out of everything to try and counter the cravings and the physical deterioration.

Characters ended up opening a Gate to another world that the exiled Loken said could provide shelter to the Mortals since this Azeroth was about to head into a new ice-age from all the dust and debris in the air, and with the amount of Fel and Arcane energy floating about and what had happened to the Leylines, it was a good chance that the biosphere might collapse and not be able to be restored for several centuries before Freya and Ammunae’s protocols could reliably start to reseed the world with life, and Hodir, Thorim and Rajh can end the unnatural ice-age and restore the planet to a level where life can flourish again.

Characters hustled as many people through as they could, tried to urge Lei Shen and his Immortals to join them, but the Divine Emperor refused, stating he would hold the line and collapse the Gate once they went through rather than allow this calamity to claim a second world.

Players jumped through … and found themselves in a Time Storm as the fragment of the Hourglass that their Mage had been concealing acted up once more, and hurled them back into AU Draenor … hours after the end of the siege on Felfire Citadel, when they’d spent over two years in AU Azeroth.


2nd Version was where Antonidas of Dalaran figured out that the Orcs just needed some new energy to replace where the Fel had been, as was canon in the Lore, the Alliance instead opted to try filling it with Light rather than leaving the Orcs to linger in the Camps and cost them a fortune, as they did in the main timeline.

Either it would work and they could put the Orcs to work for them, or it wouldn’t and nothing of value would be lost.

Spoilers, it worked a little too well.

With the Orcs lethargic and gripped with the horror of their actions, and most of their forces the result of Warlocks forcing dozens of generations to unnatural adulthood and then filling them with the Fel, the infusion process not only revitalized the Orcs, but rendered them docile and completely subservient to any Light-wielder who could tap into this pool of ‘Light’ energy within them and give them commands.

Orcs that couldn’t undergo this process, who were few and far between, were given to Blackmoore who seethed at the loss of his command to a handful of camps, while the Alliance basked in their new prosperity, since Orcs were so strong and durable, they could do the work of a team of Humans, and due to the Light infusion, remained docile and compliant even in the worst of situations. Orcs formed the backbone of basic manual labour and doing the worst jobs in society, and farms started popping up, since the Orcs were ‘inhuman’ and ‘beasts’, to produce more Orcs that could be infused and used to do more labour … except very few Orcs were born who had this spiritual ‘hole’ in them that the Fel-touched Orcs did.

This became a massive sticking point as Antonidas and others pointed out that this was a form of slavery, and as monstrous and vile as the Orcs were, forcing them into existence and turning innocent children into slaves or condemning them to the prison-camps if they weren’t compatible with the process was just as abhorrent and vile as what the Legion and the Horde had done in the first place.

The other side of the argument pointed out the Orcs were alien to this world and had no homeland, and even if these ‘unuseable’ Orc children weren’t frothing barbarians, they were still massive, brutal creatures with a predilection towards aggressive responses, and it was Orc labour that had rebuilt the remaining Human, Elven and Dwarven Kingdoms and had become a foundation of their economies.

The squabbling drew new battle-lines until Uther, seeking some sort of sense from this, went to Blackmoore’s camps to study these ‘uncorrupted’ Orcs and met a young Thrall, who had been put through the gladiator pits and had become quite a good warrior, and the Paladin’s heart was moved by seeing the warmth between Thrall and Teressa, between the Orc and ‘Captain’, and the tutor who had educated Thrall who would not shut up about his strange and unique pupil. Uther took Thrall from Blackmoore, and Teressa after getting ‘bad vibes’ (I am paraphrasing here) from seeing how the drunken, bitter Noble after around her, and took them on as squires, much to the chagrin of his much older squire, Arthas.

Teressa ended up quite the Priestess, and one who was not afraid to march up and smack-talk anyone who was doing ‘wrong’, while Thrall ended up being quite the conduit for the Light, and the poster-child the Pro-Conscience side of the debate would trot out that the Orcs did indeed need to be watched, but not enslaved. That if Thrall could become a Paladin and uphold the Three Tenets, then other Orc children could likewise be raised in similar fashion, and integrated into the Eastern Kingdoms gradually.

Blackmoore, being a :poop:, immediately joined the Pro-Economy side of the debate and revealed that he’d captured and beaten an Orc Warlock for the secrets of the Horde’s Shadow Council, and knew now how to drain Orc children into immediate adulthood, which would also render them perfect candidates for the Light infusion process and thus could be safely used to replace the aging and battered work-force of older Orcs who were dying in droves from neglect and the unending labour they were commanded to perform, and given what the Horde had done, many people saw no reason to offer the Orcs, who were always and would always be beasts, and monsters, and savages, a second chance.

This led to the War of Paladins with one side calling the infusion process monstrous, and the others refusing to allow Orcs any chance to self-autonomy to prevent the rise of a New Horde. Eventually, the events of Warcraft III kick off, Thrall and Teressa kick off following the Prophet’s visions with an expeditionary fleet of Human-raised Orcs and after some shenanigans, Darkspear Trolls and Tauren and encounter the Kaldorei, though without Grom mucking things up, there’s no outright conflict.

Grom ends up consumed by the Legion and leads what ‘free’ Orcs are left into a death-march to keep the fight going at the behest of the Dreadlords who are watching it all go down and trying to prep the Eastern Kingdoms for the Scourge.

Uther, Arthas and Jaina end up at Stratholme, having ended up on opposing sides of the War of Paladins due to ideological beliefs, and are witness to the Scourging of Stratholme and call a tentative truce to deal with the Undead, which fails miserably as gold matters more than good to one side, and the Legion and the Cult of the Damned has already sunk their claws into both sides, whispering to one side that if they lose, they’re going to be beggared, and to the common folk of both sides, that if the Orcs are indeed people and can still be Infused, then what’s stopping the Nobles and the Mages from doing the same to every Dwarf, Elf and Man who steps out of line, causing wide-spread civil unrest that allows the Plague-infused grain to be spread to nearly every village, town and city and causes multiple, albeit smaller, outbreaks of Undeath that weaken and turn everybody paranoid to outsiders, further fracturing the Eastern Kingdoms.

Thrall meets the Tauren, starts putting a more Shamanistic twist to his Light abilites and starts and starts getting visions from the Spirits, which does help the few Free Orcs who escaped Grom’s death-spiral under the Legion to make peace with following a ‘Pink Orc’, Tyrande is a lot less standoffish learning that these people seek to fight the Legion as well, Illidan is released from his prison more to move him to a more secure location and ends up in the fight anyways, but with less stupidity this time because people aren’t punching each other in the face just because, and when Jaina shows up, the Survivors of Lordaeron aren’t immediately set upon by Orcs and the ‘Outlanders’ don’t immediately get the Kaladorei’s hackles raised.

Jaina still thinks Orcs are monsters, but she’s willing to admit that they can change, and the Legion doesn’t manage to destroy the Pact made at the end of the Chaos Wars, meaning Horde and Alliance don’t end up constantly fighting each other en-mass.


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Horde are dogs and Alliance are cats. Or vice versa.

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I remember this guild!

The Miscalculated Adventures of Juspions Just Beyond! I would read it!

Indeed you have! I could read stuff like this for hours. Palaman…Shamadin…I dig it!

Also, this made me laugh out loud!

You will Bow-wow before the Horde pack, or For the Meowlliance!
If this were an animated series what animated series would it resemble most?

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We’re still around! After Halflan left the game, we reformed as the Vigilants of Tyr. There’s still a few folks running around WRA under the Picks and Pints guild tag.

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Personally, I never cared much for the whole Alternate Universe concept as it pertains to Warcraft. I’ve nothing against it, necessarily, it just hasn’t really appealed to me much. There are some characters I have, however, written characters who are more or less alternate versions of others; but they aren’t actually the same person, just characters with similar personalities and backgrounds. Since spending more time on Moon Guard, I remade some of my characters here on there. In one particular case, my Highbourne Mage, Astrea Evermoon, is considered something of an alternate of the one here; wherein, instead of becoming bitter hermit quietly hating the world in between moments of work, she joins the Kirin Tor in order to teach Conjuration and Divination in Dalaran.

I have done some actual alternate universe characters, though none have gotten far. I once tried to write a story where one of my Monks, Zhaoyang Cloudpaw, a blind woman from the Wandering Isle, wasn’t blind, was from the mainland and a priestess of Elune. I also once made a Mag’har warrior who was meant to be the gender-swapped AU version of my core Orc warrior’s father.

The closest I’ve ever really gotten to imagining an alternate version of the setting itself is occasionally thinking about what it would be like if weapons were allowed to evolve somewhat realistically and common soldiers were more commonly armed with firearms, since guns in this setting seem to be at a level of efficacy that would allow such. Regardless I don’t really think about deeply enough or for long enough to elaborate. I’m usually too busy monologuing to myself about why ‘magic’ isn’t a good enough answer on its own to justify guns not being more prevalent.

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I totally respect that. Alternate universes and such isn’t everyone’s jam that is perfectly okay. I like the subtle changes you’ve mentioned such as one character being blind, yet the other is not, gender-swapped versions of characters, and introvert to extrovert personality changes. I would categorize those as alternates, so it works out perfectly.

The whole technology versus magic thing I also find interesting. I have a personal story world that I wrote about many years ago with such a conflict. One world contained inhabitants that were more adept in magic, while another world contained a more technologically-based society. Each side had their strengths and weaknesses, making it a lot of fun to poke and prod.

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to be honest im also so-so on timey wimey stuff, at least how it has been done in the current game. Time Rifts are fun, don’t get me wrong about that but it’s just with WoD being such a let down.

Imagine if we had a Time Rift expansion? Spit balling some silly ideas, opens with going to alternate Draenor, defeat the Iron Horde in the first patch. Second patch leads us to Azmerloth to stop Deathwingurlugull. Third patch we are sent to Azmourne and fight the Lich King Supreme. Final patch could be Azewrath, the Burning Legion arrives and timey wimey hi-jinks causes the Legion in the main timeline to invade Azeroth leading to the Legion expansion.

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I’m not gonna lie, I personally would totally rock a Time Rift expansion. I also like your silly ideas! I wanna do some Amzerloth content as a Murloc (insert class here).

I never played Classic, but if they opened something silly like a Time Rift mega server where you couldn’t roll retail races, but you could roll a bunch of non-retail races…just take my money!!! I have a ton of silly ideas how this would all work, but instead of rambling on about that, I’ll just pause here.

Time rifts, not just AU rifts, is one way I look at the question.

I often think about what Pandaren must have been like in the far ancient times. Really ancient. Like chalcolithic era or early Iron Age.

more recently (pun intended) I’ve been thinking about the future of Azeroth. Not far future, but something more like Industrial Revolution. Which I imagine would be very steampunkish. Imagining much more widespread use of Gnomish & Goblin tech. We’ve even got a few " high-tech magic" items for mogging, such as staves that look like Tesla could’ve designed them.

Industrial era Azeroth … got me thinking about what might develop for overseas Pandaren. For one thing, they have an established and growing presence all over, yet don’t have a settled quarter in any of the big cities. A small enclave, sure, but not nearly enough room for what the Pandaren population would likely be in another couple hundred years. Taking their outpost near SW for an example … I’m imagining something like Kowloon City. Built up around the island and the lake as a sort of hodge-podge of self-built housing, shops, etc stacked up in more and more layers.

In my mind I think of it as “The Lantern” in the same way London use to be “The Big Smoke”. The Lantern because it’s brightly lit at night with lots of inviting places to visit. A little tiny bit like the main setting of Spirited Away, but as separate businesses as well as people’s homes. Also “The Lantern” because of the hollow shape -building up around the outside of the lake. And the island of the original Pandaren outpost would build up and up into “The Wick” - location for some of the centralized industrial infrastructure, but also for the main temples of all the celestials, some equivalent of the Seat of Knowledge, residences and meeting chambers for elders of various groups and whatever overall council might be needed to keep such an urbanized Pandarchic setting going.

Then …

A sufficiently advanced civilization might master the engineering and control of the portals through time to the same degree of precision that mages currently do with spatial portals. And over time some faction(s) might even decide that they know better than the Bronze Flight how to make their own future come about. But they’d probably have to be sneaky about whatever “time agents” they send back to our Azeroth to help steer the course. If you’ve read any of Iain Banks’ Culture novels, you know the kind of “special circumstances” agents I mean.

for TWW I’ve been developing some steampunk-inspired Pandaren. A big game hunter. A portal engineer / explorer (mage). A couple of Tong types (warrior & rogue).

Now, I’m not sayin’ that they necessarily come from The Lantern. I’m just sayin’ …

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