The amount of twisting and reaching you did to come to this nonsensical insanely dramatic comment is astounding. Please learn how all of our trips back into time actually work. Thank you and goodbye.
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We’ve inserted ourselves (or rather, the Bronze tossed us) into points of the timeline to ensure events go as-planned. Sure, the history books might not know of us, because we were disguised at the time, but we are now indelibly a part of the events we helped ensure come to pass.
Once a timeline is changed, that’s it, there’s no going back. (Ironic.) All we’re doing is rebuilding it the best we know.
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Logically…these type of stories teach us of bad things that happen…but also how good can overcome it. Now if you were to say Blizzard had a cut scene showing this stuff like some sort of perverted R rated movie…ya…we’d have a problem.
In both of these cases the timeline is not changed. The dragon eggs Krasus found were as far as the blue dragons were concerned were “lost”. Think Chrono Trigger.
This also follows the Chrono Trigger rule. The Dragon Soul we took was when it was already suppose to have been “lost” thus having no effect on the timeline.
Creating that alternate timeline was never something the Bronze sanctioned. As for allowing them to cross, it has the technically of not truly being our past.
Then this questline may not necessarily be our future, either. If multiple timelines are go, then the entire argument the Bronzes are built around falls apart.
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This questline is not set in the “future”. These arexpast event of our timeline and thus had always happened.
Since we don’t know what the quest is itself, we can only go on the text. And from the text, we aren’t doing any of that. We aren’t interacting with Alex, we aren’t pulling one of her consorts over to her, we aren’t using the Dragon Soul to inflict pain on her, we aren’t smashing her eggs to smear the yolk on her face. All we are doing is finding the Dragon Soul and putting it back where it is supposed to be. We are not “a part” of that. The same way we wouldn’t be part of a murder just because we let the suspect buy the weapon from our shop. You are reaching so far I’m shocked the Void Lords haven’t licked your fingertips.
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But the event becoming derailed may just spin off into an alternate timeline, similar to AU Draenor being an anomalous timeline that somehow hasn’t crashed the timestream. It proves that ‘incorrect’ pasts can exist and the timeline can endure.
But the thing is, this isn’t a ‘suspect’. This isn’t a ‘hunch’, and this isn’t a ‘shop’ where we could expect to sell a gun to just anyone. We are knowingly giving a loaded weapon to a person we know has a captive victim and we know they are going to kill them upon the captor’s return. We do not have the mens rea to say ‘we couldn’t have known, it was just us doing business, etc’. We know what happens if they get that gun and go back to the captive, which means we’re as culpable as the person pulling the trigger.
That was only done with the aid of an artifact the rogue Bronze stole to stabilize it.
That doesn’t matter. And even if it does, just like all the other atrocities we’ve sanctioned knowing full well what’ll happen, it’s for the future we know will turn out alright. By your logic, we knew full well what was going to happen to Alex the moment we helped Medivh open the Dark Portal and we did it anyway and you called it heroic. You have zero right to question this when you justified bringing the Orcs to Azeroth in the first place.
OK. That sounds like ‘difficult but possible.’
I said we did the most heroic thing we could, saving as much life as possible and permitting redemption. Opening the Dark Portal is absolutely a shame and it’s our shame to bear. It was lose-lose for literally everyone involved. Again, however, it could be argued we were helping the Orcs survive. This is not the case with Alex, no one benefits from her suffering longer. You could argue, ‘well yes, but Deathwing would find/kill/pursue/whatever’ her, but the counter is that we are there. And we are stronger at that point than any living thing on the planet because we have a couple dozen years and many artifacts that did not exist back then. We don’t defeat, but could certainly repel Deathwing long enough for Krasus to arrive, or outright signal Krasus to her location.
As soon as we arrive at that moment, it is permanently altered by our presence. There’s no need for it to play out the same, because the ‘key event’ is her escape, not her captivity.
Nevermind that the error apparently isn’t critical enough to worry Alexstrasza over. Despite, y’know, being a massive event in her life. We could have informed her at the very least that this was necessary to do instead of just doing it and then hoping she’ll just let bygones be bygones.
EDIT: Or, hell, have Chromie treat Alexstrasza with the respect she deserves and tell her of the anomaly, whereupon Alex seeks us out and recruits us for Chromie’s task.
Heroic or not, we know exactly what’s going to happen. And we sanctioned it. We allowed it to happen. WE are not supposed to alter the past. Our entire purpose there is to make sure the timeline that results in the present “us” remains on track. If we muck with it to irreversible conditions, bad things happen. One of which is that our present is gone. As in we just disappear so that our equivalent in the new timeline takes our place. That’s the point of us doing these missions. Otherwise what’s the point of fighting the Infinites? This ain’t some alternate timeline like the Primalist Future or WoD were we can muck about freely, this is our past that affects us. Changing it could destroy us.
We are there to be as minimal as possible. That’s the point of the disguises and in some cases outright deleting memories of us being there. We are nameless orcs that just so happens to finds the missing Dragon Soul and return it or put somewhere it can be found.
The timeline revolves around ‘Alexstrasza’s escape’, in this instance. As long as Alexstrasza and her brood successfully escapes, Deathwing is repelled and Nekros dies, the timeline is on-parallel with our own, just with mercifully less pain. Those three events must happen for the timeline to be ‘correct’. If we move those events forward, they still happen. Nothing is produced from her enslavement aside from pain and misery. She doesn’t come to any realization, she doesn’t develop anything, and from what I can tell no important character is born from Grim Batol’s breeding pits.
As long as the events occur and in roughly the right order, everything is intact and the next events don’t paradox. We don’t have to facilitate this awful act.
Plus, again, whatever effect this ‘misalignment’ is having is apparently not important enough to bring up with the person it would most critically affect.
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That’s your theory. We don’t know all the variables at play. We don’t know how letting Alex escape early will play out. The only thing we do know is that if history plays out as we know it, we’ll arrive at our current present. For all we know, letting Alex escape early can result in a Flashpoint situation. One change causing ripples across time and one misalignment causes another and another and another until the present is unrecognizable.
Oh you mean like how we didn’t tell Thrall that we helped him escape but has to allow his first and best friend to get beheaded? Or didn’t tell Sylvanas that we protected the guy that would go on to kill her, sack her home, and result in her current situation? This par for the course.
ACTUALLY.
AU Draenor is disintigrating, as seen in the Mag’har intro. The Draenei (led by face-heel Yrel) blame the Orcs using up the planets’ resources and the Orcs blame the Draenei for tipping things too far into the Light in the Light/Shadow balance, but there’s strong theories that say that it’s actually the timeline destabilizing.
We have standing paradoxes that either self-resolve or don’t do anything. The Timeline™ is far more durable than we’re giving it credit for. Hell, we paradox ourselves in Wrath. The timeline only resolves if we go back in time because we don’t survive the ambush without the aid of our Future You, but then how did we go back in time in the first place to help with Past You? Future You must be from an alternate timeline, which meant Future You either obliterated their own timeline or, more likely, their timeline is fine.
The Bronzes are very likely in the wrong here and aren’t holding onto The Timeline™ because it’s the best outcome, but because it’s the only outcome they know. And Nozdormu’s breaking it anyway.
Thrall we actually help in the end. We’ve already covered Stratholme’s ramifications if it doesn’t get culled.
This is an event tightly tied to Alexstrasza’s past, and we aren’t helping her at any point like Thrall, nor is it removed by several degrees from Sylvanas. We are literally handing over the tool she suffers from to the people causing her suffering. She, more than Thrall and Sylvanas, deserves to know what was going on.
As it stands now, we are as culpable as the Dragonmaw in Alexstrasza’s torture.
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Again, your theory. WE don’t know how it’d play out or affect us. Your theory doesn’t mean we should be doing Infinite Dragonflight activities. That’s NOT why we are there. Never has been in any Bronze time mission. This should NOT be an exception.
No, despite the justifications you’re giving it, I doubt Thrall would be too pleased that we didn’t saved Tabitha when we could’ve. That we let her get beheaded. Same with Sylvanas, the Blood Elves, and the Forsaken as a whole. We protected the guy that would go on to cause them not only death but undeath and untold levels of psychological or, in the Blood Elves case, physical horror. And for the last time it wasn’t about Stralhome, heck the quest wasn’t about culling Stratlhome which was a lost cause, it was about protecting Arthas. We didn’t tell any them what we did.
We are just as culpable in their sufferring and accomplices in Tabitha’s death. By your logic we were just as bad as Blackmoore and Arthas.
Don’t we pull the Mag’har out as the timeline is collapsing? So it’s gone and they’re all that’s left now? Been a while since I did that quest.
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We know that altering our own timeline doesn’t hurt us. We only have the word of the Bronzes that paradoxes are bad, but a paradox literally saved us. Every Mag’har is a walking paradox in our timeline.
Again, the Bronzes are probably wrong. That doesn’t make the Infinite necessarily right, but it also shows that the events don’t need to be totally 1:1.
Protecting Arthas was a by-product of the Culling; without Arthas, the Culling does not happen and EK goes full Scourge. Yes, he eventually goes on to become the Lich King, but the Culling needed to happen to save EK as a whole because Uther wouldn’t do it and the infection would spread to all corners of the continent. As far as Thrall goes, we don’t personally deliver Tabitha to the guards, nor directly hand over the chains for Thrall’s imprisonment. We are a bystander at that point; we aren’t helping, sure, but we’re also not actively making things worse as we are with Alexstrasza. We’re not making sure Blackmoore has Thrall for ‘long enough’. We’re not pushing the Scourge’s influence upon Arthas. Here, we are actively harming Alexstrasza, and now it’s canon that we are among the Dragonmaw that saw fit to enslave and use her as a broodmare.
It’s a fantasy game, this isn’t really happening nor are you really playing a part in it.
These are important themes that no game should shy away from just because it can make people uncomfortable.
It’s optional content, and if you decide to partake in it then you can simply decide that your character didn’t actually get involved. You have control over the story of your character.
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You are just making this an exception. I don’t know why but you certainly making this an exception to what is literally the same premise we’ve been doing. For literally every other instance you’ve excused it for being a greater good and to preserve the future we have despite the atrocities that will happen as a result. But for Alex you make an exception and want to go Infinite and change it. That is and must always be a hard no. As unsavory as it is, we must preserve the future we know turns out alright instead of the unknown and what could happen.
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