Ever since BFA I’ve seen lots of story npc’s go out of their way to say there is teleport blocking magic. Is this a new trope in warcraft? Does teleport blocking magic just stop all mana leyways from entering an area? What exactly is happening when there is a teleport blocking magic in the area? is it like just a constant AoE silence magic? Why is other magic allowed?
Maybe teleportation requires accessing specific laylines and if dibe correctly those lines can be blocked.
It’s probably just a question of which caster is stronger. Jaina and Thalyssra didn’t have the power to override Azshara’s anti-blocking spell. But your Heart of Azeroth did. And I don’t think Azshara wanted us to stop using magic altogether. After all, she wanted to toy and play with us.
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Piggybacking off of this, why didn’t Azshara and the highborne teleport out of Zin-Azshari before drowning?
Clearly there were mages able to perform barriers because one of the quests showed two of them holding out in a hovel hoping Azshara was coming to rescue them while npc’s said water was coming in.
Hubris that they can ride it out probably.
I think I recall something in the well of eternity instance back in cataclysm where dialog between Malf, Tyrande, and Illidan something along the lines of the well of eternity is in flux, I tried to teleport me and Tyrande out of here but I couldn’t.
Wish I could remember the exact words.
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hmm so far i only remember this spell coming from azshara herself being basically the strongest mage ever she would be the strongest arcane user.
so i think that it makes sense that she would be able to block jaina or thalisra.
Now, she wasn’t counting on them working together to counter her spell and that is how we managed to kill her.
" Illidan Stormrage says: If you’ve a way out of here, we should probably use it! I’ve tried casting myself and Tyrande out of here, but the well is too much in flux!"
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Mannoroth_and_Varo%27then
So yeah, the WoE (which was pure arcane magic) was blocking teleportation spells. So it is doubtful that even Azshara could work her way through it.
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I think you shouldnt think too hard about this, just let it be, remember for all we know teleportation actually requieres sacrificing a gnome each time but no one says anything, and if blizzard expands on the rules of teleportation they WILL find a way to screw it up, it was pretty cool with oculeth but i would just accept the trope.
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Is there lore on the rules of magic? Without the rules we can’t really say why one cannot teleport out of any situation.
In the area of my head where all my bad fanfictiony ideas come from I imagine that teleportation magic would need some sort of stability. So to stop teleportation you would have to have something that could scramble that stability.
At this point it’s best to just assume it’s a thing blizzard uses when they want to stop certain story points from having too many loop holes.
It’s just vague enough to work, if they expand on it more than they should they’ll screw up the story a lot most likely.
Example if blizz comes out and says that any mage can essentially use mass silence or mass anti teleport blocking then you have to wonder why just about any antagonist doesn’t use it against us.
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The NPC’s in Nazjatar say that teleportation isblocked in order to provide a dramatic narrative reason to bring the Champion’s Heart of Azeroth in play as a story element. to provide an alternative.
I mean teleporting works exactly how blizzard wants teleporting to work, when they want it to work in that specific way. I thought hearth stones were just a game mechanic, but then in Before the Storm, Anduin used his hearth stone to return from Darnassus.
Basically all it would take, in other words, to wreak havoc in any city would be a renegade mage from the opposite faction, and enough would-be assassins to eff crap up.
I honestly wish they hadn’t made teleporting canon, and just left it as a game mechanic.
They are and they aren’t. In the novels, hearthstones are very rare. In another novel, Anduin borrows one from a Darnassian Ambassdor and retunes it.
Presumaably none of the NPC’s who went to Nazjatar had any.
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Wards that block portals and teleporting have been a thing for ages so its nothing new.
For example Jaina had boosted the wards to block teleporting to Darn during MoP and Garrosh had to get a Sunreaver to steal the Divine Bell.
Most if not all major cities likely have wards to keep enemies from just porting in.
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Nope. And if there was any rule Blizzard would never hesitate to use a ‘magic artifact’ or spell that can overrule it. Warcraft virtually has no hard rules when it comes to anything, and they proudly admit it.
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None really. Blizz can come up with any rule to make a scenario work. Although magic in Warcraft somehow still fits within certain rules of real-life physics, except more, well, magical.
This I believe to be true. As we’ve seen when they teleported Dalaran to the Broken Isles, some gnome NPCs got stuck in walls probably due to the amount of spellwork that needed to be stabilized.
Blizzcon 2019 World of Warcraft Q&A
Player question: Why didn’t Jaina use teleportation to save Varian at Broken Shores?
Blizzard’s answer: Well ummm (long pause, awkward smile from the panel!) Aha!!! Teleportation Blocking! Yeah thats it the Legion was using teleportation blocking. (Pat themselves in the back!)
All faction cities has teleportation blocking except for Undercity Nathanos traded theirs for a lifetime supplies of hair gel. 
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i mean, to me it would make sense that they would be prepared for mages using TP or portals after all it was a trap.
Now i have no idea on why they didn’t even bothered to say just a single line about it.“oh crap, i can’t tp!” “ran out of mana!” “i got wounded! dammit!” meh.
This is mostly headcanon, but it could be somewhat akin to interference? Like as mentioned above, Illidan couldn’t teleport himself and Tyrande out because of the WoE.
In the Baine escape scenario we see mages creating an arcane barrier of sorts that prevents Jaina from teleporting. So it’s kind of like preventing her from traveling through space?
To be fair I think blocking teleportation is easy no matter your level of knowledge in the Arcane, considering that Jaina is one of the most skilled Transmuters and even she was blocked by some mages in the Rescue Baine Scenario