Also.
If the rumors about Malfurion are true, this could be a thing.
https://makanidotdot.tumblr.com/ is the artist…
And I am cackling maniacally.
Anyway 5 year timeskip + Return to Lordaeron questline making the resettlement of Lordaeron and Gilneas clear canon gives me some hope that they plan to do something with the old world focusing on those areas
Reasonably confident that kid is an SCP at this point.
Best part about this is it’s 100% in character. Man, talk about personal growth. I went to seeing Illidan as some edgelord badass back in the day to realizing what a sad, shallow sack of a Satyr he is.
I mean, he’s a good character but the poster child for social expectations and pandering turning even a good person into a horrifying monster.
Ironically, being trapped in the Twisting Nether for thousands of years as a spirit, rather than being stuck in a cage you wouldn’t leave a feral dog in, helped fix a lot of what was wrong with the boy. Admittedly, he spent most of that fighting and fleeing from the Legion agents trying to capture his now-bodiless spirit, but y’know, therapy takes many forms.
I loved at the end how he was all “I have done so much wrong, but I’m going to talk you two up and encourage you to not make my mistakes, and have good lives together.” and both Malfurion and Tyrande … have not changed. In the slightest. The culmination of 10,000 years of personal drama and grudges and their responses are 6-year-old-holding-their-breath-until-you-agree-with-them level of WUT. I loved it so much.
Personally i loved it. Illidan had to make it about him, and both Malfurion and Tyrande wanted no part of any of it.
Cut those toxic people out and throw 'em into a sun.
And now Sargeras is spending all eternity with his angry ex-boyfriend. Tyrande dodged a bullet there.
There is Only War
As for changes to the world that have been discussed or foreshadowed, such as the resettlement of Gilneas, those will not be happening during the fast-forward. As cool as it is to show locations and populations evolving because of story progression, we want events of this importance to be in-game questing that our players experience for themselves (as with the reclaiming of the Ruins of Lordaeron in the 9.2.5 update) rather than having it happen off-camera.
I can’t tell if that means “this is an important development that will be in-game as a questline at some point in DF” or “this is too important to take place in a timeskip so we’re just gonna leave it ambiguous for another decade or so”
Retconning your crappy death lore is literally the only thing I care about. None of the rest matters to me in terms of “motivation to come back” whatsover.
Who wants to RP as having let me crash on their couch for the past five years?
I am going to wrap up current storylines and my characters will enjoy the peace and quiet.
Going to fully embrace it the time skip. I may set up some minor accomplishments that I don’t mind having happen outside of Rp. Anything major development will just not really happen.
Yay! We had it right! Year 35 seems to be on the money!
I wish they would release their timeline already but it would be easier if they just did WoW=RL timeline. Just saying.
now that they’ve confirmed they’re not going to rebuild gilneas or lordareon or anything i don’t care
the only things i could have cared about with the time skip were changes to the world and that’s not happening
Ah, nothing like a good five year stretch of peace to enjoy stability and reflect.
Pointedly ignoring the smoldering tree and gassed-out Lordaeron.
Yessiree, nothing to do now but relax.
I really love how this basically means the Night Elves and Worgen have been homeless for… seven years now?
If I wasn’t so over it I’d be foaming at the mouth, but instead I like to imagine there’s a cardboard city around the Anduin and Varian statues.
That’s right. Peace and reflection means no rebuilding.
enekie I think you meant this as a joke but I’d let you do this genuinely
It’s not a “proposed” timeskip. It’s the lore of the game at this point.
Pffff five years big whoop!
~ laughs in impossibly dumb immortal Draenei lifespan ~
I mean, swapping some NPCs around and adding some new dialogue isn’t that hard …
Playing up the long-term ecological damage of the wars, one after the other and using more and more exotic and dangerous weaponry no less, has done massive damage and with the populations depleted, the resources all but expended, global trade annihilated and everyone’s economies absolutely gutted … the whole ‘we built this city in a fortnight’ glory days are over.
Wouldn’t mind seeing a lot of the NPCs in the Drag swapped out for Forsaken, with Deathguard patrolling Orgrimmar alongside the Longwalkers, Grunts and Head-Hunters. Maybe some more Forsaken scattered amongst Silvermoon as well, specifically focused on either erasing the Dread Scar or trying to coax the free-willed Undead to join them specifically.
Wouldn’t mind seeing the Gilneans occupying a lot of Old Town, and the Kaldorei split between the green, natural areas of Stormwind and the docks, with Sentinels and Prowlers aiding the Stormwind Guard. Would also adore seeing both the Worgen and Kaldorei spreading out to Duskwood, Redridge and Westfall and bringing their unique gifts and abilities to those regions to settle there.
Dialogue between patrolling guards, NPCs hawking their wares and even ‘Stay awhile and listen’ commentary is not hard to implement. The hardest and most time consuming part is going to be making sure everything lines up, lore-wise and story-wise, and then giving the OK for the actual process.
Leaving Lordaeron and Gilneas as still partially destroyed gives up a 10.1 or 10.2 plot-hook where we’re finally able to mass produce a counter-agent to the Blight, ironically called ‘Blessing’, which is distilled from the breath-weapons and blood of the Five Flights and trace elements of Azerite, Titanic alchemy and Wild God essence, that can restore the land.
It’s incredibly difficult to create, only Alexstraza knows the formula, and naturally will not share it because of what we’ve done, and can only be applied over a small area at the time. We have to earn every vial of the stuff from her via reputation and weekly quests, and in turn we get to decide who needs the stuff more.
Giving it to the Forsaken/Worgen pushes a bar forward towards the slow restoration of their respective homelands, which increases morale, reduces food consumption amongst the populace as more of the refugees can go home, and lowers the chance of riots amongst these populations.
Giving it to Orgrimmar/Stormwind restores the damaged farmlands of these nations, which increases food production, erases some pollution and lowers the chance of riots from the Orcs/Humans over food and space in their capitals.
Give it to Silvermoon/Azure Isles to restore the ecological damage there and help these beleaguered peoples. In exchange for the vials, Silvermoon/Azure Isles provides magical artifice and expertise, which provides various boons and QoL improvements for a week to both the player and their respective factions, but there’s no food production increase and the potential for riots increase due to this.
This could be the source of a PvP scenario, where the Horde and Alliance have to work together to fight against rebels/mercenaries/cultists (other Horde/Alliance players) who stole a shipment for themselves and plan to use it selfishly/sell it to the highest bidder/twist the properties of the Blessing, and need to be stopped.
It could also be used for scenarios to show-case the rebuilding of other zones and Blizzard could use their Phasing Technology to allow players to go back and forth between these states, which could also be used to increase the levels of these zones, as well as change up the enemy types and show slow progress, such as grass slowly growing across the Dread Scar, but will never fully heal it, or Gilneas losing the Blight-Mist that covers it and some areas of the region becoming brighter and less haunted-looking as a result.
We’re not expecting Cataclysm-levels of change after, what, the shortest production time of a Expansion in WoW history right on the heels of the worst expansion released in MMO history, let alone WoW itself, but slow, small, easily accessible evidence that the world really is healing and the factions are finally clawing back some ground, and some hope, would be well received at this point.
Ohhhhhhhh. Sorry, proposed was clearly not the right word.
English isn’t my first language, believe it or not, and every now and then I choose an odd word 