I started in Wrath, moved on to FF14 for a bit for a time, and recently came back to mix things up!
And to clarify, I’m certainly not opposed to writing backstories! I love writing stories! I’m just a bit less enthused when it’s forced due to, what I can assume, a desire to further distance us from the events of SL.
(Feel I should say, I forgot my old account info so just…got a new account…)
Leaving aside the personal impact, and very pointedly avoiding getting into any sort of debate with Jalanili, who is entirely welcome to feel how they feel…
I look at it from two standpoints, one of a plausible world history and one of game design.
For the former (and acknowledging that I’m forced to use an extremely loose definition of “plausible”), Azeroth and its peoples really need a break already, having gone from disaster to catastrophe to emergency with barely a breath between for in-game decades now. It’s a wonder there’s anyone left alive, and I’m sure the rabbits are coming to us for tips on procreation. Three years isn’t much…an entire human generation might not be enough…but at least it’s something.
From the game design standpoint, we can’t really have long periods in game where nothing is going on content-wise. (Stop laughing, you know what I mean.) It’s a game about heroic adventures, so players need big new things to be doing or else they’ll spend their time and cash elsewhere.
Those two viewpoints are rather difficult to reconcile, and really the second one is going to be the controlling factor, which is how the first one has become the history of a rapid series of dumpster fires. But at least with the timeskip, there’s some acknowledgement to the first.
There is no perfect solution, but we got some advance warning…and really, RP is just one long series of “how the hell does my character deal with THIS nonsense” decisions anyhow, which should be old hat to most of us. So I find I can probably cope with this too.
I could vibe with this reason if they didn’t p much say everything in the background is gonna be timelocked unless they can make something for it. Of course I get the ‘show things in the game’ logic. But come on: if you know very well you’re never gonna make content in those old zones again purely for the limits of your game design, then make a short story for them. Don’t make the ONLY one be something as minor as a wedding between two characters, when a timeskip would affect the world itself.
It’s the least they could do to throw us a bone and give us some fresh ideas for RPing in those places after Shadowlands.
I’m never going to argue against them giving us more material in-game that keeps the older zones relevant to current lore.
But I also think about the sheer number of locations in Azeroth that deserve such updates, and how they’d need to keep doing it every xpac…and about the quality of writing we already cope with.
Ha HA! Too late, I’m here!
…no seriously though, I get that giving the world a “break” to rest from constant turmoil is valid. I just don’t think that’s why they did it, especially with the lack of overworld updates. They could at least sweep the refugees out of major hubs. Like you mentioned, it’s the personal, character-level stories that I’m irritated about, rather than the overarching world. Some roleplayers who don’t recognize many of the game’s major events (I’m generally not one of them) have already been living in a peaceful world for years now.
Then again, it’s still the alpha. They might do a couple of passes at general flavor NPC updates later.
I think their reasoning behind that is that the devs are too frightened that any sort of overworld or super grounded expansion with no ‘brave new world’ to explore wouldn’t appeal to people that much.
Every expansion, even Cataclysm to a degree, had new places to explore and visit. Having a new continent has been a staple to World of Warcraft and so, I think them changing the current world (That isn’t the capitol cities) in any meaningful way, they might not feel that will appeal to people as much as “OOH! NEW LAND TO ESSSPLOORE! 
”
I, personally, would love an expansion dedicated to world building, just a couple years of peace and side stories with overworld activities and shiz!
You may not have to agree with them, but if you’re gonna call someone out on taking things far too personally, try not to end it on leaving a personal note – It really displays that glass house of yours.
If you recently came back from Wrath, how did you handle it between Wrath and recently? That is a gap in time. This really is no different. It is just things playing ‘off screen’.
Damn dancing Drae… 
Yeah, they might. We might even like the results. But I’m not betting the farm.
I think I misunderstood your post! Tynne wasn’t a character in Wrath. I made her when I resubbed.
If I recycled my last characters, sure, but I didn’t. I made a new one and leveled Tynne up.
I have one character and her husband that are due late this December. Unless written in backstory with that RP partner, we have to timeskip 3 years of their life.
This character here has several relationships, some more solid than others (All know about each other and are connected to each other.) It leaves us discussing several things like-
Do these two make it or do they break up?
If still together, what is their relationship status? Is one of them open to the idea of marriage again? Would another accept an engagement?
Do they have kids with the other person, or does that person have more children with another partner?
That’s just for personal life.
For his work-
What has the Argent Advance been up to in the time skip? Are people still their current ranks? Who has migrated away from that idea and left? Who has gotten promoted?
Who still holds Argent ideals but has greater priorities with the finding of the Dragon Isles?
It’s gonna be a bit of a mess.
Personally I am a big fan. The amount of constant planet ending events happening back to back is just insane. Remember, there was close to a 20 year gap between Warcraft 2 and 3. There needs to be time for the setting to calm down and adjust after these events. Personally, I don’t think they have gone far enough. I want them to acknowledge that each expansion being only a year long (with some exceptions) is much too short of time. Are you going to tell me that we fought back the lich kings armies, defeated the blue dragon aspect, and took down an old god all in a year’s time? No, and it’s ridiculous to think that is how it would actually happen. I want them to go back and add MORE time to these events, and some time between expansions. Out of all of the constant retcons they do, I think this would be the only good one besides axing Medan.
In regards to how it affects RP, I’ve roleplayed for quite some time both in MMOs and in tabletop and it’s nice to take a look at the character occasionally and gloss over some of the mundane times of their life. I don’t need to RP out every weekly meet up, dinner with friends, or family gathering.
As a Feral Worgen RP main, who’s my own canon is Feral Worgen live similar lifespans to real life dogs (up to 15 or so years old), it really puts a big spanner in the works. Thallanar was born shortly before the Shattering, so that makes him roughly 9 years old right now. After the timeskip, he turns 12, which is getting up there in years for a character like him. Then again, Thallanar is a Druid and can probably find ways to extend his lifespan.
The events that happened in each expansion each took roughly a year. But there have been lulls all along, they were the canonical gaps between the release of the final raid of an expansion and the launch of the next one that happened in realtime. Since WoW came out at least, the timeline hasn’t been event, event, event, it’s been more like, event, year of quiet. Event, year of quiet.
This is a post from Danauser explaining it.
The issue is that the official timelines do not put any time between these events. It simply lists a year, and those two years are cuddled right next to one another. This implies that if there is downtime, it is less than a year. Burning Crusade is simply listed as Year 26, while The War against the Lich King is just listed as Year 27. We of course do not the details down to the exact month or date. But all officially published information (Included the immediately retcon’d chronicle books) simply has these events happening back to back to back with minimal downtime. Even in the referenced post, he references that BC is year 26 and that Pandaria at least starts in Year 30. That is 4 years for 4 expansions. 4 Years in which we explored all of outland, defeated the Lich King, Malygos, Yogg Saron, Deathwing, Ragnaros (Again), All of the Twilight’s Hammer cult, and stepped foot into Pandaria. Insanity.
can’t speak, no mouth, inner screaming
looks at FF14
Y’alls story calendar moves?!
Both sides I see have valid points on one hand, a time skip is a time for reprieve and reset for many players. Peacetime and long periods before the next big thing allows room for the player to do things for their character that would otherwise take months/years to reach.
On the other hand, it is lost time. One imagines that our characters just aren’t sitting around comfy doing nothing, a lot of stories might be put on hold or get glossed over, character development that would otherwise happen organically may end up being expedited. And it also is a conflict of personal canon between people are in loop of the timeskip or are not, guilds and such. One imagines that someone who just recently joined wouldn’t be just “the newbie” for three years straight.
As a Draenei, totally don’t mind a time-skip because what’s a couple of years anyway?
I am so not going to be processing that the timeskip has happened, to be honest. It messes with timelines of the short lived races a lot to have time skips. I’ll acknowledge it if someone else does but otherwise I’ll be handwaving timeywimey as I have been since forever.