You know how in Dawn of the Infinites the “True timeline” changed? What if Season of Discovery is us experiencing Azeroth as it was during Classic time in the “New timeline” that we changed to in DotI?
As the final part to getting new crafted void-touched armor, we speak to a shadowy figure, a female elf. What if this is Xalatath interacting with us in this new timeline from before we even knew who she was to influence us in the Dragonflight future?
No. Season of Discovery is not a new timeline, it is its own contained thing. Classic is not, and has never been, meant to be anything but Classic.
This is not a new topic, and I’m positive this discussion will arise again.
This isn’t the first, and probably won’t be the last time this topic comes out.
But no, SoD and classic aren’t alternate timelines. They’re canon:
Continuing the discussion from WoW Community Council Live Chat - December 8:
According to a bluepost it’s vaguely canonical.
It’s giving more background to the world, and it was designed not to tread on the toes of anything pre-established.
basically nothing in lore seems to have changed though, its mostly gameplay changes
Any lore tidbits they’ve added only adds additional info to preexisting concepts, which were largely understood as already being there anyway.
Like people in the Alliance and Hore sharing, converting, and proselytizing their religions to each other. Like Humans worshipping Elune and Nelves worshipping the Light. Something which we all could’ve reasonably assumed existed anyway.
Beyond that yeah, most of it is just gameplay stuff.
I’m sorry, as someone who doesn’t have the time to do SoD where is this lore/quest?
Here’s a thread that compiles pretty much all the lore shown off in SoD:
The Human worshipping Elune and Nelf worshipping the Light specifically comes from the Priest rune quests.
I just wish this stuff was added to the wiki, as currently pretty much nothing has been added which makes all this new lore quite inaccessible to people.
I find it super odd proselytizing would be a thing in any warcraft religion. It’s never been a thing IRL either outside of Christianity, Islam, and perhaps Buddhism (depending who you ask).
So… it’s never been a thing outside of two of the three largest world religions and the lion’s share of the fourth largest religion?
(It’s not depending on who you ask – there are branches which are distinctly proselytizing and distinctly not-proselytizing of Buddhism and the former are by far more representative)
Well… across the gulf of time and the wide breadth of religions that have existed or do exist that is not really a very long list.
you start getting heavily into the question of ‘what is a religion’ when you take anything but the most immediate view, and that is a subject about which much ink has been spilled with no satisfactory consensus, though there are areas more and less accepted
if you want to highlight how incredibly grounded in the American experience WoW lore is and how unimaginative it is, I’m right there with you, but given that the religions we have are patently obvious pastiches of things familiar to Blizzard leadership – proselytizing doesn’t seem at all weird since those are also features of the inspiring religions.
The countdown to Xera has begun. This thread shall self-destruct in 3… 2…
I wish to know how Xe’ra will play into all of this!!
By Illidan being an edgelord, that’s how
I am scared! I shall be in the nearest bush with popcorn and hot chocolate as this thread reaches its nuclear meltdown phase. 
Oh I do not disagree with you, I just think it is odd. It does not take a very large amount of study to see better models for most religions on Azeroth. Like Kaldorei faith likely should be taking cues from Shinto, for example.
Then again it did not occur to their californian brains that if you go far enough south it is in fact cold, which is why azeroth’s climate is as bonkers as it is.
While I disagree with the idea that Season of Discovery is or should ever be an alternate timeline, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tickled by some of these additions - having Xal’atath cameo in Classic makes the story there feel more alive. It’s what WC3R shoulda been.
Why Shinto specifically?
Seems like Night Elven religion has no similarities at all with Shinto, nor do the Night Elves have any aesthetic links to Shintoism or the Japanese at all.
The Kaldorei don’t even live in a similar environment to the Japanese, not sure why you think Shinto would be the best to tie Kaldorei religion to.
Honestly there isn’t much irl crossover with real religions when it comes to the Kaldorei, they just kinda have their own thing going on. Blizz pulled from a variety of very basic religious aesthetics to embed into the Night Elves.
I think aesthetically, but honestly not even the Church of the Holy Light has any ties to irl Christianity.
Largely, a lot of what they borrow is aesthetics and leave all actual worship/structure for these religions as vague as possible. Hell, most of them don’t even have names.
Like, there isn’t even a central ‘God’ to the Church of the Holy Light. They just worship the enigmatic cosmic power of the Light and what it represents to them. Closest they have to a religious figure is ‘Tyr’ and it would seem like worship of him specifically deconstructed into a vague veneration of him in the modern day.
It’s also just natural that people living alongside each other would share religious beliefs anyway, even if it’s not outright proselytizing a new belief system.
Well, for example there are Shimenawa all around moonglade marking out sacred trees. The Wild Gods basically fill out the same roles as the Kami do in shinto, with shrines dedicated to them as embodiments of nature. Elune fills a role akin to that of Amaterasu. Then, of corse, you have their usage of Torii gates.
Kaldorei culture in general is Korean, Japanese, and just a dash of pre-christan Celtic blended up and stuffed into a Eilistraee Drow shaped package. Over time that has gotten somewhat watered down to generic wood elves iteration #122210-B, but it is not where they began.