Time travel, Timelines (WoD) and Shadowlands

I mean, how it works? there is different Shadowlands in multiple Time-lines?

Or there is only one Shadowland for all timelines? Lets take Ner’zhul for exemple, he Killed him on WoD and he was dead on our timeline. So we have 2 Ner’zhul souls in the same Shadowlands?

If there is multiple shadowlands, one for each timeline, could we “time-travel” again to the point when the machine of death was broke to discover what caused it and revert it?

Just to remember: Twisting Nether do not have “time” itself, since Demons like Archimonde could also travel in time and space to go to AU-Draenor…

I was confused while writing this, and while i was doing it, i ended even more confused.

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It works however it does because it doesn’t particularly matter to the story that’s being told, similarly to the establishment of the multiple timelines and so on that paved the way for these sorts of questions in the first place. If there’s no explanation right now it’ll be smoothed over by ignoring it or with some footnote on twitter somewhere.
Make no mistake though: WoW’s story would be stupid, told poorly, and make no sense even if it WAS consistent. A story doesn’t need to have a giant chart somewhere rigorously spelling out every atom of a fictional universe to be good, and having one wouldn’t save this franchise from itself.

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You’re asking for rules when it’s abundantly clear there aren’t any.

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There is one Ner’zhul, because all alternate realities are just echoes or versions of ourselves they weave into one thread making the rope that is Ner’zhul. There is no multiple Shadowlands, like there isn’t multiple Burning Legions. It’s one Twisting Nether and just ONE Shadowlands filled with infinite places for souls to exist in.

Time is not a concept which exists as we know it in the Shadowlands. What we perceive as time is how we conceptualize past, present and future. This isn’t the same in the Shadowlands, so try not to think about it too much or it’ll cause your head to hurt. Basically time is relative both linear and in flux, a million variations, yet only one.

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There was an Lorekeeper interview about this in September with Steve Danuser about this. Below is his exact answer to it.

"This is a complicated question. How do you deal with things like alternate Draenor? There was a Draka there. What is that Draka? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she related to the Draka in Shadowlands that we see? Or is there another Draka? We know that in Warlords of Draenor, Velen of that universe died. Does that mean there is a Velen in the Shadowlands? But what about the Velen in Azeroth? All these things are very complicated questions.

The way I would have you think about it is think of a rope… If you look at a rope, it is one thing, right? It’s something that you can grab onto, you can hold it, you can see it; think of that as a character. Think of that rope as Draka or Velen.

If you look at that rope more closely, you can see there are different threads that make up the rope. There are different twines that pull together, and you can pull off one of these threads if you want. But it’s still a rope, and each of those threads you can think of as one of the realities of the character, one of the streams of time… There is a thread that is the Draka from Draenor we visited in the Warlords of Draenor. There is another thread that is Draka on Azeroth as we know her… And there are many other threads that could be other realities that we never peered into. But all of those threads at some time come together to make that rope. And remember also that, as you’ll see, that there are many characters in the Shadowlands when they refer to time, they usually say that time is not a construct of Death. Time and Death are not related. Death is about eternity, not linear time. The manner in which these threads come together, that can take a very long time from mortal perceptions. Those threads can be separated for a time, but sooner or later, they do combine to make one rope that is that character. You can think of it as the threads of that rope, all the individual threads, are just waiting. And over time, they will come together but they can exist as separate entities for a time. That still doesn’t change the fact that they are part of one rope."

Thus one Shadowlands, with AU Ner’zhul becoming a thread within MU Ner’zhul’s rope. And because Death is about eternity and not linear time, when AU Velen died he became apart of MU Velen’s rope, joining the main soul in the afterlife, even though MU Velen is currently still alive.

Though it is currently unknown exactly how souls within alternative timeways that don’t exist within the main timeway, such as Uther Menethil*, or those from an alternative timeline making their home in the main timeway, such as Overlord Geya’rah, function in this system.

*Uther Menethil was from the time way Thrall visited in the Twilight of the Aspects novel.

One of their stupider writing choices…

Well it’s not stupid just 4th dimensional mechanics at play. We as 3rd dimensional beings cannot understand concurrent outside of time nonlinear thinking that apparently the demons in the Twisting Nether understood. Don’t even get me started on how we even wrap our minds around the logic or disordered reality that the Burning Legion is housed in. It’s both concurrent and infinite, but not really… cause Argus yet… still not always.

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Honestly, everything became messed up when we were told the Legion transcends space and time and is the same in all realities. (Really REALLY makes you wonder how they ever lost.)

At the end of the day it’s best to not think about it until told otherwise.

Introducing 4th dimensional mechanics into a story like Warcraft’s is ****ing stupid.

Like, the Legion’s motivations don’t even make SENSE anymore.

If the Legion really transcends timelines and realities, their supposed “goal” of conquering everything, and burning out all traces of the Void, is literally impossible and pointless. Because no matter how much they do it, there will always be other realities with more.

And why would they even bother attacking our Azeroth more than once? If it didn’t work the first time, why wouldn’t they just do it again in a different timeline with the knowledge of what they screwed up the first time? Like, that’s what they’re doing in WoD. But why did they attack OUR Azeroth with the Iron Legion? Why wouldn’t they attack the AU’S Azeroth instead? And when WoD failed AGAIN, why would they go back to invading our Azeroth? Why wouldn’t they just try again with a THIRD Draenor?

When you’re possibilities are literally limitless, nothing you do matters, so why should anyone care what happens?

You’re thinking third dimensionally. They’re concurrently attacking several worlds and versions of reality all at once across time and space. Infinite wars, being fought by infinite demons, led by one echelon of demon lords led by a singular Sargeras. They were at once and in a million different worlds fighting across the universes. That’s what you are not grasping.

Same goes with the Shadowlands infinite souls from an infinite variant universes all going to be judged by the Arbiter and who’s souls are weaved into one rope yet each variant version of us are, but threads in that rope which concurrently are being judged, ordered and dispensed with. Infinitely and beyond time and space.

We as humans in our limited capacity can barely grasp this notion. I prefer the Doctor Who quote,

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”

Am I? Or are the writers not grasping that, and you’re giving them WAY too much credit assuming they are.

The Legion exists across all dimensions and times, but there’s still only ONE of each individual demon. There’s still only one Archemonde, and only one Kil’Jaeden. Even though those demons originally came from NON-4th Dimensional People. Which means there should be an unlimited number of them being created across unlimited timelines.

And even though there’s only 1 of each of them, for some reason, our dimension and time is repeatedly attacked by Sargeras’s two top men, and then Sargeras himself. If they really had access to the infinite, wouldn’t it be statistically improbably that all 3 of them would end up focusing on one timeline? And when **** goes south in our dimension, why wouldn’t they focus on a different one?

Don’t…****ing…DARE try and use that quote as an actual explanation.

The entire POINT of that Doctor Who quote is to NOT serve as an explanation. It’s for the writers to handwave the fact that there IS no explanation because there’s no consistency and rules that they are following and hey, just don’t think about it, because we didn’t want to write an answer.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TimeyWimeyBall

Forget Shadowlands, I’m still up at night thinking about the Socrethar Issue. If we throw that under the rug, literally anything is possible.

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Only one reality matters to the integrity of creation. I.e. the true reality which progresses according to the true timeline. All other realities spin out from the “main” one as unstable possibilities, before either fading away as its progression past the point of their creation makes them less and less “possible” or being fed back into it, at which point they cease to be their own reality any more. The Burning Legion only explicitly targets the true reality because with its destruction, all other realities will cease to exist along with it, and no further possible realities will be produced.

I’m not sure what’s so confusing about it. Chronicle and other sources have repeatedly iterated that while other timelines and realities exist, only this one (namely the one we’re in, with our universe and our Azeroth) has permanence, while the rest are all transitory and dependent upon our reality’s continuance for them to exist at all.

None of the other realities are divorced from this. AU Draenor is its own reality now, but at some point in the past it was literally the same Draenor of our reality, before some variance at that specific point caused it to shunt off along an increasingly divergent course of events. We don’t know when that point was - it may have been a fifty years ago, a hundred, maybe even a thousand or more - but prior to that point (that very instant) there would have been no AU Draenor, because it was just the Draenor in the prime reality. And in the meantime, before and since then an infinite spectrum of other realities had similarly spun off from every instant along differing possible events both minor and significant.

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Exactly one reality matters most, but all souls whether variant AU souls converge into one prime soul housed by the prime timeline. Regardless of what happens to the other realities. Those threads merge into one. I think people who want simple answers are not likely to get it. We cant confirm if they just focus on the prime timeline, but it’s safe to assume they did at least with Azeroth.

As far as we know they were unlimited demons. They were concurrently attacking all realities. They were invading the Shadowlands, parallel dimensions, EVERYWHERE. They focused on Azeroth Prime, because that was the will of Sargeras. Our Azeroth in our timeline was the main focus of the Legion and so it was ordered and done by the lords of the Burning Legion.

The problem with conceptualizing infinite demon armies, is how do we even present that in game? We can’t. So they tried to show glimmers on Argus with them concurrently invading zones on other planets, but lore wise it would infinite worlds and infinite armies all fighting and being sent out from all over the Twisting Nether where all these demons are being housed. Argus became a focal point for the Burning Legion because they could expedite the regeneration of their demons there and send them out to worlds the Legion had “special” interests on.

It’s hard to imagine that non-4th dimensional people becoming transcendent demons who exist outside reality, but now can invade other realities. They can and they did. What happened to their non demonic variant souls in the infinite? Well Othaar became Socrethar in Draenor showing that maybe he was always fated to become a demon, but maybe if a non demon soul thread dies it gets judged by the arbiter and that tread of the rope that becomes a demon waits as a broken sliver for the rest which will never come. We don’t know the exact mechanics of what happens when a non-demon soul becomes a demon one. We do know the threads inevitably join into one in the ideal scenario. Maybe when it doesn’t they just become echoes and eventually fade away. Maybe they don’t.

None of this is satisfactory, because we cannot see it in game. We cant logistically even imagine how this works. How are all the demonic worlds within the Burning Legion’s domain working and how many are being used to send demons off world to the various dimensions to burn away life there? We don’t know. We can’t know. What we do know that worlds that accept the Burning Legion become demonic worlds and their sentient beings and animals become demons. What about the variations of those world that don’t? They burn and their souls feed the fel flame. Those that don’t go to the Shadowlands. Never completing the rope that their alternate selves severed. That’s all we shall ever know.

Fel is Chaos as is Warp(Purple Energies ravaging Netherstorm). It is unsurprising for Chaos to fray pieces of Rope leaving it uneven and incomplete.

The Rope of Souls for every Soul is torn and incomplete due to Chaos.

Yeah but…why? In infinite realities, why is our Azeroth any more important? There’s no reason it would be.

And are there also an infinite number of Sargerases that DIDN’T fall?

Sorry, but it’s still a stupid writing decision. And going “Oooooh, your third dimensional mind just can’t comprehend it” is bull****, because that mean’s the writers, with their 3D brains, can’t comprehend the thing they wrote.

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Honestly they messed up.

The Time travel alternate reality never made sense and there is no reason to read into it. Its just a massive plot hole in the story.

Basically the writers thought going back to old draenor would be cool and didn’t really think about how it would work into the larger story.

It would be easier to tie the threads together if Wod was retcon out and they just said MU Guldan was brought back to life through his demon soul and then Legion happen.

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The only non-stupid way to do that would have been to make the entire expac a Caverns of Time portal.

“Garrosh is going back in time to change the past, we have to stop him!”

And the expac ends with us actually fixing the proper flow of events. Just like every other CoT portal.

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We saw Socrethar turn into a demon in AU Draenor. Demons exist across all timelines, so he was either revived by Argus or still in the Nether from us killing his body in BC… so when mortal-Socrethar turned demon in WoD, did his demon soul and consciousness suddenly fly across dimensions to enter his body? Was he interrupted from whatever he was doing elsewhere? If mortal-Socrethar ascends to demonhood in lots of different AU’s, how is his demon consciousness present in all of them at the same time? Is he yanked across reality each time his mortal form becomes demon???

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Only one Sargeras and he fell. I know that bothers a lot of people, but one one set of titan pantheon from the prime timeline. We don’t know why they decided to write it this way, but that’s the answer.

Sargeras during the War of the Ancients was able to glimmer one look to the sleeping titan soul and basically became obsessed our timeline’s Azeroth. He has the hots for Azeroth and that’s why. He’s aroused and she is the only titan in the multiverse who can satisfy him. In other words he’s obsessed.