Just wondering. Chronicles Vol 3 says the Northrend Campaign was 27y after the Dark Portal and Cataclysm 28 y. Is it correct to assume each expansion event takes about a year canonically? Im not sure if any devs clarified this before, thanks
Itâs like classic Star Trek in which the Stardate was just a bunch of random numbers spitballed into the script⌠they never bother keeping track of the dates.
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which frankly boggles me; at least Star Trek was designed for syndication
I keep an internal encyclopedia just to keep track of everything that happens in one book I write or one D&D campaign I run, how do they just⌠skip figuring out something as simple as year chronologies as a company
Iâm not even saying it to be critical I just straight-up would like to see how you collaborate that extensively for that long and never get into a habit of setting firm timelines just to keep everything straight for your own accounting
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Because like in classic Star Trek⌠it doesnât matter. When the Harbormaster tells you the story of his friend itâs more rich for the fact that he says âThe Second War, or was it the Third⌠itâs hard to keep them all straightâ then if he just named a time and date.
The numbers donât matter whether itâs the year or the calendar, itâs the atmosphere and the story that matters.
sure, you donât tell a story using a timeline
but itâs v. hard for me to fathom writing a story for long where you donât have things pinned down in concrete even if you present them in a more vague fashion
(although Cyrusâ friend isnât something major enough to be in a rush to pin down unless Cyrusâ backstory is going to feature extensively)
Not even then⌠because the date itself isnât part of the story.
Now if you were telling the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, THAT is an example of when dates would matter.
Pinning things down takes work and man hours, especially given the complexity of all the zones and quests and writers who have to be kept in the loop over years and years of development. And then people make mistakes and you get dinged for not even keeping up with your own loreâall for details that donât matter.
If you keep things vague and only focus on the story-relevant facts, you save yourself work and headache keeping insignificant details consistent.
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Clearly the year of our Lord 2020.
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I prefer the term Common Era. Your Lord is not mine.
We are in year 33 (bfa). Every expansion is 1 year (Cataclysm has 2 years, the leveling revamp and the patches content).
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I still find this utterly goofy. Like⌠How is there any civilization left after the all the world rending catastrophic stuff that has happened apparently back to back to back.
This is why I hope they do a legit timeskip during shadowlands⌠just to help make sense of stuff.
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By my musing, if Blizzard remotely cared about logistics, the Alliance should pretty much just be dwarves and ARs, while the Horde would pretty much just be Zandalar and Forsaken survivors of UC at this point. Everyone else was either supposed to be a marginal population at some point or has been through repeated meatgrinders or both.
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Honestly considering how microscopic the First War seems in comparison to what weâve experienced since and what weâve learned of Azerothâs past continent-spanning conflicts, having âYear 1â start with the Dark Portal opening seems extremely meta at this point (i.e. âhey everyone, this is when the games started!â) and not like something the whole planet would all agree is so important that it justifies a calendar ârestartâ when world-shattering, geologically transformative events like the War of the Ancients, the Sundering, the Shattering/Cataclysm and the most recent demonic invasion (biggest one ever, remember?) apparently didnât.
At this point between Kalimdor, Northrend and Pandaria, most of the world never even knew the First and Second Wars happened until they made contact with the Eastern Kingdoms long afterward. Heck, for something so allegedly important that its activation seems to have started what amounts to Azerothâs âSecond Age,â after tens of thousands of years of mortals living through global upheavals and calamities that somehow didnât qualify, the Dark Portal barely even comes up in most of WoW.
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Calendars that purely exist to reflect out-of-world chronologies are really common, though I agree. For the purposes of roleplay, I generally assume itâs an EK-based dating system as it was extremely important for the Alliance and Thrall was educated in Lordaeron as part of his enslavement.
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As of right now we know of two dating systems, the first one is ADP/BDP, which uses the first opening of the Dark Portal as year 0. This is the common one, and the one that most Canonical sources like Chronicle uses.
There is also an older date system the Kaldorei traditionally use, that uses the Sundering as year 0. It seems to of mostly fallen out of favor, though.
I imagine there have to be others, which would be fascinating to get to know about. The event that a culture elects to use as âyear 0â tends to tell you a lot about that culture.
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It annoys me too and seems silly. Certain wars weâve had should have at the very least have been 3-5 years.
Also: Idk if this is true but I heard that chronicle said the Second War only lasted a few months? Might not be true but if that is the case thatâs also pretty silly.
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As far as Iâve been able to keep track:
Year 0: Dark portal opens.
Year 4: The First War begins. Stormwind falls.
Year 5: The Second War begins.
Year 7: Second War ends.
Year 8: The Alliance Expedition launches to Draenor, and the Dark Portal is closed/Draenor is destroyed.
Year 15: The Scourge begins to form on Azeroth.
Year 20: The Third War begin with Thrallâs Horde escaping. The Northgate Rebellion occurs. The Scourge ravages Lordaeron, and Jaina flees west to Kalimdor with the survivors. Later, Arthas destroys Quelâthalas.
Year 21: Battle for Mount Hyjal.
Year 22: Battle for the Frozen Throne. Kaelâthas leads the Blood Elves to the Outlands to seek out Illidan.
Year 25: Vanilla happens.
Year 26: Burning Crusade happens.
Year 27: WoTLK happens, including the Nexus war.
Year 28: The Cataclysm happens.
Year 29: Deathwing is finally slain.
Year 30: MoP, and the Fourth War between the Horde and Alliance begins.
Year 31: Garrosh is put on trial as the conflict is brought to a standstill, and the factions agree to a temporary truce. Garrosh then makes his escape.
Alternate Timeline: Year -4: Garrosh arrives on Draenor and convinces Grommash to form the Iron Horde.
Year 31 (cont.): The Iron Horde invades from the alternate Draenor, and WoD happens.
Year 32: Legion happens, and Azeroth is invaded by the Burning Legion once more.
It gets somewhat shaky here because Blizzard.
Year 34: The war against the Legion ends with the defeat of Sargeras, and the impaling of Azeroth. The Fourth War resumes, now called the Blood War, and the Horde and Alliance go at it, starting with Teldrassil.
Year 35: The Blood War/Fourth War ends, and Shadowlands happens?
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What exactly are you expecting in a game with regular poop quests?
We restart the calendar with the year Christ was born, and that seems a bit ridiculous too.
Humankind (even in fantasy) often use major world moments as a basis for time keeping; thatâs nothing new. We label eras based on certain wars or periods of militaristic expansion, or based on major philosophical thinking of the time, etc etc.
Having a world changing genocide and an invasion of evil demon pigs from another planet certain seems worthy of that sort of âcalendar reset notoriety.â
It may be normal for humans on Azeroth, with their extra short life spans.
But thereâs absolutely no sense in having night elves or draenei to use that.
Also, itâs an extremely recent event, and nearly everyone on Azeroth has lived well before that event, so it makes no sense to set it as the calendar zero year.