Draenei aren’t from Azeroth so they really don’t get a vote on that either way hah.
But that said, you’re right to a degree; but, Night Elves weren’t part of WoW until WC3. The timeline began with WC1 and the opening of the Dark Portal, so that’s where the meta started it, and according to Blizz it’s also the canon year for the universe - so, that’s where we’re at.
Does it make sense? Not necessarily, but it is what we’re stuck with.
Actually it was four years after his supposed birth as Christ is listed as being born in 4 BCE.
The point remains - it’s his birth and whatever else that is marked as the reset point for the calendar.
Some dude who people hyped up was born, and bam - new calendar.
A potentially world ending invasion of demon fueled jerks from another planet is a step above some dude being born, and it’s definitely worthy of the protagonists of the story resetting their calendar.
That and a bunch of Europeans who followed that calendar enslaved much of the rest of the planet for awhile.
The calendar isn’t universal, the Mayans had a different one, and the Chinese, Coptics, and Jews still follow a much different numbering.
Honestly I don’t think it’s that bad (rare for me to defend a Blizzard writing decision, but here we go).
The EK Alliance culturally dominates the playable factions: Stormwind, Lordaeron, Ironforge, Gnomeregan, Gilneas, Kul Tiras, Silvermoon, the collected not-Silvermoon-exiles and the internment camp survivors who settled Orgrimmar, most particularly human-educated Thrall (nine factions total) all have plausible reasons to consider the first Dark Portal invasion as the most consequential event of their lives that sets into motion every other super-consequential event. This leaves Darnassus, Exodar, Mechagon, the Army of the Light, the Wandering Isle immigrants, Thunder Bluff, Highmountain, the Darkspear, the Bilgewater Cartel, Zandalar, Mag’har, Suramar and Voldunai (thirteen factions) out of the playable factions as not having a strong reason to use that calendar.
Most of these factions could plausibly follow their own calendars:
In such case, the only other alternative that could gather a plurality would be a Sundering calendar, which could get the Zandalar, Darkspear, Voldunai (if they use the Zandalar calendar just by virtue of proximity), Darnassus, Silvermoon, SM Refugees, Suramar, Thunder Bluff, Highmountain… which is just nine again, and depends heavily on the weight of cultures that weren’t socio-politically engaged with the rest of the playable factions until very recently. (Suramar, Voldunai, Highmountain; less recently but still quite recent: Darnassus, Thunder Bluff)
Right but in this fantasy universe that isn’t the case - there was no enslavement. Humans and dwarves and elves were just the main canon races on Azeroth, and the only one whose story we got. So, it was their calendar - as simple as that.
Again:
The game has followed the calendar of the Eastern Kingdoms. And to be fair, we as the players are really the only ones who seem to be keeping earnest track of time hah.
Most definitely, but Blizzard would never bother putting that kind of work into the story; they go bare minimum on things, unfortunately.
And then you have Draenei and Elves, who are near immortal - does time really matter to them at all in the first place?
Varian and Valeera as well as Broll beg to disagree.
I highly doubt that the Night Elves keep a calendar at all having rejected that as part of the trappings of Azshara’s Empire. I suspect that the Blood Elves started one at the founding of Quel’thelas and the rise of the Sunstrider dynasty, the Sunstriders strike me as egotistical enough.
Why shouldn’t it be? For many of different faiths the year of Christ’s birth has little significance and yet it is what the world uses to start enumerating years.
The size or importance of an event doesn’t need to be the determining factor for year 1. Otherwise, we’d probably be using when the giant asteroid hit the earth wiping out the dinosaurs and 90% of all life as year 1. It just has to be a universally accepted standard so everyone can be on the same page.
So what? I challenge you to name ONE syndicated series where the dates mattered outside of one episode.
Bonanza? Hawaii 5-0? All In The Family? Thunderbirds Are Go? in Space: 1999! Dr. Russell specifically avoids mentioning the year, only keeping a numerical count since Breakaway as the year 1999 was an essential element of the brand. (In Season 2, they did away with her opening monologue entirely so you didn’t even get the day count anymore.)
The dates don’t matter. Only the events do, and that’s in a venue that’s not strictly episodic, like most Television series.
Yes that’s
That’s why I said “at least star trek was designed for syndication”
Because no one cares about chronology in syndication ever
The implication being that Star Trek has a much better excuse to not establish things like star dates
Star Trek BARELY made it into syndication. Do you know what the syndication guidelines were back then? A minimum of 100 episodes so that you’d have a decent package of shows without repeats.
That’s it. There’s no requirement about dating guidelines, story order or none of that crap. Star Trek barely made the grade at 79 and they had to reuse and cut up “The Cage” to get that much. (In comparison the opening scene for the last Doctor Who special starts out with the line. … Previously on Dr. Who…709 episodes ago…)
Star Trek did not break any new grounds in syndication… Syndication had been a tried and true package in selling material to non core markets, it’s pretty much how TOS made it’s actual profit.
That’s right… quite frankly, no one really does. Because it’s generally not an element of the story. Charlie X could have occured in July as opposed to just before Thanksgiving, and all that would have meant was that there would be a difference in the one and only line of dialogue we ever got from the Enterprise cook. (Yes, Virginia there was a cook on the Enterprise… for exactly one episode, and one movie.) Save in very fringe cases in which shows were specifically designed in story arcs and Star Trek before DS9 was never one of them.
…I’m confused why you’re explaining well-known facts of television history to me.
Look, Trek in the 60s (or even today, given it actively eschews all canon that is off-TV or film) isn’t the model for comparison here, the model is ‘expanded universes’ – World of Warcraft came out in 2004. By that point, comic books had been running on heavy continuity stories for three decades, the Star Wars EU for 14 years, Halo for 3 years. Mass Effect has already begun and the groundwork for Dragon Age has been long underway. In other words, World of Warcraft begins around the time of the rise of the Expanded Universe in merchandising, and every single one of these* cares a lot more about order of events than WoW.
* The Keeper of the Holocron position was created in 2000, and is especially notable I think given that Star Wars' use of its EU was so effective that it became the general industry model.
Let’s at least compare apples to apples, a lot has changed since “Danger, Will Robinson!”
Comic books in the Marvel and DC lines have been resetting their entire timelines about every 5 years or so. And frequently even after such resets anachronistic characters that were popular enough would still be retained.
When Disney took over Star Wars, they chucked the entire Expanded Universe out the airlock. And again, when do dates matter in Perry Mason, Mayberry, or all the other syndicated shows packaged on networks such as MeTV? It is an extremely unusal and rare case for dates to matter.
The entire reason I invoked that for Star Trek was that syndication is not a situation where you really care about continuity whatsoever, let alone chronology; when a character got removed on a syndicated show, most of the times they’d be replaced by another character who could effectively perform the same role and in any case they’d almost be completely forgotten about. However, this continuity-free version of writing has basically disappeared in the modern media era, where it is always easy to see things in the correct order, and even modern sitcoms frequently have a continuity.
Yes, the entire EU aside from the television series was thrown out of continuity when Disney took over. Crisis on Infinite Earths, New 52, Heroes Reborn are all big events that soft or hard reset canon. That’s a great piece of evidence for your argument about canon being difficult to maintain, particular in comicslandia at all with a year setting of ‘now’, not an example of people not caring about chronology.
I will say that comics having a default time setting of ‘now’ is a good example of dates not being necessary to have a strong concept of continuity, but that’s almost entirely unique to the superhero genre as far as expanded universes go.
I think its year 35 or 36.
Time does matter in a story. You can write a story occurring in a few minutes, seconds, a lifetime, or a millennia. Having a basis in time matters to the story you are telling.
We’re talking about species/race wide.
The Horde enslaved the Draenei on Draenor, but on Azeroth, it’s less wide spread.
Time matters… dates however rarely do.
Time matters as a dramatic element. “I love you Flash, but we only have 18 hours to save the Earth!”
But you generally don’t have looks to the calendar to set a date, because the date doesn’t matter.
As far as I’m aware, it’s year 33, which supposedly started around patch 7.3.5. Wowpedia cites a couple references for this including a Twitter post from Alex Afrasiabi (which is unfortunately deleted now so can’t supply a link), and a light mention of it in Before the Storm.