Lean in harder in Vanilla on a recovery process after the Third War or the ramifications of it for races relevant to it. Night Elves wouldn’t be playable, maybe eventually in a Pandaren style situation where it’s just ‘’‘mercenary’‘’ work where they spy on both sides and as a real faction mainly just care about other things than faction war, no teldrassil.
More explanation as to what was happening on outland between TFT-TBC to get the characters to that point, so we can at least see where Kael’thas started tripping and understand it better.
No Val’sharah in Legion, and prolly no Suramar except as the ruins from wc3. Anduin wouldn’t be high king, High King as a concept would be renamed High Commander more akin to Lothar’s title (since we know that was the inspiration for it, and it was never meant to be hereditary when it was made in MoP).
Zandalari being a profusely prideful and non-capitulating people emphasized more in BfA even after joining the Horde. They have already tried to overthrow Talanji more than once, but the implications or cultural impact of that aren’t really explored, and they’re way more interesting as a people who refuse change to such a degree that their civilization is ‘dying’ as a snails pace they largely don’t notice because they can deal with the direct issues fairly easily.
Wipe SL, and double down on the older magic system where things actually mattered and everything wasn’t just boiled down to “MUH ORDER MAGIC BAD THIS XPAC” bs. Arcane as it used to work, old light lore, old depictions of nature lore, etc.
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This.
Chormie messes up the timeline, we go back to Sargeras’ sword hitting Azeroth, N’zoth’s chains shattered. We enter into a Void Nightmare.
This is our true timeline now.
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Old God whispers would actually be foreshadowing and actually mean something important to the greater narrative and fans are actually rewarded by the plot for decifering them
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Its a lot less about what I would personally do to change the narrative posthumously at this point beyond tying up loose ends and getting answers out for aspects and concepts left up in the air or ignored, and rather taking the forward direction to bring a more grounded narrative back to Warcraft - and dragonflight I feel is a good start to that.
Easiest win is to actually do the old world revamp, Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Technologically bringing the BC zones into them, supersizing the zones, and just pack them with localized and regional story beats, complete with fully immersive towns, cities, questing, and open spaces. That is no less than 10 regional story beats that could be created here and now. Particularly around a restored Teldrassil, restored Forsaken Lordearon, restored Gilneas, nation building for Stromgarde and Alterac, titan and old god shenanigans all through Uldum, Un’Goro, and Silithus (Im staking my claim now, because the sword has been drained of power it becomes brittle and has just collapsed into a mountain), the Farakki, the Revantusk and Amani proper, I can go on and on.
Most importantly, expanding the narrative team to include actual, diverse, and knowledgeable writers, historians, anthropologists, and creative scientists who are smarter than I, or really a lot of us collectively, is directive #1 to bring depth to the peoples and areas we love. We love our fantasy, but lets at least create some nebulous system of how this world actually works.
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If we’re just changing the story and not changing gameplay…
I’d retcon all of BFA and SL to be a nightmare conjured by N’Zoth. The hero(es) were knocked unconcious by the explosive energy of Argus’ defeat and thrown into a coma and every thing we endured in BFA and SL were just nightmares created by N’Zoth as he invaded our sleeping minds.
Then re-write the opening to Dragonflight to be the hero(es) waking up in Dalaran with Khadgar standing over them saying:
“Champion! You’re awake! You’ve been unconscious for a long time. Quckly! There are dragons!”
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World of Warcraft : Infinite Crises
Dosent matter what happend, but in the end erase all lore and back to Warcraft 3 and start again
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Retcon everything after WarCraft 3: The Frozen Throne.
The “factions” remain the same as they were in WC3, and the factions leaders barely have any involvement in the day-to-day story. There is no big “faction war” because that’s stupid in an MMO. Any conflict is a low-intensity deniable fight. They loosely work together when some world-ending threat happens.
Racial identities takes precedence over factions, every time. You should feel proud of the character you created, not some obscure faction that clearly favors one race over the rest.
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My issue with the whole Retcon back to X expansion and It was a dream idea is….we’re still stuck with the same writers who are going to give us crap anyway.
What we REALLY need is a good group of writers who are going to take the IP seriously and move on towards better expansions.
Otherwise all the retcon this or that aren’t going to work if the same writers are still around to give us crap anyway. It’s just polishing a turd and than convincing yourselves it’s going to better somehow.
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Well, given that the scenario proposed by the thread is that you’re in the boss-man-woman-person in charge of those bad writers, you can keep those monkeys at their typewriters until they produce some Shakespeare.
Honestly, if you look at all the smaller questlines compared to the major story-beats, the small quest lines are full of depth, pathos, and great storytelling. It’s the major storylines surrounding the Horde and Alliance leadership that is abysmal. Since the main storylines are white-boarded by the creative development leadership, while the individual quest writers are the ones filling in the dialog and adding personality to the NPCs, I’d say that by default, the turd has been removed from the punch bowl and you can actually get better storylines.
Let us not forget, Sylvanas’s godawful story post-Wrath was her character being fought over by a fan and a hater. The hater was in charge first and set in stone that she must be despised and destroyed, followed by the fan taking over and trying to twist the entire story around how its not completely her fault and we should pity her. Your typical quest writer didn’t decide upon this, it lays firmly at the feet of the leadership and their creative vision for the story.
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I finish the job and turn everyone and everything into robots. Even the trees. Even the water is a robot. Air? Robot.
The biggest thing that comes to mind is the absolute faliure than was Vol’jin’s time as warchief.
MoP culminates in him becomming warchief which, considering his journey, was an awesome moment.
Then he appears in ONE cutscene in WoD and dies in the opening scene of legion.
I am still mad about it and will never forgive the writers at blizzard for this. They absolutely hamfisted sylvanas in there.
Next, I would make Battle for Azeroth an ACTUAL FACTION WAR. We had a pre-patch event and 2 (instanced) battle fronts. NONE of the actual patches focused on what should have been the 4th war.
The opening patch was all about exploring new allies, the raid was a titan facility. The next patch and raid was against the Zandalari trolls which hadnt officially become apart of the horde yet. then the expansion pivots AWAY from the faction war towards Naga and old gods.
They repeated the same mistake Warlords had of splitting its attention between two things (Iron horde > Burning legion and Faction war > naga/N’zoth) and giving neither story beat enough time to feel satisfying.
then I’d totally rewrite shadowlands. Those are my top 3 and everything else I can live with.
Honestly, WoD is just as big a problem as BFA but with time I’ve come to live with it. We shouldnt have pivoted to the legion and AU grommash should have been a raid boss and killed as a war criminal. Not rescued and allowed to act as if hes one of the good guys.
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Frost DKs get Frostmourne.
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Warlords of Tel’Abim. Comes with the new Fruit Vendor class.
HA! I crushed your apple, Fruit Vendor! This will not be the last!
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I would change a lot, especially BfA and Shadowlands as they were the worst that turned everything upside down. But the previous expansions, e.g. The Horde should be more represented, in Legion, especially Argus, there were no Orcs.
Or have WoD and Cata repaired where the connection is missing etc. I think I’m going back to BC where it all started with the bad story.
Rip to my boys Kargath, Zul’jin, Keal 
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Why would Argus have Orcs?
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I meant that the Orcs didn’t play a role here. No representatives from them, just nothing, even though the Legion has done so many bad things to them.
Along with the Draenei!
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In this hypothetical, not only can I rewind time, but I can also physically manipulate a digital medium: ball up the The Eternal Vow short story, toss it into the trash, and make Lor’themar and Thalyssra’s wedding an in-game event as part of Dragonflight’s pre-patch event with the splendor and spectacle it deserves.
Lastly, I’d resolve the Court of Farondis storyline. The end of Shadowlands would have been a lovely time to do this, but of course, it never happened.
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I mean, the Legion kind of did so many bad things to literally everyone in the cosmos.
Although I’d personally say re-write BFA – With different concepts (Like various evils arising with Azeroth being weakened by the Legion) for the reason of the expansion & travelling to zones.
BFA:
- I enjoyed Kul’Tiras & Zandalar as their respective zones along with the races but the faction-war story fell rather short, aside from the raid ‘Battle of Dazar’alor’ I rather enjoyed.
- G’huun was a pretty bad villain, if they told the story up like he was an old-god but then was later revealed to be a loa who was akin to Hakkar and actually partnered up to create great calamities before they were imprisoned – That’ve been far more intriguing.
- Ironically a lot of the stuff not to do with the faction war save except maybe the battle of Darkshore, was well received - So if they implemented that somehow without the burning of the tree, I wouldn’t be overly fussed.
Shadowlands ruined a lot of lore with its retcons, dump that re-write trash away immediately.
Shadowlands:
If they were to be implemented somehow for some audiences, I’d say dub them as ‘The inbetween realms’ from the TRUE afterlives and the physical plane. Thus mounts & many rewards can still be earned. So yeah … Remove the Jailor, and remove ‘ThE FiRsT oNeS’
- Ardenweald: Keep as a ‘Backup Protection’ realm for Loa & Wild Gods - Simply used so they can’t be necromantically risen from the dead, and if the wild-seed is destroyed the soul simply goes to another realm (Never destroyed though) - Yet the dangers of dark magics in the physical plane are open.
- Bastion: Reveal that the memories of ones life are restored to them in the final trial of their journey to overcome & not forget – Embrace the lessons of their life, the personality that was forged through their experiences and forge it anew with their journey experienced in the said inbetween realm.
- Maldraxxus: Hold as a militaristic realm for building up necromantic potential and preventing those from reaching further than the Shadowlands (the inbetween realms) and to also defend the other inbetween realms.
- Revendreth: More-or-less keep its intended purpose as is. Sire Denathrius had a cool personality as a villian, so keeping him as a character would be fun - Even if they did reform the ‘WHY’ to him being a villain (eg. Being a Dreadlord before they became demons then choosing to meddle with physical plane through his former people, simply for fun and to test the merit & extent of souls to be sent to his realm).
All of this would keep the lore many enjoyed BEFORE bfa / shadowlands had retconned it as canon, would be healthy for the storyline as many of the stories that were retconned for ‘The Jailor’ have been tarnished and had much of their awe-appeal dulled – And ultimately unveil much more potential for future storytelling & content ahead. 
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