In Warlords of Draenor, we'll be heading back to a Draenor that is 35 years in the past. It's a Draenor that existed before the Alliance or the Horde, and before the First War.
But Blizzard representatives have been emphatic that this is not a time-travel expansion.
Now, obviously, that's not entirely true. For all of this to begin in the first place, Garrosh Hellscream needed to travel into the past to stop the Orcs from drinking the blood of Mannoroth. There is time-travel involved here any way you look at it.
But Warlords of Draenor is most likely not going to explore the deeper, hypothetical issues that arise with time-travel. The alternate universe that Garrosh inadvertently creates with Kairoz's help is separate from ours. What we have is a new threat - a new entity, much as the Lich King was only created after the end of the Second War. Time wonkiness is merely the origin of the Iron Horde, and not the key to its nature.
Thus, I expect that, for the most part, the upcoming expansion will actually have very little of the paradoxes or philosophical quandaries that usually come with time-travel.
Why is Blizzard going with this route?
Well, first let's talk about how the idea evolved. Apparently it has been their plan for many years to have Garrosh rise to power within the Horde, lose his position as Warchief, and then break off to form his own, rival Horde. One of the ideas they were kicking around was having him form the "Mongrel Horde," taking many of the ever-present, but never really focused-on threats of the world and binding them together. Gnolls, Murlocs, Kobolds, Troggs, Centaur. There's even some concept art for this that, amazingly, makes these races seem somewhat threatening.
But ultimately, they instead came upon the idea that Garrosh would much rather find a way to get the figures of legend in the Horde's history to come back. Obviously, the big problem is that they're all dead. So they thought about having him go to Outland to raise them from the dead. That presented some other problems - mainly that they didn't want Garrosh to have an army of the undead (that's kind of stepping on the Scourge's toes.)
So, ironically, this bizarre alternate-universe wound up being the easiest solution for Garrosh to form his own Horde.
Blizzard really wants to focus more on the practical threat that the Iron Horde presents. This isn't Doctor Who territory - the Iron Horde is mainly a physical danger. Worries about breaking the timeline are somewhat pushed to the side. We are reassured that our own history and timeline is still there, and in fact, Outland - the shattered version of Draenor that is roughly in-sync with us in time - still exists.
The cynic in me thinks the reason they're taking this approach is that time-travel stories are hard to write. They're avoiding the brain-bending stuff so that people don't get out the torches and pitchforks.
But the optimist in me thinks that it's because it's just not time for that yet. Blizzard has said that this expansion will lead into the next one (much as Mists led into WoD,) and while that could easily translate into a Burning Legion expansion, what with Gul'dan and what I assume is a very disappointed alternate-universe version of Kil'jaeden, I also think that we could see some big things happening with the way that time works.
When we meet Kairoz, he seems to be a pretty chill guy, like most of the Bronze Dragons. He doesn't seem to be satisfied with the fact that their flight has lost its power, and so he's looking in the Timeless Isle for some way to regain it.
Kairoz talks about the strange power of the Timeless Isle, and how its temporal properties could be used to create entirely new worlds (something Wrathion is excited to hear about, because of his typical Black Dragon ambition.)
Right now, the motivations of Kairoz seem pretty foggy. Why would he help Garrosh unleash the Iron Horde upon the world? Surely, having seen what Garrosh was able to do with the modern Horde, he wouldn't be eager to see more of that.
No, I think that to Kairoz, the whole point of the exercise is experimentation.
The Bronze Dragons were charged by the Titans to preserve the one, true timeline. Aman'thul told Nozdormu that there was only the one, and that it was his sacred duty to keep things going the way they were meant to. Today, Nozdormu even accepts that he will one day die to us mortals within the End Time, transformed into Murozond.
But there's a lot about that that doesn't make sense. The End Time, in the form we saw it, is just plain not going to happen. So when does Nozdormu think he's going to die now?
The Bronze Dragons can no longer see the flow of time as clearly as they once did. The march of events is now clouded to them as it is for all mortals. With the future now a mystery to them, perhaps they feel a sense of relief. Perhaps they will not become the Infinite Dragonflight after all?
But they do remember knowing of that future. Part of them knows that it must come to pass, even if they can't truly see it. How, then, to avert it? How to thwart fate to prevent the downfall of their flight?
Well, one Bronze Dragon got a little inspiration from the disgraced, dethroned Warchief of the Horde and his time on the Timeless Isle. Yes, perhaps fate was immutable - the universe ultimately leading deterministically to a set destination. But if new worlds, or new universes could be created… Perhaps that is how one could escape one's fate.
Yes, in all likelihood, we're going to spend our time in Draenor simply fighting the Iron Horde. But what if the entire upcoming conflict is merely a byproduct of one individual's crucial experiment to save his people?
And, with the ability to pass between alternate universes, perhaps what we're seeing is the very first Infinite Dragon?
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