Time Travel is one of the most popular concepts in science fiction and fantasy. It's an inherently weird idea that can have really surprising consequences. We also don't know A. whether anything other than the most simple form of time travel (forward, 1s/s) is possible, and B. what rules it would follow if one was able to "sequence break" through time.
So let's talk about the various ideas. These aren't so much science and science fiction (except the first one) because we really don't have much evidence to work with.
1. Mundane Time Travel
Mundane time travel is the time travel that you are currently experiencing right now. Every second, you're a second farther into the future. Exciting, isn't it?
And yes, this is more complicated because of relativity, but in most situations, time appears to pass roughly at the same speed everywhere, and you're never going to be able to turn back the clock, even if you travel at relativistic speeds (as far as we know. Maybe if you break the speed of light you'll go back, but we also think that's physically impossible.)
2. Terminator 1/Twelve Monkeys Time Travel (Consistent Universe, Stable Time Loop, You Already Changed the Past)
In the first Terminator movie, the AI Skynet revolts in the distant future of 1997, turning the Earth into a nuclear wasteland. But a man named John Connor leads a resistance and is on the cusp of defeating Skynet for good. So Skynet sends one of its Terminator (robot assassins) back in time to kill Sarah Connor, John's mother, before he's ever born. However, as it turns out, it was this very act that led to John Connor's birth, as the humans send back Kyle Reese to protect Sarah, and Kyle and Sarah do that thing humans do and Sarah becomes pregnant with John. But unfortunately, the fate of the world is also sealed because when the Terminator is killed, human scientists discover a remnant of the robot and begin to research it. This research then eventually leads to the creation of Skynet. Hence nuclear near-apocalypse.
So the events of The Terminator are pre-ordained. Everything that happened had always happened that way, and the act of time travel has always been a part of those events in the universe. There's no strong paradox here, because everything is consistent, though there's a weak paradox in that the Skynet AI technology apparently sprang from nothing, with no inventor or creator.
The idea here is that the one timeline takes into account time travel anyway. Essentially, it means that if you travel to 1911 and take a picture of yourself, then before you even think of building a time machine, there's already a photo somewhere of you in that year, and no matter what, you will go there and you will take that picture.
3. Rubber Band Timeline (Final Destination?)
Rubber Band Timelines imply that there is some kind of fate that awaits everything, but the smaller details can change. If, for example, you have a prophetic vision (which is basically information time travel) that if your friend gets on a plane, he will die in a crash, it means that you can warn him not to get on the plane, but that he will then die in a car crash on the way back from the airport, or some such thing.
The implication of this style of time travel is that there is some kind of regulating force - either intelligent or just inherent to the universe - that causes certain important events to take place regardless of the smaller actions you take. It differs from number 2 above because in 2, it would just happen that you wouldn't have ever gotten him to not go on the plane, and the vision you received (assuming it was accurate) would play out either despite or even because of what you did. This version is flexible, but still unbreakable.
4. Back to the Future Time Travel (Paradoxes can happen, and they are dangerous!)
When Marty McFly goes back 30 years to the 1950s, he accidentally disrupts the moment that his parents met, thus endangering his own existence. Marty watches his siblings fade away on a photograph he had with him, and at some points, when his parents seem unlikely to get together, he himself begins to fade away. When this happens is perhaps a little arbitrary, but there also seems to be a bit of a rubber band here in that just getting his parents together is enough to satisfy the universe that he can still exist. His memory doesn't change even though his parents' history does.
This is a bit like rubber band time travel, but with the possibility of that band snapping, with seriously dangerous consequences.
5. Terminator 2 Time Travel (You Can Change the Past)
Ignoring later sequels, Terminator 2 ends with them destroying the last Skynet technology, which should theoretically prevent Judgment Day from ever happening. The Terminator did definitely come from the future, but it's a future that has been prevented, and the universe has switched onto a safer track. This one's a bit troubling, because there are some seeming Strong Paradoxes. For example, with no Skynet, there's no way for Kyle Reese to have gone back in time in the first place to father John or warn Sarah of the machines. But this version of time travel apparently allows for the new timeline to overwrite the previous one, so that essentially, the Terminator and Kyle just popped into existence at some point in the 80s, their origins forever shrouded in mystery.
6a. Multiverse Time Travel - Tangent Universes
This is one way of totally paradox-free time travel. The tangent universe version of the multiverse time travel concept works like this: if you go back in time to change the past, you create an alternate universe. The one that you came from continues to exist, and history as you remember it still has happened exactly as it did. But by interfering in the past, you spawn an entirely new universe, and in this universe your changes do have long-lasting effects. This may indeed be what people who think they're experiencing example 5 are actually living through, but with no way (or desire) to return to their original timeline.
6b. Multiverse Time Travel - Parallel Universes
This version suggests that rather than universes branching off into a giant tree, splitting each time there's a new interference or even just uncertain event in any universe (which, according to quantum mechanics, could mean new universes every... like countless times in the last second,) that there are and have always been a huge (perhaps infinite) number of universes that are somewhat different. In this case, time travel could actually have you hopping into a universe where your arrival was always part of its history, and the changes you wrought were always going to be a part of that universe. In fact, the universes might even be out of synch, so that one appears to be, oh, let's say 35 years off. Thus "time travel" in this case is actually just universe-travel, only appearing to be a difference in time due to the somewhat accelerated or decelerated history. Just like in 6a, you leave behind the universe that you are from, and it continues to exist and remembers you, and indeed, might be able to duplicate your technology or magic in order to follow you to this other universe.
So Who's the Lucky Winner?
Warlords of Draenor fits perfectly with 6b. Here's why:
Garrosh arrives in Draenor 35 years in the past. We follow him perhaps a year or a number of months later, and it looks like the same amount of time has passed for him as it has for us (this one's a little sketchy. I don't know how long they say that Garrosh was on Draenor before we show up.) He changes the past by convincing Grommash not to drink the Blood of Mannoroth (and gives him a kick-ass Iron Star to shoot at the Pit Lord,) but he doesn't really change the past, because we're all still here.
So why is it a parallel universe and not a tangent universe? Two things: First is that they're out of synch. Garrosh arrives in the "past," and the Iron Horde, in the "past," assaults us in our present. We follow them into the Dark Portal in our present, and arrive in this same "past."
The other, and far more convincing thing, is an Orc named Rulkan. Rulkan is Ner'zhul's wife. In our timeline, Rulkan had died years before the founding of the Horde, and it was in the guise of Rulkan's ghost that Kil'jaeden convinced Ner'zhul that the Draenei were intending to attack the Orcs, which began the war against the Draenei. And it was only after besieging Shattrath City unsuccessfully that the Orcs drank the Blood of Mannoroth to get an edge over the Draenei.
And in this Draenor, Rulkan's still alive and well.
Without a dead Rulkan, we really don't have the same motivations for the initial fight against the Draenei, and that's independent of Garrosh's actions.
So what it looks like we're dealing with is not a past version of Draenor, but a universe that is 35 years behind ours, and that was never the same Draenor that our Outland once was.
Not only does this mean that there's no risk of paradox, but it also makes it plausible why, for example, Orc and Draenei players wouldn't necessarily run into their own doppelgängers. If Rulkan is alive, then Spacegoatwarriorxxxawesome might have died on Argus, or maybe he was never even born.
The Iron Horde is not from our past, or even our alternate past, but is from a parallel universe. And while may seem like the past, our adventures on this "Draenor" are taking place in the present day.
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