I made a post a few days ago about the lore bombshell that Alex Afrasiabi dropped - namely that even among the myriad, perhaps infinite alternate realities that allowed for this Draenor we're currently adventuring in to be different from the Outland we know, the Twisting Nether is One. The Nether transcends all realities.
And demons, being denizens of the twisting nether, also transcend all realities.
Thus, the Archimonde that we face in Hellfire Citadel is in fact the same one that was defeated at the Battle of Mount Hyjal.
This lore development could have been handled a lot better, if you ask me. A huge change for the fate of one of Warcraft's most important characters is fine if done as a twist in-universe. If we see a bunch of quests in Tanaan where our questgivers are just as baffled as we are about Archimonde's return, then I think all should be forgiven. An in-universe twist feels less like a retcon, even if it actually is. Think about twists in movies -isn't it always a better twist if we're finding out the truth at the same time as the protagonist? We always want to feel like it's not just that the authors have thrown us a curve-ball, but that we were justified in feeling things were a certain way - because that's the way that the world presented itself.
Anyway, we got a few new tweets on the subject (again, I'd really like to see this plot development revealed in-game, even though the cat's out of the bag already.)
The main idea is that demons are far more eldritch in nature than we might have previously thought. The Old Gods were always the ones to play heavily on the incomprehensibility angle (what did it even mean that we were inside Yogg-Saron's brain, for example?) But until now demons more or less seemed primarily like a collection of humanoid, or sometimes beast-like or elemental-like races that are just inherently evil and infused with far more magic than a mere mortal could take (indeed, it seems like a magic overload of one's physiology is what turns one into a demon.)
But until now, that made them just kind of mustache-twirlingly evil people who want to destroy the universe because they have an instinct toward corruption and destruction.
Yet now it seems like they're something utterly different, utterly alien. If this is the case, the inconsistencies effectively stop being plot-holes and instead become part of the inherent mystery of demonic nature. Essentially, the answer to "but wait, what happened to all the different mortal Archimondes when Archimonde became a demon?" becomes "you know, no one in the Kirin Tor or even the Circle of the Black Harvest has been able to figure that one out."
That might not be a satisfying answer to you. It depends on whether you think that H. P. Lovecraft's horror style was effective. Lovecraft's tendency was to describe horrific things as inherently indescribable - that our petty human (or in the case of Warcraft, mortal) minds just can't comprehend their nature. Is it a cop-out or does it solve an inherent problem in writing horror - namely that nothing is scarier than what an audience's imagination can come up with on their own?
Even handled well, this is bound to piss some people off. It's a matter of artistic preferences, but also a question of how well-thought out things are at Blizzard. I'll give Metzen and co the benefit of the doubt and say they've probably talked a whole lot about the nature of demons - and how much of that nature they wish to reveal to the audience. If we learn too much about them, they do start to be less of a threat, but if things are kept too vague, it starts to feel like "whatever's convenient at the moment."
Fantasy as a genre asks a lot of its audience in terms of the willing suspension of disbelief, and so it behooves a fantasy writer to be consistent in the rules of that universe.
But fantasy also requires an air of mystery - magic would just be a different kind of physics if it could be broken down and understood. So the fantasy writer needs to strike a balance between the consistency that would allow for a world that has wizards and sorcerers, and the mystery that allows that magic to feel fantastical.
The reveal of Archimonde's nature should elicit dread, shock, and horror, and it should be the heroes of Azeroth who feel that way.
AFTERTHOUGHT:
Ok, this isn't actually an edit, but I wanted to distinguish this from my main point without making a separate post. First off - isn't it funny how Warcraft and Lovecraft should be opposites, but aren't?
Secondly: We actually got a big reveal (again, sigh, through a tweet) about the nature of the Twisting Nether and its place in the cosmos. The Nether is between the Light and the Void. This suggests that the Light is a realm of its own, as opposed to just a force or energy that exists throughout creation (though it could be a bit of both.) It also suggests that the Nether isn't really inherently evil. It's just the chaotic borderland between the everything and nothingness.
And yes, the Void is nothingness, which makes the existence of Voidwalkers pretty freaky. Did they start as something else (Naaru, for example) and transform after traveling the void? Or are they walking (floating) paradoxes - somethings out of nothing?
Last, but certainly not least - Sargeras does not transcend all realities. There could very well be many Sargerases out there - which makes the existence of the Burning Legion even stranger. Which of these Sargerases does the Legion serve? There's so little we actually know about the Titans that it's hard to speculate on this, but the definitive answer about Sargeras is that no, he doesn't transcend all realities. Also, the Titans themselves are searching other universes for other Titans. Maybe the Titans in all realities are different? Alternatively, maybe the "one true timeline" is the one the Titans are from, and that they had to travel to this Draenor to put it in order just like we did?
Actually, one last last thought: We're on an alternate Draenor, and this Draenor seems to exist in a full universe. We've often wondered about why the Iron Horde didn't invade Azeroth B. But we've been told that Azeroth is a special planet, and is important to Sargeras because of that. Could it be that it's special and unique because there are no alternate Azeroths? That Azeroth is the only Azeroth across all the universes? It would go a hell of a way to explaining why our actions are special (though admittedly it would also make End Time kind of hard to explain.)
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