In an earlier post, I talked about the different ramifications of whether Azeroth or the Burning Legion came first. Warcraft is a worlds-spanning saga with a whole hell of a lot of moving parts, and while Azeroth is center stage, it's not the only world we've dealt with. Draenor is obviously a close second for most important world in the Warcraft universe, given that it's home to the Orcs, one of the series' two most important races (and Ogres.) Except for the cinder of that one world we visit during the Talador quests, and soon the shattered remnants of Mar'duun, we've only really visited these two worlds. We've seen Azeroth and two versions of Draenor. One of them is "our Draenor" and the other is an alternate universe. That said, there are some interpretations of the lore that suggest that the original Draenor that is now Outland was always a different universe anyway - some even taking it as far as suggesting that all the worlds in Warcraft are really just alternate-universe versions of the same planet (a theory that's interesting, but that I find less likely than a simpler notion that the Dark Portal served more like a spatial wormhole between two distant planets in the same universe (though they could be in different solar systems, stellar clusters, or even galaxies.))
We've heard talk about other worlds, like Xorroth (whose twin world Xerrath was utterly destroyed by the Legion - Warlocks who get Green Fire will acquire the Codex of Xerrath,) apparently home to Dreadsteeds and Dreadlords (coming back to that later on,) as well as K'aresh, which was shattered and transformed the people there into the Ethereals, who escaped via the Twisting Nether and wound up on Outland (we actually don't know what the Ethereals were like before this happened.)
But I think the clear #3 world in the Warcraft lore has got to be Argus. The main reason I say this is that it's the only other world that player-characters could actually remember personally. Many Draenei player characters are over 25,000 years old, and therefore should remember growing up on Argus. They would remember the time that two thirds of their people were transformed by demons and they were forced to flee with the aid of the Naaru.
The Draenei don't often step into the spotlight, but it's pretty clear that there's something special to them. There are plenty of instances of advanced technology on Azeroth that are anachronistic to the ostensibly medieval era in which it takes place, but these tend to extend it more toward 19th Century Steampunk technology or early 20th century tech (like airplanes and tanks.)
The Draenei had access to technology that we in the 21st Century would identify as futuristic. We know that even the Draenei of Draenor B are kind of putting together their relocated civilization using scraps, and our Draenei went through the additional catastrophe of almost getting wiped out by the Orcs, so they haven't been able to achieve what they had on Argus, but everything we hear about them makes it sound like they had a society that went far beyond anything we've seen on Azeroth. Science, Magic, and Art were united in perfect harmony, and they were the the greatest mortal (or perhaps semi-mortal, as they seem to be essentially ageless) spellcasters in the cosmos - which is unfortunately what drew Sargeras to them and led to the Eredar's corruption.
But the Eredar civilization that was presided over by the triumvirate of Velen, Archimonde and Kil'jaeden was actually something like the 5th or 6th civilization to exist on Argus. This raises two big questions:
First, were all these civilizations those of the Eredar? Azeroth has had plenty of advanced civilizations, even if we cut out the time of the Elemental Lords and the pre-shackled Old Gods. The Aqir and the Trolls used to battle it out, first as two massive, united civilizations and then later divided into Nerubian, Qiraji and Mantid fighting Gurubashi, Amani, Drakkari, and Farraki. The Night Elf civilization would grow up at some point thanks to the Well of Eternity, and then it would fall and transform after the War of the Ancients. Azeroth has plenty of other fairly impressive civilizations, like the Mogu and the Pandaren who came after, the Vrykul, who were directly connected to the Titanic Watchers and might have had insight into the Titans that most didn't. The Dwarves have tons of history, as do the Humans. Hell, the Goblins were, for a time, super-advanced in ways that have only been slightly hinted at.
Draenor also had its share of advanced civilizations, like the Apexis - an early Arrakoa civilization that the Adherents of Rukhmar were desperately trying to recreate - and the Ogre Empire, of which the Gorian Empire was a fleeting fragment (odd that Draenor was a young world, yet so much of it was falling into ruin. Perhaps they were falling to make room for the Horde - as if the Horde was fate, Legion or No. That's a whole other post right there.)
We don't know what other races might have existed on Argus. That said, we do know that the standard Man'ari Eredar (like Archimonde, Kil'jaeden, or lesser demons like Socrethar or Jaraxxus) are not the only Eredar Demons we encounter - Wrathguards are also considered Eredar. So can a Demonology Warlock with Grimoire of Supremacy summon your Draenei's long-lost cousin? Perhaps. Or alternatively, maybe the Wrathguards are some other kind of Argussian.
It's hard to really comprehend what Argus' history was like simply because we don't have much in the way of text, which is a little frustrating given that many of our actual player characters ought to know at least about the most recent one and probably a handful of information about the one that came before it.
Really, here's what we know: The Eredar were not worshipping the Holy Light when Sargeras came to them. It was the vision that the Naaru gave to Velen that led to the current highly-religious Draenei culture we see today. We know that the Naaru must have come to Argus before then, because the Ata'mal Crystal was considered a sacred relic to the Eredar long before the flight of the Draenei. The Ata'mal Crystal was given to the Eredar by the Naaru, which seems to suggest that there was a sequence of events in which the Eredar had contact with the Naaru, and might have worshipped the Holy Light, but at some point this practice ended and the Eredar forgot about it, retaining only the Crystal as a relic of that era.
But that explains only pretty much two Eredar civilizations on Argus, and only in the broadest details.
Admittedly, this is one of those times when I think Blizzard might have thrown in some arbitrary numbers without necessarily having a really set idea of the whole timeline. But it is canonical that Argus went through several civilizations - all of which achieved some sort of greatness - before the Burning Legion claimed the world.
What catastrophes might have led to these different civilizations arising? One possibility could have actually been something like the Titans coming and "re-ordering" the world. We have a general sense of how the Titans put Azeroth to order, and there are lots of hints about how Draenor's process differed from that.
I'll have to apologize here, as I don't know that this post has really come to any serious conclusions about Argus - the simple fact is that we don't have a ton of info about that world's history. I hope that one day we'll be able to explore it or at least explore its lore. But I have a couple other thoughts to throw into the mix.
When Liadrin comes to essentially ask A'dal's forgiveness for what her Blood Knights did to M'uru, A'dal explains that M'uru knew what its fate would be and chose to willingly allow the Blood Elves to sap the light from it in order to provide them with champions who could spread the goodness of the Light. But how did M'uru see his fate - being the battery around which a new order of Paladins would form and ultimately reigniting the Sunwell, now as a font of Arcane and Holy power? It was Velen. Velen is a prophet both in the sense that he's a hugely important religious figure (essentially creating a new religion for the Draenei) but also in that he literally sees the future. We see his doppelgänger go through this in Shadowmoon Valley, showing the threat of the Dark Star, and Velen Prime's visions of the Army of the Light (with what appears to be Paladin Anduin Wrynn as its leader) could prove very important in Legion. But what's weird is that as far as we knew, it was the Naaru who gave Velen his gift of prophecy. Why should they have to operate based on his prophecies if they were the ones who instilled him with this power? I wonder if perhaps the prophecy was not truly the Naarus' gift but some element of Velen's arcane mastery (remember that the Eredar were the greatest arcane spellcasters in history, and it's likely that before Sargeras came, Velen was probably a Mage.) Given the Sunwell, we know that Arcane and Holy energy can mix - so perhaps the Naaru just boosted his future-sensing signal.
The other thing I wanted to note is that Velen, unlike pretty much every other Draenei, does show signs of age. The two people we know to be his contemporaries are Archimonde and Kil'jaeden, who might have been granted eternal youth/virility through demonic magic. Given how advanced the Eredar civilization was, perhaps the long life of the Draenei isn't actually a natural aspect of their physiology, but instead a magical or scientific (and remember that on Argus, the two were one and the same) advancement. Perhaps the Eredar used to only naturally live a century (or perhaps longer - like Dwarves living a few centuries,) and Velen was already quite old before they developed the technology to halt the aging process. If that's the case, Velen might be really profoundly old. In fact, maybe the triumvirate had been in charge for the entire span of that last Argussian civilization, which might have started thanks to this development. (One could also imagine that, having gained something quite close to immortality, the Eredar felt less inclined to put their faith in some power other than themselves, which would explain why the worship of the Light faded.)
It's really remarkable how much stuff must have happened on Argus. Already, the end of that last great Eredar civilization happened two-and-a-half times longer ago than the earliest event in Night Elf history we know about happened (not counting the technically not-confirmed transformation from Dark Trolls.) It's possible we might find out more about what happened on Argus in Legion (though I think the focus will be more on Azeroth.) But Argus remains an enormous ball of mystery.
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