wow Narrative Lead Talks About and Confirms 5 Year Timeskip Between Shadowlands and Dragonflight

[Staff 1,338]

Narrative Lead Steve Danuser talked about and specified the time gap between Shadowlands and Dragonflight, as well as the time gaps for other expansions. We find out how Shadowlands started in year 35 after the opening of the Dark Portal, and how Dragonflight begins in year 40, as well as the reasons for the larger gap than usual, that a digital short story is coming set within that gap and will feature an event mentioned in the Alpha (presumably the marriage of two high-profile characters), how larger story events will be featured in game with quests generally, and many more details on the in-lore timing of the next expansion. 

5 Year Gap (Source)

Hello friends,

I wanted to take a moment to address the topic of time passage between Shadowlands and Dragonflight.

There has always been some amount of time passing between expansions, though rarely has it been called out in game. We maintain an internal timeline of what year each expansion begins, and the gap between them has either been one year (as with earlier expansions) or two years (as with most of the later ones). But NPCs in the world don’t talk about how the Burning Crusade took place in the year 26 after the Dark Portal opened, or how we rediscovered Pandaria in the year 30.

When you look back at the Warcraft timeline, one of the things you’ll notice is that a lot of massive, world-changing events were tightly clustered together. This is especially true for WoW, which since launch has seen a multitude of invasions and catastrophes back-to-back in the chronology.

With Shadowlands representing the closing of one book in the Warcraft saga (as we mentioned in interviews around the release of our Eternity’s End update), it felt like an opportunity to give Azeroth and its inhabitants a bit of breathing room before Dragonflight ushers in the start of our next major storyline.

Shadowlands began in the year 35 after the opening of the Dark Portal, and Dragonflight will begin in the year 40.

Given that the events of Shadowlands took place over the course of two years, that leaves a few additional years that we are fast-forwarding through. Our purpose here is not to have a litany of events take place outside the game that you need to read about in a novel or other media to understand the state of the world. The goal of the fast-forward is to provide the people of Azeroth with a slice of “normal” life without a major threat looming over their heads.

When our heroes return from the Realms of Death, you can imagine them easing back into their lives and duties without an immediate crisis to address or enemy to fight. With the Alliance and Horde honoring the truce signed after the Fourth War, the average Azerothian citizen will be able to enjoy a time of stability and reflection.

That said, we plan to offer a digital short story on our website that details one particularly joyous occasion which has been referenced in the alpha build. It’s going to be a fun and charming read, but it won’t be necessary in order to understand the events of Dragonflight.

Besides stretching out the WoW timeline a bit, another benefit of this fast-forward is that it will let our younger characters get a little older, allowing some of them to take a larger role in future storylines. Yet not so much time will be passing that you’d expect characters who are already adults to look significantly different.

As for changes to the world that have been discussed or foreshadowed, such as the resettlement of Gilneas, those will not be happening during the fast-forward. As cool as it is to show locations and populations evolving because of story progression, we want events of this importance to be in-game questing that our players experience for themselves (as with the reclaiming of the Ruins of Lordaeron in the 9.2.5 update) rather than having it happen off-camera.

For your player characters, it has always been left to your own interpretation how much time had passed when they log in after the arrival of a major update or new expansion. Dragonflight is no exception. You are free to imagine what your characters have been doing in that time of respite as you look forward to the arrival of the Dragonflight pre-patch.

Hopefully this post helps clear up confusion about the timeline and explains our goals for having a few more years pass than we normally would.

–Steve Danuser, Narrative Lead

[Q 123]

Yeah, I don't have much faith in Danuser after the dumpster fire that was SL.

[Arcling 870]

But is this going to change anything? 5 years isn't much and some characters who were kids, will still be kids, like Moira's son or Thrall's son (they really should have picked a better name than Durak). Besides this expansion seems quite isolated from larger story, unless this is going to change in later patches. Anyway, it's hard to trust in anything Danuser writes.

[SpilledStars 60]

Well regardless of year the "destroyed Arbiter" / flow of souls to the Maw had to happen during the Legion xpac sometime.

Ursoc went to Ardenweald with no question;  yet Ashamane was trapped in the Maw.

 

[darkgreenwax 409]

2 hours ago, Staff said:

The goal of the fast-forward is to provide the people of Azeroth with a slice of “normal” life without a major threat looming over their heads.

The problem I see with this, is without drastically updating every major city, harbor, large hub, etc, it's going to be hard to suspend your disbelief. You're telling me 3 years go by peacefully, yet there's zero development to infrastructure, agriculture, border-expansions, resource collections, etc? You can sometimes argue that times are tough, so it's hard for them to develop and prosper, but he's doubling down that it's a normal life without major threats.

 

It's maybe a smaller detail to some, but it would be a larger detail for me.

[MrM 44]

14 minutes ago, SpilledStars said:

Well regardless of year the "destroyed Arbiter" / flow of souls to the Maw had to happen during the Legion xpac sometime.

Ursoc went to Ardenweald with no question;  yet Ashamane was trapped in the Maw.

 

Pretty sure it was confirmed at the end of the Zereth Mortis campaign that the soul of Argus was the cause of that. But the player didn't actually arrive in Shadowlands until a while later.

[Qisapa 11]

Their narrating is so good that they have to explain such a basic thing like passing of the time on the forum...

[Q 123]

2 hours ago, SpilledStars said:

Well regardless of year the "destroyed Arbiter" / flow of souls to the Maw had to happen during the Legion xpac sometime.

Ursoc went to Ardenweald with no question;  yet Ashamane was trapped in the Maw.

 

Ashamane was within the maw because Mueh'zala took the wildseed containing her soul while it was being transported to another spot in ardenweald where it could continue to be nurtured during the anima drought and attempted to get recruit her to his side, she refused, and he tossed her into the maw alongside Hir'eek and Shadra. But because all of this happens in the night fae campaign, only people who chose that covenant, which I imagine is a large percentage of people considering how many classes have night fae as BiS, experienced that storyline.

Frankly, I think it was really stupid of them to have added this to the night fae exclusive campaign when it is a direct continuation of the Vol'jin questline from BfA while all the other covenants don't get any exclusive story to them, Necrolord and Venthyr storylines come together near the end and Kyrian just go everywhere else while ignoring their flawed system until 9.1.

[Devylknyght 83]

Year 40. Wow came out in 2004. Pretty close to 20 years ago. They are developing the game so slow, we are growing old almost as fast as the characters are. Pretty close to 1 earth year = 2 Azeroth years. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably a little of both for different reasons. 

[Arcling 870]

1 hour ago, Devylknyght said:

Pretty close to 1 earth year = 2 Azeroth years. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably a little of both for different reasons. 

It's the opposite for some expansions. They happened within only one year, while expansions were active for 2 years (plus few months here and there).

But regardless of dates, story has been going very slowly for the last few expansions. In older expansions they were burning through villains quickly, and now very few are dying. Not to mention how good characters stopped dying at all, Jailer and his forces didn't manage to kill anyone important. Only some side characters from Covenants, but no one from Azeroth. Then there are some plots which are around for so long and they either go nowhere/are completely forgotten or they get resolved in rather anticlimactic and quick way (after they were just lying around for so long, like Azshara).

Edited August 20, 2022 by Arcling

[Teufel 331]

2 hours ago, Devylknyght said:

Year 40. Wow came out in 2004. Pretty close to 20 years ago. They are developing the game so slow, we are growing old almost as fast as the characters are. Pretty close to 1 earth year = 2 Azeroth years. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Probably a little of both for different reasons. 

40 years since the opening of the Dark Portal, a.k.a. events of WC1 (40 ADP).

WoW takes place a few years after the end of WC3, and the latter, if memory serves, ends around 23 ADP.

Edited August 20, 2022 by Teufel

[Swarf 101]

Danuser seems to be wholly oblivious to how very sincerely he is disliked by a great many people.  No, Danuser, we don't blame Afrasiabi for everything.  You don't get to hold the highest writing position at Blizzard for all this time and throughout the creation of SL and expect any thinking person to hold you blameless for the agonizing dumpster fire WoW's story became.

[Mournrethar 15]

"The goal of the fast-forward is to provide the people of Azeroth with a slice of “normal” life without a major threat looming over their heads."

What the hell are you talking about Danuser? Literally no one cares about some random "people" of Azeroth, you never gave them any *filtered* story since like idk, 25 years ago in some random Metzen novel, so why are you talking about normal basic npc people of Azeroth now?
We literally never had any good story about how it impacts the normal people, like every single *filtered* event in this bloody game..
And if we did, I am sorry, but it must have been so boring I do not remember it..

This dude is talking such a bloody nonsense I cant even.. 
Like *filtered*, just stop, admit you *filtered* up, reset the Azeroth or idk, ask someone who can actually write a decent story and go from there..
Just say Shadowlands never happen and it was all a dream from Nzoth or something..

[Arcling 870]

4 hours ago, Swarf said:

Danuser seems to be wholly oblivious to how very sincerely he is disliked by a great many people.  No, Danuser, we don't blame Afrasiabi for everything.  You don't get to hold the highest writing position at Blizzard for all this time and throughout the creation of SL and expect any thinking person to hold you blameless for the agonizing dumpster fire WoW's story became.

From what I've seen, Danuser seems to ignore any feedback, even if it is constructive and cordial. Perhaps he dismisses any criticism as just "haters being haters".  I'm not sure how much about Afrasiabi ruining the story for purpose is true. Seems like an odd and harmless way to have his "revenge" (was there any?) on the company, as one of the key people he could potentially do some damage in other form.

[SpilledStars 60]

On 8/19/2022 at 9:48 PM, MrM said:

Pretty sure it was confirmed at the end of the Zereth Mortis campaign that the soul of Argus was the cause of that. But the player didn't actually arrive in Shadowlands until a while later.

oh yeah, we fight Echo of Argus while fixing up the empty Arbiter-shell.  Which makes it busted, which only a willing pure soul can fix and then Pelagos steps in.