Now it is official. With Dragonflight, World of Warcraft is experiencing a leap in time, and it’s actually quite steep.
Even before the announcement of World of Warcraft Dragonflight, it was rumored that it was time for a time jump in Azeroth. Normally, historically, there is only a year or two between the respective expansions – but with Dragonflight that is different.
The story boss of WoW has explained at length: There are five years between the departure for the shadow lands and the start of Dragonflight.
what was said Story boss Steve Danuser addressed the players in the official WoW forum and explained in more detail what is actually happening with Dragonflight. The post is quite long, but one of the most important statements is:
Shadowlands began in year 35 after the opening of the dark portal and Dragonflight begins in year 40.
He elaborated a bit more:
The events of Shadowlands took place over the course of 2 years, leaving a few more years to skip forward. Our goal is that time doesn’t become a litany of things outside of the game that you need to read up on in books or other media to understand the game world. The goal is to allow the denizens of Azeroth to have a bit of “normal life” without having a huge threat hanging over their heads again.
When our heroes return from the realm of the dead, you can imagine them slowly resuming their normal lives and duties, with no immediate crisis or new enemy to contend with. The Alliance and Horde respect the truce that was signed after the Fourth War and the average Azerothian can simply enjoy a period of stability and reflection.
Why is that so important? This decision is important for two main reasons. The first is that it allows many “young” characters to mature a bit and soon take up more space in the WoW storyline. At the same time, the jump from three to five years isn’t so big that older characters change so drastically that you don’t even recognize them.
Role-players have to make difficult decisions
The second important point concerns a smaller group of WoW fans – the role players: inside. It is particularly important for them when several years suddenly pass in the game world. Because many characters in the role-playing game live parallel to real time – so if a year goes by in reality, then it does so in the role-playing game. Now, with the time skip, “RPers” are forced to make a decision: do they time skip their game and let their characters age and make up what their character has experienced over the past 5 years?
Or do they just ignore the time warp and then run the risk of clashing with other RPers who have aged their character?
At least there’s a good thing – Blizzard has already said that they won’t be using the time skip to set up particularly big events in Azeroth that you never see in the game. The only exception to this is probably the marriage of Lor’themar and Thalyssra, which is told in the form of a freely accessible story.
What will your warrior do in the years? Does he dance on the mailbox every day, stare at the NPCs enviously because they have housing, or does he visit Icecrown Citadel for many years to finally dust off “Invincible”?