3. The Legion in the Multiverse
The Burning Legion was for a long time the big villain, with Sargeras at the top. The demons are a perpetual threat that has nearly destroyed Azeroth multiple times, while countless other worlds have already fallen victim to them.
With the expansion “Warlords of Draenor,” there was an intention to focus on the original orcs and their corruption, but in the end, it leaned more toward the Legion and introduced demon lord Archimonde as the final boss.
But the question was: If we are in an alternate Draenor, is that also just an alternate Archimonde?
Blizzard quickly explained: No. The Burning Legion and the Twisting Nether traverse all realities. The Burning Legion is the same in all realities.
This was intended to legitimize that defeating Archimonde feels “good.” You should feel that you have really made progress and dealt a devastating blow to the Legion.
But with this, they have kind of “casually” created a significant problem. Suddenly, the Legion becomes a power that not only conducts space travel but also explores different realities and timelines.
However, since the Legion only pursues one goal, namely the annihilation of Azeroth, this idea is rather absurd. Either the Legion has already destroyed Azeroth in another timeline (thus fulfilling its goal), or there are infinite timelines, making it impossible for the Legion to ever destroy all Azeroths.
Not to mention that a multiverse solution seems somewhat “cheap” in many aspects because it allows for all sorts of ideas to be explained without much effort. Notable characters can appear multiple times, and everything feels a bit less significant when you know: There are infinitely many worlds, and if we lose someone important, we just go to replacement world A38 and pick someone up from there. Even if you don’t do that – just the existence of that possibility already diminishes the storytelling experience.
