Now it is official. With Dragonflight, World of Warcraft is experiencing a time jump, and it is quite significant.
Even before the announcement of World of Warcraft Dragonflight, there were rumors that it was about time for a time jump in Azeroth. Normally, there are only one or two years historically between each expansion – but with Dragonflight, that is different.
The story chief of WoW elaborated: There are five years between the departure to the Shadowlands and the start of Dragonflight.
What was said? The story chief Steve Danuser addressed the players in the official WoW forum and explained in detail what is actually happening with Dragonflight. The post is quite long, but one of the most important statements is:
Shadowlands began in the year 35 after the opening of the dark portal, and Dragonflight begins in the year 40.
He further explained the situation:
The events of Shadowlands took place over the course of 2 years, so there are still a few years left for us to jump forward. Our goal is that during this time there is no litany of events outside the game that you need to read about in books or other media to understand the game world. The aim is to allow the inhabitants of Azeroth to have a bit of “normal life” without a huge threat looming over them.
When our heroes return from the realm of the dead, you can imagine how they slowly get back into their normal lives and usual duties without an immediate crisis or a new enemy to fight. The Alliance and Horde respect the truce signed after the 4th War, and the average Azerothian can simply enjoy a time of stability and reflection.
Why is this important? The significance of this decision is primarily twofold. The first is that this allows many “young” characters to mature a bit and soon take up more space in the WoW storyline. At the same time, the jump of three to five years is not so significant that older characters change drastically to the point that they are unrecognizable.
Role players have to make tough decisions
The second important point concerns a smaller group of WoW fans – the role players. For them, it is particularly significant when several years pass in the game world. Many characters live in parallel to real-time in roleplay – so when a year passes in reality, it does in roleplay as well. With the time jump, however, “RPlers” are now forced to make a decision: Do they incorporate the time skip into their game and let their characters age and come up with what their character has experienced in the last 5 years?
Or do they simply ignore the time jump and risk conflict with other RPlers who have let their characters age?
At least there is a silver lining – Blizzard has already stated that they will not use the time jump to create particularly large events in Azeroth that are never seen in the game. The only exception seems to be the wedding of Lor’themar and Thalyssra, which will be told in the form of a freely accessible story.
What will your hero do in the years to come? Will he dance on the mailbox every day, stare enviously at the NPCs because they have housing, or will he spend many years at Icecrown Citadel to finally obtain “Invincible”?
