Thus far we know that all the characters that have died on WoW lore, have been placed in the Shadowlands. We didn’t exactly see ALL of them but at least some of them like Lady Vasj, Kael’thas, Draka and Alexandros Mograine.
But what happens to those that dies on alternate realities? Would we be seeing 2 Drakas and/or 2 Durotans in the Shadowlands. Which probably brings me to the most important question…Is the Shadowlands a singular realm like the Twisting Nether? Unfazed by alternate realities? If so, then how does the system of Death work from the alternate perspective?
We’ve done some stuff that’s involved with time travel and alternate realities. What happens to those souls when they pass on? Do they go to the Shadowlands?
This is a complicated question. How do you deal with things like alternate Draenor? There was a Draka there. What is that Draka? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she related to the Draka in Shadowlands that we see? Or is there another Draka? We know that in Warlords of Draenor, Velen of that universe died. Does that mean there is a Velen in the Shadowlands? But what about the Velen in Azeroth? All these things are very complicated questions.
The way I would have you think about it is think of a rope… If you look at a rope, it is one thing, right? It’s something that you can grab onto, you can hold it, you can see it; think of that as a character. Think of that rope as Draka or Velen.
If you look at that rope more closely, you can see there are different threads that make up the rope. There are different twines that pull together, and you can pull off one of these threads if you want. But it’s still a rope, and each of those threads you can think of as one of the realities of the character, one of the streams of time… There is a thread that is the Draka from Draenor we visited in the Warlords of Draenor. There is another thread that is Draka on Azeroth as we know her… And there are many other threads that could be other realities that we never peered into. But all of those threads at some time come together to make that rope. And remember also that, as you’ll see, that there are many characters in the Shadowlands when they refer to time, they usually say that time is not a construct of Death. Time and Death are not related. Death is about eternity, not linear time. The manner in which these threads come together, that can take a very long time from mortal perceptions. Those threads can be separated for a time, but sooner or later, they do combine to make one rope that is that character. You can think of it as the threads of that rope, all the individual threads, are just waiting. And over time, they will come together but they can exist as separate entities for a time. That still doesn’t change the fact that they are part of one rope.
To translate to sense: There is only one multiverse-Shadowlands with one version of the characters, and don’t think too hard about how it works, because it just does.
In any alternate reality alliance bias might not exist and all cool characters we used to have could be alive. But that is not the situation we face. The Horde is dead due to our awful lore and the only way to fix this problem is in tearing down the entire alliance until nothing is left of them.
Ropes and Souls, Threads of fate…lol…this is the only lore where I have to get things using a microscope…Nothing is set in stone…it’s like: “Here is a plot point out of nowhere, go somewhere else to see where it came from or develop a habit of reading. Your 70-80 quids does not include continuity” It’s pure wtf you know
Actually despite that long and hard explanation of the devs, the concept is quite simple, it’s basically the same concept of the christian Trinity of God for every soul in every alternate universe and timeline of WoW.
Basically God is just one entity who is always the same in the past, present and future, but if He wills it, He can order a mortal woman (the Virgin Mary) to beget his Son (Jesus Christ) who, despite being born and living on Earth in human form, is still considered a divine member of the same Holy persona of God in the Trinity, so Jesus is God too (for the Christians at least)
Therefore God can be God wherever He is, both in Heaven or Earth, or basically any other place at any given time. And despite Jesus the Son had different experiences among men rather than God the Father, eventually when Jesus ascended to Heaven, they did reunite themselves in a single holy Trinity, becoming one entity once again alongside the Spirit, and so God as an entity has both the divine knowledge of being the Father and the mortal experiences among men of the Son at the same time for eternity…
…If this is sarcasm, it’s quite well done. I mean, you did nice work picking out a concept that’s supposedly simple and showing how it is really, really hard to make sense of. Enough so that you can wage war on its interpretations.
Just don’t think about it. The devs answer doesn’t make any sense unless you didn’t do any SL questlines.
What’s established in Lore about alternative universes is that their numbers are infinite, and so the possibilities are infinite. Let’s take Garrosh for example, the main timeline Garrosh is described by the bronze dragonflight as the worst-possible scenario and a rare one, as most other alternative Garrosh’s are way better and depicted in their worlds as heroes who brought stability and peace not just to the horde but also to the alliance.
Now taking into consideration the devs answer, we’re supposed to meet a much-better Garrosh who’s our main timeline Garrosh has blended to, yet the one we see is exactly the one we know from our timeline with nothing changed at all. Infinite timelines and possibilities also mean we can even have druid and nature-loving Garrosh who should by the shadowlands standard ends up in Ardenweald, and so on the same applies to anyone.
From here, I trust you can imagine the rest and how terrible the devs explanation is. It just doesn’t make any sense!
I have long lost interest in WoW’s lore (Specifically, from the beginning of SL) because it’s just been butchered with retcons and fan-fiction fantasies that doesn’t respect the old lore nor do they have good logical reasons and answers to be.
…And that’s why when you involve time travelling on a linear storyline, it has to be done PERFECTLY or it goes completely haywire. You see, I don’t mind the presence of the Infinite Dragonflight and Infinite Timelines. Their involvement in dungeons and raids that made us revisit some past in-game scenarios from an MMO perspective was really cool. They should have just kept it this way. Introducing an entire expansion based on this time-travelling rhetoric that led to the subsequent confusing lore of Legion and finally all the way to the Shadowlands, for me, actually dug the final nail on the coffin. I really hope (hopelessly lol) that they figure a way to turn this around.
