…and any other time skips made thereafter which I’m not aware of?
I haven’t actually RPed in WOW since 2021’s Shadowlands era, so I’ve completely missed how the realm navigated through the periods where the world, according to the writing team, leaped forwards in time. I think it would be helpful to know! Should I be RPing my characters as five years older, or did AD’s roleplayers tactily ignore the time skip(s) altogether?
I’m assuming some communities inside AD differed from others in how they handled Dragonflight’s explicit time skip, and that’s OK, I’m not looking for a definitive answer! Just context.
My guild (former? It’s essentially dead. Anyway.) that guild largely ignored it. I think one character became a stronger mage and the gm changed surname were about the only acknowledgments of s skip.
In the Dalaran community, it depended. Some ignored it and some acknowledged it, and it was mostly not brought up to avoid stepping on each other’s toes.
Personally, I acknowledged it. All my characters jumped three years forward in time when Dragonflight was released, and I wrote a story telling what Lintian was up to in the interim.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone really even comment on it or involve it in their RP, ever.
It’s kind of 1 of those things where it’s best if people simply don’t think about it because it was too short a skip to really be all that significant, and the world changed 0% throughout it.
Think it’s a case of people acknowledge it happened but not many actually changed their chars much whilst it was happening. They may of turned up the age number or to avoid having to ‘age’ themselves just put a normal age (i.e. Middle-Aged).
For guilds it didn’t really affect them much either they kinda just carried on with what they was doing and to outside sources they may of writ a story to say what’s been going on.
Also there is another Timeskip after Dragonflight. War Within occurs a year later just if you want to know!
I’ve never met anyone who actively RPed it. I think most people are pretty liberal with their own timeline anyway. And it’s not reflected in pre-DF places.
Yeah, that kind of community flexibility is what I sensed might have happened, being that MMO roleplay is made up of exactly that kind of “I think this, you think that, but let’s make common ground” about all sorts of topics.
As Swordmaster points out, Blizzard didn’t use the skip to throw any big curveballs (I’m not sure if the Forsaken’s new leadership was developed off-screen?), but it still retains some importance, I think, in regards to the coming of age of some younger lore characters; not that roleplayers ever interact directly with characters from the lore.
Ironically I think it’s somewhat more tricky for returning players who weren’t around at that precise moment, but from the responses here it sounds like I can mostly RP Vragran and co as they were prior to DF, thanks!
BFA, Shadowlands and Dragonflight all happened in real time, each taking 2 years! They said moving forward they want to stick to 1:1 pace with real time to avoid having to do another timeskip to catch up every once in a while. Also the timeskip between Shadowlands and Dragonflight was 3 years.
Yeah, but that’s somewhat undermined by there being a five year timeskip after Shadowlands/before Dragonflight! I appreciate the distinction, though!
Can I ask when Blizzard mentioned they want to stick to a 1:1 pace? Not doubting the veracity, just suspecting that, as with most things pertaining to lore (and the game as a whole) their approach can change on a seeming whim.
EDIT: I’m not exactly being consistent on whether it’s “timeskip” or “time skip”, myself!
It has had an effect on all of my characters, but I was effectively on a break from RP during DF launch so it was a lot easier to explain than going from one day to another suddenly being 3 years
I tend to ignore it for the most part. It’s pretty easy to acknowledge five years as any of the longer lived races but it has a much bigger impact on, say, a human.
It was an interview early in Dragonflight asking after the timeskip and what it means for the timeline going forward.
But to answer the question in the OP, my guild at the time basically RPed with the premise that the stories taking place between the end of Shadowlands’s main story and start of Dragonflight took over the three year period. I also took it as a chance to flesh out some off screen development and adventures my character had during the time. One of my (mostly retired) characters had a child, etc.
Alright, many thanks! Now to hope they stick to that, hah! That prior retrospective change of condensing each two-year expansion into one-year narratives came out of the blue one day; I think it was decreed in a lore book, out of game? Either way, if they can resist tinkering with the timeline from now on, that’d be a really positive change!
3 years timeskip, as Telaryn said. The 5 year figure was the amount of time between BfA and DF, which included 2 years of Shadowlands and following timeskip.
For how to approach it, while people took various stances on how they incorporated the timeskip into their RP, pretty much everyone I´ve seen acknowledges that DF started in year 40 and that events of previous expansions took place at the time they took place in the lore.
Also, the main reason behind contention when it came to the timeskip was the issue that people had to deal with it in their actual RP where event taking place on Tuesday canonically took place 3 years before event that followed it the next day.
Given that you aren´t in the situation we were back in 2022 as Slands, timeskip and DF are simply going to be part of your character´s backstory, there´s no reason to ignore it. So, if you last RPed your character in early Slands, which was year 35/36, he should now be 6-7 years older as pretty much everyone I´ve met RPs us being in year 42 right now.
Mmm. Sort of like Cataclysm way back when; you could roleplay the quakes leading up to it, and the aftermath, but not the precise moment of the Shattering itself!
My guild ignored it. With how little new stuff happened over these 3 years and how little new lore we got, timeskip would have added nothing to Pandaria aside of cementing the decade that passed since the fall of the mists.
