They’d be correct to! And I can demonstrate (actually I was really wanting to make this post and was itching for someone to piggyback from)
In MoP, we see baby Durak as having just been born and held in a cot when in the Horde war campaign we go confront Thrall to convince him to stand up and help us liberate Echo Isles from Kor’kron occupation, putting his birth year at 30.
According to Rise of the Horde and Lord of the Clans, we get a confirmation that orcs reach physical maturity at the age of 12, at which point they’re eligible to participate in the Om’riggor to prove themselves as adults in the eyes of their clan. Incidentally, an orc who hadn’t passed the Om’riggor would still be seen as a child regardless of their age, and isn’t permitted to marry for example due to their societal status as a minor — see Durotan and Draka’s courtship hunt which had to be delayed until they had both passed their Om’riggor.
These numbers are specifically from Mag’har Frostwolves (Durotan and Draka) who never drank the demon blood, nor were aged by the warlocks (side note, exactly 5 Frostwolf children were ever aged by the warlocks in the canon). At the age of 6, an orc is the size of a human adult male and traditionally begins training at that point (Lord of the Clans).
In the recent Thrall short story taking place at the end of Dragonflight, Durak is now old enough to be eligible for the Om’gora, the new Rite of Honour that orcs undergo following the revival of Clan traditions in the Horde, of which the old Om’riggor is now one of the three trials they must pass. Durak’s age of 12 years old puts us firmly in Year 42 for The War Within.
plus the previous statement of the expansions following real time in the lore going forward
“Durak is becoming quite the young warrior, you know. You refused him last season,
he’ll be ready soon.”
Thrall did not meet her eyes. “I would never allow our son to track that monster.”
“You think him weak?” Aggra asked sharply.
Thrall set his jaw in a hard line. “Weak? No. Never. But the om’gora is not to be undertaken lightly, as we have just seen.”
“Durak is as strong as anyone of his age, stronger than most,” insisted Aggra.
“The om’gora isn’t to be undertaken for glory or to prove oneself. It is a pledge to serve, honor, and safeguard our people, and to know all that means. I know Durak is of age, but he is not ready. He will be, but for now he thinks it’s all about being tough and brave, and that is such a small part of what he’ll need to succeed.”
He was too young last year, and Thrall denied him the attempt then. This year he’s old enough (and even stronger than most orcs at his age), but Thrall doesn’t think Durak has fully understood the true wisdom behind the Trial and thinks he lacks the (societal) maturity to be truly ready for it — though part of that is because deep down Thrall is scared of his children growing up, and he hopes that by delaying, they’ll remain his little children forever.
But as much as the story is about Durak growing and maturing into adulthood and proving himself with the trial, it’s also about Thrall learning to let go and embrace his son as the man he has grown into, as he explains the trials to his youngest child Rehze, and in so doing reflects on Durak and his own fears.
Also I love how the dialogue between Rehze and Thrall was written. Rehze feels like an actual child and not the weird Willotree thing we had some years back. She’s young, she’s curious, and Thrall allows her to form her own conclusions about the information she learns — and corrects her when she makes a logical, if albeit wrong conclusion.
And Dagran, who was born during Cataclysm, putting him at 14 years old now.
Blizzard too lazy indie to create a toddler model so they just reused the existing baby one they had.
I mean does this https://warcraft.wiki.gg/images/2/2c/Dagran_Thaurissan_II_in_WoW.jpg
really look like it would grow into this https://warcraft.wiki.gg/images/8/8a/Dagran_Thaurissan_II.png
Well, there’s also the fact that the Dark Irons got a really weird redesign (I can’t remember in which expansion) which gave them the self-lit eyes so common during that period. So none of the Dark Iron appearances “travel”, as it were.
Did they? All the images I can find of classic-era dark irons have fiery orange/red glow eyes. They might be glowing a bit more now but they’re essentially the same as what we have now, just lower poly.
You might be right, actually. I always took them to be reddened pupils, not fiery. There are a few images of bosses on WOWHead I’m looking at now, from vanilla times. The glow is now much more pronounced, but yeah, maybe it was always meant to be there.
EDIT: I think I took that to be the case because on the same release (must have been WOD), the Dragonmaw Orcs definitely received a change to their eyes, going from standard pupils to glowing eyes.
Shog here exists solely because I wanted to explore the attitude of a character who came of age during the the five years of peace between Battle for Azeroth and Dragonflight. But while the time skip is rather important to his character, it’s mostly irrelevant to the characters that he interacts with, so I try not to bring it up too much.
At the time I thought that the time skip was a great opportunity for people who wanted to develop their characters and do something neat with three years of off-screen time. However, the two prevailing attitudes were “I’m not going to pretend that three years have suddenly passed when I’m in the middle of a story arc” and “I’m already happy with who my character is, why would I change anything about them.”
For me personally, the main issue with the timeskip was that nothing has really changed during it, so it hasn´t offered any opportunities for a character that has already existed (even though the information that both BfA and Slands lasted 2 years, followed by 3 years long timeskip allowed for emergence of new character concepts due to people who were born during or after Third War reaching adulthood). And, tied to it was the problem that the act of changing character through some short story I write for timeskip would take away from character development that I could have experienced during RP instead.
Urgh, I’ll confess I found it a nightmare.
What didn’t help was that the main world itself went through no changes at all, so the time skip felt unimpactful and meaningless to me.
What we did in RV, ultimately, was play it kind of vague.
If someone wanted to have their character spending time away, we responded to that in kind and similarly allowed ourselves to indulge in a little bit of background character development where it was wanted or needed.
However, it was felt generally best to not make a massive deal or expand on the particular lengths of time, and was generally treated as if the characters had remained in regular touch by default anyway.
Anyone that wanted to then RP without the ‘ah my friend… it has been so long’ moment was then just as able to do that.
(actually I was really wanting to make this post and was itching for someone to piggyback from)