Make it nine years and watch every human rper lose their minds as they are all forcefully put into retirement homes.
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Ah, now we know what all those teenage archmages and knight commanders were for… they were preparing for this day so that when the timeskip came, they’d instead end up being in their prime instead of old and decrepit.
Fel keeps me eternally youthful and spry.
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Since I’ve quit WoW it doesn’t really concern me, but if I somehow return during Dragonflight (such as via another promotion with free game time), I’ll acknowledge the timeskip and have Lintian emerge as a full-fledged mage (though one with much to learn still) rather than an apprentice.
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Since a lore wise 1 year, or less, expansion spans over more in real world time a time skip of a fairly small number of years is not likely to even make up for that, so unless they actually update the in game world to reflect otherwise, as far as I am concerned it really changes nothing, our characters will still be stuck in years that lasts for way past the calendar’s 12 months, and likely to be way ahead of where they really ought to be lore wise, at very least having awkwardly experienced the same holidays several times within an actual lore year for the last past many years.
I used to keep rather strict track of time on my characters, until I realized that didn’t actually work at all in this game, and really only brought frustration, so now I just resigned to the fact that it’s timey whimey and adapt and roll to whatever suits the situation or the people I play with.
It’s not ideal for immersion or feeling consistency of character, but non the less it’s the only thing that actually makes sense when RP’ing in this game, even if it doesn’t really.
It’s simply just the fact of how RP happens to work in this game, like it or not.
You can pretend it isn’t of course to a certain degree, but that’s just denial of cold facts, the actual reality of this game, both how it works as a RP game in it self, but perhaps more importantly also on a meta level, that is in relation to actual reality.
You can fight it, but honestly what is the point, you might as well refuse to acknowledge the color green is actually green, and not red like you thought it ought to be, you are not going to win, and nothing good will come from it, quite on the contrary.
If it’s broke then accept that it is broke and try to get the best out of that fact of reality, hammering on it for sure will only make it even worse.
Well, that went a little beyond the topic of this thread, but there you have, a wall of text ramble on the state of WoW as a RP game.
If I were to return in dragonflight, I would acknowledge the time skip. However on characters that had some time sensitive things planned, particularly those that involved other people, I would play out select moments as sort of flashback episodes for the player.
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This is an argument that I see a lot but I have to bring up that it’s only really valid for older characters.
Any player of any Allied Race, any Shadowlands DK, or at a guess maybe even most Demon Hunter characters will not have been around for long enough IRL for a “several year” timeskip that’s specifically after Shadowlands to catch up.
My Death Knight for example was created Day 1 of 8.3. The very first day that the concept of a Nightborne DK ever existed in lore. That character has now existed for 2 and a half years IRL. If it’s suddenly in-universe been 4, maybe 5 years since Shadowlands, but everyone sees fit to RP as if the timeline is just “catching up to our RP” then people’s entire characters no longer make chronological sense whatsoever.
I suppose my main point is that the viewpoint that the timeskip should just be used to play catch-up is at best ignorant of lore and at worst a very selfish argument that doesn’t take the characters of other players into account.
They didn´t make chronological sense to begin with though as characters like your DK were already operating on different timeline than someone who went with “1 year OOC = 1 year IC” approach and had character since start of Legion. Legion was year 32, so with 6 more years added, they are in year 38 while you are in year 36.
Now, even if time skip is accepted by both of you, your characters will still be in different time, even if you agree on how long the timeskip actually was.
Also, in terms of chronology making sense: Day 1 of 8.3 was also day 1 of Shadowlands pre-patch (according to Sylvanas book, where she killed Saurfang and fought Bolvar on the same day). So for your character´s chronology to make sense in Blizzard´s canon timeline, you´ll also have to explain why about 9 months of RP took place in a day.
This is why I think the actual number of years has been kept vague/non-specific. I believe a time-skip is less so a means to make quantifiable change but instead to push away as far as is reasonable from poor story choices made in BfA and Shadowlands, and also more importantly perform a sort of soft reset on the timeline.
I believe RPers should take the opportunity to do the same. Rather than say “oh well there is no timeskip because it’s just catching up to the time that we RP’ed” since that clearly only makes sense on a character-by-character basis, simply treat the start of Dragonflight as Year X (Whatever that time may be) and decide for yourself whether you need to skip forward based on how many years your character has been RP’ed for.
The time-skip does enable some interesting character concepts though.
For example, a fresh-faced recruit who grew up during those several years of peace and renewal. I think it’d be refreshing to play a character with a strong reason to be naive and optimistic regarding faction relations.
It could lead to engaging interactions with older, jaded characters who have reasons to harbour very different views and if a rift is created between the Horde and the Alliance in the future, that could be explored from the unique perspective of a character who has grown up (or at least spent their adolescence) in a world without that sort of warfare.
This is the first time that Azeroth has had a chance to take a breather since the gap between TFT and Vanilla and even that period was tumultuous and chaotic. While this period of “several years” might cause some problems, it might provide some opportunities too.
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I think we can all agree this came about because someone stepped on the wrong frog in the Black Morass back in the Caverns of Time or something.
The pros of a timeskip.
- I can excuse off screen development of my less developed characters and forward some of their goals a little bit.
- I can soft retcon or rewrite some characters to give them a broader range of flexibility, as opposed to constraining them to a particular area.
The cons of a timeskip.
I have to go through my characters and decided how many of them will see drastic changes.
- Will the one possible future my paladin saw, where he became a crazy cultist, come to pass?
- Will my old man shaman be dead?
- Will my food loving pandaren have died of a heart attack from all the unhealthy amounts of grub he consumes?
- WIll anyone of them have started a family, retired or changed in a noticeable way?
The time skip kind of sucks for rp situations where characters either try to learn a lot or travel a lot. Plenty of personal RP development apparently would happen behind the scenes.
At this point I changed my char’s age to vague description, to avoid any issues. Added to that, caravan guild discussed various possibilities, since we do travel almost monthly to various places. One option is considering 1 month of IRL stay in a zone as couple months per rp in-game time. That way whatever happened to RP characters in the span of IRL Shadowlands length, basically happened thorough the timeskip. I hope it’s only the minimum of 3 years.
‘Several years’ of nothing changed is the exact lore we had on Azeroth throughout the entirety of Shadowlands so I’ll just write it off and make it even.
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I think having a couple of years of chill and prosperity is a welcoming change in lore and possible character writings.
Sure, comes off slightly lazy, but we do not need action 24/7, especially Shadowlands-tier action.
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Several years would certainly feel more suitable to the idea of an extended period of peace and regrowth.
I can’t wait to IC fast-forward Liao after years of seclusion.
This is a really good idea because in my perspective if this goes through. I plan to have my Character who has just regained his title as a General be holding and keeping this peace. But having not participated in the many battles he has been through in the last chaotic 10-15 years of being a part of the Horde. He now has just been fighting here and there rather than the constant churn of action which has weakened his fighting capabilities. He’s still a good fighter but, I plan to make him more rusty. I think this would be a really good dynamic of him relearning how to get into the thick of things again. (Also includes my absolute curse of low rolls 
)
I like the idea of time skip. Allows me to say that my character took a break for a while and started a proper family with his partner. Can also make some ooc background stories of him getting stronger or developing in other ways. However, if we do not get an exact number of the years that were skipped, I think it would be best for us, as community, to decide how long the skip was, so we all can be on the same page. Because it would be odd for some players to ignore it, for others to have been only 3 years while for a third party maybe 5 or 7.
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