There are already signs pointing to a return of Ysera, which was a plot that was supposed to be time and great deeds as well. So yeah, if the time skip happens Anduvanas and friends are certainly on the table as well. Jay. 
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Probably going to see Illidan as well, because - y’know - “if the star disappears then we should be worried.”
Another Elf expansion incoming and as we’ve seen before, elf expansions are normally led by Night Elves…what a disaster of an expansion…
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Well at least when the Night Elves lead the main theme of an elf expansion, the Blood Elves cannot be made into main villain protagonists like it happened in TBC so that’s definitely an advantage… and overall even I have to admit Legion was much better than TBC as an expansion, gameplay-wise and story-wise…so if the price to pay is to give Night Elves a bit more attention than Blood Elves in order for them not to be ruined too much, it’s okay for the Blood Elves to not lead a new elf expansion… I guess 
The Blood Elves usually get updates on their lore and main characters essentially in every expansion anyway, sometimes big and sometimes small updates, but still to be the protagonists of an elf expansion is not strictly necessary for them anyway I feel…
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That’s my problem with this as well. A time skip isn’t bad per se, but without actual, visible changes to the world it is pointless. Are we supposed to believe years have passed and nothing has changed?
Of course it is too early to say. Maybe they are planning something big. We’ll see in the expansion after DF I suppose.
Maybe, but we’ve seen so much of the night elf culture - what else is there that they can possibly show us? We’ve been to Zin-Azshari and Suramar, you can’t go much further than them. People who want another time-based expansion, but it revolving around the kaldorei empire…I mean, to look at the same architecture for the whole expansion…it’s not my cup of tea.
Yeah, the story could be great. They could easily turn it around where the infinite Dragons are trying to stop the WoTA and we have to work with Highborne Xavius in order to stop them so he can begin the summoning of the demons (example), but I’m not feeling it.
I’m just ready for a break from Night Elves as a whole. I want to see less of Tyrande and more characters like Maiev (granted, her voice actress has confirmed that doing Maiev’s voice does hurt.)
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I am reminded of a thread you made a while back: So, they are hiring
Maybe the goal of Dragonflight is to be an inoffensive expansion running on the fumes of the creative whims of the previous writers with the purpose of buying time for new (and hopefully better) writers to repopulate Azeroth with new characters and conflicts.
The datamined dialogue is vague enough that it could suggest a time-skip or simply refer to the time we spent in Shadowlands. This may give the new writers some creative wiggle-room as well. I’m… not as optimistic as I may sound, but the idea of a renewed Azeroth is more appealing than going on some cosmic journey.
So long as they deliver what was advertised and actually build events up before they happen it’s gonna be an improvement.
The farther we get away from cosmic nonsense the better, for the time being.
Sure, but but that’s no reason to have the time skip now, if they can’t deliver on it, is it? They could just do it when the new guys are there.
I really don’t see how “Several years have passed quietly since our forces returned from the shadowlands.” and “Several years have passed since Azeroth’s heroes returned from the realms of Death.” could refer to the time we spent in the Shadowlands. So if it makes it in (which I still doubt), it is most definitely a time-skip after 9.2. I don’t see any wriggle-room here.
But it makes more sense to have it now than after Dragonflight – unless Dragonflight has a really wonky ending where we’re teleported to the future or if time somehow moves slower faster on the isles. I don’t mean that we’ll see them act on this in any meaningful way in Dragonflight but rather that we may see the fruits of this decision in the next expansion. If they throw in a few character barks that points to the fact then a sudden time-skip expansion wouldn’t come out of the blue but rather seem like a planned thing.
And I think that’s not a too bad idea. I am not particularly hyped for Dragonflight, but the setting alone makes it better than Shadowlands in my view. Azeroth has faced escalating supernatural conflicts for so many years with little room for peace that a break would do the world building some good. Ideally I would have liked to see a World of Warcraft 2 and not continue this trainwreck but that’s not going to happen so long as the cashcow is still profitable. Having an inoffensive fluff expansion prior to a revamped Azeroth is like the best thing they can do with the current story. Hopefully, by the time should we reach such an Azeroth, NPCs will never comment on the Shadowlands and if they do I hope they’ll refer to it as a strange hazy dream.
Why though? If this expansion is a filler that’s meant to satisfy the customer while they get their story team in order for the future, the timing seems pretty much irrelevant, doesn’t it?
…but it comes out of the blue now. Indeed, a time skip after they actively tried to avoid one with the timey-wimey stuff only highlights the lack of direction they have right now. They haven’t avoided the disjointing feeling. They are just pushing an expac where I have even less of an idea of the state of my character and his home than I usually do, which makes it harder for people who immerse themselves through their character. And I don’t see what they’re winning by this.
If it’s just about warning us… well, they could warn us now and do it in 2 years. They can talk to the players directly, if that’s the concern.
Wrong as always.
As we discussed, yeah. 
But doesn’t change much, if anything. The stuff that a novel can fill in about the whole world is limited. And even if it would be complete, it would still be the repetition of mistakes they vowed never to make again, by putting information that’s relevant to understand what’s happening in the novels.
Reading further than the first 5 posts is beneath me.
Yeah, Blizz would surely never do that. 
Actually now that I think about it, Salandria growing up so suddenly and joining the Blood Knights in the story, it could possibly have been a hint of the coming timeskip all along…
sure, that’s supposed to happen before the timeskip, but, still, I guess it could be considered foreshadowing of it maybe…
I agree with the statement that timeskip without any visual display is a hollow one. Not everyone is a Roleplayer and can imagine things that are not there like during their combat RP events.
Which puts whole Dragonflight expansion into a big question mark. Who is this expansion for? I watched a stream of FF14 player that tried to play WoW.
He as a new player started in the Exile’s Reach and went through BFA to Shadowlands. What struck the most is that during cinematics he commented that he doesn’t know who Jaina is. Why she is hated in Kul Tiras and why they don’t like the Alliance.
The game didn’t explain to him why things were happening that way. I really thought that instead of Rainbow Dragonflight we will get another Cataclysm-esque expansion mostly directed toward the new player with focus on the narrative, explaining the state of the world and major figures that are of importance.
I doubt that Dragonflight will be such expansion as it doesn’t seem to be going that way. I find it as a major issue. And if too much info will be presented during Pre-patch or during the expansion itself in regards to the rest of the world, and then after Dragonflight a real Story Re-telling expansion comes around new players will not be aware of the info that already took place in the previous xpac and start their journey again from half way through.
And books are not a good way to explain such things. People who want to play the game will not look at the guide through Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms or whatever those books are called.
If they figure out how to establish the who, why, what, how, when of the expansion’s big players then it’s gonna solve most of that and then some. Because noone from newbeis to oldtimers has any clue what the hell Shadowlands was even supposed to be.
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That’s basically the same issue MoP had as a new expansion, when it was announced I remember almost everyone couldn’t believe it was true, maybe back then it was even worse than now with Dragonflight and the Dragon Isles because Pandaria was only barely mentioned in WC3 in a line of Chen to Rexxar, and Pandaren were also basically regarded as a non-canon/joke race without any real background in the lore, but then the whole MoP turned out quite good overall as an expansion…
MoP was thought to be a meme, but it was one of the best expansions between 5.1 and 5.2.
I remember getting so much hate from Blood Elf fans for saying that the Purge of Dalaran was one of the best smaller turmoil stories that I’d ever played. But it was and whether I want to admit this or not, Vereesa Windrunner was one of the best characters between 5.1 and 5.2. (Along with Jaina, Lor’themar, Garrosh and Rommath.)
I think what made the Purge of Dalaran unique was that their was a resolution in that immediate turmoil. The Sunreavers were imprisoned (rightly or wrongly is a separate debate and I’m not debating that) and that story was followed up with the Sunreaver Onslaught and Kirin Tor Offensive going against each other.
EDIT: They attempted to do the same with 8.2, but instead of the Thunder King, they used Azshara. The issue with that story arc was that their was no “Purge of Dalaran” pre-story to 8.2. Their was nothing between the Humans, Blood Elves and Nightborne which warranted them directly fighting each other. Unlike Garrosh in 5.1 who was sowing seeds to cause tension between the Humans and Blood Elves, Sylvanas hadn’t sown any seeds together for the Alliance and Horde forces to be fighting, in Azshara’s realm.
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If you took it in isolation it’s a solid story beat. Problems start to rise, when you start actually looking at the story surrounding it. Like when they teamed up with Jaina, in the very next patch after that! Or the time Lor’themar killed the survivors alongside Jaina…
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Indeed. Sadly, this event lost quite a lot of its shine for me, when it didn’t really change anything in the long term. They didn’t use Dalaran at all after that… until it unceremoniously became neutral again. As too often, the story only really managed to reform the status quo. Which isn’t necessarily bad, but becomes bad, when the players are successfully trained not to expect anything to come from it. Emotional manipulation (as in story-telling) works a lot better, if you aren’t aware you’re being manipulated.