I wonder how that works though. My best theory is that the subconsciousness builds up energy (I was close to writing “regenerating mana”, but that would be a tad to geeky – right?), and when an idea suddenly pops up, the brain goes all haywire and spends the stockpiled energy on making the ideas good, and tossing out more.

However – it’s just an idea.

The concept of timeless events came upon me, which made a slight change in all of it. In the end, it happening before isn’t wrong, it’s just not the whole truth. To clarify, allow me first to explain what I mean by a timeless event. Basically, it’s a live retroactive continuity (mostly known as a retcon); a change in the lore as we know it, but with the player taking part of the action, and witnessing the event first-handed. Players of all levels can participate, and as such it doesn’t make sense speaking of when, as all players are essentially at different points in the time-line.

The harsh way to look at it, isn’t to say that your characters past is wiped completely – it’s modified. Your actions naturally affected the world around you, just in another way than when you experienced it. This is basically what everyone seem to have a problem with getting: time is not linear in an MMO, and it will be changed.

As an example of the linear time, try to imagine that your character goes to a lower level area, where you meet a NPC that speaks of death and destruction, and narrowly escapes his death. However, you remember that you already killed the same NPC, while wondering why you were actually sent to kill him, rewarding you with a small bag of gold, and a big amount of questions.

What can we derive from the above, then? Firstly, that the time-flow follow the level-path. As such, whatever happens at level 75 is based on what content from level 1 to 74 said that happened. Secondly, that since nothing obviously can happen at the same time, these time-less events, in which players of all levels can take place, must have happened at level 1, or prior to it.

The answer to the question “What happens when such a timeless-event has passed in-game?”, leads me to the concluding point: It must have actually happened before the game’s on-going story-line. It doesn’t matter what you did before you participated in the event, as the players individual time-line means, I’m sorry to say it, nothing.

When did the Cataclysm happen?
The common misunderstanding is that new content is always happening after previous content. While this is indeed true for highlevel content, it’s certainly not true for all of it. We can use a good example from each of the existing expansions to support the claims I’m going to be doing.

Burning Crusade: Races was added, taking lore with them to explain how they joined their respective factions before or during the starting areas. As the levels progress, Emissaries are often spotted throughout the capitals, to represent that they had indeed “just” joined, and was seeking to aid their factions, in what way they can.

Wrath of the Lich King: Death Knights, the new class, was added – champions dying at the plaguelands, meant to be raised as The Lich King’s new order of Death Knights – and joins the respective factions at the time when the Dark Portal opens, and steps into Outlands. As the Draenei and Blood Elves were part of the factions, they could naturally die at that point in the timeline alongside the other races, and be raised. They could not be fallen of the Third War (Warcraft III), as Draenei wasn’t in Azeroth at that point, and Blood Elves weren’t aligned with the Horde yet.

Now, as said, the main point is to figure out when the actual Cataclysm takes place. Since it affects the world that the first part of the content happens, people will experience it already at level 1 (the two new races even seem to have a small time of their quests before, prior to “normal” WoW timeline). They can choose to be Death Knights as well, which meant some of them died and was raised before Arthas was defeated in Icecrown, and since they had already waded through the cataclysmed world, it must’ve happened before the whole of WoW’s storyline.

To back it up, the first few sentences of the Cataclysm Trailer, is as follows:

As the terrible war against the Lich King continues, the proud defenders of Azeroth fight to secure a lasting peace. But there can be no peace, when the world itself is devoured by rage.

First of all, the war against the Lich King has lasted pretty much since Warcraft III. Second of all, it’s not stated if the cataclysmic event actually happens at the time where we – the heroes – fight the Lich King. He’s merely the biggest immediate threat after the Legion had been pushed back in Outlands, and removed from there.

With the time aspect covered, the obvious question pops up fast: “But what about Deathwing?”. You see, Deathwing is smart. He didn’t strike at once, as he would otherwise had to deal with the Legion and the Lich King – so he plots his plans, while we do the dirty work. On the way, we have however already crushed some of his plans: The Twilight Dragonflight (a subject I’ve discussed not one or two, but three times), seen over 3 notable places. First, there’s the Netherwing-area of Shadowmoon Valley. Next, the events of Night of the Dragon. Third, the death of Sartharion in the Obsidian Sanctum. With these events spanning over the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, while Deathwing was “hiding” below Grim Batol… further supporting that the Cataclysm must’ve happened before the final parts of the battle against the Lich King.

While all of the above is pure speculation, I’m wondering how it could be any other way, and still be presented in a believable matter. I’m surely looking forward to every small tidbit of information about it all at least.

It boils down to two things. First there’s Deathwing’s connection to Queen Azshara… Now, it’s obvious that they both share a connection to the Old Gods. But they havn’t really had anything to do with each other – or have they? The closest to a meeting we know of, was during the War of the Ancients, but that was hardly a “friendly” situation at all, as Deathwing was on a mission to reclaim his precious stolen Demon Soul. After that, we don’t know of anything else between the two. The events that followed that, led to the transformation of Queen Azshara and her Highborne to the vile Naga.

Now, this is where it gets interesting. As I wrote in my second post:

…And then ofcourse there was the incident where Korialstrasz was ambushed by the Naga on his way to Grim Batol. Naga who very seemingly had attempted to halt his progress. The cryptic part arises by the words being uttered by the Naga: “The deed is done, we will be spared…”. Spared by who? In the end, I’m sure Deathwind would intend to erase all life on Azeroth, no matter if they both “serve” the Old Gods, however weakly. The fact that a pact was made however, gives a hint of non-hostile communications of sorts atleast having passed.

What if Queen Azshara, with her change to the Naga, under the influence of the Old Gods, actually had arranged this, so that the Naga would be spared for Deathwings upcoming plan of utter decimation of all other living beings, except his own. He would rule above the ground, she would rule the depths. It could also “just” have been a pact made with Sintharia, who were the visible threat – not even she knew that Deathwing were the one pulling the strings. Never the less, a certain connection is indeeed there. And Deathwing certainly has something up his sleeve, now that his Twilight Dragonflight has been perfected. The Obsidian Sanctum might just have been a trial of things to come…

From all that, I’m pretty certain that we’ll actually get to see, or at least somehow experience, a lot more of Queen Azshara and Deathwing soon. The storylines have been set in motion.

Now, the second thing is the mysterious globe (texture link) first seen in the Halls of Lightning instance, obviously replicating Azeroth as we know it. But, look closely. Obviously, something is really wrong with Kalimdor, as it’s pretty much torn appart. The Eastern Kingdoms doesn’t seem to have taken much damage, but something has indeed happened – a thing that, in a storyline aspect, already have happened when the instance is entered. So far, the best example of map comparing I’ve found is a series of pictures from “The NEW Face of Azeroth“.

Oh, and it does seem rather convenient that the maps of Azeroth… are not available on the official website, but instead says this:

We currently do not have a map for this at this time. Our old one was really outdated so we removed it.

Outdated? Please. What has changed since the original release? The re-introduction of Quel’Thalas, Azure- and Bloodmyst Isle… and yeah, nothing else really. It seems strange that there havn’t been time to fix that, even though there’s maps of both Northrend and Outland available. Would make sense to redo it completely, if such big changes are being made to the landscape.

Going back to the globe, it fits in really well with the whole Cataclysm idea of a magically based supreme attack against Kalimdor. And who better to do such thing than the Naga? A plan that had been in the works for ages, but only now showing the consequences of it, when the Burning Legion was vanquished (or, at least, set severely back), Malygos decimated, Ysera and Nozdormu occupied elsewhere, Yogg-Saron being killed off (though, he was most likely the Old God that deeply corrupted Deathwing in the first place), and – last but certainly not the least – the demise of the Lich King. Deathwings return should be easy, as he really doesn’t have any real competition in his domination of Azeroth. Seeing as he was the Earth Warder, he could indeed have had a plan, that would result in further destruction. The assault on Kalimdor was merely the starter…

A last matter to take into consideration, is that C’thun was seemingly resurrected into the form of Cho’gall, starting another branch of threats from the Old Gods. The big question is though: Is Deathwing still under their sway, or is he thinking by himself, now that Yogg-Saron is indeed defeated?

In the ind, and as a “tldr”, I really expect Deathwing and Queen Azshara to show themselves, in some way. A big role in the story should be a given. We already know that he has a voice, which was revealed in the vision-part of the fight against Yogg-Saron.

I’m certainly looking forward to seeing them and the lore galore behind it (see, I couldn’t even stick to the two things I wanted to be the focus points). Let us hope that BlizzCon will reveal this to be the truth.

Masks… now? It’s the middle of the summer!
Indeed it is the summer. While Patch 3.2 is possibly the last content patch before Hallow’s End this fall, that alone could be a reason. But why were the masks even added in the first place – and why did it spawn such enormous discussions about new races? Well, the answer to that is quite simple: The currently existing masks replicates only the ten playable races. With that in mind, it’s easy to get suspicious, especially when they were introduced with a high level of detail, and the introduction of female worgen – which hasn’t been seen around.

So, someone at Blizzard screwed up?
Perhaps, perhaps not. Never the less, the next build introduced 4 additional sets of masks… and not really much else. These new masks had, funnily enough, mostly weak graphics – mostly noticeable by the female ogre, murloc (it’s just a recolored “male”). Even more interesting is the fact that no changes to the Hallow’s End even has been announced, or even talked about – and you’d guess they’d add something like that before adding detailed masks out of the blue. Well, just look at it the picture, and notice the difference in the level of detail.

… and then what? What makes the worgen/goblin race-combination to believable?
An expansion involving the The Maelstrom, which is – along with the Emerald Dream – the largest candidate for that part. Such will, most likely open up the various islands, Undermine, Kul Tiras, and thus… Gilneas. Being able to visit Undermine makes sense, and Gilneas should certainly involve those Worgen – I mean, what else is supposed to be behind that wall?

But, the Goblins are Neutral…
The Steamwheedle Cartel is the mainly known Goblin cartel, which is neutral. However, there are four other cartels, which we don’t really know that much about. The Horde has a past with the goblins, which is very obvious from the current zeppelins, and various units up till the Second War, which is where they went neutral… the Steamwheedle Cartel did. With Blizzard being able to pull retcons, it should be fairly easy to make goblins a part of the Horde again.

And what about the Worgen?
Tricky one to explain the fullest, since we don’t really know what really happened with the Scythe of Elune in the end. But, the fact that it was actually (re-)recovered and used in a quest in Grizzly Hills. Since the storyline of Northrend takes place after a character of starts at level 1 – and the Scythe was lost at that point – it cannot be used as a way to explain it. Never the less, it gives a connection to the Alliance, through Velinde Starsong. Another possibility – and possibly the best one – included Alphus Wordwill, who researched the worgen curse, and might find a type of cure. But, the best part of all this, is that we know so little about the whole thing, leaving it easy to do a believable background for the race.

So, is it going to happen?
Who knows? I got a good feeling, but I probably won’t put as much on it as Boubouille did. We’ll see, but I do indeed want to believe it.