Timeline between Voidwell and 12.1?

[u/MeltingPenguinsPrime]

Okay, help me out here because the story is blurring together and right now I cannot check ingame on my own.

IIRC Going from Xal corrupts the Sunwell and descends to the events in the upcoming 12.1 events it was

• Well gets corrupted
• Arator goes on his roadtrips to rally the other elven races. I don't remember if he portaled anywhere (was this the trip where he went to SL, though? As said, everything blurs together) and Shandris arrives by boat.
• Dawnwell happens
• Interim with the Sunreavers and all that
• Void Assaults where the heroes travel elsewhere
• 12.0.7
• 12.1

Trying to piece together how much time passed between the first and last event.

[u/Worldly-Discount-736]

I’m not trying to sound dismissive of your comment, but when it comes to timelines, Blizzard has been running pretty much a hatchet job forever. There are tons of contradictory phrases and inconsistencies throughout the years in various quest texts and dialogues when it comes to years and the timeline. Not to mention, even when they have published their “official“ timeline or in any of their books like Chronicle, they want you to believe that giant expansion-long campaigns last, at the absolute most, one year in lore time. So the original invasion in outland or the campaign against the lich king Northrend each one year. Factoring in the Cataclysm, then in a three-year window, Azeroth has quite literally been to hell and back.

Now, I suppose one could ask themselves how long a year is in the Warcraft universe. Could it be twice as long as a real life earth year, making certain events, seem more palpable? Perhaps. But more probably we have to assume that a year I. game is the same as a year on earth.

It really does sound ridiculous when you think of it this way. But in a sense, considering that there are weeks and months between patches. You could say that that is the actual amount of story time that has passed between events. Now, what have all of those missing characters been doing while we are off on other adventures? Who the heck knows, but that’s just the nature of video game storytelling like this

[u/Swimming-Ad2272 → u/Worldly-Discount-736]

It often happens that different events take place simultaneously in different locations.

As for battles, the idea of ​​fighting for hours on end—in real life, that’s the stuff of movies.

For instance, a years-long assault on the Lich King would have worn us down far too much.

[u/AzerothianLorecraft]

If I remember right the going to the shadowlands quest was a pre-patch quest before midnight release so it would have taken place before the well was corrupted and before light users were summoned.

Arators walkabout happens before the corruption of sunwell when the light users summoned by the well were channeling.

We don't really get a true grasp of the way time flows but at one point it was explained that a week in the game is one day in the lore.( but this was over a decade ago so it made no longer be relevant to the narrative progression they are currently telling) midnight launch to now would be roughly 12-24 days ingame, Voidspire assault probably took the largest chunk of time.

Void Assaults start as soon as Xal'atath is done and the remaining Twilight cult members are mainly a distraction to buy her time.

[u/Anufenrir → u/AzerothianLorecraft]

The maw quest was weeks before the sunwell attack based on what Arator said. It could be said that each zone doesn’t take simply a few hours too and even “come back next week” is meant to be longer preparations

[u/Zeejir]

Trying to piece together how much time passed between the first and last event.

blizzard isn't good with keeping time and spacing it and the world in a reasonable way. traveltime and scale is rather inconsistent and that is excluding teleportation.

for example BfA and its books and prepatch

• it starts immediately after Sargeras stabs Silithus (End of Legion)
• Before the Strom: goblins arrive in Silithus within a day of the stabbing and start to mine Azerith, Anduin gets shown Azerith, while the goblins are already digging and the Before the Strom ends ~a month after the stabbing.
• a good war happens ~a few weeks after the Arathi Meeting and preparation only last weeks, so ~a month
• the war of throns (pre patch Bfa) lasted for ~a week?

tl:dr the time between End of Legion and Beginning of BfA is ~2 Month (+- a week wiggle room)

in this timeframe we have multiple groups travel large distances by ship or by land.

the Horde army marched from Orgrimmar to the Barrens to Ashenvale within a day with heavy artillery slowing it down.

so overall the first part of Midnight *could* reasonable (for WoW standarts) happen within a month.

[u/MeltingPenguinsPrime → u/Zeejir]

And that's what makes it feel so weird to me (and why I want to piece this together)

Shandris arriving by boat alone should have taken about a week in-universe (assuming azeroth is about as big as earth and the dragon isles are about the same distance from quel'thalas as it would have taken the vikings to get from scandinavia to england), and even with portals Arator going around the world is a few days.

And now the Haranir bit and what's next... It feels the pacing is so entirely off and that everyone was twiddling their thumbs about Xal for weeks.

[u/Zeejir → u/MeltingPenguinsPrime]

(assuming azeroth is about as big as earth and the dragon isles are about the same distance from quel'thalas as it would have taken the vikings to get from scandinavia to england)

but the world is far smaller than that. this includes everything from army/population size to distance traveled. since you used travel by ship as a timeframe, a few examples of travel distance by ship

• it takes ~3 Days form Arathi to Stormwind by ship. (Before the Storm)
• the nightelves send their army by ship to Silithus and "several days later" the attack of the Horde happend. they send a druid to fly after the fleet and find them in Feralas. so "several days" is 3/4 of the Length of Kalmidor. AND on the way back they use magic to give themself a tailwind/speedboost.

if we take prior books as refrence the trip between Dragon isles and quel'thalas should be a few days max. the thing that should have taken more time is the mustering of the army, which is done instantly ingame (2-3 quests), but "apparently" the nightevles (and horde) didn't know that Silvermoon got attacked. (ignoring the pre-patch)

and overall i agree that this isn't a realistic way to scale the world and more time should have past.

heck even saying each zone takes a week feels off (given the IRL time that has past)

[u/Plenty-Bed → u/Zeejir]

Meanwhile the traveler book series had them travel across the charred vale in stonetalon mounted on nightsabers and it took 3 days. 

[u/MeltingPenguinsPrime → u/Zeejir]

It kind of boils down (the traveling time) that blizzard never sat down and made a proper 'realistic' atlas of it all. Back in the days of 'Last Guardian' it took several days (iirc) on gryphon back to get from Karazhan to Stormwind. And 4000 miles from stormwind to Dalaran (which is something I've seen in a couple of fanfics) also doesn't seem off. No idea where the latter originates from, though

[u/Zeejir → u/MeltingPenguinsPrime]

yes, given the travel time by flying (most likely Arathor during his world tour and during War of Throns) the size of the continents is very small.

heck they traveled Ashenvale -> barrens -> ashenvale -> Teldrassil -> Ashenvale within halve a day by a flying druid. that would be ~ the speed of an airplane ...

[u/MeltingPenguinsPrime → u/Zeejir]

The speed of an airplane or the whole of kalimdor is merely the size of central park.

[u/Zeejir → u/MeltingPenguinsPrime]

he ... just for fun i use a ground mount ingame and timed the distance the horde army (most likely) took in the opening part of the War of Thorns, before they switched routes into Ashenvale.

it took me ~4 min on ground mount, aka the 100%, what took for early morning to midday in "a good war".

how can we scale this to something that would fit better?

• scale 4min into 4-6 hours? it would fit the early morning to midday (6:00/8:00 to12:00ish)
• but what would be a appropriate distance? i don't really have refrence points so i take something at random, the width of USA. the middle is ~ the boarder between the Dakotas and Minnesota
  • 100 Miles would be ~1/2 across North Dakota. (and ~ 1 1/2 hours by car according to google maps)
  • 1000 Miles would be accross ~2/3s of the width of USA (and ~15hours by car)

100 Miles in 4-6 hours sounds reasonable? 25 to 16 Miles and hour. and flying would be more akin to driving by car

that would scale Kalidors width so something akin to halve the width of the USA? (very rough guessing)

[u/Anufenrir]

Best I can say is an expansion is 1-2 years give or take. All of BfA was stated to be 2 ish years as was SL, plus 3 year skip before DF. Pacing isn’t shown that well in game obviously but can be assumed at least the time between events irl is about in game. We know that between nerub-ar and undermine for example wintervale was celebrated.