Don't Mess With Time.

I could be totally off base here being I am not a lore expert by any measure but it sure seems as if the coming 5 man dungeons are going to be tinkering with the time line.  Tinkering is a bad thing.  Tinkering only leads to bad things.  Look at the Gnomes, they are tinkerers and look at all the bad stuff they are responsible for?

We have experienced moving through time before in the game. It will not be the first time and surely will not be the last time when the new 5 mans come out but there is one startling difference now, at least as I see it.

In the past when we went back in time we went back to make sure things happened as they originally happened in the natural flow of events.  We went back to make sure they did not change or even as innocently as to be allowed to witness the past and participate in it.  To succeed in each of our endeavors into the past we needed to make sure things happened as they should have happened.

With the new five mans we are bouncing throughout time and changing things.  As any sci/fi geek will gladly be able to tell you and ramble on about for hours on end, you do not screw with the time line.  One little change could cause the butterfly effect.

For those that are not sci/fi fans or those that might not know what the butterfly effect is I will explain it in the simplest way I can.  If you go back in time and change even one little thing you could cause a ripple effect that eventually changes everything you know about the world.

We are going back and changing the time line.  That is a big no no.

I have a feeling all this time line tinkering is going to lead to something quite horrible, or fantastic depending on how you look at it, with the world as we know it.

Perhaps by changing things so we can defeat deathwing we are changing things in a way that will be worse then anything deathwing could have ever done.

Anything we change in the past could change everything that happened after that point.

This could be a return to BC if something we did going back now changes what we did there.  It could mean a return to wrath if something we did going back now changes what we did there.

It could effectively be a complete reset of all the lore as we know it.  Like hitting the new game + button.  We would still be playing warcraft but we would not longer be playing it in the world we know now.

Could you imagine if something we did back then causes the humans and orcs to become allys?  What would the factions look like then?

What if something we did then gave someone else that was a push over in the original time line more powers then could ever be imagined?

What if the old gods got angered with our tinkering?

Even if all we do is go back and pick an apple off a tree we can never know what could happen.  I am not happy with playing with the time line even when the best sci/fi writers in the world do it.  There is no way I am ever going to feel comfortable with the group of amateurs that blizzard has writing for them handling it.

It can only turn out one of three ways as I see it.

1) Blizzard makes swiss cheese out of their own lore and just keeps mutilating it trying to fix it.
2) Blizzard uses this as a springboard for some really awesome retelling, in a much better way.
3) Blizzard just totally ignores it and forgets it ever happened.

I am hoping for #2, I am thinking #3 will happen and I am worried that #1 might.

Either way, time is a fragile thing and shouldn't be played with if you want to have a fluid storyline.

I love the idea of going back in time and experiencing some of the most fantastic moments in warcraft lore.  I wish we did it more often.  I do not like the idea of going back and changing those things, that is a story killer.

But then we go back to one of the biggest questions about situations like this in sci/fi.

What if us going back and changing it is the natural chain of events and the way it is supposed to be?

Either way, I made a prediction before cataclysm was released about the next expansion after it and us going back in time changes some things in a way that is starting to make me look like I hit the nail on the head.

I think I know what the next expansion will be and it will not be the mists of panderia.  Not even close.  Check out the new five mans and tell me if you can see something deeper in what is going on.  Might not be the next expansion, but what I predicted will happen it seems.

One hint. 

Our next big baddie is just hanging out right now in game doing nothing in an area that is probably totally empty and neither horde nor alliance can attack him.

I know one person that reads my blog and I read his knows who I am talking about.  I am pretty sure I posted a comment on his blog about it a year ago or so.