Draenor "Settlement" Timeline?

Just checking: Does anyone know if there's a certain point we're "jumping into" once we all are roleplaying on Draenor? Someone mentioned to me that it seemed a bit much to suddenly have, overnight, full forts and camps and ports throughout the planet. I had people asking if we're timeskipping entirely after just levelling, or RPing out some of the supplies gathering/building and so forth.

Before I go making any decisions for myself, is there any SERVER consensus I'm unaware of?

Make a poll for it.
Option One - Access to Draenor has been available since the Iron Horde came through it, and the opening quests occur during the week since the pre-launch events, and launch day. Thus, We've had plenty of time to build.
Option Two - Launch day was -the- first time we could get access, so we need a few weeks/days to build stuff.

Nah, if there's not ALREADY a consensus I'll make my own suggestion to my RP comrades-in-arms, but I was just checking to see if there WAS one already.

I think the most "sensical" one, and the one for best RP opportunity, and give people time to level, would be to go around exploring and gathering the supplies for the forts and so on IC. But I hadn't been keeping contact with other guilds (mostly to keep myself in the dark, no spoilers etc!) so wasn't sure if there was already an idea in mind.

I'm thinking it's mostly the bigshots who's gotten there by now:
The Kingslayer, The Destroyer's End, The Firelord and their buddies. Some expert craftsmen, capable guards and daring adventurers may have been ported in with the Garrison-reinforcements when the Hero built his stronghold.

Some extremely curious/stupid may have taken the chance and jumped through the portal when Commander Jenkins and World -Shaman Earthwarder Go'el made their push. Some of these may have survived.

TLDR(TLPD :0): There are some opportunities for having gone in. Your character is not by default likely to have done it. As long as you make an explanation that doesn't violate the Lore's private parts too bad, fits your character, and doesn't belittle everyone else by its details: go ahead.

Everyone's gone in; there was a server event with it. Armies and rank-and-file are already in The question isn't when we went in, it's at what point we begin RPing our presence there, since (by ooc necessity) everything's already in place. Do we RP helping with that, or timeskip? I'm going to rp the former, unless the server's main guilds had already decided something else.

Wild Tempest is taking an RP break for about a week or two.

What I suggest is that if people want to RP already in Draenor then lets maybe see it as the portal so Stormwind opening up after a week or two.

Feral / Blackfall wrote:Everyone's gone in; there was a server event with it. Armies and rank-and-file are already in The question isn't when we went in, it's at what point we begin RPing our presence there, since (by ooc necessity) everything's already in place. Do we RP helping with that, or timeskip? I'm going to rp the former, unless the server's main guilds had already decided something else.

Short answer: No to everything.

While everything leading up to it makes perfect sense IC, it is my belief, by the manner the battle on the other side of the gate is presented in game, that our oh-so beloved characters would be among the "die fighting while those 4-5 guys free the frostwolf and start a war"-brigade. Which again, makes it possible that some survived until the tank-vs-portal part, but doesn't really leave it as the most likely outcome. There aren't very many azerothians in WoD after the welcome-questline.

Anything else feels pretty out of touch with the actual "Welcome to Draenor"-questline.

(Yes, I'm aware that this may be an unpopular opinion, and against the "server consenus", but seriously... Do the quests. What we're discussing in this thread doesn't make sense or match the lore as presented. That's a good sign that we might want to stop)

Edit: Tried to make my post more easy to understand.

There is no official server opinion on things i think.

As Helmut said, Wild Tempest for one is taking a break from RP for a week or two.

Going by the wow timeline, Vanilla WoW > MoP took 5 Ingame years, while that was 8 RL years. By that, i think it's safe for us to roleplay out "time going on slower", so that all forts may not be built up instantly.

Ashran forts for example could have been in process of construction for 1-2-3 weeks after the Vanguard step through The Dark Portal.

Something that i proposed in our guild forums to, is to not level up Garrison IC instantly, keep it as the wooden fort IC for weeks/months before have it upgrade. Ignoring the lack of buildings, that was the most awesome level of all of the Garrison stages in my opinion.

Not a bad idea; and what Helmut said makes the most sense, I think. Most people will probably be taking that break, yeah!

Thanks both of you

And Dwy--imo our chars are RPing the bland army, rank and file; the army goes in, and a lot are dead or killed. Makes for good RP, even if we don't have the actual player characters to lose. There's no IC reason for the armies to stay behind, that makes less sense than going through and getting lucky. Why did we live? 'Cause Khadgar OP. Still, that wasn't the point of this thread, and the point's now addressed--there was no real planned consensus, but that a week or two of struggle/preparation RP (or RP break while our chars do that) is good.

Sidenote--why do you think there's not a lot of Azerothians? I don't know how far you've quested but there's a -lot.- There's enough night elves to build a nelf hub with a moonwell; enough soldiers for your garrison, and then various military outposts, even a port. There's talk of supply lines, etc. Our whole army's in there, make no mistake!

Feral / Blackfall wrote:
Sidenote--why do you think there's not a lot of Azerothians? I don't know how far you've quested but there's a -lot.- There's enough night elves to build a nelf hub with a moonwell; enough soldiers for your garrison, and then various military outposts, even a port. There's talk of supply lines, etc. Our whole army's in there, make no mistake!

Well, there are stable portals back to Azeroth, afterall. But the number of people who survived the initial push through the Dark Portal is probably a bit low. It was supposed to be a suicide mission, afterall.

On the few thing:
All rank and file troops in all battles in the first two zones horde characters see are native draenor folks. All the azerothians you see are your crew at the garrison, your handful of followers, Thrall and Khadgar. And that nelf warden.

Admiral Taylor has a Garrison in Spires of Arak, so there's that.

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Admiral Taylor has a Garrison in Spires of Arak, so there's that.

Spoiler:

But yeah. There's Azerothian presence on Draenor, alright.

On the few thing:
All rank and file troops in all battles in the first two zones horde characters see are native draenor folks. All the azerothians you see are your crew at the garrison, your handful of followers, Thrall and Khadgar. And that nelf warden.

The end of Shadowmoon Valley storyline has Alliance forces fight the Iron Horde at Karabor. The NPCs are called Fort Wrynn [NPC], which is located in Talador. Then again, the game calls them your garrison's army.

Yeah, truth be told I figured it was called "suicide mission" because we didn't think we could get back through the portal! I don't know for sure, though.

I haven't played through Horde side, Dwy; on Alliance, you have a garrison, a tree filled with night elven druids + a night elven outpost that you help with, at least two forts in Spire (one being a big "port"), and some other stuff I've probably forgotten. Oh--right, the engineers in the military post in northern Talador as Lini said, and then the mage area, if you took the arcane sanctum.

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Admiral Taylor has a Garrison in Spires of Arak, so there's that.

I went through the trouble to get the logbook from his chest. The entries in his journal suggested that he's been there at least 27 days.

Jiang-Nu wrote:

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Admiral Taylor has a Garrison in Spires of Arak, so there's that.

I went through the trouble to get the logbook from his chest. The entries in his journal suggested that he's been there at least 27 days.

Nice. i did read through that thing but did not think about using them things to count time. Great pickup!

Dwyburn wrote:Short answer: No to everything.

While everything leading up to it makes perfect sense IC, it is my belief, by the manner the battle on the other side of the gate is presented in game, that our oh-so beloved characters would be among the "die fighting while those 4-5 guys free the frostwolf and start a war"-brigade. Which again, makes it possible that some survived until the tank-vs-portal part, but doesn't really leave it as the most likely outcome. There aren't very many azerothians in WoD after the welcome-questline.

Anything else feels pretty out of touch with the actual "Welcome to Draenor"-questline.

(Yes, I'm aware that this may be an unpopular opinion, and against the "server consenus", but seriously... Do the quests. What we're discussing in this thread doesn't make sense or match the lore as presented. That's a good sign that we might want to stop)

Edit: Tried to make my post more easy to understand.

Spoilers for anyone who hasn't done the first quests yet.

You meet survivors from the vanguard later. Not saying that it's good if everyone goes through and survives, because I guess the idea is only the best go through in the first place. But the only reason the vanguard died is because they kept fighting to hold the line while Khadgar and friends ran away. If you retreated I don't really see why you wouldn't get out alive.

Stormshield is a central hub for the entire alliance, and there are evidently pockets of alliance throughout as shown by Taylor's garrison, so the people saying "all yer characters are dead" evidently didn't pay enough attention. Alliance were going through the portals to your garrison (Why wouldn't it be okay to say we're an off shoot of some hero's forces or brought in alongside them?).
I get that it seems unlikely anyone who ran through the portal would be dead, but as Raenmar pointed out, there are survivors and you see a lot of people who retreat survive. In game, you're presented with like 20/30 alliance including soldiers at the portal vanguard. Let's be honest, in lore this wouldn't be the case - you saw the Maraad lord of war. There were no end to the marching alliance forces. What are they doing? Playing scrabble outside the dark portal?
They went through, a lot will have died, a fair few will have survived, others will be on Stormshield or in some alliance garrison elsewhere.

To summarize: we see a load of alliance soldiers die in game, but in lore, it won't be every single one. In lore, there'd probably be at least a few hundred from the vanguard who survived. Hence why there are more survivors of the vanguard present in game than actual numbers in the scenario.

Terenus speaks wisely.

Jiang-Nu wrote:

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Admiral Taylor has a Garrison in Spires of Arak, so there's that.

I went through the trouble to get the logbook from his chest. The entries in his journal suggested that he's been there at least 27 days.

On that note, I've finally gotten to take a look at this myself as of last night.

In 27 days, a man who fought with extreme distinction during two wars, someone with a direct line to King Wrynn, and personally entrusted with the life of Anduin Wrynn, had only managed to build a wooden walled fortress with cobblestone pillars in between the wooden posts.

And he had to get his men to chop down the trees around the garrison for the wood, and construct a quarry for the stone to achieve all of this in just shy of a month.

I always take druids, shamans and other nature bending powers into account when it comes to construction.

He built those walls by day 7. His forces built that in a week. He isn't there with a huge force either, from the look of the garrison he has and its downfall.

Stormshield is about in game by the way as we're sent there early in the story. We're sent to Stormshield at level 91 (or level 90). That means Stormshield was potentially the first settlement to be focused on by the Alliance. It exists in the first few hours of the expansion and so it's safe to say that Stormshield is definitely there IC.

I'm even sure in Warcraft 3, Archimonde was like a couple days behind the combined forces of the Alliance and Horde. I remember seeing "a few days pass" in one of the loading screens. The Alliance managed to build a small town in that time. I say Alliance, I mean Jaina's small force.


People need to remember that this is Warcraft. There have always been super fast constructions in every expansion. Blizzard avoid saying how long things take but it's always been silly when compared to real life. Warcraft isn't like real life. It's not medieval and it's not realistic. It's a magical world where you can literally build a town with a town-in-a-box. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Khadgar acts like its no big deal to summon his tower. I'm not saying to summon a tower, but you could have mages summon materials or open a portal together. How about a Gnomish teleportation machine?

At the end of the day, if you're having fun and abiding by the lore, you can do what you like.

Terenus speaks wisely.

It's obvious that you can't construct a castle in one week. Everything is there (however, this Khadgar's compound in Zangaara, and in Everbloom... those smart mages).

Although, due to the fact, that it's impossible to RP in Tanaan Jungle, if one wishes to incorporate his or her character to this initial "Run, Khadgar, run!" quest it's his or her choice. There are plenty of other ways to get to Dreanor as we see through progressing.
The best would be to split all forces to different hubs, so that there won't be a situation where one guild is claiming the Lunarfal, and others go like "Ok. We will then move to Spires of Arak to see how's Taylor doing... Oh, wait! We don't even know how to get there!"
Another difficulty is the total number of players who can be in one garrison at the time. There are more roleplayers than 40 spots, so it's obvious that some will decide to build their own garrison "elsewhere" in Shadowmoon Valley. However, mind that the zone has it's spacial limits.

So, all is based not on common sense but rather on logic

As do I. I figure Taylor had that to help as well. Yet still after 27 days there were wooden wall only, with the towers of cobble stone.

Raene wrote:

Jiang-Nu wrote:

Ixirar/Kavalis wrote:Admiral Taylor has a Garrison in Spires of Arak, so there's that.

I went through the trouble to get the logbook from his chest. The entries in his journal suggested that he's been there at least 27 days.

On that note, I've finally gotten to take a look at this myself as of last night.

In 27 days, a man who fought with extreme distinction during two wars, someone with a direct line to King Wrynn, and personally entrusted with the life of Anduin Wrynn, had only managed to build a wooden walled fortress with cobblestone pillars in between the wooden posts.

And he had to get his men to chop down the trees around the garrison for the wood, and construct a quarry for the stone to achieve all of this in just shy of a month.

Let me just quote my post from the other thread on this subject.

Since much of the journal seems to reference player progress, (building the barracks first, Maraad suggesting you go to Elodor) it'd, imo, be reasonable to assume that the garrison progresses at the same pace as player garrisons, ie. the first invasion (described on day 7) happens immediately after upgrading your town hall to level 2. So no matter how you look at it, one week of time passed is enough to progress your garrison ICly to the point immediately after you complete the invasion at garrison level 2.

Furthermore, you're sent to Ashran long before you get to level 2, so it'd be well fair to assume (imo) that given the fact that the Iron Horde has no strong naval presence in the sea between SMV and Tanaan, your garrison would have reasources funnelled through to it (something that Taylor specifically mentions his garrison -isn't- doing). Yes, Taylor is there for like a month, but he has his Garrison by day 7 and the book hints at it being level 2 at that point. We're coming up on the start of week 3, somebody who went to SMV instead of the far end of the world would have no problem getting resources from both Elodor and Stormshield. I'd say at this point having a level 3 Garrison would be absolutely possible for anybody important enough to be setting up an alliance endorsed garrison on Draenor.