This is something that always bugged me! In Tanaris, there are the Caverns Of Time, where you go back to the past to rescue Thrall escape, aide Arthas in Strat, etc… Yet, it either creates some kind of temporal loop or we just messed up all kinds of history! Going by the laws of physics (which we all know are documented in Back To The Future) if you step on even an insect, it could lead to a drastic chain of events that would alter the future forever!
So I can’t help but wonder… if we “accidentally”, I don’t know, nuke Southshore while we’re helping Thrall… What would happen? Does it tear apart the fabric of the space/time continuum? Should we learn from documentaries and follow Dr. Brown’s warnings about time paradoxes? Or do we just go nutzo and just nuke the heck out of the past and see what happens? I mean… Arthas is right there and I’m pretty sure a 5man group could take him at this point. Or worse yet… since you take the forms of humans in CoT, does that mean it goes by Quantum Leap physics and all we’re doing is jumping into their bodies… trying to right the wrongs of the past… and hoping that our next leap… will be the leap home?
You and me must have a talk about Temporal Mechanics. I can go on for Volumes.
But when all is said and done, there’s nothing much weirder there than already exists on Azeroth!
lol… I uh… totally didn’t major in physics for a while… nope… never happened!
<.<*
I always figured it was something like it all actually happened as is all along (with us there) and the dragons knew it so they made sure we were there when we needed to be, then helpfully erased us from the memories of those we impacted so as not to mess up their plans. In a sense making a perpetual loop. Remember that one quest where you have to go defend a giant hourglass and who shows up? Why it’s yourself from the future! And let’s not forget the quest where you have to go back and defend yourself! (My personal fave quest chain hands down)
I think the dragons have everything planed out to the most minute detail, and if we happen to screw up… well they can always go back and correct us. Just think of it like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, they didn’t change history, but they did help certain historical figures to make the future what it is. Be excellent to each other!
oh yeah! I remember that quest! I was very disappointed I didn’t have full tier 10 and still wearing the same crappy gear…
but yeah, the bill and ted theory could very well be the most accurate account for azeroth physics. >D
Well… I have two views to this. First, if we did change the future by going into the past, would we know it? Or would we become the future that the past created?
And second… I don’t know if you have ever played Star Ocean on the PS3, but there is a part where the team goes back in time to 1950s earth and end up blowing up the planet, but when they go back to their time, all is well, so they realize that the earth they visited must have been an alternate reality. My opinion there is that they created a paradox. The heroes blew up planet earth in the past, which meant they would never be born to go back and blow it up. And so the universe reacted the only way it could - it forced that past earth into an alternate reality, forcing it on a different path to preserve the integrity of the timelines.
Maybe that’s how it is here? If we did something that would cause a paradox, would it just force the historical past that we are changing to be on a different timeline all-togetehr?
As much as I love Back to the Future…and I love Back to the Future. Time does not “flow” as we think it does. All the perception of time is is collapsing of matter into the most probable state based on observation. In essence, you are “shifting” from universe to universe, each state slightly different which provides the illusion of “flowing” time because you’re always ending up in the most likely state based on the last. You can go back or forward but if you do so at too great of a jump, it’s likely you’ll end up with a heavily dilated timeline where nothing you really know is familiar, as the Fourth Dimension is just the infinite set of all possible states of the universe, including states that contain “contradictions” and effect each other.
The grandfather paradox. If you went back in time and killed your grandfather before your father was born, logic would indicate you would cease to be, but if you were never born you could have never killed your grandfather, which means he never died…which means you went back and killed him….ad infinitum..reducto ad absurdum.
That doesn’t happen though, what really happened is that you have “moved” into a universe in which you have killed your grandfather before you were born for no reason. You Jerk. This is all within the realm of possibility.
Damn it Coffin! Look what you made me do! No more time travel comics!
see, now this is where we get into the whole mess of “for every action, an entire universe is created to play out that series of events” with infinite universes and whatnot. it would be messy, though not impossible. Though you have StarGate physics where it seems the number of actual universes that are created are pretty slim, so you know, the team can make it back to their home universe without too much of a problem… or at least the one they got back to was close enough…
Although you could argue time is not “linear” in that sense and you could still exist if you offed your grandpa. In Futurama, Fry was his own grandfather and that seemed to work out ok for him… sorta…
Though there was some movie, or show, I don’t remember, but it said the same matter couldn’t occupy the same space, so if you went back in time and touched something with the same matter (say shake your old self’s hand or ate a fruit that had the same linage) you’d just blow up.
err… anyways, in real physics, I recall them contemplating dimensions, like length, height, depth… (x,y,z) of space, but there was also xyz of time as well… so I guess with length of time that’s 1 time line, but with depth of time that’s the infinite possibilities. so in theory, if you just went back, you may not be stuck in the same loop (y of time) but take an offshoot into a whole new timeline.
man, where’s Q when you need him? he’d know how to settle this!
Q is busy laughing at our feebleness.
I would love to continue the conversation but at the risk of spamming your comments and boring your users to death, I won’t. My understanding of the 4th dimension is that all possible combinations results already exist, including what we might perceive as a paradox, mathematically the “hyper-verse” (up to 10-dimensional) is constructed to account for reverse causality or other strange occurrences.
In the Cartesian graph system, the 4 dimensions are usually w,x,y,z, but is mostly expressed mathematically. When they graph it, they end up graphing the derivative of the 1st and 2nd dimension to give a sort of 3 plane “shadow graph” of the 4th dimension, but it’s kinda harder to understand than if you just understood the math.
With that I leave you with my good friend, Carl Sagan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0.
DAMN IT I DID IT AGAIN!
lol, very interesting stuff. and uh Carl Sagan’s a bit creepy… but I remember that “hyper cube” thing!
my brain hurts now… XQ
/explodes
TIME COP!!! that’s the movie I was thinking of with the “matter from 2 times can’t touch”… worst movie ever btw…
Wow, deep. Afaik all that the chromatic Dragonflight does there is trying to alter the reality so adventurers are sent to defeat the dragons before they can install for good and start tearing the ‘real reality’ putting ‘newer reality’ in its place. The sooner we defeat the Dragons the smaller chances of their alteration to jump into real history.
And human forms? They simply didn’t want to surprise the culprits and protagonists (Arthas would’ve surely hit hard on Orcs in his domain)
At least that’s my reasoning :P
so it’s kinda like a time/space amusement park? hmm… not a bad idea… someone! get disney on the phone!!!
lol, yeah… I don’t think Arthas would take too kindly to my Forsaken mage just popping in to say hi…
Bad news, Sam. Ziggy says you’re a four-square…foreski…*WHACK* Forsaken.
oh god! the flash backs! glad I’m not the only one who watched that show! XD
I’d say the space time continuum in this strip definitely left its altered stamp on the forehead of the orcs. The orcs of the lavendar tribe. It’s just simply FABULOUS!
I’m assuming when you go back in time and just go crazy with tearing up history… what you get is orc/draenie/blood elf/one eye one horned flying purple people eater hybrids… so let this be a lesson to you all!
If that is a giant gnome you’re my new hero!
that, my friend, is indeed a giant gnome! with uh… crazy super power eye beams… XD
Well, the consequences surely are minor and, well, …inconsequential.
It’s not like we’re traveling 10,000 years into the past…Oh, wait http://www.wow.com/2010/06/13/cataclysm-press-event-war-of-the-ancients-raid-confirmed/
LOL!
If the time line is as fragail as one says, then wouldn’t even breathing the same air cause a distrubtance somewhere along the line such as suggested by the butterfly effect. And with all thos epeople going back in time, wouldn’t a major storm gather that could possibly destroy something or cause a major calamity, thus ending the world? did that make any scence?
exactly! that’s where I don’t get the whole “if you kick a frog in the past, the universe will explode in the future” thing. I think we don’t give nature and the universe as much credit as we do… it’s fairly resilient to our constant meddling and it’s pretty arrogant of us to assume WE will have any major effect.
idk… all I know is that when you time travel your clothing magically disappears and if you start shooting at things you’ll eventually become governor in the future.
there’s really no way to prove if such a thing could happen. you try then come back and something happens, then you have to stop yourself like a day in the past from going into the past…whoa….confusion
I always liked how you got COT rep for killing avoidable neutral pats in old hillsbrad. Like they didn’t have to die, but you feel the urge to kill them, and the dragons like you better. Or maybe they were supposed to die, so sometimes you let them live re baby Hitler debate.
yeah, that’s pretty messed up! and why don’t we just off Arthas while we have the chance?! “oh yeah buddy, we’re right behind you! lets go fight that big mean old dragon!” /runs
problem solved?
Didn’t the dragons say that even though Arthas would commit unspeakable horrors upon the World (of Warcraft) he HAD TO survive Stratholm and go to Northrend cause if he didn’t something far worse would happen? I think it’s like in the Command and Conquer: Red Alert series, first Einstein goes back in time and basically erases Hitler, but in doing so makes Soviet Russia a bigger threat, then later in RE3 the Soviets (led by the one and only Tim Curry) go back and erase Einstein. But in doing so they radically alter their own timeline and now have to contend with the Japanese too! (led by the great George Takei of Star Trek fame.)
To make things even MORE confusing let’s talk with The Doctor.
“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.” Dr Who S:3 E:10 Blink
Caverns of Time is about *preserving* the timeline. We’re supposed to go back in time, it’s part of our timeline that creates the Azeroth we know. If we didn’t go back in time, Thrall would be dead, the Orcs would have never made it to Azeroth (good in the long run, bad at first) Archimonde would have won at Hyjal, and Arthas would never have been there to hold the Scourge back from destroying all of Azeroth or defeating Illidan (the first time).
The Infinite Dragonflight is seeking to eradicate our timeline, and because it happened in the past, that’s required for our timeline, and so is our entering the Caverns to stop them.
Ah… so it IS like Quantum Leap! well… actually more like Time Trax I guess… anyone remember that show? uh… anyone… ?
I don’t know if you are any kind of anime fan, but the whole buisness with the Infinate dragonflight reminds me of the show “Noein”. Starts out as typical cute little kids and very shortly evolves into two diffrent timestreams fighting over a quantum observer. Very cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noein
yup, I am! never heard of Noein but it sounds like something I’ll have to check out!