So the Worgen start zone has long been a thorn in my side in terms of figuring out when the hell it takes place, especially in regards to the sort-of time skip/gap in the story when the player character is a feral worgen. Based on what I’m reading in the Chronicle, and based off the events of the in-game start zone, so far as I can tell it begins at about year 22 and concludes in roughly year 28, meaning the gap that the player character is feral is quite substantial indeed, roughly 6 or so years.
My reasoning below the cut:
So the Worgen start zone begins with the “mysterious threat” plaguing Gilneas, implying that the Worgen threat is brand new and no one really knows what’s going on. This is important, because the Chronicle 3 goes into detail about the Greymane Wall, why it was constructed, and what threats it faced. So first off, the wall was built to protect Gilneas from the orcs, not the scourge, meaning that it was constructed before the scourge were even a thing, roughly around year 18 or so.
The wall worked, for a time, until the Scourge began beating upon it. Though the Chronicle doesn’t list exact dates, Warcraft 3 the Frozen Throne takes place during year 22, and that’s roughly when the Scourge invade Lordaeron, so we can safely assume this happens in year 22. At first, Genn sends out his forces to combat the Scourge, but when this ends with his forces getting slaughtered and turned by the Scourge, Genn turns to his Archmage, Arugal, for assistance.
Though Arugal has studied the Worgen from “another dimension” (read: the Emerald Dream), he cautions against summoning them, as he warns that they could be difficult to control. Genn insists, and so Arugal summons the worgen to combat the Scourge. To Genn’s credit, this actually works—the Scourge buckles and is pushed back into the forests of Silverpine. However, without the Scourge as a foe, the Worgen turn upon their handlers, and begin slaughtering Gilneans.
Genn sounds a retreat, and his forces pull back behind the wall, and Gilneas is closed off from yet another threat. Or so they believe, for many of Genn’s men were bitten in their conflict with the Worgen, and thus begins the Worgen curse.
…Which brings us to the beginning of the start zone, where no one has really figured out who or what is attacking Gilneas yet, or even the nature of the curse and how it’s transferred, meaning that this still takes place roughly around year 22.
The end of the zone, however, takes place during the Cataclysm—at the very beginning of it, actually, given all the earthquakes. Meaning that there’s a very large timeskip when you’re feral, which HAS been hinted at from the way the NPCs tell you that the temporary alchemical “cure” doesn’t always work on someone who has been feral as long as you. However, we didn’t always have an exact timeframe, and now we can extrapolate that it’s been roughly around 4-6 years, depending on just how Blizzard tweaks the events of the in-game timeline. This also means that the general Gilnean population was living outside of the abandoned Gilneas city for quite some time, too.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED talk. I don’t know if this has always bothered anyone else, but the strange inconsistencies in the timeline in the Worgen start zone has always bugged me, so now I’ll sleep slightly easier at night.
