The Caverns of Time are a pretty neat place. With the recent announcement of Old Stratholme, we'll get to go back and preserve the timeline through four different events: Medivh's opening of the Dark Portal, Thrall's escape from Durnholde Keep, Arthas's purging of the city of Stratholme, and Azeroth's victory at the Battle for Mount Hyjal. The mysterious Infinite Dragonflight is trying to disrupt the timelines for unknown reasons, and we have to keep things the way they were.

But why? Yes, any change in the past will have a ripple effect on the future, bla bla bla, but there are people who would definitely prefer that events went down differently in three of the four CoT instances. Blizzard doesn't show us what happens when we wipe, fail or simply choose not to preserve things in CoT ... so we've had to fill in the blanks ourselves.

The Battle for Mount Hyjal: Okay, no one really wants to see history changed for this one. Heck, it even looks like the Infinite Dragonflight may not want to change it, since we see none of their members in the battle. If history was changed ... actually, I'm not sure what the Burning Legion really would do if they won the war. Destroy all the mortal races in their quest to bring chaos to the universe? Enslave all the playable characters and force them to become an invading force for another world? Man, that would be awesome. For the Legion. Not so much for Azeroth. The Burning Legion winning at Hyjal is like a big Game Over sign for the Warcraft universe.

Savur from Gurubashi asks, like an Azerothian Jerry Seinfeld: what's the deal with Mount Hyjal? Escape from Durnholde and the Black Morass, the first two Caverns of Time instances, have to do with players attempting to stop the Infinite Dragonflight from completely messing up the Warcraft continuity. In both of those instances, you work both for the events of history, and against the Infinite Dragonflight, in order to make sure that what really happened in Azeroth actually happens.

But in Mount Hyjal, the Infinite Dragonflight is nowhere to be seen. There's no reason for the players to be there, as even without them, Archimonde was defeated by all the exploding wisps. Now, the Bronze dragonflight does apparently claim that they suspect the Infinites are there, but from all player reports (disclaimer: I haven't played the instance myself), the Inifinite Dragonflight is MIA, so there's no reason for the players to stick around and fight.

Drysc wimps out, and basically says that players are there because it's cool to see past events of Warcraft history (and that Archimonde apparently drops the Professor Plums). But that's weak-- if the Bronze Dragonflight really cared about protecting the continuum, they wouldn't just let a few punk heroes go sightseeing throughout time. Sure, there doesn't need to be a "lorelol" reason to fight the people (and Orcs, and Scourge, and the demons) that we fight, but there should be.

So we'll wait patiently and see what happens in the next CoT instance. Are you content with just seeing the sights of Old Azeroth, or would you prefer there be a reason that you're going there in the first place?