Beyond the Mists

Mists of Pandaria is going to be taking us somewhere pretty new. Basically the only thing we ever knew about it before its announcement was that there was a race of Panda-people (an off-shoot of the Furbolgs? Seems about right) with an East-Asian culture and a love of booze.

After three expansions of fighting important figures from Warcraft 2 and 3, Blizzard - rightly, in my opinion - is trying to expand the cosmos a bit by introducing a new continent with new beings to discover. Now, I would also say that Blizzard shouldn't sell themselves short. The Elemental Lords and the Old Gods are almost entirely original to WoW (ok, there's that C'thun-like thing (some appendage of Yogg-Saron, one assumes) that Arthas fights in the Frozen Throne, so technically the Old Gods and Faceless did exist pre-WoW.)

I'm all for creating new plots and story elements before they exhaust the ones they have to work with, but I figured here I'd take a look at some of the stories that really need to be dealt with in-game. I'm going to try to keep these to big stories - the kind of thing to devote an entire expansion to. WoW has lost some subscriptions lately, but I think Blizzard, and most players, are expecting it to stick around long enough to see several more expansions.

The Burning Legion:

Yes, Kil'Jaeden's defeat at the Sunwell was a big setback for the Legion, and we've basically only seen little hints of them since then. Yet the demons still clearly have a good amount of influence. The Wrath Gate was proof of that - Varimathras and Putress were being supported by someone who seems suspiciously like Sargeras. And let us not forget that Mal'ganis actually managed to outlive Arthas (apparently Frostmourne's soul-sucking capabilities weren't enough to permanently kill the dreadlord) and the remains of the Scarlet Crusade are now basically what the Scourge was originally meant to be - the Legion's proxy army of the dead.

And that's just their presence on Azeroth. As far as we know, there are billions of demons out there in the Twisting Nether. Argus is probably still downright swarming with them. It seems inevitable that we'll eventually journey to the Eredar homeworld, which would give the Draenei some much-needed lore love.

I'd also love to see more Titan stuff. With Wrath and Cataclysm, it does seem like the Old Gods have been set up as the Titan's primary antagonists, but I think there's also room for some good lore to flesh out the relationship between demons and titans. Most of the demon races are corruptions of mortal races, I think, and Sargeras was one of the Pantheon - a ruling order for a presumably much larger titan race. Might we have to fight off an army of Dark Titans?

The Nightmare:

There's just so much potential in this that I'd hate it if they really have closed off the potential for an Emerald Dream expansion with some tie-in novel's plot. I don't really know how that all went down, but as I understand it, we've got N'Zoth responsible for the Nightmare, and that at the moment it's mostly sequestered into a place within the dream called the Rift of Aln. Sounds like your Shadowmoon Valley/Icecrown/Twilight Highlands zone for a potential expansion to me.

I think the Emerald Dream has the potential for some very cool visuals, too. We haven't really had a chance to see truly surreal imagery other than the upper half of Karazhan in-game (well, and places like Netherstorm.) I'd love to see the Emerald Dream as a mix of MC Escher, Salvador Dali, and the scary, wild style of paganism - wicker men and animal bones.

The Infinite Dragonflight:

I adore time travel stories. Growing up, one of my favorite movies was Back to the Future. I also particularly like the steampunk feel of the Bronze Dragons (just look at Mage tier 13.) Murozond is dead as of End Time, but let us consider that A: Nozdormu is still around, and theoretically he has to become Murozond, unless killing Deathwing prevented that future and... um... aneurysm time... and B: Murozond died in a future that we just prevented, far in the future. So that means that he still has all that timeline-destroying fun ahead of him, and he might not even be dead considering the fact that that future never happened.

See why I love time-travel stories?

Anyway, there's a great hook for the entire expansion: Every zone is a different time. It would be awesome to find yourself back in the First War, or in a future in which something unexpected has happened regarding the Horde and the Alliance. You could also do alternate timelines - like a Lordaeron ruled by the benevolent King Arthas.

So those are the three I've thought about the most, but I think there's a lot of potential to expand on established stories. I don't mean that Blizzard should stick only to what is already there, but having a good mix of old and new will help ensure the new stuff fits in to the overall cosmos that exists.