Ok, so I know that we're a mere two weeks through 5.2, and there's still a whole raid tier (and a whole story-patch) coming that will still be Mists-era, but it's always fun to open things up to speculation.
I tend to be a bit conservative when it comes to making predictions about future content (it helps the big surprises shock me more!) but what we've seen in Mists has upset the pattern.
As expansions go, first we got two new races, then a new class, then another two races, and then Mists did a very odd thing and introduced a new class and a single new race (the unfortunate consequence here is that the vast majority of monks are pandaren and the vast majority of pandaren are monks.)
So we can't really hold to the pattern anymore. Here's a handful of predictions:
Prediction One:
There will be no new race, but instead, we're going to get the new models for the older races.
This is one of those things that Blizzard's been talking about for a long time, and when you put a human next to a worgen, goblin, or pandaren, they do look kind of awful. Now, there are different ways they might go about this: the problem is that people like me have been playing for a very long time, and we have a connection to our characters. The old models are based on an earlier generation of gaming (technically they're two console-generations behind at this point,) and what flew in 2004 is looking very blocky and unimpressive in 2013.
Yet these are our characters, and we still want them to be recognizably ours. I still want Jarsus to have his hippie braids and tired bags under his eyes (wow, now that I describe him that way, it makes him seem like a stoner. He's not meant to be.) So clearly the new facial options have to correspond with the old ones. Still, with greater fidelity, we might decide one look isn't really what we remembered it being, so I think character re-designs should be an option, at least as a one-time thing (and as a paid service after that.)
Then there are animations and wireframes. Personally, I like the way armor sits on a human male, and draenei males have an awesomely intimidating look to them, except when they're running. Ironically, as one of the two races who can't be rogues, draenei have one of the coolest stealth-crouches.
Yet not all animations are great. The way our characters move are probably more iconic to us than the looks of their faces. If Jarsus doesn't do the John Travolta Saturday Night Fever dance when I type /dance, I'll be very sad.
Likewise, they're going to have to keep the old voice acting. Sure, some of it's kind of ridiculous, but nothing would break the sense of continuity more than having them sound different. Even if they could round up the same voice actors, it would be very strange.
But new models - bring them on. And then maybe some helmet models that let us see their faces - though transmog can always solve that.
Prediction Two:
A new class is unlikely.
As much as I'd love to play a Demon Hunter (though I still think I'd prefer DKs as the badass antihero class) I don't think we should expect to see a new class this coming expansion. Monks have been better-balanced than DKs were during Wrath, but I imagine that new classes mean a COLOSSAL amount of effort on the design side of things, especially when you consider how much redesigning is needed for the old classes each expansion cycle.
This is the thing I'd most like to be wrong about.
Prediction Three:
We're going to deal with a very big threat, and we might have another ten-level expansion.
Expansion five, assuming it holds to the usual pattern, will come out in 2014 - the tenth anniversary of World of Warcraft. Consider that and the fact that we're within spitting distance of level 100, and throw in the fact that the Alliance and Horde are going to have a reckoning at the end of this expansion, and you've set the stage for a super-epic.
If we have our big confrontation with Sargeras, it will be a risky endeavor, and could be seen as a shark-jumping moment for the game. Sure, there's still the Old Gods, and Blizzard could do plenty of things to bring in new villains, but if we take down the S-man, questions will be raised as to what the hell we can't do. It's weird enough now after beating the Lich King and Deathwing (never occurred to me that they had rhyming names) that people still ask us to do their chores, but after killing Sargeras? "No, lady who wants me to kill five goats for your stew - I saved the universe. Do it yourself."
Granted, Kil'jaeden was left conveniently alive at the end of Burning Crusade, and I imagine he's super-pissed at us and wants a rematch. A Legion expansion could have us finally take down KJ for real, and potentially give us awesome draenei lore along the way. Still, not to say that Blizzard ever really "aims low" for an expansion (Mists has proven far more epic than "that place with the panda-people") but I think that for their tenth anniversary expansion, we should expect something really big.
Prediction Four:
Something I haven't come up with yet that's super-epic-awesome.
I'm not saying that I lack for imagination, but when it comes to predictions, I like to get things right. As I said, this tends to make me a bit more conservative in my brand of meteorology, but one thing I can definitely put my money on is that there's going to be something crazy that I haven't yet listed.
What could it be? Some kind of new feature? A reworking of the core structure of the game?
I'm very curious to see what happens to the Alliance/Horde war after Garrosh gets deposed. It's not like the two sides were best buddies before he became Warchief, but I can't see the war continuing as it is. The question, then, becomes how that will be reflected mechanically. Granted, the only "mechanical" difference since the war started is that we don't get neutral capital cities anymore (the Shrines barely count as cities anyway,) so there might not be much to change.
We could also see something akin to Path of the Titans - the strange and ill-defined thing that they talked about in the run-up to Cataclysm. I still don't quite know what the hell it was supposed to be or do, but if we explain it as a bit of character-development for your toons and a way to specialize in ways that didn't tie into the normal means of progression, that would be cool.
Likewise, it would be interesting to add more depth to the classes and their mechanics, though I don't really know what that would entail. If a druid were to become an archdruid, what would that mean?
We're still several months from Blizzcon, but if there's one thing I'm totally confident about, it's that we are going to see the next expansion announced.
I only hope that we get a bit more info than they did with Mists - where we got just the title, the new race and the new class and that was it until a media blitz months later. Blizzcon should be big, and with Heart of the Swarm already out, I think WoW is going to be center-stage (ok, we'll probably also hear about a Diablo 3 expansion.)
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