The Dark Below

It's Trademark Datamining Time!

Blizzard has apparently just trademarked "The Dark Below" as a new computer game title.

So, disclaimer/caveat first: THIS COULD BE A DIABLO EXPANSION, OR SOME OTHER INDEPENDENT GAME (though the latter seems far less likely.)

These trademarks are typically a very solid indicator of what is going to come out of Blizzard. Both Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria were trademarked names before anything was announced at Blizzcon.

So, is this WoW? Or Diablo?

Well... possibly. First off, if you are unfamiliar with Diablo, Blizzard's point-and-click RPG shares a lot of DNA with WoW. Power is largely based on gear and you have a set of classes with customizable layouts of spells. In fact, much of WoW's original infrastructure was derived from Diablo, like the old talent system, and practically the entire Warrior class.

More to the point, Diablo is also a fantasy setting, but it decidedly more gothic. Whereas Warcraft doesn't really have anything that explicitly angelic in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition (though angels in the Bible are a lot weirder than you typically think of them being, so perhaps the Naaru aren't that far off,) Diablo fully commits to a gothic look. Demons are not space aliens - they are demons and devils and there's lots of gory, bloody stuff that they like to hang out with. Angels are not exactly typical (their bodies are invisible, so you recognize them by their clothes) but the whole setting uses a fairly dichotomous world structure, with humanity representing the middle-ground.

So "the Dark Below" would totally fit within a Diablo setting, representing some aspect of the Burning Hells, which is where the demons are from.

On the other hand:

The Old God expansion?

The World of Warcraft has a very dangerous, very dark threat that has always been looming, or rather, skulking, beneath the surface of the planet. While the Burning Legion is known to be out there, threatening to come back here and burn us all to cinders, the vast majority of the supernatural problems we have encountered are all thanks to those horrifying, tentacled abominations, the Old Gods.

In case you somehow don't know the basic story of the Old Gods, here it is in a nutshell.

There are two versions of this story, one in which the Old Gods arrive first, and one in which the Titans do, but I think that the latter story makes the most logical sense, so that's the one that I'm going with.

The Titans arrived on Azeroth (or maybe built the planet itself) for mysterious purposes (though Wrathion's recent quests suggest that they meant to create a new Titan.) Once they had set the planet up, they departed, presumably to continue their business of bringing order to the universe.

Then the Old Gods came. The Old Gods were massive and completely malevolent beings that raged across the planet, warring with each other for sport, twisting and mutating the native population of Azeroth to fight for their armies. They freed the Elemental Lords, either to serve as their commanders or to simply watch the ensuing conflict.

Then the Titans returned. Horrified by the chaos wrought on Azeroth, the Titans went to war with the Old Gods. There were terrible losses on both sides, which included the "fall" (whatever that means) of one Titan and the death of Y'shaarj (Pandaria's local Old God.) When Y'shaarj died, the Sha were released, and the Titans realized they could not simply kill the Old Gods, or every part of Azeroth would be haunted by similar dangers.

So the Titans decided to imprison, rather than kill the Old Gods. And this decision has not been without its consequences. We've seen Neltharion corrupted into Deathwing. We've seen countless mad cults arise (most notably the Twilight's Hammer.) And we've seen the Curse of Flesh, which transformed several types of Titan creations into mortal races, including the dwarves, the gnomes, the tol'vir, the mogu, the vrykul, and humanity itself (by way of the vrykul.)

All this time, the Old Gods have lurked, their armies of Faceless Ones, along with the off-shoots of the Aqir, ready to swarm the globe.

In fairness to us, it's not as if we haven't made an effort to stop them. Both C'thun and Yogg-Saron have been defeated by mortals. Are they truly dead? Well, that's an interesting question. Kalimdor and Northrend aren't swarming with manifestations of negative emotion, but then again, perhaps that was a special quality to Y'shaarj only.

We do know that N'zoth is still around, possibly in the Emerald Dream, generating the Nightmare around him. And beyond the four Old Gods that have been named, there may well be others we have not yet encountered.

Cleaning House before we Go Abroad

The Old Gods have always been the massive, tentacled thorn in our side. But we've never quite been able to work out how to kill them without dooming Azeroth. However, as Wrathion demonstrates, it is possible to extract Old God corruption using esoteric Titan techniques. That said, taking the evil mojo out of a single dragon egg might be a tad bit easier than extracting the sources of said mojo from an entire planet (for one thing, what do you even do with the bodies when you're done? These things are the size of continents!)

Regardless, lasting safety on Azeroth cannot be achieved until the Old Gods are dealt with in a serious manner. These guys predate the Burning Legion, and arguably have had a greater negative impact on Azeroth (though the Sundering was nothing to sneeze at.)

So what do we think?

Well... I'm still a little more inclined to think it's the Diablo expansion, maybe just because I was hoping for a Burning Legion expansion. We've been dealing with Old Gods or the direct consequences of the Old Gods for two expansions now, and Wrath had a considerable presence for them as well (though I'd argue Ulduar was more of a Titan-themed raid, as the Faceless Ones and Twilight's Hammer didn't really show up until the final wing.)

Still, I was convinced that Mists of Pandaria could not be the name of a WoW expansion. As a name (remember that all of this is just speculation based on a name,) The Dark Below doesn't seem that much of a stretch.

Regardless, given that we're getting closer and closer to Blizzcon (three months away!) I'm happy to have this little gem to drum up expectations for the next expansion, even if it turns out this title has nothing to do with WoW.

Bonus: Other WoW-based Interpretations of "The Dark Below."

So I'm clearly convinced that such a title would refer to the Old Gods, but there are other ways it could go:

The Dark Below... the Sea?: Azshara and her Naga have always seemed like a potential threat that could carry an expansion. Perhaps this would be our Island-Hopping South Seas adventure (though not too far south, or you'd hit Pandaria.)

The Dark Below... Reality?: "Nether," means "below," or "lower," after all. The Netherlands are called that because they are so low down, even below sea level in some places. Might this actually be our Burning Legion expansion after all, set within the Twisting Nether?

The Dark Below... Tirisfal Glades?: Blizzard has stated explicitly that the dark presence resting beneath Tirisfal is not, as you might guess, an Old God. So what the hell is it? There is a little circle of mushrooms in that hard-to-access grove in the west, where Fae Dragons show up on a daily basis. Why? Big mystery here.

And again: This might just be for Diablo.