Place Ya Bets!

Ok, don't actually do that. I mean, if you and your friends like to gamble on things, then that's fine by me, but I'm not involved.

Blizzcon is two weeks away, and we are pretty much guaranteed to get the announcement of the next World of Warcraft expansion. However, unlike the last two (or possibly three?) expansions, we haven't had a single hint at a name. Sure, there was that whole "Dark Below" business, but at this point the verdict seems to be that it's just a self-perpetuating rumor. We know that Heroes of the Storm is just the new name for Blizzard All-Stars, and I think Corgis Unleashed is probably (probably) not the name of WoW 6.0.

The possibilities are open, and Blizzard is totally capable of throwing a curveball (I never would have guessed at something like Cataclysm before I heard about it,) but I think there are three routes that really present themselves for future content.

Azshara and the South Seas:

Admittedly, the South Seas can't be that far south, or they'd be in Pandaria, but there's often been a lot of talk of some kind of island-hopping expansion focusing on Azshara and the Naga as the primary antagonists. There's a lot of potential here to deal with not only the Naga, but also the Faceless and the Old Gods (we could finally face down N'zoth,) as well as dealing with the Naga's connection to the Burning Legion, both through their War of the Ancients affiliation and because the South Seas would presumably include the Tomb of Sargeras.

Personally, I'd love to have an opportunity to interact with Gul'dan, if he were somehow revived, though I know that it might be wise to steer away from constantly reviving old characters.

A South Seas expansion would also allow us to perhaps finally deal with the Zandalari once and for all. We don't know what Zul's deal is, but I'd like to see the Zandalari turn friendly again after we defeat this Dark Prophet. Who knows, though.

Burning Legion:

The Burning Crusade was kinda sorta a Burning Legion expansion, and we certainly had our big confrontation with them at the Sunwell, but they intentionally kept Kil'jaeden alive so we could fight him again, and while the final part of the expansion may have focused on the Burning Legion, the man center-stage was Illidan.

It seems to me that we've really got to head to Argus at some point, and it would be pretty cool to see Illidan brought back to life (I know what I said earlier, bear with me here) so that he could train Demon Hunters, giving us a new hero class. (While I think it may be unlikely to see a new class added right after the Monk, the rollout of the Monk was incredibly smooth compared to the Death Knight. While the DK was overpowered in all three specs during 3.0, the Monk kind of slid in as if it had always been there. They're a lot better at balance now, so I don't think giving us DHs next expansion would be out of the question.)

With a whole new world, there's a lot of opportunity to totally invent new things, so the story's really only limited by imagination, but I think at the very least we could get some cool Draenei lore and also possibly delve into the history of the various demon races. After all, if the Man'ari Eredar were originally indistinguishable from the Draenei, what might the other demonic races have been like before their falls?

Infinite Dragonflight:

My thoughts on an Infinite Dragonflight (or other agents affiliated with them) are pretty clear to anyone who's read this blog.

I really think for this expansion to be successful you would need to hop across multiple time periods, but you also would not want to have the Cataclysm effect of having isolated zones. So as I suggested earlier, having some kind of mashed-up continent made of different eras, with time-warps at the borders to go between them, would probably be the way to do it.

Considering the Chances:

Well, both the Burning Legion and Infinite Dragonflight possibilities have points in their favor. The former is all Wrathion talks about, and was his entire motivation for gearing us up (and attempting to unify the Alliance and Horde.) We know the Legion's still trying to get us, though we haven't really seen much of their activity since the Battle of Undercity. Of course, that may simply mean that we're due.

The main point for the Infinites is that the Timeless Isle, the emergence of the Timewalkers, and the disturbing visions we've seen using the Epoch Stones found on the Timeless Isle all point to something funny happening with the Bronze Dragonflight. In fact, we pretty much know that at some point, the Bronzes are going to be corrupted into the Infinites. We just don't know when. If the emergence of the Timeless Isle means anything, it could mean that we're going to have to deal with some problems in the space-time continuum.

The South Seas expansion doesn't have a huge number of hints at the moment, though if we go back to Cataclysm, there are a lot of hooks that point us in that direction. We still haven't faced N'zoth, and we don't know what has become of Neptulon. I'd actually argue that of the three of these, the South Seas expansion has clearest model for how to structure the expansion.

On the other hand, one wonders if perhaps we need to go to a more unusual setting. Dread Wastes aside (which really felt like just a corrupted version of Townlong Steppes - and indeed, they were originally going to be a single zone,) Pandaria is a fairly normal set of zones. We have a forest, a jungle, farmlands, mountains, and steppes. The zones of Pandaria were actually fairly ordinary, whereas in the last few expansions, we've seen strange vistas like Icecrown, Deepholme, or Netherstorm. One concern I'd have for a South Seas expansion is that it would simply be a series of tropical islands. Of course, that's not a guarantee. If Ny'alotha were a zone, for example, or whatever island the Tomb of Sargeras is on, we could see some unusual things. It would also be a good opportunity to introduce Kul Tiras and maybe Zul'dare as zones, though I don't know how unconventional those would be.

There is, of course, still the chance that something will come way out of left field and surprise us, but I think that the three possibilities I mentioned seem the most likely. Oh, and yeah, I've basically given up on the Emerald Dream. Such is life.