The trajectory of Warlords of Draenor seems to be more or less set. Blizzard has raised the possibility that there might only be two raid tiers in the expansion, which I honestly think is a very strong indicator that that will be the case - Blizzard has a history of trimming down what they have announced, but I don't think they'd have said anything on the subject if they really intend for there to be a tier between Blackhand and Grommash.
I could be wrong, of course, and it's possible that Blizzard's dungeon design team is already working on something to use as a middle tier, but is hedging its bets. Still, I think that they are planning to have a new expansion out soon enough that two raid tiers will fill in the time for Warlords. I would not be surprised if, given how long it has taken for Warlords to come out, they may very well be scaling Warlords down in order to make sure that the next one comes out quicker.
Why they are doing this, I'm not sure. While I love time-travel stories, I know there has been some grumbling about the extraordinarily complicated justification for the Warlords story (a straight time-travel story, though it would have "changing history" implications might have been easier, or a straight "parallel universe" story set on a different Draenor that nevertheless is at the same point in history as Outland,) and there's certainly a lot of disappointment that we're following up a major chunk of Mists of Pandaria that was about all Orcs, all the time, with an expansion that is laser-focused on the Orcs.
I think there's enough worthwhile stuff in Warlords that I'm excited to play through it, but I'm also kind of chomping at the bit for other stuff. Most of the zones in Draenor are gorgeous (stand-outs for me are Spires of Arak and Shadowmoon Valley,) and I'm very happy to see the Draenei playing a major role (though it's frustrating that they're not the Exodar Draenei. Really hope that Yrel becomes a kind of recurring character and isn't just put in mothballs after Warlords.) And actually, despite my Orc fatigue, it is kind of cool to see the individual character and personalities of the various Orc clans. I'd love to some day do the same with the human kingdoms, but I'm not going to hold my breath. (Ok, granted Stormwind, Gilneas, Lordaeron, and Dalaran have kind of gotten that.)
Blizzard claims that their new philosophy for expansions has been to have one lead into the next. BC and Wrath were hardly connected other than that the headlining villains from each of them were fan-favorites from Warcraft III. But there were hints at Cataclysm in both BC and Wrath, with the Nether/Twilight Dragons. Mists brought center-stage the Alliance/Horde conflict that had blown into full-out war during Cataclysm, and obviously Warlords follows very directly from Garrosh's defeat in Orgrimmar.
It will be hard to predict where we will go from Warlords, because we really don't know what the expansion is going to look like when all the pieces have fallen into place. Having played on the Beta since day one, I often have to remind myself that the expansion doesn't actually even begin for nearly three months, so I'm kind of jumping the gun.
But we know that demons are going to play a big role in the final raid, which could suggest we get a big Legion-themed expansion. Granted, the demons in Warlords are from the alternate-universe Legion, and I suspect that with very few characters excepted, we're going to be returning to the main timeline's figures. So is the Legion a feint?
On the other hand, it's possible that while we won't be facing the B-Universe's Legion, the presence of demons is going to push us toward confronting our own. Still, I'm skeptical that we'll be heading off to Argus or some such place immediately after spending so much time on another non-Azeroth world.
To me, the most obvious direction would be to finally have our long-awaited Azshara/South Seas expansion, but only if Azshara has retained her ties to the Burning Legion. If Azshara has totally abandoned demons in favor of Old Gods, then it's possible that such an expansion would be a wild left-turn. That's something I'd be fine with, but it doesn't really gel with what Blizzard has been saying.
The other alternative is that the whole Kairoz/Infinite Dragonflight thread will be picked up once more. But I really don't know what that expansion would be like. Blizzard's going to have to tread carefully with these guys. When you have something like a dungeon, you can isolate a single event - the Culling of Stratholme, the Opening of the Dark Portal, etc. These dungeons have basically been pass/fail. Either you succeed, and history goes on as it ought to, or you fail, and... well, you run back from the graveyard and try again. But having an entire expansion of "making sure history goes as it should" would be extremely constricting, plot-wise. I could see alternate versions of various zones smooshed together to make a kind of crazy-looking continent with some as-yet unrevealed part of the Caverns of Time at its center (preferably looking something like the End of Time in Chrono Trigger,) but in order to avoid all the paradox stuff, you'd probably have to stick to the multiverse established in Warlords, which then has the problem of making stakes difficult to establish. After all, if you save this Lordaeron from the Scourge, is it really a victory? Or are there an infinite number of other Lordaerons (including our own) that get overrun.
There's very little that I can see coming in Warlords that would point to an Old Gods or Emerald Dream expansion, and beyond those four possibilities, the really obvious ones have kind of run out. Granted, as I pointed out in an article not too long ago, there are certainly some less obvious alternatives. The question then, is how we're going to lead in. Siege of Orgrimmar has a very strong tie with the subject matter of Warlords of Draenor, but we've never seen a connection that intense before. If it's that strong again, we'd almost have to have a Legion-themed expansion, but perhaps they'll dial back a bit.
It is, of course, very early to make any solid predictions. Perhaps it's even too early to speculate. Still, given that they are already working on those new zones, it's pretty clear that the expansion to follow Warlords has already been decided upon. Hopefully they made the decision after getting the reaction to Warlords, so they could anticipate what the players want more of (hint: not Orcs.)
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