It was pretty smart of Blizzard to delay the release of Blackrock Foundry the way they did. Setting aside any question of how much content Warlords will actually have, Highmaul was always in danger of becoming irrelevant very quickly. Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry are technically part of the same raid tier (though Highmaul's really more the semi-traditional "intro raid," more like Mogu'shan Vaults, or Karazhan (though Kara did have tier tokens in it.) But by pushing BRF back by a few months, there was enough time for Highmaul to be the pinnacle of raiding, allowing serious raiding guilds to make decent progress and even clear the place before they had to worry about whether they were wasting their time there.
Blizzard's nightmare scenario is another Siege of Orgrimmar. Not that Siege wasn't an accomplishment in raid design - I actually think that it was pretty successful in terms of how it was constructed, and the variety of boss mechanics (though I wish we'd spent more time fighting through recognizable parts of the city - incidentally, what do you think Vol'jin's doing with the Underhold now? Clearly it's a really good strategic asset for the city.)
The only glaring problem with Siege of Orgrimmar was that it took us so long to get anything else. SoO came out two months before Warlords was even announced. Contrast that with Icecrown Citadel and Dragon Soul, which were both still being previewed at the Blizzcon where their next expansion was unveiled. Now, that wouldn't have been a problem, except that Warlords wound up taking just as long as every other expansion to come out, which led to 14 months without a single new thing in the game.
WoW is subscription-based, so we're constantly paying to play the game. Obviously a lot of that goes toward maintenance - the game's an enormous, unwieldy contraption, and they need a lot of people to keep the hamsters in the wheels fed. But another part of that expectation is that the money will go toward the creation of new content. Yes, we buy individual expansions for a quick burst of cash, but the main cost of WoW is that subscription. And when there isn't new stuff, people start to feel like they aren't getting their money's worth.
Blizzard certainly wants to put out as much content as possible, but if you've ever been part of any creative endeavor, you'll understand why that can be very difficult.
New expansions are a huge undertaking, given that it's everything you'd find in a raid patch, plus a huge amount of new artwork, new zones, tons of new quests, new abilities, sometimes new classes or new races (the racial revamp of Warlords balanced the fact that none of the races were new with the fact that they had to do ten of them instead of the traditional two - or one for Mists.)
Now, Blizzard has talked about wanting to get expansions out faster. I don't really know if I'm in favor of that even in theory. Part of what I like about WoW is hitting that point in the last tier where you're absurdly overpowered - I remember having over 50% crit on my Rogue at the end of Wrath. I also like expansions to feel like a complete arc. And while I really enjoy questing and leveling, what "faster expansions" translates to is "less content per expansion." On the other hand, it could mean "more content per time spent," which could be a good thing.
The problem, though, is that Blizzard has made me skeptical. They've talked about this "faster expansion" thing from the very beginning, and Warlords seemed like the perfect opportunity to succeed. Siege of Orgrimmar was finished two months before we even found out about Warlords, and we had an expansion with no low-level content, and no new races to give introductions to and no new class to fit into the roster of options. But Warlords wound up taking just as much time as the other expansions, even with all that taken into account. Blizzard claims that moving a bunch of people from the Titan team required a period of readjustment, which slowed them down, and that's totally plausible. But after living through five expansion launches, I can only sit in anticipation of whatever reason they'll have for why expansion six took so long.
We're almost certainly going to hear about expansion six at this year's Blizzcon, which isn't until November. By then, we'll have been in Tanaan Jungle and Hellfire Citadel for - I would guess - four months (I'm assuming that 6.2 will drop in June, though that might actually be pushing it a bit - it will most likely be some time in the summer.)
Now, the announcement timing is not necessarily indicative of their progress on the expansion. If Blizzard wants to have a fantastic PR coup, they'd announce the start of the Beta at Blizzcon. Granted, I think they'll need some time in Alpha post-announcement (because the Alpha always leaks) but if they could put a solid date on the Beta (and have it be early 2016,) we might be able to shave off a few months from the typical pattern, with a summer or late spring release.
But even if we get expansion six out in May, if there's still only two raid tiers, we'll have been running Hellfire Citadel for at least eight months, and if 6.2 comes out sooner, then maybe even ten or eleven.
See, even optimistically, I don't see this working out well.
However!
Could we actually get a third raid tier this expansion?
Narratively, it seems like we're coming to the end. Gul'dan has taken over the Iron Horde and is bringing the Burning Legion to Draenor. We're fighting freaking Archimonde, and it's pretty hard to get higher-stakes than that.
Where could we even go from there?
First off - we don't fight Gul'dan as a raid boss, which seems like a major oversight. We also don't fight Grommash Hellscream, which could be an oversight, or it could be a twist (Grommash is certainly anti-demon, and might actually team up with us in 6.2.)
There's also another factor - Kairoz and Wrathion. Kairoz is clearly dead - Garrosh murdered him - but Kairoz had allies - the Infinite Dragonflight. Now, it's totally possible that Kairoz' story ended in the Time-Lost Glade, and Blizzard has seemingly gone out of their way to try to avoid Warlords feeling like a time-travel story.
But if there's any foe who, by their nature, could actually be a bigger threat than the Legion or the Old Gods, it's the infinite dragon flight. They have all of history at their disposal, and just because you kill them doesn't mean they cease being a threat. I mean, we've killed Murozond, but Nozdormu is still fated to become him (or is he...?) which means he literally hasn't even gotten started yet.
Remember that Kairoz dreamt of infinite Hordes to serve at his command. Grommash might turn against the Burning Legion, but that possibility - and the possibility of pulling his allies back as if from death - would be seriously tempting. Could there be an Infinite Horde to contend with?
Oh, I realize that it's a total mess of an idea. It opens up a huge can of worms of implications and also could elicit a certain "seriously, you want us to kill a third Kargath Bladefist" sort of complaint. But from timing alone, it really seems like Warlords has got to have something going on post-6.2.
Or maybe we're just screwed. Or maybe expansion six will be out this year! (Skeptical grumble.)
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