Should the Next Expansion Have a -1st Tier?

To be clear, that's a "negative first tier."

With the defeat of Archimonde, Blizzard could easily lock up the shop and call it a wrap on Draenor. I won't go into the details of the Archimonde cinematic, but the story at the end of 6.2 seriously looks like as good a place as any to pull up stakes, donate Lunarfall to the Draenei and Frostwall to the Frostwolf Clan and head on back to Azeroth.

But are we ready for that gameplay-wise?

If we end on Hellfire Citadel, this will be the first expansion to ever have fewer than three raid tiers. Granted, it will still have more raid bosses than Cataclysm (counting World Bosses and Tol Barad in both cases - and excluding Cho'gall from Warlords, as he's really more of a final phase than a fight of his own,) but it will be the first time that the entire expansion's raiding content comes out in less than nine months.

As exciting as it is to imagine getting a new expansion with, hopefully, a new class or at least new races sooner, I will be disappointed if the trend starts to be smaller expansions without a reduction in expansion pricing. If Blizzard wants to make expansions free as part of a subscription on the other hand, they can have an expansion every patch for all I care. (Well, maybe not quite - I do like getting to a point in an expansion where you feel really powerful, and it's hard to reach that when things like haste or crit rating keep resetting with new levels.)

But if the story is in a place where we can't really do anything else in Draenor - and of course, that's not entirely the case - could Blizzard try something different?

What if we got the next expansion's raid tier at level 100?

Ok, now there's a certain oxymoronic problem here. Expansions are sort of defined by their level cap. One could argue that a raid at level 100 would automatically be a Warlords raid.

But in terms of theme and feel, imagine a raid that took place somewhere else. And not just a small, Ruby Sanctum type of raid, but one that really served as a raid tier.

Here's my pitch:

Oh, and this is kind of spoilery.

So watch out.




After Archimonde is defeated, he calls out to Gul'dan "We had a pact!" With a bolt of fel magic, Archimonde knocks Gul'dan into the portal out of which the Destroyer had been summoned. Presumably, then, Gul'dan is now afloat in the Twisting Nether, and must serve the Legion - presumably on a much shorter leash than he had had in the first place.

Actually - and this is NOT my theory - it almost makes me think Gul'dan could become an alternate Lich King, but that's neither here nor there.

Gul'dan's probably in for some torment, but he might be released in order to serve the Legion's goals. Perhaps they'll send him to Azeroth - our Azeroth - in order to retrieve the Eye of Sargeras.

We could then get the Broken Isles as a zone and the Tomb of Sargeras as a raid, with Gul'dan as its final boss - perhaps even fighting over the remains of Gul'dan's doppelgänger.

It would be a great ending to Warlords of Draenor - pitting us against the main villain of the expansion (well, one of the two. The other's our friend now I guess?) But it would also potentially lead us into a new South Seas expansion.

Ok, there are clearly big problems with this though:

First of all, it cuts out a potential raid - indeed a great first raid tier - for such a South Seas expansion.

It would also require somehow linking the city/garrison hub system with the South Seas, unless they want us to totally abandon Draenor.

It's also something that Blizzard would have to have been working on already. One of the big problems that I see with the "third raid tier if we need to buy time" strategy is that you're basically promising that should such a raid tier exist, it will be a thrown-together mess. And if a great deal of planning and effort was put into it, why wouldn't you just plan to have it in there anyway, regardless of the progress you made on the next expansion? It's not like people would be disappointed if the last raid tier of Warlords wound up only lasting four months should they be able to make quick progress on expansion six - hell, hasn't that been the goal?

So maybe the answer to the -1st raid tier is a no. Still, I'm really curious, and a bit anxious, to see what, if anything, is coming to Draenor after Tanaan but before expansion six.