The upcoming Legion expansion will, canonically, be the largest invasion by the Burning Legion of Azeroth ever. By my count, the Legion has launched or attempted to launch full-scale invasions three times - the War of the Ancients, the Third War, the invasion at the Sunwell, with this making four.
The Legion destroys worlds all the time. It's what they do. The Draenei, in their flight from the Legion, inadvertently left a trail of fel-burnt cinders behind them. In fact, according to the Legion announcement, Azeroth is the only world that we know of that hasn't fallen to the Legion (in our universe, at least - Draenor B narrowly avoided that. Good luck guys!)
So it could be a simple explanation - the project called "Azeroth" has simply taken longer than expected, and the Legion is attempting a fourth time to finish the job.
But that's kind of boring, so perhaps there's something else about Azeroth - a special quality that makes it of special interest to the Burning Legion and Sargeras.
Theory One: Bad Azeroth and Sargeras, Working as Intended
Sargeras' job when he was part of the Pantheon was the monster-hunter. The nature of the Titans remains highly mysterious, but it's been suggested that even though they can effectively create gods, they're not technically divine. Rather, the Titans seem to be a people - a civilization - so advanced that the difference between magic and technology has basically disappeared.
The Titans went around the universe, trying to make it a nicer place - they "brought order" to the universe. While just how involved they got has been a bit unknown, it sounds as if they really took a strong hand in creating things - literally shaping mountains and oceans and breeding new life to inhabit these worlds.
But the Titans weren't alone, and there were monsters out there, including demons. So one of the top Titans was given the job of hunting down these demons and locking them away (interestingly, they actually employed demons as well - using the Eredruin, aka Doomguards, to hunt down mortals who were using sacrificial magic.
Of course, we still don't know exactly what demons are, fundamentally, but it sounds like many, if not most, or even possibly all demons began as mortal races who were then infused with fel magic. The Man'ari Eredar went through this, as well as the Satyrs (former Night Elves,) and one gets the distinct impression that the Legion's endgame regarding Orcs was to do the same with them eventually.
Anyway, demons weren't the only thing that the Titans encountered that posed a threat to their creations. The other was the Old Gods. As of yet, while Harbinger Skyriss in the Arcatraz (someone you can see a lot more frequently now thanks to Timewalker dungeons) claims that they "span the universe, countless as the stars," as of yet they seem to be primarily an Azerothian problem. (In fairness, we've really only been to Azeroth and Draenor, and they might have just been undiscovered in the latter.)
Sargeras' job is to destroy monsters. But unlike demons, who are inherently apart from the worlds they invade (they don't even really go there themselves, sending avatar-like bodies that are relatively disposable) the Old Gods work their way into these worlds to become inextricably linked to them. We finally managed to scrub the residue of Y'shaarj out of Pandaria, but we haven't gotten an official confirmation that the Sha are totally, completely gone. For all we know, the essence of the Sha remains within the people of the land.
But even if the Sha have been eradicated forever, the Titans clearly gave up on getting rid of them. The conclusion that the Titans came to - regardless of whether it was strictly true - was that the Old Gods couldn't be killed without ruining Azeroth, and so the Titans decided to just lock them away and contain the infection while proceeding with the rest of the plans to make the world nice and orderly - essentially discovering a problem and kind of patching it up, rather than scrapping the whole thing and starting over (but leaving Uldum as the big "abort" button just in case.)
As monster-hunter-in-chief, Sargeras might have found that solution unsatisfying.
So we could actually give Sargeras some credit. He might think he's doing the right thing - purging the universe of the great evil of the Old Gods. It's just that he believes that the only way to be sure is to fry every planet with organic life on it. He's willing to employ demons because he knows how to lock them up or, potentially, eradicate them once he's done with his Burning Crusade.
This would make Sargeras less pure evil, but more of an extremist so obsessed with fulfilling his objective that he winds up doing something far worse. In fact, this almost fits in with the kind of quasi-robotic nature of Titanic creations. If Sargeras was built, rather than born (or rather than having arisen from the cosmic eternity,) perhaps he's just doing his job far too well.
Theory Two: The Final Titan
But the previous point would be a pretty serious retcon of what we know of Sargeras. The official story has been, for years, that Sargeras decided that evil outnumbered good, and this clearly meant that the universe was supposed to be chaotic and evil, and that the Titans were just struggling against the natural state of the universe. Maybe he read a bunch of Nietzche.
He blasted the planet Mar'duun to pieces and freed all the demons he had spent Light-knows-how-many years locking up there and basically said "do your thing, but under my direction," and started burning worlds throughout the universe - maybe picking up and corrupting/converting useful species he found along the way (if the Annihilan - aka Pit Lords - were originally mortals, I wonder what they looked like before they were demons.)
The obvious question here is what the hell the rest of the Titans were doing during all of this. The Titans were a whole race. The Pantheon was basically their governing body. Sargeras might have been the strongest fighter, but he was highly outnumbered.
We do know that the Titans continued to exist after Sargeras' turn. His former lieutenant, Aggramar, basically took up his old job.
But the Titans have been silent for ages, and we've never heard of the Titans stopping the Legion. It stands to reason that the first target Sargeras would have gone after was the Pantheon, and even if he didn't eliminate it entirely, it could be in a far weakened state.
Regardless of the Titans' current status, the loss of Sargeras was probably a huge blow to them.
During the Mists of Pandaria legendary chain (which I don't think you can actually start anymore,) Wrathion has you bring him the Heart of Lei Shen. Not only was the Thunder King a former Titan construct, he also, oddly enough, had stolen the heart of Ra-Den (being unaffected by the Curse of Flesh, Ra-Den survived this.) When Wrathion (who, we must remember, was kind of Frankensteined together by Titan technology,) ate the heart of Lei Shen, he went into a really, really weird trance.
Speaking in a slowed, odd voice, he said "We have fallen. We must rebuild the final titan." We haven't gotten any clarification on this, and Wrathion notes that the memories that had come to him during this process faded almost instantly.
But this could be the key to understanding the origins of Azeroth (something we've been told we'll discover in the new Violet Hold dungeon.) There's a lot to unpack here.
First off: "We Have Fallen." Could this be the Pantheon itself? It certainly does not bode well. At the very least, it means that someone, probably Titan or titan-affiliated, has fallen. Perhaps this is something as innocuous as the Curse of Flesh (real innocuous, I know.)
The second part is, I think, bigger. "We must rebuild the final titan." Ok: rebuild is kind of interesting, suggesting that Titans are built, not born or... eternal. But also rebuild, which suggests that the Final Titan had been built already, but was somehow dismantled.
Perhaps Azeroth was made to be the birthing ground of this Final Titan, and maybe the infestation of the Old Gods, or perhaps the Sundering, ruined the work that had been done, and the Titans are now scrambling to make up for the lost time.
Then there's that word "Final." What the hell does that mean? The "Final Titan" could imply a couple of things. Are the Titans an incomplete set - perhaps set to the task by their creators to build themselves into existence? Or are the Titans dying out, and this is a last ditch attempt to save their species.
In any case, if Sargeras had decided that his own people are what's wrong with the universe, he might be obsessed with killing this potential Titan (and potential rival) before she can emerge from Azeroth. This could be the most universe-shattering case of sibling rivalry ever.
It seems highly possible that the Well of Eternity was some kind of power source for this Final Titan's creation. All of the previous Legion invasions involved the Well somehow. The original war was fought around the original Well. The Third War set its sights on Nordrassil, the tree that had soaked up the waters of the new Well created by Illidan. The invasion during Burning Crusade involved the Sunwell, which was similarly created using the waters of the Well of Eternity.
And though this invasion seems centered around the Tomb of Sargeras, we do know that there's a "Nightwell," in Suramar City that could very well be a pre-corrupted Well derivative.
I'm eager to see what the Legion's true motivations are. As easy as it is to think of demons just going full-on chaotic evil, it's far more exciting to deal with a foe that is trying to accomplish something specific.
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