Friday, August 4, 2017

Argus and the Patch-xpansion

Let's get some speculation out of the way: The next expansion seems strongly implied to be some combination of N'zoth and Azshara as main threats. N'zoth is likely the more powerful of the two, but Azshara has the potential to be a more interesting villain, given that we already have a sense of her personality.

Personally, I think what I would prefer is to have an Azshara-centric expansion based on a tropical island-hopping adventure that has us see Kul Tiras, Kezan (in full,) Zandalar, and other important "island" locations we haven't seen yet. Then, at some later point (not immediately after) I'd like to have a sort of "Underdark" expansion in which we delve into the depths of the earth, encountering weird cultures with Nerubians and maybe even a group of N'raqi (aka Faceless Ones) who have something of an actual civilization (albeit an evil one) as well as tons of buried titan facilities that would allow us to discover new lore about the evolution of the Titanforged races on Azeroth, and then leading to a confrontation in the end with a final boss as an Old God, presumably N'zoth (as it's the only living one we haven't fought yet.)

But while these could work fine as separate expansions, I suspect that Blizzard will lean toward making them one.

The main reason I suspect this is that Legion has been several expansions in one. For years we speculated that there could be an Emerald Dream expansion, but this plot was resolved in the first raid of Legion (I love the aesthetic they came up with for the Nightmare and am sad that we'll probably not see much more of it.) The Tomb of Sargeras and "Deathwing's Lair" were also locations we had speculated about for a South Seas expansion. I had even imagined prior to Warlords of Draenor that we could have an expansion with a resurrected Gul'dan as the main villain with the ultimate raid being the Tomb of Sargeras. Not quite in that order, but not far off the mark.

And then there's Argus. An Argus expansion had always seemed like the place to go to finally defeat the Burning Legion, and now that's basically what we're going to do. The thing is that it won't be its own expansion, but rather the final patch of an existing one.

The interesting thing about Argus, though, is that it's almost like a mini-expansion. We're getting three zones with a decent number of quests each - not quite a full zone's worth of quests by Legion's standards, but there's definitely a sense of progression through the world, and while Krokun (the first area) and Antoran Wastes (the one with the raid) are maybe pretty similar, the middle zone Mac'aree feels totally different (and gives you the best sense of pre-Sargeras Eredar civilzation.)

As someone who loves the Draenei (and plays two Draenei characters a lot) I might have wanted more time to explore Argus and for Blizzard to take more of an opportunity to build up that lore. But they decided that, given how thoroughly corrupted the world was, a whole expansion would get monotonous (a similar argument was made for an Emerald Dream expansion.) I suppose I can understand that argument, though I think you can be creative and come up with different flavors of corruption.

But the fact is that Legion will be both the Emerald Nightmare expansion and the Argus expansion.

There are benefits to this approach: one of Warlords' biggest problems was the idea of stakes - the Iron Horde was a physical, military threat that was a menace, sure, but it was never really clear (and didn't make logical story sense) that they were actually more powerful than either the Alliance or the main Horde, much less the two working together. Now, by the time Gul'dan had corrupted the Iron Horde, we were dealing with the Burning Legion, so it felt like a bigger deal. But in Legion, we've had real headliner villains to deal with in every raid. Xavius, Gul'dan, and Kil'jaeden are all serious bad guys. And Helya, while a new character, managed to make a pretty good impression in the short amount of time she had. Blizzard has managed to craft a story where it doesn't seem like a waste of time to be fighting what we're fighting in this expansion, and even if Xavius and the Nightmare aren't directly linked to the Legion (though that Doomguard is aiding the Nightmare's assault on the Temple of the Moon, so I don't totally understand) one gets the sense that this is another world-imperiling threat that really needs to be taken care of ASAP.

That being said, I do think we will need to have lower-stakes expansions in the future. Partially that's just because short of a Void Titan, there's not really much higher stakes you can get than a full-fledged invasion of the Burning Legion. But with all the ideas they've burned through in Legion, it also means they're going to have to get really creative in WoW expansions to come.

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