With Blizzard's announcement coming on Friday, we're in an odd state where I think a lot of WoW fans are eager to speculate wildly about expansion seven but also perhaps hesitant to do so, as we're just going to find out at the end of the week.
Well guess what? I'm in that former camp.
While a "South Seas" expansion has been the most commonly heard idea for a new expansion, it's not the only one floating around. One idea that I've been seeing, including a potential leak from a supposed Blizzard employee called Genki, calling it Shadowfall, is actually another old-world expansion that would add zones to the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, similar to what they did in Cataclysm.
The reason I think this has some credence is that the Wound in Silithus is not terribly close to where we'd assume most of the South Seas stuff would take place (on old maps, Kul Tiras is roughly where Vashj'ir is, and I'd assume it has shifted over a bit, but not all the way across the ocean.) A "south seas" expansion would probably involve zone-hopping anyway, so it might not be too crazy to just make it global, perhaps using the ship-style transportation like the Vindicaar as a more evocative means of getting around than the Cataclysm portals were.
The big question is how to make that work. While Cataclysm was probably the biggest expansion they ever did, as it involved re-doing the story for nearly every vanilla zone, updating the continents to allow flight, and adding two new races with starting zones in addition to all the high-level stuff, that high-level content suffered, without a ton of outdoor content to complement the small number of raids (Warlords had no excuses for its lack of content except for a quixotic or greedy - depending on your opinion of Blizzard's business strategy - attempt to do annual expansions that failed miserably.)
While Cataclysm updated the world to account for the big changes that occurred in Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, there have been even more big changes in the game's story that ought to be reflected in the world if they're going for a revamp (for one thing, you'd think most zones would have the remnants of the Legion and fel corruption, as the invasion here is supposed to be a global thing.)
I also hope that they'd do a better job with the timeline, which granted, could get even worse with another revamp. Perhaps it would be best to leave the Cataclysm zones alone, either focusing on just a couple that are relevant to the current story or simply adding new zones with new story and not touching any existing zones.
Anyway, given the datamined words of Khadgar following the Antorus raid, in which the blood of Azeroth is leaking out of Silithus and Khadgar warns of powerful people across the world trying to get as much of that resource as they can, it wouldn't be too crazy to imagine that the faction conflict might re-erupt. In Wrath, we saw tensions explode in a few skirmishes before the Cataclysm made the lack of resources a trigger for a full-scale war. We've seen Sylvanas and Greymane clashing in Legion, and without the Legion holding our attention and a new rush to control this powerful resource, a factional conflict could boil up. This would make familiar locations, or at least familiar environments (such as the Plaguelands or the arid lands of southern Kalimdor) ripe spots for new conflict and story.
Another element that finds its way into several rumors, including this Shadowfall concept, is that we might see racial questlines similar to class ones. Given that I've been wanting to take back Gilneas since Cataclysm, I'd be really happy to see stuff aimed directly at certain races (though it'll make me lament that they didn't allow Demon Hunters to be Worgen, as my Warrior is kind of lower-priority.) It does mean that those players who only play Blood Elves are going to be SOL (as a true altoholic - see the title of the blog - I have characters of every race, though given that I'm a bit lopsided in favor of alliance, my top Troll, Orc, and Goblin are duplicate classes to higher-priority characters I have on Alliance, and I think only the Goblin has even hit level 100.)
While even this concept puts N'zoth as a key player in all of this, the God of the Depths has always liked to be a behind-the-scenes manipulator, and following the massive clash with the Burning Legion (in an expansion that burned through like three or more long-speculated expansion concepts,) it might make a lot of sense to turn the focus inward at the factions again.
If the faction conflict does rear its ugly head again, though, I hope that it's more nuanced. It would be very easy to simply have Sylvanas abuse her power as Warchief and go full on evil until she becomes a raid boss. But we've already seen that story, and I wasn't too crazy about it then. Real people play both factions, and I want to see the Horde have some legitimate justification for believing themselves the good guys. I want to see a bit of ambiguity and fractured loyalties on the Alliance side.
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