One could argue that, together, Warlords of Draenor and Legion served as something of a sequel to The Burning Crusade. Warlords gave us a vision of Outland before it was Outland (it's really weird doing Terrokar Forest having now seen Talador) and Legion brought back Illidan Stormrage and the sci-fi space armada version of the Burning Legion that we had seen in BC.
There's a fair amount of evidence that, while Battle For Azeroth is likely to involve a great deal of Old God content (unless it's Azshara - though she seems to have been announced as an earlier boss - I think N'zoth is a strong candidate for final boss of the expansion,) there are several hints that the Shadowlands will play a big role in what comes next.
And that actually makes sense. While we've had back-to-back expansions focused on certain major evils of the Warcraft universe before (Cataclysm and Mists had lots of Old God stuff, Warlords and Legion were obvious both big on Legion stuff,) it also seems like a good idea to diversify the threats we face. While the Old Gods were not dealt with in any permanent way in either Cataclysm or Mists (though I maintain that we did manage to finally rid Azeroth of the last bit of Y'shaarj - but that leaves one untouched and two only beaten but not broken,) Legion really seemed to wrap up the Burning Legion's story in a definitive way.
If the philosophical realm of Death, along with the physical (or quasi-physical) realm of the Shadowlands, are Warcraft's third major source of evil, they're the piece we've explored the least. It's not even canon (yet) that the Scourge and the Lich King are anything other than a creation of demons - that it's just a demonic tool that broke off and became independent.
But frankly, given how iconic the Scourge are, and how well they fit as an independent threat, it would make sense to put them in a separate category, allowing us to take them just as seriously as the Old Gods and the Legion.
But we have a couple issues to consider:
One is that Wrath dealt with the Scourge in a similar way that Legion dealt with the... uh... Legion. Its leader was not eliminated - Arthas may be dead, but there is still a Lich King on the Frozen Throne, much as Sargeras is not dead, but imprisoned. But with Northrend conquered, the Scourge seems pretty contained.
There's also the question of repetition. Would a Scourge-focused expansion not just be Wrath all over again? We've already had the grueling war of attrition against a foe that replenishes its troops with each one of yours it kills and fought our way to the top of its sovereign's dread citadel. Do we really want to fight the Lich King again, even if it's a different Lich King?
Well, here's a couple notes:
First off, the undead is a bit like a cancer: You can eliminate the largest concentration of it, but if it has spread (and the Scourge sure as hell has spread - there's even Scourge in the Barrens, controlling the Quillboar,) you could always see it build up somewhere else.
Second: it's possible that a Death/Shadowlands/Necromancy-themed expansion would see the Scourge take on a very, very different form. For instance, we know that Drustvar in Kul Tiras is an area where the humans killed off the indigenous Drust, who then slid into the Shadowlands in order to haunt Drustvar from just outside conventional reality.
We also know that some powerful entity from the Shadowlands taught Odyn and Helya how to create the Val'kyr. I've always suspected that it might be this entity that Kil'jaeden made the Lich King from, which would suggest that the Lich King's designation as Death God is not actually that far off the mark.
Might we then see a far more diverse group of powers from the Shadowlands, united under a new sovereign? Could the Lich King turn his attention away from the Living and toward the Dead as a source of new recruits?
If that were the case, we might see a very different version of the Scourge - far more mystical and less militaristic.
And maybe to do that, Bolvar would abandon the Frozen Throne. Or perhaps, some other entity - maybe the powerful entity from the Shadowlands - would shatter the Frozen Throne and reclaim the title of Death God.
No comments:
Post a Comment