N'zoth, Sylvanas, and What Comes After BFA

Probably the two most popular theories on what expansion eight is going to be about are either the Shadowlands or the Old Gods.

What's kind of interesting about this is that that direction largely depends on what BFA is not about.

Sylvanas and N'zoth appear to be the two main contenders for BFA's final boss. In Nazjatar, we fight Azshara, who - while not necessarily good friends with N'zoth - serves the God of the Depths. It would not be terribly shocking to me if in some subtle ways, N'zoth has been the one to manipulate this war into being - to divide Azeroth's heroes and ensure that our conflict means we cannot do a very good job of fighting him.

Frankly, I imagine that the remainder of BFA will largely revolve around taking the fight to N'zoth. The most likely trajectory (and I'll issue this caveat - I'm usually wrong about these things) is that we'll spend 8.3 fighting our way into Ny'alotha for a final confrontation with N'zoth, who will be the expansion's final boss.

Indeed, Sylvanas' taking up of the Blade of the Black Empire (notably not Xal'atath, though, as this is a separate entity that is now going around in the stolen body of a Blood Elf cultist) could signal that she intends to siphon N'zoth's essence into the dagger - on one hand trapping him but on the other hand giving her a great deal more power (and possibly destabilizing Azeroth further.)

But it's also possible that the expansion will push us instead to a confrontation with Sylvanas. Might we find ourselves fighting the Warchief - between Horde rebels and a vengeful Alliance?

The reason I find the latter possibility very unlikely is that we did exactly that in Mists of Pandaria. Yes, in some ways Sylvanas is very different from Garrosh, but the way she has remade the Horde in her image and driven many of its leaders to either openly defy her or consider behind her back that a change might be necessary means we're treading some similar ground.

Blizzard needs to make this a different story than Garrosh.

But let's entertain both possibilities, starting with the latter.

If Sylvanas is taken down by the end of BFA, it will likely mean we have not dealt with N'zoth, and given his strong presence in BFA, it would seem that the Old God ought to be ascendant. One could imagine a Black Empire expansion - one in which N'zoth attempts to reestablish dominion over the surface of the world, and we could see all manner of Rl'yeh like cities and environments (side note: I think I've said it before, but while initially they claimed Ahn'qiraj was a former Titan facility, now that we have some concept art of the Black Empire and a glimpse of it in Azshara's Warbringers short, it seems pretty clear Ahn'qiraj is just a ruined version of what must have been C'thun's capital city prior to the Titans' arrival.)

That could be a cool expansion, to be sure, and I could even see it showing a resurgence of C'thun, Yogg-Saron, and even maybe Y'shaarj (by the way, does it annoy anyone else that it's pronounced like it should be "Ya'sharaj?")

On the other hand, if we go with the former scenario, which I think is more likely, we will probably deal with N'zoth at the end of BFA - though to what extent we truly "deal with him" is an open question. It's hard to portray a being as million-year-old master of manipulation and schemes and just have us kill the dude once his patch number is up, but the demands of an MMORPG sometimes lead to such things. I think that having him defeated, but instead of dead being trapped in that knife would be A: pretty cool and B: give us a chance to have Darin DePaul speak to us if we ever get our artifact weapons back. (Another side note: I really hope we get more of the friendly, higher-pitched voice that N'zoth uses when speaking to Azshara through the fish. WoW sometimes overuses the deep, low, booming voice for big bads, and I think that N'zoth is way creepier when he uses that first voice. It's like how I find C'thun's voice way cooler than Yogg-Saron's. That being said, the Lich King's voice is perfect.)

Anyway, if N'zoth is defeated or destroyed at the end of BFA, I could see Sylvanas become public enemy number one. As someone who has been undead for all of WoW and is now getting bolder using necromantic powers, it seems very likely she could use the Shadowlands to escape into.

While the Shadowlands is in many ways the dark reflection of the Emerald Dream (so is the Nightmare, sort of, but in a different way,) it's not clear that the Shadowlands have any of the problems that kept Blizzard from building an entire expansion around it. The Shadowlands could easily have inhabitants and cities and such.

Indeed, BFA has actually seriously diversified the kind of things we might find there. Between Bwonsamdi's loyal spirits, the Drust, and all the Scourge-affiliated undead, it would not be hard to flesh out the Shadowlands as a weirdly vibrant place with all manner of creatures and people for us to meet.

Frankly, I think that WoW has always done well with creepy and macabre stuff - I think part of it is the way that its colorful and cartoonish art style keeps it from getting too overwhelmingly grim. So I would be super on board for a Shadowlands-themed expansion. And Sylvanas would be a great gateway NPC into it.

What her fate is, ultimately, once we get there is something I won't begin to speculate about. I hope it's not some Horde NPC killing her in a duel like last time. Indeed, I'd kind of like to see what happens if Sylvanas becomes her own, independent force - not a leader, but a rogue NPC who is extremely dangerous but not necessarily our adversary. Indeed, I think I'd like to see her as more of an Illidan-like figure (the Legion version,) where any interactions we have with her are fraught with animosity that has to be stifled in order to get things done.

Obviously we're still months away from the reveal of the next expansion. We don't even know when Blizzcon is this year yet (or if it will be announced at a different convention, like how Legion was announced at Gamescom to a typically reserved and skeptical German audience) and we don't know where 8.3 will fall in that cycle, which is obviously something we'll need to see before we can speculate with much confidence about expansion 8.