Blizzcon Rewards Lore Speculation

Well...

We're going to be grasping a bit here. But as with any Blizzcon, we have some new rewards coming in for those who buy tickets or the virtual ticket (which I have never done.)

Given that these branch out across all their games, it's not always clear how much to read in anything in particular for what it means for WoW.

The most obviously Warcraft-related rewards are the Murloc pets for WoW and a pair of Overwatch skins.

The skins give Genji and Symmetra Illidan and Tyrande skins, respectively. I'm very hesitant to read too much into this, as Illidan was very firmly placed on the back burner lorewise at the end of Legion. While his death in Burning Crusade was a little abrupt - most players never even saw him before getting to his boss room - much of Legion was about giving Illidan a proper send-off, and rehabilitating his character just enough to push him out of the "villain" side of things and into the "very chaotic neutral antihero."

But looking at the Murlocs pets, as is Blizzcon tradition, these are a little underwhelming. The rewards are just an Anduin-themed Murloc for the Alliance and a Sylvanas-themed Murloc for the Horde.

Now, as the leaders of their respective factions through this expansion, the conflict between the two has been representative of the overall Alliance/Horde war. But BFA only has one more patch to go (one assumes), and we're expecting that at Blizzcon, we're going to get a new expansion announced. Two years ago, the Alliance/Horde airship mounts were a big hint toward the factional theme of BFA. But these feel like more of a callback to the current expansion than a hint to the next one.

Especially after 8.2.5, this doesn't even seem up to date. And furthermore, Anduin's role in BFA has been a fairly background one. Yes, he's been working with Saurfang, but he's been more backing him up than directly taking a part in this internal Horde conflict. Jaina, I think, has really been the Alliance character with the biggest story this expansion.

So I'll say now that my guess is that these pets are not any sort of hint at what's to come.

But what if they are?

Sylvanas (spoilers for the most recent patch if you haven't done the quests yet) is no longer Warchief, and is basically in hiding now. I've long suspected that if we do get the death-themed Shadowlands expansion (which, to be clear, is my preferred route) that introduces new cosmic-level threats beyond the Void and the Legion, that Sylvanas will be our lead-in to such a story. Indeed, the attention that the game pays to her newly-empowered magic seems to strongly hint that we're getting some kind of new force at play. While death magic is not exactly uncommon on Azeroth, the biggest expression of it, the Scourge, was introduced via the demonic power of the Burning Legion. Granted, Jaina seemed not to recognize the magic Sylvanas used, which you'd think she would if it were pure death magic after her tribulations in Thros with the Drust.

So even though she already had a big role in BFA, it's not unthinkable that she'd also play a big role in what comes next, especially if it's death-related, given that she's the big Forsaken faction leader (or was.) If the expansion kicks off with us pursuing her into the Shadowlands after she, say, bombards Stormwind with Blight, that'd make a pretty good hook.

So what of Anduin?

Well, so far Anduin has largely played the role of a young man trying to fill his father's shoes. Ending the war was a big win for him, especially given that Saurfang's challenge meant no actual battle over Orgrimmar (though given that a lot of that would be Horde vs Horde, if you're counting by pure Machiavellian standards, maybe that battle would have been a bigger win - except it would have risked Sylvanas remaining in charge.) Storywise, Anduin has always played the role of the idealist, tempering his father's desire for revenge with a sense of empathy toward the Horde's humanity. And make no mistake - that strength of his ended the war. He saw Saurfang as a person, and that ultimately led to Sylvanas' removal from power.

But is there something else they could do with him?

We've usually seen Anduin confronting the Horde, which is a distinctly humanoid group of people who are... people. Sure, they basically flip a coin with each leader whether they're going to focus on protecting the world or waging genocidal campaigns of conquest, but the ebb and flow of Horde politics is one that could, in theory, eventually be solved by just having them figure their shit out.

The Warcraft universe has plenty of threats that aren't nuanced in that way. And I think that it could be a great test of someone with as much empathy and patience as Anduin to confront something that is pure evil.

Again, I'm spitballing here.

There's a big chance that they're simply not going to give some hint as to what is coming next with the Blizzcon rewards. But we're only about a month away and I'm excited!