The last several WoW expansions have had stories directly lead into one another. I don't know that I think that's entirely necessary for the story, but it's been an interesting narrative concept.
Essentially: Vanilla had no real central story - it was more about just introducing Azeroth as an explorable space, where we encountered some icons of Warcraft lore (actually, Kel'thuzad might have been the only raid boss who had actually appeared in the RTS games... wait, no, Sapphiron did as well, but that was literally the final and second-to-last raid bosses to be found in vanilla WoW.)
Burning Crusade was also a bit more focused on just introducing environments, and its "story" was more about tracking down Illidan and beating him, and then Blizzard realizing that they had released the final raid way too soon and putting out Sunwell Plateau later on.
Wrath of the Lich King, however, I think, created the real model for how an expansion should work. While demons did invade through the Dark Portal in the pre-patch to BC, it wasn't entirely clear how everything tied together with Illidan. Indeed, as someone who was then a neophyte to WoW lore, I went in thinking Illidan was the leader of the Burning Legion, not an enemy of it. But in Wrath, it was very clear who the big bad was from the word go: Arthas Menethil, traitorous prince of Lordaeron and now Lich King, had to go down.
But Arthas' death didn't have anything to do with Deathwing's emergence from Deepholme. You could argue that the Cataclysm did lead into Mists given that it seemed to break the... Mists that had kept Pandaria secret. But that was more of a coincidence than a direct connection.
However, starting with the end of Mists, we had much more direct connections between the expansions. Garrosh's defeat and imprisonment led to his resentment and release by Wrathion and his True Horde loyalists and a group of Infinite Dragons (which... dude, are we not going to address that Wrathion was working with the infinite dragonflight? Also, where the hell were they in Warlords?) His travels to the alternate version of Draenor ultimately led to the introduction of a new Gul'dan (in a plotline that, now that I think about it, really parallels the creation of a second Thanos in Avengers: Endgame... um, spoilers.)
Gul'dan B then kicked off the plot of Legion, opening the portal at the Tomb of Sargeras that allowed the Legion back onto Azeroth.
And then, Legion ended with Sargeras stabbing the planet as he was being dragged off to his imprisonment at the Seat of the Pantheon.
Which brought us to Battle for Azeroth - the rush for Azerite that kicked off the Alliance/Horde war and the machinations of N'zoth taking advantage of said war.
8.3 is not out yet, and we don't know how it will end, but
SPOILERS AHOY
We do have datamined dialogue that suggests N'zoth is defeated - which is a given because he's the final boss (two bosses, actually) of the final raid.
Granted: this guy is the master manipulator and creator of eons-long plans, so I don't even think his being killed is necessarily not just part of what he's trying to do.
But we don't have a final cinematic, other than an in-game cutscene that I suspect will play only before the true end cinematic - a bit like the scene in Val'sharah that plays before getting the pre-rendered scene in which Ysera is corrupted by Xavius.
I could certainly see N'zoth having some kind of backup plan or contingency following his defeat in the raid. But at the same time, I think we might already have seen the breadcrumb storyline for the next expansion emerge.
BFA has been two stories going on simultaneously. Initially, it was all about the Alliance and Horde fighting each other. But on both continents, we saw more and more hints that the Old Gods, and N'zoth in particular, were hard at work. In 8.2.5, we actually saw the war come to an end - perhaps even in a more permanent way than ever before.
But notably: Sylvanas escaped justice. And Horde players who remained loyal to her got to talk to her one more time. Sylvanas is hardly down for the count, and is even planning to use our fight against N'zoth to gain a strategic advantage.
It seems very clear to me that Sylvanas will be the person - like Garrosh and Gul'dan before her - to lead us into the new expansion.
What's curious, though, is that there is a fraction of the playerbase that remains on her side. No one was given the option to stay loyal to the True Horde in Mists, but there are players who never turned on Sylvanas. Unless those characters are railroaded into fighting her, it suggests to me that Sylvanas cannot be the Big Bad of the expansion.
Which then raises the question: if not her, who?
We still have a lot to learn, and this is all speculation that could be rendered moot by next week's announcement. But I feel, along with many other WoW fans, that the next expansion is almost certainly going to have a strong Death theme. Whether it actually takes place in the Shadowlands or not, it seems like that's going to be the unifying theme.
Sylvanas is certainly a Death-themed character. But we've also got, from the last two expansions, Bwonsamdi, Helya, the Drust, and Taelia Fordragon - whose presence in early questing through Kul Tiras (she's a major NPC in both Tiragarde Sound and Stormsong Valley) was pretty prominent, making it puzzling how she's faded into the background unless her role is to be a major player later on.
Predicting final bosses for an expansion has not been a very easy endeavor for a long time. In Mists we only knew because they told us a few months after the initial announcement. Archimonde had basically come out of nowhere (he's literally not on Draenor until right before you fight him) and we hadn't even known Argus existed - as a Titan - until the final patch of Legion. So picking a final boss for an expansion that we don't even know is coming is probably foolish.
But this is the internet!
So let's go down the list:
Sylvanas:
Sylvanas has clearly embraced her villainous side - she was always probably an evil-aligned character (well, once she was undead. I'd imagine living Sylvanas was either lawful good or lawful neutral) but unless they figure out a way to get the players who are for some reason still loyal to her to flip, I actually think making her a boss would be a mistake. I'd rather she play the "you may hate me, but you need me" role.
Bwonsamdi:
Bwonsamdi is a fantastic character who I hope to see more of. The thing is, I think that he's a great "dark is not evil" type character. He's not a good guy, mind you, but I think he's very emphatically neutral. Death doesn't distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, and neither does he. Thus I don't think he'd make a good villain.
Helya:
Helya is, I think, evil. But she also has every right to be freaking pissed off an Odyn for what he did to her. The only reason I don't see her as the big bad is that we already fought her on her home turf as a raid boss in Legion. Now granted, Archimonde showed up as a raid boss prior to his stint as an expansion's final boss, but A: I don't think that was a good idea, B: it should have been Gul'dan, and C: the Battle for Mount Hyjal raid was really just an experiment in converting a WCIII mission into a raid, and not really a direct story confrontation between us and Archimonde. Also, the fact that Helya is still around is only available via a random drop from an Island Expedition - we'd want to have that more firmly established in lore if we wanted to build an expansion around her.
The Old Gods:
Yogg-Saron did claim to be the God of Death. And I'm actually building up a theory that Ny'alotha is a part of the Shadowlands (there's a post about that that I'll probably write soon.) Could they be behind all this death magic? My gut says no: For one thing, I want Death magic to be separate from the magic of the Void. I like that there's a sort of rock-paper-scissors element to the various great powers, and I firmly believe that Death magic, the undead, necromancy, all that stuff short-circuits the power of the Old Gods. It's why the Scourge was fine operating in a Saronite fortress and why the Void insists to Alleria that she kill Sylvanas for being the "true enemy." So no thanks.
Mueh'zalla:
There is an obscure reference here that could be very important. On the tablet of Thekal (I assume in the room with the Thekal the Prophet boss) in Zul'farrak, there are three Loas names inscribed. These include Kimbal, Shadra, and Mueh'zalla. Kimbal and Shadra show up in Zandalar (the former in a little shrine in northern Vol'dun, the latter as part of the main story in Zuldazar.) But Mueh'zalla, who seems to be some kind of evil death Loa known as the "Father of Sleep" (who gets mentioned by Ilgynoth in Ny'alotha - which makes this theory less fringe) has not shown up anywhere. Given that Bwonsamdi mentions being worried that the "boss" won't be happy that he misplaced Vol'jin's soul, a lot of people have speculated that this guy could be that boss.
On top of that, we still don't know what powerful Shadowlands entity Odyn gave his eye to in order to gain the power to raise the first Val'kyr. Mueh'zalla is one theory for who that could be.
So if they make Mueh'zalla a thing, we've got a decent candidate for the big bad of the Shadowlands. And given how little we know about it, they've got a lot of license to expand the lore on him. Is he a Loa, or could he be some Titan construct? Or a Constellar? Who knows?
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