9.2 Eternity's End

 The official announcement has come. 9.2, Eternity's End, is what's coming next for World of Warcraft, and appears to be the final major patch of Shadowlands.

The patch will take us to Zereth Mortis, a beautiful land at the heart of the Shadowlands that we first visit by navigating a realm of endless mists. There, we'll meet the Automa, a group of constructed creatures built by the First Ones to generate additional afterlives like the ones we've seen in the expansion. We'll also meet the Enlightened, a group of Brokers who have set aside their pursuit for material wealth (whatever material wealth is in a spiritual realm) in order to help to safeguard the region.

It appears that there will be a campaign over the course of the patch in which, among other things, we learn the runic language of the Automa in an effort to learn what knowledge they hold.

However, the bigger issue is that the Jailer has invaded, and his Mawsworn forces are pushing into the Sepulcher of the First Ones, which will be the big raid where we finally face off against Zovaal.

The Sepulcher will see a return of class-themed tier sets, though it does look like each of these sets is going to have a very similar visual language and color scheme.

In terms of unique gameplay and system changes, I don't see a whole lot. That, of course, might be fine - we don't want a situation like BFA where every patch brings an enormous new system to unlock and learn.

Zereth Mortis looks very pretty - it's divided between a lush zone with water that one can walk on, and lots of this mechanical life. The other side is a dry desert, which is apparently meant to represent reality's state prior to the First Ones' intervention.

While the preview video Blizzard posted focused a lot on the world design and lore of the new area, I got the sense that they were being a little cagey - the First Ones are creators not just of the Shadowlands, but the whole of the Warcraft universe, and so I would be surprised if we don't get some huge lore bombs.

I don't know how big Zereth Mortis is supposed to be, though I suspect it's going to be much larger than Korthia (ideally it'd be the size of the whole Maw, but I'm not going to hold them to that expectation.)

Mainly I felt that details were somewhat sketchy - I don't think we should expect this patch to drop super soon - perhaps waiting until spring of next year.

Blizzard talked about this patch closing a chapter that started in Warcraft III, (which oddly reminded me of the way Nintendo was talking about Metroid Dread,) though I don't know what that actually means. They're not ready to show us what the next expansion will be, but that will presumably be the next big announcement to follow this patch.