Why Is Jesse MIA in Control Resonant?

 In Control, Jesse's primary motivation entering the Oldest House is simply to find her brother. Nearly two decades earlier, the FBC abducted Dylan in a misguided attempt to groom him as the next Director, seeing his paranatural abilities and figuring that if they controlled (it's kind of a theme word) everything about his upbringing that he'd wind up an ideal successor to Trench.

This backfired like crazy. Not only did a young Dylan kill numerous FBC personnel, but he wound up resenting the Bureau so much that he welcomed the Hiss when it began infecting everyone there.

Dylan's unique resilience to his Hiss infection is notable - he retains a sort of intelligence and intelligibility. Is this because of the lingering presence of Polaris? Is it because of his own paranatural powers? Is it because he didn't resist?

The point is, Control doesn't end with much of a victory for Jesse. The Hiss are still rampant in the Oldest House, the lockdown can't be lifted. The only real point she manages to score is that Dylans is... not infected by the Hiss anymore, but it's something of a Pyrrhic victory, as Dylan is comatose. Not exactly the reunion she was aiming for, and now she's trapped in the building, performing a leadership role for a Bureau that she only vaguely understood before that fateful night, that same Bureau that abused her brother for the better part of his life.

The FBC as an entity occupies a strange space in the world: Clearly, it has done some really morally wrong things. But there are factors that make us (or at least made me) view them in a more positive light: first, that there truly are threats that need to be handled, and the clandestine secrecy might actually have some justification given that the rules of the paranormal/supernatural (my guess is the insistent use of "paranatural," which is not a term I'd ever heard before playing the game or anywhere else since, is meant to blur the lines between the more sci-fi term of paranormal and the more fantasy term of supernatural) mean that people simply believing things can shape reality.

It's honestly one of the most potent concepts in speculative fiction: the whole scientific, empirical manner of viewing and studying the world rests on the assumption that our observations reflect a concrete, objective universe underlying everything that is consistent and exists completely independent of our perception of it. But the only evidence we have of that objective universe are our very flawed perceptions, and the more we learn about psychology, the more fallible our perceptions prove to be, which raises the question: can we be so certain that there is an objective reality, or is reality malleable and shaped by perception?

Beyond that, there's also an adventurous spirit amongst people at the FBC, especially as embodied by Casper Darling, which makes it very easy to forget that what he did to Dylan was unconscionable.

Jesse, after what you'd assume would be a horrible trauma of walking into an office right after the man inside shot himself, and then being compelled to pick up the gun and hold it to your head while you go through some bizarre psychic evaluation, arrives back in her own body and says she's actually happy she's there - she's excited to be initiated into this world of the Weird.

In other words, even if the FBC has played an antagonistic role toward her through much of her life, the world it opens up to her is something she deems worth it.

Generally, I think we're meant to think of Jesse as a good person. She wants to save as many lives as she can, and she hopes to reform the FBC with whatever power she gets from being the Director. But it's such a weird idea, to find this secret government agency and to be in charge of it ten minutes after walking in the door before meeting any employees other than the mysterious janitor.

I haven't played FBC Firebreak, but I'm given to understand that in the documents found in that game, Jesse is not terribly popular with the Oldest House staff. I mean, who would be happy with things when you're stuck inside an office building filled with deadly threats for a full seven years?

Control Resonant, we know, will be inverting the story a bit - instead of Jesse looking for Dylan, Dylan is looking for Jesse. And instead of entering into this strange world of the Oldest House, Dylans is emerging out into the wide world that has been denied to him for most of his life (if memory serves, Dylan was born in 1992, so he's 34, and has spent 24 of those years inside that freaking building).

We know that Jesse is the one who drives the Aberrant, which will be his weapon as the Service Weapon is for her, into Dylan's abdomen while he's lying in his coma, and at least the way the trailers are edited, this seems to be what wakes him up.

But... does that make sense? I don't know if the timeline actually adds up if that's the case.

Because the last time we saw Dylan was not 2019, but 2023, when Kieran Estevez was investigating the Lake House out near Bright Falls, and was transported via the Oceanview Motel into the Containment Sector of the Oldest House, where she found Dylan in a containment unit.

Now, it's possible this was some kind of mental construct: I doubt that Jesse would have allowed him to be kept in such a bare-bones glass case. But here I need to break through the fourth wall and say that it's also possible that Remedy just didn't want to built all the assets to give Dylan a nice and comfortable cell.

I do think, though, that there's strong evidence to support the idea that Dylan wakes up before 2026 - not only can Kieran talk with him in that meeting (and again, could be a mental construct, could also be a connection across temporal distances) but there are also drawings found in the Lake House evidently made by Dylan.

Hm. But how would they have those if they weren't from before the lockdown...?

Ok, maybe that's not a valid line of reasoning.

The point is, Jesse drives the Aberrant into Dylan while he seems to still be in his coma, and that seems to initiate his bonding with what we can probably assume is an Object of Power (it may have even been described as one officially - though the name certainly elicits some curiosity.

If Dylan just wakes up right when that happens, surely he might have a moment to speak with Jesse. Might she give him some hint as to where he's going?

In clips of the game we've seen in previews, Dylan does seem to be able to interact with Jesse in the mind-place like "Gap" (the stunning instant-shift to the Mind Place and the Writer's Room from Alan Wake II will evidently also be how we access the Gap in Resonant) but she also seems to doubt that it's actually him that she's interacting with.

Jesse is missing - that seems to be the headline. And with her gone, the FBC turns to Dylan as the other incredibly powerful Parautilitarian to try to deal with some of the threats out there.

But why does she leave?

Ok, to be fair, that's probably the driving mystery of the game.

I guess there's a question, though, of the timeline:

It sounds like there is some signal detected days before the Oldest House lockdown fails, which I think Emily Pope describes as some unprecedented resonance.

The catalyst or source of that resonance is probably related to the Blessed Organization (I don't know about you, but I always read Blessed as the two-syllable version, like a "Blessèd Day!" Do we get any audio of FBC people reading it out loud? Or did I just conclude that on my own?) We know from emails with Barry that Chester Bless said something about it being good that Barry had gotten out of New York - a decidedly ominous remark that Barry doesn't seem to find nearly as concerning as he probably should.

But will Blessed be our main antagonists in Resonant? Or are they just the ones who tip over the first domino?

Bless cheekily seemed to imply he had some connection to the Board - his motivational speaking tour employed what was probably an Altered Item that was a Surf Board, but given the power behind the FBC, and Bless's well-informed understanding of the Bureau's inner workings (enough to, for example, send a deadly altered item to the America Overnight studio, a show that was not publicly known to be an FBC project,) it seems pretty clear that he knows about the Board.

But here's the question: Is Bless and his organization opposed to the Board? Or are they actually working for the Board behind the scenes?

Control's Foundation DLC sees tensions begin to form between Jesse and the Board. They, bizarrely, limit the powers that they are willing to grant her while down there, despite the fact that she clearly needs both to fix the problem there. And the Board also seems to sabotage Marshall's HRA in retaliation for her destruction of the Nail, an act she does to prevent the Hiss from infecting it. While the ensuing problems from this action are, of course, also quite dangerous, it shows both a ruthlessness and an evident misaligned set of priorities between the human FBC and the inhuman Board.

I think it's very possible that Jesse's awareness of the danger that the Board poses to her and to the entire world grew over her seven years stuck in the Oldest House. And I think the most obvious reason for her to go MIA is because she knows that the Board is ready to get rid of her, no longer convinced that she can be useful to them anymore. Trench, it would seem, after his infection by the Hiss, had proven to no longer be a suitable choice for Director, and I believe it was the Board that forced to blow his brains out with the Service Weapon.

I think there's a good chance, then, that if they retain control of that OOP, Jesse might not be carrying it with her anymore, because the Board might no longer feel they can control (there's that word again) her as Director.

It would explain a couple things: first, why Dylan doesn't get the Service Weapon (while we see it as a gun throughout the first game, it is implied that it has taken on other forms, including possible Mjolnir and Excalibur, both of which are melee weapons that would suit Dylan's playstyle). But it would also explain why Jesse has to leave in a hurry without telling anyone where she's going or why.

Much as Dylan has even less reason to trust the FBC than Jesse did, it also stands to reason that as someone who is unlikely to romanticize the world of the Weird, having steeped in it for nearly a quarter-century, we might see the Board go from creepy but ostensible ally in the first game to the ultimate threat that must be defeated in the second.

Devouring the Void: Further Thoughts on WoW's Newest Spec

 The Devourer Demon Hunter is honestly a bit weird on a conceptual level.

Demon Hunters had only two specs for the first ten years of their existence, and they both sort of operated in a similar conceptual space: fel fire, demonic transformations, and sucking up soul fragments (whether as a bit of soloing sustainability for Havoc or a central healing mechanic for Vengeance). Interestingly, the two specs originally had different resources, with Havoc using the purple Fury that they now all use and Vengeance having the ultimate edgelord resource, Pain, which was colored more kind of orange. They honestly worked basically the same, and so it made sense that they consolidated it into the resource that also more or less shared the class color.

But we haven't really dealt with demons as a major threat since Legion. Demon Hunters work pretty well as one of the major "cosmic warrior" classes given the kind of space-alien theming of Warcraft demons, and so it sort of makes sense that, as we have an expansion with void-based villains that are if anything even more space-alien-coded that it would be Demon Hunters who develop a new technique to deal with them.

This comes hand-in-hand with adding Void Elves to the list of races that can play Demon Hunters (the only real downside is that they don't have quite as many unique customization options as the Night Elf and Blood Elf ones, and don't get unique voice lines. I did, however, discover that they have evidently added the ability to give at least Void Elf Demon Hunters glowing blue eyes rather than green).

Anyway, I leveled up a Void Elf Demon Hunter to stick pretty religiously to Devourer as a spec, while my original Night Elf one remains committed pretty firmly to Havoc (he dabbles in the other specs, but I also have a Blood Elf who I think is committed to Vengeance. Does this make sense in this day and age of extremely simple spec-switching and where most gear works for all your class's specs? Maybe not. But it helps me kind of organize the way I think about a character, and also lets me try out new looks and feels).

Devourer as a spec has always felt a little weird to me: looking at it without any kind of external guidance, it feels like the point is to cast Collapsing Star as often as you can, which means first building up the Void Fragments you need to activate Metamorphosis, and then racing to generate and gather as many more as you can to get as many casts of Collapsing Star in there as possible.

But it has always been quite difficult to get Metamorphosis to actually last long enough to get the spell off, even just casting it once (we'll address Apex talents in a moment).

The weird thing is that, at least according to Icy Veins, this isn't actually how the spec plays, or at least how it plays most effectively. Instead, what seems to be more ideal is to basically ignore Collapsing Star - instead of trying to extent your Metamorphosis as long as you possibly can, you instead want to get it as frequently as possible to take advantage of Voidsurges from the Void-Scarred hero talent (is the Demon Hunter the only class where one of its Hero Talent trees changes names depending on your spec?)

I am of two minds here.

See, I actually like the version of the spec that I had in my head, and I do think that building around it, which would involve actually picking up the Apex talents, could be fun, but it seems that this Voidsurge-focused build is considered more effective.

And actually, once I released my attachments toward that Collapsing Star-focused version of the spec, I started to enjoy the version I had. It's zippy (I don't think any spec has as much movement built into it, even Havoc) and bursty in a fun way.

The other major change I needed to make was that I think at least early in the expansion, you could take talents that made Soul Immolation a passive proc rather than an activated ability. Perhaps in 12.1 they changed this so that you do really need it to be a button on your bars.

Well... while I was leveling my Voidy DH up, I was not aware of that, and I will tell you, now that I am actually hitting that button, it's smoothing out the rotation a bit and also helping a lot with survival (given that you get healed for 30% of your HP over the course of it).

I still think I probably like Havoc best, but I do find myself enjoying the increased speed and flow of Devourer.

Sargeras in The Last Titan

 Sargeras is the original Big Bad of the Warcraft Franchise.

As the mightiest warrior of the Titans, themselves godlike beings (the closest that WoW gets to a classical Olympian-style pantheon - they're literally called The Pantheon,) the story goes (after a retcon or two) that Sargeras, in the ancient past, was tasked with fighting demons across the cosmos. While any given demon was not much of a match for him, the problem was that they kept returning from death, reborn in the Twisting Nether.

So, Sargeras built Marduum, a prison-planet where, rather than killing the demons, he would bind them there so that they could not escape.

Notably, the Titans actually used demons for some of their purposes. As we learned in the Green Fire quests back in Mists of Pandaria, Doomguards were used to sniff out people performing sacrificial magic - essentially, taking demons that were particularly drawn to mortal sacrifices, the Titans could then track down mortals performing such heinous rites using the very creatures they were attempting to summon and bind to their will.

It was when Sargeras found the world of Telogrus (never officially confirmed, but implied to the point that I think it's more or less undeniable,) it was infected not with demons, but with its own version of the Old Gods, who had wormed their way into the planet's Worldsoul and corrupted it. A group of demons, the Nathrezim, had come there to take part in this corruption, or perhaps study it (or, perhaps they had led Sargeras there knowing the effect it would have on them. Look, the Revendreth-Nathrezim connection was a wild swing for Shadowlands, and I don't know how much Blizzard would prefer to sweep that under the rug, but it's canon until retconned away).

Sargeras determined that the Telogrus World Soul was beyond saving, and so slashed the planet it half, killing its world soul and horrifying the rest of the Pantheon.

(As a side note: if the death of Argus sundered the Arbiter and the Shadowlands, had something similar happened when Telogrus was killed? Or was the fact that Telogrus hadn't yet fully formed as a Titan or other equivalent entity enough to keep it from disrupting things? Presumably the Jailer had already fallen from grace by that point if he was sending the Nathrezim out there into the cosmos, so this wouldn't have been the start of his villainous journey.)

Now an outcast, Sargeras determined that he would need help if he was going to purge this void corruption from the cosmos, and so he destroyed his own demonic prison, unleashing the demons he had trapped and conscripting them into what would become the Burning Legion.

When the rest of the Pantheon confronted him, they told him how they had saved another world soul from void corruption - namely Azeroth. This didn't work out very well, as Sargeras' "destroy the entire universe to save it" plan had gone into full swing. He "killed" (they got better) the rest of the Pantheon and set out searching for Azeroth and looking for new recruits to join the Burning Legion, ultimately discovering the Eredar, a super-advanced civilization living in a seeming utopia, but whose curiosity to learn more about the cosmos would make them easily manipulated. As we know, most of the Eredar willingly joined the Legion, while some fled into exile as the Draenei (or fought in resistance as the Krokul).

Sargeras tried numerous times to invade Azeroth - the War of the Ancients was the first major attempt, while the invasion of the Horde was another notable one (though the Horde's defeat and the death of Gul'dan allowed the Orcs to break free of their Legion affiliations). Finally, we had the events of Legion, which ultimately led to the biggest blowback of one of these invasion attempts, as Illidan Stormrage opened a portal to Argus, and the heroes of Azeroth were able to strike a deadly blow to the heart of the Legion and free the Titans from their eons-long imprisonment.

The last we saw of Sargeras, the other Titans magically pulled him away from Azeroth, dragging him into the Seat of the Pantheon where he would be imprisoned and guarded by the other Titans along with Illidan.

Sargeras attempted one last parting blow, driving his sword into the heart of Azeroth, and as we've seen in the 12.2 preview images, got like, 20 feet away from hitting the World Soul itself (given this is a sword nearly the size of a planet, 20 feet is almost nothing).

But, as I noted in the end of Legion, it felt kind of strange that after all this time, and after an expansion called Legion, we didn't get to fight Sargeras himself (to be fair, the first expansion was Burning Crusade, which is practically synonymous with Legion. But we didn't have Demon Hunters yet!)

I'm still not sure we're going to kill Sargeras at the end of The Last Titan. Frankly, my money is on Iridikron acting as the expansion's big bad.

It was, after all, Iridikron's plan to lure the Titans to Azeroth and lay a trap for them.

But... look, we can't discount the fact that the Dark Titan himself is out there, and specifically, if the Titans themselves come to Azeroth... they've got to bring him with them, right?

Sargeras became the master of a universe-wide army of demons, but he's not actually a demon himself (though he looks way different than he did before destroying Marduum. Originally black-haired and rocking a vaguely Ancient Egyptian vibe, he's now fire-haired-and-beared and has big scary wings and such (and I think horns?)

Still, while Aman'thul is the ultimate patriarch of the Pantheon, occupying the Zeus/Odin role within it, I think Sargeras might represent the absolute worst impulses of the Titans, the need to control everything to the extent that he'll destroy that which he can't control. I can totally imagine a world where Aman'thul emerges as the villain of the story, to be sure.

But I do really wonder what role Sargeras will be playing. It's only been 8 or 9 years since the final raid of Legion, and even if it's a little longer in-universe because of the post-Shadowlands time skip, this is an infinitesimal amount of time for beings like the Titans. (Though to be fair, as Algalon said, he's seen entire worlds created in the space of a heartbeat, so maybe they can process a whole lot of information in a very short period of time.)

My guess is that if Sargeras is playing a major role in The Last Titan, it's something Blizzard will play pretty close to the vest.

Honestly, I think they have a marvelous opportunity here: The Jailer jumped into canon as this massive, Sargeras-level threat, but was written so simplistically and also had so little time to develop as a bad guy that he wound up falling flat.

Blizzard has shown that they can do villains, even if they are cartoonish and mustache-twirling, a lot better with Xal'atath, and while he hasn't had a ton of screen time, Iridikron also feels like a smarter, more strategic threat.

I would love to get some high-quality writing to give us a Sargeras that truly feels like the deserving Big Bad of Warcraft. I want to see him be both mighty and a genius. Let him feel august in his regal power, larger than life, but without spouting cliche lines like "pitiful mortal," as we had the Jailer do. (Sargeras wouldn't find mortals pitiful - that would require him to feel pity.)

And... don't kill him off. For a bad guy who I think has been part of the lore for 32 years, it's not like it'd be too early. But the thing is, we haven't actually gotten enough time with him to earn that catharsis. I know that part of the idea of ending the Worldsoul Saga is to move onto something new, but I think it would be great to actually see some classic villains get their due (and not in a half-assed Warlords of Draenor way).

What Does WoW Forever Mean for Retail WoW?

 I haven't really played WoW Classic much - I basically got an Undead Warlock out of Deathknell and onto Bree and then decided I liked how modern WoW plays better. I ran a Death Knight through the starting experience to unlock a cool undead proto-drake mount, but beyond that, I haven't really touched it.

It's something I appreciate as a sort of living archive of the game WoW used to be.

There have been "Classic" recreations of various expansion, with I think even Warlords of Draenor Classic due to launch (though man, who would be eager to live through that again?) But as I understand it, there's also been a version locked at Vanilla-only.

This version (and I could be totally wrong here, as again, I don't play Classic) saw an experiment with the Season of Discovery, which brought in new (I think temporary) gameplay ideas that diverged from the 2004-2007 run of the original WoW.

Forever seems to be building on the popularity of Season of Discovery and making it the whole gist of the game, as a kind of alternate timeline for WoW (which they describe as not really changing the overarching story, but filling in gaps here and there with additional stories and characters).

Now, as I understand it, part of what appeals to Classic players is the relaxed pace - knowing that things are going to be as they are indefinitely means you aren't rushing to get geared up on all your alts to run Naxxramas.

In the early days of WoW, the endgame really wasn't the whole game. There's just a natural shift that occurred as players had been playing longer, where their mains and alts would hit the level cap of an expansion and thus be well-positioned to hit the level cap pretty early in the next one.

Given that, WoW has shifted its focus more and more to level-cap content, with the actual process of leveling up being more of a kind of prologue to the real game.

But for those of you who weren't playing 20 years ago, that wasn't necessarily the expectation back in the day. "Hitting the level cap" in Vanilla was practically being done with a character, and endgame content like raiding was reserved for a narrow few, more akin to Mythic Raiding today (and even that I think might be more accessible than it used to be). The game, then, was focused more on the personal journey as you quested across zones, perhaps occasionally running dungeons together along that journey (and given that the level 40+ questing content prior to Cataclysm was utterly anemic, you kind of had to grind dungeons to get to level 60. Seriously, if I recall, you could come to Tanaris at level 40, get like one quest, and then find that the next quest in the zone required you to be level 45 or something, when you were maybe near 41 after that quest. I ran Zul'Farrak a lot).

I'll confess that my approach to WoW is a bit mechanistic - honestly, my main goal is to try to get the fully Mythic tier appearances on each class (by getting Hero gear from Delves primarily and then upgrading them to 6/6). It's not necessarily the way I really ought to be playing the game, to be frank.

So I can kind of see the appeal of an endless "get there when you get there" version of the game. Indeed, as expansions have been coming out faster recently (War Within was by several months the shortest expansion in WoW's history, and Midnight seems likely to be on a similar 18-month timeframe) there's something of a rush to consume all the content you can (I gotta say, the in-between patch content like Forbidden Reach, Siren Isle, and Ritual Sites are ones that I've really kind of checked out of).

Anyway, the thing that's really odd, though, about WoW Forever is that this new content doesn't exist in the main WoW. So... should it?

I will say, I was glad to find out that the added Paladin-capable races coming in WoW Forever will also be joining us in I believe 12.2 (possibly 12.2.5). I'm honestly kind of eager to take an Undead Paladin through Tirisfal Glades and such, as it's been a while since we've really been able to hang out in WoW's spooky mode (Talebound appeals to me).

But what of, for example, the Skyborne? The backstory on these people is that they're apparently exiles from Dire Maul, who rose up against their prince. Practically speaking, they seem to use the Blood Elf model (a popular one) but have blue skin and golden eyes. While we could probably recreate that look with the Void Elves, it does make me wonder how much of what they come up with for WoW Forever that they might then import into mainline WoW.

It is a strange thing - this sort of parallel, or perhaps branching version of Azeroth. I guess the other big question is what this will do to the playerbase? I suspect that Forever won't siphon off players from "retail" anymore than Classic did, but will the Classic playerbase be divided here?

Wild Speculation on The Last Titan

 As I write this, it's the evening of the opening of 2026's Blizzcon. With announcements for WoW Forever, 12.2: Eclipse, and a few other things, we got just a teaser trailer for The Last Titan, and confirmation that it will release some time next year.

This next expansion is due to close out the Worldsoul Saga, and is set in Northrend, which will presumably be getting a big visual overhaul and update (also, thankfully, we'll almost certainly have the old, 2008 version of Northrend preserved, as Blizzard learned its lesson on removing old game content after Cataclysm).

The teaser gives us one major hint about the tone of the expansion, but news about the final patch of Midnight similarly seems to confirm some ideas I had had going into this expansion and how it would affect the story of the Last Titan.

I'll put the teaser in here, in case you haven't watched it, but I'll also describe the gist of it, as I had done in a previous post:

In the teaser, we see familiar locations in Northrend, with a snowy, overcast sky. Utterly dwarfing both Wyrmrest Temple and Icecrown Citadel, the two largest structures on the continent outside of Ulduar, is what appears to be a colossal (that word being the title of the teaser) Titan Construct that points its massive shoulder-cannons at the viewers as the teaser ends.

This is the Fel Reaver x100, possibly literally.

That's all we have to go on, but here, I'll start putting forth my speculative ideas:

    The Titans Are Going to be A Major Enemy Faction

The Titans have generally been presented in WoW's lore as good guys - the closest thing we have to true gods, or perhaps not "true" but "traditional fantasy gods," akin to the Greek Pantheon. They are, after all, the creators of a good chunk of the playable races, including Humans (which then means Kul Tirans, Worgen, and Undead,) Dwarves (along with Earthen and Dark Irons,) Gnomes (along with Mechagnomes,) and effectively Orcs (and thus Mag'har Orcs) as well, as they evolved from the giant creature Aggramar created to deal with the overgrown life on Draenor.

We've seen Titans and their creations corrupted - obviously Sargeras, but then also figures like Loken. But we've also seen Titanforged beings acting in rather hostile and malevolent ways, like the Mogu on Pandaria. Sure, you could explain the Mogu as being rogue creations.

We got our first real scare by the Titans with Algalon, who came to determine if Azeroth should be "reoriginated" to cleanse the Old God corruption from the surface. The fact that the Titans built in a "kill everything on the planet" button is... a bit worrisome.

But starting in Dragonflight, we began to get a different perspective that was less flattering. The Primal Incarnates opposed the five dragonflights because of their "corruption by" and collaboration with the Titans. And we saw how places like the Ruby Life Pools infused order into the dragon eggs there in a manner that sort of seems like brainwashing. In the final patch, as we tried to prevent Fyrrak from burning Amirdrassil in the Emerald Dream, we found lore that suggested that Aman'thul was very upset to see Life magic infused into Titanic creations, in opposition to Eonar's support of this.

In War Within, the Earthen were forced to cut their connection to their Titanic protocols, as it prevented them from taking the steps necessary to defend Khaz Algar, and a massive Titan construct (smaller than the one in the Last Titan trailer, to be sure, but with similar vibes) to go and attack Dornogal.

To be clear, I don't think that the Titans are likely evil, per se. But I think that they, and perhaps here I'm most specifically referring to Aman'thul, are hardcore Lawful Neutral, in D&D terms. That means that the order they bring to Azeroth is something they're going to prioritize over what we'd think of as the moral obligations to find a way to compromise and preserve life.

Is this a retcon? After all, Sargeras wanted to destroy Azeroth like he did with Telogrus after finding it was infected by the Old Gods, but Aman'thul and the rest of the Pantheon took a different approach.

While I'm confident we'll defeat Xal'atath and prevent her from merging with the World Soul to do what the Old Gods never accomplished, the fact that she gets so close might mean that the Titans decide they've taken too big a risk.

Thus, I see one of two scenarios: either the Titans come to conquer Azeroth and establish full control over it once again, purging "corrupted" life (as in, those affected by the Curse of Flesh, or those who weren't part of their Titanforged creation in the first place, meaning all of us except the Earthen,) or they come to fully destroy the planet.

Here's a factor that we might not have considered:

At the end of Legion, Sargeras was brought to the Seat of the Pantheon, to be held there imprisoned by the other Titans and Illidan. In my mind, he and Illidan have been in an endless duel this entire time while the rest of the Pantheon maintains containment around them, but we don't really know what's been going on there.

Sargeras is very powerful, but might he also be insidiously persuasive? Xal'atath's breaching the Worldcore is precisely the scenario that Sargeras warned the other Titans about, and even if she doesn't wind up succeeding in corrupting it (which is technically still an "if") it might be enough to get some of them, at least, to agree with Sargeras' plan to destroy at least Azeroth in order to prevent it from falling to the Void.

But rather than the demonic army of the Burning Crusade, Sargeras would get access to the full arsenal of the Titans, which is honestly probably stronger, because it's that power that he used to imprison the demons that would first form the Burning Legion in the first place on Marduum.

Whether Sargeras or Aman'thul is at the head of this Titanic assault, I suspect that we will at least be facing Titans and Titan creations as one of the core, major threats in the expansion.

    New Class: Tinker

Ok, while I'm very confident in at least the broad strokes of that previous scenario, this is my pie-in-the-sky idea.

People have been talking about a Tinker class for ages, leaning into WoW's utter rejection of strict medievalism in its fantasy (you wonder why I've been playing this game for 20 years? That's part of it).

While there's not exactly any precedent like we had with Death Knights, Monks, or Demon Hunters, we did get the Evoker kind of out of nowhere, and I think that the very technological nature of the Titans would actually make Tinkers a really good fit for this expansion.

Again, pure speculation, but here's how I see it:

Tinkers could wear plate armor (we now have at least three classes at every armor type,) and would be able to tank, dps, or heal. Tanks would basically use power-armor (I don't know how we'd do this visually outside of tier set design) using forcefields and such to defend themselves. Healers would probably be able to send jets of healing energy or fluid and likewise place forcefields over allies to defend them. For dps, I think we'd actually have them be ranged dps, possibly giving them access to ranged weapons that only Hunters currently use (technically more specs currently use Warglaives than Guns, Bows, or Crossbows).

Given that this is a learned discipline, any race would be able to play one, though obviously if there are any limitations, Gnomes and Goblins are certain to get them (I'd argue Draenei are also shoe-ins).

We haven't had a new class since Dragonflight, just the addition of the Devourer spec for Demon Hunters. But I think you could have a lot of fun with the aesthetic here.

    Icecrown Citadel as Home Base:

This is wild, I know. The thing is, in Wrath, our home city was Dalaran, which of course canonically moved to the Broken Isles and then canonically got blown into a million pieces at the start of The War Within over the Isle of Dorn.

So where, then, will we set our Hearthstones?

Initially, I had thought that perhaps Ulduar would expand into a true city for us to use. But if the Titans are a more hostile faction (at least for part of the expansion,) it seems unlikely that their central command base for all of Azeroth would be a safe place for us to hang out.

Now, maybe the far more reasonable answer here would be Wyrmrest Temple.

But Icecrown Citadel is the most defensible location in Northrend, and while Bolvar is no longer the Lich King, it is a place that might be potentially secured and made safe. Furthermore, while the rift in the sky is closed, the connection it has with the Shadowlands might actually lend us some power that could hold off the Titans.

(My main was Soulbound with Pelagos, and so now any time an NPC tragically dies in a questline, I jokingly think "it's ok, my best friend is God, and he'll make sure you get somewhere good for you.")

    Iridikron is Waiting in the Wings:

While Xal'atath has been the headlining villain throughout War Within and Midnight, it seems that she's made the age-old mistake of becoming the final raid boss of an expansion. This isn't a death sentence (see Kil'jaeden, at least the first time, and Garrosh) but it does not bode well for her long-term survival.

But we know that Iridikron's plan in Dragonflight was the lure the Titans here and essentially spring a trap on them.

What that trap actually is is totally up in the air. We haven't seen him since he peaced out and let Fyrrak distract us at the end of Dragonflight. But part of the plan was securing the Dark Heart for Xal'atath, which she used to Pokemon up the essence of Dimensius to then use to invade Azeroth.

Given this teaser, it sounds like if Iridikron wanted the Titans to come here, he sure as hell got his wish.

Again, though, we really don't know what he plans to do once they do show up. The Primal Incarnates were near-matches for the Dragon Aspects (is the fact that there were five aspects and only four incarnates the only reason the aspects won?) but I don't think that an admittedly powerful dragon is a match on his own for a Titan, not to speak of a whole Pantheon of them.

    Titan Internal Conflict:

It is perhaps a somewhat well-meaning but still sexist trope that the woman in a group tends to be the most reasonable. I think that even if the Titans are hostile to us, it'll be Eonar who differs in opinion. We do know that she was always more welcome to mixing Titanic Order Magic with the magic of Life.

Again, I don't think the Titans are bad, but their focus on order has led them to do some morally questionable things.

Given what we've seen in Harandar, it looks like the original cradle of the World Soul was held there, but the Titans extract it and put it in their own Worldcore.

There are two ways to read this: one is that the Titans are just as bad as the Old Gods, trying to impose their views and shape the World Soul in their own image. But a more charitable way of looking at it is that they simply didn't think Harandar was defended well enough to keep the World Soul safe.

Because I think that the Titans mean to do good by the universe, even if their understanding of what is "good" is skewed toward their focus on order, I suspect that some, likely starting with Eonar, will object to the attack on the mortal races.

Frankly, I'm really hoping that the Titans are major characters in the expansion rather than detached and distant presences, because these names that have been part of the story for so long have not really been attached to much in the way of personality. Someone explain to me how Norgannon, Khaz'goroth, and Golganneth actually differ in personality. Please.

A divided Pantheon, not all united in this campaign, would be a way to expose some of those different perspectives and personalities.

    The Scourge Rampant:

This might contradict my "Icecrown Citadel as our home city" idea, but even if this expansion is going to center far more on Ulduar and the Titan stuff, Northrend is the home continent of the Scourge.

And let's face it, the Scourge is the coolest villain faction in all of Warcraft.

The fact that Bolvar isn't Lich King anymore means that the Scourge doesn't have anyone at the wheel. Now, does this make them more or less of a threat?

In Wrath, Terenas seemed to believe that a Scourge without a Lich King would be an even bigger problem than it was under Arthas. But while Bolvar did a decent job of keeping it in check (give or take a few very morally questionable actions during the Death Knight class campaign in Legion,) the brief outburst of Scourge activity in the run-up to Shadowlands seemed kind of minor compared to the forces of the Jailer within the Maw.

Indeed, one of the disappointments of Shadowlands is that it seemed like the Jailer's Mawsworn forces ought to have felt like a "Super Scourge," but they wound up not really feeling as cool as the one we faced from Warcraft III through Wrath.

Part of what made the Scourge cool, though, was the fact that it was organized - not just a mindless swarm of zombies, but a unified fighting force employing tactics and strategy. (One of the cleverest bits of lore writing is some of the books written by Kel'Thuzad found in Acherus during the Death Knight starting experience, in which he talks about how the Scourge doesn't need to adorn all of its buildings and weapons with skulls and other dark and scary symbols, but by embracing the look that the living expect them to have, they gain a psychological advantage over their adversaries).

I would be shocked in the Undead don't play a big part in The Last Titan, though I'll also say that it's likely they won't be the focus. Perhaps we'll get a 13.1 patch that gives us an Undead raid, but much as Yogg-Saron was dealt with in the "middle raid" of Wrath (we can just pretend Trial of the Crusader didn't happen) I think we'll see the focus flipped in our Northrend revisit.

(I will say, doing Wrath remix before Last Titan comes out is kind of a bold choice. We're going to spend a lot of time in Northrend in 2027).

    We'll Get a Level Squish After Last Titan:

We will be hitting level 100 in Last Titan, and while we did previously go up to level 120 in Battle for Azeroth, I think especially with the Dragonflight-era talent system, there's some danger of things getting out of hand as we pile on more and more levels with more and more talents.

One of the big problems by BFA is that, with the Mists-era talent system, we stared dealing with a lot of empty levels (and with level scaling, that meant that you were effectively getting less powerful as you leveled up).

Given how talents now work (more akin to the Classic-Cataclysm system, but refined) I don't fear empty levels, but I do think it's notable how they've had to throw in more bells and whistles to the talent system, giving us first Hero Talents and then the Apex Talents in Midnight.

So while I think 100 is a nice round number for us to hit in Last Titan, I think what comes after is going to include a level squish.

    Actually, Lots of Changes Post Last Titan

This is way ahead of us, and we won't know any of this stuff for sure until probably 2028, but bears speculation:

The World Soul saga comes to an end with the Last Titan. What does that mean?

Well, I think Azeroth/Aln'hara/the World Soul will emerge from the planet and take on their mature form, which is probably going to be something not quite a Titan, but of an equivalent level of power (or greater).

That will mean a lot of changes for Azeroth.

Does this mean that the planet is no longer the battleground for the various cosmic forces trying to claim the World Soul?

But also, does that mean that the Elements will actually calm down, as the spirit energy that Azeroth has been chugging will now be left to facilitate harmony between them?

While I've always been skeptical about a true "WoW 2," given that I think that came out in 2007 and was called The Burning Crusade, I do think there's a chance we'll see some major overhaul to the game.

While I'd argue it's dangerous to split your playerbase by making a true sequel to an MMORPG, it's clear that they've already experimented a bit with that with WoW Classic and now WoW Forever, and at least in the former case, it doesn't seem to have caused them any major problems.

My fear, personally, is that I'm a Mac user, and Blizzard historically started as a Mac gaming company, but in recent years (er, decade,) their new games have been PC- (or console-) only. I get that it's easier to optimize PCs for gaming, but I'd hate to be put in a position where I have to either not play the next incarnation of WoW or have to get a second computer.

I would also think that a WoW 2 would have something of a reset when it comes to player options. If they were to rebuild from the ground up, would we have to wait several years to get Demon Hunters again?

And what would happen to characters I've been playing for straight-up 20 years now?

Again, I'm not convinced that WoW 2 will ever be a thing, but I do think it's possible that we'll have a pretty major overhaul of the game post-Last Titan. What that looks like, I truly cannot say.

Undead Paladins and the Current State of the Forsaken

 You know, when I first started playing WoW, I kind of rolled my eyes at the Undead, the chosen playable race for the most edgelord players.

But the thing is, the deep, dark truth in my soul, is that I'm a bit of an edgelord myself.

Yeah, I freaking love these guys. The truth is, that while there was some precedent for my affinity for spooky vibes (my favorite holiday as a kid was Halloween,) I truly think that World of Warcraft coaxed forth a lifelong fondness for the grim and macabre, and my amoral little Undead Rogue, who cut his teeth assassinating the leadership of Hillsbrad, has always been one of my most beloved WoW characters, even as my love of the Rogue class fluctuates (actually, I really adore the way Subtlety plays currently, though Goremaw's Bite being part of the recommended talents does mess up my comfortable action bar placements).

I also love Paladins... though I'll confess that while Protection Paladins remain my "comfort class," as my main has been my human Prot Paladin since early 2008, I don't terribly care for the current state of Retribution. And I've genuinely never played as Holy outside of the artifact quests in Legion. If I tank well enough, they won't make me heal!

But if you asked me which race would be the absolute last to get Paladins, I'd have assumed Undead.

Perhaps that was too quick a judgment.

In I believe 12.2, we'll get an expansion to the available classes for Paladins, adding Night Elves, Trolls, and Undead.

For Night Elves, this is honestly a long time coming. Delas Moonfang was one of our class champions in Legion, and the ghost of Nerus Moonfang (I believe her ancestor) was another one. There were, thus, more Night Elf champions than there were Dwarves and I believe Draenei, both races that can and always have been able to play as Paladins. While Night Elves don't worship the Light in the same way that Humans, Dwarves, and to an extent Blood Elves do, we've seen how the Paladin tradition need not all derive from Uther the Lightbringer's example, with Draenei Vindicators, Zandalari Troll Prelates, and Tauren Sunwalkers. It stands to reason that Night Elf Paladins could emerge from a combination of their Sentinel warrior traditions and their Elune-worshipping priestly traditions.

Then, with Trolls, it seems likely that the example of the Zandalari Prelates would simply be something the Darkspear incorporate into their traditions. Interesting that the Darkspear were once this minor, pariah tribe amongst the Gurubashi nation and now are more or less on equal footing with the traditionally most powerful Troll tribe. While there were rough patches (Garrosh,) it sounds like joining up with the Horde has worked out quite well for the Darkspear.

Anyway, when it comes to the Undead, it sort of simultaneously makes a ton of sense and also the least sense for them to be paladins.

After all, the Knights of the Silver Hand were quite prevalent in Lordaeron. I don't know how where Uther actually hailed from, but we've seen how Alonsus Faol, who literally is the one who imbued Uther with his holy power and co-founded the Knights of the Silver Hand, has remained a holy priest firmly dedicated to the Light, even if that light causes him pain as one of the undead.

While Faol is associated more with the Conclave now, as he is a Priest rather than a Paladin, I think he stands as a great example of how the Forsaken might embrace ways that seemed to be lost to them with their descent into undeath.

Culturally, I think that Sylvanas' regime as head of the Forsaken (and in fairness, she more or less founded the Forsaken as a unified people) discouraged association with old identities from when they were living. While Sylvanas seems on the road to reformation, she's also decidedly not the leader of the Forsaken anymore, though at least in-game we haven't seen anyone really take her place (Calia Menethil might play such a role, but I think reestablishing the Menethil dynasty is maybe not the best choice for them, even if she's about 1000% better than her brother was.)

The point is, the Forsaken, who have always leaned pretty hard into their dark and spooky aesthetic (prior to Cataclysm, towns like Bree were just ruined versions of human architecture found in Elwynn Forest, but they had created new types of buildings in Wrath of the Lich King, which they then carried over with the world revamp, dialing the spooky gothic vibes up to 11). And that extended to their behavior, with a fair number of actions that were straight-up evil, with just the lightest justification that it was in the name of self-defense.

Sylvanas amped up this kind of behavior, eventually forcing the Horde to turn on her after she had become Warchief, and outside of the game, she even had an emerging independent Forsaken government, the Desolate Council, killed.

Without Sylvanas, and after the betrayal by Sylvanas in her alliance with the Jailer, the Forsaken have not really been in the spotlight as much, but I suspect that, absent her influence, it might be less taboo for them to embrace some of their old identities as humans. Particularly given the much less hostile relations between the Alliance and Horde, it's not quite as important to the survival of the Forsaken to be so utterly hostile to living humans.

And I think that these factors all combine to allow them to start embracing the role of the Paladin.

Now, at least according to some very old lore, it's unlikely that any Undead Paladins would have been living paladins prior to their initial deaths. Back in early WoW lore, Paladins were immune to the Plague of Undeath, and thus would not have been turned even if slain by the Scourge (they could still be resurrected as Death Knights, of course).

This is the kind of minor lore thing that could very easily be retconned away, but I think it might be interesting, culturally, if we conceptualize Undead Paladins as embracing it as newcomers - a movement to honor the history of Lordaeron, and a test of their convictions to endure the power of the Light in order to protect their people.

Look, as I said, I really only love playing Protection, so I don't know how likely it is I'll have some really prominent Undead Paladin alt (I already have a Lightforged Draenei and Tauren Paladin sitting there as well). But it would be really cool if we get an exploration of the way that Forsaken culture has evolved in recent years.

Patch 12.2: Eclipse and 12.1.7: Talebound, plus Wrath Remix, and a brief Last Titan Teaser

 While we only got a brief (but pretty menacing) teaser for The Last Titan, the main focus for Blizzcon's WoW stuff, apart from, you know, WoW Forever, was Eclipse, the presumably final major patch of Midnight. Boy, doesn't it feel like this expansion just came out?

Eclipse sees Xal'atath make it down into the Worldcore, where Azeroth's World Soul was placed by the Titans (after they removed it from Harandar). It appears that Xal'atath's plan is to merge with the World Soul to become her own kind of Titan-like being.

Here are the major highlights:

First off, we have a new zone called the Mantle Vault, where the Worldcore can be found. Here, there's a subterranean hostile faction called the Deepskar Empire, composed of Troggs, Drogbar, Kobolds, and led, apparently, by hostile Niffen.

Within the Mantle Vault, we'll find the big 8-boss Worldcore Raid, which sees us have our big confrontation with Xal'atath, and where spellcasters can get their hands on Midnight's Edge, a spellcaster dagger that looks quite similar to a certain Black Blade that a certain former-mortal-turned-void-being used to live inside, though Blizzard claims at least that this is a different weapon (it's also apparently not just a rare drop, but will require a whole quest chain that includes finishing the raid. Fingers crossed it's more like the Mists/Warlords Legendary quests so I actually have a chance of getting one).

Additionally, the Gearhold will be a new Lair, the recent variation on World Bosses that... puts them in instances (not entirely sure how this is distinct from a single-boss raid, though I guess the fact that you can just walk in and be assigned a World-tier group for the boss is somewhat convenient). The boss here is an Azerite-infused cave bat called Noctinaxx.

We'll be getting a new dungeon called Thraegar's Stand, which has three bosses and seems to be kind of Earthen/Titan themed.

Also of note: Paladins will now be available to three new races: Night Elves, Trolls, and Undead. While this doesn't quite make them universal like they've done for some other classes, it does mean that we've got a ton of new options. Personally, I'm eager to make an Undead Paladin alt (if for nothing more than to see how amazing their paladin mount will look,) and given that we had Night Elf Paladin class champions in Legion a whole 10 years ago, it's about damn time that we get some cat-mounted champions of Elune's light. As for Trolls, I imagine that they've adapted some of the traditions of the Zandalari Prelates, spreading Paladin techniques across Troll-kind.

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly given how profoundly sinister he's been all expansion, our Delve nemesis will be none other than Astalor Bloodsworn. What that means for Prey is something I don't totally know (it will, evidently, still be part of the game).

Prior to this patch, in 12.1.7, we'll be getting a new game mode: Talebound.

This will apparently be a sort of Gothic Horror-vibes roguelike RPG system. If I understand correctly, this will be a bit like Plunderstorm, as a standalone thing you can play within the WoW Client. But unlike Plunderstorm's PvP battle royale, this seems to be built around single-player and co-op.

The premise is that we're snatched out of our reality to play the role of protagonist in The Storyteller's tales - a figure who prefers horror stories.

The game mode lets you play as one of three original classes, the martial Slayer, the Inquisitor, or the Witch.

Now, I think that WoW does Gothic Horror vibes immaculately, and my favorite parts of the game have tended to be when it leans into horror aesthetics, which I think are beautifully offset by WoW's cartoonish style, keeping it from getting oppressively bleak. It seems that this game mode will use environments like Revendreth, Gilneas, the Plaguelands, Parts of Kul Tiras (I know we saw the Shrine of the Storm, though I have to imagine we'll get a bunch of Drustvar) and such, and let us wear all the kind of Victorian finery that you'd want to in such a space.

This feels, basically, right up my alley, even if I generally don't like Roguelikes.

Additionally, we're getting a third expansion Remix, and having already done two of the game's most beloved and popular expansions, the next one will be bringing us to what for many was the pinnacle of WoW, Wrath of the Lich King. While I've already farmed quite a few of the tier sets for almost twenty years now, I'm sure I'll have fun soaking up every bit of Wrath nostalgia for that.

While the focus here is far more on Midnight's last patch and WoW Forever, we got a tiny little preview for the Last Titan - nothing in terms of gameplay, but we got this:

Shots of the massive, towering structures of Northrend, Wyrmrest Temple and Icecrownd Citadel, against stormy, overcast skies. As the camera lingers on Wyrmrest Temple, towering over Dragonblight, a flash of lightning reveals a silhouette - something that dwarves the temple tower, hundreds of feet, maybe a thousand feet tall. And then, glowing runes activate, and we see what appears to be an utterly colossal Titan construct walking the earth. Twin cannons on its shoulders activate and point down at us, the puny viewer in the frigid landscape, and as they begin to fire, we cut to black.

The Last Titan is due to arrive next year, in 2027.

Yeah, this is a pretty fast clip: Midnight launched only 18 months after The War Within, and it looks likely that The Last Titan will arrive on a similar schedule (I'd assume late in the year, given that Midnight only launched this year).

I... I know that the ambition back in the day was or WoW to have annual expansions, but I don't know that I think this is really a good idea. If the level cap rises and our progress in gearing and other means (I've actually been taking professions seriously in Midnight) is wiped away that much faster, it might cut into some of the extrinsic motivations to play.

I'm super jazzed to see what an updated Northrend looks like, don't get me wrong. But I think the traditional two-year cadence for WoW expansions worked fine, and if you're worried about content droughts, just give us X.3 patches! They did it in Wrath and Legion, and everyone loved those expansions!

Anyway, lots of stuff to digest. I haven't even touched on the new campaign being added to Warcraft III Reforged (hey, do you like the Forsaken? I've got good news for you.)