When Mists of Pandaria was announced, the path of progression for just how the expansion would roll out was a bit of a mystery. We later got a bigger preview that unveiled how Garrosh would be the final boss and how the last raid would take us through the streets of Orgrimmar (though in practice, we spend a fairly small portion of the raid within the city proper.)
It seems to me that Warlords of Draenor is in a similar space. We know that the expansion will revolve around the seven Warlords, but beyond that, it's mostly speculation.
First of all, of the eponymous Warlords, we only know for certain how we'll be interacting with one of them. Blackhand, who in our timeline was the original Warchief of the Horde, will serve as the final boss of tier 17's main raid, Blackrock Foundry. It appears that in this alternate timeline, Blackhand is not really in charge of the Horde. He was, after all, really just Gul'dan's puppet, and given that Gul'dan seems to be an outcast from the Iron Horde, it seems that Blackhand might not be in the leadership position (no word on whether we'll interact with Orgrim Doomhammer, who killed Blackhand and seized power of both the Blackrock Clan and the Horde.)
Beyond them, there's Grommash, Kil'rogg, Kargash, Ner'zhul, Gul'dan, and Durotan. Durotan will, presumably, be the central leader of the native Horde faction, the Frostwolves Clan. Unless there's a big twist coming, it looks like Thrall's dad will be on the side of the good Horde.
I could imagine some of these Warlords serving as dungeon bosses, or even having a zone's major quest line culminate in slaying them.
Grommash really seems to be front and center, and the only reason why I'm skeptical that they would make him the final boss is that he's so similar to Garrosh (perhaps unsurprising, given that he's Garrosh's dad.)
But beyond these Orcs, there are other major forces that I expect we'll have to deal with. The Kara/MSV-style intro raid will be Highmaul, which seems to be an Ogre raid, but given what we've heard about the Ogres being part of an empire in decline, I could imagine the Ogres serving the same function as the Mogu in Mists and occupying the second raid tier of the expansion.
The Arrakoa will also be making a return, and we might even get a little bit of Old God lore with them (because, you know, we don't get enough of that.) Whether the Arrakoa will be anything more than a zone and a dungeon kind of remains to be seen, though.
So that's all we've had confirmed as part of the expansion, but I strongly suspect there are other forces at play. The two most obvious ones are the Infinite Dragonflight and the Burning Legion.
The Infinites, perhaps linked to Kairoz, would certainly have a reason to be interested in an alternate universe created by meddling with time-travel. That said, Blizzard has insisted time and again that this is not a time-travel expansion. Is this a deflection? Who knows? We do know that there is apparently some kind of Chronomancy-themed location in the center of the continent that may in fact be where we arrive when we come to Draenor.
The Burning Legion is also a fairly obvious player in all of this, but it's one with caveats. The entire point of the Iron Horde was to divorce the Orcs' history from the demons, but if Garrosh arrived just in time to prevent his father from drinking the Blood of Mannoroth, that means that the Legion was already involved - goading the Orcs into a war against the Draenei. Additionally, Gul'dan still did drink the blood, and he has a contingent of warlocks serving him. The Legion might not have their claws in the sides of the Iron Horde the way they did with the original one, but that's no reason to think that they wouldn't have a role to play.
We've also been promised a little extra story around the Dark Iron Dwarves and the Blood Elf Paladins. The former will likely see some development in Moira's ascendence to power, which, despite roughness earlier on, seems to be working out ok. Meanwhile, the Blood Elves were set on a path to redemption by the reignition of the Sunwell, but they haven't really made amends for what they did to M'uru.
Theoretically, we're due for an update on the upcoming expansion, and I really hope that we can see the Beta coming on its way soon. With no new class, nor Cataclysm's enormous old-world revamp, the Beta could actually be shorter than usual, but even then, I hope they get it on its way.
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