Less Obvious Expansion Ideas

WoW's first couple expansions were somewhat obvious choices. Not in a bad way, mind you, but it was pretty clear in vanilla that we'd have to go to Outland and we'd have to go to Northrend at some point. Illidan, Arthas, and Deathwing were all big figures who had been conspicuously absent in Vanilla. Outland (then called the Outlands) had been explored as early as Warcraft II's Beyond the Dark Portal expansion, and Northrend was introduced in the same game that we learned about Kalimdor.

The first few expansions burned through some big characters, though, and Blizzard has, wisely, I think, tried to start building up new lore (all lore is new at some point, of course) for the new expansions. At least one Pandaren had been established before WoW, and actually, even such organizations as the Shado-Pan were already on the books before Mists of Pandaria came out, but nearly everything in Pandaria was built from the ground up.

Garrosh Hellscream has, of course, been a pivotal figure in the Warcraft universe, but has only existed since the Burning Crusade expansion. (Of course, at this point "only" seems a little silly when referring to an expansion that came out eight years ago. Ugh, I just made myself feel old.)

It seems that there's a canon of obvious future expansions that always get talked about when we're due a new announcement. A South Seas/Azshara expansion (a lot of people thought that the Dark Below would be that, though it turned out to be an expansion for Destiny, and not WoW,) an Old God expansion, maybe an Infinite Dragonflight expansion (fingers crossed!) and of course, if they wanted to pull that trigger, an ultimate Burning Legion expansion that has us finally confront Sargeras (possibly set on Argus.) And of course, despite Blizzard basically ruling it out as anything more than a raid instance, the Emerald Dream, which people have been expecting as the next expansion since before Burning Crusade.

But Mists and Warlords were both somewhat surprising. When I first heard about the trademark for Mists of Pandaria, I actually was very skeptical that the Pandaren would even play all that big a role. I figured it would be in the South Seas, on an archipelago, and that the "Mists" referred to the Kvaldir, who might be warring against the Naga. My speculation on the name "Warlords of Draenor" is on this blog, so you can see for yourself, but I remember imagining that it could be another part of Draenor we would discover, floating in the Twisting Nether, and that perhaps we'd have all new societies, including perhaps a group of brutal Draenei, becoming somewhat more Orc-like after being cut off from Velen.

The obvious expansions are fine, but they're finite, and some of them Blizzard is probably going to want to sit on. There are some early quotes from Vanilla where some developer said that the Lich King would take eighty level 100 players to take down when asked what his power level was. Obviously, at this point level and in-lore power level are somewhat divorced concepts. There's no way that Garrosh, even covered with Y'shaarj's blood, was anywhere near as powerful as the Lich King or Deathwing. And neither of those guys (ok, maybe the Lich King) were as powerful as the Old Gods, one of whom we fought at level 60. I absolutely loved Wrath of the Lich King, even if I do remember things that rose-tinted glasses would usually filter out, but Blizzard is in the position now where they don't get to have Arthas around anymore, which is a little frustrating.

There's a reason Batman doesn't kill the Joker, and instead opts to send him to Arkham Asylum. It's because damn, DC doesn't want to be in a position where they can't use the Joker anymore.

But I think it's also good to try something new and shake things up. Frankly, for all the complaints about "whimsical Pandas," I thought the story of Mists of Pandaria was top notch - the only flaw being that Horde players had to make a sudden shift between standing behind Hellscream and fighting against him (though the Dagger in the Dark scenario was a pretty decent attempt at justifying that.) Personally, I wasn't that crazy about the aesthetics of a lot of the Pandaria zones, but it was a matter of personal taste, and not a judgment of quality (though I think there's nothing in WoW that's anything like Valley of the Four Winds - a zone where you can actually imagine people really living and not starving to death!) But regardless of aesthetics, the character of Pandaria was wonderfully rich and the story of the expansion felt fuller than any that had come before, even my beloved Wrath.

Warlords of Draenor cheats a little bit in its originality, but it's something I'm willing to let slide given that it's kind of a 20th anniversary celebration of Warcraft. My only real issue with that is that if Blizzard insists Warcraft's all about Orcs and Humans, when do we get to hear about the humans? Warcraft's the only fantasy universe where the "boring race they spend too much focus on" isn't humans. But still, it's cool to see Draenor as it was pre-Outland, and I'm overjoyed to have an opportunity for the Draenei to actually do something (mumbles something about the fact that only one of the major Draenei characters in the expansion is actually from our universe.)

But post-Warlords, what comes next? What are the less obvious expansion ideas? Of course, as the "less obvious ones," these are all kind of inherently less likely, and are kind of stuff I'm pulling out of thin air.

Further Exploration of Draenor B:

In an interview, Tom Chilton said that he'd love to explore more of Draenor, but right now it looks like at most we're going to be getting all the Outland zones to fill out the map of Draenor (except Zangarmarsh, but it's ok, because Blade's Edge Mountains and Terrokar Forest are each represented by two zones in Draenor.) Given that Draenor as we know it is really just one continent on a potentially larger planet, you could imagine all kinds of crazy parts elsewhere.

A Trip to Eastern Kingdoms Past:

Just like the previous example, I wouldn't recommend this as the immediate follow-up to Warlords, but given hat we're seeing what the various Orc Clans were like in the early days of the Horde (albeit different thanks to Garrosh's imported Goblin technology and foreknowledge) I would love to see the Eastern Kingdoms before the First War. We've never seen Alterac before it was a ruin, and we've never seen (in WoW) an unplagued Lordaeron (except in the Culling of Stratholme dungeon.) Stormwind probably looked totally different before the First War, and hell, Stromgarde used to actually be an important capital. And that's not to mention the various Dwarves, High Elves, or Trolls that populated the place. If we went back a few centuries earlier, you could even see the War of the Three Hammers, and see what Blackrock Mountain was like before it went volcanic. I know that Cataclysm already gave us a new version of the Eastern Kingdoms, but one wonders what it would be like if it were to be rebuilt from scratch the way they're doing in Warlords.

The Freaking Moon:

Elune has to exist in more than just a metaphorical way, because we've met her son, Cenarius. Azeroth has two moons (actually, so does Draenor... weird.) Is Elune up there on the moon? Is she somehow a spirit that resides within the moon? What is the other moon's deal? We seem pretty happy and have the magical/technological capability to go to Outland, which was a planet presumably thousands of light-years away, then became trapped in another dimension. And now we're not just doing that, but going to a version of Draenor in an alternate universe. Don't you think that at this point, the Alliance and Horde might get to the moon? And how much do you want to bet that the smaller, blue moon, is actually a massive orbiting Titan facility?

Wrath 2: The Rescourgening:

There's only one reason that "there must always be a Lich King." It's because Blizzard knows that the Scourge is the best group of villains they've ever come up with and they want to keep them around. But other than a Cataclysm-style or Warlords-style revamp/remake of Northrend, how the hell would you do another Scourge expansion? Well, Azjol-Nerub was a tiny dungeon, and far from the massive zone that we were all hoping it would be (and then of course, in the following expansion we got our massive underground cavern zone in Deepholm.) It does seem like there could be more nooks and crannies to explore in Northrend. Speaking of...

What I thought the Dark Below was going to be:

For some reason, the "Dark Below" to me did not immediately make me think of the Naga, as for some reason it made me think more about being underground than underwater. It strikes me that we could, at some point, have a massive Old Gods-themed expansion. Cataclysm was kind of that, but it was sort of diluted with all the Elementals and the Black/Twilight Dragonflight (actually, if you ask me we could have focused a bit more on the Black Dragons in Cataclysm.) But given that Azeroth is a quasi-artificial planet, one wonders if the whole planet has mechanisms like the ones you find under Storm Peaks, and if we could explore them.

While I'm happy to go to Draenor (go Yrel!) I'm also intrigued and perhaps naively getting my hopes up that we'll get another expansion announcement at Blizzcon this year (for the record, it's super unlikely, and the big reveal will probably be Legacy of the Void and maybe a new Diablo III expansion, as well as some news about the patches that will be coming with Warlords.) I'm sure there are plenty of ideas floating out there that would also make for great expansion ideas, but for a while now, we've been in a kind of "anyone's guess" state of the game. So for curiosity if nothing else, I'm excited to see where the game goes.