Unlike other major forces in the Warcraft universe, the Alliance and Horde, for story and gameplay purposes, always keep pace with each other. The Alliance gets big steampunk airships? So does the Horde. The Horde loses a city? Only if the Alliance loses one first.
The headline fight in the next expansion is going to be an all-out war between the Alliance and Horde. We did see this in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, but this expansion seems to be putting that conflict center-stage, while those earlier expansions had the real focus as Deathwing and the elemental unrest he caused, or the mysterious land of Pandaria and its many secrets.
And yet...
There are logistical problems with making an expansion all about Alliance and Horde fighting. Generally, the raids in an expansion are where we deal with the big villains - take Legion as a great example. Every raid ends with us defeating a very important enemy from lore, with only Helya and Argus the Unmaker not established previously (though new, both of those characters were definitely very important lore-wise.)
But when you're focusing on the conflict between the playable factions, how do you resolve that story?
We have had raids in which the experience is mirrored but different for the two factions. In both Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel, some fights feature members of the other faction as the enemy. But ultimately, that conflict plays a distant second fiddle to the real threat, which in both cases is the Scourge.
Even in Mists of Pandaria, that ended with the Siege of Orgrimmar, we had to jump through a few narrative hoops to ensure that the Horde had a reason to invade their own capital. The Alliance story was utterly straightforward (and thus, sadly, not really as interesting) while the Horde underwent a revolution from within. But the end result was that both sides were, as they tend to, uniting against a common enemy.
Now, there is a case in which cooperation was decidedly not part of the endgame: in the aforementioned Icecrown Citadel. While the Argent Crusade and the Ebon Blade were arguably going through their own "unite against a common foe" plot, Alliance and Horde could only get in each others' way during that raid. The closest they came to cooperating was when Varian allowed Varok Saurfang to claim the body of his son after we killed him (a scene only Alliance players get.)
But again, in that case, even if the war was hot between the factions by then, the real enemy was a third party.
And to be honest, I suspect that this will be the case in Battle for Azeroth as well.
Let's look at evidence, circumstantial, datamined, and speculative:
Throughout Legion, we've been getting hints that the Old Gods are active. Yogg-Saron summoned faceless N'raqi to attack us in Ulduar. The death of Xavius ended the Emerald Nightmare, thus waking up N'zoth. The Naga, allied with the N'raqi, were seeking the Tidestone of Golganneth for apocalyptic purposes (we also know Azshara will be a boss in BFA.)
Now sure, this could all be building things up longterm - Wrathion's comments about the Legion were all in Mists of Pandaria, and we had Warlords of Draenor extending the gap between that and the Legion's invasion.
But if we're talking about longterm buildup, I suspect that Battle for Azeroth is actually going to be introducing threats more from the Shadowlands than the Void.
Getting into datamining spoilers, we should also talk about a few other elements:
The quests sendings both Horde and Alliance to Silithus to keep tabs on what the other faction is doing there after Sargeras stabbed the planet in that zone eventually have us run into members of Twilight's Hammer who are trying to reunite the cult after their defeat in Cataclysm. While Deathwing's demise (not to mention Cho'gall and Benedictus,) Twilight's Hammer's leadership has been devastated (even Bishop Farthing, who replaced Benedictus in Stormwind, both appears to have also been a Twilight Cultist and is killed by Shadow Priests after he acquires Xal'atath in Tyr's tomb.)
But when you consider how Twilight's Hammer is a textbook example of a Chaotic Evil cult (emphasis on the chaotic,) it stands to reason that killing one leader or three isn't going to mean that the whole thing disappears. And given that the Old Gods have their tendrils deep in the cult's activities, one could even argue that the "leadership" was only middle management.
Moving onto the Allied Races, datamining suggests that the Highmountain Tauren will have to deal with Void corruption, as shadowy whispers attempt to corrupt Ebonhorn, who is one of two surviving (and uncorrupted) Black Dragons on Azeroth (we still don't know the fate of Baron Sablemane/Sabellian, but he's been in Outland all this time as far as we know.)
On top of this, it also appears that Void-aligned Ethereals attack at the Sunwell when Lor'themar invites the Nightborne into the Horde. Alleria is there, and despite helping defeat the ethereals, she is blamed for the event and exiled even from the historically neutral grounds of Quel'danas.
Also, Void Elves. The connection to the Void, and thus the Old Gods, is not hard to imagine.
Moving on to the stuff we see in Kul Tiras and Zandalar, the most obvious is the presence of Uldir and the "Blood God" within. This creature was a failed attempt at turning Old God biology to a good purpose by the Titans, and while that does mean that this Blood God is technically a different thing from the Old Gods, it's still on-theme.
The Sea Priests of Kul Tiras also have a very strong Old God vibe to them. While these guys do provide a service to the kingdom by blessing their ships, everything we've seen of their practices screams Old Gods, from their tentacle-and-eye-motif robes to the cathedral that looks like a giant kraken to the fact that said cathedral will be a dungeon with what is apparently a void-corrupted water elemental as its first boss, I'd be rather shocked if they aren't N'zoth cultists.
And then of course we have Azshara, who will apparently be a raid boss in Battle for Azeroth. While it's possible she only really worships herself, Azshara does have ties to the Old Gods that have existed for ten thousand years - far longer than her brief alliance with the Burning Legion. Even if she's ultimately in it for herself, she's probably going to help her allies if it means more power for her.
So I'm pretty confident about the Old Gods, and likely N'zoth in particular, being major villains if not the major villains of Battle for Azeroth.
But if they aren't?
Well, Azshara could be the final boss of the expansion - she's a big enough lore figure to warrant the spot, and could easily lead into an Old God expansion. If not her and not N'zoth, I don't really know who would make the most sense as a final boss unless they pull a Siege of Orgrimmar situation and make one of our own leaders the boss, though Sylvanas seems too obvious a choice if you ask me, and in the interest of balance, it would make more sense for an Alliance leader to get the raid boss treatment. I don't think Anduin makes sense, which leaves probably Genn or Jaina. I don't want them making Jaina evil, as I think she's far more interesting as a good person who has just been pushed too far to forgive the people who keep betraying her. Genn could pursue revenge to the point of becoming evil, but I think his influence on the Alliance has been interesting, and I want the Alliance to retain characters who aren't so firmly in the altruistic and good category.
I guess there's also the Prophet Zul, though I see him much more as being a mid-tier raid boss rather than the boss of the whole expansion, especially because his connection to Kul Tiras is non-existent as far as I know, and whoever is the final boss really ought to have a presence on both continents.
At this point we're still probably months away from the Beta, which is when I think we'll be getting a far better sense of just where the expansion is headed. Until then, we can only speculate, but damn if that isn't fun in and of itself.
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