Après G'huun, le quoi?

Yes, that's a very silly paraphrasing of a line attributed to Louis the XVI, "Après moi, le deluge," meaning "After me, he flood," as in "I really don't care if the whole world is destroyed after I die. It won't affect me."

Anyway, history lesson aside:

With this week's release of Uldir, and the opening of (at least the first part of) Warfronts, not to mention the first PvP season of the expansion, BFA is well and truly in full gear. Next week will see Mythic Uldir and the first raid finder wing.

That's all well and good, but as we WoW players are fond of asking: What comes next?

Blizzard has gotten cagier and cagier about the trajectories of their expansions over the years. There's a practical side of that, of course - a lot of people were really ticked off that instead of the mentioned Utgarde Keep and Gun'drak raids and a full Azjol-Nerub zone, we instead got a revamped Naxxramas as Wrath's first full raid tier (minus two single-boss raids.) When things are still in the early planning phases, it's a good idea to keep them secret so that if you have to dump something for quality or resource reasons, you can do so without a player outburst (and WoW players are known for such things.)

But BFA is sort of exceptional. Before Mists of Pandaria came out, we knew that we'd be fighting Garrosh at the end of it. When Warlords was out, we knew we'd be getting Tanaan Jungle opened up (we also were supposed to get Farahlon, grumble grumble.) And in Legion, while we only found out we were going to Argus at the Blizzcon after its initial release, we had the Tomb of Sargeras waiting there as a clear eventual objective, not to mention a buildup to the Nighthold that was also evident.

In BFA, the only, single thing we know about the rest of the expansion after the current point we're at in its life cycle is that we will be fighting Azshara.

But Azshara will only be to BFA what Gul'dan was in Legion - the boss of the first major raid (though that distinction perhaps means less without tier sets. Can we get tier sets back after we're done with Azerite? I know there are a ton of Paladin sets, but there's only three Demon Hunter ones.)

And even if we know that a fight with Azshara is coming, we still have no word on where we'll fight her.

There's nothing like Suramar to build up a big raid with a long, ongoing story. The whole Dusk Lilly rebellion was a massive quest line that really established a great deal about the Nightborne and the struggle with Elisande's collaboration. But we don't know where we'll face Azshara. Will it be in Kul Tiras? She does seem to have a slightly greater presence there than in Zandalar, and it would be odd for the expansion to end without a raid on that continent. But at the same time, I do wonder how we could fight Azshara anywhere other than Naz'jatar - a place that certainly has not appeared in-game.

Blizzard has been much more hesitant to announce final bosses in recent years. The first three expansions made it very clear who the big bad was (even though Illidan came too soon in the cycle, hence Sunwell Plateau. Also, I'll reiterate: Halion doesn't count. The Lich King was the final boss of Wrath of the Lich King. Halion was the prologue boss to Cataclysm.) Garrosh came as a bit of a surprise - announced a little after the announcement of Mists of Pandaria as a whole, but still well ahead of the 5.4 patch.

But starting with Warlords, things have been more ambiguous. I suspect Grommash had been intended as its final boss, but when they realized that would be two orcs named G. Hellscream in a row (a joke I made back then,) they thought better of it, even if Archimonde kind of came out of nowhere, as did Argus, for that matter.

Now, there are of course plenty of hints in BFA that suggest that we're heading for a confrontation with N'zoth. It would be the most logical conclusion, though I think there could be some hiccups.

For one, while I would be happy to have the faction war play out and resolve itself (maybe permanently, allowing players to run dungeons and such cross-faction? Can a man dream?) I think we might come around to it again.

Here's a proposed arc for the expansion that gives the faction war the spotlight:

We raid Uldir and then, let's say, Naz'jatar. But in Naz'jatar, we learn that N'zoth has nearly broken through to the World Soul and is on the verge of finishing his ancient task and corrupting Azeroth to create his Void Titan.

So we head to Ny'alotha and fight N'zoth, killing him.

In the absence of this greater threat, and the factions decide that there's only one threat left to eliminate: each other. We end with a raid that has us fighting the opposite faction perhaps not killing the other faction's leader but still defeating them, only for the result to be some catastrophe.

Maybe Azeroth dies.

And then we are set up for the next expansion, where we try to fix the problem we created. If I'm lucky, the factions see the error of their ways (or rather, the Horde sees the errors of their ways and the Alliance somehow, some way, finds a way to trust them not to massacre them yet again) and we get a real, long lasting peace (between the factions - by all means keep the zombies and tentacle monsters and demons and evil dragons coming. I've got to have something to kill for loot after all.)

Alternatively, with largely the same building blocks:

We fight Azshara in Naz'jatar.

Then we fight each other in mechanically identical but separate raids, perhaps again defeating but not killing the other faction's leader, or perhaps instead killing a major secondary leader, like Nathanos and Genn (or for more parity, Halford Wyrmbane - though I imagine a lot of Horde players would find killing a guy they regularly defeat in the Isle of Conquest a bit underwhelming.)

But we realize in the end that our fighting has helped N'zoth get free, and in true WoW fashion, we set aside our differences in order to fight the greater threat.

This gives us three raid "tiers," and a full expansion's worth of content.

Blizzcon comes in early November. Is two months of Uldir too long for an announcement?

In Mists and Legion (let's skip over Warlords, shall we?) we generally got information about the next patch (and often a PTR) within a week or two of the release of any major content. Technically this week wasn't a patch, but I could definitely imagine that they're going to want to get started on testing whatever comes next pretty soon (I'm assuming they never want to have an expansion as anemic as Warlords again, so a more Mists/Legion content release schedule is preferable.)

So I imagine that we'll get some sort of PTR relatively soon, likely releasing some new outdoor content like a Nazjatar zone or some big changes to the existing zones to facilitate such content. The actual Azshara raid might be teased, but I think we probably won't get a grand preview until Blizzcon, and during that we might also get some peaks at what comes after Azshara.