I've been writing this blog for... holy shit, seven years. As such, especially given its focus on WoW (though as my interests have drifted, so has the blog) I've got posts on here watching the history of WoW unfold.
In particular, I tend to write a lot of speculative pieces about the future of the game. Even when the gameplay grows dull (which I actually think is usually due to feeling unmotivated by the lore - Legion got me really back into things after Warlords had sapped my enthusiasm.) I still have a ton of fun speculating on the direction the game will go story-wise.
So it's interesting to find posts from right before various expansion announcements.
I started writing this blog in 2012, while Cataclysm was still the current expansion, but Mists of Pandaria had already been announced. So we'll start with the pre-expansion buzz around Warlords:
There are a couple of posts I made after Warlords of Draenor was trademarked by Blizzard. "Let's See How Wrong We Get It!" was my attempt to speculate based on the title and other rumors that were floating around. While in retrospect the notion that Anduin would do something as crazy as break Garrosh out of jail is nuts (that's for Saurfang!) the overall idea of going to a past version of Draenor was pretty spot-on, using Kairoz and such.
I think the big thing that I got wrong there was the importance of the time-travel elements to Warlords. I've made no secret of the fact that I think Warlords would have been a far better and more interesting expansion if they had really leaned into the mechanics of time travel and the weirdness of having alternate-universe doppelgängers pop up, but Blizzard seemed wary of trying such tricky narrative elements and chose, instead, a sort of bland story of a world that may as well have just been a different planet in the same universe.
Moving on:
Blizzard was remarkably good at keeping Legion under wraps. The post before Gamescom 2015 was called "One Day Out and Still No Solid Leads on Expansion Six." The only accurate leak I saw was some translated post on a Chinese forum with details about Demon Hunters, Sylvanas becoming Warchief, and something about Azshara (who wound up playing a very minor role in Legion, though given that right now she's the top raid boss in the game, they apparently just chose to save her for later.)
Hilariously, I think one prevailing theory at the time was that we'd go to the Ogre Continent on Draenor, as if we weren't all sick of that world. Thankfully, Blizzard did nothing like that. Naturally, each expansion we'd speculated on the possibility of a "South Seas" expansion, and I remember feeling convinced enough that that would be what was coming that in the Legion announcement trailer, when Khadgar said something along the lines of "we knew they'd be coming back" right at the start, I still thought that it would be the Naga - and hoped that the pre-announcement cinematic with Gul'dan finding Illidan still meant that Demon Hunters were coming. I was just so convinced that they wouldn't pull the Burning Legion trigger that it was a profound shock when they did.
And having played through Legion, which is now my favorite expansion, I look back on that announcement with glee.
Finally, we come to BFA:
The final prediction post for this one was "For the Record: Expansion Predictions." Now, it's notable that at the time, we had not yet seen the end of the Antorus raid. Indeed, this was more like how things were in WoW's earliest expansions. The announcement trailer for Cataclysm even included a brief shot of Icecrown Citadel because that hadn't come out yet. Mists of Pandaria, I believe, was the first expansion to get through all of its content before we had word on where we were going next. However, datamining had shown that Sargeras was going to stab the planet.
We seemed to accurately predict that this would be the "South Seas" or at least the nautical-themed expansion. What I certainly didn't predict was that there would be two major continents. I figured we'd get a single large archipelago where we'd find Kul Tiras and Zandalar as two of a larger number of zones instead of the mini-continents they wound up being.
Obviously, we still don't know where the final patch of the expansion is taking us, and even though Blizzard did say it would be clear who would be the final boss of the expansion after The Eternal Palace, I still see a lot of people doubting that N'zoth will be the final boss. (Though I'm relatively confident.)
Looking at these predictions, it seems like we get things right some of the time, especially when there's a pretty logical direction for things to go.
So what does that mean for future accuracy?
Well, first off, I think I should point out that these are the last-minute predictions, when there's been ample time for leaks and datamining. While I have no doubt that Expansion Eight is being worked on right now, and that there are probably models, dungeon maps, and stories figured out by this point down in Anaheim, there is probably very little reason for that stuff to have left the building, and while employees getting a kick out of leaking stuff certainly does happen (hell, I imagine some companies do it for marketing,) we've got to take this stuff with a grain of salt. Very convincing-looking title screens and screenshots have been "leaked" only to prove utterly wrong. But also, sometimes they're correct.
But if we ignore the idea of secret information getting out, what about our ability to logic out where the story should be going?
On that front, I think there's something to be said for player speculation.
So I think the analysis of themes and motifs in existing expansions is actually a pretty good way to suss out what is coming next.
For that reason, I think we really, really shouldn't discount the theme of Death in BFA.
Now, in theory, Warlords and Legion were two Demon/Burning Legion expansions in a row. So I don't think we can rule out an Old God expansion even if N'zoth is the final boss of BFA. That being said, I think that we're probably going to rotate a bit around the big chart of the Warcraft cosmos seen in every volume of Chronicle and focus more on Death and Necromancy than Void and Shadow.
Let's make a list of the elements that point toward this in BFA:
The Drust and their Death Magic.
Bwonsamdi, a Loa of Death, ascending to the top of the Zandalari Pantheon.
Sylvanas, who is undead, growing more powerful and more antagonistic even to the Horde.
The Lich King's daughter showing up.
The continuing mystery of Vol'jin's return as a Loa after death.
Helya's apparent resurgence (this is admittedly a deep cut, given that it's a story reward off Island Expeditions.)
The rebirth of Calia as a "Holy Undead."
Even that one quest in Drustvar where you fend off a Death Knight trying to raise a Red Dragon from the dead (which has special dialogue if you're a Death Knight, given that you did exactly that last expansion.)
Just as Legion was filled with references to the Old Gods and, wouldn't you know it, we've got a very Old God-themed expansion, it seems very likely that the Death theme here is pointing us to the kinds of things we're dealing with next.
Now, the whole "Azeroth dies and we have to journey into the Shadowlands to save the World Soul and bring her back" is just my spin on these themes - the ideas that I think would motivate an epic WoW expansion. But regardless of the specifics, it seems very likely that WoW's next expansion will put a Death theme front and center.
As always, I'll be very curious to see how right or wrong I am. We're still a couple months out from Blizzcon, so maybe in November I'll be eating crow and we'll be getting ready for our journey to K'aresh to fight the Void Lords. I'll make a post closer to the actual announcement to add to the series listed above.
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