So, with less than two weeks to go until Blizzcon, the rumor mill is working at high capacity. That being said, a lot of rumors are clearly made up by people with no actual inside information. I can tell you a bunch of theories I have about where the expansion will go from here, but I claim no direct "leak" from Blizzard. Indeed, on the forums of MMO-Champion, the term "Leak" has mutated, no longer meaning an actual bit of information smuggled out from Blizzard, but instead just descriptions of possible future expansions.
However, there's something kind of interesting going on regarding these non-leaks. I've seen a number of rumors that the next expansion will involve a revamp like Cataclysm to older zones - though whether those are Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor or potentially Outland and Northrend remains to be seen.
One of the major reasons Classic exists is that people wanted to be able to access WoW as it existed prior to Burning Crusade, but especially prior to Cataclysm, when certain zones and quests were changed forever. If you started playing after 2010, you might not realize, for example, that Thousand Needles used to be a dry, desert zone without a drop of water in it. And the Western Plaguelands used to be filled with a haze of choking plague and basically felt like a dangerous nightmare the moment you stepped inside (it was also funny to have a zone designed for level 50+ right next to the Undead starting zone - the Western Plaguelands' "welcome bears" would one-shot any newbie who accidentally wandered past the Bulwark - this was also before there was any indication on the map to say what levels a zone was for, so there wasn't any strict indication that you shouldn't go there other than the big physical barricade the Forsaken had built on that road.)
However, Blizzard has taken to using things like Bronze Dragonflight NPCs to allows players to visit old versions of zones. Cenarion Hold in Silithus, along with nearly everything in that zone, was canonically obliterated by Sargeras when he plunged that massive sword down there. But if you want to see the old version of the zone and do those quests (for some reason - maybe you still want to get your Guardian of Cenarius title) you can just talk to an NPC to do so. Not so with, say, the original Hillsbrad Foothills (the only way you can go to a non-ruined Southshore is to visit the one in the Caverns of Time dungeon.)
So maybe a true revamp would not be as big of a loss now that they have that technology and game mechanic.
What is interesting about these rumors is that they also suggest a more radical way to do a level squish.
Essentially, the idea is that future characters would be able to skip all the other expansions' content and just go 1-60 through the "old world" and then move directly on to the latest expansion. The old content would, of course, still exist, but it would primarily be there so you could get cosmetic items, reputation with old factions, and the like.
I will say that this rumor does solve a couple problems. For one thing, the "Cataclysm problem" of going to Outland or Northrend or both after going through an Old World that is, for example, post-Arthas, is a little narratively jarring.
It would also, I think, make leveling up new characters feel far less daunting. Getting from 1 (or 20) to 58 is not that arduous right now, but having to go through the Outland/Northrend "chapter" followed by the Cataclysm/Pandaria chapter, then Draenor, then the Broken Isles, and then Kul Tiras/Zandalar is a bit of a tall ladder to climb.
Rather than just nerf XP to the point where you're only doing half of Val'sharah before you're ready to leave the Broken Isles, it might be more sensible to just let people get past it - but keeping it around if you never got to experience that story, or just want to run through it again.
That being said, Cataclysm's world revamp wound up being way bigger than Blizzard expected it to be. While I think that in a lot of ways it made leveling more fun in those lower levels (though all the people who seem to be loving Classic might beg to differ) it did also freeze a lot of the world in that Cataclysm moment - something which was less jarring when thing were frozen in that... World of Warcraft moment. Another revamp would potentially make all the other expansions' content feel narratively disjointed as well - though on the other hand, if it's all skippable, maybe that's not a problem.
Now the huge caveat to all of this is that I really don't know if this rumor is at all based on facts or just speculation. Here I am, spreading it further, and so many fake leaks might just be taking up the idea and tweaking it enough to seem to be some other rumor.
Here is one other thing that could be an argument in its favor though: if we are going to see a fundamental change to the way that factions work in WoW, the Old World is probably the most faction-defined area in the world. If faction restrictions are going to be significantly loosened in 9.0, it might make sense to remake the world once again as one in which the Alliance and Horde are no longer operating in opposition to one another. Would it go so far as to allow your Orc Hunter to freely walk the streets of Stormwind? I don't know. But if that were to happen, you'd need some major revamp to the world in order to allow that to work.
I personally have a lot of planned activities during the remaining days of October, from one of my best friends' birthday party to some D&D nights, so the next week and a half actually feels like a significant stretch of time. But I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes next for WoW.
I heard (not personally, just on their respective outlets - I don't know these people personally) from Matt Rossi at Blizzard Watch and Taliesin from... Taliesin and Evitel that this Blizzcon is supposed to be a huge one. And while I'm sure it will in part be huge because of the whole Hearthstone Hong Kong clusterfuck, I'm really hoping we get not just a WoW expansion announcement (which is almost certainly guaranteed) but the announcement of a really exciting and good expansion.
(Oh, and I might write a post about this, but apparently there's been a leak - like, a real one, as in a magazine published something it maybe wasn't supposed to) - about Diablo IV, so fingers crossed this time?)
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