Here's my Real Prediction: Azshara

Azshara, twisted queen of the Naga: Our next big challenge

Haha. I'm almost sorry to keep coming back to this issue, but I keep giving it more and more thought.

I think I'm ready to put down my bet: The major antagonist of the next expansion is going to be Azshara. I'm not sure that makes the whole thing and "undersea" expansion per se. There are plenty of creative ways to introduce different settings to a story. But that's what it will be: Time to finish the Naga threat.

The thought that occurred to me about an Azshara-based expansion: Blizzard originally planned two raids for tier 12 raiding, the Firelands and an Abyssal Maw raid. The undersea raid was tabled, since the devs were allegedly more "excited" about the Firelands. 

Abyssal Maw had been announced and it's cut from patch 4.2 was one of the things that has been a major, major letdown. But, reading between the lines, if Blizzard were actively contemplating a significant undersea expansion, it would make a lot of sense to save the ocean raid material when they know it will thematically fit into the story they have coming up. 

/Snap

Mer is riding the shark, not jumping it! Riding it!

Seahorse!

Actually, I'll write more posts as soon as
I stop having fun riding my new sea horsey
all over Vashj'ir.

I couldn't take it anymore and sent Merinna into new territory and have brought her to level 82. There has been so much forum discussion about how much the healing mechanics are changing that I had to go see for myself. So, expect some up-coming posts about the new content after all.

My first impressions of the undersea realm of Vashj'ir: The zone is pretty honking huge. And it is layered and very vertical. This makes it a little tricky to find things since what you are looking for might be on the sea bottom, or it might be sitting on one of the four ledges that jut out over your head. So a little patience is required.  You do get some help in navigating, however: Merinna's sea horse there is a full blown new mount (that only works in Vashj'ir) but you can jump on him and move about at epic-flying like speeds. And you get that sea horse in the first 10 quests or so.

You also have the fairly well documented "Sea Legs" spell which allows you to skip across the sea floor at a semi-normal speed.

The first few areas that you go through don't look terribly exciting really. There is sea bottom, and a fair number of shipwrecks. But as you go deeper into the realm, much more incredible things rise up out of the murk to surprise you. So, the whole place is well worth exploring!