The Future I Would Rather See

Here's a good basis for an expansion: Let's kill this guy!

I wrote my last article speculating about the next expansion and a day or two later Anne Stickney did the same thing on WoW Insider, and somewhere in the midst of reading her piece it dawned on me that I had written my article about the likely possibilities and had left out some of the options that I would really really like to see (though I think they are less than likely).

I don't really take back anything that was written in the previous article, however, but let me add these ideas that would likely be even more compelling, in my opinion:

The Horde Civil War
I see two possibilities for how these things could go, either of which would be immensely satisfying.

Scenario 1:  Somebody in the Horde comes to their senses and goes, "Garrosh F$%&ing Hellscream is Warchief? Oh, no! What were we thinking?"  But Garrosh won't go quietly and the forces loyal to him and the forces loyal to Thrall have to throw down. Thrall can even turn to the Alliance for help, since apparently he and Malfurion Stormrage are best buddies now. My favorite variant of this has Orgrimmar being seized by the Garrosh people and becomes a raid instance, in which the last boss is Hellscream himself.  Pure awesome. Horde players can totally get behind Thrall in this scenario, no matter what race they are and an invasion of one of the well-established WoW cities would be exciting beyond belief.  On the other hand, this would be a fairly radical use of game resources. I can imagine some players being upset about loosing the Big Apple of the Orcish eye.


Scenario 2: Syvanas Windrunner is clearly going bat-crazy insane. She's "recruiting" new members of the Forsaken. She's indiscriminately throwing plagues anywhere she chooses. Let's not forget that plague Putress used at the Wrathgate... that was Sylvanas' plague. In fact, she was only ticked off that Putress used it without her say-so.  Clearly, Sylvanas is going to have to go.  I think implementing this story point would be a lot lot harder, however. The Cult of Sylvanas is strong, and lorewise, the Forsaken serve her, not the Horde. They could technically have her go off the reservation in the same sort of way that Kael'thelas Sunstrider did. That allowed even the Blood Elves players to be against him. But still, I can't think of many ways Sylvanas could do the same without alienating all the Forsaken players from the Horde as well.

The Retaking of Lordaeron
Somebody in the Alliance decides that a top priority should be to finish the job of flushing the undead down the toilet, and marches, en force, to clear Lordaeron of its various undead. Calia Menethil, Arthas' sister, remains an MIA to this day but, if living, would have a legitimate claim to the throne being sullied by the Forsaken. What if she appeared in Stormwind asking for help reclaiming her throne? There's no way the Alliance could say no to that. This could be a truly epic-scaled war between Alliance and Horde. But, one side has got to win that battle and one side has got to lose. I'm betting Blizzard would be hard-pressed to give that story point to the players. Although, I would consider it payback for what the orcs have done to Ashenvale.

Queen Azshara and The Naga Threat
Azshara makes a cameo appearance these days in Dark Shore when she pops up to taunt Mal Stormrage. She is one of the very few major terrestrial threats still remaining on Azeroth anymore.
There are vast pieces of the ocean left to be discovered and a major Naga city is supposed to be around there somewhere. A downside of this is it seems to me that Vashj'ir in this expansion was not broadly welcomed and truthfully, I'm not sure what else we might find that would be radically more interesting than what we can currently find while we charge around on our Abyssal Seahorses.

Nerub
I'm not sure where it's documented, but Wrath of the Lich King was supposedly planned to include a large underground zone dominated by the Nerubians. It was cancelled, and the Azjol-Nerub instances are all that really remain of that. Tragedy.  But there should be gobs of spider-men down in the depths of Northrend still who would be interested in stirring up trouble.  I would >love< to see multiple zones based on exploring those underground tunnels, which are sort of  Deepholmish, but denser and also featuring that cool Nerubian architecture in places.

Grim Batol
Frankly, I'm almost disappointed with the lack of things to do in the current Grim Batol instance. Have you ever peered over the edges, and into gated areas and seen dragonkin fighting with each other? Grim Batol is honking huge and we have seen very very little of it. This is probably not expansion material, but I really wish Blizzard would develop more of this place.

In Conclusion
I don't think that Warcraft is "done."  Blizzard has stated on a number of occasions that they'll keep producing content for WoW as long as there are subscribers.  But let's be honest: There's not a lot of iconic villains still breathing or corners of the world that we haven't explored by now.  An expansion with two or three of these slightly smaller thematic fights could be quite enjoyable I think.