[Discuss] - World of Warcraft: War of the Ancients
Imagine World of Warcraft with a completely overhauled graphics engine modernized in our 2013+ world. Imagine yourself as your current Orc character whom walks into the Orgrimmar throne room but only now the Warchief is Orgrim Doomhammer.
The overall plot is the War of the Ancients and each major patch is the First, Second, and Third Wars respectively.
What mysteries lay previously in Wetlands or Arathi Highlands when you had previously died to that velociraptor mob? Is it now a farseer who suggests your offspring's blood will be spilled here? Maybe he's provided you with a vision of the complete and utter destruction of Ironforge via Doomlord Kazzak. The crowning of King Terenas Menethil?
Take part in quests under the command of Lord Uther the Lightbringer and Anduin Lothar.
During the second war patch take part as the horde and siege Kul Tiras and kill Grand Admiral Daelin Proudmoore.
Only your lineage could wield such artifacts as Orgrim's Doomhammer or cast spells such as Might of Muradin
Only your lineage could discover such artifacts through Archaeology.
Phased History - be revered with a heroic statue to stand tall and and proud as your character sees your noble father or mother having fallen and sacrificed themselves for a greater cause, for when you spawn a level 1 character in World of Warcraft - your told only one thing: that your born of a race but leaving the greater question unanswered:
who walks into orgrimmar, not whom walks ...
[/grammarnazism]
i could see an expansion based on the war of the ancients, a complete time-travel expansion! but there is not reason to re-do the first/second/third war. That would be superfluous as those games already exist and the lore is old.
if you really want to play those story lines again, play the original Warcraft RTS games
War of the Ancients on the other hand, is a pretty fertile and only partially tapped source of lore.
Also the first/second/third wars have pretty much no connection historically to the War of the Ancients
If we had a time travel expansion I feel it would be a waste visit to something we already know a lot about. Also a huge time skip from 10,000 years ago to a couple of decades ago and then jumping a couple years more each patch would feel a little awkward and disjointed.
I'm not sure everyone would enjoy finding out their character was the son or daughter of a great hero either, especially not the RPing crowd.
Time travel could still be an interesting premise for an expansion though. A chaotic and primordial Azeroth with the Old Gods not yet imprisoned by the Titans could be a pretty whacky time to get ported back to, and would give them a good chance to flesh out the deal with that muddled little bit of lore. I'm not sure that could carry an expansion, but it could make for a pretty cool set of dungeons and a raid at least.
I was thinking more like how EQ 2 was set 500 years after the first. You could have a presundered Azeroth for example. I think it'd be interesting what kind of lore the Blizzard team could come up with back in that time. It could be Trolls versus Elves as opposed to Orcs versus Humans.
If there was ever to be a new/alternate warcraft timeline, I wouldn't want it to be an MMO, rather a singleplayer RPG with some brutal combat and a brilliant story.