Theories concerning the end of WoW (Legion Spoilers)

[Talvindius]

We all know the end of WoW is coming, and will end with something akin to fighting Sargeras in the Twisting Nether and destroying the Burning Legion once and for all, but the circumstances leading up to that are still pretty mysterious.

Some breakthroughs in Lore have occurred lately especially finding out that Illidan is the Naaru's chosen warrior of Light and Shadow etc. With this in mind I have created a few theories as to how the rest of Azeroth will come together to support Illidan as he leads us to the end.

While it's clear Illidan is the "chosen one" it would be very anti-wow spirited to have him win the day by himself, and there will likely be many supporting characters joining Green Moses in the journey to the Nether, one of which we can all assume is Anduin. Now at the moment he's not a particularly impressive fighter, but he is a priest which leads me to one theory that seems pretty obvious for me.

Theory 1: Anduin will become a Paladin and wield his Father's sword, with which he will unite both Alliance and Horde.

So the transition from Priest to Paladin seems pretty cut and dry, especially considering Anduin's father. There have been instances in comics where Anduin and Varyian have been training together with swords so he may already primed to take a frontline role in the Legion conflict.

It's also possible that Anduin receives some sort of blessing from Wrathion, the Black Prince, as he saw enough potential in Anduin to accompany him in MoP and can most likely see that he is capable of bringing Azeroth together, something his father would likely not have as Varyian had a distaste for Orcs for a long time.

He was also trained by Prophet Velen, which may indicate that Velen knew Anduin was destined for greatness and may have even been tasked by the Naaru to train him. It is possible that a very "Qui-gon X Anakin" situation occurred that set that in motion.


Theory 2: The Sons of Lothar will return in full.

This theory is a bit shaky as the fate of Turalyon and Alleria is undetermined, even the Marksman hunter quest to retrieve Alleria's bow hints that she is missing in the Nether, and we know that the 2 are connected heavily. There was also a rumor that Turalyon may have died fighting the Legion and sent a letter to Arathor, his son in Outland, detailing his fate.

However if there's 1 thing we know from fighting the Lich King it's that the power of the Light is pretty immense, especially in desperate times. It wouldn't surprise me if both Turalyon and Alleria lived through their Demon hunting adventures and return via help from the OG son of Lothar, Khadgar, especially considering Khadgar's current powerlevel. All that would remain is for Kurdran Wildhammer and Danath Trollbane to return to the fray and the legion hunting supergroup would be back to full strength.


And lastly the true tinfoil hat theory. Theory 3: Thrall will return to glory and summon the Elemental Lords themselves to fight the Legion.

Thrall is currently in a depressed state, as not even Doomhammer will respond to his call. He's going to probably spend most of Legion taking a backseat and brood while we with our Artifacts fight back the Legion invasion. This will give him time to cope with his mistakes and most likely through the help of Aggra and his son Durak overcome his depressed state. We already know Thrall has the potential to power up to the level of the Dragon Aspects, its time for him to go 1 step further and play with the actual Elemental lords, which would be nice since after the "deaths" of Al'akir and Ragnaros we don't actually know if there are new Lords of Fire and Wind.

This theory is just what I would LIKE to happen, I would love Green Jesus and Green Moses to tag-team Sargeras in some epic final battle, but we'll remain in the dark for a while.


I know it's a long read but thank you anyways.

[Deleted]

Thrall theory


In the Shaman Order Hall campaign you setup new Elemental Lords.

[RoutinelyWorgen]

Yeaaaaah.

As we have yet to beat the old-gods, void lords and explore the 'south seas', there will be at least 3 more expansions before WoW will have to rest and procure new ideas in the meantime. Though they could decide to make a WoW2 that begins with the exploration of the 'south seas', so the expansions could be lowered to two.
So it's fairly possible that we'll see the ultimate ending in 2-4 years or so, as for your theories however.

1. Anduin just randomly switching from priest to paladin (with a petty amount of "training") is a little out there but still an interesting idea overall.

2. The sons of Lothar have become pretty rusty since the height of their relevance and their popularity is no exception, giving them the job of "saving the world" might leave the community feeling like 'Meh'. I don't think that's what Blizzard is after.

3. Sure you can like Thrall but it's become almost mandatory for players to spite him because of this "Green Jesus" status so it might only leave a bitter taste in people's mouth to give him the spotlight yet again, which won't result in positive feedback.

- - - Updated - - -

Thrall theory


In the Shaman Order Hall campaign you setup new Elemental Lords.

Interesting, though it's good to fill up the lore-gap the previous ones left.

[Talvindius]

Thrall theory


In the Shaman Order Hall campaign you setup new Elemental Lords.

Neat. Didn't know that.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeaaaaah.

2. The sons of Lothar have become pretty rusty since the height of their relevance and their popularity is no exception, giving them the job of "saving the world" might leave the community feeling like 'Meh'. I don't think that's what Blizzard is after.

Only Danath is likely rusty, Kurdran was active during Cata and if Turalyon and Alleria aren't dead they're probably still fighting demons.

Although if Alleria lost her bow there's a chance shes not in fighting shape.

[klaps_05]

i think what would be best is when wow ends to just open legacy servers, make kungen dev lead and go buy that mark whoevers facebook app game, what an ending that would be!

[Darkarath]

WoW isn't ending. It amaze me that a lot of people still thinks that it will over in a few years.

To begin with, WoW has potential to, if Blizzard wants, unlimited expansions, and I quote Metzen in Warcraft Chronicle: ''in the face of all this...history...I'm fairly certain that the adventure is only just beginning!''.

WoW gives Blizzard an enormous amount of money, and even if it isn't as popular as it was, its still HUGE, and obviously they won't let it die as long as profit can be made.

I don't see a WoW II, it will be a mistake. I might see a Warcraft 4, Warcraft 5 and Warcraft 6, and then maybe a WoW II. In, who knows, 30 years? But if people still plays Diablo II, WoW its going to be played for 15 years more EASILY.

About your theories, no, I don´t think that Anduin will ever become a warrior / Paladin, he's very bad with weapons, the short stories are canon and they show that. He's going to be very important obviously. In which way, I don´t know. Thrall will be coming back for sure and I hope that he dies, they just need to move on, and I don´t dislike him, but he has done too much already. Legion it's the perfect time to him to depart. Sons of Lothar? I would like that, I love Khadgar and everything related to him, so I would like to explore that possibility.

[Seifross]

WoW isn't ending, there's absolutely no reason to think it is. Even if it dropped all the way down to 1 million subscribers (and it hasn't) the game would still be very much profitable. There's no end in sight, not even in the next 2-4 years. It's making a ludicrous amount of money, and nobody in their right mind would shut it down. Before anybody says "they might care more about the story than about money", I'd say that they care a lot more about keeping hundreds of people employed than about the WoW story, sure. If you don't, that's an issue.

The only way I could see WoW ending any time soon is with the release of a WoW 2, which served as half sequel and half expansion, or did something like GW2 where you could (sort of) carry progress over from your WoW character. People seem to constantly underestimated the success of this game, because 1-5 million players is an enormous player base, especially with subscriptions. It's nowhere near WoW's height, but that hardly matters when it's making so much money.

More on topic, I don't see Anduin becoming a paladin, but it's definitely possible. I'd prefer that Velen just head off in the Exodar and Anduin become our new priest hero. Others have covered the Thrall theory, but I agree that Turalyon and co. are basically just too old to be brought back as the big heroes. A large number of players won't even know who they are (I'm a long-time Warcraft fan and have been playing WoW since vanilla, and I've long since stopped caring about Turalyon and Friends). I'm sure some people would love it, of course, but they'd have to spend a lot of time reintroducing these characters and I'm not sure it'd be worth doing. Definitely a possibility, though.

[Al Gorefiend]

WoW isn't ending. It amaze me that a lot of people still thinks that it will over in a few years.

To begin with, WoW has potential to, if Blizzard wants, unlimited expansions, and I quote Metzen in Warcraft Chronicle: ''in the face of all this...history...I'm fairly certain that the adventure is only just beginning!''.

WoW gives Blizzard an enormous amount of money, and even if it isn't as popular as it was, its still HUGE, and obviously they won't let it die as long as profit can be made.

I don't see a WoW II, it will be a mistake. I might see a Warcraft 4, Warcraft 5 and Warcraft 6, and then maybe a WoW II. In, who knows, 30 years? But if people still plays Diablo II, WoW its going to be played for 15 years more EASILY.

About your theories, no, I don´t think that Anduin will ever become a warrior / Paladin, he's very bad with weapons, the short stories are canon and they show that. He's going to be very important obviously. In which way, I don´t know. Thrall will be coming back for sure and I hope that he dies, they just need to move on, and I don´t dislike him, but he has done too much already. Legion it's the perfect time to him to depart. Sons of Lothar? I would like that, I love Khadgar and everything related to him, so I would like to explore that possibility.

The great thing about Blizzard is that they're insanely good about optimizing old engines on new hardware. The bulk of WoW's coding was designed back in 2001 and finished in 2004, tweaked and changed in the last decade but everything from our inventory to terrain collision and the "laws" of Azeroth (like the fall distance X damage equation) is pretty much coded in spaghetti design from the day's most of the new employees at Blizzard were still in middle school.

EverQuest can be used as another example, still going strong having released in 1998, and EQ2 going strong as well releasing in 2004, 10+ expansion packs!

The story of Warcraft unfortunately is going to outlive us all :c we may never see a satisfied ending.

[Deleted]

Yeah... No such thing as ending any time soon, to be honest. Free-to-Play MMOs still turn a profit enough for them to keep on a fraction of WoW's CURRENT subscription.

Potential ideas to shove into expansions:

Azshara
Old Gods
Pirates
South Seas
Argus
The Void
The Outer Space
Sanctuary (Diablo's World)
Earth
Starcraft'

If you think the last three are farfetched then let me tell you something brother: Blizzard is so good at pulling things out of their ass that people WILL STILL INVEST IN THEIR WARCRAFT FRANCHISE.

[Raetary]

If you think the last three are farfetched then let me tell you something brother: Blizzard is so good at pulling things out of their ass that people WILL STILL INVEST IN THEIR WARCRAFT FRANCHISE.

would be interesting to see a diablo, wow mixup.
earth and wow?
sure, why not?
but sc and wow? errrr.......

[Deleted]

would be interesting to see a diablo, wow mixup.
earth and wow?
sure, why not?
but sc and wow? errrr.......

If I want to be more serious, I proposed this once in another topic:

Imagine us fighting in a raid during the battle against the Void armies, and some sect of shadow priests, or warlocks, or whatever, are a boss in a raid. You fight this council, who is in a middle of summoning some "unknown entity", and BAM! Diablo comes out of the portals and slaughter them all; they knew not what they were dabbling with! So now the boss fight turns into us pushing Diablo back into his portal before he wreck us all, ergo his own world of Sanctuary.

As for Starcraft, I think it could work (and mind you with a lot of stretch to my imagination) considering the idea behind the Void is very similar to the Starcraft lore as far as i am concerned. Plus, Earth is actually a planet in the Starcraft universe.

[My User Name]

We still have to face the void lords, the creatures that even Sargeras feared and the main reason for him to start his Burning Crusade. Void Lords corrupt our world day by day, and will awaken Azeroth as a Shadow Titan if the progress goes on. We clearly have to clean the frontlines which is Azshara and her Naga army. Then N'zoth and the other old gods corrupting the world. And finally their masters the Void Lords.

So clearly Sargeras is not the end game now.