Everyone agrees on the fact that next expansion will take place into the South Seas, we saw tons and tons of fake leaks about it... Yet all of these "spoilers" seem to forget a small detail: Legion ends with the destruction of Silithus, a place that has absolutely no connection to the ocean whatsoever. So we can't just go sailing without any reason, we need to have something that would justify going there; just screaming "Old gods" or "Azshara" isn't enough to make a logical storyline.
So let's take a better look at the situation. The world is pierced by an enormous corrupting sword, what do you do? If you're an ordinary human being you'll probably try to find a way to heal the wound and not live the pirate's way of life. To fix something so massive, you'll need something as enormous, something like Titanic infrastructures. Where do you find the closest structure around? I'm sure you guessed it, at Un'Goro crater.
Since we have Diamond Magni on our side it shouldn't be too difficult to get into secret rooms of the jungle... As we saw in Ulduar these kind of places always have their own reset button, sounds convenient, isn't it? Obviously something will go wrong, things must always go wrong at the begining of an expansion.
Before we continue, let's take a look at the evidences we have :
- The most recent discovery is about Tottle the Tortollan mini-pet, a Hearthstone race specifically associated with Un'Goro. If something was to happen in the jungle, they would be aware of it more than anyone else.
(Being servants of Tortolla it wouldn't be so much of a surprise to see them around the lost isles as well. These island are ruled by giant turtles after all.)- Flotsam, one of the many Legion Worldbosses, only loots sea treasures he amassed in the debris of shipwrecks. Most of his loot are what would you expect, except one, a ""Liberated" Un'goro Relic". From this single item we can actually conclude the place got pillaged, with some of the plunder ending up in the ends of pirates.
(This wouldn't be the first spoil from a Worldboss drops; as Kazzak used to loot the Spellcloak of Suramar back in WoD)- Next Hearthstone expansion will be about Pirates as well, with a lore getting more and more cannon. So we might as well have to explore Un'Goro and go to Gadgetzan on our own.
That's not a lot of clues, but that's enough to theorize that the Titanic machines won't work as intended, too many important pieces would be missing, you even might have to sacrifice your own artifact weapons for it to do something. The quests would force the players to back-track were these numerous powerful items went to save Azeroth from corruption. Then comes a use for the tortollans, once be-friended they could offer you new primitive weapons and tell you what they saw.
These titanic artifacts probably hold gigantic powers that many people would desire as their own. There is a high demand for powerful items, and goblins would certainly not miss a chance to get some easy money. That's how a bigger traffic starts.
If we consider that Gadgetzan became the huge harbour we can see in Hearthstone, then it would make sense for this place to have been able to sell hundreds of relics around the entire globe, with some of these items ending up in the hands of pirates or Nagas. Sand trolls might as well capture some of these relics in order to restore their ancient kingdom with the help of the Zandalaris.
That's how you would explain that all of these people suddenly became a threat to the world.
So, do you think these are enough evidences that we will see a revamp for these zones?
Is Hearthstone becoming the new canon? Are we're actually going to see these concepts ingame?