Well, I've been reading a lot of threads about Arthas being the "end of WoW", but truthfully, I think it's just the beginning.

If Blizzard wanted to, they could've made another WC3-styled game to finish the Arthas storyline, but they didn't. By making WoW, they allowed us to get on the ground-level and feel what it's like to fight in the trenches face-to-face, rather than have a birds-eye view to events as they unfold.

Switching the narrative to 1st person, rather than 3rd-person-omniscient also allowed us to dive into a level of immersion that was never truly possible with the WarCraft series.

Back to my point, though: because, as gamers, we were already looking forward to the eventual demise/redemption of Arthas, there was always an element of predictability to WoW. We knew where the road had to eventually go, and we wanted that final resolution of the original conflict we'd come to know from WC3.

Now that that's over, I'd say we're presented with a world of uncertainty, where we can no longer predict the "ley-lines" of narrative. I'm sure some would argue an inevitable clash with Sargeras, but those events are too far away to predict, and the road to them hasn't even been crafted yet. That makes me excited! To feel that, for the first time, we're genuinely in a world we do not know. Sure, there's history and a list of events that got us to this point, but the road ahead is truly uncertain. I think that's what allows this game to feel new: being allowed to experience events without the knowledge of how they will eventually play out. The absence of metagaming (at least lore-wise) give us gamers a chance to forge new paths, friendships, and rediscover where our heart truly lies within Azeroth.

Cheers to the future! ^_^

-SS