The next expansion can only be awesome. Agree?

[Granyala]

IF burning Legion THEN yes.

ELSE we'll have to see.

[Theed]

I remember the day burning crusade was released and i stepped through the dark portal. It was amazing. The atmosphere, seeing the burning legion trying to breach the defenses and kill me. I remember seeing Fel reaver for the first time. It was amazing!
I remember going from hellfire pensula to mushroom land. The atmosphere was so great! There were so many great moments like that in BC. I know nostalgia and everything. But i like BC most of all expansions.

Sure MoP had great atmopshere too, quest design, raids, balance and everything is better now. But BC had something special, that no other expansion had that way. WOTLK had some of that feeling too but it was not as good as in BC.


I want to be on another planet, i want a burning legion theme and many things in MoP have hinted the next exp will be that theme.

I am so looking forward to the next blizzcon and (call me a nerd & hope my gf never reads this) this will be my day of the year.

[wariofan1]

Unless they drastically change things around from a gameplay PoV it doesn't really matter.
Just a different skin on the same old stuff.
I doubt any change blizzard makes at this point revives WoW to the 10mil+ numbers.
Even if they release a new xpac+vanilla+tbc+wrath+cata+mop only servers so literally anyone can play what they want the most.

Burning Legion xpac is the most likely; anything south seas related is bound to involve tons of water.
After the cata startzone with the weird name i doubt they will risk such a thing.
But MoP only released past September iirc so we still have a long while to go.
Announcement at blizzcon this summer; release next spring.
Might just be to little to late at that point.

Actually, Blizzcon isn't before November, so there's still a long way to go before we know anything.

[Osmeric]

I'm still thinking it will be an Emerald Dream expansion.

[Glorious Leader]

I'm still somewhat amazed theirs been no leaks though. What's the usual time frame for this sort of thing?

[Deleted]

So I'm calling it - the next expansion will see WoW return to a 11-12 million strong subscription base.

No matter how awesome the next expansion is, this will never happen again (maybe when WoW goes F2P, but we're years before that).

Besides that, every expansion has the potential of being good, but it's how Blizzard handles it that makes it bad or good. For example Cataclysm. It sounded amazing on paper and in the previews, but once you got to it... not so much anymore.

[Demsi]

The story is one thing but dont forget about the gameplay.

[TJ]

We have south seas, ocean and emerald dream. All come with their own, well-made lore.
Not a whole expansion of spacegoats and other abominations of lore.

Lore doesn't mean everything, it's how they implement it in game that counts. A wasteland populated by bloodthirsty demons appeals to pretty much everyone, it's likely to be the next expac since it would get some people to come back. South Seas etc are all still on Azeroth so we don't even leave, it's beyond old and going to a new planet is something completely new since it's so different. Aka more original and appealing.

[Deleted]

I'm still somewhat amazed theirs been no leaks though. What's the usual time frame for this sort of thing?

If I remember correctly, if they want to release it faster and compared to other expansion leaks, we should get something in the next 2-3 months. If we don't, they won't release it faster as they said.

[Glorious Leader]

Lore doesn't mean everything, it's how they implement it in game that counts. A wasteland populated by bloodthirsty demons appeals to pretty much everyone, it's likely to be the next expac since it would get some people to come back. South Seas etc are all still on Azeroth so we don't even leave, it's beyond old and going to a new planet is something completely new since it's so different. Aka more original and appealing.

I'm convinced they will want to get away from fat panda farm as much as they can. Even if it means to another planet. I can't wait personally.

[Immitis]

While I 100% agree I think the next expansion will be awesome.

I 100% disagree that WoW will go back to 12 millions sub.

I am pretty confident there will never ever be an MMO with 12 million subs ever again.

The market place has changed.

MoP has some of the best content in WoW history delivered in a much shorter time span.

Blizzard somehow captured the genie in the bottle with WoW I am not sure what it was luck, good timing or something else but look at all the competition with less than 1 million subs is Rift and SW:ToR really 8 times as bad as WoW, of course they are not.

B2P and F2P games are having an effect on the MMO market and I think its a good thing.

Competition is great, blizzard should have to fight for subscribers, this will only make WoW and other MMOs better.

did we fight sargeras in bc? theres no reason to assume we would fight sargeras, we shouldnt even expect to SEE sargeras anytime soon.

burning legion doesnt = sargeras.

[Mascotte]

did we fight sargeras in bc? theres no reason to assume we would fight sargeras, we shouldnt even expect to SEE sargeras anytime soon.

Based on what reasoning?
WoW is having its 9th birthday this year.
We wont see an xpac released this year so at the very least it'll be spring 2014, roughly 8months from now.
Its more then possible WoW will be below 6mil subs at that point; no xpac thus no infusion of returning players.
Garrosh alone doesn't have the same appeal to cause the same effect so 6mil seems a pretty fair guess.
You could hold of releasing the big bad super villain for eternity but at what point do you release it tho?

After TBC people said; nah its way to early!
This was 6 years ago, wow had roughly 15mil subs.
Then Wrath wrapped up, 4 years ago.
WoW was slowly losing subs but still had a healthy 11-12mil.
Deathwing died, finished around half a year ago.
Subnumbers in the high 9/low10 mil.
6 months of MoP, down to 8mil subs.
If this pattern goes on you'll have 4mil subs before 'its time' for a Sargeras xpac.

[PuppetShowJustice]

I hope this game dies, because this shit which is up now shouldn't be called WoW

This may the most painfully selfish thing I've ever seen posted on MMO-Champion. "Millions of people enjoy this game as a hobby but I want to see it dead because I don't like the direction it has taken!"

Dude, chill. I've quit a bunch of MMOs out of similar displeasure; but I would never wish for other fans or the people who make these products to suffer just because I've moved on. It's not worth being that angry over.

[dokilar]

WotLK has as much to do with WarCraft series as MoP has - the only thing warcraftish in WotLK is Arthas and names (not even looks) of some locations in Northrend.

i dont know that i agree with this. chen stormstout was the only pandaren that was revealed and playable in WC3:TFT

RoC and TFT introduced a bunch of more stuff related to WotLK than it did MoP. kel'thuzad, arthas, anub'arak, exploring azjol'nerub, exploring the coast line of northrend, illidan trying to blow northrend up, the first hint of the old god yogg-saron (in the azjol'nerub missions, he wasnt specifically mentioned but there were old god servants throughout one of the dungeons) i could go on and on.

im not a pandaren hater or think that MoP is dumb or silly, but in my honest opinion there was more stuff happening in WotLK that had been introduced through the RTS game than MoP has introduced

[Immitis]

Disagree big time. Cataclysm had everything I loved about Warcraft: Deathwing in the front seat, Ragnaros and Nefarian returning, Cho'gall and Al'akir, still being on Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Dragons and Elementals are just amazing.

Now see how well that turned out.

If anything, I'm afraid Blizzard might lean themselves back a little too much again. With Mists of Pandaria they had something to prove, all new things that nearly everyone was skeptic about. With a Legion expansion they just have to drop a Pit Lord on you and people go crazy, just like in TBC. Not only that, but 90% of all Demons are just bland "Crush. Kill. Destroy." guys, they're not interesting at all imo. I'm very skeptic as to how it might turn out, but I was incredibly skeptic about MoP too, and that's my favorite expansion, so I'll gladly allow myself to be surprised again.

Also, about subs. WoW has topped in numbers, it's not going back, it's a recognizable pattern not only for video games, but for nearly everything.

i would agree if they had portrayed deathwing the way he was originally, instead we got "rawr ima dragan i gone mess up yous park!"

atleast deathwing going crazy made more sense then kael'thas or illidan. old gods did it is a better excuse than 'never explained'

---------- Post added 2013-05-11 at 07:18 AM ----------

Based on what reasoning?
WoW is having its 9th birthday this year.
We wont see an xpac released this year so at the very least it'll be spring 2014, roughly 8months from now.
Its more then possible WoW will be below 6mil subs at that point; no xpac thus no infusion of returning players.
Garrosh alone doesn't have the same appeal to cause the same effect so 6mil seems a pretty fair guess.
You could hold of releasing the big bad super villain for eternity but at what point do you release it tho?

After TBC people said; nah its way to early!
This was 6 years ago, wow had roughly 15mil subs.
Then Wrath wrapped up, 4 years ago.
WoW was slowly losing subs but still had a healthy 11-12mil.
Deathwing died, finished around half a year ago.
Subnumbers in the high 9/low10 mil.
6 months of MoP, down to 8mil subs.
If this pattern goes on you'll have 4mil subs before 'its time' for a Sargeras xpac.

and then what do you expect them to do? wow isnt going to end anytime soon, and if we kill what is one of the most powerful beings in the universe what do you expect them to follow it up with? right now theres only three possible things that could top sargeras, the titans, space old gods, possibly whatever built the titans.

the legion spans thousands of worlds and planets do you even know what levels of plot armor we would need to go in there and kill their leader in ONE expansion.

we could barely defeat the lich king, it took the expense of all the dragons powers combined to stop deathwing.

sargeras is like a million deathwings. the dragons were given a tiny bit of the titans powers, sargeras was the strongest of all the titans, and hes probably grown in power gobbling up magical doodads and mystical thingamabobs in space.


please tell me how the hell you expect us to stop him? and no the titans WOULD NOT help us, at best we might be able to get the old gods to help us but even then they would just stab us in the back so no go there.

wows writing has never been a masterpiece but that would be like taking the lore in warcraft and breaking it in two.

[dokilar]

i would agree if they had portrayed deathwing the way he was originally, instead we got "rawr ima dragan i gone mess up yous park!"

atleast deathwing going crazy made more sense then kael'thas or illidan. old gods did it is a better excuse than 'never explained'

i quit a few weeks before firelands was released but i have to admit the atmosphere and sense of danger that stemmed from the pre-cata event and the things that were happening right at launch was pretty intriguing. the first time i flew thru hyjal i was like "oh damn, this shit just got real"

unfortunately after hjyal and deepholm i really lost interest in the story that was unfolding. yes uldum was ok the first time thru but it was really kinda different from the things happening in hyjal/deepholm, and i absolutely hated twilight highlands. the story was just boring, especially on alliance side. everything just felt like it was going in different directions and not really related to one another.

i also didnt like how they handled deathwing. i hear a lot of people say they didnt like arthas all up in your face while leveling and throughout the expansion but i enjoyed it a lot. knowing and seeing him through out the expansion, on top of him constantly taunting the players, let me know that he was a bad dude and wasnt one to be messed with. with deathwing we only seen him a few times (unless you got torched in a zone) while leveling and after that it was basically it. i think i read somewhere that their reasoning was that he was licking his wounds after the fight with alexstrasza in twilight highlands but that just seemed cheap to me.

i guess its just a matter of opinion. i think the story, direction and theme of Cata started good and i liked it, but it ultimately became quite dis-interesting

[Gimlix]

I still have fade in WoW gaining subs instead of losing, i don't say going back to 12M, but saying that it slowly regains subs like 100k a conference :P
But then i think we talk about Burning legion Expansion though and then Kil'Jaeden and Sargeras.

[Mascotte]

i would agree if they had portrayed deathwing the way he was originally, instead we got "rawr ima dragan i gone mess up yous park!"

atleast deathwing going crazy made more sense then kael'thas or illidan. old gods did it is a better excuse than 'never explained'

---------- Post added 2013-05-11 at 07:18 AM ----------




the legion spans thousands of worlds and planets do you even know what levels of plot armor we would need to go in there and kill their leader in ONE expansion.

I never said kill.
You're right, its a massive story and a giant move.
Could just be an expansion that revolves around gaining favor with the old gods etc, killing whatever thats bothering them so they in turn will help dealing with Sargeras.
There are plenty of options to consider that could make for a great expansion.
The whole 'leading up to 1 giant badguy and then killing him in the final patch' xpac idea got kinda boring so maybe a double expansion is the way forward.
But, if you dont start with the massive story that is Sargeras now then when do you?
You yourself said its to much to fit within 1 expansion but if you dont start it someday it'll never get told right?
Doesn't even have to be 2 back to back expansions, you can create one in between while your newly obtained allies are preparing for war or something.
Its a great storyline, would just be a shame no-one is left to experience when they finally decide its time.

[Deleted]

It's going to be hard to get people enthousiastic about the next expansion... unless they manage to bring something very new to the table.

People aren't going to swallow the following things anymore:
- Days of quest-grinding again to get to max level
- End-game consisting out of only PvP (BGs / Arenas) or Raiddungeons

People are growing very bored with that limited scope of endgame progression...

There is only so much they can do though.
From a business point of view it's still not bad practice to continue a working formula as old players might de-sub, but new players will sub, it will always draw a crowd no matter what, they'll always have a steady amount of subs, even if it'll probably never rise to its peak again.
The game has been designed from the get go (from a technical/engine point of view) to do what it does now, they cannot suddenly go towards a guildwars or rift approach because the engine was never designed for that, hopefully titan will bring some much needed change to the actual gameplay.

The only thing they can really do is try to entertain people as much as possible with the story and hope that will suffice, and base their quests, scenarios, dungeons, raids and pvp on that, i very much doubt the core gameplay of the game will change much, if any, with any new future expansion.
This is why older players basicly stop playing, no matter what they do, the core of the game will never change, the only thing that keeps people going is the change in scenery, story, and the refusal of wanting to give up online contacts with friends & whatnot you met during those times.
Which isn't neccesarely a bad thing really, they have a good thing going, people just shouldn't hope too much that wow will suddenly take an extreme 180 turn when it comes to the core of the game.

I think people should look at it from a different point of view, the amount of hours of entertainment and social engagement they are getting from this game is beyond anything thats released out there, playing wow for so many years makes it harder on people to enjoy any regular game or a singleplayer experience because even if its a fresh change, it's only for a short while before they realise it's not giving them as much as wow did/does, hell it took a while for me to be able to justify the price and appreciate new games again after i quit playing wow back in cata. Hell even now i still check mmo-champion & it's forums daily because i appreciate the attitude (most, anyway) of the players and love to read the changes & opinions of it's players.

[Zoma]

Way too early to tell, but I do have high hopes. I like what Blizz did with MoP.