Battle for Azeroth then what, out of ideas

[Krixooks]

There are professional writers at blizzard, surely they can keep expanding their universe.

Yes they can keep expanding their universe, but you can't expand it 5 minutes before you consume it.
Blizzard need to be developing long-term heroes and villains, especially villains right now, to make the world compelling and unpredicatable.

Look at Yrel, she pops up out of nowhere at the start of WoD, and then disappears at the end of the xpac.
It was the same with the Orc clan leaders, Blizzard had to work really hard to build them up as villains as quickly as possible before we promptly knocked them off.

Can you imagine every xpac being like WoD?
The fact that we care so much about characters like Arthas, Jaina, Anduin, Illidan etc are because we've been reading their story and fighting side-by-side with them for years now. They're complex individuals.

[Vespene]

I'm down for a 100 years in the future expansion. Remake the whole world with a more down-to-earth tone.

Player characters can either:
1. Choose to go on stasis a-la Link in BOTW.
2. "Convert" their character to be the descendant of the current one.
3. Long lived races like dwarves and elves can stay as they are.

So how do the civilized lands look 100 years in the future? In ruins?
What things have arisen in the shadows after the century of relative peace?
How are classic characters who are still alive doing?

There are so many ruins all over Azeroth, it would be cool to visit the future ruins of Stormwind and Ogrimmar. Maybe all the dwarves have relocated to BRD. Maybe there's a new world tree. Old content can be revisited through CoT, but things would mostly be a fresh start.

More than anything, it would give history a much needed break. For civilians in Azeroth, calamity has been non-stop since AQ and Naxx.

[Wondercrab]

This is the point at which you start coming up with new stuff, which WoW is sorely in need of. A lot of bad storytelling has resulted from old enemies being dredged back up because "hey, remember this cool thing?" with minimal effort being put in to establish them as something we should care about in the here and now. WoW relies way, way too heavily on the successes of its past rather than looking to the future. Let's not forget that they made an entire expansion based around time travelling to an alternate universe just so they could bring back dead characters again.

I eagerly look forward to new characters, new places, new antagonists, and new storylines that establish cool new lore rather than coasting on (and occasionally trampling over) the successes of the past.

[ATZenith]

There are infinite ideas that could happen. Hell there is the other side of the planet also..

[Vespene]

There are infinite ideas that could happen. Hell there is the other side of the planet also..

From orbit on Argus, it looks like Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are closer together if you sail west from Kalimdor than if you go through the middle of the map.

Looks like there's no such thing as an other side of the planet. Granted, they can always do an Uldum or Pandaria thing where an entire piece of land was invisible.

[AbalDarkwind]

Secrets of Tel'Abim - Wrathion has landed in Tel'Abim after the devastating war between the Alliance, Horde, Naga, and N'Zoth. Worse, he's stolen Xal'atath, who has led him to this mysterious, forbidden land to seek their destinies together. As a one of the remaining champions of the Alliance and Horde, you heard N'Zoth's final, cataclysmic warning that Xal'atath will soon be reborn as Ny'shuburoth, the long forgotten fifth and most powerful Old God, devoured in the prehistory of the world by her four brothers. You must race across this Arabian inspired continent to stop Wrathion from resurrecting his Dark Mistress.

Not the most fleshed out thought, but I'd argue that Tel'abim being a Pandarian-styled hidden continent is likely if we don't see it some time during BfA.

Wrath of the Lich King 2, along with a underground "continent", dealing with the dead Old Gods, the dead Black Empire, the Blingtron War, Undermine, and, of course, the Scourge, seems like a sure bet; in fact, I'd say this is the most likely next expansion.

A Void expansion seems like it's still a couple of expansion away, honestly. It could be next, but that's throwing us into the deep end of villainy early, in my opinion. Still, I think the Void could carry two expansions; an Introduction to Void Lords expansion and the final Light vs Void expansion.

The Burning Onslaught, or How We Finally Deal With Sargeras and the Demons, also seems likely after the ending of Legion.

Another time-travel expansion is possible, although if this is done, I expect it to be near the end of WoW's lifespan as a way to make all content viable permanently. The ultimate maintenance expansion, essentially.

Who knows what else they could come up with?

[Ghazan Julio]

I have seen no Blood Elf Vampire King.......yet. We have encountered princes and a Blood Queen in ICC, but I would like to see a big castlevania themed castle sometime in WoW, with the more numerous crazy naxx ideas. Throw in a were-bear, Nightwatchman, High Necromancer fight, perhaps a rogue member of the Twilight's Hammer will try to make things even more sinister.

[Polygons]

They should make it where we compete with alternate universes in a giant tournament to save our planet from deletion, where villains we've killed in our universe succeeded in other universe timelines and are at full strength. We get our Illidan to fight a different version of himself, etc. Other universe timelines would have utterly different versions of major characters, like a Thrall that who never left the throne, or a Garrosh who succeeded and killed off the old Horde and most of the Alliance. Or Anduin meets a version of his father in another universe, where in that universe Anduin died instead of Varian, like in Batman Flashpoint. These are all universes where the plot went in a "what if?" direction, and it'd be easy for them to get really creative with this. It could also justify adding more sub races (since some don't have a reason to join Horde or Alliance) to fight along side us, for our universe. Yes, this is the plot from Dragon Ball Super.

[rhorle]

TLDR: It feels like wow is running out of the plotlines that classic launched with, Void lords and Bolvar the lich king are the only two hypothetical threats I can think of when classic had lots of hypothetical threats left understandably.

There are still a bunch of story lines that exist. Just because a few big ones have been taken care of doesn't mean there can not still be some to explore. And new ones built up and hinted at. Sargeras was defeated but the Legion wasn't all mindless like the scourge. We could have new demon threats, we could ally with them. We could see Khadgar turn against us. The elements revolt. More time ways story lines etc.

I don't think it was every obvious what expansions would come. It might have been obvious what expansions could come. But we almost got pandaren in Burning Crusade until Blizzard scratched that idea. BfA can really set up new stories to come since we are having deep conflict between the races which can spawn future conflict points. And not to mention something deeper that may or may not be handled in the next expansion.

I still am convinced Khadgar will be working against us from the little we see of him in the post-legion sithilus quests. Or at the very least will be finding the real threat to Azeroth while we are busy fighting each other. That A v H conflict really helps because it can always be the fall back. The greatest threat to Azeroth is ourselves.

[Feali]

I have seen no Blood Elf Vampire King.......yet. We have encountered princes and a Blood Queen in ICC, but I would like to see a big castlevania themed castle sometime in WoW, with the more numerous crazy naxx ideas. Throw in a were-bear, Nightwatchman, High Necromancer fight, perhaps a rogue member of the Twilight's Hammer will try to make things even more sinister.

You got me hyped for that now.

[clevin]

There are professional writers at blizzard, surely they can keep expanding their universe.

I think OP's point is less that they can't do it than that they're not laying the groundwork. Looking at the game as it is now, what new threats have they laid the groundwork for? Void stuff... but that's kind of it. For a large company with pro writers, they're doing a poor job of developing new threats.

[Deleted]

I think OP's point is less that they can't do it than that they're not laying the groundwork. Looking at the game as it is now, what new threats have they laid the groundwork for? Void stuff... but that's kind of it. For a large company with pro writers, they're doing a poor job of developing new threats.

Honestly I'm not too keen on this whole breadcrumb plot they got going on. Why must every single expansion be entangled with each other?
I'd rather have they wrap up a story in 1 expansion instead of spreading it across multiple.
Give me something fresh each new expansion.

They could easily create new content, where you get to know the threats/enemies through leveling up/questing and end game story lines.
Make the bosses taunt us like in WOTLK, show us how intimidating they are, instead of filling a raid time after time with a bunch of nobody bosses you've never seen or heard of before.

[Deleted]

When I first started playing in classic wow there was so much we could see coming in the future, the Lich king obviously, Illidan was still out there somewhere, Deathwing was missing as well I believe, the legion was obviously a threat that would need to be defeated one day as we eveanutlly would get to meet the titans as we came to argus and defeat them. Oh and the Emerald Nightmare was obviously going to get a raid evenutally as well, also lots of people have being expecting a Kul'tiras and Zandalar Expansion for a long time.

So my point is there was a time when it was nearly obvious what expansions would come, it wasn't obvious when but that they would come at some point there were plenty of themes in the game that had being started but not explored to their potentinal, the breadcrumbs had being left around but these days I struggle to think what will come next we've killed so many legendery figures and ended so many storylines from the early days that took so long to end.

My only ideas are literally another Void Lord Expansion to follow the bread crumbs this expansion will leave with old gods influencing the War. MAYBE a bolvar the lich king expansion, so two POSSIBLE ideas. In classic wow there were so many obvious things to follow but now? so much lore has being used up. Any ideas folks!

TLDR: It feels like wow is running out of the plotlines that classic launched with, Void lords and Bolvar the lich king are the only two hypothetical threats I can think of when classic had lots of hypothetical threats left understandably.

The lore of warcraft was made by people.

People can make more/new lore

/thread(this stupid moronic shit comes up every single expansion)

[Deleted]

When I first started playing in classic wow there was so much we could see coming in the future, the Lich king obviously, Illidan was still out there somewhere, Deathwing was missing as well I believe, the legion was obviously a threat that would need to be defeated one day as we eveanutlly would get to meet the titans as we came to argus and defeat them. Oh and the Emerald Nightmare was obviously going to get a raid evenutally as well, also lots of people have being expecting a Kul'tiras and Zandalar Expansion for a long time.

So my point is there was a time when it was nearly obvious what expansions would come, it wasn't obvious when but that they would come at some point there were plenty of themes in the game that had being started but not explored to their potentinal, the breadcrumbs had being left around but these days I struggle to think what will come next we've killed so many legendery figures and ended so many storylines from the early days that took so long to end.

My only ideas are literally another Void Lord Expansion to follow the bread crumbs this expansion will leave with old gods influencing the War. MAYBE a bolvar the lich king expansion, so two POSSIBLE ideas. In classic wow there were so many obvious things to follow but now? so much lore has being used up. Any ideas folks!

TLDR: It feels like wow is running out of the plotlines that classic launched with, Void lords and Bolvar the lich king are the only two hypothetical threats I can think of when classic had lots of hypothetical threats left understandably.

They can pull whatever they want out of their asses and people will pay for it. Just look at BfA. They could literally make an entire expansion around the rise and fall of Hogger and people would be on here debating for 10k pages and blizzard would rake in the dough.

[Blamblam41]

I imagine we'll go on a full blown space adventure using Azeroth as basically a ship, pick up Draenor, Outland and Argus in low orbit for ingame lore reasons as to why we can still get there and use Azeroth to wander the cosmos trying to balance the light and darkness in the universe.

It's kind of meta, and very cliche... But that's the Blizzard way....

[Deleted]

Didn't they say the same thing about Legion?

We are slowly scaling down enemies with WoD... If anything else fails we can still go back into All-out-faction-war territory.

[Grokresh]

There are still a bunch of story lines that exist. Just because a few big ones have been taken care of doesn't mean there can not still be some to explore. And new ones built up and hinted at. Sargeras was defeated but the Legion wasn't all mindless like the scourge. We could have new demon threats, we could ally with them. We could see Khadgar turn against us. The elements revolt. More time ways story lines etc.

I don't think it was every obvious what expansions would come. It might have been obvious what expansions could come. But we almost got pandaren in Burning Crusade until Blizzard scratched that idea. BfA can really set up new stories to come since we are having deep conflict between the races which can spawn future conflict points. And not to mention something deeper that may or may not be handled in the next expansion.

I still am convinced Khadgar will be working against us from the little we see of him in the post-legion sithilus quests. Or at the very least will be finding the real threat to Azeroth while we are busy fighting each other. That A v H conflict really helps because it can always be the fall back. The greatest threat to Azeroth is ourselves.

You can say you don't feel it was obvious to you but deathwing, legion, scourge expansions were pretty obvious in my personal opinion each year wondering if they were going to announce that one, also not just expansions but the emerald nightmare, also southseas was pretty obvious as well. That it would come evenutally. The themes existed and it was clear they'd be followed through with evenutally. Less ideas like that are left to explore, but of course they can come up with new storylines hence this thread.

[Super Kami Dende]

Well, Pandaria was their best expansion to date and it's entire story/concept was new to the Warcraft Lore. I don't doubt they could come up with many many more.

It's no different to many shows/stories. You think the people that Watched Dragonball watched Dragonball Z and thought "Wow Goku has already been killed by Piccolo in the first 10 episodes, this show couldn't possibly go anywhere from here!"

[Grokresh]

I think most people have misunderstood the point I am making, OBVIOUSLY, they can come up with new plotlines I am just saying that there is more of a need to do that now and I wonder what they will come up with as there is less old lore to rely on than any time in wow's existence because so many of the old plotlines from classic wow have being wrapped up and used.

- - - Updated - - -

The lore of warcraft was made by people.

People can make more/new lore

/thread(this stupid moronic shit comes up every single expansion)

God, you are stupid, I am literally just saying what do you guys think they will come up with next as they've been able to rely on old lore for such a long time now and we're finally at a point they will be somewhat forced to make new storylines fresher then the stuff that came from classic wow and warcraft 3, I never said they couldn't write more or that they wouldn't write more. This wasn't a thread saying they wouldn't have more storylines, it was a thread saying they wouldn't be from classic wow/warcraft 3 as much.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, Pandaria was their best expansion to date and it's entire story/concept was new to the Warcraft Lore. I don't doubt they could come up with many many more.

It's no different to many shows/stories. You think the people that Watched Dragonball watched Dragonball Z and thought "Wow Goku has already been killed by Piccolo in the first 10 episodes, this show couldn't possibly go anywhere from here!"

As I am trying to explain this thread isn't saying they won't be able to write more stories but we've got to a point they will be less predictable because so much warcraft 3 lore has being used up, and classic wow lore.

[Deleted]

I'd like to see faction specific plotlines. Like Alliance has an entire expansion devoted to fighting Defias again while Horde simultaneously have their own problems. Mortal stuff far away from this world saving, hard to grasp heroic stuff. Just regular soldier stuff.