Where is Blizzard going with all this? What's their ultimate plan? Speculation thread

[Dystemper]

Man, this is the first time EVER a faction leader obliterates two cities... yes, she pretty much did destroy the Undercity by herself too.

This is something totally new and it is a whole new level.

I think BFA would have been much more interesting if we mutually destroyed SW, And OGR. The cities could still be used somewhat but both sides are re-building and prone to attacks. I would love to see Dalaran get obliterated

[Twdft]

The thing with more factions is, it divides the playerbase more, it requires Blizzard to make even more content to be faction specific, it requires trilateral symmetry for all BGs. (or they can be symmetrical between TWO of the factions and the third can join in mercenary mode with either of the other factions).

A third faction would actually be better for BG queues, provided none of the factions is more than 50%.

Let's say right now 400 Alliance and 600 Horde queue. 200 Horde players will have to wait their turn. But if 400 A, 450 H and 150 XY queue everyone will be playing in a minute (350 A vs 350 H, 50 A vs 50 XY and 100 H vs 100 XY).

[Mr chub]

After wraithon the guys whose whole character arc for three expansions was to fight the legion years of heavy plot development and story telling all tossed away because blizzard forgot about him in legion leads me to suspect blizz doesn't have a plot planned out and just goes by the rule of cool.

[Deleted]

I had to wipe a tender tear of QQ from my eye after reading all this.
Still 3x better writing than Christie Golden.

Well,thx I guess,but lets stop blaming Golden for what the devs actually plan. She just writes novels with the material other people give to her. She doesnt decide the future of warcraft lore.

[Crypt]

I personally wish this is the end to great scale faction wars, and that next expansion we are allowed to pve with everyone, but at this point it sounds just like wishful thinking; both the devs and the fan base have a hard on for "going back to the roots"

is this game called Peacecraft or Warcraft?

[Deleted]

is this game called Peacecraft or Warcraft?

You can call the game as you want, but the truth is that sooner or later having the population divided because of the factions thing is gonna be unsustainable for PVE.
The PVP flagging could be helpful for this in the future, so you can be not flagged and join the other faction, or flagged and do WPVP against them.

[KridenTagg]

I've seen a lot of great theories in this thread! Certainly some ideas that Blizzard could use to go down a path that would be pleasing for the fans, although I have a feeling Blizzard is looking in to the story of the next expansion and BfA is certainly wrapped up story wise. As they say, they look pretty far in to the future with some minor tweaks here and there. Here are my opinions on what I think will happen:

1) As we've seen the beginning of some dissention amongst the Horde ranks, I think we will see the same with the Alliance between Anduin and Genn. I don't think Genn has been 100% sold on Anduin being King right now due to his age and inexperience. He isn't his father but Genn follows out of honor. With recent events and events going forward I think Genn to Anduin is going to be the Jaina to Varian. He wants to take direct action against the Horde and wipe them all out due to sheer anger, and Anduin (like his father) will want to choose the honorable path and find a way to peace. This will certainly create some tension and disagreements. How that will play out remains to be seen, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Genn take his own actions on the side and try to hide it from Anduin (which won't work.)

2) I think the Queen Azshara storyline will wrap up in Patch 8.2 as we finally take her out as the main raid boss. She has a major presence in one of the leveling zones, and I think she will be fully revealed and ready to take down by that time.

3) I think there will be a new Horde Warchief by the end of this expansion, but I don't think it will be Saurfang. I think he goes and reaches out to the one he believes can redeem the honor of the Horde, which you guessed it...is Thrall. He will make his return to reclaim and rebuild the Horde.

4) The Old Gods will definately show up in some form towards the end of the expansion to wrap things up and present a clear and present danger. I just don't see where they could go with an Alliance vs Horde for a full expansion. Sylvanas will be sent away, Genn possibly too (if he commits acts of treason due to his anger towards the Horde) and Anduin and Thrall will rebuild what the Alliance and Horde once were.

Now here's where I wish things will go but highly doubt it. At some point Sylvanas will be exiled (either by her own will or forcefully) and she will go to Northrend to build her own faction that I could see helping in the final battle of the expansion. This would create a third Forsaken or Undead faction which I would love to see. You keep Sylvanas around for those who like her, and with a three leadership storyline of Anduin, Thrall, and Sylvanas would certainly carry some weight going forward. At the end of the expansion every player can choose to take on a questline that will eventually lead them to become Undead or Forsaken. Those who don't agree with either the Alliance or Horde can take this route, creating some very interesting dynamics going forward.

[Deleted]

Well,thx I guess,but lets stop blaming Golden for what the devs actually plan. She just writes novels with the material other people give to her. She doesnt decide the future of warcraft lore.

Well, can't really argue with Commissioned Works point. Oh well, business plan, business reaction required.

[Kazdros]

Given what we know about Ghuun, the beta, and the raid after Uldir, I think it's safe to say both sides of this war are going to be taken advantage of by Old Gods/Void Lords. The groundwork is already fairly obvious.

Horde BFA spoilers:
Especially considering Zandalar's seals are basically what's containing the Old God corruption in Uldir, the fact that Zul and Azshara have some sort of deal and are both bosses in their respective raids, I can almost guarantee when we see 8.1 news at or before Blizzcon that it'll further this line of storytelling.

[heerobya]

It's old god stuff coming up, this Horde vs Alliance stuff is to hype up players, and sell the game. I can see Sylvanas doing a self sacrifice to save Anduin, because he is essentially "pure light" to save the world from darkness (old gods). And her arch will have been "redeemed"

I too think Sylvanas is going to sacrifice herself in some way in order to stop N'Zoth from destroying Azeroth or something. Then that will lead into the, hey so these Void Lords are bad... let's go galavanting around the cosmos hunting for them and saving baby titan worlds!

[kamuimac]

So we know the majority of what's happening to kick off the expansion now. Blizzard is still insisting that it's nuanced and we haven't seen the complete picture but Sylvanas is advocating for total genocide of the Alliance now so I'm not sure that Blizzards idea of "nuanced" is the same as everyone elses.

But realistically, where's this all going?

Blizzard can't seriously just be doing the SOO story AGAIN, with Saurfang taking out Sylvanas and becoming Warchief?

Also, would Blizzard even have the balls to kill Sylvanas? She's still hugely popular and has a big loyal fanbase.

With "Alternate" potential faction leaders introduced, like a Light-Undead Calia, could Blizzard use this expansion to end the faction conflict once and for all?

Will the story work towards making Sylvanas the next Lich Queen? Or will she get a final redeption arc? (If you're trying to commit genocide, should you even be allowed a "redemption" arc?)

Will it just be excused as Old God interference and then we're back to the status quo?

I've even seen theories that this will set up a third undead faction (though this seems as far fetched as removing the faction system entirely from the game)

Blizzard seems to be burning all their bridges pretty quickly with this expansion so far. What theories does anyone have of what their end game plan is for this expansion, and what they're planning to achieve with it are?

someone forgot we are playing world of warcraft not world of pussycraft.

most horde players are more then ok and supporting complete decimation of allience.

Sylvanas is literaly the most succesful warchief ever - loa were 100 % correct choosing her

[The Anax]

Based on everything happening, and let's see if this pans out, but my theory on this expansion is that this is all Old Gods stuff. At the Battle for Lordaeron, we will probably see how they twisted the minds of Genn or Anduin have become, and we already saw them mess with Jaina's mind in the 'Daughter of the Sea' cinematic when her *wink wink, nudge nudge* "father" appeared in the little boat. Very Lovecraft-ish, which is what the Old Gods are basically are drawn from. I wonder if Jaina will go full on corrupted and have to be put down by us or Thrall, since he is supposed to be in this expansion based on what they showed at Blizzcon, I assume he and she will come to a head.

With Azerite, it must have something to do with the Old Gods too, Azerite- Azshara? They probably have something to do with each other. And, knowing Azshara, she will probably grow as powerful as the Old Gods, but enough about my crazy ramblings on that stuff, it's Sylvanas everyone is upset about! So...

I am curious if anyone else thinks that when the Old Gods are inevitably unveiled as having manipulated everyone (look at the reaction races get from Azerite- it's definitely a tainted substance), will Sylvanas be forgiven? She is obsessed with death, will she end up leaving the Horde to go off to the Shadowlands to figure out how the Old Gods are able to cheat death itself? I think these current theories sound solid. This all sounds like it could wrap up the expansion and keep Sylvanas breathing while not making her Garrosh 2.0. Saurfang, of course, will step up and bring the Horde back to its normality, and WoW goes back to business as usual. (Though probably with new villains like the 'super, mega happy fun time' version of Azshara if she really does manage to steal the power of the Old Gods.

So, where are they going? Next expansion, Saurfang will lead the Horde into the Shadowlands where we will have to cut off the Old Gods power (and hopefully get Shadow Hunters as a class).

[kamuimac]

I too think Sylvanas is going to sacrifice herself in some way in order to stop N'Zoth from destroying Azeroth or something. Then that will lead into the, hey so these Void Lords are bad... let's go galavanting around the cosmos hunting for them and saving baby titan worlds!

and ? some people keep forgeting she literaly died 3 times now in wow what is 1 or 2 more "deaths" in this case plenty Valkyrs to ressurect her

[GreenJesus]

Exactly, theres no logic. She knows that her opponent wants peace but she pushes for war, why? It makes no sense, by that logic she can't guarantee the loyalty of the different horde factions either.

Well... She will live forever as an elf and as an undead. She sees things way farther in the future than mortals that live for maybe 50 years. The conflict is inevitable in her eyes so might as well start it now before warfare is changed forever by azerite technology and Alliance is even stronger.

[Luckx]

But what would a redemption arc even look like? How do you even "redeem" from genocide?

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Well Sylvanas argument for burning down the tree (and killing all the civilians) in the short story is that, depite that the Alliance leader would never cause war and just desperately wants peace, they can't guarantee that in 50 years there won't be war again.

It was Alliance who started the faction war by attacking Horde fleet in Stormheim, Horde retreated from Broken Shore only after Vol'jin as warchief was deadly wounded.

[Keyblader]

I too think Sylvanas is going to sacrifice herself in some way in order to stop N'Zoth from destroying Azeroth or something. Then that will lead into the, hey so these Void Lords are bad... let's go galavanting around the cosmos hunting for them and saving baby titan worlds!

AND THEN!!! The expac after bfa Sargeras is gonna be on our side saying "guys this is what I was trying to prevent, now it's come full circle, we gonna have to work together to end these old gods"

[Akka]

Ask Illidan who did some bad shit back in outlands. Killed a lot of people and enslaved others. He even lamented he didn’t slaughter all the broken “long ago”.

Not really a good example considering how retarded this whole "Illidan has gone mad" story was. Illidan was actually the only character that I feel Blizzard really betrayed in WoW - the others have been somehow true to how themselves, it's rather that players seem to have their own idea about who they were in their head and not actually checked if it was true, or that they confuse "shitty writing and shitty plot" with "ruined characters".

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Well... She will live forever as an elf and as an undead. She sees things way farther in the future than mortals that live for maybe 50 years. The conflict is inevitable in her eyes so might as well start it now before warfare is changed forever by azerite technology and Alliance is even stronger.

Considering orcs reproduce like rabbits and that Forsaken only die when they fight and can raise dead, of which there is a neverending supply, the actual smart thing to do would BE to wait 50 years, when Horde population has actually grown much faster and overtook Alliance.

[LaserChild9]

Well... She will live forever as an elf and as an undead. She sees things way farther in the future than mortals that live for maybe 50 years. The conflict is inevitable in her eyes so might as well start it now before warfare is changed forever by azerite technology and Alliance is even stronger.

If that is her logic then she has become completely irrideemable and is a villain so the Horde following her instruction makes them the villains henchmen. It's not logical to reignite a war that is so close to being over because they might change their minds 50 years down the road. It just makes Sylvanas a paranoid psychopath, which is sad. How long until she questions the horde factions loyalty? They have only been allies for about 20 years and the forsaken have always been black sheep of the horde, what about in 50 years?

[GreenJesus]

If that is her logic then she has become completely irrideemable and is a villain so the Horde following her instruction makes them the villains henchmen. It's not logical to reignite a war that is so close to being over because they might change their minds 50 years down the road. It just makes Sylvanas a paranoid psychopath, which is sad. How long until she questions the horde factions loyalty? They have only been allies for about 20 years and the forsaken have always been black sheep of the horde, what about in 50 years?

Yeh. I wonder what would happen though if she asked the Alliance for peace and went to shake hands. Would Genn be fine with that? Would 90% of the humans besides Anduin be fine with that? Anduin is king, but kings get opposed by their people all the time. If they see him working with the banshee queen would people consider him insane and try to impeach him?

[LaserChild9]

Yeh. I wonder what would happen though if she asked the Alliance for peace and went to shake hands. Would Genn be fine with that? Would 90% of the humans besides Anduin be fine with that?

Genn does whats best for the Alliance and he knows that does not necessarily align with his personal feelings, but he follows his king, like he has in every instance so far, including the forsaken meeting their living relatives. I'm not saying Genn wouldn't ever move against Sylvanas, but that's personal, that's not about the Horde and the Alliance, that's about Sylvanas killing his son.

As for the humans, they didn't turn on him when he brokered the meeting with the forsaken and he has given them no reason not to trust him. I'm pretty sure that the people of Stormwind would rather he made peace with Sylvanas than keep sending their friends and family to die in a war which literally has no reason. I mean, look at order halls, the various races could all put class above faction, druids have been doing it since Vanilla, Shaman since BC (possibly Vanilla, cant recall).

Anduin is king, but kings get opposed by their people all the time. If they see him working with the banshee queen would people consider him insane and try to impeach him?

I don't see this being an issue, Stormwind is not a democracy, it's a kingdom, the people don't get to vote in or out a king, there are not many examples of people "impeaching" monarchs in history usually because the monarch has all the power. The Alliance population knows that the Alliance did not save the world alone, they know that the Horde were equally responsible so they have no reason to blindly hate them anymore, the reasons for the factions being created in the first place are gone.