Will we ever get WoW: “Infinity War”?

[Aresk]

Just play 8.0 from Alliance perspective. You lose or your early victories are tainted. Seriously, all of BfA feels like what you're describing; NPCs are dying, the world is going to hell, and we're too busy fighting one another to save a freaking planet. But then it's also WoW, so when things get really bad, we just open a ton of portals to all different places, hop through one, and find a new home somewhere else.

[PaladinBash]

Thematically, nothing tops riding Deathwing. You're riding the back of a giant dragging, blowing off parts of his scales to crash him into a big magical vortex. You can't top that as a themed encounter unless you go to even more absurd levels.

You also can't top fighting Argus. There's just no way to outdo that shit. It's as big a bad as you're ever going to get, as forced and unsatisfying as it was. The Lich King felt like the be all and end all when you fought him and the encounter design was amazing as well. You can't top that as a fight in any real sense without getting very silly very fast. It's the problem shit like DBZ has after building up X villain, Y awesome powerup and Z power levels. How do you just stab a dude that can blow up planets with a sword?

That's the problem the setting has now. They escalated shit way too high and way too fast. We went from fighting big orcs to Archimonde, which is a fine step up. We went from fighting Gul'Daddy and some souped up Elves to fighting KJ again which is also fine, to fighting a titan on Argus with the help of the Pantheon. Come on now, how you gonna outdo that? How is the Lich King or Queen gonna compare with that? Azshara? They'd make great villains if we hadn't already killed Argus. Say what you want but the faction war is the most sensible thing they can push because at least the Horde and Alliance are just orcs vs humans or plants vs zombies. That's not as ridiculous as some of the other things in the game right now and at least they're not trying to just top Argus just yet.

It's a filler expansion in story, I don't think anyone argues against that, but what next though? Lich Queen or King time? The Void Lords show up? Illidan comes back possessed by a redeemed Sargeras to stop the Void Lords as he always intended? I wouldn't put it past Blizzard to redeem Sargeras but still say that alt Yrel is bad for stopping the orcs from being dicks on Draenor.

[majesta]

Legion could’ve been our infinity war and gave the title battle for Azeroth a whole another meaning with the titan killed and world inhabited by demons and we have to fight them all including sargeras who used Azeroth power to empower himself to fight the voidlotds himself and make a very drastic decision: kill the enemy of our enemy or kill both of them and most likely lose

I was all for that story.

I really had hoped that BFA was going to be about the planet was dying. We are all screwed so the all-out war idea was for supplies to survive the apocalypse. But we are not getting that.

Like I even felt they could have made WoD relevant with Azeroth getting killed.

Here is what I had hoped:

The whole stabby stab of the planet mortally wounds the baby titan in Azeroth. Planet starts to die. The dwarves go nuts over it and losses their your know what. The elements on the planet start going crazy too and the shamans/druids know something very bad is going down. A few zones on all continents, completely die. Like takes STV and kill all plant life.

Quickly the Horde and Alliance realize the planet is screwed from the stab and go all out on each other. The fight is over what little resources are left, over tech that can survive whatever is happening, and just plain old grudges. And I mean extreme violence. Like goblin sapper bombings, and airship firebombings. Have the war wipe out entire towns, cities, and zones. Really trash the place. Have the Alliance a real baddie for a moment and use the Vindicaar and orbitally nuke Orgrimmar\Durotar or Under City\Tirisfal Glades and then have the weapon break, aka no more juice.

I am talking total all-out war. All remaining neutral groups take sides too. Get the murlocs, furbolgs, kobolds, twilight cultists, argent dawn, scarlet crusaders, vrykul, ogres, everyone and everything involved. Even the animals pick sides.

Then at some battle, some critical point, the planet takes a massive turn for the worse. It becomes clear to the people, not so much the leaders, but the people, that the only way they are going to survive is if they get off this rock.

A new faction forms. Can introduce new future major lore heroes here.

This new faction realizes an evacuation must happen and it is of a planetary scale. They convince the Cenarion Circle, The Argent Dawn, Kirin Tor, The magisters, The Reliquary, Frostwolf Clan, Blackwater Raiders, and some other out there groups like maybe the Timbermaw Furbolgs to stop fighting and join the cause.

The last half of the expansion players get to chose their path. Continue the war or evacuate.

The war continues, blah blah, boring.

The evacuate path becomes interesting. Players effectively turn on their own faction's leaders. They agree their leaders are being shortsighted and going to get everyone killed. The planet really is doomed, cannot be fixed or saved, time to go. So they work towards evacuating, but where to? Alternate WoD universe. The new faction using artifacts, mages, and all other sorts of magic are able to make the Draenor portal shift to the correct time to match the current time in Azeroth.

From there the people of Draenor lend a hand and refugee camps are set up, nature reserves, everything else is put in motion to try to save and preserve as much of Azeroth as possible. Players get quests to capture creatures, collect plants, seeds, and other samples of Azeroth. Also fun quests like stealing cultural significant artifacts from their faction, like art, books, statues, anything, and everything. Quests to evacuate farmers and Defias alike in Westfall, quests to aid the goblins in the evacuation of Kezan and all their tech.

Of course, the faction leaders catch onto what is happening as more units and people start to abandon the war. Like the 7th Legion and Kor'kron both bail on their factions and help out. At this point, the faction leaders take those that are most loyal and devise a plan. They know the planet is doomed at this point as well. They are going to ensure their side survives and takes WoD. War breaks out over there, and both sides realize they can open portals to the Azeroth in the WoD universe. An Azeroth that knows nothing of Draenor nor has suffered the consequences from having known Draenor. Once the floodgates open this third faction starts to fall apart as the sides go back to their own, but a new war begins.

The Horde vs Alliance vs WoD Azeroth. The people of WoD Azeroth are like oh hell no and everyone goes nuts.

At this point, I sort of stopped thinking where this would go, but I did have the idea that the old Gods from our Azeroth could become a problem. I also had the idea that maybe the titan doesn't die in the end but becomes super corrupt (maybe old gods) and has to be dealt with. Maybe some lost group of titans shows up with a new world soul and fixes (reoriginates) the planet after we are gone and then something happens to make us check back up on it.

As I said, stopped thinking about it as I realized this would never ever happen.

[Airlick]

Did you guys really played wotlk?
A simple summary is "we destroy everything of the courge every where we go". Arthas makes "it was merely a setback" like a catchphrase.
And the final fight is a "hahahahaha, i got you. You destroyed every strong creature of my army, you are all united to fight me, you managed to reach me, I lost every battle until now, but that was all a trap! A master plan to kill and resurect 25 guys. I'm so smart lol!"
That was the expansion where wow team discovered story content. But they were retarded (still are)

Some zones ended with a pyrrhic victory at best. Take Zul'Drak as an example, yeah, we are killing what-was-his-name-again in the dungeon eventually, but not before the whole ice troll tribe gets basically exterminated and turned into Scourge and their loa are all dead. LK walks out with his forces a lot stronger than before. Or Wrathgate, where Alliance loses some of its best troops and the overall commander, Horde loses a lot of troops and one of the main commanders (who also ends up getting ressed by LK), and Arthas only loses some trash mobs.

And then the costs of this war were actually presented in the game later in Cataclysm, with Stormwind being almost bankrupt and left with no soldiers to defend the outlying regions from various threats etc. Compare that to BfA, where a couple of months (if that) of a potentially world-ending invasion that also started with both factions supposedly losing so many soldiers they were left paralyzed, which is why it fell to class halls to deal with Legion, Sylvanas goes "np, lets start another world war". Just like nothing ever happened between that and WoD.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Legion was nothing close to Infinity War. We only suffered losses in 8.0 that's it. We mopped the floor with the Legion for the entire expansion, including their leader Sargeras.
We need to lose major at the pre-patch, main patch, and one big ass loss [More than a King/Warchief, kill off super powerful beings such as the Titans] at the end with minor to moderate losses in the on-going patches.

[Mic_128]

What next though? The Void Lords show up? Illidan comes back possessed by a redeemed Sargeras to stop the Void Lords as he always intended?

He 'intended' to stop the Void Lords by destroying every other Titan so they couldn't get corrupted by an Old God infestation.

[Deleted]

What you're describing is naivety and just wanting the same story over and over again, if we're going to point out generic assumptions. I think we're both wrong here, at least I'd hope so. You can have a defeatist story but still make it interesting - the start of Legion was actually quite nice in that respect. Granted, it immediately became 'We're the heroes, and we will triumph' and set out to do so with little in the way of stopping the player or the NPCs.

The player CAN die in MMORPGs, much like NPCs can die. That doesn't mean a lore reason can't bring us back - lest you even forget that Bwonsamdi is a thing and many other lore figures have been brought back to life. Have you forgotten that we were essentially dead in the Lich King fight? Or near dead, anyways.

The last sentence is nonsense and you know it. You can create an uphill battle in many different respects and actually build it up instead of immediately climaxing the story or moving on past a pivotal part of it just so it can conclude.

What I think is that talk is cheap. You are telling us that we can die and be brought back. You can't be serious. That proves my point. You can't kill off player character for good. What you say here has been done on SWTOR. Your character was frozen in carbonite for a few years. But for players that is mere seconds. The devs don't have narrative tools like making you take control of another character for long without upsetting players.
So, as I say, in mmo's players always win. They have to win. There can be minor setbacks but that's it. The devs can't delete your character. So, you will always win.

You want a book quality or single player quality story in an mmo? It can't be done. Sorry. This is as good as it gets. SWTOR and GW2 have tried strides, but they are all constrained by the genre limitations.

Also, I don't see why we need tragic stories. What's wrong with feel good moment's. I don't agree. I like being a badass.

[Voltsmasher]

Yeah, I'd love it if the end of BFA was a cinematic of us escaping Azeroth as N'zoth destroys it like FF14 1.0. Then the next expansion is basically Legion in space where the first tier is us winning allies, the second is us getting a beach head and the third is us invading Azeroth.

I imagine the black empire as something the sweeps over most of the world. Furthermore I, personally, am done with the space antics.

What I would want from the black empire is just a complete decimation of horde and alliance power structures.

This way we get a chance to work through an expansion as an adventurer that is going after the big bads in a time of despair rather than the heroes that are dragged everywhere by the main story character

[Nize]

I have my doubts that'll ever happen, given the measures that OP gives.

However, I do feel that Legion was WoW's "Infinity War" as it is a battle that has built up over a lengthy amount of time, and becomes the biggest crossover within the Warcraft universe.

[Aeula]

Needs to happen from a narrative perspective. But it probably won't.

A lot of OP characters would need to die, and most OP characters are on the Alliance. So we all know where the backlash would be coming from if it were to happen. Right now there's a serious power gap between the factions within the narrative and these overpowered characters usually have to go AWOL to make enemies feel like a 'threat'.

As it is I expect every 'threat' going forward will be over within a year with minimal losses. Same as with what happened with Deathwing, Arthas, The Iron Horde and the Legion, joke of a 'loss' that was the Broken Shore aside, Blizzard doesn't want to piss people off by having us 'lose'.

[Kokolums]

Killing off characters, whether we like them or not, is always high risk especially if they kill too many too quickly. Game of Thrones gets away with it to some extent but the latter seasons had many complaints about character death fatigue, where people became tired of investing in a character only to see them bumped off.

Kill off too many characters too quickly and you are left with a bunch of new characters no one really cares about. Infinity War is different because we know they are all coming back.

The reason you kill a hero is to make a threat more credible. That demands that the hero be killed in a 1v1 fight and NOT in self-sacrifice. The death of Varian violated BOTH principles so that death was totally wasted and didn't make Gul'dan more credible. The death of Maraad also was self-sacrifice and because of that it didn't make the Iron Horde more credible (and BOY did it need to be made more credible).

The problem at this point is NOT that Blizzard isn't willing to kill off heroes. They've started to do that a little bit. Its just they completely screw it up.

The last time a villain went over a hero 1v1 in a straight up fight was undead Arthas over the king in Warcraft 3. And that turned Arthas into a legendary and epic character.

[Forgottenone]

If we had an expansion pack where the villain wins from start to finish that would get me hooked. Don't get me wrong I loved the Lich King, I liked Deathwing, but as with every expansion the bad guy always gets slain/imprisoned.

I would love if we had an expansion pack introduce the main villain right at the very start, and from there we meet his generals/lieutenants and at first we gain a foothold in his land but then we start getting pushed back. Losing what we gained, losing what we had at the start, and eventually ending with his making a desperate assault against the villain which results in us nearly dying but being saved somehow. Expansion can end with the villain having killed 4-5 main characters, having new ones step up, having the Alliance, the Horde, and their allies feel a defeat that made Broken Shore look like childs play.

Essentially an expansion where you feel like we lost, where you did your best but it wasn't enough. I want that kind of expansion at least once, because so far every expansion has felt like a victory.

Vanilla - Defeated C'thun and then Naxxramas
BC - Defeated Illidan and his generals before stopping Kil'jaedan at the Sunwell
Wotlk - Defeated Yogg'saron, and then the Lich King
Cata - Defeated the elemental lords and then Deathwing
MoP - Defeated the Sha/Mogu/Mantids/Thunder King before defeating Garrosh with evil Horde
WoD - Defeated all the warlords, and stopped Archimonde
Legion - Defeated Kil'jaedan, then defeated Argus before seeing Sargeras stopped
BFA - TBD, however so far defeated G'huun

[Puremallace]

N'Zoth needs to have his own expansion. They need multiple expansions dealing with the old gods and not just their Azeroth physical forms.

[dope_danny]

I think that was kind of the plan with Cata but then the game suffered large content cuts, things got stretched out and it soured people on it a lot. I can tell you FFXIV is kind of a fan of 'starting you on a low point' sometimes and right now its setting up a similar thing where your 'party' such as it is are all in a very, very bad state and your warrior or light character must become the warrior of darkness because 'too much light causes a calamity as easily as too much darkness'.
Trouble is how do you do that without another shattering? the rumour for Shadowbringers for example is it involves time travel and going to another world/shard in its 14 world multiverse. In WoW whats the state you can push the world to -again after cata- that it can survive and come back?

Personally i'm surprised they never tried to pull a 'dreamscape' idea. Look at Bloodborne. The game about a hunter in a city during a lycanthrope plague outbreak that turns out to be based on abusing the blood of lovecraftian elder gods takes place entirely in a dream. You could straight up 'majoras mask' a WoW expansion and have it set in a dream. Replace portals with using a bed in an inn and deal with the old gods effecting the collective unconscious just like the emerald dream. People can die, places can be nuked from the surface of the world and 'its all a dream' is an easy way to wipe the slate clean once its over. Buuut that can also seem like a copout.

Honestly knowing blizzard the most likely thing i could see them do is introduce another zerg/scourge type enemy to at best put the world on the defensive. Imagine an expansion that starts with a meteor shower and some flood/zerg/necromorph thing starts to spread and the factions struggle to keep the infestation out of major population centers. We all saw how the corrupted blood was a more effective antagonist than Deathwing ever was in terms of a threatening villain after all

[NaNaaru]

I must say that one of my most emotional moments in WoW was this moment during the Wrathgate quest where you see all the undercity refugees in orgrimmar.
They were all crying, broken, hopeless...

I remember the original guild wars started in a lovely scene of a city in a wide grassland... very early on it was all destroyed by the enemy faction and you could actually feel the strife to survive.

[Luxeley]

I honestly thought Legion would be that, but I was wrong. I think it's a very good idea to switch things up and make them unpredictable for a change. It would be a fresh and interesting change of pace. The idea of the horde and alliance putting their conflict/ war on hold and defeating the all-mighty enemy is very redundant after 82 times.

[Kallisto]

I'm sure there would be complaints, MoP had plenty (and still has).
Not saying it's for everyone, or even for "majority" - it's just something I'd presonally enjoy (a lot)

I'd agree with you that it would be a nice change of scenery. But financially it's a dumb decision to make. People mostly want something that links to warcraft 3. Hell I'm certain one of the main reasons sub numbers platoed at wrath and dropped afterwards was because the story that started in warcraft 3 was wrapped up.

Illidan's group destroyed. Legion defeated with Kil'jaeden having similar fate happen to him in sunwell as Sargeras in well of eternity (at this point no one knew where Sargeras was or even if he had a body. All we had was his voice scolding varimathras at horde end for battle for undercity.). So then we kill Arthas that was it. It's the perfect end to a game. You the player worked up from a nobody to doing something that those heroes you controlled in WC3 and TFT failed to do.

You defeated the scourge. Cut the head off the Legion etc. Since then players have been for every expansion except Legion have been calling them fillers.

Cata was filler to these people. MoP was filler. WoD too. Only Legion escaped the accusation because it links to WC3. A vocal group basically wants this game to be warcraft 3 the mmo. Nothing else interests them which is why in one way or another the game will link to try to link to it.

Hell I'd live an expansion that's no threats that end the world but maybe something fun and silly like dark moon fair wants to expand on a continent. We're set to clear it. Pvp could be silly things like how swtor has huttball

[Aresk]

If we had an expansion pack where the villain wins from start to finish that would get me hooked. Don't get me wrong I loved the Lich King, I liked Deathwing, but as with every expansion the bad guy always gets slain/imprisoned.

I would love if we had an expansion pack introduce the main villain right at the very start, and from there we meet his generals/lieutenants and at first we gain a foothold in his land but then we start getting pushed back. Losing what we gained, losing what we had at the start, and eventually ending with his making a desperate assault against the villain which results in us nearly dying but being saved somehow. Expansion can end with the villain having killed 4-5 main characters, having new ones step up, having the Alliance, the Horde, and their allies feel a defeat that made Broken Shore look like childs play.

Essentially an expansion where you feel like we lost, where you did your best but it wasn't enough. I want that kind of expansion at least once, because so far every expansion has felt like a victory.

Vanilla - Defeated C'thun and then Naxxramas
BC - Defeated Illidan and his generals before stopping Kil'jaedan at the Sunwell
Wotlk - Defeated Yogg'saron, and then the Lich King
Cata - Defeated the elemental lords and then Deathwing
MoP - Defeated the Sha/Mogu/Mantids/Thunder King before defeating Garrosh with evil Horde
WoD - Defeated all the warlords, and stopped Archimonde
Legion - Defeated Kil'jaedan, then defeated Argus before seeing Sargeras stopped
BFA - TBD, however so far defeated G'huun

Aren't you somewhat describing WoD? We meet Gul'dan at the very beginning, constantly fail to kill him. He seizes control of our allies (Cordana) and our enemies (the Iron Horde) and builds a grand fortification. We go in to fight him, but not before he completes his preparations and escapes to our world, where he kills our leaders (Varian, Vol'jin, Tirion) at the very start of the next expansion. It may not have captured the being pushed back feeling as you described, but we were forced out of our initial holding of the Dark Portal, and there were garrison assaults (granted we never permanently lost anything).

[ryanmahaffe]

Legion felt like that....

No it really didn't
Start the Broken Shore and we lose
We then kick ass in every major zone
Kil'jaeden sends a massive fleet to destroy Dalaran, we destroy it in 5 minutes
we then attack Argus and face so little resistance it may as well have been a random Legion planet.

[Kallisto]

No it really didn't
Start the Broken Shore and we lose
We then kick ass in every major zone
Kil'jaeden sends a massive fleet to destroy Dalaran, we destroy it in 5 minutes
we then attack Argus and face so little resistance it may as well have been a random Legion planet.

Honestly the destroy fleet in 5 minutes was perhaps one of the worst things they could have done for 7.2 (Lore wise), especially when there was a large city just there. They could have had Dalaran destroyed and everyone evacuated to Suramar. Have the best mages from the world rebuild the shield for a temporary 1 patch measure with our dalaran hearthstones done in such a way we are able to get through them.