Your guess on WoW's next expansion / 9.0

[Tinnie]

Hi everyone!

I really wanted to gauge the players' feelings regarding what the next expansion is gonna be about, and I thought I'd make a little poll to see where we're at.

If your answer is "Something else" don't hesitate to explain your idea below.

REMINDER: Please remember the question is what do you think it's going to be, not what do you want it to be.

I think we need an expansion with a clear central villain again. One that is there from beginning to end. We are introduced to him in the beginning, we slowly build up to him, and then the final raid is about taking him down. We've only ever really had an expansion that pulled that off fairly well with Wrath of the Lich King. He might've been out there a bit too much, but the general structure was alright. Probably one of the reasons why it was one of the best expansions.

So I would hope for something like that. Possibly a Northrend revamp with Bolvar as the villain. All zones of Northrend revamped with use of max level world quests plus 5 new zones.

[Wangming]

It's probably (disappointingly) going to be Shadowlands. I'd like to see another EK/Kalimdor revamp, but oh well.

Why not both? What if we don't go to the Shadowlands, but the shadowlands goes to us. It spills over to our realm and corrupts a few zones

[Kyphael]

Shadowlands is like the most accurate guess, but a lot of those might be featured as sub-plot patch content alongside Shadowlands. Like what they did to Emerald Dream and Argus in Legion and Nazjatar in BfA. Relegated to mere zones with no depth. I could easily see Dragon Isles treated the same.

What's Northrend 2.0, Northrend revamp? Would that be a Lich King redux but with Bolvar instead of Arthas? Maybe phased zones but I don't see them pouring that many resources to re-using an old zone, the player base would eat them alive. Azeroth revamped also seems like more work than they think WoW is worth right now. They're happy doing the bare minimum. Suramar was the last thing I recall that was like top notch, tremendous content that looks like required effort and it likely came at the cost of abandoning WoD altogether.

Black Empire is just old world Azeroth, Silithus looks a lot like I imagine the Black Empire did, with phasing tech these places can be brought to life without being actually all new geographical locations.

I once had high hopes for K'aresh. Then I saw Argus... and now I imagine it would be just like that.

Underground would be Deepholm expanded, when they run out of ideas on the surface world, sure. lol Other side of Azeroth still makes no sense to me as I thought the map we see is complete when 2-dimensional and it then wraps around a globe, but whatever. Just seems ridiculous Lightforged Draenei have a functioning ship and have been in orbit this long without noticing continents Horde and Alliance aren't aware of.

[tromage2]

Shadowlands.

You can do alot with the story and lore in the realm of death where we know little to nothing about.

[Nathanyel]

The devs have already said we didn't actually kill the Old Gods. We just killed a physical projection of their power. They're still alive but their defeat drove them into dormancy to recover their power.

Which is still way more than what the Titans could achieve with their big good strong hands.

[Wangming]

Shadowlands.

You can do alot with the story and lore in the realm of death where we know little to nothing about.

Add to that it is an easy way to involve favorites that are already dead. I mean when WoD tanked so hard Blizz stopped reporting subs, Illidan was pulled back from retirement.

Now though:

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Honestly I'm torn on what I think because I can see all the seeds being planted for a WoW "2" kind of soft-reboot, or a "WoW Rebrand" expansion that updates basically everything to look like it belongs in this decade instead of last, sweeps the old content away to optional status, and all that jazz.

But at the same time I look at Blizzard's track record, the way they're pushing Classic, and now the Blizzcon Key Art featuring none other than Kerrigan 3.0 and say "They're gonna have another business as usual expansion. Sylvanas is the hero, Dimensius is the villain, level cap is 130, Artifacts 3.0, Mission Table 4.0..."

[TheFirstOnes]

"Kerrigan 3.0"

Who was Kerrigan 2.0? @Slowpoke is a Gamer

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

"Kerrigan 3.0"

Who was Kerrigan 2.0? @Slowpoke is a Gamer

Still Illidan. Everyone's like "but he defied his destiny" but his destiny was still a rehash of Kerrigan's.

[zlygork]

With Sylvanas on the key art, I am leaning towards shadowlands, though I hope for dragon isles (specifically as I imagine them in my head)

[Zentail]

Can someone explain to me why “The Other Side of Azeroth” is feasible? The in-game globes have shown Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are opposite sides of the globe from each other. Each one is the “other side.”

Am I missing something?

[Jastall]

Shadowlands for sure, there's too much setup for that not to happen. Sylvanas escapes there after BFA, and we gotta deal with shady stuff going on there. We can also meet Vol'jin, Bwonsamdi, Helya, Bolvar, Mue'zelah (however you spell it) plus any number of new characters or old, dead heroes along the way.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Can someone explain to me why “The Other Side of Azeroth” is feasible? The in-game globes have shown Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are opposite sides of the globe from each other. Each one is the “other side.”

Am I missing something?

Blizzard has shown us time and again they really don't care about map accuracy.

See: Pandaria, Broken Isles, Kul'tiras.

[zlygork]

Can someone explain to me why “The Other Side of Azeroth” is feasible? The in-game globes have shown Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are opposite sides of the globe from each other. Each one is the “other side.”

Am I missing something?

Never believe an in-game map, some artists keep shoving them in, because they find them cool, but this game would be extremely limited if someone having decided to make a map in Vanilla meant that we can't even have Northrend.

[Mellrod]

I think the Shadowlands will be the expansion setting, and will feature a return of the Black Empire

[Zentail]

Blizzard has shown us time and again they really don't care about map accuracy.

See: Pandaria, Broken Isles, Kul'tiras.

Never believe an in-game map, some artists keep shoving them in, because they find them cool, but this game would be extremely limited if someone having decided to make a map in Vanilla meant that we can't even have Northrend.

I could have sworn someone posted a Classic/BC globe once that contained all the continents of current retail content plus 1 we haven’t seen yet, but maybe I’m mistaken.

[Naiattavain]

when are we going to get better subtlety experience on rogue is all i care about. shadow lands would be neat.

[Tinnie]

Can someone explain to me why “The Other Side of Azeroth” is feasible? The in-game globes have shown Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor are opposite sides of the globe from each other. Each one is the “other side.”

Am I missing something?

Dumb fan theory.

[Revamp Man]

Shadowlands for sure, there's too much setup for that not to happen. Sylvanas escapes there after BFA, and we gotta deal with shady stuff going on there. We can also meet Vol'jin, Bwonsamdi, Helya, Bolvar, Mue'zelah (however you spell it) plus any number of new characters or old, dead heroes along the way.

But we now have an old God free to raise his empire....if we leave to the shadowlands then we are kinda fucking the planet

The only actual set up for shadowlands is the drust

- - - Updated - - -

Dumb fan theory.

Or the fact blizz themselves have said that the maps in places like ulduar are incomplete

[TheFirstOnes]

Still Illidan. Everyone's like "but he defied his destiny" but his destiny was still a rehash of Kerrigan's.

Not really. He's not all that much of a "savior" to be honest. I think Illidan served his role in Legion perfectly.