The Expansion after Shadowlands may be a “Soft Reboot” of WoW.

[Doffen]

Avenger style indeed. Just another copy of something that they watched somewhere else. When the Void Lords comes to claim Azeroth the Titan then:

Grom
Broxigar
Varian
Orgrim
Anduin Lothar
Arthas
Kael'thas
Uther
Bolvar
Rocket
Sylvanas High Elf style
Garithos
Groot and
Captain Phillips will come back from the dead to aid us to fight the evil Lords of Shadow

Class Hall Troops, Assemble!

[Syegfryed]

The game need a timeskip for this kind of "reboot in the landmasses/races/organizations


i don't think characters will come back from the dead, but Spoilers from shadowlands~~

with Key characters that advocate for peace kidnapped by Sylvanas like Jaina and Thrall, and other characters who would mostly agree with then going to search then in the shadowlands, the world will be left for the Warheads, Turalyon and Geyara will mostly like command the alliance and the horde

How much time it will pass in shadowlands? how my years? a decade? a lot of shit can happen, Thralls sons can be grow up, lots of new characters

New conflicts with the factions will most likely be born without outside threads, and no one will know who started, and we will be left like the vanila situation.

New enemies will have time to plot and grow stronger becoming new villains, being key antagonists to the updated zones or even entire patchs/expansion

By example, we have Botani and Saberons now living in Kalindor, they can grow to be new allied races and enemies of the enemy faction, like Saberons also going to live in ashenvale team up with Orcs, botani allied with the night elves, so, many options.

[Lazuli]

yeah that is pretty optimistic there OP... there's about a 1% chance of any of that happening, except for some people coming back with us from SL is most likely.

[MoanaLisa]

They may or may not do a revamp. Depending on how far your definition extends every expansion is really a soft reboot.

[rrayy]

Returning with a large batch of old characters would invalidate all story telling wow has done so far. That would be an insanely bad move even if it was under the pretext that we shattered the fake afterlife or some stupid shit like that. While I don't think anything (well besides WoW 2, because that takes effort Blizzard would never invest these days) is beyond them these days, I very much don't see them going that far. Maybe if shadowlands turns out to be a complete bomb.

Blizzard puts tons of effort in everything they do. Making an expansion you don't like does not= they put no effort into it. People need to stop basing bogus claims on whether they like an expansion or not.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Blizzard puts tons of effort in everything they do. Making an expansion you don't like does not= they put no effort into it. People need to stop basing bogus claims on whether they like an expansion or not.

Making wow 2 would take them 4-7 years. That is simply not feasible with their current development priorities for WoW. They already need to put the game on live support (the so called end of expansion drought/lull) to hammer out another expansion within a year and a bit, they simply can't pull off a sequel with the current way they operate and desert the live version of the game for a couple of years. Building an entire second team to make it happen is very unlikely in the current climate either, especially with the state of the genre.

Also WC3 would like to have a word with you.

[ReleaseDay]

Just do a WoW 2 and be done with it imo

I sure hope so. Current retail is in dire need of some facelifting and revitalization. As of late it has become very stagnant power-fantasy which quite frankly doesn't feel like a Warcraft anymore. Too much scheit has happened and quite honestly I don't even care about anything anymore. We have Mary Sue characters coming left and right and whatnot and player characters are here slaying Titans so yeah. Gets kinda tiresome.

It just kinda depends on how big risk Blizz is going to take with all this. And if they do, will it be worth it?

We literally have 1-2 threats after this. The Void and the Light. That's it. No need for a WoW 2 when the story's almost done.

You're both wrong. Wow2 is a horrible idea and the story is far faaaaar from done.

[Dug]

You're both wrong. Wow2 is a horrible idea and the story is far faaaaar from done.

It's not a horrible idea it would allow the devs to work with a new engine that could bring fresh and new ideas to the game that just aren't possible with any limitations in current WoW. And why is the idea that if you have a WoW 2 the story of WoW 1 MUST conclude? We do not have to handle every single baddie Blizzard is willing to come up with in 10 or so years lore time. Assuming of course we will EVER be done when Blizzard can come up with new lore at any time for any reason.

[Trans Lives Matter]

If they do that, it's gonna be in the form of a World of Warcraft 2

- - - Updated - - -

We literally have 1-2 threats after this. The Void and the Light. That's it. No need for a WoW 2 when the story's almost done.

Holy shit, what a dumb post.

First of all, the light is barely even mentioned as a threat.

Second of all, there are tons of things out there that we did not deal with completely. Sargeras is still out there. Undead are still out there. Everyone can always come back and everyone always does come back. Ethereals are doing things. Who knows what's going on with the Dragonflights.

And third of all, they can always invent new things. Which is what they are doing right now with Shadowlands. At least some of it is new, or created with inspiritation from other things.

I mean seriously, you really think they can't make a WoW 2 because the "story is almost done".

Are you 5 years old?

There are infinite realms of the Shadowlands. There are infinite potential worlds out there. There is literally as much out there as they can potentially imagine.

[BB8]

What I like to see in the "Reboot" of WoW is Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms bigger in size as they are now. So those continents look more in scale to the islands of the several expansions.

So the regions we know like Elwyn forest could make Goldshire a town. And between Goldshire and Stormwind they could make a new village.
Other parts of the region we could explore as high levels (like those high level zones in the areas of Draenor).
This means, we dont need new area's and we dont need to loose much of the old areas. We just have more space in between.

[Soon-TM]

Does a Baros Alexston carry an x-pac like Ilidan, Arthas or Deathwing do? And even then, they kinda only popped up here and there and were reserved for a final raid, while other stuff had to carry 3/4 of the x-pac.

If you develop him appropriately, he could, why not. Now, if you don't want to go through the legwork of character development, and start throwing all your big names from the past into the fray, then guess what it's eventually going to happen.

[Seranthor]

They did, but as Garrosh once said:

So your evidence for your idea happening is them saying it wont happen? Is that accurate?

[Soon-TM]

What I like to see in the "Reboot" of WoW is Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms bigger in size as they are now. So those continents look more in scale to the islands of the several expansions.

So the regions we know like Elwyn forest could make Goldshire a town. And between Goldshire and Stormwind they could make a new village.
Other parts of the region we could explore as high levels (like those high level zones in the areas of Draenor).
This means, we dont need new area's and we dont need to loose much of the old areas. We just have more space in between.

This, so much this. If Kul Tiras, which was supposed to be a relatively small island, is big enough to accomodate three subzones (and very nice, while we are at it), then the continental zones should be appropriately sized as well. Besides, all racial capitals should definitely receive a facelift, at least. Going from Silvermoon straight into Dazar'alor is just... awkward.

[Dejavuproned]

My biggest problem with the story telling and lore in WoW, is the fact that all of these major events are essentially compacted into what, like a 10/20 year period? Probably even less? Especially when we are told how old the planet is, yet everything just happens spit-fire one after another at this point in history. Now obviously the consequences of one event will lead to another, but I think the lack of "breathing room" in a sense, is why people may have gotten tired of the "story" of the franchise and how we cleared through so many major threats on the to-do list.

In my personal opinion, if they are to do a "soft-reboot" expansion, I think they should set the game some decent ways off into the future, like anywhere from 30-100 years, maybe even longer. Let things mellow out, let new background lore build-up in that period we are not playing that can become the new quests like Vanilla had, introduce new characters or the future versions of them years later. For our own characters let them be the exact same as before, but consider them the descendants of your original character, complete with options like "family-heirlooms" you can obtain which were the hi-end gear and legendarys you already had, scale-down the content to the point it feels like fresh new character's quests, even though its a continued expansion, they could even make the accomplishments of your previous character as the new quests, like a previous raid-boss they destroyed has returned or recovering a piece of their mythic level armor. Hell, doesn't even have to be a descendant, they could just pull a Breath of the Wild and have our characters sealed away for a 100 years or so, or let the more long-lived races or undead not even need that bit.

Shadowlands is that "sealed away" state. It doesn't have to be any more complicated then that! By their very own words they have stated that time is different and chaotic in there so they can have us leave literally ANY time they want.

It could be immediately after we left as if we were never gone (boring imo), 10/20/30/100 years in the future, or sometime in the past.

I personally hope for the time skip, at least 10 years if not more. Give the world time time to breathe and change without us.

the wow team is 1/3 of what it was during cata

Citation needed?

Sent from my CLT-L04 using Tapatalk

[Dug]

So your evidence for your idea happening is them saying it wont happen? Is that accurate?

They said the same of Classic and look where we are. If it becomes profitable/makes sense then they'll do it

[Unholyground]

Game needs more live events in every zone in all expansions like Guild Wars 2 has. The problem with WoW is nothing about it feels alive in the world.

[Seranthor]

They said the same of Classic and look where we are. If it becomes profitable/makes sense then they'll do it

So we should all be running around expecting giant asteroids to be bombarding the earth because the scientists say it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes?

[Dug]

So we should all be running around expecting giant asteroids to be bombarding the earth because the scientists say it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes?

You're being obtuse. Blizzard saying one thing and then doing another already has precedent so just because they say they'll never do another big revamp doesn't mean it won't ever happen again. They can walk back any statement for any reason if it becomes convenient for them to do so like with WoW Classic

[Fistfighter]

I hope it is. The world desperately deserves a new storylines in it, a nice revamp, a continuation of the story, anything.

[Seranthor]

You're being obtuse. Blizzard saying one thing and then doing another already has precedent so just because they say they'll never do another big revamp doesn't mean it won't ever happen again. They can walk back any statement for any reason if it becomes convenient for them to do so like with WoW Classic

So could the scientists...