Over the last couple of weeks and months the community basically decided that the next WoW expansion will be about the Dragon Isles.
This was more or less reinforced by the Blizzard website itself - the copyrighted name of "Dragonflight" as well as their codes on their homepage and the leaked key-art.
But what if... what if all that is just Blizzard playing with us? Throwing out a false route of breadcrumbs...
Well I'm here to tell you exactly that and I hope you can tell me why I'm oh so wrong about all of it.
So... let's kick things off with the question: Why even Dragon Isles? Or dragons at all for that matter.
There's little to no indication about this bascially confirmed adventure.
Surely, we've had Steve Danuser confirming that the Primus has ties to the infinite dragonflight.
And sure, there's still Wrathion wandering around somewhere. But that's bascially it, or am I missing a point here?
Now, we have confirmation that time in the shadowlands works a bit differently and maybe that even was our first hint that connects everything somehow to the infinite and therefor bronze dragonflights but it's a bit far fetched, isn't it?
So what is my personal wish or speculation then?
For that I have to give you a spoiler warning though, since I will iterate it based on some content coming with 9.2.5.
The next expansion will be built around the light. And we have a lot of things that hint towards it.
I'll list all the things that hint towards a light themed expansion in no particular order and giving some background to them as to what exactly everything means:
- The scourge is rampaging throughout Azeroth: We got our first glimpse of that in the 9.0 Bastion campaign when we saw an attack of the scourge on Lakeshire in Redrige Mountains. In 9.2.5 there will be a new small questline for everyone that has reached exalted with Silvermoon (Sorry, Alliance). This questline evolves around the Ghost Lands, Lady Liadrin and her "daughter" or rather pupil she adopted back in Burning Crusade. There we fight the rampaging scourge, some good old San'Layn and watch a new character grow into hopefully a bigger role later down the road.
- Tirisfal got updated: At the end of BFA we had some undead night elves joining the ranks of the forsaken. Together with Calia Menethil they went to Deathknell to undergo some sort of training. The map files were updated recently with the 9.2.5 PTR hinting at maybe playable dark rangers or maybe playable undead night elves in the future. But you know what is also in Tirisfal? The Scarlet Crusade!
- The Scarlet Crusade as the antagonist: We never completely wiped out their ideology. They are still as pissed about Lordaeron and have even more reason to now that Calia is back... just not the way they maybe wanted. The Scarlet Crusade hates all kinds of undead beings and they wanna see them dead for good. But they also hate the Stormwind nobility. What a coincidence that Anduin got kidnapped and Turalyon sits on the throne now. Did everyone forget about the pamphlets that appeared at the end of BFA? We have a marauding scourge in the Eastern Kingdoms and Northrend, Undead Forsaken that got new allies and a weakened Stormwind - more than enough to appear out of the dark again.
There are some more minor things that could lead into a light themed expansion like the Lordaeron shield drop from Sepulcher or Locust Walker for example - another guy just like Wrathion we haven't heard from for a long time now. But I'll leave it with those 3 main points that strongly suggest the light for me personally.
The only problem I have with this theory though is: I have absolutely no clue where this kind of expansion could play out.
It would need to stay on Azeroth since everything I've listed happens right now on our beloved home planet.
But where exactly? Is there some new undiscovered landmass as per usual all of a sudden? Will we finally get out revamp of the northern Eastern Kingdoms?
That's as I said my main doubt about all of this. Because you'd expect a light themed expansion to be a bit more... cosmic?
But yeah, I won't go into my wishes for this theoretical light xpac. Well, maybe in a later follow-up post under this thread should this gain some interest from you guys.
Let me know what you think of my ideas and I'd love to hear your arguments against it and for other xpac themes like the Dragon Isles.