I was thinking about this another day, trying to figure out why Shadowlands was the first expansion announcement that I didn't have any excitement about since I started playing back in late TBC.
In the process, I noticed that every expansion we had before explored mostly everything the Warcraft franchise had to offer.
Vanilla = Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor
Burning Crusade = Outland and Quel'thalas
Wrath of the Lich King = Northrend
Cataclysm = The elemental planes and the remaining zones from Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms.
Mists of Pandaria = Pandaria -
this is when I thought they were running out of ideas, surely Pandaren was a thing back in Warcraft 3, but I never expected to see a full expansion all about them.
Warlords of Draenor =
Bad attempt on Warcraft 2 lore, but still something we were familiar with. And we were able to see Draenor before it was blown up.
Legion = Broken Isles, Argus, Emerald Nightmare/Dream
Battle for Azeroth = Kul Tiras, Naz'jatar, Zandalar, and Nya'lotha.
Then in Shadowlands, we got an expansion centered around a place that we barely heard about and were more akin to visiting the Emerald Dream than anything else.
So, with that in mind, what's left?
Are we going to explore more cosmic realms/planes that everything we know about them can be summarized in a single image or even a word?
This is why I think so many players want a World Revamp because there are no longer places that we wanna visit, we literally explored everything we've heard a lot about and were excited to explore. So, the only right move would be going back home, starting over.
Another day I made a post on the 10.0 speculation thread about leaks being scarce these days, but that's also because of what I said above. I mean, back in the day anyone could make a "
fake leak" about a reasonable place like: 6.0 will be about Argus, or 5.0 will be about either the South Seas, Broken Isles, or Naz'jatar. We had so many places that we knew we would explore at some point, and also who would be a major character there, such as Kil'jaeden and Sargeras, Azshara, Rasthakhan, N'zoth, etc. Feels like the Warcraft franchise already used all its characters and places we could be hyped about, and I think that's also why so many people are not engaged with the lore anymore, it seems like nobody cares about the fate of the Jailer Zovaal, and I think that's because he literally came out of nowhere and is meant only to be used as a plot device so we could have someone to blame for Sylvanas actions and an excuse to visit the Shadowlands.
While I think we still have a single character that is meant to become a villain (Nozdormu), he technically lost his Aspect powers and shouldn't be able to become (Muronozond), and the place that could fit in his expansion (Dragon Isles), we also barely heard anything about. So, even this could feel empty for many people.
What do you guys think? Did I forget something? There's still any place that we should be excited to visit?