How likely is the Dragon Isle being a real expansion?

[LordKharon]

Maybe their story will be more belivable when no Titan+ level stuff is the main plot. Dragon Isles could be that, its back on Azeroth and smaller in scope.

Generally they should think about uncoupling systems/classes and story to get more content into the game faster. Do story patches on a regular cadence (every 3-4 month) and seperate tuning/systems patches. 10 hours of quest/dungeon content every 3-4 month sould be easy to do for Blizz. At least they should have a dev team that is adequate for being the "biggest MMO in the world/west a least", even if it looks like the opposite these last 2 years...

[DatToffer]

I am not so sure if Dragons can do that. I mean it would be great, but I hope the Naaru will do it. They seem to have this kind of power.

I'd rather help the dragon giving an energy boost to Azeroth so that she can be born and take the sword herself, than wait for Naaru to come and tractor beam the sword out of her, lol.

[Cloudmaker]

I'd rather help the dragon give an energy boost to Azeroth so that she can be born and take the sword herself, than wait for Naaru to come and tractor beam the sword out of her, lol.

That's a good idea too for her to have some weapon to start with.

[Nebron]

Mistake or not (personally, I don't think it's a mistake), it cannot be undone.

Once we slay Titan level entities, we can never go back to killing quill boar.

Story-wise I can easily think of a "power-reset" mechanism. If they decided that "time goes differently in Shadowlands" and we returned to Azeroth where 30 years passed, with our powers drained as a cost of defeating the Jailer, that would be a perfect opportunity to reshape the narrative of WoW's story.

Going into cosmic stuff is wrong as it simply removes the boundries intrinsic to any fantasy universe. As long as you believe the Titans are the greatest force in the universe - some sort of "the Makers" - the story is maintainable and sustainable. The moment you make a correction / retcon, create a narrative of powers X that are greater than Titans, then powers Y that are greater than X and so on, there is nothing to stop you in continuing that - I belive you can get my point.

So compare that to, idk, Tolkiens works. He created Silmarillion - a blueprint for all his work. There's a story of a gensis for this universe, he describes powers ruling the world and that's it. From there, you can make anything work as long as it's inside these boundries he created himself. In contrast to WoW, due to many retcons to the story, these boundries have been removed not once (via Chronicles), but now twice (via Shadowlands broker's POV). That lack of story / universe integrity cannot lead to cohesive storytelling, let alone a great experience.

They pretty much fcked it up time-travelling and the merging of parallel and actual realities. Parallel Gul'dan has been sent to our world, which cause a lot of story problems and paradoxes. And from there, they picked up with Argus and cosmic stuff, Void Lords and so on. After all, Titans were not so powerful.

I believe is what people truly desire are simple, down-to-earth stories of local communities. You can relate to these stories and these are inherently associated with Warcraft genre.

But I'm open to be wrong

[Fistfighter]

Almost all leaks

They're not leaks, dude, they're fanfic speculations

the only "leak" we have is not even a leak, it's a hint provided by blizzard (the store mounts and all that)

there is NOTHING that has been leaked.

So yeah, we will visit the Dragon Isles, but that's about all we could possibly confirm about that.
Just like 2 years ago we knew we will visit the Shadowlands, but none of the """""leaks""""" actually got anything right about what Shadowlands actually was about.

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Mistake or not (personally, I don't think it's a mistake), it cannot be undone.

Once we slay Titan level entities, we can never go back to killing quill boar.

why not? WoW has became a comic book tier storytelling, and comic books do character reboots all the time. Why couldn't we just go back to updated Azeroth and farm elwyn boars for an expansion?

[Sharein]

The only things they really need to do is fixing the server population/faction balance issues, making less systems and treadmill content, and writing COHERENT LORE.

I feel that SL's content isn't really the issue here. It is the lore that is all over the place.

Oh, and fix PvP.

[Jericho21]

The Shadowlands name was correct.

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I'm leaning this way as well. I believe Dragon Isles will be part of the expansion, not the whole of the expansion. I also seriously doubt the expansion itself will be called WoW: The Dragon Isles.

I dunno if anyone really picks up on this, and I'm not saying anyone is stupid/ignorant, BUT Big Blue does tip its hand with the "Timeless Isle/Argus" style ending of expansions. MoP pointed towards a Back to the Future But Now theme for WoD. WoD had a derpy obvious lead to Legion, Legion shoehorned BFA, and BFA was obvious with Sylvanas using OP Death magic from Shadowlands. Now with MMO-C's encrypted file "leak" of a Deluxe Edition pack containing a dragon of sorts? Let's wait for 9.2.5. Let's see if the Dragon flights get involved somehow.

What's the latest books say? Last one I read was the Vol'jin one. Are there hints in there? If it's Dragon Isles, kinda obvious Wrathion is involved (groan) but wouldn't Murozond? I mean there's gotta be a hint and a reason for us to go there. Plus, I'd love to see Dragonshire.

[SniperCT]

Story-wise I can easily think of a "power-reset" mechanism. If they decided that "time goes differently in Shadowlands" and we returned to Azeroth where 30 years passed, with our powers drained as a cost of defeating the Jailer, that would be a perfect opportunity to reshape the narrative of WoW's story.

Going into cosmic stuff is wrong as it simply removes the boundries intrinsic to any fantasy universe. As long as you believe the Titans are the greatest force in the universe - some sort of "the Makers" - the story is maintainable and sustainable. The moment you make a correction / retcon, create a narrative of powers X that are greater than Titans, then powers Y that are greater than X and so on, there is nothing to stop you in continuing that - I belive you can get my point.

So compare that to, idk, Tolkiens works. He created Silmarillion - a blueprint for all his work. There's a story of a gensis for this universe, he describes powers ruling the world and that's it. From there, you can make anything work as long as it's inside these boundries he created himself. In contrast to WoW, due to many retcons to the story, these boundries have been removed not once (via Chronicles), but now twice (via Shadowlands broker's POV). That lack of story / universe integrity cannot lead to cohesive storytelling, let alone a great experience.

They pretty much fcked it up time-travelling and the merging of parallel and actual realities. Parallel Gul'dan has been sent to our world, which cause a lot of story problems and paradoxes. And from there, they picked up with Argus and cosmic stuff, Void Lords and so on. After all, Titans were not so powerful.

I believe is what people truly desire are simple, down-to-earth stories of local communities. You can relate to these stories and these are inherently associated with Warcraft genre.

But I'm open to be wrong

A big problem wow has is not lowering the stakes enough. Like... We always start out weaker, yes, but the stakes for each expansion are much much higher than the last. The DBZ constant powerups of villains issue.

After the legion 8.0 and 9.0 should have lowered the stakes while building up to something big again. That goddamn south seas expansion I wanted would have been perfect for this lol

But wow has never been good at building an overarching narrative.

[Forum Man]

The Shadowlands name was correct.

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I dunno if anyone really picks up on this, and I'm not saying anyone is stupid/ignorant, BUT Big Blue does tip its hand with the "Timeless Isle/Argus" style ending of expansions. MoP pointed towards a Back to the Future But Now theme for WoD. WoD had a derpy obvious lead to Legion, Legion shoehorned BFA, and BFA was obvious with Sylvanas using OP Death magic from Shadowlands. Now with MMO-C's encrypted file "leak" of a Deluxe Edition pack containing a dragon of sorts? Let's wait for 9.2.5. Let's see if the Dragon flights get involved somehow.

What's the latest books say? Last one I read was the Vol'jin one. Are there hints in there? If it's Dragon Isles, kinda obvious Wrathion is involved (groan) but wouldn't Murozond? I mean there's gotta be a hint and a reason for us to go there. Plus, I'd love to see Dragonshire.

Wasn’t your “leak” dragon isles for 9.0 and then you went on about getting personal messages from their lawyers

[MrLachyG]

if this were to become an expansion, here is what I would want:

-5 zones, 1 for each flight, 4 are levelling zones and 1 max level
-goal of start of expansion is to re-empower the dragonflights
-each zone has a perk (similar to WoD) which is exclusive to the zone
-if we get new zone then you can choose a perk to use in new zone and can change at any time with no restriction at the main hub of new zone

[Teriz]

This was brought up in another thread, but Blizzard sometimes leaks expansion hints via their store mounts;
MoP: Heart of the Aspects (while based on the dragon aspects, it looks more like the Cloud Serpents of Pandaria, and mirrors the Chinese legend of Huang Long, the Golden Dragon)
WoD: Enchanted Fey Dragon (this one is a maybe, supposedly had text about Draenor, not able to verify)
Legion: Leaked via Mystic Runesaber.
Shadowlands: Leaked via Vulpine Familiar and Sylverian Dreamer

Recent mounts:
Steamscale Incinerator (Mechanical dragon, released at the tail end of BFA after Shadowlands was announced, also part of Dragon Pack promotion last month)
Sapphire Skyblazer (Blue Phoenix. Seems more like a homage to TBC classic)
Sunwarmed Feline (Giant cat, seems geared towards autumn season, and matches Shadowland creatures)

Of those, the Steamscale seems like the most likely to be a hint. Not only is it a dragon, but another mechanical dragon (the Timeless Mechanical Dragonling pet) was released this past year.

[mythicowow]

Yes every leak about next expansion has been fanfic so far. Real leaks have never been so detailed going in depth into lore for paragraphs like these fake leaks. However, it's still very likely Dragon Isles is the next expansion because it's been rumored for years and hinted at to some degree and now we have the datamine of dragon focused stuff likely related to the deluxe edition. So people jsut made their fanfics based on the most likely candidate, simple as that.

[Jericho21]

Wasn’t your “leak” dragon isles for 9.0 and then you went on about getting personal messages from their lawyers

Erm that was Legion when I leaked that. I was personally contacted by Rod Rigole of Blizzard that forced me to confirm I was the leaker and whom I got the info from otherwise I would face legal problems immediately. At that time, my wife and I were expecting our 2nd child not too far away from that time and I didn't want any issues, especially from a fucking game.

If you're speaking to the lead up to SL and personal messages some turd on her kept asking me, I blew smoke up that person's ass just to fuck with them.

[Forum Man]

Erm that was Legion when I leaked that. I was personally contacted by Rod Rigole of Blizzard that forced me to confirm I was the leaker and whom I got the info from otherwise I would face legal problems immediately. At that time, my wife and I were expecting our 2nd child not too far away from that time and I didn't want any issues, especially from a fucking game.

If you're speaking to the lead up to SL and personal messages some turd on her kept asking me, I blew smoke up that person's ass just to fuck with them.

No you leaked a shadowlands dragon expansion and mentioned a heart of Azeroth style system

[Jericho21]

yep. smoke blown up people's butts. That's all that was.

[Nebron]

A big problem wow has is not lowering the stakes enough. Like... We always start out weaker, yes, but the stakes for each expansion are much much higher than the last. The DBZ constant powerups of villains issue.

After the legion 8.0 and 9.0 should have lowered the stakes while building up to something big again. That goddamn south seas expansion I wanted would have been perfect for this lol

But wow has never been good at building an overarching narrative.

Yeah, South Seas is a huge loss, that's true. Such a great opportunity for a 'down-to-earth' expansion. Kul'Tiras and Zandalar as two main continents was actually a good idea - but I can easily imagine it being expanded into Plunder Isles and Tel'Abim.

Other side of the world? Soooo much to explore if only the story guys were a bit more creative. But yes, you summed it up pretty well - it's a DBZ thing

[Soulwind]

50%: Either it is, or it isn't.

How should we know, Azshara was an inminent threat after Cataclysm. And after Pandaria. And after Draenor. So next expansion could be any of the ones people have been speculating about for years, or even something entirely new.

[ro9ue]

yep. smoke blown up people's butts. That's all that was.

You got the 10.0 leak?

[Ersula]

Yes, it feels like time to do an expansion that's a throwback to its classic rpg roots. Dungeons & Dragons & such.

But No, Dragon Isles is not "an idea they've wanted to do for a long time." They had no ideas for the Dragon Isles, besides a cool temple built into a mountain shaped like a squid: Which they already used as Temple of the Storms. It was a remnant of the game before it became more quest-based. It was originally just a landmass to kill dragons on.

[Aedruid]

Dragon Isles seems to be a very likely expansion. Not sure if it's 100% the next exac, but going back into dragon lore at some point (which brings back homage to the classic story) would be pretty down to earth and feel good. Hopeully it comes with a beautiful landscape, good sound track, and epic story. We'll see, but I'm hopeful this is the next expansion.