As time’s gone on, I’ve come to the conclusion that WoD was hammered out to coincide with the major motion picture so the current content would “match” but once the movie kind of came and went with all the sound and fury of moisten air passing through a person’s built in couch cushions…support for the expansion was promptly dropped and production shifted immediately to what I assume was the actual planned expansion after Mists…Legion.
Think about it, Garrosh escaping his trial and rallying the Dragonmaw Clan (and by extension the other remnants of the Dark Horde) to serve as both a unified force against the Horde and Alliance while also being a fifth column against the Legion. Basically the part of Illidan gets replaced by that of Garrosh.
I was surprised that WoD didn’t lead to an in the past Azeroth and we meet the other cast of characters from the movie and it essentially becomes WoW 2 with the players are able to keep their existing characters and Blizz is able to reboot the franchise.
I was immensely disappointed WoD didn’t lead into an AU Azeroth where we’re fighting against a Medivh/Gul’dan tag team and manipulated Human Leaders (ie King Llane, Tereneas, AU Genn, etc).
Boss Fight against a Demon-fueled Uther Felbringer.
Just image… we return to Azeroth only to discover it’s a gigantic light crystal. We’re told we have to change our entry point. We go back to the Second War era. There’s Yrel and AU Xe’ra.
Like I said, I think that’s because WoD was a marketing tie-in less than an actual product. Were it not for Blizzard using AU Draenor for the Mag’har (When the other Mag’har are right there in Outland) absolutely nothing from WoD would have “stuck” and it’d basically be the fever dream expansion.
I would laugh so hard at that, especially if it means in the next expansion she’s not even a dungeon boss and gets killed by Tyrande at the end of a single person questline.
The Primus, Archon, and Winter Queen standing in the Arbiter’s chamber in Oribos. Since Baine and Tyrande are coincidentally already in the Shadowlands, they get to defend/prosecute again. Kyrians play memories from Sylvanas’ soul, or other souls in the Shadowlands that have suffered directly at her hands. Then, toward the end before the Eternal Ones can pronounce sentence, some Brokers bust in led by Ve’nari, and they all disappear!
A Knight of the Ebon Blade rushes forward and states the portals to Azeroth shattered, and when they make new portals they see a dead world conquered by Sylvanas! So, the Kyrians suddenly lift Kairozdormu out of the Maw and he crosses his arms smugly and goes, “Well, well, well,” before Jaina gives him the back of her hand and he meekly makes a portal to past Azeroth circa WC2.
Thus begins the, ‘Highlords of Azeroth,’ expansion! We’ll have the old Horde yet again because who doesn’t want more Grom, Ogrim, Gul’dan, etc…? But this time we’ll also have a heroic Zul’jin, because why not? Guest stars will include Yrel, Xe’ra, and the AU Lightbound as surprise antagonists, a Sargeras-possessed-Medhiv who is extremely confused, and past Tyrande who does the super sekrit forbidden Elune-fusion-dance ceremony with her future self to become the Moon Warrior, the even COOLER version of Night Warrior, which will promptly struggle to 1v1 Khargath Bladefist, who will himself be one-shot by Jaina lazily in the same patch.
Next expansion is a trial expansion, a literal trial.
It’s a bit like a bad Ace Attorney rip off.
All the questing we do to level to 70 is gathering evidence and reading very lengthy legal texts, it’s basically the discovery process. The dungeons and raids are you on a jury with four of your peers going over evidence or with your respective faction lawyers discussing evidence and reviewing legislation to make your case.
Thrall, Jaina and Bolvar are lawyers. Thrall represents the Horde, Jaina the Alliance and Bolvar the Shadowlands.
Honestly I’d be down for it too but also I could just play Ace Attorney.
At least I think the MMO grind mechanics and story gating would be a funny way to mimick how long some cases can take to go to trial.
Who would be Sylvannas’ court appointed attorney? Or would she represent herself and get into some weird sovereign citizen rant about how she’ll never serve lol
Also another opinion regarding patch 9.1 but I actually don’t mind Korthia being small. It makes running from one end to the other to get a rare a piece of cake. Also the rare respawn timer is pretty quick so I don’t feel so stressed or annoyed if I miss one.
I’m mostly doing the bare minimum to collect the transmog sets so I like it from a casual player perspective.
Though I am annoyed that you can’t buy the specific slot gear you want and instead it’s an RNG item that costs 1k stygia. I’ve gotten a few drops from rares but all repeats and I decided I’d never buy from the vendor because knowing my luck it’d just be more repeats.
It’s my hope that Blizzard took a gamble and basically had a skeleton crew working on 9.1 so that 9.2 can be really far along and come out in a reasonable time period, maybe even like 2 or 3 months. Not for myself cause I’m not playing but for those who waited.
But I doubt it.
In all of this I feel bad for the devs though. Not the bigger shot calling ones but the grunts and programmers and whatnot who have probably been in a permanent state of neverending crunch that seems to be becoming more of an industry standard.