I’m a maniac who likes to spit out video game ideas and RPG boss fights for fun in my downtime and I’ve made a series of four expansion concepts now that start from N’zoth’s defeat and go from there. First one is a return to Northernd after a new Scourge attack, with all kinds of crazy changes to the environments there. It led to the discovery of Sylvanas having usurped Bolvar as the Lich Queen.
Expansion after that was a Better Shadowlands with actual Azerothian afterlives that ended in all the Old Gods, who’d all died by now and were stuck in the Maw, merging to become essentially a Void Lord and trying to devour Azeroth’s soul from the Shadowlands.
Then after that I did Dragon Isles mixed with a world revamp and a bunch of continuations of stories all over the place as well as new story thread seeded for just about every race. And most recently I did my last expansion which takes place in the “Deep Dark”, an abyssal land so far underwater that physics starts acting funky and you start drifting closer to the Void.
Imagine Subnautica meets Lovecraftian horror but you’re stuck on the ground (until flight is unlocked of course) while giant leviathans swim above you in the dark sky. I introduced a lot of new Void themed entities and stuff.
I can share PDFs in a few days when I’m home from vacation if anyone wants to read it all. It’s lengthy, granted, so I’d just recommend picking away at a few paragraphs whenever you’re bored and looking around the internet for something interesting from time to time.
What I’d do if I were in charge of storytelling would probably just be a focus on the world as the character again. Warcraft stories pretty much write themselves at this point if you let them. Every race has their own conflicts of interest with one another and needs and you really can just let it move naturally and get a great story out of it. You have Void infused elves hanging out with Light infused draenei, for instance. Lots of interactions there.
I’d also focus on gaining new recurring characters while putting racial leaders on the back burner. Racial leaders shouldn’t be going on adventures, they’re leaders. They need to rule their lands and be kept out of harm’s way. Not to mention less interactions with racial leaders creates a mystique around them. Remember the Battle for Undercity in Wrath? You showed up and freaking Thrall, Vol’jin, and Sylvanas are there. You knew things were serious and that made it so awesome.
But yes, new recurring characters who aren’t bogged down by racial leader demands would be great. They’re more relatable, their flaws are more natural, and it expands the world as well as advancing their race’s portrayal and culture. One racial leader does not represent the attitude and story of a whole race. But several characters of that race can start to establish trends.
Aside from that, I think it should be more commonplace to reuse zones and continents for patches. We’re all fans of Warcraft. I think we’d all be happy to go back to places and see how they’ve changed. I’d love to see a modern asset Ashenvale where that fugly volcano has cooled and become a forest again. Or a repopulated Gilneas.
Could have it be an epic battle or just chilling and doing local heroism. People who care about the story won’t mind, and the people who don’t care about the story wouldn’t care either as long as they get to fight stuff so it’s a win-win.
