Depends on who you ask. Depends on the resources available. Depends on what are the stories the devs are capable of telling.
Everything and then some? From members of known cosmo influences and Azeroth herself being at odds with someone, to going back into a state of never ending conflict between the factions with occasionally spending time on other “threats”, sometimes fighting them, sometimes aiding them.
The imagination is the limit. And the quality of execution, of course. There are alt-timelines, timetravel, various planes of existence, all while we did not even uncover the details of the titan actions on Azeroth, what’s on the other side, or what are the secrets from the long forgotten past on the place, mysteries on the surface and below.
I mean, I can’t answer for everyone, but if I quickly summarize what I saw in the last year across 4 regional WoW forums, reddit, discords, youtube comments, and twitter, I think the big themes would be:
- focus on continuity. As few retcons as possible, rarely, and when the pay off if really well executed.
- depth over breadth. Not hopping from topic to another, but to show follow ups, more attention to how events flow from one to another, how things clash or co-exist.
- more clear narrative structure. Climax where it should be (aka the most impactful event should be where it usually should be). Some kind of ending to stories. Be it smaller ones, or a patch / expansion story lines. There could be narrative hooks for the future, but the state of never ending cliffhanger burns out people. There need to be some kind of closure, open or not so much, to most story chapters.
- world vs selected cast as the main characters. It’s debatable, I know some people liking following a cast of heroes. But more and more people getting tired of the format and want to focus on Azeroth, what happens after events, on fixing what is damaged, or uncovering the mysteries of the place, etc. It seems that a lot of what happens should be clearly with some relevance / connection to Azeroth or the themes. In a way, there seems to be a shift from “hero-focused” stories that were hyped in Cata days, to “Azeroth is the main character”.
There are more things to add, but I think considering those things would be a solid first, but far from the last, step. There are things that the devs do rather well even these days, but for some reason do not commit to what they’re reasonably good at.
edit: actually there is one of things that does stand out for me personally like a sore thumb. It’s not as vast or commonly mentioned, just if I have to pick 1 - commitment: is WoW the game about factions or not? What I see is a mess. I hear in interviews “factions are the core” and all the talk about why it’s a good idea to keep them around. Yet the story bashes the idea of being focused on (in universe) your faction / nation, etc. I hear that all we did was done in the name of factions. Yet in the game there is “for Azeroth”.
So, I definitely would want to see commitment to 1 theme and exploring it in-depth: if the factions are the core and are good to keep, tell the story that the factions are the core and are good to keep; if not - just stop pretending and wasting dev resources, admit the story direction and adjust the game-play side accordingly.
I would be fine with going all-in in either direction. As is - IMO it’s just wasting dev resources and making each direction worse than it could’ve been.
gl hf