Let’s be honest, we all predicted Shadowlands if we did a tiny bit of research…but no theories I’ve heard, regarding what lies beyond anyway, there were predictions for Return of the Lich King, but much like BFA was the South Seas expansion, Shadowlands is Return of the Lich King/Shadowlands both in one, so…
What does that leave after the Shadowlands business is all sorted?
Holy Skies.
Void. Ethereal planet maybe.
i know i joked during WoD that we would be going to a AU northrend. that’s basically what shadowlands is. blizz doesn’t reinvent the wheel often
Into the Void.
I should hope Karesh and the Void. You guys realize what the level squish means?
We’re back where we started 15 years ago.
Conceivably WoW could continue the 10 level boost now per expansion. This is a good thing.
Mirrorlands. Where you start at 60 and level in reverse. The player who hits the character select screen with a level 1 first wins.
Still waiting on the Emerald Dream expansion which I thought was going too be 2 expansions ago.
Whatever it is please don’t focus on humans anymore.
Emerald dream. But now with multiple realm. With one realm look like argus but alive-y. And the other one look like ice crown but kinda warm instead.
It could be something along the lines of the Dragon Isles. I’m betting that they’ll want to bring it down a ways the same way they did with Legion/BfA. It’s their way of slowing the DBZ-levels of power creep.
We spent all of Legion using artifacts to fight an endless world-destroying army of demons. BfA started out with us in a fairly tame situation where we were just working on fighting a few local threats and each other. There was the whole “Azeroth is dying” thing but it wasn’t really the main focus of the story and mostly just got sidelined. We went from saving the world with the Justice League to beating up clowns and muggers in a bat costume.
Shadowlands is starting out at a high level the same way Legion did so I’d imagine whatever’s next will start out fairly mundane again.
Yeah I agree, Shadowlands to me is a cross between Lich King 2.0 and more Old God nonsense.
Reverse leveling. I like it.
We can fly from the start and it’s gone.
The tagline for shadowlands specifically says;
Step into Azeroth’s afterlife, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with legends of the past as you fight to preserve the universe.
I have a feeling we’ll be seeing The Pantheon again by time 10.0 rolls around. I predict Sylvanas will betray The Jailer and assume his position as an entity of Death.
the Lightseas
It was supposed to be the first one but we got it in… I don’t remember. Which one was Xavius in?
Legion?
Okay this is how it worked out…
The Emerald Dream expansion=Patch 7.0 with Emerald Nightmare and druid stuff going on.
South Seas expansion=Patch 8.0 with Island Expeditions.
Wrath 2.0=Shadowlands expansion.
Was supposed to be the first one but it was scrapped for Burning Crusade.
Realistically after BfA I’d consider them officially out of “original warcraft lore” to pull from for content. At least in terms of known villains and major well-established locations and such.
South Seas, N’zoth, and Azshara were pretty much the last plot threads to finish out, and all 3 of those are happening in BfA.
And Shadowlands is exhausting “Lich King 2: Electric Boogaloo”. Legion already exhausted “Burning Crusade 2”.
I think after Shadowlands they’re going to be hurting. They’re out of villains with weight behind their names, they’re out of locations that are anything more than a footnote in a lore book somewhere, and they’ve already blown their load on shoving deceased big-name characters down our throats with Grom and the other AU Orcs, Gul’dan, Illidan, and now Kael’thas, Uther, and I guess Draka if she counts (she probably shouldn’t).
I expect Shadowlands to be good. It has an interesting theme and deviates enough from being literally “Lich King 2” to keep me happy. I think they’ve learned some solid lessons over Legion and BfA and this is the first chance to really show us that (since they start working on expansions so far in advance).
But they don’t have any good asspulls left to recover from the next “bad” expansion down the line (if you believe in the whole A team / B team thing, then that would be the one after Shadowlands). I think WoW will survive that initially, but may be in serious trouble when it fails to bounce back afterward.
So I guess I’m less interested in what 10.0 will be, and more interested in what the state of the game will be in, say, 11.2.
Not until we klll Hogger in a Mythic raid.