Hello everyone! The other day someone on the stream asked me if Warcraft still has enough
stories to tell to fill future expansions. I speculated a little bit during the stream from the top of my head,
but later figured that it might be fun to actually dedicate a video to it and this is that video!
Keep in mind that there are countless stories that they could invent in the future and this is just me speculating
a little bit about stories that might they might use, about features that might be introduced so this is just me speculating for a little bit of fun. Hope youll enjoy! ... Lets begin shall we?!
Starting off with the story that I find most likely to happen next, it's the expansion named Eye of Azshara.
Still story takes place after we come back from Draenor and we find out that the world of Azeroth has
been taken over by Azshara, by the Naga and N'zoth. Queen Azshara used to be the queen of the night elves until
her plans of summoning Sargeras and the legion failed. As the water surrounded her palace,
whispers of the old gods offered her a deal.
Azshara and the highborn that were with her were transformed into the naga and took up
residence beneath the waves as the sundering took place and transformed the world of Kalimdor.
Azshara wasn’t a queen just for her looks, even though she was beautiful to behold. She used
her magic to enchant those around her and the pitlord Mannoroth recognized that she was a force
against which only his lord Sargeras and Archimonde would prove superior.
That means that she was more powerfull than Mannoroth, even as a nigh elf, and now she's teamed up
with the old gods so who knows what kind of power she has
So Azshara would be the main character in this story, but similar to the cataclysm where
deathwing was the main guy but there was a guy behind the guy, so too does Azshara follow
orders and behind her are the old gods, specifically the old god N’zoth. We’ve seen his influence
during the Cataclysm as he was said to be the one signing Deathwing’s paychecks. And those
that quested in Vasjh’ir have also seen a few of his minions. The novel Stormrage
had the emerald dream turned into the emerald nightmare and the old god N’zoth was also behind this
and at the end of the book Malfurion could sense that the evil behind it all was
still in the ocean, but they would deal with it at another day.
All these hints at N’zoth being near the ocean, being beneath the waves of Azeroth, it has me believe that he’s the one
working close together with Azshara and the naga. This story would be a great opening
to introduce the other half of Azeroth which we’ve never seen before and we know that
it’s a possibility thanks to red shirt guy at blizzcon 2013:
The southernmost points of the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Pandaria are all desert or jungle climates. This indicates that they'd be at what should be the equator. Is there an entire southern hemisphere of Azeroth that we simply haven't seen yet?
Yes & no. It's a very astute observation. We actually have argued about this in the studio. So I think it's totally possible that there's more stuff down there.
An unknown area of azeroth, such potential to be placed there, so many secrets still hidden on Azeroth. On top of that we also
have a bunch of islands that we already know about: Kul’tiras, Jaina's homeland. We got tel’abim the magical banana island. We got Kazan, the home island of the goblins that still has a part to play.
and of course we can’t forget about the trolls. During mists of pandaria
we found out that the cataclysm also hit Zandalar and it’s now slowly sinking into the sea.
King Rastakan, ruler of the Zandalari gave some ships to the prophet zul to shut him
up about his catastrophic prophecies and these prophecies actually turned out to be true. Zul offered his people
a way to escape and they decided to follow the prophet and this leaves the fate of Rastakhan unknown.
I think Rastakhan could be a great way to get us more familiar with ancient troll lore, perhaps a little bit of titan lore or origin of Azeroth lore
and it also opens up the door to Vol’jin to make new allegiance and step forward in
his new roll as warchief. The first none orcish warchief in history deserves his time in the
spotlight and what better way to do it then to combine it with some good old fashion troll stories. I think that could be awesome.
For the Alliance, I would say that this is a good time to bring back Magni Bronzebeard
and create some drama within the unified faction that it currently is. Just before the cataclysm,
Magni tried to use an ancient titan ritual to communicate with the land and figure out
what was going on and what was happening with the Cataclysm. This ritual backfired and instead of communicating with the land, he
was turned into a crystal, he became one with the land but his spirit is still very much alive
He was mentioned in Thrall’s short story so he could still come back one day and he could guide us into
this new unexplored territory of Azeroth. Just imagine the former king waking up to find
not only his daughter in the council of three hammers, but also his grandson half bronzebeard,
half dark iron. The world as he knew it has changed and will he be able to deal with that
or will he try to reclaim his former seat of power? and will there be some little bit of drama, I would to see that to be honest. The Alliance is such a unified force, they are so very boring right now...I would love to see more drama
So those are the major characters for that expansion so in short, we come back, naga
have taken over the world and we have to stop Azshara and N’zoth and Neptulon and what
ever else they have in their arsenal, we need to take care of that and we need to save the world. To aid us we get to party with king Rastakhan, we
get to build our own shipyard with sea battles, we get Magni bronzebeard back, we get different
islands and a whole new area of Azeroth to explore. I think there's a lot of potential for this story line and a great addition to this would be a
neutral faction of pirates that can choose to work for either side or perhaps this is
the moment for the murlocs to shine. Part of it would take place within the water, but
you don’t just get a sea horse, you also get submarines while above the waves you get
to set sail on your boat, you get to fight with eachother, quest on land... It's gonna be great!
The second story that they can go with is the one that I like to call: The Great Dark Beyond, but keep in mind these are just names that I give it.
The great dark beyond is the term used for the unexplored space or galaxy or universe
or what ever you want to call it. Pretty much anything unexplored in the Warcraft universe, that is called the great dark beyond. This story begins as the previous one as in we’ve cleaned up the story line
in Draenor, we go home and instead of finding the naga partying on the planet, this time it's the legion.
Wrathion’s warnings during Mists of Pandaria of the world not ready yet they've
come true and the legion has dominated our remaining forces. Many heroes have been taken
prisoner and taken to their home base on Argus and we need to take care of this threat once
and for all. The legion has pushed us too far and now that we know how to kill them
for good, as we're gonna see with Archimonde, we need to kill them within twisting nether, now it’s time to take the battle to them.
We clean up what ever forces they’ve got stationed on Azeroth, possibly together with
the Naaru and we blast off into space. We know from Velen’s short story that the Exodar
has been repaired so that’s part of how we could get there, but alternatively
you could also say that we're gonna get another Tempest Keep. Perhaps the goblins and gnomes they've been able
to replicate Draenei technology. Either way, we build our spaceships and these don’t
come cheap. We need to gather resources, horde and alliance needs to work together similar
to how they did it before the opening of Ahn’qiraj. We need to create a massive spaceship with the materials collected and both sides blast
off to their own starting planets and from there they need to find a way to build their
own individual spacecrafts. Similar to our own ships at sea, this will allow us to have
world pvp while fighting with our ships. I’m talking about small, fast individual rockets if you want to travel really quick
too massive guild ships that have multiple stations to work together with. You can have people stationed on the guns and on the steering wheel, you can fight with eachother, you can steal resources. I think this would be so cool
Besides shooting each other, we’ll also use these ships to visit new planets ofcourse and this
is where they can really make the expansion shine with brand new cultures and designs,
since there a millions of planets out there. We know of a few of them. We know of Xoroth, home
world of the dreadsteeds used by the warlocks. You have K’arash, original home world of
the ethereals which would be great to dive deeper into their origin story like they did
with the arakoa and then there’s of course Argus home world of the Draenei and now the
stronghold of the burning legion. Characters that can accompany us are of course Velen
for the Draenei and it would great to find out that the Draenei are not as pure and holy
as they pretend to be. Remember that they have been running away from Kil’jaeden and
the legion for years upon years, countless times the legion tried to capture them and
countless times they escaped. What happened to the planets that they visited before, how
do they carry that burden of guilt and what other skeletons are hiding in their closet? Velen: 'We must unite against the legion."
Besides Velen and the Draenei, you also have ofcourse Wrathion who has a high stake in all of this so he and Anduin will probably join the journey
while the naaru and the blood elves like lady Liadrin could also be a great addition and
the origin of light could be further explored. Those are the people that come with us and
together we explore the great dark, we find out about new cultures, new story lines, new threats, we kick all kinds of butt
until we reach Argus. There a massive army of the legion is waiting for us, but as we
learned during Warlords of Draenor, you need to be in the twisting nether to really take care of
the legion. As luck would have it, Argus has a gateway straight into the twisting nether and there
a few characters are waiting for us to join the battle. Illidan Stormrage for example,
many have requested for him to come back including myself and Illidan had become so much of a
demon, that he could never truly be killed on Outland. His spirit returned to the Nether
where he, as a demon hunter, he's been fighting against the legion but he did not fight alone. Alleria and Turalyon are also at his side. Turalyon,
one of the greatest human paladins in history and Alleria is the long lost windrunner sister
and they've finally returned to the story. They hold the secrets and the keys to defeating Kil’jaeden
and the Legion, but the real enemy, the real bad guy behind all of this, he's far too strong.
Sargeras, as we take out Kil’jaeden, he show and steps up to the plate, but we are
no where near ready to take him on. With all haste we evacuate out of the twisting nether,
maybe Velen or Illidan or hell maybe even Thura will stay behind to buy us some time
and we get the hell out of there back to our own home planet. Not all is lost though, we’ve
bought ourselves valuable time, we've conquer areas of the great dark and the legion has been severally weakened. Wrathion will
resume his duties as the earthwarden, but for the moment the planet is safe. This could
also be a great gateway in to warcraft 4, in to the RTS, the whole battle shown in Velen’s vision of
the army of light against darkness, but that’s maybe getting a bit too far ahead. The reason
why I think this story is less likely to happen than eye of Azhara is mainly because we’ve
just dealt with the legion on Draenor and it would be a little bit of a repeat. It's not impossible though, they could definitely go with it, it's just...you know...We've just done a legion fight. I think it would be a little bit boring, but who knows!
At number 3 for this list, the last one I'm going to talk about today, I’ve placed the story line left wide open at the end of Wrath of the Lich King
so lets go with Wrath of the Lich Queen. As we took down Arthas we got a beautiful
cinematic, but one line that didn’t make a lot of sense.
Tirion nearly placed the helmet on his head and took up this roll as jailer of the damned,
but thankfully for him, Bolvar had nothing left to live for and took his place instead.
This left free Tirion to go home to Hearthglen, still wielding the ashbringer, and now they’re busy with
cleaning up the plaguelands and keeping it safe. Meanwhile Sylvanas Windrunner is becoming more and more like
the one that she hated. She has entered an allegiance with the Val'kyr who will keep
her alive and out of hell while also resurrecting the dead and creating more forces for the
forsaken. They are Sylvanas her bulwark against the infinite, her way of avoiding that endless
torment in hell, but it comes with a price
I find it hard to imagine how this story line would go. On the one hand we have Sylvanas
who’s running around and acting like the Lich King with a lot of people promising to
take care of her but not actually doing anything. On the other hand, Sylvanas is a fan favorite,
she’s leader of the Forsaken, so how do you deal with her without pissing off a whole
bunch of fans and removing another horde leader out of power.
I always had hope that reuniting with her sisters could possibly bring back Sylvanas
from the dark side, but that story line was used for war crimes in which Vereesa made
plans with Sylvanas to murder Garrosh, they grew closer, Sylvanas started to feel again,
but in the end, Vereesa quickly backed out and betrayed her sister. This devastated Sylvanas
and makes me believe that not even Alleria can bring her back, but who knows, maybe the
older sister will have a better effect on her and will be able to push her away from the dark side and become a little bit lighter again.
That’s a way that they could push Sylvanas back to a lighter side, but perhaps her fate
is already sealed when she agreed to the valkyrs proposition. It’s uncertain what exactly
the Valkyr get out of helping Sylvanas besides liberating themselves from bolvar’s
control. Perhaps all of this was just part of a much greater plan. Imagine that Ner’zhul never
left the helm of domination. Arthas, in his mind, stabbed both Ner’zhul and his good
side with frostmourne claiming that he wouldn’t be controlled anymore, but we already saw
his good side still very much present during Wrath of the Lich King . Even the lich king himself has said things like
I used to be a shaman, so perhaps Ner’zhul was never truly gone. He just moved to the
back of Arthas's mind, biding his time until the inevitable would happen. His disobedient puppet would
be defeated by the world, and Ner'zhul guided us disguised as king terenas himself. He gave us all the information that we needed and at the
end he proclaimed that there must always be a lich king, but not for the reasons given.
It wasn’t to keep the undead under control. We already took care of the undead, there weren't that many forces left. instead it was to give Ner’zhul a new host.
At this very moment, he’s whispering, corrupting the once noble and righteous bolvar Fordragon.
Kel’thuzad is still out there as well, we never destroyed his phylactery and the valkyr
were never released from their service to the lich king. All they did was fill Sylvanas
her mind with fake visions of hell, manipulating her back into service of the one true king.
Unknowing, she’s creating more and more troops, until the day comes that Ner’zhul’s
ready and the lich king rises once more. He does not come alone though, he has found a
new ally near the capital of the Forsaken. Beneath tirisfall glades sleeps the unnamed
old god, responsible for driving the high elves mad, responsible for the corruption
and devastation that has befallen that area. Now Ner'zhul has found new allies. Allies
that are more then willing to set him free in exchange for their own freedom and their
own glorious power. Rise of the Lich Queen will set Sylvanas on a path of slavery, the
sins of the past will catch up to her, but not too worry fans. You will get the chance
to save your beloved queen and the alliance will get their chance to reclaim old territories.
Once all is said and done, the Forsaken will have to move since the old god sleeping beneath Tirisfall glades, that's not an area you want to live in. They have to move to Icecrown giving the alliance
the opportunity to retake their capital city of Lordaeron, they can retake Gilneas and even Danath trollbane
will return to Stromgarde. You could even take this story line further and remove Sylvanas
her control over the blood elves, but that might be taking it a little bit too far again.
This is the basic set up. So Sylvanas she's kinda going to be redeemed. It was actually a plan of Ner'zhul and she's going to be turned into a slave, we're going to save her, we're going to take care of Ner'zhul, Kel'thuzad and we're going to wrap up that story line.
Like I said everyone, there are countless story lines and expansions that they could build on and I still have a fair few ideas that they could use so if you like this kind of video let me know and I might make more.
These are just a few of the top of my head that I would love to see. I think that there are many more to come and let me know what you think!
What would your perfect story line, your perfect expansion be for in the future? Leave a comment down below and who knows, we might make more videos like this.
Anyways, I think I've been rambling and speculating for long enough so thank you once again for watching everyone!
Subscribe if you like my videos and until next time guys...see ya!