World of Warcraft II

While it's almost certainly a long, long way off, WoW 2 is something I'm really looking forward to. It's not going to be new, fresh, innovative, anything of that sort - it's simply going to be WoW, rebuilt on the foundation of three, five, ten, whatever years of experience.

I often say to myself, 'what would you do if you could go back in time to when WoW started, but with your current knowledge, skill and experience?' I think that I'd roll a warrior as my first main, get onto the first oceanic server as soon as it came out, and be a main tank in a bleeding edge guild - BWL, AQ40, Naxx, and I'm there in the forefront, tanking first kills. /wistful

But WoW 2 will be, I think, very similar to that scenario. The playing field will be completely reset. Sure, a few guilds might carry over, but the ball will be in my park so to speak - with entire servers full of unattached potential raiders, I'll be able to be one of the founding members of a proper, hardcore, raiding guild. And I won't be held back by my timezone, timetable, or attitude as I was in vanilla WoW.

But aside from the whole 'clean-slate' aspect, the game itself will be... better. More polished. More complete. Blizzard will know exactly what they set out to do in each individual facet of the game. Lowbie instances now are just a mess of mobs in seemingly random positions, as if they were outside. Not in WoW 2. Instances will have defined trash pulls and interesting bosses. Many levelling zones now lack centralisation, which is annoying, and feel bland, which detracts from the overall feel of the game. Not so in WoW 2. Quests will be found in logical and clear clumps, and every zone will be rich and cohesive. Compare Desolace - uh, there are... kodos here. Some Twilight's Hammer, I see, but what're they doing here? - to Hellfire Peninsula - There's a war going on here, and you'd better step sharply to keep alive - and you can see just how much Blizz have improved since they began their masterpiece back in whenever it was.

And, of course, you have to wonder - will MC be in WoW 2? AQ? BRM? CoT? Kara? Naxx? Will there be Scourge? Burning Legion? Illidan? Kael'thas? Arthas? Ragnaros? Black dragons? Trolls? Dark Iron dwarves? Murlocs? Silithid? Naga? Green dragons? C'thun? Kazzak? Medivh? Tirion Fordring? Scarlets?

With Sargaeras killed by Aegwynn and later Khadgar, Archimonde destroyed by a lot of fireworks, Kil'Jaedan (presumably) dying in SWP in 2.4, Tichondrius killed by Illidan, Mannoroth killed by Grom, and Kael'thas dead (again), the Burning Legion is pretty much leadershipless. So unless a minor character is promoted to top dog (Kazzak head of the Legion? I mean, he's killed all the time, but that didn't stop him from opening the Dark Portal for TBC... maybe world bosses don't count as dying lorewise O_o), a new character is invented, or one of the previous leaders ends up not actually being dead, that rules them out of the running for the Bad Guys.

With Illidan killed in TBC, the Illidari blood elves and demons look likely to collapse as well. The only other real candidate for leadership of the Illidari was Varedis, and he's 5-mannable. So they're also pretty much out of the running.

The Black Dragonflight is a strong possibility, with Deathwing still at large somewhere. Even though Nefarian and Onyxia, both his known children, have been dead for quite some time, he could easily have more children and lieutenants - and, indeed, in the fel orc camp in Netherwing Ledge a dragon in the guise of a blood elf talks to the overlord there, and they refer to 'the Master' and 'continuing the work of Nefarian,' as well as arranging for Netherwing eggs to get back to this Master. So it looks like Deathwing's getting ready to do Bad Things. (On a side note, he could already be doing Bad Things - he could very well be in charge of the Infinite Dragonflight).

Speaking of the Infinite Dragonflight, they're evil enough (want to destroy time itself) and mysterious enough (we know nothing of their leaders, etc) that they could make a good Bad Guy in the future.

Continuing on, although this is all wild speculation, I assume that by the time WLK is over, Arthas, Anub'arak, Sapphiron, and Kel'thuzad will be dead for good, leaving the Scourge leadershipless - and indeed, without a Lich King they're mindless.

Keeping with the undead theme, Sylvanas and the Forsaken could make a good Bad Guy (engineering a plague to destroy the Scourge and, oh, every living thing) - however if that happened people wouldn't be able to play Undead.

The Scarlets could be a Bad Guy I suppose... but as awesome as they are, they don't have what it takes to be a real major thing. They hate the undead, yeah, and so they kill the undead, yeah... but they don't want to, for example, conquer Outland or summon the avatar of a dark god. There's no reason to go and attack their fortresses or w/e. Apart from that, a fair amount of their leaders are alive, and they're of the nature that a new leader could just spring out of nowhere without feeling wrong. Plus they're awesome and they're related to the whole Ashbringer storyline.

The Qiraji, well... They were all in AQ, and that got pretty badly pwnt by players. C'thun with them. The Silithid, well... without Qiraji they're pointless.

Azshara seems like a prime candidate for a Bad Guy sometime in the future. Zin-Azshari could be large enough to be a raid instance, or a four-wing instance (three 5-mans, one raid, a la Coilfang), or a zone containing a couple of instances, or, hell, the setting for an entire expansion - it was a pretty damn huge city as far as I know, bigger than any modern Warcraft city. And the Naga are pretty cool, and they hate everyone, which gives them motivation to be Bad Guys.

And the other big thing which I think will be coming in future is the stuff happening in the Emerald Dream - Cenarius is there, and Malfurion is there, and Ysera is there, and apparently when they exploded Archimonde he broke it or something, making everything evil (hence the four Dragons of Nightmare). This has been explored a little - world green dragons, Sunken Temple and Eranikus, the whole Green Scepter Shard bit - but we've been dealing with the symptoms, not the problem. Of course, the Emerald Dream is supposed to be not exactly another world - more a sort of dream where druids and animals go - so unless they just decide to make it a proper, solid world it'll pose some problems.

At any rate (back to my original point), looking forward to WoW 2.

'Cos of stuff.