Yeah, I mean, to me it feels like Blizzard have begun sowing the seeds for changes to factions.
We’ve seen it with Tess taking over for Genn. Shadris taking over for Tyrande & Malfurion, and her being “friends” with Lillian Voss. We’ve seen it with the Kirin Tor wanting to remake themselves now. And so on.
So there’s a lot brewing in the pot that feels like it’ll manifest in some form of unity where everyone is together as friends under new young leaders that are inspirational and a clean slate for Blizzard to work with.
But it feels like the story is moving in that direction. And if Blizzard were to do a little time-skip after the World Soul Saga, you could easily put all that in place as the new stage for whatever follows.
I feel like Metzen’s story is the one that starts in Uldaman with those Discs of Norgannon that were put there back in 2004. It’s the Titan conspiracy story that revolves around the World Soul of Azeroth and why all these forces want to claim Azeroth and what’s so special about it. That’s been the over-arcing narrative of WoW since its beginning, and I think that’s the story Metzen wants to conclude with the World Soul Saga.
But Metzen also departed from Blizzard for a few years, and in his place came Danuser who introduced some other story arcs – cosmic ones I would say. So that’s The First Ones and who are they? It’s the Arcane, Light, and Void, and so on, equivalent of Zereth Mortis and the exploration of the cosmos.
Danuser basically introduced a whole plotline about the greater cosmic origins and the originator(s) of it all.
And that’s definitely something Blizzard can explore in the years to come, if they want to. But personally I think the reception to Shadowlands was so bad that Blizzard would rather put a lid on all of that than revisit it.
That leaves some other plotlines that have been explored a little bit but never really manifested into anything of substance.
There’s something with the whole New Avaloren and the other side of Azeroth.
There’s something with Elune and Blizzard always teasing but never substantiating much around her.
And there’s some more with some Southern Seas and pirates and such.
Personally, I don’t think Blizzard are going to do any of it.
I think Blizzard wants to wrap as much as possible up with the World Soul saga as they can.
I think Blizzard wants a clean slate, a nice time-skip after the World Soul saga from which they can tell some new down-to-earth stories that people can easily get into without needing a lot of prior knowledge from stuff that happened 17 years ago.
I think Blizzard are realizing that the story and lore of WoW is getting so complicated and confusing that constantly adding more to it just makes it worse, not better.
Like Kingdom Hearts or Tekken it is becoming such a mess to understand that even the veteran fans can’t quite keep up with all the important details, let alone summarize what’s going on to outsiders.
It needs a reset and a clean slate, and I think that’s what Blizzard are speaking into when they talk about “The next 20 years of adventure.”
They’ll keep the Warcraft IP with its world and its inhabitants and magic, but the stories told within it will be entirely new.