I think that Blizzard are taking steps toward a kind of reset or revamp or next gen or whatever you want to call it.
Because WoW does need a make-over or glow-up if it has to continue as a major flagship game for decades to come – as Blizzard suggests is their aspiration.
I think the World Soul Saga is Metzen’s farewell tour, so to speak.
The story that’s being set up in this trilogy is basically the culmination of the over-arcing storyline since the beginning of Warcraft. All the secrecy and mystery and the huge conspiracy – it’s all going to come to a major climax in The Last Titan.
As Metzen himself pointed out at Blizzcon, they kind of have to wrap this story up sooner rather than later, if they want to have an audience left to experience it.
So as I see it, then the World Soul Saga is basically the ending to Warcraft and World of Warcraft, in terms of story.
And then there’ll be something new.
Just like when Game of Thrones ended HBO began House of the Dragon, and when Naruto Shippuden ended the new Boruto: Naruto Next Generations began.
That’s pretty normal. Franchises usually have to go on forever, but sometimes they need to restart or reset or do a spin-off, in order to be accessible to a new audience.
And that’s where Warcraft and World of Warcraft is now. Warcraft is more than 30 years old and World of Warcraft is more than 20 years old, and it’s pretty much the same audience that’s stuck with both. An audience that started out as kids and teenagers and who’ve now become middle-aged adults.
So the franchise obviously needs to do something to open itself up for a new audience very soon, else it ends up with a fanbase of old senile mummies.
On the story side I think it shows that Blizzard have quietly been retiring a lot of old characters and putting new ones in their place that are a blank canvas they can do whatever they want with.
Malfurion and Tyrande have gone on an eternal holiday and Shandris has taken over. Shandris is young and female and she doesn’t come with a lot of baggage that you need to know about. She’s just a young female Night Elf leader that Blizzard can do whatever they want with.
Genn Greymane also went into retirement and passed the leadership onto his daughter, Tess. And like Shandris, she is a fairly blank canvas that Blizzard can do whatever with.
In a recent questline the Kirin Tor agreed amongst themselves, almost impulsively and without reason, to disband and commit to making some new alliance between themselves that wouldn’t be called the Kirin Tor but otherwise be exactly like the Kirin Tor.
That felt completely unnecessary and pointless, unless you see it from a writer’s perspective who wants free reigns to tell new stories without being constrained by having this confusing conclave of wizards.
So in terms of story, if the current World of Warcraft is Naturo Shippuden and the World Soul Saga is the 4th ninja war (yes, you need to have followed Naruto to understand this analogy), then what comes afterward is the World of Warcraft equivalent of Boruto: Naruto Next Generations.
I think that has to happen. Because the Warcraft story universe is a single ongoing story that’s been plowing on for more than 30 years, it’s completely inaccessible to any newcomers, and it’s frankly also very confusing and difficult to understand and keep up with for current fans, simply because you’re constantly juggling more than 30 years of material to understand the context of a random quest in the game.
So the story reset or revamp or spin-off or whatever, that’s definitely coming.
I don’t know in what form it will come. There are lots of options and Blizzard have a fantasy universe that basically allows all of them to happen.
They can do the alternative universe or the multiverse and try and tackle it the same way that the superhero franchises have.
They can do the long time-skip and set in in a distant future or a forgotten past, like we often see sci-fi franchises do.
They can do the world-ending destruction or cosmic calamity that the denizens of Azeroth have successfully managed to avoid 348979 times in a row by now.
But they’ll have to do something. Blizzard can’t just continue piling on with another expansion with another big baddie who’s got yet another masterplan that’s part of the same huge conspiracy that becomes increasingly more confusing with each big baddie that’s added to the pile.
In terms of the game I think it’ll carry on as it does. WoW is WoW.
if Housing is a success then they’ll double down on it. If it’s not, then they’ll throw something else on the wall and see if it sticks. That seems to be their approach these days. WoW isn’t anything specific in terms of gameplay – it is just anything and everything that Blizzard can come up with that’s popular and players like.
The one trend I think we’ll see continue is the modernization of WoW in terms of becoming more hack 'n slash, gacha, mobile, and all that other stuff that we told ourselves WoW would never get because we paid a subscription and the subscription kept all that temu design at bay.
Well we’re getting all that and will definitely continue to get more of it.
That’s just going to be an increasingly bigger part of what WoW is.
Less of a game experience and more of a product experience I would say, to summarize it.
What I’m super curious about is the form of this reset, revamp, next gen, or whatever.
I can’t really see Blizzard revamping the in-game world across the board (say in the event of a world destruction event). Current fans won’t be happy about that (see Darnassus being torched).
I also can’t see Blizzard adding the new world on top of the old through phasing (say in the event of an alternative universe or multiverse). In many ways that doesn’t make Warcraft more accessible, it just doubles the confusion as you’ve now got two Warcraft universes in one (Warlords of Draenor alternative universe story).
What I lean toward is that Blizzard will do what they’ve been doing a lot in recent years, which is to simply make new servers for it.
Keep Retail as a forever realm for those who want to continue playing in the old world, and then have new servers that players can copy their character to that are set in the new Warcraft universe.
Same approach as Blizzard already uses for Classic WoW. Tried and true.
So if I had to guess, and I were Blizzard, then I think I would do it a bit like this:
After the World Soul Saga you release Warcraft: The Next Generation on new servers. It’s a revamped Azeroth set in the near future after calamity has struck the world.
Everyone can copy their existing characters onto these servers, or they can create brand new characters and play in this brand new world that is otherwise WoW as usual with Mythic+ Dungeons and Raids and quests and so on. It just has a clean slate in terms of its story and setting, and a more accessible and simple gameplay experience for newcomers and returning players alike (it’s easier to make a good modern leveling experience if you can make it from scratch).
The old retail servers will continue to exist but won’t receive any major updates going forward. They’re just there for people who want to continue playing in the old world.
My joker guess, that I’ve speculated on in the past and I feel a bit confident about, is that Blizzard will use the ending of the World Soul Saga to birth a new universe that will be Blizzard’s next franchise game (because that’s something else Blizzard desperately needs). There’s a story hook whereby the world soul of Azeroth holds the power of creation and can thus create a new universe – and I think that’s going to be Blizzard’s mic-drop. Azeroth will birth a new universe that will be the setting for Blizzard’s next game, and thus technically WoW 2 without necessarily being related to Warcraft apart from its origin.
Because franchises usually have two problems to solve. How to survive, and how to survive themselves.
Blizzard needs to figure out how to use the success of Warcraft to create new success beyond Warcraft, and I think the above approach is a clever way to create a springboard for something new that can draw upon the success of Warcraft.
And I think Blizzard are smart enough to have had this idea themselves.
So that’s what I think! Briefly summarized of course.
