Faction conflicts are over. Azeroth has stabilized and it is a united world more or less. Many talk about “world of peacecraft”, and I think there is a bit of boredom in the setting. So what’s next?
This is what I would wanna do, if I had the power:
I would change the scope from Azeroth to the whole universe, and introduce a gigantic, chaotic cosmic war, that we get thrown into. Right now it’s just about the world soul, but after the current Saga our planet could just be a side-aspect of the plot . I think after the world soul saga it makes sense to draw a bit of inspiration from Warhammer40k and change the dimensions of the story, where we are a small part of something that completely changes the scale of what we have seen so far.
I would argue that we already are in that cosmic scale of events and have been into it since the beginning - though maybe not as focused in gameplay - although we time and time again dealt with cosmic forces in one way or another. Lorewise we always were part of the cosmic war raging between the different forces of the cosmos (Light, Life, Arcane/Order, Void, Death and Chaos/Fel). And the Saga pretty much is about exactly that. Showing us how the Titans are influencing Azeroth and keeping their idea of order instilled on us - ignoring our free will (which we likely have because of Azertoh herself), the Void apparently trying to corrupt Azeroth, Light and Void in battle and the final battle Renilash heavily hinted at, the world soul directly speaking to us.
Our planet is the center of the plot as the whole point from the beginning was that our planet houses the last nascent world soul.
I mean if we go back and take a look at the expansions - there was cosmic scale thing in every single one of them, with Legion (Chaos/Fel) and shadowlands (Death) each dealing with one cosmic force in their main plot.
I think The War within is so to say the calm before the storm but if you think about it - is it? We antagonize Xalatath a being we know had or has association with the void. Isle of Dorn and disc quests show that the titans might not be our friends but pretty much manipulators that keep the world soul imprisoned and want to mold her into a titan, we have the fight between Light and Shadow in Hallowfall - hinting at Renilash as final bttle between the very two forces that allegedly created our cosmos.
My guess is that after the Last Titan it will move on to a story that doesnt heavily involve our Planet but might make us to side characters again.
I’m not that well-informed on Warhammer, but as far as I saw it, Warhammer and 40k were basically fully independent settings with next to no surface-similarities. That’s certainly what your idea for Warcraft sounds like. What are you suggesting we actually keep from the old setting? Because “You could make a totally new game in a sci-fi-setting with a better story than Warcraft” is certainly true, but not exactly attractive for those who wanted Warcraft to be Warcraft, is it?
The civs of azeroth right now could ascend to connect more with the cosmic force that’s most relevant to their society with new factions. The Nightelves would still be the Nightelves, but the alliance wouldn’t be relevant to them anymore. They could still keep the current themes and make the cosmic forces look recognizable. Space travel could be done with some kind of magic, which would also keep a medieval vibe to it without going too much into scifi. We already kind of have this mix between scifi and medieval fantasy anyway. So warcraft would still feel similar to now, but the scope of what’s relevant would change
…sorry, I’m not seeing that at all. You can’t just change genre and scope to that degree and claim it’s the same world, because you kept the color-scheme and character models. The space-faring Night Elves just aren’t the wood-dwelling, mysterious, ancient, aavage, druidic Night Elves, and could never be that again. Aesthetics are important, but they are only the surface-level.
I see what you mean, but Life in the setting right now is a cosmic force and it’s not restricted to Azeroth. For example if their main allegiance changes from “alliance” to Life with cosmic wild spirits, it doesn’t change their druidic and mysterious nature. Also, Life exists on other planets too. Just imagine for example Orcs reconnect to Fel after Thrall dies and wanna power a big soul machine on a planet with a lot of Life. Nightelves don’t like that and try to defend that Planet against them. This would lead for example to cosmically scaled skirmishes. Get what I mean? Of course many more civilizations can be introduced than what we have now. But maybe my idea would make more sense for a wow 2.
Life isn’t restricted to Azeroth. Night Elf culture is, though.
And frankly, the more you say, the less I see how this could even in theory be fit into the game World of Warcraft. Every race a faction, and all the old zones and politics basically irrelevant, because it’s planet-hopping time? Every place updated to reflect space age tech? That’s a complete redo of…well, everything,
You are asking about a sci-fi new game, inspired by WoW, just like 40k was inspired by Warhammer. If I were looking for a new sci-fi game personally, being inspired by the dumpster fire that has been WoW’s lore would be a detriment instead of an asset, though. And considering that the Warcraft-fandom was initially attracted to the fantasy-setting, I don’t see why the playerbase would explicitly be looking for a sci-fi-game anyways.
It would definitely be sci-fi, but they could use magic instead of technology to keep the warcraft vibe more similar to now.
But if wow’s lore is a “dumpster fire”, wouldn’t it make sense to do a soft-reset of it via scope-change? Or do you mean you’d rather just have them make a new IP or use something like Starcraft?
I don’t think that’s a very important part of the Warcraft vibe at all. To me it certainly isn’t.
If they are making a new game in a new setting then yes, they should use a different IP. If they want to make a new Warcraft game, they should try to make it appeal to fans of Warcraft.
But as it is, what keeps us playing Warcraft is mostly the gameplay of World of Warcraft, the social connections we have within the game, and maybe even more importantly, the sunk cost we put into it. None of that is transferable to a new game, so yeah, at this point I wouldn’t think that creating a game that builds on current Warcraft’s story would be a good bet, if they were after easy money. I guess they could create one in hopes of repairing the IP, but that would be an investment in WoW’s long-term future, not in a replacement.