Wow shadowlands: is this the next warcraft expansion?

Lore Story
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Hello Everyone.

I received this news on my Google research today.

It’s about a leak of the new expansion.
I can’t link addresses, but it’s from:
ENUK eSports UK

It’s that funny time after a big World of Warcraft content update has gone live but before Blizzcon - and internet speculation about the next expansion is rife.

The WoW community is currently talking about the ‘leak’ of the moment: Shadowlands.

Details of the possible Shadowlands expansion were first posted on 4chan and later discussed by content creator Pyromancer on YouTube. After this, he claimed to Asmongold that he was contacted by a couple of people who had worked at Blizzard confirming the ‘leaked’ assets to be true (including the zone image, above, apparently taken at an internal dev ‘show and tell’ session).

The 4chan post claims that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will see The Black Empire rise in Azeroth once again, as old god N’Zoth has apparently been redirecting souls to the Shadowlands.

The Shadowlands is of course the realm where the spirits of mortals go when they die. Players will recognise this whenever they die in-game and need to walk around as a ghost in a greyed-out environment to find their body and resurrect.

The speculation for the WoW expansion is that there’s apparently a secret war going on in the Shadowlands, between the old gods who are trying to reclaim power, and ‘Death’s Vanguard’, consisting of Elune, Helya and more (whom the player will assist).

The 4chan post claims that the current Lich King - Bolvar Fordragon - takes the player to the Shadowlands, while Sylvanas has been waging war in Helya’s name (instead of the forces of the sleeping city of Ny’alhota) and Bwonsamdi is working for Hakkar the Soulflayer.

Shadowlands as an expansion is said to include two new continents - Dragon Isles and Shadowlands - as well as a new Tinkerer DPS class. This mail-wearing class will apparently include turrets, bombs and ‘Ghosbusters’-style abilities and have healer and tank specs.

It’s also said to include new scaling tech that replaces stat squishing, a ‘Vestiges of Power’ secondary talent system and a champion system where the player reunites with fallen heroes and villains.

Areas will allegedly include the long-discussed Dragon Isles, a group of islands originally intended to be an early raid in the game, featuring void dragons where the players are said to help rebuild the black dragonflight.

Then there’s the Alnir Riftlands, where everything is spilling in and out of rifts and the ‘fabric of all realities’ collide, and Xiros, which will apparently be the main city and sanctuary of the next WoW expansion.

The Xiros zone is actually one of the main reasons that some are believing the Shadowlands expansion info to be true.

Blizzard Entertainment’s WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas mentioned a past developer update video that he’s been inspired by Greek mythology. Not only that, he used to visit family on the Greek island of Syros (or Siros).

Some are saying that the whole ‘leak’ has possibly been planned by Blizzard in order to drum up some community hype towards the next expansion, considering Battle for Azeroth has been seen largely as a disappointment.

Of course, it’s all just speculation at this stage, so take the above info with a pinch of salt. We’ll most likely find out if Shadowlands is the next WoW expansion for sure at Blizzcon on November 1st and 2nd.

WoW has been enjoying a lot of coverage of late around the Eternal Palace Race to World First raids (with [Limit and Pieces raiding from London’s Red Bull Gaming Sphere]

What’s your opinion ?

Have a nice day.

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There are some key concepts from that “leak” that I personally would love to see.
These include Hakkar and Bwonsamdi, clarification regarding Helyas deal with Sylvanas, a more active role for the new Lich King…

But, I’m not quite convinced yet about the veracity of said info.
Been reading/watching Pyromancer for some time, and despite the fact he is indeed knowledgeable regarding the games story, he often enough creates convoluted and crazy theories that often are but an educated guess.

Edit: Not saying this info is to be discarded entirely, but I’m very wary regarding accepting such a detailed and complete leak. These kind of things are heavily locked and restricted.
Personally, I’d find any of this more credible if the leak only had had the expansions title.

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Oh well, leak season is really busy this year, and I’ll start by reminding everyone to take the necessary pinch of salt when looking at this. While we did have expansions leak before they usually don’t leak from Blizzard itself, but from third parties that are part of the production or advertising process. And the map that started the supposed Shadowlands leak has a addon Logo plastered right across a part of the Map which kind of makes it stupid for a showcase of a map. Lastly, the map really resembles maps from another fake leak in the past.

That said… this wouldn’t be the worst expansion concept they could come up with. It would not redeem Sylvanas, while also leaving her a mostly rational actor. She would have started the war to kill loads of people and thus bolster certain factions in the Shadowlands. She has not shared her plans, because most people wouldn’t have seen her actions as justifying the means she thought she had to go to. She started a war of annihilation, not to win for the Horde, but to make afterlife less bad for herself, her people, and everyone.
While it would still make the Horde to dupes, it could satisfy the Alliance players in their justified anger and the Sylvanas fans in their trust in her pragmatic nature and reason.

Sounds like some people in and out of the Shadowlands should be very angry at their gods, who essentially killed them/their loved ones, though. This goes into the same direction as Elune’s deal with death that has been speculated on before.

And Bwonsamdi working for Hakkar just sounds strange to unbelievable. But if we tune that down to “working with” it might be somehow feasible, I guess…

But generally… I would be mostly ok with that. And reusing old heroes after their death sonds very, very Blizzard-like. I’m not really happy with the idea of another class, but if one is to come, Tinker seems to be what has been build towards. I wouldn’t expect it to be a pure DPS class, though.

But there is the caveat… Nothing of this feels like something that would genuinely be surprising. Any player could have come up with this concept, based on the stuff we all have been speculating about. So… no reason to think that it isn’t exactly this that happened here.

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Doesn’t it massively spit in the face of Night Elves though?

Their patron goddess being complicit? in the genocide to fulfill some grand plan in the Shadowlands?

:thinking:

On second thought that only makes the leak that more trustworthy.

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The Night Elves? certainly. They should be close to broken by this. This should change everything. That’d be their loss of the Sunwell event.

The Night Elf players? Well, many will see it as a continuation of being made a punching bag whenever Blizzard needs one, and they will undoubtedly cry about it. But I hope some will have a more nuanced view.

Personally? I think this is actually an improvement. The Night Elves didn’t just lose because they weren’t strong enough, they were betrayed. Elune actually did abondon them, in a few important ways.
And narratively? The authors didn’t just throw some sacrificial elves on the pyre to up the stakes for BfA, the story actually needed those elves as part of the next addon and needed them to die to be in the position where they are needed. Their death wasn’t random, it had purpose. I tend to think that’s quite a good thing.

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So what you’re saying is
…
…

…
The Dark Wardens were right?
snicker

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Well, not really. If they lost their faith in Elune for betraying the night Elves, killing Night Elves is still kind of contradictory…

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BuT tHe MaStEr PlAn In ThE sHaDoWlAnDs.

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Speculation and unlikely to have more than a few details correct imho.

Fake leaks are like rain in the MMO world.

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I wouldnt watch Pyromancer, he seems kinda insane/crazy .

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If they do i wouldnt be suprised if they then later pull elune is a old god/void lord. Or Night warrior is from n’zoth or some crap. or n’zoth is elune.
Casue for some reason blizz thinks its interesting/cool if old gods/n’zoth are behind litterly evrything with corruption and what not.

Manipulated but acting out of own will(like defias) or their own twisted views or having own good reasons to do what they do. Nope old god corruption!

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Well, that’s one way of putting it!

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I’m surprised Maiev isn’t his favorite character then :rofl:

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Maeiv is saint compared to him mentally :stuck_out_tongue:

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Not a fan of “Lore informants”. Not because I don’t value their work, but because I think that if people were truly interested in lore, most of it is accesible enough if you are interested.
This isn’t some overly complicated narrative where you can miss some nuance or detail.
As stories go, this one is pretty shallow.

That leaves room to two lines of debate over it:

  1. Speculation regarding future events.
  2. Clashes between different interpretations or opinions regarding an event.

The former is something pyromancer does quite frequently, but I personally think it’s rather pointless. His educated guess is about as valid to me as anyone else’s (and it would be dishonest not to admit that often enough we give our own interpretations more valid ness than those of the others). So…it’s kind of pointless.
Regarding the later…meh. Everyone has their own bias. Specially with the current expansion.
And I don’t think anyone is entitled to call out on someone else’s opinion (best you can do is point at a severe misinterpretation).

Ps: Regarding this last part, it’s one of the reasons I ceased to watch from time to time Nobbels videos. His Alliance bias keeps oftenly creeping in, to the point it affects his expositions even when narrating neutral events. Nothing exaggerated mind you, but still enough to be noted on some occasions.

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I just hope that the next class is Necromancer and not Tinker.
Starting in legion and increased greatly in BfA necromancy have been in almost every corner.
And now we are (supposedly) going to the realm of the dead?? And we do not get necromancers but instead GHOSTBUSTERS MINIATURES?!?!
though it does seem like something blizzard might pull…

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I… sort of like it?

I hope we “lose” this expansion. We chase down Nzoth only to be defeated and he goes on a total rampage.

The next expansion would then feature a total world revamp - the black empire bursting through all over the world, with smaller racial stories built in. The nelves reclaim their forests. The dwarves rebuild the dam. The belves fix up Silvermoon. The Draenei build themselves a city instead of hiding in a crashes spaceship. Basically all the races shore up their defense and holdings to prepare for a siege against the old god madness. I think it would be brutal to leave the old world in cata-state for another expansion.

And I had hoped as part of this N’zoth would free/revive C’thun and Yogg-saron. Leading other players such as Lich-bolvar etc to get involved.

Tinker race sure. Think everyone expects that. Necromancer could be fun though…

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Weren’t the three enemies? I think they even warred each other in the past.

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I think you’re right, but I think they also relished the chaos and destruction. Who knows how deep their loyalties lie. They do refer to each other (sort of? Maybe?) in whispers. But that could just be further madness.

Or maybe N’zoth would revive them to then absorb them and become even more powerful.

I think mostly it’s wishful thinking on my part though!

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They are like siblings.
They fight eachother, are jealous of eachother, but also proud of eachother.
They have different strengths and need eachother if they are to succeed.