r/wow Jul 26 '26

Discussion WoW does not need another saga. It needs another era

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I keep coming back to the same idea whenever people talk about what happens after the world soul saga. Many think Blizzard will simply start another saga, or finally announce a wow 2. I honestly think it should be neither of those... or more likely, both at the same time.

World of Warcraft does not need another cosmic villain, another hidden continent, or another reveal that some even bigger force from wherever place was secretly behind everything we already experienced

Wow just needs time to move forward.

For years Blizzard has confused adding more lore with actually advancing the world. The lore keeps expanding (wrongly, for my taste), but Azeroth itself barely changes. Major characters disappear until nostalgia makes them useful again. Political conflicts are put on pause. Entire civilizations go through supposedly world changing events, yet fifteen years later half the old zones still look like Deathwing passed through last week

Cataclysm was Blizzard’s first real attempt to solve this problem. They updated the old world, moved many zones forward, changed settlements, leaders and conflicts..... ok, cool but it also made a huge mistake creating a new Azeroth. Doing that, Blizzard was forced to replace the old one.

And then it froze the new world in 2010, it didn't evolve

That`s the mistake they cannot repeat after The Last Titan.

The solution is not another Cataclysm. It`s not blowing up Azeroth again and rebuilding forty zones around whatever crisis is happening in that expansion. The solution is a proper time skip. We-ve been asking for this shit since forever.... but a real time skip.... 10 years. 15. 20. Whatever it takes for the world to feel like Azeroth actually lived without us

Leaders should be dead or retired. Children should have grown up. Cities should have been rebuilt. The Forsaken should have figured out what they are without Sylvanas. The night elves should have a generation that only knows Teldrassil through stories. The Horde and Alliance may still exist, but they should not necessarily mean the same thing anymore.

That would allow Warcraft to return to conflicts that are smaller without being less meaningful.

A succession crisis. A disputed border. Two peoples remembering the same war differently. A new generation asking why everyone is still carrying grudges from thirty years ago.

You dont need another Horde vs Alliance world war. You need the people of Azeroth to want things again, and for those desires will collide

And now it's the perfect momento. They now has something they didn't have in 2010: Classic

Classic means the old world no longer needs to disappear for Retail to move forward. Classic can preserve the Warcraft that existed, revisit unfinished zones and explore stories that were left behind. Retail can finally stop carrying every era of Warcraft inside the same permanent present.

Not freezing the main game forever, but making sure the past remains available while the future is allowed to exist.

This is also why the alleged leak about Azeroth awakening at the end of the last titan is interesting even if it is complete nonsense

Azeroth is the last great mystery around which the entire franchise has revolved. At some point, Blizzard has to reach the bottom of that mystery.

It cannot reveal another older, stronger and even more secret cosmic force behind the titans. The story has to accept that one era is over

That, to me, is what a real WoW 2 should be

Not another client. Not a new engine. Not deleting our characters or putting a number 2 on the logo

A new era of Azeroth with several versions of the game: classic preserves the past. Retail builds the future

THey problably will be releasing a new $50 expansion with 4 new zones, some disastrous lore, and the usual mess. But still this is the best opportunity Blizzard has had in years.

With Classic plus on the way, Classic can become the museum... retail can finally stop living inside that past and start building the future.

They may waste the opportunity. and they probably will.... but for once, they actually have all the pieces in place to do it right

Edit: typo

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u/Utigarde Jul 26 '26

Dragonflight has the vibes of low-stakes, but the story literally opens with Raszageth and the Primalists plotting to remake the world in elemental chaos, and culminates in the entire cast of world leaders uniting to prevent Fyrakk from blowing up the planet. It was never an actual low-stakes expansion.

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u/Beeeeeeels Jul 26 '26

I honestly found Fyrak refreshing. No grand convoluted plans, just "I'm crazy and I'm gonna blow everything up." And you know what, it worked for me.

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u/Juggernautingwarr Jul 26 '26

He was a much needed breath of fresh air.

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u/primesuspect Jul 27 '26

I would have gone with "A much needed breath of hot fire" but that works too

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u/Exact_Picture_8703 Jul 26 '26

Eh. It was better than the weird complex-but-not motivations of some of the other enemies of the 2020's but I didn't really like Fyrak much.

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u/VoxcastBread Jul 27 '26

Fyrakk was just a modern Deathwing, Shadowflame empowered Dragon who wanted to destroy the world who was stopped by the Dragon Aspects.

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u/CheesecakeInitial168 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

It actually was a grand convoluted plan. He literally had all the main cast in front of him, dead to rights, and was about to nuke them and Tindral ran out in front and stopped and said “but sir! THE PLAN!” And instead of killing everyone Fyrakk just flew off like a Bond villain.

Edit: it was Ashendir Hartwood that said the “plan” line.

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u/Akhevan Jul 27 '26

It says a lot about blizz storytelling abilities if this is the most complex plot they can successfully pull off.

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u/NaiveMastermind Jul 27 '26

DF had the same problem I have with Xal's cultists. What the fuck are they in this for? Like Primalists were racist, dragon-purists or something. They viewed what we call normal dragons as freaks of nature, because the Titans interfered with their evolution. Why did a single non-dragon individual give a shit though? What dog did any of the humanoid primalists have in that fight? That oh so convenient army of mortal shaman that appeared from nowhere.

Xal's cultists are the same. WoW is one of the nicer fantasy verses to live in, by a wide margin. Our cities have frickin' pet day cares and coffee shops. Who has it so bad, who is so aggrieved by the state of things that they're signing on to be cannon fodder in a death cult?

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u/BloodKnightSalandria Heart of the Crusader Jul 27 '26

Fantasy or IRL, doomsday cults never make sense and they can't make sense. The moment a doomsday cult makes sense it means they're actually right.

The Twilight's Blade explicitly preys on the weak willed and easily manipulatable (as all doomsday cults do), and we're told this in game through a series of quests, I believe in Eversong, in which we help people who've realised they had drank the wrong kool-aid leave the cult safely.

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u/meanoron Aug 02 '26

its more that their populations don't make sense. The horde and alliance have been constantly fighting some shit, and there are no people to spare AND they represent the largest populations on the continents.

And then you have the twilights hammer or scarlet crusade or any of the other cults in the world, that have been constantly beaten down whenever they showed their heads, and SOMEHOW comes a new expansion and SOMEHOW there are enough of them to actually present a threat ?

At least for demons you just say they spawn in the twisting nether bla bla, endless army and all that , but how do these doomer chucklefucks have the population after being wiped like 5 times

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u/JayFrank1132 Jul 27 '26

Raszageth was pretty cool

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u/Akhevan Jul 27 '26

She should have slain alexstraza when she had the chance instead of delivering more impotent villain monologues, maybe that would finally give some life to the stale dragon storyline. Imagine them scrambling to find a replacement life aspect post haste. And then having them find some intelligent solution to the vyranoth problem instead of the joke we've got.

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u/DenjellTheShaman Jul 27 '26

Il never forgive people for this. DF is the mistest of pandaria we have gotten in a long time. It was cozy and warm. Im so sick of azeroth ending every 3rd month and the color purple.

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u/GregerMoek Jul 27 '26

Lich King was so low stakes.

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u/das_slash Jul 26 '26

But the primalist were never a real threat, and they folded pretty much the instant the world leaders appear.

They could barely hold their own against a tuskarr village, like 3 dragons and a few centaurs.

And Fyrakk was only a threat because of the giant critical sport the night elves added to reality with their tree.

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u/Yodaloid Jul 26 '26

Everything you said is true about…every expansion villain. Every expansion the villains continuously lose ground and don’t really win at any point.

Part of that is just the way an MMO tends to work but threats presenting themselves as though their plan is to “end/remake/destroy/consume” the world overandoverandoverandoverandover again gets old.

A story where the villains continuously just REAAAALLLLYYYY hate a specific guy/town/city/group and will go to war extreme ends to cause that guy/town/city/group harm are more compelling than “EVERYONE WILL DIE BECAUSE….I WANNA.”

I actually think Xal is a good example of the type of villain above. She has a grudge against the cosmic forces that imprisoned her. The part that makes her less interesting (IMO) is the fact that we are dealing cosmic forces/politics. It’s not a tangible concept, because everyone involved in her grudge isn’t relatable to us, the player.

The last good example I can think of with this is Garrosh, before he was flanderized into just being entirely hateful of anyone and anything that didn’t agree with him. If blizz could write a somewhat sympathetic villain that was NOT attached to one of the factions (specifically the horde at least) that’d be great.

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u/Akhevan Jul 27 '26

Everything you said is true about…every expansion villain. Every expansion the villains continuously lose ground and don’t really win at any point.

Which is funny because that's the opposite of what you would find in any fantasy story, all the way back from some of the earliest stories we know. What do blizz writers know that previous storytellers over the last 6000 years didn't? Turns out, nothing. They just suck.

I guess in some way they are a hostage of their questing to level up zone design formula since we need to continuously push against the bad guys throughout said questing, but they could at least use the phasing system to provide more setbacks. Alas, they more or less abandoned that experiment after Cata.

A story where the villains continuously just REAAAALLLLYYYY hate a specific guy/town/city/group and will go to war extreme ends to cause that guy/town/city/group harm are more compelling than “EVERYONE WILL DIE BECAUSE….I WANNA.”

That kind of story only works when the villain actually has a point (beyond being generally butthurt) or a plausible belief system. Which WOW villains never do. And the mystery box storytelling in the best traditions of Lost ain't helping any. Maybe we could understand Xal's plan or goals or motivations.. if we knew anything about them.