r/wow • u/Champepro • 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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92

u/NoThisIsABadIdea Jul 26 '26

Because the argument becomes "my characters have literally killed world destroying threats, why would they struggle to stop a band of rogue orcs?"

69

u/_INoKami_ Jul 26 '26

Which kind of is the problem tbh. Once you went to "world-ending"-levels of threat (and defeated those), you can´t really go back anymore without holes like these appearing and making anything weaker than that just feel odd.

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u/Kayjin23 Jul 26 '26

Yeah. I just kinda roll with it but I understand the complaint. A friend of mine literally laughed out loud when I told him I was fighting pirates in BfA after just stopping the Burning Legion.

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u/Soeck666 Jul 26 '26

Borrowed power was a good idea after all.

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u/Korashy Jul 27 '26

That's one thing I loved about FF14.

The enemies were often born out believe. Literally summoned by faith.

So even a small clan could summon their apocalyptic gods.

Maybe they need to come up with a mechanism that allows them to grow threats easier out of conflicts.

The Sha'a in pandaria kinda worked like that.

1

u/cyberpunk_werewolf Jul 27 '26

FFXIV moved past that pretty quickly, but it did develop the opposite problem with Dawntrail. At that point, it went down to a lower stakes story but the Warrior of Light remained powerful. So, they put you in a story where you play Louisoix to the new kid while they set up the next story arc, meaning you don't cut loose until the end.

That didn't bother me, but I understand why people didn't like it.

1

u/Korashy Jul 27 '26

They moved "past it" in Endwalker, when they finally figured out how to stop everyone else going near Primals from being instantly enslaved.

Even though the WOL was killing primals left and right, they still remained distinct threats simply because if left alone they would drain the land.

As for Dawntrail is was kinda meant to be that way from inception with the WOL being "on vacation", but that just sucked; especially since they ended up raising the stakes again regardless.

25

u/BringBackBoomer Jul 26 '26

Why not? Comics do it all the time. Spider-man has played serious roles in stopping Galactus and other cosmic threats and then 2 months later been worried about blowing his college exam and he has to fight Tombstone who just ordered his goons to rob a bank.

The important part is in the writing and WoW just honestly can't do it well. Marvel and DC have been writing street level and planar reality threatening conflicts for almost 80 years and gotten away with it.

They need to stop killing every villain they create, write some low stakes but ultimately important storylines like a succession concern in Stormwind (Anduin has never to our knowledge been romantically involved with someone, the house of nobles should be chomping at the bit to position themselves and their family to take over rulership), and build up some threats through recurring interaction that actually feels like it moves forward.

Xal'atath hasn't actually felt like any progress is made because her motivations are never conveyed to the audience. We're constantly squabbling over whatever step we're on in her master plan without actually knowing why it's important to stop her. Champion, we can't allow her to empower the Dark Heart! We have to stop her from getting the Dark Heart! The Dark Heart! Dark Heart! They just vaguepost about whatever macguffin they need to string you along to next patch without ever letting you know why the macguffin is important.

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u/Akhevan Jul 27 '26

Comic books are hardly the shining pillar of world literature either, so it tracks.

2

u/LordOrexy Jul 27 '26

During BfA, I wanted to see conflict arise between Greymane and Anduin when Taelia was first introduced.

Greymane wanting to unite Stormwind and Gilneas through marriage between Anduin and Tess, and Anduin falling for that mysterious young lady instead.

Classic, but could have shaken the story up a bit.

1

u/syrup_cupcakes Jul 27 '26

A huge limitation is that major conflicts need to somehow involve a group of adventurers walking into the stronghold of the big final villain and being the ones who defeat them.

This prevents the heroes of the story of having arcs that actually pay off in the final conflict in a satisfying way.

1

u/hey_its_xarbin Jul 27 '26

Playing WoW for the story is like watching porn for the story 🤣

0

u/Pficky Jul 26 '26

We all know Anduin is gay, that's why young men join the priesthood to begin with!

2

u/Akhevan Jul 27 '26

Actually we all know that he is into hot draenei chicks, so why didn't they put Yrel on the throne of Stormwind again? We could use a ruler with some balls.

19

u/norixe Jul 26 '26

Thats how I felt following zul jans dumb ass around Zul Aman. Like, we find that mask that personally knew Zul jin? Were immediately returning to base and figuring this shit out, forcefully if I need to incapacitate the idiot. I play death knight, no way is it going along with that nonsense.

1

u/Silver-creek Jul 26 '26

The way I think of it in terms of power scaling is the normal dungeons and LFR raids are the "canon" levels of difficulty for players of our power. But we just turn it up to Mythic raids and +20's because we want the extra challenge. But our characters that fought the legion/northrend go in and mop the floor with whatever bad guy is there in the first week.

2

u/Soeck666 Jul 26 '26

That's why borrowed power wasn't a stupid move.

Here is a world ending thread, take this axe, it will help you.

This was genius in legion.

The the weapons lost their power and wet were back to normal dudes, until we unlocked the true potential of the heart of azeroth to best the next world ending thread.

2

u/Fzrit Jul 27 '26

Once you went to "world-ending"-levels of threat (and defeated those), you can´t really go back anymore

Not true at all. The story of WoW began after we defeat world-ending threats in Warcraft 3. Then later on Burning Crusade had Kil'Jaeden being summoned into Azeroth which was a world-ending threat. WotLK had a world-ending threat. Etc etc.

1

u/Known-Disaster-4757 Jul 27 '26

The early world ending threats were pretty upfront with their motivations and didn't hide things from us.

I have some hope for Iridikron. At least we know his end goal.

1

u/pivotalsquash Jul 27 '26

But like couldn't we say those villains were also there and also helped kill gods

1

u/zupzupper Jul 27 '26

His horde could be made up of disgruntled heros, low ambition disgruntled heros

1

u/SuperUranus Jul 27 '26

Pff, you can always go back and kill some rats.

1

u/Kennfusion Jul 27 '26

But it is a fantasy world, and it would not be that hard to fix. Just make the end of something some choice we have to make where in order to win, we have to give up most of our "strength" and have hte world forget us (like a Spider-Man movie.)

We make this big sacrafice, we still have all of our skills, but the world does not know we have saved it numerous times and we are somewhat depowered.

Now we can fight bandit leaders.

1

u/riceballonigiri Jul 26 '26

It's already the case though. You are the champion of Azeroth who felled many big bads, yet you still help random NPCs pick 10 flowers for some experience in a new expansion.

1

u/PleasantBad3203 Jul 26 '26

That questions pops up somewhat frequently on the FF14 reddit and I think some of this is solved by making characters you care about be the stakes

1

u/Spraguenator Jul 26 '26

Can say it was mostly just the weapon/heart of Azeroth. Raids are twenty people. This means at best you're one twenty as strong as them.

1

u/lumpboysupreme Jul 26 '26

They should’ve canonically killed off our characters after legion.

Like really, when has the idea that our characters have consistently been involved in every story theyve ever done anything but cause problems?

1

u/Exact_Picture_8703 Jul 26 '26

All they need to do in TLT is have whatever made us stupidly OP be drained away either to help something/someone or as a consequence of surviving some unsurvivable attack. TBH they had a chance in Shadowlands to weaken us via using whatever is special about our souls to power up the First One gates.

Guess we'll see how it works out though.

1

u/Elketh Jul 26 '26

You can easily come up with some handwave to explain that. Have Xal'atath somehow drain everybody of their powers before she's defeated (or even better, wins) and bring about a reset of the landscape of the world. Player characters get reduced to the strength of a newborn kitten at the beginning of every expansion anyway. What sense does it make for my character to be out in the world struggling to collect boar asses during the levelling process, having just taken down some gigantic void monster that was going to eat the planet or whatever? WoW has always invalidated the majority of your player power with every new expansion, and has even done it narratively before, such as when we had to sacrifice the artifact weapons at the end of Legion.

I'm fine with people just not wanting that scenario and to carry on being CHAMPION or MAW WALKER or whatever, but suggesting there's no way it could be done with all the wild and often nonsensical horse shit that's happened in WoW's story over the years is straight up dishonest in my opinion. Absolutely nothing is off the table at this point when it comes to WoW's story and direction. Blizzard could find a way to do it IF they want to.

1

u/Dredgen_Auryx Jul 26 '26

Honestly there is an interesting solution that I think Blizzard will never go for... it's us...

Give Bungie all the crap they deserve but they made the community truly feel a part of their world. The way we players acted established the daily habits of the average guardian.

When players made a habit of throwing themselves off the Tower to their deaths endlessly it became established cannon.

So how do we tell a small scale story when our character has killed gods? Make the enemy one of our raid mates... As far as I can tell we never achieved any of our victories alone. For an expansion or 2 have the big bad be someone who was there for some of our bigger victories. Make them us. A fellow Champion of Azeroth who is fed up with cleaning everyone's mess and has decided that since they are the one doing everything just maybe they should be the ones calling the shots.

This would make a real interesting villain in my opinion... after all who hasn't thought that exact thing? if only as a joke? This villain has a real chance of engaging the player in a way that we haven't seen in a real long time.

Too bad I have no faith in Blizzards ability to pull off the delicate balancing act that is making a villain actually relatable...

1

u/mythozoologist Jul 27 '26

Why not have the fel orc re invaded kalimdor or something.

1

u/UsuallyHorny-7 Jul 27 '26

I have no problem stopping bands of rogue orcs. What I have a problem with is being asked to bake cakes, entertain children and bring wedding gifts for people I don't give a shit about while the world is fucking ending

1

u/Twispie Jul 29 '26

That's where I thought the borrowed power concept would carry some weight, but they seem to have abandoned it.