Expansion Six: Where Are We (Not) Going? Pt. 1
by JR Cook - 9 years ago show comments
Now that we know for sure that the next expansion is going to be announced in five days, speculation is running high about what it’ll be, and everyone has got their own pet theories.
Now, there’s plenty of loose ends, both from Warlords itself and past expansions, that could be the gateway into a new expansion. What a lot of people tend to ignore, though, is that there are usually reasons why a lot of those loose threads have been dropped.
Put another way, the existence of a dangling thread from a past expansion is no guarantee that the next expansion is going to pick up that thread. Who saw us going to Pandaria just after Cataclysm? Who saw us going to an altered past version of Draenor after wrapping up stuff in Pandaria?
The bottom line is that Blizzard is going to take us where they want to take us, and while that might follow along with some known content, there’s no guarantee that it will. They built an entire expansion out of a handful of references to the place where a drunken panda monk named Chen Stormstout came from. That was literally 100% of the lore about Pandaria before MoP came out.
So with all that being said, what are some of the major loose threads that Blizzard could build an expansion out of? Let’s get one big one out of the way first:
The Terror of the Tides
Azshara and the naga are a big target for expansion ideas. A fake trademark for something called “Eye of Azshara” showed up before WoD was announced and people still think it’s a possibility.
Pros:
Azshara is one of the few pre-WoW villains that’s still in play. After being sideshow villains for a long time, she and the naga made a bigger impact during Cataclysm, only for the resolution of that story to end up on the cutting room floor. Part of that naga plot was the capture of Neptulon, the Elemental Lord of Water, a storyline that was never really completed. Broadly speaking, the naga have been a fairly popular race since their introduction during WC3; the naga were clearly intended to be a playable race in The Frozen Throne but were never completely implemented, so players have always been hungry for more content with them.
Cons:
Part of the reason that the Abyssal Maw raid was scrapped during Cataclysm was because Blizzard realized that players were burnt out on the aquatic experience that had been hammered home in Vashj’ir. The raid ultimately didn’t do more than utilize existing assets in uninteresting ways, and they didn’t feel like the story was worth tying up with a subpar raid, while they were much more excited about all of the new assets going into Firelands.
Aside from Street’s official statement on the matter, there’s anecdotes from people who got physically ill or disoriented from the underwater experience in Vashj’ir. While there was a bit of underwater content in Mists (and even less in Warlords) it’s been marginalized since Vashj’ir, and it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that it’s because it just wasn’t a good play environment for all players. It goes without saying that doing an expansion that focuses on the naga, who live underwater, would naturally require us to go underwater. So unless Blizzard’s got a way to address how aquatic play impacts a nontrivial number of players, I feel like that alone might be enough reason to torpedo an expansion that would naturally require underwater play.
Consequently, a lot of people suggest that the naga could raise landmasses to the surface, but that always triggers my suspension of disbelief: part of the naga’s greatest advantage is their martial superiority in the water, as opposed to their disadvantage when fighting on land. So you’ve got to do a lot of handwaving for me to buy that the naga would willingly give themselves a handicap in every battleground where they’d be fighting against the Alliance and Horde.
So, an entire expansion built like Vashj’ir is a bad idea. An entire expansion where the naga handicap themselves is also a bad idea. There’s no good idea that suits the naga taking center stage, hence there’s no good way for “Eye of Azshara” to become a real expansion.
I feel like Azshara being a villain who comes into play in a big way is almost a certainty, but while she’s bogged down with the naga, I don’t see her getting the chance to take center stage. Recall that she was a night elf first, though, so maybe there’s something that can be played with there.
Coming Up Next:…
There’s a lot of expansion ideas floating around out there, and I’ll be digging into the big ones (and largely debunking them) as we get closer to gamescom. In the meantime, stay tuned: if there’s going to be a legitimate trademark reveal, anytime in the next five days is the window where it will take place. If we can confirm that the trademark is legitimate, you’ll see it here.
Are you someone who’s hungry for a naga expansion? Think I’m wrong about why I think it’ll never happen? Tell me about it in the comments.
Vash’jir was – and to this day remains – in my top two favourite zones in WoW, only passed by Grizzly Hills. I loved the music, the ambience and the feel that you really were stranded down in the depths. It wasn’t until the quest that shot you up to the surface with rocket boots that I realised, ‘Hey, I’m almost level 83 and I haven’t been above the water since Cataclysm was launched.’
On the other hand, I play a ranged class – I’ve only taken a melee character through Vash’jir once. It wasn’t terrible, but was certainly more irritating than my Mage.
I think it’s fair to say that a nontrivial number of people loved Vashj’ir just as much as there were people who hated it or couldn’t tolerate it. What we can all agree on was that it was polarizing, to say the least. By avoiding aquatic content (especially when they couldn’t stomach it long enough to do Abyssal Maw) I feel like the devs are playing it safe, which might largely be the smart move in this case.
Same. Vashj’ir remains one of, if not my absolute, favorite. I’ve played through it on both melee and ranged to its entirety (including my main, a mage), both when it was current and recently, and still don’t see all the fuss about targeting issues. The only issue I’ve found is the watery effect on the screen, which makes me nauseous after a while.
However, in terms of 3D gameplay, there is and have always been needed improvements. It’s part of why flying combat didn’t happen in WotLK. The only way that can really work on a scale hardy enough for an entire expansion is for a rework of the battle engine that doesn’t rely on tab targeting and with skills that work more logically in 3D environments.
To say that a water environment is their largest asset is, in my opinion, not correct. Their largest asset is their affinity for magic. That was what made the Highborne formidable in War of the Ancients, and it continues to be thus, in addition to their connections with the Old Gods. We countered their environmental advantage through spells and strategy in Cataclysm, but in terms of sheer magical aptitude, they are unrivaled, probably save for members of the Burning Legion.
Also of note, Metzen is on record for wanting to visit the Naga as a playable race. His issues were figuring out how pants and boots would work, which obviously became a non-issue with cloven races and could easily be solved for Naga in a similar fashion. The major hurtle is mounting–I’ve seen side-saddle concepts by players, and it looks…doable, but still weird and doesn’t suspend my disbelief entirely.
Also, a Naga expansion probably wouldn’t be the wisest choice. I think most people who talk about the topic (from what I’ve seen on the forums and MMOC) discuss it in terms of their relationship to some other issue, in much the same way that MoP ceased being about Pandaren in 5.3 (and, arguably, in 5.2, since it was more about the development of issues in the Horde and Lor’themar’s rise to leadership). For instance, as anyone who can say that follows this area of lore a lot, the Naga have easy connections to plots related to the Burning Legion, the Old Gods, and now the Elemental Lords. Through the Old Gods and Sargeras, a bit more of a stretch would be the Titans, but as Azshara’s prime focus for a long time has been Sargeras, that might not be a stretch, either.
As others have pointed out, they could also easily be worked in with the South Seas concept and Zandalar, among others.
Ultimately, I think the thing to keep in mind in regards to Naga actions is that they are primarily a PROACTIVE force, not reactionary. They set out to open a portal to the Legion, they set out to capture Neptulon, they set out to do a number of things all along the coasts of Azeroth in many, many zones. I doubt they would turtle unless they had good reason to.
From this angle, I would expect them to likely search for some relic out in above-water zones, and then retreat to Nazjatar to begin whatever rituals it requires, which is where I’d imagine an endgame zone or raid of some sort would manifest.
And, of course, it would not require everything to be swimming. As we saw from Throne of the Tides, a beautifully realized dungeon, just because entities live under the ocean (or on the Plane of Water) does not mean they can’t have open-air halls. This can be done without losing strategic advantage, too, as we saw from the Naga and Faceless using the top and sides of rooms to emerge on unwitting players.
I agree that an entire underwater expansion would be ludicrous, but to limit the Naga to that is shortsighted and disregards how they’ve interacted with Azeroth since launch.
The problem with the assertion that magic is their greatest asset (as opposed to their agility in underwater combat) is that only the female naga are spellcasters. Male naga are almost universally bruisers in melee trying to shank you with pikes.
A lot of your other points are largely valid, and it all depends on Blizzard’s willingness to make it happen. But it bears repeating that Metzen doesn’t always get what Metzen wants. He wanted to go to a grip of portal worlds in Burning Crusade to fight the Legion on their territory and the rest of the dev team went “yeah NOPE” because they were barely able to get BC itself out the door on time.