What could the future of World of Warcraft look like? A large part of the community agrees that a new era is needed.
Slowly, very slowly, the end of the cosmic saga can be seen on the horizon. In a few weeks, BlizzCon is coming up, and there will certainly be a lot of information about “The Last Titan.” But it is the time afterward that many in the WoW community are concerned about. A post in the game’s subreddit has particularly drawn attention and made the claim:
World of Warcraft doesn’t need another saga. It needs a new era.
A major leap for Azeroth
What does this mean? The Reddit post by user Champepro explains in detail what World of Warcraft needs from his perspective and what it hasn’t received in recent decades: room to breathe. A major leap in time where the old world is finally left behind and Azeroth has the opportunity to evolve.
From his perspective, modern retail WoW exists in a strange compulsion that has manifested since Cataclysm. Back then, the community was shaken by having lost the “old world,” and the experiment of advancing and modernizing the world was seen as a failure in this regard.
The solution is not another Cataclysm. It is not that Azeroth should explode again and that 40 regions should be redesigned due to some new crisis. The solution is a real leap in time. We’ve been asking for this crap for ages… but a real leap in time… 10 years. 15 years. 20 years. Whatever it takes to make it feel like Azeroth has actually lived without us.
Leaders should be dead or retired. Children should have grown up. Cities rebuilt. The Forsaken should have figured out who they are without Sylvanas. The Night Elves should have a generation that only knows Teldrassil from stories. Horde and Alliance should still exist, but perhaps not mean the same thing anymore.
This would allow Warcraft to return to conflicts that are smaller but no less significant.
Champepro sees the justification for this solution in the existence of WoW Classic in its various forms. Since the earlier versions of World of Warcraft are now essentially preserved “for eternity” through Classic, the modern WoW can finally break free and take bold new steps to refresh the world. He further explains:
For me, this is what a WoW 2.0 should be. No other game client. No new engine. Not the deletion of our characters or just a 2 on the logo. A new era of Azeroth with different versions of the game. Classic preserves the past. Retail builds the future.
The time leap theory is also not completely new. Almost 10 years ago, we speculated that this had to come at some point.
What would you think of a time leap that normalizes the world a bit and brings simpler threats into focus?
A lot of agreement for these thoughts: The post has received a lot of support with over 5,700 upvotes. Many comments agree with the ideas and hope that Blizzard is steering in this direction.
- “WoW needs a big bad, that’s always been the case and will always be the case, but the bad doesn’t have to be the biggest and baddest. We don’t have to have an even bigger threat every time; it could also just be a rogue faction of Undead / Orcs / Gnomes that decides they want to take over lands that aren’t theirs. Not every enemy has to threaten the destruction of the universe.” – D1rty87
- “I’m not against you, but I also don’t want Classic to be the time capsule. Retail should have all versions of Azeroth’s history. They have the technology to make this possible and to bring the old world back into the game and also make it accessible in Retail.” – Griever12691
Cortyn thinks: The arguments in the Reddit post are quite good and summarize several issues that exist in World of Warcraft, but are probably simply inevitable for a game that has been focusing on “bigger, stronger, cosmic” for 20 years. This spiral has likely reached its peak with the cosmic saga and then will flatten out again. This is not a completely new theory, as there were hints a few weeks ago that with ‘The Last Titan’ not just the cosmic saga ends, but that the game essentially transitions into a “WoW 2.0”.
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