DUDES WHAT IF

So this is going to pretty much be a gigantic post of ideas. Most of these sorts of posts are pretty shit, but I felt like I should get this off my chest. I've been feeling pretty negative about the game, and I hope this is as entertaining for you to read as it was for me to write.

World of Warcraft's history has been full of conflict. Too much conflict. In the past half a decade, the Horde and Alliance has been shaken by two separate legendary threats: Arthas, and Deathwing.

For the world powers of Azeroth, the strain of having to endure constantly punching above their own weight class has got to logically take hold at some point. Serial Escalation can quickly lead to sillyness that neither party should be able to handle - yet, for the sake of character progression, there must always be ~~a Lich King~~ something bigger to kill. Quite frankly, there needs to be some form of quick time skip in the Warcraft story to allow it to progress without being affected by the needs of an MMO. The only real solution people have ever proposed to this is Warcraft 4 or a WoW 2.

Something like that would involve abandoning our characters, and the game we've come to love. What if we can both solve this problem, while simultaneously creating a real use for Warlord of Draenor's time-wankery? What if the reason for the cut content in Draenor was a flux of developers moving towards working on a feature-packed future expansion? What if I put so much tinfoil on my head that I couldn't walk into my kitchen without being pelted by fridge magnets?

**Here's the deal: We're stuck in Draenor.** Since the destruction of the Dark Portal, even movement of individuals has become incredibly difficult. We need another major portal to take our armies home. So say we rebuild the Dark Portal, with the help of Kairoz's abandoned broken hourglass. And the hourglass is just that - broken. When our armies return, we come back to an Azeroth that has progressed ten or fifteen years. Suddenly, there's an entire elite detachment of Horde and Alliance forces appearing in a world that has changed massively.

This expansion would be called **Rise of the World of Warcraft**, or perhaps something similar. Unlike every other expansion, this one is about everybody. We're setting the stage for a new era in the game. Azeroth itself is our levelling experience. We travel across our old stomping grounds, changed by a decade or decades of time, getting caught up on what's been happening while we were away. Everyone's favorite sassy archmage, Khadgar, has been through this shit before; he stands as our rock of stability in a world that is both familiar and alien.

So, what would this expansion have for new features? Well, let's be realistic (because we've definitely been 100% reasonable in our expectations so far) and assume no new races and classes. In return, we have...

**Origin Stories**

*"Every good story needs a hero."*

Origin Stories is the new character creation and customization system, which focuses on accomplishing as much as possible with as few resources as reasonable. The primary goal is this: we need to get rid of the ridiculous time-hopping that goes on in the 1-90 levelling experience. We start in Cata, then go to BC, then go to Wrath, then go to Cata again. It's very hard for a new player to understand what the hell he's doing.

In *Rise*, during character creation, a new player is presented with a timeline of events. He picks the event that changed his character from a common adventurer to a true hero. The war in Outland, the war in Northrend, Cataclysm's Aftermath, and the Horde/Alliance War in Pandaria are all presented as options. Once chosen, the character starts on a short intro quest chain that introduces him to the wider world, to the gravity of the challenge he's about to face, and to how his chosen race and class fits into the conflict. The final raids of the expansions are converted into quest hubs to wrap up the story, with the boss himself as a challenging fight in the vein of Kairoz in the legendary quest, or the enemies in the warlock Green Fire quest.

By the time the final antagonist is finished, the player has reached 90 and is presented with a short outtro, where he is hailed as a hero and savior of the world. At this point, your character chooses his quiet retirement - before being called on again, possibly years later, to face the Iron Horde.

This allows the old expansions to be faced at an appropriate difficulty, and gives players enough time to really enjoy them. Balancing such an experience would require a lot of dev time, but this was the best solution I could envision for the lack of linear story progression for new players. This has the added benefit of improving replayability for altoholics.

**Overhauled Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms**

*"Times change."*

It's been decades since we left. Anduin is grown priest, and is preparing to take his place on the throne of Stormwind. Wrathion, who slipped away from Draenor on his own terms, is now a drake of respectable size. The Argent Dawn now stands with the alliance against Sylvanas' forces. The Pandaren Empire has set up trading ports along the southern coasts of Kalimdor and the EK. Thrall's kid is running around doing stuff too, I guess. Little touches like this - things that could only happen on a world that has had time to breathe.

Out introductory quest starts in the Blasted Lands, before passing ships pick us up to carry us to our home capital port cities (Orgrimmar for Horde, Stormwind for Alliance). We're greeted as heroes, but nobody really has a place for us anymore. So we leave the safety of the city walls to do what we know best - adventure.

The failure of the Cataclysm expansion is often cited as putting too much focus on parts of the world that don't matter in the endgame, with real endgame zones feeling isolated. *Rise* would be a true return to Azeroth. We're adventurers, not commanders, re-exploring the two massive continents that introduced us to the game. There's a huge amount of new stuff to learn. Quests get us caught up on the world as if we're new players all over again. New factions have risen and fallen in the time we were gone. New fortresses and ruins have appeared on the landscape for us to explore as five-man dungeons and raids. The continents might not be entirely remade, but they definitely would get some major graphical overhauls. There's no real central villain - this expansion is all about setting up a new World of Warcraft.