Next expansion 2015.... War of The Dead?

     It's that time of year again.  Time to speculate on what the next World of Warcraft expansion will be.  Last time I made a guess at what I wanted the expansion to be I said an adventure where the Forsaken are shaken up because Sylvanas is resurrected and giving her some sort of redemption story.  My guess was that Lilian Voss was going to be the next Forsaken leader as they seem to be building her up to something, and that the expansion would also take us to a series of tropical Islands including Kul Tiras and Zandalar.

    This year my expansion idea is actually a little similar.  So bear with me here.

     I am somewhat basing this on the fact that we get a reference to Wrathion having been in Draenor with us, though he never appeared and what happened to Admiral Taylor's garrison.  Admiral Taylor's garrison bothers me simply because it was obviously destroyed by a necromancer/warlock (Ephial) but we are in a Draenor where as far as we can see, Warlocks if they exist are somewhat new.  The orcs have not lost their shamanistic powers, as happened (to my understanding) when the race gave up on the elements and started practicing magic through demons.  Of course this change seemed to have happened along with the orcs drinking Mannaroth's blood.  (I haven't read to books so my understanding may be skewed here)

    What if the "Dark one" that the Necromancer was referring to wasn't even on Draenor.  Ephial came through the portal to Draenor with us, and may have had some plan all along.  While Taylor's journal does mention Ephial going missing for a while after a Horde attack, I'm not sure this means that whatever twisted him happened on Draenor.  He could have been evil before he stepped through the portal.

     I think things may be stirring in the North.  What if Bolvar has awakened, and he's been corrupted.

     He has spent the last few years up there with Ner'zhul in his head.  Frozen alone with the ghost of the Lich King whispering in his ear.  Because with Arthas having been in the helmet all those years, there is a chance that his voice in in Bolvar's ears as well.  What if we are about to fight another scourge invasion.  What if Wrathion knew this and had arranged Garrosh's escape in order to find  a way to get a bigger army for Azeroth.  I don't think it's coincidence he showed up in the same garrison as Ephial.  He told Admiral Taylor that he was fleeing the ogres, but was that the truth? Or did he lie so he could keep an eye on the evil he found had followed us through.  Strangely, we didn't see any signs of ogres chasing him.  From the account in Admiral Taylor's book he was hardly a prisoner. 

     Now picture this, Bolvar goes south to take out the only true threat he can see to his power, Sylvanas.  What if Sylvanas where to strike back with a Frostmourne rebuilt from the shards.

    When the sword takes her like it did Arthas, will we be stuck between to factions fighting for the dead of Azeroth?  What might have happened in Northrend in the years of our absence?  What might have been awakened from beneath the ice? What lands might the Cataclysm have unearthed between us and the North?

    Anyway, that is my thoughts.  I would love to see "The War of The Dead," as an expansion.

    I'll be honest, everyone is thinking Burning Legion expansion, and dealing with Gul'dan.  But let's be honest, following Garrosh to Draenor was the first time the previous expansions event led to the next expansion.  I'm more inclined to believe they will let that thread dangle for a while.

    What do you all think the next expansion will be?

Lag

I miss the Lich King

Last night was pretty fun.  We went Retro.

      As is more then possible we did a quick run of heroic 25 ICC.  In about an hour and a half we had blown all the way through the entire raid getting several achievements.  It was fun, it was smooth, and most of all there was little or no tension.  There were a couple of achieves we didn't manage to get, but we can grab them later.  We also had a couple issues working on Frosttide's legendary quest, but he did get further. I'm calling the night a win.  I was kind of sad by the fact that you can heal through the remorseless winter portion of the Lich King fight now.  We just sat back and dpsed him down without running to the edges.  Adds died quick and we pretty much skipped the 2nd phase and 3rd phase as we kept pushing him down before remorseless winter was over.

     We will be back to ICC soon though.  I look forward to getting the next drake after the achieves are done, and I would love to get a couple peeps through their shadowmourne legendary quests.  I use to run retro raids for the guild here and there, but people stopped showing.  I think it might be time to revive the practice.  Not every week, but once or twice a month would be nice to go blow stuff up.  Wrath was the period where I really started raiding, and I look back on it fondly.  I did some raiding at the end of B.C., and never touched it while I was in vanilla, but I smile at a lot of the memories from back then.

     While the game has been streamlined, I almost feel at times that Wrath was a simpler time.  Gearing seemed smooth.  I wasn't afraid to pug my way into a 25 man and do some damage.  Tempers seemed not to flare up so much, and it wasn't hard to do a good job if you focused on what you needed to do.  I know that if I really looked back, it would also have the pain of sitting in trade pugging a group for Raids or dungeons.  Balance was a lot more skewed, and before duel specs it meant a lot of work if you needed to trade specs.  (I recognize that duel spec came out during wrath.)

     A lot of people learned to raid in Wrath as well.  I feel this is when raids became more accessible, and the story line really carried you through Northrend.  Arthas was everywhere, unlike Illidan who you never really saw unless you did the netherwing quest line.  It felt meaningful when you killed him.  It wasn't like Deathwing who would randomly nuke you, Arthas was looking at you specifically.  It made you feel connected to the story in a fascinating way.

     What was your favorite expansion/raiding experience?  Why?

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye