Instead of faction splitting, we might just get more "alternate" story paths like the Saurfang loyalist vs. Sylvanas loyalist schtick.

EDIT: I suppose this could be an "Iron Horde texture" for the next expansion:

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You are right, but people have this weird fixation on characters whose only claim to fame is having been mentioned once or twice more than a decade ago or being related to actually important characters. Calia, Tandred, Mueh'zala, Rastakhan... So it is kind of understandable why Blizzard does it.

Rumour has it that Calia wasn't even meant to get the part. Instead it was meant to be a completely new human character, but Golden rebelled.

I think the best solution would be to simply leave the Forsaken without one single leader. Simply continue developing a wide cast of Forsaken characters until one of them feels like proper, leader material. Or have them be led by a council. Either way, just take your time instead of rushing from one not-really Forsaken leader to another.

If the Forsaken need leaders, they should be led by one of their own. Racial leaders should be people the race's NPCs and players can aspire to be like; if you put people like Calia or Sylvanas in charge, you'll never stop receiving demands for playable Dark Rangers or alabaster humans.

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https://de.wowhead.com/news=295589/a...-text-spoilers

Well.....

...it looks like that Anduin learned of Bolvar's fate offscreen.

Also:

https://de.wowhead.com/news=295591/8...w-trade-prince

Gallywix apparently has fleed, so Thrall appoints Gazlowe as the new Goblin Leader.

Not sure what is wrong with that. Allied Races essentially mean Blizzard can add dozens of playable options without much effort, if people want something, let them want something. The "it takes a spot" argument does not really work that much anymore.

We've discussed this on the discord, probably the best idea is if her contact with the Forsaken led to some sort of cultural/philosophical split where some embrace her, but many also reject her.

I guess Sylvanas is gonna push for becoming Lich Queen. It would be a boring existence but I guess it beats that other place she went to.

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That is the most likely option anyway.

We already seen in Tides of War how Sylvanas encourages a policy of that the Forsaken should cut their ties to their past and "old families".

Which as we saw didn't work 100%ly. But there are still enough Forsaken who got rejected by their families during the summit in Arathi and probatly are more in in embracing Sylvanas philosophy.

Plus, the fact that diehard Sylvanas loyalists are still out there. (And a new Generation of Scarlets, if we can believe some stuff datamined months ago.)


@Lich Queen: That's actually been a kinda nobrainer for a while. And there is really delight in the irony that Sylvanas is about to become completly like the person (or even worse) whos annilation has orginally been her only motivation to exist.

It could very well be the "compromise" Blizzard is looking for with the Sylvanas debacle not becoming Garrosh 2.0.

Sylvanas gets to postpone her punishment indefinitely while encased in a block of ice, hoping that she can atone for her sins as she keeps Undead in check. Some leaders will continue to call for her head but she is more or less protected by her new Scourge minions.

Meanwhile, Bolvar can spend family time with Taelia... and maybe Calia if the theories are true.

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There were many, many requests for Bolvar to "come back" and have his plot developed.

I'm afraid Blizzard is going to use Lich King 2.0 to distract us from the Calia-Forsaken-Tyrande-Sylvanas-Lordaeron mess.

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There's nothing wrong with desiring or adding more allied races and classes.

I simply do not think that the racial leaders of already available races should be used (intentionally or unintentionally) as a means to "hype" new (allied) races nor have more in common with another race than the one they are meant to lead.

There shouldn't be a feeling of inadequacy whenever you compare your character with their racial leader.

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Great points @Nazja

I like the idea of gnomes and mechagnomes uniting. Having an race/allied race pair makes it more likely for the later to be used frequently.

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I mean... I don't have a problem with calia leading the Forsaken as a whole.

I'm talking more about introducing Calia in a way that feels impactful and natural, rather than...after the story is over, being like "oh btw, Calia is a light-infused undead and is super important now kthxbye." Without taking away from Jaina or Anduin or Sylvanas or Saurfang (who are basically the core/pivotal characters of this expansion).

Jaina had major arcs in WotLK and especially MoP. Sylvanas had major arcs in Legion, Cataclysm and Wrath of the Lich King. Saurfang's been a major player in Classic and Wrath. Anduin had a major storyline in Mists, and to a lesser extent in Legion. And of course all of them have had major long-form arcs in Battle for Azeroth almost non-stop since the opening cinematic.

Hell I could buy Alleria taking command of the Forsaken over Calia. At least I know who Alleria is and I care about her. I mean it'd be ridiculous and it wouldn't make any sense, but it'd be more impactful, I'd have a clearer idea of what was going on.

Just because Calia is in a novel and her brother & father are important characters doesn't mean I care about her.

Though Sylvanas's whole downfall is really underwhelming anyway. The whole thing feels thin and rushed. Even Thrall just feels like he's... there. It's hardly a triumphant return. It's a lot of man tears and faffing about.

I guess the only way I could buy Calia, is if she was a larger part of the War Campaign or even was just involved in a few side quests in Kul Tiras or Zandalar somehow. Maybe she fled there during the war and has been in hiding ever since. It'd be outrageous, but again, at least it'd be a better way to introduce and integrate her and explain where she's been and what she's been doing.

To be honest, I'm still super frustrated with Sylvanas's whole bit as Warchief. Until midway through Battle for Azeroth there was no justification for her to even be Warchief from a narrative standpoint. Vol'jin appointing her is ridiculous, and is just a weird vague plot-hook.

Sort of off-topic but I still think there was a better way to handle Legion.

I still maintain that the two factions should have just been absolutely shattered by the Legion's invasion and there should have been no chance for any central leadership to recover. It should have been a totally wild situation, with Sylvanas leading one of the largest armies (between the blight, her val'kyr and no oversight from a WarChief).

With Khadgar, Furion, Tyrande, Velen, the Illidari, and others forming a sort of council to initiate dealing with the Legion condemning anyone who would dare fight the other faction while dealing with the Legion (which leads to Sylvanas taking advantage of this situation to search for what she wants -- Greymane initiating a counter-initiative in secret, trying to avoid the eyes of this council).

Then Sylvanas's power continues to grow, even the Gallywix thing could just be him going specifically to her for the Forsaken's help in retrieving the Azerite. Sylvanas drags the rest of the Horde into her battle with the Alliance. as her power and influence continue to grow and spread.

There's problems with that, it would have run into issues with other initiatives they had, I just think they have way too much tunnel vision with certain ideas and concepts.

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"The Demons did their job well. You creatures are as reckless and bloodthirsty as they ever were."

So a pretty strange event is going on over at MMO Champion.

There's this leaker guy named Jericho21 doing a weird version of a fake leak where instead of doing the standard bullet point list he's giving tiny details spread across multiple posts on multiple different threads without any concrete details but more nudging people to figure out things on their own. I shared it over at the Discord just thinking it was a novel way to do a fake leak.

Then I found out why the people on MMO Champion were taking this Jericho guy so seriously. He posted this back in 2015, two days before Legion was announced at Gamescom.

So that makes things a lot more interesting. That being said, there's still a good chance its all fake, after the Legion leak he said his source got fired over it. So either he's gotten another source or he's just piggybacking on his past to troll people with made up stuff.

That's still oodles more credibility than literally every other leak we've had so far so I felt I should share it here too. Here's a summary of what he's said/implied so far (spoiler-ed just in case there's anything to it):

-Dragon Isles is the expansion continent.
-All the Shadowlands leaks are fake. If we go to the Shadowlands, it'll be as a raid akin to Emerald Nightmare or Ny'alotha.
-Tinker class. Unlike past new classes, they have no connection to the expansion's story or themes. Blizzard did this to break that precedent so they can be more creative with classes in the future.
-There might be new allied races, he was especially vague on this part so I'm not sure.
-The main villains are Sylvanas, the Death Entity she serves, and the Void Lords.
-This expansion is the end of Sylvanas' story. There's no it turns out she was secretly good all along moment like with Illidan. She's just "batsh** insane."
-She doesn't die, however. Instead Sylvanas' "transgressions past, present, and future" will "haunt" her.
-Elune allowed the Burning of Teldrassil to happen because she has a "tacit agreement" with Sylvanas' master.
-Tyrande is the Avatar of Elune, Sylvanas is the Avatar of Death.
-Wrathion "totally gets rekt" at some point in the expansion. He's not a good guy, he has a soft spot for Anduin, but is otherwise not a hero and is only helping protect Azeroth for personal gain.
-Order Halls in Legion were a testbed for Guild Halls, but Blizzard wasn't satisfied with them and scrapped the idea. That's why we didn't see a proper garrison/order hall successor in BfA and why we won't get one in 9.0.
-The new artifact power grind will be to restore the Aspects' powers.

Here's his full post history if you want to read it for yourself: https://www.mmo-champion.com/search....d=63075094&pp=

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Hm. Nothing particularly objectionable in that*. On the other hand, nothing that particularly piques my interest. Guess I'll have to wait for either more "leaks" or Blizzcon.

#Except perhaps Tinkers.

Well I'm 90% sure it's going to be a Sylvanas expansion and those who don't like her will have Bolvar (possibly) and Dragons as consolation, so I don't see this expansion being the huge WOOAH that Legion was unless the gameplay changes and features are mind-blowing.

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If this is legit, it will be hard to top this as "most boring expansion premise ever."

Yeah pretty whatever. Of all those things only curious about how they do tinkers.

How are you bro?

The Jericho21 "leak" situation has come to a strange conclusion.

He announced this:

Notable dataminer Marlamin chimed in:

Very suspicious that this turn comes after people on MMO Champion were starting to doubt him...

Well, we'll know for sure in two weeks.

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Yeah, if the premise is mostly Tinkers, Sylvanas, a traitorous Elune and Dragons it's gonna be really really boring. No racial or order halls either? Meh.

Bolvar/Scourge would be cool though.

I'm good, my dude.

How about yourself?

Doing alright, still hanging around memer. Drop in anytime you feel nostalgic.

@Leaks/Rumors:

Well, we will see.

I still think we additionally get another Azeroth revamp. It's been almost 10 years since the last one and there is currently quite some whining about leveling. (And leveling issues were one of the main reasons for the initial revamp.)

The folks over at MMOC made a spreadsheet to keep track of all the leaks

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1758213767

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Not even a column for each leakers past credibility?

Well this is worthless.

Notice how they do the following:

2 expansions where the factions band together to fight a bigger threat from the start, 2 expansions where they do it after a whole expansion's worth of conflicts

TBC and Wrath - bigger enemy expansions
Cataclysm and Pandaria - faction war expansions
WoD and Legion - bigger enemy expansions
BFA - faction war expansion

It's like expansion themes are designed in pairs

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