Illidan was cool, despite Blizz taking the pandas away from his blades. The whole intro movie was him taunting us, catching glimpses, and finally you see him in all his half-demon glory. It was awesome. Currently, we see some armored dude stick a sword in ice, a dragon pops out and flies over a bunch of undead. Yay….

Arthas is tricky though, perhaps the only “depth” to his character. He’s a bit evasive. I could see us fighting him, him saying, at zero-health, “L2Play n00bz you were fighting my image! I now haz ur kings!” and just ruining all of old-world. The idea of refugee camps being setup is cool…but what if it was changed a bit…

What if the next expansion is a server-wide event, just like people have been clamoring for? Arthas (or someone) lays waste to Azeroth. You think pansey lvl79 troops are going to take down kings? No. Every monster is no less than lvl85 elite. Yes. Every monster is equal to heroic trash in Nax25. All of them. Servers band together- the “hardcore” guilds teach the noob guilds because without the sheer numbers the noobs provide, no progress will be made. All instances require level90 (100?) to enter. Heroic dungeons are a lot more heroic when AOEs cause cave-ins (Deadmines, Muradon, others), players get radioation sickness (gnomer) and players can become zombies again. Heroic VanKleef? No. He was replaced by the lord of the bone dragons. His name is Kip and he just ate the entire boat Vanqueef was hanging out on.

World pvp comes back as more effective zombies. You think the kings of Azeroth would die by one of those loser zombies? All your armor, weapons, and stats are doubled against the living…but go for more than 10 minutes without HKing someone and you lose 10% durability, 1/4 of your gold and get rez sickness.

What happens when you finally make it to Arthas or dominate the “world”? Server events reset each month. It can even be on a Tuesday.

This forces hardcore and noob to work together. This is heroic-WoW-mode all the time. You could even create a neat buff to the mob where the more people within 25yards it gains X% health/dmg. It would be nice to make people think again.

Sorry if you got critted by a wall of text.

That said, I’m tired of Arthas. He’s just not very sympathetic or interesting. He’s a cold hearted jerk, but he’s a pretty shallow villain overall. Powerful, sure, but not all that interesting.

While we are away defeating the Lick King, he back doors Azeroth and lays waste to both continents in a MASSIVE war. the horde and alliance have to retreat, masses of refugee’s enter the maelstrom, mass camps setup in the outlands (camps that allow new toons of ALL classes/races to start at 55 and go through a newby zone like the DK’s had).

While all this happens, the old continents are “offlimits” and are completely redone with phasing, we amass armies and retake them. All the old zones are warzones, we get to redo all the old instances on normal/heroic as we retake out home lands. Flying mounts finally useful in old world.

the retaking of azeroth brings us to level 90, and we finally completely destroy the lich king, fade into new MMO.

Really? I’m holding out for those fabulous ugg boots myself.

Or my other thought Burning Legion returns, Sargeras but demons are now a playable race. Dreadlord/Succubus playable toon = pure win!

I always thought Deathwing was going to happen with Burning Crusade, because isn’t his lair in Outlands? I think WoW’s dragons are really lame and boring, though, so a dragon expansion wouldn’t excite me quite as much.

I’d like to see Queen Azshara and Sargeras involved in a new expansion. Seems like they could milk a good amount of content there.

I was always pissed by how quickly they introduced Illidan and how easily he was defeated. When I heard Northrend was the site of the expansion, I worried the same thing would happen. If they can avoid doing that, perhaps by doing the second option, I’d be thrilled. Arthas is too cool to become a loot pinata.

Yes, I wonder where they will go next since they don’t have any more Warcraft (the RTS) game lore to explore. I’m sure they’ll come up with something. I just hope it’s not too far out there.