CONventional Speculation

Mutfak has a silly name. I'm not exactly sure how he came up with that beauty, but it's almost dumb enough to fall into my Theory on Character Naming and Player Ability(tm). But Mutfak for all his nomenclature frivolity brought up an interesting point this morning: What will the BlizzCon 2008 announcement be?

BlizzCon is not an annual event, as Blizzard has already stated they will only have the convention when they feel they have meat enough to fill the plate, as it were. No reason to simply celebrate their nearly 11 million players. No, there has to be some big reveal. Mut believes Blizzard will announce a second Hero class, a healing class, since on his server there is a terrible shortage of healers. This isn't the case, obviously, since the Hero class is an experiment all on its own. I really don't expect a second class announcement at the convention. It could happen, true, but it's not likely.

But that still leaves the question of what announcement will be made. I have a theory, recently formed on only one cup of coffee, but it's a good one. Or, at least as good as one cup of coffee on a Friday morning will get you. I maintain that there will be only one Hero class put into the game in Wrath. The next expansion is all about Fordring versus Arthas, Paladin versus Death Knight. The themes of the expansion revolve around the Death Knight. The only other class featured in Wrath to such an extent is the mage class. I simply can't believe there will be an Archmage added to the game. While cool, it's too similar to the class currently in the game.

So my theory goes that yes we will have an announcement regarding the Warcraft universe at BlizzCon (not to be confused with my belief they will also announce another MMO project on October 10th), but it will be the announcement of the next expansion. Think of it. We were told that Blizzard intended to release a boxed expansion every year. In 2005 we learned about TBC. In 2007 we had the Waht-lu-kuh announcement. I expect 2008 to bring us the Maelstrom announcement. Why Maelstrom? Azshara and Malfurion are the last of the Warcraft Celebs not to make an appearance in WoW. While we have seen videos of people travelling through the Emerald Dream landscape already put in the game files, I don't see the story jumping that completely. Yes, I can expect ED to be an expansion of its own, but I don't think it's next. Remember my favorite map? The map of the Maelstrom that we saw on the behind the scenes DVD? It included amongst other things Kul-Tiras and Undermine. And everyone loves pirates. There have been two other MMOs to come out with pirate games.

I expect that Maelstrom will have with it two new races and most likely a Hero class. Finally we will see a faction of playable goblins, as well as naga. I am still pondering what the Hero class will be, but I expect to see one every expansion as we go forward. With the Maelstrom would also come the opening up of Zandalar, meaning that trolls would finally have a homeland. Anyway, the initial coffee-created burst of energy is gone. Now that I have had my say, I will slink back into the shadows and let my prophecies go forth and bring me unsung glory.