World of Warcraft fans have never eaten this well in their lives.
In a reveal today that put all other WoW announcements to shame, Blizzard Entertainment officially announced the next three expansions for the WoW franchise, placing them all into a monstrous “chapter” of WoW’s story known as “The Worldsoul Saga.”
As WoW enters its 20th year of existence, the game will reach a significant turning point. Today at BlizzCon, the next three expansions—The War Within, Midnight, and The Last Titan—were all teased.
The first of those expansions, which will coincide with the 20th anniversary of the game, was the first WoW expansion to be announced at BlizzCon in four years. After the studio’s annual convention was put on pause due to COVID-19 complications, the WoW team was forced to announce its last expansion, Dragonflight, remotely. Today, though, the electricity was brought back to the Anaheim Convention Center in a major way, bringing back the classic feeling of what a WoW expansion reveal should look like.
To drive that point home, the announcement for The War Within was made by longtime Blizzard executive and original WoW developer Chris Metzen, who, after some time spent away from the company, returned to Blizzard as WoW’s executive creative director in September. It marked the first time Metzen announced a WoW expansion since 2013 when he directly introduced the Warlords of Draenor expansion.
“When it comes to WoW’s storytelling, we ain’t screwing around,” Metzen said. “We are playing for all the marbles. We are working to establish a thundering heartbeat for this franchise.”
Metzen additionally teased that the games will be released with an expedited pace, meaning it’s possible WoW’s current every-other-year formula for WoW expansions could get a boost in speed. World of Warcraft: The War Within does not yet have a release date at this time, although it was confirmed the expansion will go live before the end of next year.
