We're a week away from BlizzCon now, and I don't think I've ever looked forward to it with this much anticipation. I've always enjoyed the spectacle and the big announcements - even in the years when I wasn't playing WoW, I still had a look at the trailers they released every year. And while 2017's WoW Classic announcement was probably the single most exciting piece of news I've ever gotten out of BlizzCon, most of us weren't looking forward to that one at the time, because we weren't really expecting it.
This time, it feels like the Classic community has been holding its breath waiting for what's to come for a long time. Some of us only for a few months, some for years. Whatever the truth is, we'll find out next Saturday. Please, no more "this is what Classic+ should do" videos in my YouTube feed. And give the people in the WoW Classic subreddit something real to talk about, instead of trying to wring deeper meaning out of things like the Blizzard store changing its CSS.
Worst case, even if Camelot turns out to be a bit of a bust, I'm hoping we'll also find out more about the future of other modes of Classic soon after (even if that stuff doesn't make the big announcements). As I wrote back in June, I have a lot more questions on that front to which I'd like to get answers.
Interestingly, retail is less clear in terms of what announcements to expect this time. I have no doubt that there'll be some, but it feels a bit early to start hyping The Last Titan - Midnight's only been out for six months! In the past, with new expansions coming out every two years, the annual hype cycle would basically alternate between the actual release of an expansion and announcing the next one about a year in advance, but since they've been trying to make an eighteen month cycle happen with the Worldsoul Saga, it kind of complicates things.
The increased focus on story and the fact that the Worldsoul Saga is meant to be a trilogy also means that it would make no sense to focus on whatever's going to happen in the final part when we don't even know yet how Midnight is going to end. Maybe they'll go for several mid-sized announcements instead: what's coming in 12.2, what's the next Remix going to be, maybe just a teaser for Last Titan, giving us glimpses of the revamped Northrend or showing us what Iridikron has been up to.
The Remix question is probably the most fun thing to speculate about on the retail front. I was originally thinking Wrath of the Lich King to get us in the mood for Last Titan, but considering that the anniversary servers are also supposed to continue into Wrath Classic next year, that might be a bit too much Northrend at once? Most people seem to think that a more modern expansion like BfA or Shadowlands is more likely, usually because they see Remixes less as a nostalgia trip and more as an opportunity to do a lot of item collecting in a short period of time, and apparently both of these had a lot of collectibles that people loathe to go back for in the regular game. We'll see.
And of course, there's the off-chance that they announce something else Warcraft-related that's not about WoW itself. The timeline from the purported leak discussed a few months ago included a Warcraft RTS, an anime and an Arthas ARPG, but even if these projects are real, the earliest any of these were meant to be released was late 2028, so it might still be too soon to talk them up.
