Wrath of the LK, the end of WoW?

[handsomearny]

Hello my friends,
this might have been asked somewhere, but couldnt find it, so here goes:

If Blizzard releases an expansion where we get to down the Lich King, isnt that the end of WoW? Let me explain. I am a geek for Wow lore. The biggest enemy in this entire Warcraft universe is the Lich King. He is Sargeras, Arathas and Kil'jaeden put together. There is NO one more powerful than this being in the warcraft universe. So I ask you, if Blizz lets us kill him, will there be any reason for any more continuation? Yes, there is still the Alliance/Horde conflict, but as I said, the main reason for the confusion, danger and peril will be gone. No reason for anymore expansions, atleast not any good additions to the story. But this is Blizz, they want the money. They will have thought about this (lets hope they have), and thus following are my guesses on what Blizz might be planning.

My first guess is the we wont be able to TRULY destroy the LKing. Blizzard has stated that we will face him, but not wheather we will be able to kill him. Maybe he flees outta Northend when we bring his health down to 5% or something. And then he becomes more powerful (lvl 90???), and we get another expansion with lvl cap raised.

My second guess is that Blizz might instead invent some more powerful entity when, and if, we are able to kill the LK. Then the next expac will deal with downing this other new entity. I dont like this second option because it screws the story. I hope Blizz goes with the first option.

I will like to know what you others think. Please share your thoughts on this dilemma and what other options that Blizz has, as well as what you think about my guesses. Or am I entirely wrong? Is there anyone else that is more powerful than THE LK?

And also, based on your thoughts, tell me what the next expac might deal with.

Thank You for your valuable time!

[Torik]

One thing I learned about roleplaying is that if you spin a good enough story you can justify anything. So if an encounter design might interfere with established lore, Blizzard will 'bend' the lore to accomodate it.

[handsomearny]

Thanks for replying back so soon, Torik.

Torik, by your post, you seem to think that Blizzard will make use of the second option, ie, inventing some twists and turns to the story. I really hope that they dont. They did a little bit of that for TBC, but it wasnt that major. But THE LICH KING?????? No way man, let them not screw with the lore!!!!

Waiting for other POVs as well.

[amgyn]

well first off.. we dont really destroy illidan, yet he is the "final" boss of outlands.


anyway... you got your lore off a bit, sargeras is still out there in one form or another.

arthas (as the lich king) is corrupted by ner'zhul who was a powerfull orc warlock who was once allied with kil'jaden. kil'jaden is one of sargeras' seargents (along with archimonde, whom is "defeated" in mt. hyjal by the wisps).

sargeras is the most dangerous to azeroth, nobody know's where his body is... some think its buried near the maelstorm in the middle of azeroth.

so untill we kill sargeras wow will always have an expansion coming up :P

[Blakbow]

Thats true, Sargeras is still out there, and there are stil lareas of azeroth that haven't opened, even with the wotlk expansion.
And besides, there's always the emerald dream to explore between arthas and sargeras.

[handsomearny]

Ty amgyn and blakbow for replying.

Yes, you guys are right, Sargeras is still left. The mighty ex-titan is surely more powerful than the LK. Yes, indeed, you both are right.

I was somehow confused that the spirit of Sargeras was residing in the body of Arthas, and when Arthas became part of kil'jaden and became the LK, Sargeras also became part of the LK. I am sorry for my misumderstanding.

The reality (lol, atleast wow wise) is that for sometime, sargeras' spirit resided in the body of Aegwynn. Aegwynn gave birth to Medivh, and thus passed on the spirit to him. When Medivh dies, the spirit was banished to the Twisting Neather.

I had confused Medivh with Arthas. Really really embarassing, given that I pay carefull attention to details in the lore.

Ty so much once again.

And yes Blakbow, the Emerald Dream is prime candidate for a future expac.

[Pongle]

The Lich King isn't Kil'Jaeden, it's Ner'zhul inside the body of Arthas. Kil'Jaeden is still walking the nether around being highly pissed off because The Lich King didn't do his damn job.

Further Expansion Options: Emerald Dream, Undermine, Hyjal (real Hyjal still isn't open though it would likely go with the Emerald Dream).

[handsomearny]

Pongle, ty for pointing that out. That was a mental typo in both of my posts. Yes, indeed, it is Ner'Zhul who has binded with Arathas. Ner'Zhule used to reside in that helmet that was encased in the FT, which Arthas breaks, and then wears, thus to become the LK.

Yea, my only misunderstanding was the mixup of who had been possesed by Sargeras. Just got it right when amgyn pointed it out, and I did a good reading of the wowwiki article on the LK.

Now to think of it....isnt Kil'Jaedan more powerful than the LK too? He will easily kill the Lich if he got his hands on him, right?

[Gavriel]

Has it even been confirmed that we will be killing the Lich King in Northrend?

[JaedxRapture]

Confirmed? It's still in early development. Even if they state something now there's a decent chance they'll change it before WotLK comes.

My idea? Stop speculating. You're only going to start up wild and stupid rmors around the WoW community. We'll know when Blizz says something or a reliable source leeks info.

Edit: Though WC lore isn't that great, I doubt Blizz is stupid enough to end the series by killing off all conflicts in the WC universe. They'll always leave something open to leave the audience wanting more and to keep the lore exciting. And as such they'll always be room for more expansion.

[Felix Niebuhr]

Ehh, the Lich King was invented in Warcraft 3. So in WoW, just another game, they can just invent another? Lol why yes they can, that little kid running around Stormwind is now the evil Emperor of the Universe, you must put a stop to him before we can make some more lore. Yes we will hype him by telling you he is untouchable, and then you kill him, cause its a game and you are supposed to.

[clevins]

Gav... In fact during the Lore panel at Blizzcon Metzen was explicit that they had not decided whether or not we kill the LK. I could see him being defeated but not killed, the spirit of Ner'zhul being cast out of Arthas' body or... we could just kill him.

[bwirum]

Ehh, the Lich King was invented in Warcraft 3. So in WoW, just another game, they can just invent another? Lol why yes they can, that little kid running around Stormwind is now the evil Emperor of the Universe, you must put a stop to him before we can make some more lore. Yes we will hype him by telling you he is untouchable, and then you kill him, cause its a game and you are supposed to.

You mean little William who runs around with the doll? He truly IS the evil emperor of the universe. I wish there was a way to ignore him, but no..

[Loriel]

Just to offer an alternative view, it could be argued that WoW will be the vehicle for creating and reshaping Warcraft lore - and not just picking up threads from the Warcraft RTS games. Up until now, WoW has presented characters and events that were previously introduced in the RTS games (and the books and articles that go with them), such as Illidan, Arthas, Thrall, Medivh et al.

Consequently, if the game should "run out" of characters to kill, Blizzard will simply create some new ones. It's the same deal with the whole Alliance Shaman / Horde Paladins thing - if the lore does not support the gameplay the way Blizzard want it to be, the lore will be reshaped to fit.

I was a bit confused myself when Blizzard wanted to introduce Arthas already in the next expansion, but from a business perspective it makes a lot of sense to keep rolling out the heavy hitters early, i.e. Illidan and the Burning Legion in TBC, Arthas and his Scourge in WLK. If they had introduced some minor stopgap expansion, such as maybe Undermine with no level cap increase, people might start to lose interest. Blizzard want to maintain and hopefully build momentum, which is why they choose to bring Arthas to the stage already at lvl 80.

And truthfully, I doubt that very many people care about the lore at all.. Lore is a very big deal to quite a few people (including, to a degree, myself), but I think the majority of those 9+ million players never played Warcraft II & III, and as such they have no idea who Arthas or Illidan might be. Nor do they really care, as to them they are just another boss to beat, for the challenge of it and the loot that can be obtained.

As such I don't think WLK will be the end of WoW. Blizzard supposedly have a premade plan for the next 4 or 5 expansions following WoW 1.0, so I'm sure they have a pretty good idea of where they want to go next. As long as they can come out with exciting encounters and hopefully some innovative ideas, people will still want to play it.

[det]

Dungeons and bosses with no levelcap raise are often introduced in patches (next: Zul Aman). The Maelstrom - being on the Azeroth map - might feature in next time, indeed.

The Old gods have been mentioned as more powerful than anything we have imagined, but already the Draenei and the whole spaceship thingy caught many people by surprise - proof that Blizzard is good at opening up some sideline and dragging new stuff in.

Though after WC 3, I guess ppl always wanted to fight Arthas, and so this might feel like a pre-mature "end" to WoW...

[Davemetalhead]

And truthfully, I doubt that very many people care about the lore at all.. Lore is a very big deal to quite a few people (including, to a degree, myself), but I think the majority of those 9+ million players never played Warcraft II & III, and as such they have no idea who Arthas or Illidan might be. Nor do they really care, as to them they are just another boss to beat, for the challenge of it and the loot that can be obtained.


I'm pretty much one of those people. I played WC II a lot, but could never really get into WC III - I just didn't like the graphics and gameplay. So to me, when I came into WoW I had no idea who most of these characters were. Thrall was just the head of the Orcs, Jaina was some lass who lived in a tower in a swamp, Rexxar was just some scary fella that I had to avoid when playing my Alliance characters.

To be honest, I don't care too much about the lore. I enjoy the game - I read the quest descriptions, and I like the world that's been created for me. But I couldn't care less who the end game bosses are (I doubt I'll ever see them anyway, not being a dedicated raider) ....

[bwirum]

I'm in that boat too, never really got into any of the WC RTS games actually. Just wasn't the games for me. Strange when you consider the fact that I played other RTS games extensively over the years. And so I'm also in the same boat as Dave when it comes to the caring of lore. I mean, it's fun to have a nice storyline and all, but if it doesn't really follow the line of a game I didn't play many years ago, well, meh.

[Wintrow]

I'd say, in terms of power we have:
- Illidan as the lowest
- Archimonde
- The Lich King
- Kil'Jaeden
- Sargeras
- The Old Gods (when combined)
- The Titans (when combined)

Off course for now the titans are not evil, so we might not get to fight them.

Still... It might be that we eventually get to help the Titans in an epic battle against the Old Gods (I know this has already happened when Azeroth was formed and the titans won, but it could happen again and this time the titans no longer have Sargeras to help).

[Loriel]

With Arthas being the pivotal character of WC III and especially The Frozen Throne, the WLK expansion could be seen as the end of WoW lore as we know it - but that doesn't mean the game won't continue to evolve. The remaining 80+% of the player base will simply go "The Frozen What, now?", and keep on playing.. :)

There's tons of stuff left to introduce into the game, like The Emeral Dream, Undermine, The Maelstrom, Uldum, Gilneas, not to mention the Old Gods. The lore is just a backdrop for the gameplay, and it's not like Blizzard considers the lore to be sacred in any way. They're not bound by a license in the same way that (say) Lord of the Rings Online is, so they are free to mold the lore in any way they see fit. And I'm sure they will exercise that right :)

[moopy]

It's not an issue, there's always a facile deus ex machina style getouts that can be fired up to feed the mudflation machine- for as long as there are enough people wanting to kill bosses, there will be bosses for tea.

[Baboon]

Blizzard said they wanted to include Northrend and Outland originally in the Vanilla game. So that would mean you could kill Arthas, Illidan and most of the Burning Legion without even an expansion.

Therefore, I think they have a whole followup story waiting.

[Arsehale]

Have to agree with the follow up story idea, with the money they are making from this game it is very unlikely that they will simply end it.

[Twoflower]

i wanna battle more old gods. cthun was fun :)

titans incoming !

[WatcherZero]

I love the quest in Shadowmoon where you stop the ghsot skettis arrakoa from summoning cthun back to the land of the living, its like corpse camping him.

[Thargos]

Edit: Though WC lore isn't that great, I doubt Blizz is stupid enough to end the series by killing off all conflicts in the WC universe. They'll always leave something open to leave the audience wanting more and to keep the lore exciting. And as such they'll always be room for more expansion.

How isn't the lore great? It cerainly better than games like EQ, Vangaurd, LoTRO, Diablo, and a ton of other games.

[moopy]

How isn't the lore great? It cerainly better than games like EQ, Vangaurd, LoTRO, Diablo, and a ton of other games.

Being arguably superior to something so terrible that it sucks Win from the surrounding environs does not make something in and of itself A Good Thing.

[handsomearny]

Great excellent posts.

If there is one thing that everyone will wager on is that Blizz has something in mind. They make too much money from this game to not keep it alive for atleast another (minimum) 5 years or so.

I am sorry moopy, but I have to say that you have no reason to say that Wow lore is being called good because it is superior to other game lores. WoW has a terribly fantastic lore. You can, if you want, even draw a damn family tree of Arathas if you wanted to with the help of the existing lore. Only Lord of the Rings seems to have more intracacies and details than WoW, but Hobbits do not come close to say, a Warcraft-style Blood-Drinking Orc.

Anyway, with everyone else, I agree, that there is still a lot that has the potential to become another future WoW expac. And what with Blizz's habit of creating more lore as they go, I am sure they can come up with enough lore to fill another 100 expacs.

[Loriel]

I'm sure Blizzard will evolve the lore to keep up with the expanding gameplay, but my only concern is how they choose to tell this story. RTS games like Warcraft III, and in particular the campaign contained therin, are the perfect vehicle for telling a linear story from a single point of view. It's this campaign that introduced Arthas as a tragic/heroic character, and also (in the Frozen Throne) illustrating his rebirth as the Lich King - thereby creating an uber-villain for the franchise.

MMO games by their very nature require a big leap of faith on the part of their players, as mobs and bosses obviously respawn. If your guild takes down C'Thun - and Old God, no less - by the very next week he'll be alive and well once more, ready to be farmed for more loot. Within a server there are hundreds of simultaneous timelines, and then again there are hundreds of different servers - each representing a unique copy of Azeroth and Outland. As such there is no singular unique timeline to WoW, and events that should ideally be unique - such as the killing of Kel'Thuzad or Illidan - eventually happen hundreds of times. For gameplay reasons it obviously has to be implemented this way, although it is at the expense of story telling.

From a story telling perspective, the best thing Blizzard could do is to release another RTS - i.e. Warcract IV - some time between WLK and the following expansion, thereby providing more lore fodder for the MMO machine. From a business perspective this is probably not a stellar idea, though, as Blizzard don't want to dilute their player base and distract them from their #1 Warcraft vehicle.

And again, most players don't care about any of this - so they might be happy with some brief background article preceding the expansion. In fact I doubt many people even read those, so it might be something like this:
- "OK, who are we killing today?"
- "Sargeras"
- "Who he?"
- "Well, he's the..."
- "Naah, I don't care - I just want my T8 chest piece. Pull!"

:)

[Janfader]

The problem is, is that is so many lores, beliefs etc... Many different Gods to Demons lies ahead for many possibilities.

Blizzard is a "role-playing" game based on moderation. That says it all really. They can modify anything they want to any shape or form. "Lore" is simply a story told - did it happen for real? Of course not - simply because its lore. No actual facts, no actual beliefs, just imagination.

Who's the big boss of the universe? Hell E.T for all I know. So much religion and beliefs following Gods to Demons out there, its crazy.

Just in that, Blizzard can continue to write storylines while enticing us to broadon our own horizion on the matter. Hell, what do we care, more epic gear, and more money to spend. : )

A little history on the "first Gods" (so we have been told)

Generation 1
Gaia was the great mother who created and then mated with the heavens (Ouranos) and the sea (Pontos). She also produced but did not mate with the mountains.

Generation 2
From her union with the heavens came the Hecatonchires (hundred-handers: Kottos, Briareos, and Gyes), the three cyclops (Brontes, Sterope, and Arges), and the Titans (Kronos [Cronus], Rheia [Rhea], Kreios [Crius], Koios [Coeus], Phoibe [Phoebe], Okeanos [Oceanus], Tethys, Hyperion, Theia [Thea], Iapetos [Iapetus], Mnemosyne, and Themis).

Generation 3
From the Titan pair Kronos and his sister Rheia came the first Olympian gods (Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Demeter, and Hestia).

Generation 4
From the mating of Zeus and Hera came Ares, the cup-bearer Hebe, Hephaestus, and the goddess of childbirth Eileithuia. There are other, conflicting genealogies. For instance, Eros is also called the son of Iris instead of Aphrodite, and Hephaestus may have been born to Hera without aid of a male.

[dasecrus]

When one dark lord falls, a new and far more powerful one arises. Sure WoW will get to the point where its like dragon ball z and gt but like Janfader said, more money, more epic gear.

[LunarSolaris]

I don't doubt that the game will be alive for the next 5 years or more... but I firmly believe WoW has reached it's peak of subscriptions. It'll probably maintain at this level for the next year or so and then start to taper off as other things are released.

I heard through a rumor that Diablo 3 is in the works (will be a MMO). If this is true (and the game gets released in the next year or so), it definitely means WoW has seen it's day and I'd bet will easily be replaced with the new one.

WoW is much like Everquest was... Everquest lived a long life. I imagine WoW will too.

[dasecrus]

I won't ever abandon WoW.

[clevins]

The Diablo3 rumor is running around the web, but mostly because people read too much into things as did Wowinsider when they published a post postulating D3 would be announced in Germay because the conf schedule mentioned that Blizz was talking about 'new games." Um... SC2 and LK maybe?

The idea of a peak is an interesting one given that WoW saw VERY stron TBC sales and adds about 150k new people each month. I'm not sure if that's a net +150k or if we should subtract people who leave from that... but there are a million more people playing now that in Dec 06 when I started...

I think Wow will float up to somewhere between 10-13 million then taper. But here's the thing... that's a LOT of people. Unless there's a mass exodus for another game, even a slow decline from a peak of, say 11 million means several more years of play at a a population that is about the same size as it's been for the last 12-18 months.

Is WoW the last word in MMOs? Of course not. But I do hope we see several new games that become v popular, not just a move from WoW to the next ONE game. The issue there is that only so many people can afford multiple subscriptions per month.

[Janfader]

I don't doubt that the game will be alive for the next 5 years or more... but I firmly believe WoW has reached it's peak of subscriptions. It'll probably maintain at this level for the next year or so and then start to taper off as other things are released.

I heard through a rumor that Diablo 3 is in the works (will be a MMO). If this is true (and the game gets released in the next year or so), it definitely means WoW has seen it's day and I'd bet will easily be replaced with the new one.

WoW is much like Everquest was... Everquest lived a long life. I imagine WoW will too.

There's many truths to this. But it will take an empire of S/W programmers and skilled writters and corp. guys to maintain and stablize a "better" game then WoW. All I can say is GOOD LUCK! :thumbsup: I can't imagine the amount of people invloved with WoW. This game really does run well. It's fun and love to hit up new PUGs that are mature and know their character.

Maybe with more game like WoW coming out will mean a $$$ battle going on for "on-line" payments :flowers: Cheaper game play for me, is always a good thing. That alone will sell me in any aspect/game (good game).

[LunarSolaris]

It's hard to say. I could be totally wrong. I suppose it's possible WoW could continue to increase in subscribership - though I have my doubts that it will. The main thing is that in the last 2+ years since WoW was released, there really hasn't been anything that has really even remotely been a serious challenger to this game - and until that happens, not much is going to put a dent into the current WoW base.

No doubt this game will be going for years. Hell, Diablo2 still has quite a few players - and that game has been out now for what... 8 years? I imagine that several people will still be playing WoW in 2010 and beyond - though I doubt I'll be one of them.

[clevins]

hmm I can see your logic, i'm just going on the data... which still shows them adding subscribers for a net gain.

[Loriel]

As for the subscriber base, it's obviously still growing - but it seems the growth rate has slowed down. Hence it seems that WoW is approaching its peak number of subscribers, which might be somewhere around 10 million. That's still a pretty big number, and there's no doubt the income from that many subscribers will support Blizzard's effort to maintain and evolve the game throughout its life span.

Most MMOs have a life span of around 5 years, and WoW is now coming up on its 3 year anniversary (at least in the US). WoW might be able to go beyond those 5 years, but I think 10 years is pushing it. There will always be something new and fresh to attract attention away from WoW, if not from other developers then possibly from Blizzard themselves..

My feeling is that Blizzard has a de facto monopoly on the fantasy MMO genre, and other developers would have to be very brave to attempt to beat WoW at its own game. There are huge costs involved in creating a fantasy MMO that is competetive with WoW, and developers/publishers would need to weight the risks very carefully. If their goal is to overtake WoW, they'd have to create something that isn't simply just as good, it would have to be substantially better.

If I were in that position I certainly wouldn't take that risk, but rather try to find some niche that isn't covered by WoW, and then try to create an MMO that is equally content heavy and just as accessible. A sci-fi MMO, perhaps, or one in a modern day setting?

Ultimately I think the people who are most likely to create the MMO that supercedes WoW is in fact Blizzard themselves. Once WoW subscriber numbers start to drop, I suspect Blizzard will publish Diablo 3 and/or some kind of Starcraft Online, to keep these players in the Blizzard franchises.

But hey, this is pretty deep crystal ball math, so I guess time will tell if I'm right :) 3-4 years from now we'll know for sure.