Traditionally, World of Warcraft expansions have been condensed upon themselves, with the narrative of each expansion being confined before the next addition to the franchise takes the game in a new direction.
On occasion, the last patch of one expansion has set up the first patch of the next. But never before has a specific narrative point of the game been promised to play out over the span of three intertwining expansions.
WoW has some of the strongest well-established lore and consistent themes out of any game in the modern fantasy sphere, but rarely have those themes been employed consistently over a story that reaches across expansions, or even years. With the launch of The War Within later this year, though, Blizzard is undertaking a new project for the long-running franchise known as the “Worldsoul Saga,” which will kick off a new era in WoW’s history—one where a cohesive story will be told by way of an overarching trilogy.
“We normally do not do something that is serial, we normally do storytelling that is episodic as far as expansions go,” WoW’s senior narrative designer Abigail Manuel said in a press conference this week. “And we have gotten ahead of this in many ways. We have the main story beats planned out very, very far ahead, and we know where we’re going. That is the way we’re going to make sure that the payoff pays off after these three expansions.”
WoW’s story was heavily criticized during the Shadowlands era, and to leave that destitute moment in history in the rearview mirror, the narrative team had to pivot in a major way. A front-to-back trilogy of expansions that bridges the modern age of WoW back to its roots just in time for the 20th anniversary is definitely a colossal risk, but it’s what the dev team thinks is necessary to pull the masses in for what has been promised to be “a storyline that in every way feels like the culmination of the first 20 years of our storytelling,” according to WoW’s executive creative director Chris Metzen back at BlizzCon 2023.
“The Worldsoul Saga is one of the most ambitious things we’ve done with World of Warcraft,” WoW’s lead visual development artist Gabriel Gonzalez told Dot Esports this week. “It really has to be, for the type of loose end tying that we’re doing for a lot of the story elements.
Each of WoW’s next three expansions—The War Within, Midnight, and The Last Titan—will all be “satisfying in their own rights,” but the WoW team is still making sure the whole of the Worldsoul Saga will live up to the grand plan that it’s set out for itself. Although players will be expected to stick around for the entirety of the Worldsoul Saga, the individual expansions will “still tell a cohesive, complete experience,” according to Blizzard.
To ensure the boundary-pushing nature of the Worldsoul Saga remains faithful to the already-existing story the franchise has established, the WoW devs have frequently turned to in-house loremasters, historians, and experts to keep continuity at the front of mind when developing the narrative for not just The War Within, but the entirety of the Worldsoul Saga. Names like Sean Copeland (lore historian lead), Anne Stickney (senior narrative designer), and Chris Metzen (executive creative direction) were specifically cited as major influences in the departments of accuracy and fine-tuning.
While little is known about where the story will end up in Midnight and The Last Titan, what fans can be assured of is the story that’s set up in the initial stages of The War Within will be concluded in full by the time the third expansion of the Worldsoul Saga wraps up. That likely won’t come until at least three years from now as Blizzard plans for WoW’s expansion releases to be slightly expedited during this new era, as opposed to the usual every-other-year schedule for WoW expansions.
The Worldsoul Saga will kick off in earnest with The War Within later this year. The expansion is expected to be released at some point between the late summer and early autumn, according to Blizzard’s 2024 WoW roadmap.
