World of Warcraft teases three expansions starting with The War Within

Chris Metzen didn’t come back to Blizzard — and BlizzCon — just to show off his snazzy bald head and black t-shirt. No, Chris Metzen returned as Executive Creative Director for World of Warcraft to do something Blizzard has never done before: to announce not one, but three expansions to World of Warcraft. The next three WoW expansions will be:

• World of Warcraft: The War Within, due out in 2024
• World of Warcraft: Midnight
• World of Warcraft: The Last Titan

The series of expansions is coming together in a trilogy called the Worldsoul Saga, and it looks like it’s trying to tie up a lot of loose ends from previous expansions. A lot of the plot tidbits we’ve seen since Battle for Azeroth, including big lore reveals from both Shadowlands and Dragonflight, will all be brought together in a storyline about what the Titans are really up to, what the Old Gods have been doing, and the true nature of Azeroth. We’ve been seeing all sorts of details in the current expansion that hinted that the Titans were less benevolent than we were originally led to believe, and now it sounds like we’re going underground to answer the call of a mysterious voice, perhaps Azeroth itself and find out.

While we have general hints at a story arc of the three expansions, we have more details about The War Within, including a cinematic trailer featuring Anduin, Thrall, mysterious visions, and that sword we’ve spent the past few years ignoring.

The feature trailer also includes Alleria talking about how her visions are different — darker — suggesting we’ll be delving into the void soon. And of course the usual slate of expansion features, with new zones, new dungeons and raids, a Dragonriding-style Dynamic Flight system, Warbands, and Delves — we expect more details on all of these as BlizzCon 2023 continues.

So yeah, three expansions. They’re three expansions deep, guys. The first one is next year. That’s kind of nuts, y’all. There’s already a cinematic teaser! Anduin has a beard and a lot of angst, which is kind of crazy considering he was like five when I first met him and man I’m old.