What do you expect to be revealed at the Warcraft Direct today?

Today is the Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct stream and with BlizzCon normally scheduled for this time of year there’s a lot of excitement building around the 45-minute showcase as all the announcements typically revealed at the Anaheim Convention Center are likely to get their spotlight here instead. So what are we expecting to happen during the stream?

For Warcraft Rumble I feel like the biggest surprise would be anything substantial about the future of the game. News and content has been sparse for the mobile title, but its inclusion is a good sign that it’s not going away — or being sunset like Heroes of the Storm. Still, it would give players a warm fuzzy feeling if a substantial plan is revealed.

Hearthstone may end up getting the short end of the presentation stick as it’s pretty rigorous in its announcement and release schedule, and with The Great Dark Beyond releasing last week it seems extremely unlikely we’ll get any major previews of future releases. There’s the ever-present possibility of a new game mode — hopefully more successful than Mercenaries — but the relatively early release of the latest expansion has me wondering if there’s going to be a big change to the release schedule of Hearthstone. Could they switch to four expansions a year instead of three (while jettisoning the mid-expansion update)? It’d be a bold move albeit one that could alienate the playerbase if expansion costs aren’t reduced to compensate for the increased release frequency.

Is it time for a reforged Warcraft 3: Reforged?

It’s easy to forget that the Warcraft franchise started off as an RTS but there will be definitely news on that front. Warcraft 2 Remastered is an open secret and is very likely getting revealed today, and the announcement promised updates to Warcraft 3 Reforged. Salvaging WC3R would be an impressive feat nearly five years after its release, but one suspects that without the proof of a substantial improvement to the earlier game WC2R would be dead on arrival due to the lack of trust on players’ parts. I tend to think that lessons have been learned, but we won’t know until the reveal.

Of course World of Warcraft remains the centerpiece of the company and it’s expected to get the most time during the Direct. On the Classic side of the game a reveal of Mists of Pandaria Classic is the safest bet, with a release date of later next year. Both Retail and Classic will hopefully get their 2025 Road Maps revealed, and while I expect it to be vague especially for the latter half of 2025 it’ll be interesting to see what the plans are. Retail is where things get interesting on the prognostication front; a preview of patch 11.1 feels like a given, but besides that it’s hard to say why it seems to be generating the hype amongst the developers on social media. The official post states there will be a special announcement at the end, but what could it be? Could Midnight actually be arriving in 2025 instead of 2026? It seems unlikely, so it must be something else that players have really wanted for a long time now. Is it finally time for playable Vrykul?

These are some of the things that we might see at the Direct today. Which of these possibilities do you feel are likely? And what didn’t we mention that you think will be announced or would like to see happen?