What do you think the future experimental World of Warcraft game mode is?

Legion Remix wasn’t the only announcement at the World of Warcraft PAX East panel last week. On the heels of the success of Plunderstorm the development team is building a new game mode experience and there are a grand total of two facts known about it:

• It’s darker/scarier than Plunderstorm (something suggested by the picture of Darkshire included in the slide)
• It’s not another battle royale/Fortnite clone like Plunderstorm was

Granted, not a lot to work with but that’s never stopped me before. The easy answer is that they’re teasing the Vampire Survivors-derived mode that was datamined back in patch 10.2.5. Here’s the thing though: the picture is of the town of Darkshire, not the cemeteries of Raven Hill or another haunted locale in Duskwood. This feels like a deliberate choice and coupled with the idea that it would be an asset-driven mode like Plunderstorm it seems that a direct Vampire Survivors clone is unlikely (but not impossible).

That said a zombie survival/defense game could definitely be in the mix. Instead of a “bullet hell” though it could be something more akin to 7 Days to Die or Left 4 Dead — action games (albeit hopefully not first-person shooters) where you have to fight the increasingly-dangerous undead swarming Darkshire for as long as you can. When the last few players are standing the real challenge arrives: Stitches. To give the game a PVP feel like Plunderstorm they could also make it that when you’re killed you become an undead and the other players have to take care of you as well.

There are other options out there that are a little more creative. One suggestion I’ve seen is for an Among Us mode where players try to survive the night in Darkshire while trying to figure out who is “sus.” Similar to this is the idea of an escape room or mystery experience within Darkshire. While these ideas are intriguing, I question the replayability of such modes; it may be tough to design such a mode that encourages players to keep coming back for more.

What do you think? Do you think we’ll get a clone of Vampire Survivors, Left 4 Dead, or something else entirely different? Would you want to play a game like that? And what are the chances we get my choice of a zombie rhythm dance game called Thriller?