World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas confirms that players will finish off the Legion expansion by taking the fight directly to the demon-infested planet of Argus.

At this weekend's BlizzCon, World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas gave fans of the 12-year-old MMO an extended preview of what kind of content they can expect Blizzard to deliver in 2017 for the game's Legion expansion pack. Hazzikostas went over Patch 7.1.5 and Patch 7.2 The Tomb of Sargeras in detail, noting that a new raid, a new dungeon and new PvP content will all be coming to Azeroth soon.

But the biggest reaction from the game's fans came at the very end of the presentation when Hazzikostas alluded to players leaving Azeroth altogether. The game director hinted that players would eventually travel to the planet of Argus, but left the details intentionally vague. Some fans speculated online that Hazzikostas was talking about the next World of Warcraft expansion after Legion, but in an interview with Polygon this weekend, Hazzikostas made clear that Argus will be another major patch for the Legion expansion.

For the uninitiated, a quick history lesson. Sargeras and the Burning Legion have repeatedly threatened Azeroth over the years, with events coming to the forefront again this expansion. Long story short, the reason many WoW fans are so excited about the Argus reveal is because the planet is the main base of Legion power and presumably the seat of Sargeras himself. If Blizzard is sending players to Argus, there's a chance the heroes of Azeroth could finally put an end to the Burning Legion once and for all.

Because of these huge implications, some fans thought that Argus would have to be its own expansion. But Hazzikostas told Polygon that Blizzard decided the current Legion expansion was the perfect fit.

[HTML1]

“It felt like the right time,” Hazzikostas said. “I don’t know if Argus would hold up as an expansion in and of itself. We could make up a whole lot of ecologies and things there, but at the end of the day, it would feel like a very one-note, alien expansion.”

Hazzikostas used the ending of one of his favorite non-Blizzard games to drive home his point about why players are going to Argus now.

“It’s kind of like the end of Mass Effect 2,” he said. “We’ve been fighting on our end. Now we’re going on our suicide mission, because this is the only way to save ourselves.”

No timetable is available for Patch 7.2 or 7.3 but Blizzard announced that Patch 7.1.5, which will feature a variety of smaller adjustments like class balancing, will go on the public test realm next week. With both the upcoming Nighthold raid and The Tomb of Sargeras still unreleased, it's likely that players will not make it to Argus until the 2nd half of 2017.

Blizzard has historically had some issues with long content droughts at the end of expansions but if the company can nail the Argus patch and then transition into the expansion after Legion in a timely fashion, Blizzard will have kept its word to its fans and might even win back some of those millions of lapsed subscribers.

World of Warcraft is available now for PC and Mac.

Source: Polygon