Since it's inception in 2004, World of Warcraft hasn't broken any new ground in the RPG genre mechanics wise and has only one credit to its name: taking the world of gaming by storm. That said however, World of Warcraft seems to be a compilation of the greatest aspects of RPGs rolled neatly into one package with added Blizzard bling just for luck.

So what does the future of World of Warcraft offer us?

Well in the world of instances and raids, before WotLK, we can expect to see Zul'Aman, a new 6 boss, 10 man raid dungeon to follow on from Karazhan, geared towards those players who capped their raiding experience, either through choice or lack of progress, at the 10 man marker. It will be tuned to take players geared up in partial tier 4/random epics from Kara and will offer none-tiered items, similar to those items offered in Zul'Gurub pre-TBC, as well as Heroic Badges which will be handed in for brand new heroic gear (which may contain some interesting itemization changes). This addition is expected in 2.3.

Following on from Zul'Aman, we have another raid dungeon but this time we're looking at a new 6 boss, 25 man raid dungeon to follow on from Black Temple. It will drop items better in quality than Black Temple and possibly better than tier 6, but it is as yet unconfirmed as to whether these items will be tiered or none-tiered. Another item query that is unconfirmed is whether their will be set drops for each class - watch this space. Not much is known about the actual raid location, "officially," but unofficially, it is rumoured (and the source is 99.9% trustworthy) that in 2.4 we will be seeing Sunwell Plateau.

On the cards but not concrete is one last 5 man before Wrath of the Lich King and nothing has been even hinted at in this case. Watch this space as well.

So that is raid content and instance content covered but what about the one thing on the majority of players minds - itemization. There are some interesting itemization changes in the making and rumoured, that will please a lot of people.

Firstly, we have the lack of items for two off-classes - retribution paladins and balance druids. It is well known that both of these classes have little to no good itemization choices at this moment in time and Blizzard have answered this problem with the announcement that the new heroic gear that will be added to coincide with the release of Zul'Aman will contain brand new gear to fill the void for these two class specs, as well as gear for other none-generic class specs. This change is expected in 2.4.

A lot of PvPers were disgruntled when, after the start of season 2 and the inception of a new arena set, the old arena set was not made available to those who only play battlegrounds. Well, they will be pleased to know that the old Gladiator set will be made available to them for roughly 15k a piece. We don't know when this will be but it is expected at the start of the next season, shortly after 2.3.

Next, we have some dramatic additions to the game that will make it even more addictive than it already is.

Voice over IP software has been used by both hardcore and casual raiding guilds to direct and better communicate during raiding and now arena teams and premades are using the same software for a similar thing in PvP. Despite this however (and the blatant fact that boss encounters were designed with VoIP in mind) Blizzard have never had it in the game. That is all about to change as in patch 2.3 (expected in the next 1-3 weeks) there will be a brand spanking new in-built VoIP sytem that will hopefully render the need for TS or Ventrillo old. This system is currently on the test realms and from what I have experienced of it, so far so good. We shall have to see if it can handle a few thousand players and not cause major lag in game on our servers. Fingers crossed.

Next we have Guild Banks. A highly anticipated aspect of the game and on the table since after 2.1 was released, Guild banks are going to change the way guilds work. They will allow members to deposit and withdraw items from a bank available to the entire guild and also allow Guild Masters and Officers to set restraints on the bank, meaning (for example) I could set it up so that you can only take an item after depositing an item, or something along those lines. When we will see this addition is still unknown, but it is expected after Zul'Aman, possibly 2.5 or 2.6 (or maybe even 2.7...). Guild Housings, instance areas that only members of a guild can access, are also going to make an appearance in the future, but when this will be...nobody (not even Blizzard) knows.

Other interesting changes and rumours that may or may not be added to World of Warcraft are to come but these are not confirmed or are confirmed but not a priority at this moment in time.

An interesting change is the prospective lift on the level cap of Outland. At the moment, players of a lower level than 58 can enter Outland through Warlock summoning' spells or portals and Blizzard have said that this is not a bug and are considering removing the level cap on Outland in the future. This wouldn't effect game-play really and would only server to get more low level players ganked by high level mobs. Another interesting idea is the arena spectator mode. At Blizzcon 2007, the spectator mode was previewed and from what I have heard is a brilliant idea and a step in the right direction. We shall have to wait and see when this will be added but it gets my vote.

At the end of the day, the story here is that there are still plenty of things that can be added to the World of Warcraft gaming experience and maybe one day we will see that graphics engine update that everyone so eagerly wants and longs for. Maybe one day, it will be a Direct X 10 Vista only game...actually, let us hope that day never comes.

The future is bright but it isn't Orange this time ;-) (CHEESE!)