World of Warcraft’s Next Expansion Won’t be About Pirates

Since we’re getting close to a year since the release of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, fan speculation on the subject and themes of the MMORPG’s next expansion has already kicked into gear. Thanks to the presence of some new cosmetic items in the game, players have been guessing that the next expansion will revolve around pirates.

Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, however, has cleared the air. Taking to social media platform X, Ybarra made a simple two-word post: “No pirates.” Ybarra made the post in response to fans on the social media platform speculating the subject of World of Warcraft‘s next expansion.

For context, cosmetics released during an expansion have had a history of being hints towards future content for the game. For example, the Shadowlands expansion had the Dragon Pack, which featured dragon-themed cosmetics well before Dragonflight was even announced. The cosmetics prompting players to speculate on a pirate-themed World of Warcraft expansion come from the recently-released Seafarer pack, and the slightly older Waveborne Diplomat’s Regalia.

World of Warcraft has seen quite an upswing in player satisfaction since the release of its Dragonflight expansion, since it introduced a host of new features like Dragon Riding, and focuses on an aspect of Warcraft’s lore that has been mentioned here and there, but largely ignored for quite some time.

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is available on PC. If a new expansion is in the works, we’ll likely only get an announcement some time in 2024.