I'm not going to respond to the China comments, it'll just derail the thread!

The comment the next expansion will be something nobody expects, is a little confusing. Everyone expects it to either be The Emerald Dream or a mix of The Maelstrom / Nazjatar / Undermine (loosely all thrown under the umbrella term 'The South Seas') . Haven't really been sold on any ideas that it could be anything but one of these two options.

I would take the Blizz comment to mean that it could be the Maelstrom: a mix of scattered island zones in the south seas (including the Tomb of Sargeras, Maelstrom, Nazjatar and surrounding underwater areas etc). This is unlike the previous expansions, which basically just span a single fluid continent. Thats what people would be expecting.

I'd imagine that this would rule out the Maelstrom if anything, really. But I guess it's possible that it's meant to rule out absolutely nothing, since there are no remaining continents to add.

Here's something posted over @ WoW.net forums. I take no responsibility for how accurate or true it is, though it was pretty specific.

Far as I'm concerned, that just sounds like the Maelstrom. Read the linked post for some more details.

So... he's telling us that Blizzard doesn't make its "fluff" employees sign NDAs?

Well, NDAs have never stopped anyone. On the other hand, that post is nothing anybody couldn't just guess.

I'm not sure what to make of "something people won't expect" and "not continents" because the top two ideas people expected -- Maelstrom and the Emerald Dream -- are not continents. I'd be quite surprised at a continental expansion (it'd have to be a new continent) and not surprised at Maelstrom, Emerald Dream or some combination of the two.

I find the Surging Emerald Deeps idea a bit of a stretch, but, eh, who knows? It's just speculation at this point, and probably best left for another thread.

The only thing I can see that would be is.... Azjol-Nerub as an expansion. The whole subtareanen Northrend. Maybe tied in with the underground Troggs in Kalmindor and those in Khaz-Modan.

Regardless of whether the post is true or not, it has a bunch of good design ideas. Going to quote it, will be neat to do a search someday and find out if any of these ideas were implemented:

The whole idea that the 450+ riding skill will make use of submarine and boat mounts (with the maelstrom being non-flying) would fit in nicely. Using phasing technology for zones seems like a natural next step for innovative zone design. The idea of having alot of underwater zones would make me nostalgic for land, but this would be no different compared to Northrend and snow.

Archdruids and Blade Masters being new hero classes pretty much guarantees that that post is 100% bullshit imo. Deathknights are a very distinct class, while those would be pretty close to existing ones, even with the strange ideas the poster tacked on. The fact that the new warrior 51 point talent is Bladestorm removes all doubt for me though, there's no way it would be named that if blizz was planning on introducing Blade Masters. Nevermind how strange introducing "Arch Druids" would be...

Azjol-Nerub is probably large enough to make up several zones, minimum, and an underground expansion would leave room to include Uldum and other Titan lore locations as well as possibly wrapping up the question of the old gods into a reasonably cohesive expansion - but it's still a pretty large stretch when they have better material that hasn't been covered much recently. We know Blizz reads most of the WoW forums out there, so they have to know what the prominent guesses here have been... but are probably loving the fact that it's impossible to tell if they just meant that the majority of the WoW population won't be expecting it at this point, or if truly they haven't seen it seriously considered by anyone yet.

A Maelstrom/South Seas expansion, an Emerald Dream expansion, a Twisting Nether expansion, or just about anything other than another world in the sense of Azeroth or Draenor would fit the "not continents" hint. Though they'd really have to invent a LOT of details to make a full expansion out of the Emerald Dream, they pretty much did that for Northrend though. The Draenei and Naaru could use some more lore, but just about anything involving the Burning Legion would give an excuse for that, and just about anything could and probably would involve the Burning Legion in some way.

Erm, does anyone REALLY think Blizzard are going to release an expansion where the main evil effect is called "The Surge"?. That name ring any bells for anyone?

While you're right that that entire thing reeks of BS, I wouldn't say the existence of a warrior skill called Bladestorm rules out the possibility of there being Blademasters later. Especially given that warlocks have Death Coil, a signature DK ability. As you say though, that whole story is BS, so it's a moot point really.

I'm not sure why you'd say a content patch would make more sense. Content patches usually only add at most a 5-man dungeon, a raid instance, and a quest zone, or some permuation thereof. Azjol-Nerub is vastly larger than that. There's easily enough content there for an entire expansion. In fact, given that the news from the beta suggests that the A-N areas don't nearly do the name justice, who's to say that Blizzard didn't deliberately cut back the A-N areas in WotLK so that they could devote an entire expansion to it? It would certainly fit the "not a continent" hint. Of course the Emerald Dream or the Maelstrom would also fit that hint, but they don't really go with "not what you're expecting", since they've both been prime candidates for expansion territory probably since before WoW was even released.