Dragonflight 10.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Cheezits]

I have to agree on the actual necklace though. The story would have worked just as well if it was centered squarely on Vanessa being ousted from the Defias in favor of a radical leader who doesn't care about the original ideals. A caricature of even Vanessa, who herself didnt care much about the ideals beyond vengeance.
Making the Defias the lapdogs of the Stormwind Nobles adds a layer of tragic irony to them I find.
I can only hope that the new Defias ringleader gets some interesting buildup. It feels like the writers made him intentionally vague in order to fill in the blanks later, which I don't think is a bad idea.

On this note, I think Onyxia was added solely to give the quest some spice besides politics. Also a dragon tie-in, but it meant a ghost dragon to fight at the end as opposed to a single sorcerer. They definitely needed to have some intrigue to the questline besides the politics: even if you argue the Orc one did that without magic bullshit, there are still ghosts and a billion alien orcs from another planet.

Also the quest differentiates the "true Defias" as people that still want to fight and do good as opposed to the "thugs" that Vanessa mentioned sticking around just to cause sufering. It's just that Vanessa tells the true Defias to go home, likely because there aren't enough of them.

[Le Conceptuel]

Tell me you don't want to see space marine holy goats and entropic elves pull a purge of the Stormwind nobility and I'll be in shock.

I was thinking I could see this happening, albeit perhaps on a smaller scale. Turalyon cracking down on the more corrupt elements of the nobility seems in-character—at the very least, I'd expect him to start appropriating their resources for religious institutions or the military to punish the nobility for stepping out of line. Even if he doesn't extort them directly, a ludicrous wealth tax is within the realm of reason. If it were the latter, I could see him being smart enough to realize that the nobility wouldn't like it and audacious or ideological enough not to care, and appropriating a host of wealth for military and religious institutions would be fairly suitable for how he's been portrayed thus far.

[Varodoc]

Tell me you don't want to see space marine holy goats and entropic elves pull a purge of the Stormwind nobility and I'll be in shock.

I have said many times in the past that if the farmers revolted again, Turalyon would just have the Vindicaar nuke their ass.

That is irrelevant to the point, the fact that you and others here ignored is that Turalyon has proven himself to be the perfect Regent, so why would the farmers revolt, again? He successfully protected Stormwind from rampaging Scourge, he successfully ushered in 5 years of unprecedented peace and stability for the kingdom. Why should the peasants revolt against him?

And, by the way, you acknowledged that the government of Stormwind is now made up of Warhammer 40k Space Marines with nukes and the first mortals in the history to successfully master the Void.

Imagine you're a farmer from Westfall, you have nothing in your possession but an old pitchfork and some ragged filthy clothes, would you want to rebel against such a government? That could literally nuke your house or drag you to the abyss? I don't think so.

Stormwind's military has increased drastically since the Third War/Classic era, as more and more races join the Alliance and bolster the kingdom's forces. There will never be another uprising in Stormwind history.

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The House of Nobles also supports Turalyon as Regent and this is a fact that we have known since 2019. The new revelation that Anduin was rooting out corruption inside the House of Nobles during his reign reduces the chances of House of Nobles ever being treacherous again down to 0.00000000000000000000001%.

[Le Conceptuel]

Oh, and we've crossed the milestone of three thousand posts already. Sweet. Here's to many more to come!

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I completed the Baine quest yesterday and, while the ending was extremely predictable, it was nice seeing him going crazy. In fact, I was surprised at the fact that they had the balls to show him in that state - he literally turns the centaurs into pulps of flesh with awesome music in the background. Considering how pussy this expansion is, this came as a surprise. I hope they do more of this.

Indeed, I'm quite inclined to agree! It was kind of a breath of fresh air after this expansion has been so insufferably saccharine.

[Sauredfangs]

Knowing how Blizzard treats trolls, they will add ONE troll beard model and it will replace the Darkspear heritage armor
They'll probably kill Rokhan too for good measure as they haven't killed a troll leader in almost 2 expansions

>: ( that would suck. They need to give Rokhan a unique model too since he's pretty much the new troll leader.

[Skildar]

>: ( that would suck. They need to give Rokhan a unique model too since he's pretty much the new troll leader.

Let's wait a couple of years that we get rehash zul gurub in which Darkspears and Zandalari will need to stop a random menace trying to save Mueh'zala or whatever. Bwonsamdi will get incapacitated and Rokhan will get killed trying to save Zalanji. Next Zekhan will summon Vol'jin loa of the kings and save everyone then Bwomsamdi will finally manage to absorb what remains of Mueh'zala.


The golden Vol'jin will make little Zekhan his personal Shadow hunter and Chief of the darkspear, happy Easter.

[Le Conceptuel]

In this case, there is no story. The human heritage quest, like everything Anduin-related in BFA and the Sylvanas book, though not SL itself, is meant to defuse stories in their crib.

This is precisely why I felt so disappointed about it, myself—the Defias had a lot of potential, and they were essentially rendered stillborn by this development. I'm probably just being repetitive at this point, given I've bitched about this to no end, but I digress. Mind you, I could sure as hell see Anduin paying reparations, but by this point, I think there's no harm in simply saying that it wasn't enough—keep in mind the Defias have been at this for, what, twenty-ish years now? They've been fighting and dying en masse, and their motives may no longer be monetary after a certain point. We already saw the seeds of this in Cataclysm, where Vanessa was portrayed as something almost akin to an anarcho-syndicalist revolutionary terrorist. Similarly, Vanessa is without question not the only young Defias member orphaned by Stormwind's army. There would undoubtedly be many "young Defias" who were born into the Brotherhood, and whose hatred for Stormwind goes beyond being cheated out of pay. There's a lot of potential in the idea of Vanessa oscillating between a deuteragonist and antagonist as the story demands, and she could be a lot of fun to interact with as in either capacity.

Anduin, a young inexperienced king who's been in repeated crises and was at least initially doubted for his leadership confronting the established nobility of Stormwind is an interesting potential story. Their views and his will clearly clash as much as their interests do. Similarly, Anduin dealing with waging a ruinous war against the Horde involving mass conscription of farmers to the point of exhaustion while flooding their city with night elven refugees that need caring for in a war that'd clearly have a considerable material cost opens the door to civil unrest.

I'm ashamed to say the matter of the war didn't even occur to me—that's true. Last we heard, Stormwind's military was effectively drained in BfA. With mounting casualties, there would likely be shortages of resources due to a lack of viable labor, and a great deal of children would be orphaned and women widowed. These people wouldn't likely be very happy when the war ends in a white peace, and Anduin does little to effectively compensate for the losses. Although the unemployment that once ravaged Westfall would at least be gone after a while, since the vacuum would drive up demand for labor and create jobs, there would still be plenty of reasons for people to be upset.

A Defias Brotherhood resurgent based on the cost in blood and treasure that the war with the Horde entailed, combined with a deprivation of Westfall that'd only be sharper in light of a Legion invasion that took place over its skies writes itself as far as conflicts go. The people involved in such an organization are, beyond having the potential to be Edwin-tier in their grounds, at least have motive enough to serve as recurring antagonists rather than one-off thieves lead by a comical caricature.

Not much to add here. See my prior comment about the lost potential for a legitimately nuanced faction.

Having the House of Nobles subvert such a group to advance their own strength, be it during Anduin's rule or facing off against Turalyon who has otherworldly elves and space marines on his side to suppress them with, is a story worth telling. But these stories aren't and can't be told, because that'd entail internal Alliance conflict and even though Vanessa takes the piss out of the idea of a magic necklace being responsible for Varian not paying the Stonemasons, the contrived series of events to make sure all genuine conflict is handwaved away in the background while the actual plot faces off exclusively against petty, self-serving clowns is just that.

Conflict between Turalyon and the House of Nobles is something that struck me as having potential as soon as I started going over alternative storylines in my head. The fact is that you've got on one end a religious militant who would no doubt be interested in both maintaining the moral integrity of the Alliance and further funding the military, and on another a self-interested group who just wants to keep their wealth. An excessive tax leveled against the nobility would be sensible, both as a means to indirectly reprimand the corrupt nobility and as a means to keep Stormwind's coffers full if push comes to shove with the Horde again. The nobility undoubtedly wouldn't like this. A three-way conflict between the interests of the sincere and ethical, but authoritarian, AotL regime, the corrupt old order, and the sympathetic, but inordinately violent, Defias would make for a nice kind of conflict the game has been lacking in for a long time.

Even the hollowing out of the Defias, an organisation twice founded against rule by the nobility, explicitly founded on class warfare and now being co-opted as a weapon by the class who fucked them and being filled with petty thugs and opportunists is a story that can and would be told. But unlike the orc story, this story doesn't deal with class, politics or even people at large. It deals with the interpersonal drama of six or so pricks just like all the worst aspects of the plot these last couple years.

That's quite a point there, too. Obviously, you do need a limited lens—we need singular characters to serve as representatives, or even sorts of avatars, of these classes, and that's just a narrative necessity. But this really does feel too personal. In fact, the presence of the Defias feels superfluous in itself, because absolutely nothing is done with them aside from a vague nudge for Vanessa, who is already so out-of-character that her total personality replacement would hardly be more nonsensical without the Defias plot.

There's plenty of reasons why the Orc storyline is better than the Human storyline, and part of it to me is that the Human storyline rides on unearned, offscreen development that Stormwind allegedly received. The Orc storyline, conversely, nicely represents the Orcs finally going back on rails after so long of being jerked around with their inconsistent portrayal. It's a small event, not reliant on anything happening offscreen, that just helps to serve as a milestone of a path that's already been being walked. There's plenty of things that Stormwind's been through, but the way their quest manifests just doesn't feel like a sensible culmination of those things. It pays lip service to threats like the Defias and Onyxia, but none of the actual changes Stormwind has gone through throughout the game's lifespan are showcased at all. Of course, the writing itself is also terrible and the dialogue is very stilted, but that's beside the point. It's just a poor story all around.

I may go ahead and post an abridged overview of a potential rewrite either in this thread or in the lore forum later, as I do have a few ideas that I think could make for a fun story. Admittedly, the story I have in mind isn't exceptionally good, but it's fun and evocative, and that's the essence of Warcraft.

[Gurahk]

Knowing how Blizzard treats trolls, they will add ONE troll beard model and it will replace the Darkspear heritage armor
They'll probably kill Rokhan too for good measure as they haven't killed a troll leader in almost 2 expansions

If it weren't for the Orc questline, I'd add in the fact that we haven't killed or deleted an important orc character since.. Shadowlands.

[Ginnung]

They really HAD to censor Vanessa rofl?
The pants don't even freaking match it looks so bad and lazy...

It's really starting to get to me how female characters are always the ones getting this treatment, especially in a game kinda infamous for male frontline fighters who are allergic to shirts/ wear no torso armor.
But a woman showing legs and suddenly it needs to get covered up, it's not even consistent in that regard either.
Just so irritating when people who dislike skimpy outfit already have 99% of the game catered to them already, and then the little there is for those of us who like it just keeps gettinge erased because of some narcissistic uptight employee guilt-tripping other devs into removing things.

I am just waiting for them to bring Valeera out again and then butcher her design...
Fml I hate this bullshit in current Blizzard it's so annoying... Feels like you're never allowed to have things you like anymore..

[Wangming]

this story doesn't deal with class, politics or even people at large. It deals with the interpersonal drama of six or so pricks just like all the worst aspects of the plot these last couple years.

Here you just perfectly summarized the biggest problem with WoW storytelling. Thank you! It is not an option on mmo champ. but please, have my like.

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They really HAD to censor Vanessa rofl?
The pants don't even freaking match it looks so bad and lazy...

It's really starting to get to me how female characters are always the ones getting this treatment, especially in a game kinda infamous for male frontline fighters who are allergic to shirts/ wear no torso armor.
But a woman showing legs and suddenly it needs to get covered up, it's not even consistent in that regard either.
Just so irritating when people who dislike skimpy outfit already have 99% of the game catered to them already, and then the little there is for those of us who like it just keeps gettinge erased because of some narcissistic uptight employee guilt-tripping other devs into removing things.

I am just waiting for them to bring Valeera out again and then butcher her design...
Fml I hate this bullshit in current Blizzard it's so annoying... Feels like you're never allowed to have things you like anymore..

To show how sorry we are that we abused women we will take away the option for them to look sexy if they want to. That will show them how nice we are. XD Goddamn clowns.

[Varodoc]

I'll never not find it hilarious that they cover women's legs but then they have characters like Illidan and Zobald the Jailer who literally go around wearing just some tattered pants.

And I still find it hilarious that they gave so many gratuitous nipple shots to the Jailer btw, because obviously a well-written villain is a villain whose nipples are the focus of his scenes.

[Wangming]

I'll never not find it hilarious that they cover women's legs but then they have characters like Illidan and Zobald the Jailer who literally go around wearing just some tattered pants.

And I still find it hilarious that they gave so many gratuitous nipple shots to the Jailer btw, because obviously a well-written villain is a villain whose nipples are the focus of his scenes.

His nipples are well written.

[Grimbold21]

Yo, where's that Trading post datamining?!

[Le Conceptuel]

They really HAD to censor Vanessa rofl?
The pants don't even freaking match it looks so bad and lazy...

Honestly, I don't mind the outfit change. It's somewhat difficult to take her seriously as a terrorist if she's airing out her thighs to everybody. The choice for the change was rather awkward-looking, though—were there no good options?

[Dracullus]

If they keep this fast gearing for next seasons, X.X.7 could become my favourite patches.

[Melorandor]

Yo, where's that Trading post datamining?!

I assume that Panthera plate mog that looks vaguely similar to the Nighthold Druid mog is gonna be one of the rewards.

[Nathanyel]

Honestly, I don't mind the outfit change. It's somewhat difficult to take her seriously as a terrorist if she's airing out her thighs to everybody.

And a Rogue who's technically still wanted by the law would occasionally change their outfit.
But for some it's easier to jump to a convoluted conspiracy theory than to think a few seconds to find more obvious explanations (lorewise or IRL)

[Le Conceptuel]

And a Rogue who's technically still wanted by the law would occasionally change their outfit.
But for some it's easier to jump to a convoluted conspiracy theory than to think a few seconds to find more obvious explanations (lorewise or IRL)

Oh, by all means, that doesn't mean it's not true that Blizzard are absolutely only entertaining these changes because they need a craven out after all those people they molested. Even if these are changes some in the company kept shrieking for, they're still only anywhere near being entertained because the company that's still strike-busting and coercing the people they raped in court needs an easy win with Twitter—given that end of things are mostly satisfied more by superficial, skin-deep changes they can retweet and keep circulating like this than any policy changes, they're obvious placated no matter how the company continues to handle unionization and the like.

My point is just that most of these changes are also totally harmless, and I don't really care about them either way. They're not really a loss, per se, just a change, and I can't be fucked to care about pixelated thighs.

[Wangming]

And a Rogue who's technically still wanted by the law would occasionally change their outfit.
But for some it's easier to jump to a convoluted conspiracy theory than to think a few seconds to find more obvious explanations (lorewise or IRL)

Putting on pants isn't much of an incognito though if the rest of your outfit and even hairstyle is the same, plus you are very vocal about who you are. What you are saying would make sense under normal circumstances, but at this point the convoluted conspiracy theory is more likely.

[Varodoc]

And a Rogue who's technically still wanted by the law would occasionally change their outfit.
But for some it's easier to jump to a convoluted conspiracy theory than to think a few seconds to find more obvious explanations (lorewise or IRL)

Putting on a pair of pants, while keeping literally everything else the same (including hairstyle) = changing the outfit, sure bro.

I do find this idea hilarious, that the SI:7 wouldn't recognize Vanessa if she just put on a pair of pants. I guess that her legs really were her only defining feature after all.

Just admit that Blizzard is still freaking out from the PR nightmare and they're now scared of showing women with too much skin, it's not hard.