Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nathanyel]

https://twitter.com/Nobbel87/status/1714608406055587850

Wonder is he just guessing or was spilled on with some info.

Just memeing. Hare on the moon is referencing some Asian (Japanese?) myth, the other two are more or less obviously connected WoW things.

Just for a history.

General suggestion: when posting large pictures, put them in a [QUOTE] box, so that the images are removed when people fullquote you
(not a complaint, just an idea)

Capitalizing on One Piece is probably a good business decision

I'd rather have an actual Kung Fu Panda expansion and 24 sequels to Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum than some weird Anime being a major influence on an expansion (also, game-wise, there are better influences to draw from, e.g. AC: Black Flag)

[flan1337]

Let us assume it is not guessing.
1st pic: Darkshore, Night Warrior version of the moon, and the moon rabbit on it. Gonna guess this is about Elune. Don't think she is a bunny girl, but who knows? Elune is a Viera.

2nd pic: Best girl and a pirate ship. Azshara probably hints at her being the villain. Copium says playable Naga. The Pirate Ship is likely the Nightsquall. (Who is also a Nightelf and has Night as a title like the Elves and the Warrior).

3rd pic: Black Empire, Oddly placed Eye of Sauron, Moira (Dark Iron Dwarves) Turalyon, Sylvanas (unfortunately). The eye makes me wonder. It can just be about N'Zoth and his many eyes, but there are other famous eyes. Like the Eye of Aman'thul. Ya know that was kept by the Nighborne, in the Nighhold and was used to create the Nightwell.

The stuff on the picture are all over the place. But I'm seeing a lot of things that translate to:
Dark (Shore, Lady, iron)
Night (elf, warrior, squall, borne, well, hold)
Black (Empire)

Which does not suggest a very happy expansion. Also we have three Queens.
Queen Azshara, Queen-Regent Moira Thaurissan, and the Banshee Queen.

Maybe the next expansion is Dark Queen, Night Queen or Black Queen.

These could be either Elune or Xal'atath.

Oh damn my tinfoil hat burned from all this reaching.

just in case he does - the third image is really odd.

[Teriz]

Okay it seems we are back to talking about whatever again.
Let's salvage the discussion cause 16 days from now, it will be showtime.

What are our options truly?
Considering the Algarian Stormrider (the only actual datamined thing that we know is real and not just made up by posters or just wishful thinking) Kaz Algar being part of it is as close to 100% as we can get.

But where IS Kaz Algar?

There seem to be two camps.

The ingame lorebook camp places it on Avaloren cause this would cut down the unknown mysterious lands by quite a lot. Avaloren is said to have advanced technology and is hostile to titan forces. Dragons who go there do not come back, but the Nightsquall did. This definitely feels like a plotline that should be investigated in an expansion or patch.

The other camp, most famously represented by Towelee and Bellular place Kaz Algar under Silithus and Un'Goro. A consolidation of weird hiden places posist that Kaz Algar is the same as the hole where a world tree was suppoosed to be but had to be pulled off to escape Old God corruption. Well not only is Silithus the seat of power and prison of C'Thun, but quite close to Un'Goro, where a corrupted world tree was shown in the Emerald Nightmare version.
As an added bonus, 10.2 features the enigmatic Loa of Change named after the Egyptian Moon God. Southern Kalimdor is the closest we have for Egypt in the game.

Speaking of Moon deities, the only other thing we all seem to agree on is that for better or worse, Elune is likely going to show up either in 10.2, 11.0 or both.

With Thrall on the key art, Toweliee saying it’s going to be underground, and Khaz Algar being in a fissure, I’m going with underground expansion.

[Nightshade711]

Okay it seems we are back to talking about whatever again.
Let's salvage the discussion cause 16 days from now, it will be showtime.

What are our options truly?
Considering the Algarian Stormrider (the only actual datamined thing that we know is real and not just made up by posters or just wishful thinking) Kaz Algar being part of it is as close to 100% as we can get.

But where IS Kaz Algar?

There seem to be two camps.

The ingame lorebook camp places it on Avaloren cause this would cut down the unknown mysterious lands by quite a lot. Avaloren is said to have advanced technology and is hostile to titan forces. Dragons who go there do not come back, but the Nightsquall did. This definitely feels like a plotline that should be investigated in an expansion or patch.

The other camp, most famously represented by Towelee and Bellular place Kaz Algar under Silithus and Un'Goro. A consolidation of weird hiden places posist that Kaz Algar is the same as the hole where a world tree was suppoosed to be but had to be pulled off to escape Old God corruption. Well not only is Silithus the seat of power and prison of C'Thun, but quite close to Un'Goro, where a corrupted world tree was shown in the Emerald Nightmare version.
As an added bonus, 10.2 features the enigmatic Loa of Change named after the Egyptian Moon God. Southern Kalimdor is the closest we have for Egypt in the game.

Speaking of Moon deities, the only other thing we all seem to agree on is that for better or worse, Elune is likely going to show up either in 10.2, 11.0 or both.

I think Khaz Algar & Avaloren are both west of Kalimdor. But I don’t think either is the name of the whole continent. Both are probably zones or specific locations.

The most underground we’ll get imo is a city in a mountain (or in the crevice that was mentioned) kind of like typical dwarf cities.
No shot Khaz Algar is under Silithus imo.

I think that next xpac will involve Iridikron/Xal’atath/Azshara in some significant way. Be it a full on void invasion akin to Legion or something else.
I’m expecting them to make Elune void related somehow. Just a nagging feeling they’d damage nelf lore even further by making her a void lord in some way.

[NikolaiShade]

The stuff on the picture are all over the place. But I'm seeing a lot of things that translate to:
Dark (Shore, Lady, iron)
Night (elf, warrior, squall, borne, well, hold)
Black (Empire)

Which does not suggest a very happy expansion...

...And I, for one, welcome our new void overlords...

[Fahrad Wagner]

The hotdog shape obviously represents a banana, confirmed we are going to Tel'Abim next

Tel'dorei confirmed as AR

[Hitei]

The other camp, most famously represented by Towelee and Bellular place Kaz Algar under Silithus and Un'Goro. A consolidation of weird hiden places posist that Kaz Algar is the same as the hole where a world tree was suppoosed to be but had to be pulled off to escape Old God corruption. Well not only is Silithus the seat of power and prison of C'Thun, but quite close to Un'Goro, where a corrupted world tree was shown in the Emerald Nightmare version.
As an added bonus, 10.2 features the enigmatic Loa of Change named after the Egyptian Moon God. Southern Kalimdor is the closest we have for Egypt in the game.

Elune'ahir being in un'goro doesn't actually track all that well. The "crater" in the Elune'ahir story is the result of the tree being torn out, it wasn't planted in an existing one. In fact the story specifically says it was planted where it would be nourished by the sky, i.e. not as far away as possible in a hole. If Un'goro itself was the crater left behind by Elune'ahir, we have several more problems created:

First, that the tree seen in the Il'gynoth fight makes little sense. Elune'ahir would have to be literally Teldrassil sized and not in the crater that shouldn't exist until it's removed.

Second, that the region makes little sense. Eonar planted the tree where it could be nourished "by river", but Un'goro's location is bounded on two sides by mountains and the other two by completely waterless desert regions, Tanaris and Silithus. The only viable explanation here is arguing that historically, thousand needles could have been an ancient river for the erosion to form the needles, but that'd still be on the other side of a mountain chain.


Third, Un'goro is inconsistent with what we know of Khaz Algar. The earthen were sent to an unnamed sector with a strange fissure and experienced anomalous effects after which they seemingly broke off from the Titans.

Un'goro is a well documented Titan testing facility explicitly first established by Freya to seed life, and then used by Khaz'goroth for experimentation. There'd be no reason for the other watchers to have to look up what "sector AR-938" is in geological archives when it's one of Freya's regular places and a facility Khaz'goroth openly used, and it makes little sense that it'd be both unnnamed and somewhere they need to send Earthen. There's literally an easy access waygate to Un'goro from the Northrend facilities. It also doesn't make much sense that Eonar would let Khaz'goroth just run experiments in the place where she is specifically trying to keep the remnants of Elune'ahir hush hush from other pantheon members.

[Sondrelk]

Oh yeah! I forgot all about BFA

Never forget BfA. That expansion was the biggest slap in the face of players the developers have commited. So many wasted opportunities. Both from what was done, and what wasnt.

Player ships would be nice though. Remember thinking that the Vindicaar would have been a perfect blueprint for how to make it work.

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I'd rather have an actual Kung Fu Panda expansion and 24 sequels to Harrison Jones and the Temple of Uldum than some weird Anime being a major influence on an expansion (also, game-wise, there are better influences to draw from, e.g. AC: Black Flag)

One Piece fits the tone of WoW much better though. Going to fantastical lands and fighting another villain of the week.

Also One Piece just got a really good live action adaptation marketed towards international fans specifically, rather than a japanese audience.

[Teriz]

Well once again the Hearthstone expansion looks more interesting/entertaining than what the WoW expansion is likely to be;

[DiscipleofCazicThule]

Let us assume it is not guessing.
1st pic: Darkshore, Night Warrior version of the moon, and the moon rabbit on it. Gonna guess this is about Elune. Don't think she is a bunny girl, but who knows? Elune is a Viera.

The first one is eluding to Elune. In Chinese mythology, there's a moon goddess named Chang'e. She's on the moon with the Jade Rabbit.

[milkmustache]

Well once again the Hearthstone expansion looks more interesting/entertaining than what the WoW expansion is likely to be;

Hearthstone seems to be able to tell isolated stories really well. WoW has shown they have the ability to, but the narratives always end up having their issues. I like the risks that Hearthstone takes with breaking racial/class boundaries.

[DiscipleofCazicThule]

Well once again the Hearthstone expansion looks more interesting/entertaining than what the WoW expansion is likely to be;

If Hunters don't get a ranged weapon that shoots lizards/frogs, then what is even the point of having an expansion?

[Auxis]

The third picture from Nobbels tweet could just be a LotR shitpost.
Elven ranger (Sylvanas), human noble with a sword (Turalyon is current regent of Stormwind), a dwarf (Moira), and Sauron's eye in Black Empire (Sauron's eye in Black Empire, a time period with Old Gods, most of whom have massive eyes).

[Sondrelk]

Well once again the Hearthstone expansion looks more interesting/entertaining than what the WoW expansion is likely to be;

Would have been interesting to see what kind of game WoW would have been if we had yearly expansions, as being bound by 2 year timelines is why expansions like these wouldnt work.

Even better, if we somehow got half an expansions launch worth of content every half year I imagine content probably would have looked more like this.

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Hearthstone seems to be able to tell isolated stories really well. WoW has shown they have the ability to, but the narratives always end up having their issues. I like the risks that Hearthstone takes with breaking racial/class boundaries.

Isolated stories in WoW are more difficult. Purely lore heavy questlines can be done, like what we saw with the Man'ari Eredear questline. Stuff like this would have to at least be a full patch though, which likely wouldnt gel with a greater expansion.

Maybe one day when we get the coveted World Revamp stuff like this would make more sense if the expansion didnt have to follow a rigidly structured grand narrative, and instead could focus on zone specific stuff.

[Lady Atia]

Hearthstone seems to be able to tell isolated stories really well. WoW has shown they have the ability to, but the narratives always end up having their issues. I like the risks that Hearthstone takes with breaking racial/class boundaries.

Well tbf, wow is also finally breaking racial/class boundaries, but every time Blizzard tries to do something cool with it some people here are all like "but that goes against the LORE reeeeee".

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Would have been interesting to see what kind of game WoW would have been if we had yearly expansions, as being bound by 2 year timelines is why expansions like these wouldnt work.

Even better, if we somehow got half an expansions launch worth of content every half year I imagine content probably would have looked more like this.

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Isolated stories in WoW are more difficult. Purely lore heavy questlines can be done, like what we saw with the Man'ari Eredear questline. Stuff like this would have to at least be a full patch though, which likely wouldnt gel with a greater expansion.

Maybe one day when we get the coveted World Revamp stuff like this would make more sense if the expansion didnt have to follow a rigidly structured grand narrative, and instead could focus on zone specific stuff.

Wow would also look a lot more like hearthstone if they went away from Expansions and instead only did seasonal patches similiar to Diablo. Tbh, I would love both - Expansions with a big chunk of lore advancement with seasonal content that's different from Expansion content on top, but I guess that's too much to ask haha.

[flan1337]

Just for a history.

Man this makes me think Elune is going to bring us to another planet lol

[Well Done Steak]

Are we at the point where the DF leaks came out in terms of time left untill reveal?

[Sondrelk]

Are we at the point where the DF leaks came out in terms of time left untill reveal?

Should be about that time, at least depending on the exact leak. Not sure when the convention center starts being prepped for the actual Blizzcon, but that is usually the weak point in their NDA contracts.

[flan1337]

Are we at the point where the DF leaks came out in terms of time left untill reveal?

Eh probably happen next week if not the day before blizzcon. This year feels different and I have money on no leak this year

[Yus atath]

Are we at the point where the DF leaks came out in terms of time left untill reveal?

Yes
/char

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Eh probably happen next week if not the day before blizzcon. This year feels different and I have money on no leak this year

He’s talking about the Dragonflight leaks we had