Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Zaganite]

Well i asked Ion , so hopefully we get an answer soon lmao

https://imgur.com/qvaGfNm

No because this actually cracked me up! Just waiting for a "TotallynotIon" account to show up and say its real followed by "What sword"

[Sondrelk]

he will answer for sure, maybe they will have ion on video going through every detail of this leak.

I imagine someone so involved in an actual game dev company would be able to spot AI fakes, so crossed fingers.

[Dismayxz]

They’re boring in the sense of this could be anywhere on Azeroth and does not need to be a new expansion at all. That alone says enough about the quality of those screenshots.

And you still say that as if that hasn't been the case before and is an issue entirely unique to this specific string of images.

[Teriz]

As I recall, all continents so far have been known (in some form) since waaay back. I'm pretty sure even Pandaria was mentioned. The biggest changes would be that the Broken Isles was enlarged by quite a bit, and the Shadowlands developed from a sort of spirital plane on Azeroth to a more physical location. Dragon Isles was a map all the way back in the RTS, and featured in some rough early concept art for WoW (the one with the mollusk).

Avaloren is the first time we're headed into new territory, even if there's been suggestions that something might lie beyond the waves.

Yeah all the previous landmasses you named had been in the lore for years before becoming expansion content. Avaloren would be a massive departure from that trend, and be an odd choice given that we still have lore areas that have existed for years that we haven’t visited yet.

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TBF, Avaloren is part of Azeroth, and we knew of Azeroth since at least WoW Vanilla, and definitely by Warcraft 3.

See what I have done here?

Yeah, that’s not how it works. Again if Avaloren had been revealed a long time ago, it would make sense for us to venture there. Having us go there in 11.0 would be viewed as an asspull, especially given that every concept (even the leaked ones) coming out of it sounds like a Dragonflight patch instead of a new expansion.

[Sondrelk]

And you still say that as if that hasn't been the case before and is an issue entirely unique to this specific string of images.

You are not going to look at the announcement trailer of BfA, see Boralus, and wonder if this is actually Pandaria.

There are definitely areas in new zones that look like old ones if you are not fully caught up on them, but you would usually struggle to find those in the announcement trailer or press kit of all things.

[Nyel]

And you still say that as if that hasn't been the case before and is an issue entirely unique to this specific string of images.

It absolutely is because all of those 4 pictures are saying nothing about the expansion. Again, they could be anywhere on Azeroth. This isn’t the case with former previews. While you can say that parts of those are not the most exciting, there still was something where you could say: okay, this is new and I haven’t seen this yet on Azeroth. The four pictures for Avaloren don’t portray that at all. Not even one of them.

How likely is it that all four of your preview pictures are indistinguishable from other zones on Azeroth? How likely is it that there’s nothing better to show? Like come on. If this is the most exciting they can come up for a preview the expansion must be incredibly dull.

[Dismayxz]

There being four pictures is where the question of variance comes in. Because while you definitely have some boring shots of ambience to break up the excitement, you would have to be very picky about what to show from a trailer to only get those. Even more so if you have a random collection.

If the images are random from the press kit or trailer then the person who got hold of them is monumentally unlucky bordering on the absurd. And if it's curated pictures then Blizzard is either intentionally witholding anything interesting, or actually just making an expansion without any iconic landmarks of any kind.

I mean, for what it's worth, just based off the first shot, it more or less has to be screenshot moments from a trailer. Which doesn't lend it a whole lot of credibility in the long run due to some of the points you've brought up. But that was more or less clear from the moment this leaked. You don't usually see pictures with trailer captions as part of the press kit, the press kit usually contains more or less what the webpage gallery would consist of, plus the odd extras. I guess by some people's standards it's either just boring, since it'd be very unlikely to just get all the bad pictures, unless the person leaking is deliberately being a bit of a Scaleface and keeping the good shit for the sake of the eye of the beholder/the overall 'game' of leak season. Which I doubt, given that everything coming together for this one is from 3 different burner accounts.

[Teriz]

I mean, for what it's worth, just based off the first shot, it more or less has to be screenshot moments from a trailer. Which doesn't lend it a whole lot of credibility in the long run due to some of the points you've brought up. But that was more or less clear from the moment this leaked. You don't usually see pictures with trailer captions as part of the press kit, the press kit usually contains more or less what the webpage gallery would consist of, plus the odd extras. I guess by some people's standards it's either just boring, since it'd be very unlikely to just get all the bad pictures, unless the person leaking is deliberately being a bit of a Scaleface and keeping the good shit for the sake of the eye of the beholder/the overall 'game' of leak season. Which I doubt, given that everything coming together for this one is from 3 different burner accounts.

Does any of this really matter when the very idea of Avaloren as the next expansion continent makes no sense? Do people really think Blizzard is going to set an entire WoW expansion off of a passage from a story in the current expansion?

[Shadochi]

What I don't understand is people dismissing the website leak as fake due to the content of the page. If it was a developer working on a (presumably local) copy of the website and just making it mobile ready, it is more than possible that they just used the race image and text as placeholder image and text wherever they have content on similar size (and since there are multiple panels only thing that matters is that they are all similar size, that is why placeholder text works). The actual values and content would probably later by added through a content management system or however blizz has their sites set up so it isn't static content. What matters for the developer making the site reactive is just the dimensions of the content (for images), or max size they expect to display (for text). For stuff like background blur or overlay the designer would just give the input info for that and if the final background image is not done just use something in the general color scheme and brightness as the final version.

This is coming from someone who worked as a web dev for a couple years and except on prod and pre-prod environments, the content was usually like that, just devs using random images we have access and copy pasted text of similar size to final content to test how it looks design wise and how it functions.

Now bar from that, I think the best pointer towards that being fake is the background image analysis someone did last night, comparing it to the DF map and analyzing how it most probably is AI generated as it doesn't follow logical shapes for the 3d terrain.

[Nightshade711]

Seems like everyone has accepted that the four screenshots are likely fake, which is nice. Though I wonder if the leaker will make something even more believable in the remaining time.

Hardly accepted that they’re “fake”, there’s just not a whole lot to talk about.

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Does any of this really matter when the very idea of Avaloren as the next expansion continent makes no sense? Do people really think Blizzard is going to set an entire WoW expansion off of a passage from a story in the current expansion?

I mean blizzard based an entire expansion off of the Shadowlands. Which before SL was always just a mirrored copy of the world with a grey filter.

They also based an entire expansion around Pandaria, which only existed in the form of an April Fools joke.
The Dragon Isles only existed as a non-canon giant old god temple island until Wrathion mentioned it by name in a side quest.

[Raetary]

We are officially a week away from Blizzcon!

[Dnusha]

Seems like everyone has accepted that the four screenshots are likely fake

copium 10 chars

[Nyel]

I mean blizzard based an entire expansion off of the Shadowlands. Which before SL was always just a mirrored copy of the world with a grey filter.

They also based an entire expansion around Pandaria, which only existed in the form of an April Fools joke.

But still was an established part of the lore for over a decade. Avaloren is just way too new and too irrelevant to be its own expansion yet. And Pandaria or at least Pandaren existed since WC3 (?). They’re hardly comparable to Avaloren.

[Dismayxz]

Does any of this really matter when the very idea of Avaloren as the next expansion continent makes no sense? Do people really think Blizzard is going to set an entire WoW expansion off of a passage from a story in the current expansion?

Yes, Teriz. Some of it probably matters in a World that isn't you living in the delusion 24/7, rent free.

[Nightshade711]

But still was an established part of the lore for over a decade. Avaloren is just way too new and too irrelevant to be its own expansion yet. And Pandaria or at least Pandaren existed since WC3 (?). They’re hardly comparable to Avaloren.

I mean, Avaloren might be new but it has more canon lore to it than Pandaria/DI (and even 99% of SL) had before they were released.

[Samin]

Does any of this really matter when the very idea of Avaloren as the next expansion continent makes no sense? Do people really think Blizzard is going to set an entire WoW expansion off of a passage from a story in the current expansion?

Literally nobody believes that. It would be the other way around, the stories in the current expansion are based on the upcoming expansion which would have been in the works in some form since even before Dragonflight launched.

[Shadochi]

I mean, Avaloren might be new but it has more canon lore to it than Pandaria/DI (and even 99% of SL) had before they were released.

For Pandaria and DI I agree, but for SL hardly (and I am not that big of a fan of SL, but we did know way more about it and even technically visited it before, we just didn't know much of the hierarchy, eternal ones and such).
But the thing still remains that those locations existed in game lore for way more than a year before they were announced as expansion zones, and weren't created specifically for the expansion purpose. While if Avaloren is the next continent, we only found out about it in the expansion where we go there. (And all "hints" before were just refering that there might be something else on azeroth, keeping it vague not to keep it a secret, but so they can make up whatever when the time comes).

I dislike more the idea of it being the next expac from a worldbuilding standpoint, where its just like in a TTRPG campaign in a homebrew world it just sucks if a town/kingdom/dungeon/whatever is created just for the next story arc and was never mentioned before the lead up to that Arc.

[ercarp]

Seems like everyone has accepted that the four screenshots are likely fake, which is nice. Though I wonder if the leaker will make something even more believable in the remaining time.

I'm mostly on "team fake" at this point as well but we'll see what happens. As you said, if something even more believable/undeniable comes out next, I might change my mind yet again.

If these are fake, whoever made them will have changed the leak landscape completely lol. We've never had anyone put this much effort into a fake. Whenever any screenshots leak in the future, people will point back to this leak and say, "Yeah, but remember when this happened?"

[micwini]

Seems like everyone has accepted that the four screenshots are likely fake, which is nice. Though I wonder if the leaker will make something even more believable in the remaining time.

Im still on the boat that there is a 75% chance that it is real.
The best point for it being fake is actually when we compare it to other screencaps from similar feature trailers.

[Nightshade711]

For Pandaria and DI I agree, but for SL hardly (and I am not that big of a fan of SL, but we did know way more about it and even technically visited it before, we just didn't know much of the hierarchy, eternal ones and such).
But the thing still remains that those locations existed in game lore for way more than a year before they were announced as expansion zones, and weren't created specifically for the expansion purpose. While if Avaloren is the next continent, we only found out about it in the expansion where we go there. (And all "hints" before were just refering that there might be something else on azeroth, keeping it vague not to keep it a secret, but so they can make up whatever when the time comes).

I dislike more the idea of it being the next expac from a worldbuilding standpoint, where its just like in a TTRPG campaign in a homebrew world it just sucks if a town/kingdom/dungeon/whatever is created just for the next story arc and was never mentioned before the lead up to that Arc.

Fair points. I do hope we get a proper DF -> 11.0 bridge to help address some of these.

If they had a patch dedicated to DF’s epilogue before prepatch, like how Legion did it just following Antorus that would be great.