Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[ercarp]

What would Elwynn + Westfall + Duskwood + Redridge + Deadwind Pass be called?

Geographically that area is basically the Kingdom of Stormwind, so maybe they could call it that.

[Raetary]

If they remove the borders and give them new names and make the maps bigger then they can count as new biomes.

What would Elwynn + Westfall + Duskwood + Redridge + Deadwind Pass be called?

How about the actual name of the region?

Like, you know, Stormwind?

[Chickat]

I missed 30+ pages, but Talisien pretty much agrees with all points in this thread who think the avaloren screens are fake



Big sorry if it has been posted

Of course he does. All the big YouTubers do is copy wow head or stuff from us/other sites.

[Sondrelk]

But they're not actually making the zones bigger, the just remove the naming border - the individual thematically and stylistically often very different zones still remain as small as before?

Sure, but Vanilla zones were designed to mesh slightly better with the surrounding zones anyway. Treating Elwynn, Westfall, Duskwood, and Redridge as one zone makes for one easy to digest human zone with four subareas.

Several Vanilla zones are, or at least were, almost identical to the surrounding ones. Tirisfal and Silverpine. Eastern and Western Plaguelands. Burning steppes and Seating gorge.

Megazones is a bit of a misnomer in that sense. It's less about making a big zone out of the small ones, and more about treating a collection of zones as a single big one for the purpose of questlines, dailies, and endgame content.

[Nyel]

But how do you explain the Algarian Stormrider with an old world revamp? It is too much work to ALSO include completely new zones.
While Northrend, which also needs a revamp, absolutely could fit Khaz Algar somewhere. And we had Outland remade (through an AU but still) so many years ago so we know they could do the same to Northrend. Plus Northrend is the perfect sequel to Dragonflight, holds the old lairs of the Incarnates, has Odyn, has Sholazar (which seems like a good case for Elun'ahir) and has so much space for great side stories that would interest both factions.



And damn is it confusing when people are trying to catch up to posts that happened so many pages ago

What if Khaz Algar is a place we already know, but not just under that name? Think about something like Uldum.

[Samin]

Of course he does. All the big YouTubers do is copy wow head or stuff from us/other sites.

Oh come on, half of the people here also just regurgitate whatever their preferred content creator just talked about. It's a beautiful cycle of bullshit.

[Nymrohd]

If they remove the borders and give them new names and make the maps bigger then they can count as new biomes.

What would Elwynn + Westfall + Duskwood + Redridge + Deadwind Pass be called?

In the older lore, the Eastern Kingdom continent was divided into subcontinents and the southern half was split between Khaz Modan (up to and including Burning Steppes) and Azeroth. Now I would NOT call it Azeroth since the name has changed meaning drastically since then. Could simply call it Stormwind since those are the lands Stormwind controls. Then you join Swamp, Blasted lands and STV into a second megazone.

[Chickat]

But how do you explain the Algarian Stormrider with an old world revamp? It is too much work to ALSO include completely new zones.
While Northrend, which also needs a revamp, absolutely could fit Khaz Algar somewhere. And we had Outland remade (through an AU but still) so many years ago so we know they could do the same to Northrend. Plus Northrend is the perfect sequel to Dragonflight, holds the old lairs of the Incarnates, has Odyn, has Sholazar (which seems like a good case for Elun'ahir) and has so much space for great side stories that would interest both factions.



And damn is it confusing when people are trying to catch up to posts that happened so many pages ago

They have tripled the team since cata. They would 100% include new zones in a revamp.

[Lady Atia]

But how do you explain the Algarian Stormrider with an old world revamp? It is too much work to ALSO include completely new zones.
While Northrend, which also needs a revamp, absolutely could fit Khaz Algar somewhere. And we had Outland remade (through an AU but still) so many years ago so we know they could do the same to Northrend. Plus Northrend is the perfect sequel to Dragonflight, holds the old lairs of the Incarnates, has Odyn, has Sholazar (which seems like a good case for Elun'ahir) and has so much space for great side stories that would interest both factions.



And damn is it confusing when people are trying to catch up to posts that happened so many pages ago

Yeah but revamping Northrend before EK/Kalimdor would only work if they would announce it as the "start of a propper old world revamp", which would kinda spoil 12.0 than too. Otherwise, people would riot. Blizzard, can we have a world revamp? We have a northrend revamp at home, child!

[Chickat]

Oh come on, half of the people here also just regurgitate whatever their preferred content creator just talked about. It's a beautiful cycle of bullshit.

Not really. We discuss things as they happen. YouTubers release their video 24 hours later after its already been discussed. Not saying i care that they do that. 99.9% of the players dont read this thread, but moat of the time they have very lottle ideas of their own and regurgitate stuff from places like this or Wow head.

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What if the "4 screenshots" are real, but only the first couple are of the new land, and the other two are of revamped zones? One, revamped Thousand Needles or Badlands, the other, a new Un'goro?

Plausible. The orange desert with a Harpy could easily be durotar.

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Y'know something?

All this talk of reveal trailers in terms of relative quality, but I don't think anybody brought up the most obvious one: Cataclysm.

If you go through Cataclysm's reveal trailer, about 70% of the footage is revamp material, with the remaining being placed on the starting zones. We do not see Hyjal, Vashj'ir, Uldum, or the Twilight Highlands, even if we do see a dungeon set in one of them. (Edit: And ONE shot of Halls of Origination)

The clear priority is that a lot of resources went into the revamp. And of those changed landscapes, I'm sure a fair number of existing reused assets existed amongst new ones and terrain changes. And the 4 new zones were probably not ready to be shown in the same way. We get a bevy of concept art for future areas, some that didn't actually materialize.

So hypothetically, let's say the first shot is the only part of the reveal trailer. We're seeing the early portions of maybe the introductory zone of the new areas, and we're getting an early moment of the sweeping shot. The three remaining shots are from press kit images, and it is possible that the 3rd and 4th images are revamp photos. It would make sense to reuse Titan pillars or existing baby triceratops battle pets, for example, in a hypothetical new Un'goro.

Not hopium, I don't even think the above is a particularly high possibility, but it's something to consider when we compare to how Cataclysm's development started to come together. They didn't even have Deathwing ready. And if you just looked at the reveal trailer, you wouldn't even know it was going to also strongly be about the Elemental Planes beyond a line or two.

Snow place is Aerie peak. Orange desert is durotar. Jungle with titan pillers is Ungoro.

[blaatschaap]

I'm behind a few pages but wanted to address the retail/classic thing. Wow classic has far fewer players than retail, if you think otherwise you're just in a weird bubble imo.

[NikolaiShade]

What if Khaz Algar is a place we already know, but not just under that name? Think about something like Uldum.

Unlikely but not impossible. All things considered Khaz Algar should have: a fissure, labeled as a geological anomaly; earthens culturally similar to dwarves but physically distinct and some animal or ridable "thing" called a stormrider (one could infer there should be storms near Khaz Algar).

And reading again the in-game book, it's clear there is something strange in the fissure

[Nymrohd]

I'm behind a few pages but wanted to address the retail/classic thing. Wow classic has far fewer players than retail, if you think otherwise you're just in a weird bubble imo.

Why are you trying to derail the thread?

[Chickat]

Speaking of, I wonder how fast we would see Alpha this year. With their content creation, I think we can realistically see it by February.

Mind, saying that's possible doesn't mean I think it's whats going to happen.

It its a revamp i could see alpha starting in like February and running all the way till november. They would need a shit load of time to test it all.

[Hitei]

Why are you trying to derail the thread?

I mean, it's really that Nyel, as always, was trying to derail the thread into whining about the game being dead.

[Chickat]

Oh, I see

I guess that is not a bad name. Unlikely, though.



I got you. We will get Uldaz in DF. Probably a dungeon. In patch... 10.3.5. There you go. We will have a 10.3 as big as Argus. It is called Avaloren.

And then we also get a fated season and world revamp releases summer 25.

[blaatschaap]

Why are you trying to derail the thread?

Weird accusation, lol. Just replying to something from a few pages ago, but since I'm posting from my phone, it's a hassle to actually quote the guy. Derail the thread... Lol. Thread is off the rails 1800 pages ago

[Chickat]

For a screencap.
Metzen comes on stage, does his trademark 'Horde! Alliance' speech. Tells how its good to be back and how important the 'War' part in Warcraft. He smiles in his beard, then tells about some screenshots around the internet about 'some Avaloren'.
He then tells 'The war is coming. See what is next for World of Warcraft'.
Then we see the feature trailer with revamped zones, playable Ethereals, armies of Light coming out of the Dark Portal and armies of the Void coming out of the dark purple realm rifts.
Title is 'Shadows of Azeroth'.
The whole hall goes crazy, screaming 'Chris! Chris!!! WoW is back!" and then forming the giant word "POGCHAMP". Metzen comes back in a purple and gold SoA shirt, tearing up, and raising up the Doomhammer in his hand.

And then everyone kissed.

[huth]

And then everyone kissed.

And the whole Starbucks clapped.


Though nobody was quite sure how they fit the whole convention center in there.

[Nyel]

I'm behind a few pages but wanted to address the retail/classic thing. Wow classic has far fewer players than retail, if you think otherwise you're just in a weird bubble imo.

Nobody was talking about amount of players. We talked about hype levels. Everybody expects the announcement of a new retail expansion. Nobody expects them to announce Classic+. It’s easy to imagine which of those announcements would generate more hype in the end.

Edit: the only retail announcement that could overshadow a Classic+ announcement is a world revamp. That would be the most hype inducing announcement ever.

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Unlikely but not impossible. All things considered Khaz Algar should have: a fissure, labeled as a geological anomaly; earthens culturally similar to dwarves but physically distinct and some animal or ridable "thing" called a stormrider (one could infer there should be storms near Khaz Algar).

And reading again the in-game book, it's clear there is something strange in the fissure

Could be somewhere underwater as well. I mean it can be anything or nothing. That’s why we really shouldn’t put too much emphasis on it imho. In the end it could be nothing because it has been completely destroyed and is just a ruin / something like the Heart Chamber.