Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nightshade711]

I hope Blizzard learned from DF cinematic experience and wont make 11.0 one with no-name or little known characters.

Throwback to when they made a watcher the main character of a cinematic just for him to do nothing for the expansion except for hand out a quest or two

[Sondrelk]

There was that legendary cloak we got in the N'zoth patch that had all the dragon aspects powers put into it. They did mention the Dragon Isles, but people sort of turned a blind eye to it as they were hyper-focused on stuff like N'zoth, Sylvanas, and Azshara making her escape from Ny'alotha.

Then came Shadowlands and the game didn't end any cliffhanger or anything to segue into the next expansion. If anything people assumed that was when the revamp would happen because of a lot stuff they were setting up like relations between the Horde and Alliance trying to ease or Turalyon trying to re-establish the Old Kingdoms.. or the possibility of Light vs Void stuff... or even the Botani/Saberon getting more active in the Barrens...

Literally nobody could've predicted the Dragon Isles because it wasn't within anyone's radar. It's so much that players didn't know it existed, but rather people were hoping for something else than that...

Honestly, given how expansils seem to be seeded I would very much think a revamp is imminent now, simply because it was talked about at the end of SL. Similarly to how DF was talked about at the end of BfA, and the Shadowlands and its connection to Argus was briefly touched upon at the end of Legion.

[Hitei]

Not exactly possible with current training, no. AI is great at doing certain generic styles that it is trained on (e.g. realistic, painterly, 3D, whatever), but WoW's specific style isn't something it has nailed down yet. It will still give something very painterly even if you tell it to generate an in-engine in-game WoW screenshot.

If you were to train one of the major AIs specifically on in-game WoW screenshots (without any UI), you might be able to get close, though, but the really good ones aren't publicly trainable, so alas.

I do believe that the environment in the 4 screenshots is from in-game, whether or not it is by Blizzard or some very talented third-party individual(s) remains to be seen.

I think stable diffusion + LoRA trained on a 2-3 dozen screenshots of a zone in game (per image) would output decent enough results. The issue with a general model is that it tries to be landscape-y and is pulling from concept art.

The asset involvement aso allows for hiding potentially off spots. For example (not even arguing this is evidence of AI, just that this is an example of how it could be done):

Spoiler: 

This mountain in the background weirdly goes from being jagged on the right to a strange curved drop off on the left. But if you slap a pine tree in front of it like this, that sort of feature basically disappears.

Between this artifacting on these trees and the weird resolution blur happening on these horns:



My gut feeling is that a good bit of this has been layered in 2D onto the image of the zone, rather than done in a sandbox. This also makes it easier to do the impression of spell effects, because you don't have to make custom ones, you can just add a bit a color to a flat image at low resolution:

[Catastrophy349]

Throwback to when they made a watcher the main character of a cinematic just for him to do nothing for the expansion except for hand out a quest or two

Mindboggling, actually. During the announcement, I actually enjoyed the cinematic. However, in hindsight, it was actually such a waste (and doesn't even come close to my top 3-5 expansion cinematics). How does the featured character only really show up in the "Reforging Tyr" quests?

[Harbour]

I'm guessing this is an unpopular take, but I actually wouldn't be at all interested in having Azshara as an antagonist. I think BfA completely ruined her as a character.

Yeah, same. For the same reason im not hyped about any sort of Nzoth or Black Empire related expansions. They had their time and werent done good enough, and its hard to start caring.
Same i feel for Elune. Not a fan of portrayal she got in Shadowlands and i cant care less about her now. Id rather her to stay that abstract figure Night Elves mention in their prayers, and thats it.

[keelr]

I hope Blizzard learned from DF cinematic experience and wont make 11.0 one with no-name or little known characters.

Well that's not the problem imo. I think Shadowlands cinematic was the worst of all, even tho it had known characters, while MoP had no/not really known characters and it's one of my favourites.

The problem with DF cinematic was that there was too much running and climbing -> nothing really happened in it, we just saw a really stressed stone man trying to achieve smth.

[Samin]

In all honesty this is all giving me Pandaria vibes with the doomer takes.

If the expansion is Avaloren, we can only hope it's as good as Pandaria was.

Shockingly I encountered more than one person who came back to WoW in DF who quite proudly told about qutting WoW when they added that "joke race Pandaren" and "the story went to shit without any basis in lore". Some of those doomers just never quit being doomers.

[Sondrelk]

Mindboggling, actually. During the announcement, I actually enjoyed the cinematic. However, in hindsight, it was actually such a waste (and doesn't even come close to my top 3-5 expansion cinematics). How does the featured character only really show up in the "Reforging Tyr" quests?

Weirdly enough I like it, but only up until stuff happens. The second he sees the dead Titan watcher (also is he the first boss of the Halls of Infusion dungeon) I lose interest. And when Alexstrasza shows up I am completely done with it.

[keelr]

Almost certain that the only way to find out is to brute force it by trying all the likely options for names.

there are tools for finding all public sub-domains for a website, just search for "subdomain finder" on google, try one of them, they are safe to use

[Moth Preacher]

My DF cinematic experience was like:
- The world is healing!
- Who asked?
- Dragons will be protectors of Azeroth once more!
- Who asked?
- The age of the Dragons
- Whoa, really, who asked?

Alexstrasza's whole speech seemed disconnected from any plot lol

[Chickat]

ok this is actually kinda interesting! The background looks very void-like

And theres a gryphon flying.

[ercarp]

Somehow, Palpatine returned.

The fact they added the Jailer with zero build up in and out of his expansion gives me no hope for the current team's worldbuilding.

The big bad of Shadowlands should have been Mueh'zala. At least he had some build-up.

[Chickat]

Soooooo .... void-corrupted worldtree-roots, confirmed??

Also, gryphonriders in the background.

Maybe we will go into the underground to save Azeroth. We put the world tree fire out and we thought we won. That was never the goal. Once the tree manifests into Azeroth the shadow part of the shadowflame will start spreading ajd reaching down into Azeroth. We have to go underground to fight the void.

If Teriz was right the whole time we will never live it down.

[Syphin33]

I think stable diffusion + LoRA trained on a 2-3 dozen screenshots of a zone in game (per image) would output decent enough results. The issue with a general model is that it tries to be landscape-y and is pulling from concept art.

The asset involvement aso allows for hiding potentially off spots. For example (not even arguing this is evidence of AI, just that this is an example of how it could be done):

Spoiler: 

This mountain in the background weirdly goes from being jagged on the right to a strange curved drop off on the left. But if you slap a pine tree in front of it like this, that sort of feature basically disappears.

Between this artifacting on these trees and the weird resolution blur happening on these horns:



My gut feeling is that a good bit of this has been layered in 2D onto the image of the zone, rather than done in a sandbox. This also makes it easier to do the impression of spell effects, because you don't have to make custom ones, you can just add a bit a color to a flat image at low resolution:

Didn't you all do this same detective work on that leaked dracthyr leaked picture that came out to be true, you all picked it apart for days.

[Ferlion]

I hope Blizzard learned from DF cinematic experience and wont make 11.0 one with no-name or little known characters.

I think people think these cinematics are easier to pull of than they are in reality.

I've said this before. Metzen left Blizzard 2016. The Saurfang cinematic was the last thing he worked on. That was 2018.

Blizzard can learn all they want from DF cinematic, and it won't mean a single thing for whatever is done now.

[Polybius]

Well that's not the problem imo. I think Shadowlands cinematic was the worst of all, even tho it had known characters, while MoP had no/not really known characters and it's one of my favourites.

The problem with DF cinematic was that there was too much running and climbing -> nothing really happened in it, we just saw a really stressed stone man trying to achieve smth.

SL's cinematic was actually cool. The only reason it got flack is because the average viewer doesn't know Bolvar has no access to Frostmourne, and Arthas' martial experience and callousness. Top that off with the hindsight of SL's story being a solid turd.

[Woggmer]

Honestly, given how expansils seem to be seeded I would very much think a revamp is imminent now, simply because it was talked about at the end of SL. Similarly to how DF was talked about at the end of BfA, and the Shadowlands and its connection to Argus was briefly touched upon at the end of Legion.

I am hoping so... but I wouldn't be shocked if they did something else completely different to throw everyone off their guard.

To put it this way, I'm hoping that there is a revamp, that it will go into greater detail about the Primalists and the Elementals having another effect on the world resulting in a revamp in a similar way to Cata (minus deliberately destroying previous content)

But the worst I'm expecting is another location to the west of Kalimdor... a place that the Titans didn't know about.. and filled with more bland looking environments than DF's. (The harpy and dwarf NPCs don't bother me as much)

[Chickat]

this got debunked?

Thats a really cool logo.

[Jaggler]

After Blizzcon i don't want to hear the word build-up for at least another 2 years. It's wearing out its welcome lol

[Harbour]

Well that's not the problem imo. I think Shadowlands cinematic was the worst of all, even tho it had known characters, while MoP had no/not really known characters and it's one of my favourites.

The problem with DF cinematic was that there was too much running and climbing -> nothing really happened in it, we just saw a really stressed stone man trying to achieve smth.

This really comes down to execution. There are
well executed cinematics with unknown characters (Pandaria/Classc/TBC),
well executed cinematics with known characters (WoD,WotLK, Legion, BFA, Cata),
badly executed cinematic with known characters (SL),
badly executed cinematic with unknown characters (DF).

Id rather 11.0 cinematic to be of the second type.