Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Shadowferal]

Technically at launch given that all the WC3 factions made “peace” and weren’t actually at war at all in classic-tbc with the faction war only starting in wrath.

Sure thing Sylvanas..try harder

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Sure thing Sylvanas..try harder

It’s been the lore since late TBC with the Varian comic it’s why the horde and alliance team up in wrath, they even set up trade deals.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The fact that the Titans were apparently close enough to the First Ones to access their own Zereth (Ordos) and leave without causing much of a fuss already sets up that they are likely handpicked to be their successors. I don't think the similarities between the two were overt laziness, especially when the expansion immediately after (DF) has a big titan focus that points out their aesthetic similarities. Definitely seems to be on purpose.

I'm not of the mind that the First Ones were a terrible retread of the Titans because the writers were lazy – though they were a terrible retread of the Titans – but I'm also not going to be so quick to pretend that Blizzard had any kind of plans like the post I'm quoting. The motive of whichever writer was responsible for them is presumably that they were almost certainly trying (and failed, given that the First Ones felt like an astounding asspull to anybody with even a modicum of narrative sense) to recapture the mystique the Titans used to have, which evaporated over the course of the game up until it finally came to a head in Legion. I'd also hardly be impressed if the Titans were just the successors of the First Ones—the specific way in which they succeed them in the proposition of the original poster was what appealed to me, not the idea of the First Ones being the predecessors of the Titans somehow, because it ties into the preexisting dangers we're told about regarding the victory of any of the Cosmic Forces, and also allows us to keep the Cosmic Forces as something transcendent instead of reducing them to something even less than they already were (and don't get me wrong, the whole cosmic chart was a terrible idea to start with) because it invalidates the idea that the Cosmic Forces were specifically designed as they are by the First Ones, just that their current incarnations are a product of the victory of the First Ones in the previous Kalpa.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

While I agree (again) that Mount Hyjal and all the surrounding forests, including Nordrassil, are important and should remain important, I wholly disagree with you guys' assertion that this is the only area of any importance in Night Elven history.

The argument I'm making is that just as the Dragons returned home to their ancestral home, so could the Night Elves. That's the context of why I'm arguing with you all on the importance of the entire Kaldorei Empire.

Ten or fifteen years ago, our idea of the Dragons was that they had a few important locations in the world. For the Red flight, it was the Ruby Dragonshrine, Vermillion Redoubt, Wyrmrest Temple and so on. For the Black, it was Blackrock Mountain and the surrounding area, parts of Outland, and so on. You get the idea. But then we were introduced to the idea that the Dragon Isles was, in fact, something they considered to be their ancestral home. Upon returning there, even after 10K years away, it still felt like their home. We found out they had a rich culture, a developed society, hell, aqueducts and cities...

Because Night Elven society spanned aross the entire known world, more or less, it not only makes sense that there is more for them out there, but also that they'd feel a deep connection upon returning there. It is likely many of the now living Night Elves were born elsewhere other than the forests around Hyjal.

So while I personally would prefer if Nordrassil became their new home, I could feasibly see a scenario in which interesting lore is developed over the coming months, making a different location make sense to us.

We already had all of this addressed in legion and again night elfs and dragons are apples and oranges.

Hyjal is there ancestral home, they have never left it, they don’t want to go back to the old ways that was the blood elfs, even those born of suamar don’t want to go back and don’t like those who still live there showcased by Tyrande in legion.

[Cheezits]

Considering they haven't been mentioned in Dragonflight so far, at least to my knowledge, maybe we'll get some reveal regarding a portion of Loreth'aran (the green dragon-riding nelf city) in the Dream?

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ruins_of_Loreth%27Aran

The ruins are in Bloodmyst Isle but it would be cool to see them play a part to some serious degree here.

[Palapop]

Reading some thoughts about "Blizzard shouldn't waste funds into capitals."

Hearing something like this makes me cringe lol.

Like, for such huge company, creating 1 capital city should be no issue at all.

Or what? Creating capital city costs 1m $, 2m, 5m, 10, 20, 50, 100.....?

How many people they need to create 1 capital city like Darnassus for example?

How big was the team back then when they created whole world with so many details?

Grow up! It's their job to make it!



Its called building world and giving more diversity in story telling!

And just for the record- when I say diversity, I give 0 Fs about your sexuality/ethnicity/religion/whatever... But I care about IN GAME LORE.

Imagine if we had multiple questlines available atm. 1 would be about primalists and aspects. But we could also have HUUUUUUUUGE questline about NEs reclaiming their new home.

or Forsaken reclaiming Undercity. And cleansing it of the plague.
Or Worgens cleansing Gilneas.

we could have another drust invasion in Drustvar (due to their activity in Ardenweald...)

Or we could have another invasion of quilboars in Barrens...

Or we could have an invasion of Dreadlords in Outlands/Northrend/Draenor (since they might be trying to free Denathrius from that sword. but I still see Denathrius as creator of Nathrezim uber-bad move....)


My point is: Theres COUNTLESS opportunities to make something in game. Or to (re)build some old zones/cities.

But instead, developers spend their time on new big-bad-evil guys who have 2-3 sentences throughout whole expansion. Or they waste their time designing items that dont even belong to warcraft franchies/style (e.g. some crappy tmogs, hair colours, mounts... etc, etc, etc....)

[Makabreska]

My point is: Theres COUNTLESS opportunities to make something in game. Or to (re)build some old zones/cities.

But instead, developers spend their time on new big-bad-evil guys who have 2-3 sentences throughout whole expansion. Or they waste their time designing items that dont even belong to warcraft franchies/style (e.g. some crappy tmogs, hair colours, mounts... etc, etc, etc....)

Your point is like, dumb? "New big-bad-evil guys", AKA raid/dungeon bosses are essential, since it's PvE content that is the cornerstone of the game. What are you suggesting? Should Blizz cut PvE content so they can rehash old capitals? And "items that don't even belong to warcraft franchise" is purely subjective. Does the jester mog not fit in WoW, despite looking pretty darn cool? Or the tier sets/weapons we get each patch? But your idea is "Yo guys, go do stuff in that zone you had since vanilla, instead of having a brand new palces!". I am defo sure players would be thrilled.

Also, the ARE going back to old zones. Battlefield Barrens in MoP, Uldir and Vale in BfA, and so on. But for some reason they are not enjoyed as any new zone they release, and Blizz gets flak each time they revamp old place for being "lazy". Weird, isn't it?

[Super Dickmann]

Night elf "bloodthirst" and "xenophobia" are complete memes. The Night Elves when they met humans and orcs were a continent-spanning empire. For the sake of beating the Legion, they sacrificed their immortality and world tree, losing Hyjal. Then, for the sake of an inexplicable, nonsensical alliance with humanity they lost their gender roles, nocturnal lifecycle and geopolitical independence. Then all their lands were contested by the orcs. Then they lost some of those in the Shattering. Then they lost their capital to the Horde and a bunch of civilians. Then they had to live on the streets, fight in a suicide army and be denied direct help for the war to take back their lands. Then their goddess fucked over their racial leader before she could kill the woman who ordered the murder and consignment to hell of most of their population.

Night Elf support of other races has been an unmitigated failure that in the span of a blink of an eye where their thousand-year lifespan was concerned turned them from masters of a big part of the world into the vestigial vassal of a human kingdom. This isn't arguable, it's just an objective fact. To reject all that to revert back to a vastly better status quo isn't backwardness, it's the only rational position anyone could take.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Not sure why you keep repeating this false claim.

Hyjal is not their ancestral home. Hyjal is where Cenarius dwelled, and because Malfurion was his apprentice it became important to Night Elves as well. Their ancestral home was around the Well of Eternity in the middle of ancient Kalimdor.

Because it’s not a false claim and you just don’t know the lore or how any thing works.

Them evolving around the well doesn’t make it there one true ancestral home just like humans don’t only say they come from Africa even though that’s where they started.

Night elfs as a culture have always lived around hyjal the majority of there city’s were around hyjal and only a handful are known to come from else where.

[Lahis]

While I agree (again) that Mount Hyjal and all the surrounding forests, including Nordrassil, are important and should remain important, I wholly disagree with you guys' assertion that this is the only area of any importance in Night Elven history.

The argument I'm making is that just as the Dragons returned home to their ancestral home, so could the Night Elves. That's the context of why I'm arguing with you all on the importance of the entire Kaldorei Empire.

Ten or fifteen years ago, our idea of the Dragons was that they had a few important locations in the world. For the Red flight, it was the Ruby Dragonshrine, Vermillion Redoubt, Wyrmrest Temple and so on. For the Black, it was Blackrock Mountain and the surrounding area, parts of Outland, and so on. You get the idea. But then we were introduced to the idea that the Dragon Isles was, in fact, something they considered to be their ancestral home. Upon returning there, even after 10K years away, it still felt like their home. We found out they had a rich culture, a developed society, hell, aqueducts and cities...

Because Night Elven society spanned aross the entire known world, more or less, it not only makes sense that there is more for them out there, but also that they'd feel a deep connection upon returning there. It is likely many of the now living Night Elves were born elsewhere other than the forests around Hyjal.

So while I personally would prefer if Nordrassil became their new home, I could feasibly see a scenario in which interesting lore is developed over the coming months, making a different location make sense to us.

And where would this rediscovered new land with Ancient Kaldorei heartland be?

Kaldorei Empire spanned over Ancient Kalimdor. We have already the most important areas of Ancient Kalimdor available on Kalimdor, Northrend, EK, Pandaria, Broken Isles and Zandalar. The heart of their Civilization was sunk into the sea. After the explosion, Kaldorei settled on norht end of Modern Kalimdor, and abandoned pretty much anything else. Hyjal is and has been centre of their culture since Sundering.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

A revamp of Mount Hyjal would be fine. Execution of it matters when it comes to old zones though. Also umm I am not not of the opinion that we should never revamp old places. As I said above its how they do it that matters, and that they don't rely on it.

[Lahis]

That is literally nonsense, and your suggestion that I don't know my lore is highly ironic.

I suggest you read up on Zin-Azshari and Suramar. Major cities, home to the majority of Night Elves during the height of their civilization, and birthplace of virtually all well known Night Elves.

Again, I'm not dismissing the importance of Mount Hyjal or what we now call Kalimdor. They are vital parts of Night Elven history and culture. But to call them their ancestral home, or to suggest their culture was always primarily situated around Mount Hyjal, displays a gross ignorance of the lore.

Zin-Azshari was sunk into the sea, functionally destroyed and is now home to the Naga. Bit wet for Night Elf resettlement.

Suramar fared better and is still inhabited by the people who were there 10k years ago. They just aren't part of modern Kaldorei people anymore, so Kaldorei can't set up shop there either.

[Lahis]

I'm not saying there will be some rediscovered piece of land, I'm just saying there could be. Just like Blizzard developed the lore around the Dragon Isles to a point where it suddenly made sense to players that the dragons were "coming home at last", they could do something similar with the Night Elves.

For all we know, we could be sitting here a month from now, going "oh crap, it makes so much sense now! Of course Tyrande takes up seat in Ladidadida-ahran, and obviously Malfurion has invited players to dwell among the barrows of Lolnassus!"

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And I'm not suggesting they relocate there. I'm only bringing them up as evidence to prove my claim that Mount Hyjal, despite its importance to Night Elves, is not their ancestral home as some people seem to believe.

Problem is that Night Elf history is better defined than Dragons were. Asspulling Zan-Izshare as the true ancestral Night Elf capital is way bigger stretch than expanding Dragon Isles as the Dragon homeland. Before DF we only had their name and the fact that it was ancient land for dragons.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

and your suggestion that I don't know my lore is highly ironic

It's also a fact.

Here is the dark trolls (night elfs) holding and how they were already in the area around hyjal before they were even elves.

it's there ancestral home and always has been and while there are other places they lived the core of there once empire is now filled with fish and and of the very few we know come form Suamar they don't want any thing to do with it.

[Catastrophy349]

Haven't seen this forum pop off like this since the announcement of Dragonflight.

[Hellspawn]

But it's literally not an act of aspulling. It's right there in every lore text and every book concerning Night Elf history. Zin-Azshari was the capital city of the Kaldorei Empire. It's not a ret-con, it's not fan-fic, and it's not a stretch. It's where the majority of them lived and where much of their history played out.

They then relocated to Mount Hyjal, and because the destruction of the continent separated them from basically everything but modern Kalimdor, that's where they remained and further developed their culture into something more druidic.

Night Elf had a strong connection to Hyjal before they turned into an empire, at that time even Cenarius had contact with them (but somehow never thought to taught then in his druid ways). The modern Night Elf reject the empire and their former queen and Hyjal and Ashenvale are their home it is the Zuldazar of the Night Elfs.

[Reive]

"Kalimdor" is already trending on twitter. i can only imagine what's going to happen when the patch is actually out lol

[Lahis]

But it's literally not an act of aspulling. It's right there in every lore text and every book concerning Night Elf history. Zin-Azshari was the capital city of the Kaldorei Empire. It's not a ret-con, it's not fan-fic, and it's not a stretch. It's where the majority of them lived and where much of their history played out.

They then relocated to Mount Hyjal, and because the destruction of the continent separated them from basically everything but modern Kalimdor, that's where they remained and further developed their culture into something more druidic.

Yes. Zin-Azshari was the capital of Kaldorei Empire. It was destroyed in The Sundering.

My hypothetical Zan-Izshare is complete asspull, with no precedent, and would require inventing up new landmass altohether since it is obviously absent on any known piece of Ancient Kalimdor.

[huth]

In that they're a poorly-conceived knockoff of the Titans?

Better explanation would be that most player races are Titan creations or related beings, so it would be a logical startoff.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

And though the Air Elemental place was just a dungeon I fel like we got the general gist of the place plenty.

Missed opportunity to have an Air Elemental Plane zone where you explore floating cities, ie a Suramar zone you can spend dozens to hundreds of hours in, not just a linear 15 minute dungeon.

People want the world to feel bigger but then bitch that the Dragon isles is actually made relevant outside of this expansion.

Baffling.

Outland hasn't been relevant after TBC. Northrend hasn't been relevant after Wrath. The Cata zones of Hyjal/Uldum/Vashjr/Twilight Highlands haven't been relevant after Cata. Pandaria hasn't been relevant after MoP. AU Draenor hasn't been relevant after WoD. The list goes on. The Dragon Isles won't be relevant after DF.

let's not suddenly expect it will be some big, new player hub. Especially when considering that faction division is still a thing (or maybe it will be a next step towards unification?).

Horde should never be allowed to walk around Night Elf territory. There is no way the populace at large could forgive them. Similarly, Horde should never be able to walk around Stormwind, the human kingdom they destroyed. But we've already crossed that bridge when Belves joined the very Horde that were slaughtering them during the Second War.

New race capital cities would only make sense if there is content in them or in reach around them so you have a reason to be there.

If all hubs shared the same services, then the playerbase would spread out and chill in their favorite hub of choice in between queues. Stormwind and Orgrimmar and Warspear and Stormshield were still populated during WoD even though people could have just sat in their garrisons. Thunder Bluff and Silvermoon didn't have transmog vendors so ofcourse people are going to avoid those places and chill in places that do.

GW2 has 19 player cities and smaller hubs and continues to add more. All of them are populated to the map limit. Server communities on retail died long ago so there is no reason why Blizzard can't just rewire their megaserver system to keep the smaller hubs populated.

Danuser did specifically reference retaking Gilneas as "something they would want players to do" so I think that cities are something they're thinking about, but only forwhen it's relevant (expansions that feature the main continents again).

The time to retake Gilneas from Sylvanas was during the war with Sylvanas expansion. That expansion is over. It has been five years since that war ended. We will never get to play through a questline retaking Gilneas.

Me too, but I think most people won't. Even on RP servers most capitals were usually pretty empty.

The game's population is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I could have walked into Thunder Bluff, Iron Forge, Darnassus, Undercity, or Silvermoon and have seen lots of players. The only way those places will be populated again is if they are given the same utilities as the current expansion's capital, and Blizzard utilizes cross realm phasing to keep those places sufficiently populated, like in GW2.

Too many people don't care about the lore for Nelves to be what the hardcore Nelf players want them to be. It's never going to happen and especially not after the fanbase reaction to BFA.

There were many, many fans who yearned for the Nelves to be badass again. It didn't happen because the only people at Blizzard who were in a position of authority over the story content were Horde fans.

I doubt the Nelves are really uncaring about the Green Dragons being neutral to what happened to Teldrassil.

The elephant in the room is that almost everyone on Azeroth should be against the Horde. Every time they're the ones launching unprovoked attacks and wiping whole cities and kingdoms off of the face of the Earth. They are the enemy of civilization. It's bizzare that the dragons overlook the Horde when only a few years prior their queen was enslaved by orcs and then raped and her children enslaved and then murdered when they were growing up and becoming too dangerous to control. The Horde desecrated the Pandaren's most sacred place, and when the Horde goes wiping out civilization again the Pandaren for some reason don't help the Alliance stop the barbarians. Except for Goblins, every race that joined the Horde after vanilla are insane as they had no reason to join the enemy of civilization. "Tyrande was unkind to me once" isn't a reason to align yourself with the loser barbarians against civilization.

This is basically how it's going down on WoW twitter. I have already seen posts about how if it's not on Kalimdor, the story is pro-colonization and pro-fascism because it means the "Horde won" and are kicking the Nelves out of Kalimdor.

The Horde has been colonizing and kicking races out of Kalimdor since WC3. Ask the Quilboar.

Hell, even Val'sharah, a place which has the Dream superimposed onto Azeroth (a literal "Life island") is vastly more favorable, as a place with Nelf related history, than on the Dragon isles. (Which has no relations to the nelves beyond a theme overlap).

Val'sharah would be terrible. The Night Elves would be surrounded by two Horde factions, and given that Blizzard's narrative purports that being good = being passive and that being proactive = evil, the Alliance would not help the Night Elves subdue their enemies and make the Broken Isles a safe home for them.

Horde favoritism is still a thing even after all these years and all the dev team changes, and also despite the factions being blurred. It's hopeless...

The issue is that there are only two playable factions, and out of those two factions only one of them is unique. The Horde - a faction where you can play as the evil monstrous beastmen - is what is unique about WoW. It has all of the cool races. People who like Alliance aesthetics have an easy time transitioning to other games, decreasing Alliance's population. If you want to be a pretty, heroic human, then you have literally every other MMO out there ready and waiting for you. People who like Horde aesthetics don't have an alternative game to switch to and are more likely to stick with WoW. WoW has been in decline for a decade so over the years you just wind up having more reds than blues.

The people at Blizzard who made WC3 and remembered its unique factions of Night Elves and Scourge are long gone. The people working today at NuBlizzard have no memory of those cool factions. Their only experience is with WoW and its boring Alliance and cool Horde. It is only natural that given the choice, the people working on Warcraft are more excited to make Horde content than Alliance content.

I want to know where all this favoritism was during Legion, BfA or Shadowlands.

They get to regularly commit mass murder and get away with it scott free. Meanwhile, the Alliance is forced to pull their punches and watch their cities wiped off of the face of the earth one by one, and never definitively eliminate evil.

When did the "World of Warcraft" become "Turn the other Cheek?"

Since MoP apparently, when Taran-Zhu made a false moral equivalency between the Alliance and the barbarians they were defending themselves from. And that incredibly, incredibly stupid and insulting moralizing from the Tavern in the Mists panda about "how the Horde and Alliance are strong because of one another!" *spits*. According to Blizzard, trying to excise evil and dangerous actors from this world is wrong.