Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Shadochi]

OG Overwatch showed that they are able to somewhat quietly put a quality team together. Right now Microsoft has signalled that Blizzard have somewhat free reign to pursue projects they want.

Im not really sure about that first statement, wasn't OG Overwatch just cobbled up from the failed MMO Project Titan that they did, and it turned out to be a success. I would more say that it managed to breach the market at the time and did much better than they expected. And not that they were looking to make a team that will make the best next gen (at the time) shooter.

[Xilurm]

Hold on, in what world is Overwatch dead?

Not dead, but it's quite messy. Almost as controversial as Diablo 4, and that is very much alive as well.

[Harbour]

I think with K-Pop Overwatch 2 collaboration for the ending ceremony every leak dooming about Overwatch would be fake.
Scrapping OW2 is just a wishful thinking. It seems Blizzard are willing to commit to it even if its a failure. Corpos dont like to admit mistakes. Disney and SW is similar case.

[ercarp]

These were made with zero in-engine work or sandboxing or whatever, using stable diffusion with a LoRA trained for about 5 minutes on 24 WoW screenshots I pulled from google. I generated maybe 30 images before I had a decent and interesting set to use.

Bottom two are complete untouched from their generated form (besides cropping). Top left has a lamp dropped in but is otherwise unmodified. Top right has five existing models photoshopped in, as well as some minor fixes to clear up stuff that was more obviously strange looking in the generated picture. All those existing assets were just screenshotted from model viewer, so they're 2D pictures layered on top.

Entire thing, start (from finishing SD install and looking up how to train the LoRA) to finish was about an hour and a half).

This is why I suggested that those original four pictures could be AI bashed with assets. It's very easy to just generate what will look like a screenshot with AI and then spruce it up a bit if you know what you are doing.

This is some good stuff. Agree with you on the part that I bolded; they most likely used AI for the general shape of the landscape and then added the other assets on top using something like Photoshop. The other zone screenshot that was shared yesterday was probably made entirely using a custom LoRA.

[Nymrohd]

OG Overwatch showed that they are able to somewhat quietly put a quality team together. Right now Microsoft has signalled that Blizzard have somewhat free reign to pursue projects they want.

OG Overwatch was the best minds in Blizzard working for nearly a decade on Titan, failing and then salvaging what they made to create Overwatch

[Eldryth]

Microsoft DOES RTS though. They did Age of Empires 4 and have supported it. If you buy the WC and SC IPs and you have RTS talent in your team (Blizzard probably has almost none left by now) why not do sequels for two of the biggest RTS franchises ever.

That's all true, and I'm actually hopeful that we'll get a new Warcraft RTS or Starcraft eventually, but I don't see that happening anywhere near soon enough to reveal this year unless it's just a quick tease that they plan to start work on it.

I do think we'll probably hear about that Warcraft 3 Reforged relaunch that they had surveys on a while back though. Though I am skeptical that they'll actually manage to fix that mess.

[Makorus]

In no world. Overwatch is just not as successful as it could be but good content will bring it back up in a moment (and if they actually could pull of a proper PvE campaign that isn't released sporadically, they'd be printing money with it).

Heck even if Overwatch the game does, Overwatch pron will live forever.

Honestly, the PvE missions we got were pretty good.

The only issue that we only got three missions in the last 6 months and the pricing is... not good.

[Dracullus]

I always have to turn off Twitch and Youtube chat when I watch anything game reveal related, Youtube is the worst; dead game, L game, 1998 game.

Tip: you can have great experience on twitch - just pick smaller streamer and engage in discussion there. Not everything is dogshit experience like Asmon chat. There are also 5k-10k streamers that builded solid community.

[Makorus]

I think with K-Pop Overwatch 2 collaboration for the ending ceremony every leak dooming about Overwatch would be fake.
Scrapping OW2 is just a wishful thinking. It seems Blizzard are willing to commit to it even if its a failure. Corpos dont like to admit mistakes. Disney and SW is similar case.

Why would they scrap OW2 lmao.

How is it a failure? It's literally just an update for OW1.

[Beerplz]

Another 4chan leak , this one is also a bit on the weird side
https://imgur.com/a/vZ479V7

[Nymrohd]

Honestly, the PvE missions we got were pretty good.

The only issue that we only got three missions in the last 6 months and the pricing is... not good.

I mean the PvE missions are clearly the content they have managed to salvage from what they were actually making. And now they will release it piecemail and charge an arm and a leg for it. That is no way to experience a story.

[Makorus]

Not dead, but it's quite messy. Almost as controversial as Diablo 4, and that is very much alive as well.

The only thing messy about it is the monetization, which, fair enough, they could probably slash all the prices atleast in half.

However, being able to pick what I buy will always be better than shitty gambling.

[Zers Editor]

I don't know if Tyr cared one way or another about the Primal Dragons. In fact it appears he considered them beneath him, but it seems the Keepers were already worrying about the Legion when the Aspects were empowered, or at least Aman'thul was. One point of the book failure is presented to the Aspects as "monsters destroying the world in green."

I think it was about the Incarnates specifically, not the primal dragons.

If he'd truly saw the latter as dangerous for Azeroth, he wouldn't have conceded to Alex's demand and would at least made some attempts to keep them from being integrated into the ordered dragon society (as they are, unchanged). Which he didn't throughout MANY years.

Him realising the eventual threat Fyrakk and his followers will present and trying to kill it in its track by having their potential numbers minimized goes well. And my personal theory of him being directly/indirectly responsible for Fyrakk learning of elemental imbuing (and thus the Incarnates' creation) would fit too.

[Nymrohd]

Why would they scrap OW2 lmao.

How is it a failure? It's literally just an update for OW1.

I'd say it is a failure in that it failed to deliver the premise that they sold to us at Blizzcon.

Overwatch managed a far greater reach than the people who actually played it. Many people were following the character roster and the media while not playing the game at all. Blizzard tried to capture that crowd by selling them a proper Pve story (and probably sold quite a few units on that promise) and then failed to deliver.

[Raetary]

Another 4chan leak , this one is also a bit on the weird side

It's identical to another leak we've had some time ago.

[crusadernero]

Microsoft DOES RTS though. They did Age of Empires 4 and have supported it. If you buy the WC and SC IPs and you have RTS talent in your team (Blizzard probably has almost none left by now) why not do sequels for two of the biggest RTS franchises ever.

Thats true. Dont know how it works, but maybe Microsoft & Blizzard have been working/talking about a new RTS game for a while. but its not that long ago MS bought ActiBlizz, so this Blizzcon might be to soon?

[Makorus]

Another 4chan leak , this one is also a bit on the weird side
https://imgur.com/a/vZ479V7

I mean, that's like the biggest non-leak ever.

WyldOdyssey was stolen from another leak, and we already know it's gonna be called Odyssey.

[ercarp]

Another 4chan leak , this one is also a bit on the weird side
https://imgur.com/a/vZ479V7

Azeroth Reborn was also mentioned in this leak from October 29th.

[Makorus]

I'd say it is a failure in that it failed to deliver the premise that they sold to us at Blizzcon.

Yeah, sometimes things don't work out, and Blizzard communicated that to the playerbase.

Once again, it's a free game. They didn't really sell anything to us.

[Puupi]

People are really into K-Pop these days.

By people you mean 15 year old weebs?

The sad truth is that us 30-40 year olds are no longer the target audience for Blizzard's products, like at all.