Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Xilurm]

he is I think alongside metzen one of the first artists ever at blizzard

at least metzen is back

and something positive: even though I don't really have interest in the story of DF, emerald dream looks and sounds amazing
I hope they keep this standard of artwort in the next xpac

Yeah. He's also the lead singer for ETC, and he came up with the Pandaren and even the name "Warcraft".

[Vakir]

Damn shame about Sam. He was responsible for, for example, a lot of the designs of what I'd call the best all-around tier, 2, before he moved onto SC2 and HOTS. A lot more than that, obviously, but I have a soft spot for Ten Storms, Judgment, and Bloodfang to this day.

He had his issues - huge orc and dwarf bias, pretty caster-dismissive, really seems like he'd struggle a lot of the time to get into the same mentality and spirit of a lot of the things outside of his interests, but that's pretty much all artists and the creative process for ya.

[Raetary]

That was answered. Queueing in DF without a premade group might ruin it for the people that are immersed into the faction theme.

This is such a dumb answer.
Literally not improving LFG so that the 5 people who are left to give a single fuck about faction division can feel special.

Premade groups already have the option to lock out opposite faction players, just add a similar option to the group finder if that is such an issue.

[Gurahk]

That sucks. Was he the art director for DF tho? Pretty sure it was someone else to begin with.

Samwise hasn't worked with Warcraft for a long time.

[Vakir]

Literally not improving LFG so that the 5 people who are left to give a single fuck about faction division can feel special.

Sadly, those 5 people are all on this forum, and for whatever reason they are really proud to be fascists for a fictional, D-tier writing quality culture.

I'll take 10 Dreamworks expansions to improve my queues and get away from whatever the fuck BFA was.

[Daniri]

No wonder you anti-faction people get so upset. You actually think your opinion is the overwhelming majority and it's just 5 people holding you up.

[Nightshade711]

This is such a dumb answer.
Literally not improving LFG so that the 5 people who are left to give a single fuck about faction division can feel special.

Premade groups already have the option to lock out opposite faction players, just add a similar option to the group finder if that is such an issue.

Agreed. They should just add cross faction LFG.
It’s crazy that Battleground Blitz has faster queues than regular BGs for example.

[Vakir]

I appreciate critiques in the story, but maybe try not to get personal on the attacks?

It's not even an attack, it's a statement of fact. At least in so far as past situations indicate.

If someone is fairweather fanning whatever the new cool shiny toy is, how else am I to take that?

[Xilurm]

No wonder you anti-faction people get so upset. You actually think your opinion is the overwhelming majority and it's just 5 people holding you up.

I think they are the overwhelming majority here, but this is a fansite. It's hard to gauge how split this opinion is though. I personally don't want anything cross-faction. But I also am going to admit that I don't really care that much about gameplay mechanics unless they're the immersive kind.

[Samin]

I don't know if people expect more, but I really want Azerothian Archives to just be a collection tab for all the books, notes and other lore (story recaps, dungeon journal lore, etc.) in the game.

I mean some kind of Bestiary that you unlock as you slaughter your way through Azeroth would be neat, but I'd be happy with "just" a library for lore books.

[Nerdslime]

I was wondering if getting so much news all at once with the saga announcement would soften the edge of my hunger for knowledge and news but every hour Im not playing 10.2 I have spent excited for the 10.2.5 PTR or this Q&A and so forth. I admit to being an optimist about WoW generally but I feel like we really do have a lot to be excited and hopeful for!

As for Samwise retiring, the guy is a legend and has touched all our lives. Dude kinda helped disrupt the whole industry of video games in a way. At one point Warcraft was a global phenomenon and one of the biggest media properties on Earth and even now it has had a ton of games, merch, movies, and so on all drawn in some way from art he did or contributed to. Even if he hasn't been at the helm of WoW art in practice for awhile (and it does show!) his fingerprints are indelible. What a great legacy for an artist to have. His artbook is fantastic by the way!

[Vakir]

You can just say "I know you like the Cosmic stuff a ton, especially Argus, Sargeras, the First Ones, etc. BUT", and that's it. Ik you didn't intend to, but what you said above comes off rather harsh.

That's not all I mean, though.

You switch gears when a bigger fish comes along. It comes off that you like the strongest entity in the room, not the actual character(s).

[Vakir]

Well, I do lmao. But I also like the characters a ton.

Ask yourself why. A strong shitty character is still a shitty character.

This is why I mock the spectacle nonsense. Some opinions are weaker than others.

[Dracullus]

I think for me, this Q&A marked the end of BlizzCon season a bit. I had hoped for a Roadmap today, but looks like that's a few weeks away, still. I'll probably linger until the 10.2.5 PTR, before taking a break from the conversation until at least 11.0 Alpha datamining.

It's been intense these past few months.

Although no roadmap, we get confirmation there will be 3 patches. Imo 10.2 will last until middle January (I don't think any patch was released before 15th January), then 2.5 month long 10.2.5 with timewalking, 2.5 month long 10.2.7 with some story wrap up and 3 month long Season 4. This (together with info they want keep regular 2-3 month patches until 11.0) and Alpha plans for Spring make me think release is planned rather for late September/early October than usual late November.

[KyleEverett]

It's 8 weeks per patch give a week or two for holidays. My rough guess is still each patch is about 9 weeks and prepatch will be 8-10 weeks for an October release. That also gets levelling out of the way and not interfere with the 20th anniversary

[Vakir]

I'm aware. It's why I don't like the Jailers character execution wise, though I'll still respect his power.

Respect his...?!

He's a fictional character!

Seriously, Metzen can write, I dunno, Durak, to be the post powerful character in the lore tomorrow! That wouldn't make it "respectable" by default!

Sometimes certain story decisions are just bad. The basic idea of a similar character archetype to Sargeras, the black sheep of the group that pulled the Satan decision and rebelled against their charge out of ambition/extremist preservation, but with Death alignment instead, isn't a bad idea on paper, but the Jailer's entire role as 7 dimensional schemer that undermined all of canon retroactively is certainly one of them.

Warcraft's writing hasn't been good in...well over 20 years, frankly, but certain things can still damage it. This and the First Ones are among them. When did you start playing/following the lore, by the way?

[Schwert]

No wonder you anti-faction people get so upset. You actually think your opinion is the overwhelming majority and it's just 5 people holding you up.

I sincerely want these people to ask people at a convention what World of Warcraft is about.
Just got back from Blizzcon and the first thing somebody asked - every single time - after finding out I played WoW was what faction I played. Not race. Not server. Faction.

It matters.

[damonskye]

I sincerely want these people to ask people at a convention what World of Warcraft is about.
Just got back from Blizzcon and the first thing somebody asked - every single time - after finding out I played WoW was what faction I played. Not race. Not server. Faction.

It matters.

Y'all had your twenty years of faction nonsense. It's boring, it's been-there-done-that. Wars that go on forever aren't interesting.

Also, sure, people identify with their factions and that's where their *gameplay* is. It doesn't mean they are all going out and PvPing the shit out of each other. Lots of people really don't care about anything other than "I'm Alliance" or "I'm Horde" and meanwhile "let's go do a raid/dungeon/something fun in the game." I'm fine with the PvPers acting out their faction conflict in war mode if that's where they want to be. I sure don't.

Meanwhile, I'm sure that Blizzard is seeking their own counsel, not the vociferous MMOC forum posting squad, about how they want to shape their game and whether faction war is important to the general player base.

- - - Updated - - -

Although no roadmap, we get confirmation there will be 3 patches. Imo 10.2 will last until middle January (I don't think any patch was released before 15th January), then 2.5 month long 10.2.5 with timewalking, 2.5 month long 10.2.7 with some story wrap up and 3 month long Season 4. This (together with info they want keep regular 2-3 month patches until 11.0) and Alpha plans for Spring make me think release is planned rather for late September/early October than usual late November.

Someone kind of posted a rough idea of a schedule earlier, which was basically:

January/February - 10.2.5
March/April - 10.2.7
May/June - 10.2.whatever
July/August - prepatch for TWW
September - TWW boom!

This wouldn't surprise me in the least, because the math works.

[Scyth]

I sincerely want these people to ask people at a convention what World of Warcraft is about.
Just got back from Blizzcon and the first thing somebody asked - every single time - after finding out I played WoW was what faction I played. Not race. Not server. Faction.

It matters.

Thr first thing people ask me when they find out I play WoW is what class I play.
I can do this too you see

Someone else already made the same comment but faction wars are boring and have been done more than enough already. Not to mention it’s always the same thing. I’m not quite sure WoW’s subscriber count would go up if we had the same faction war every single xpac.

[Vakir]

I sincerely want these people to ask people at a convention what World of Warcraft is about.
Just got back from Blizzcon and the first thing somebody asked - every single time - after finding out I played WoW was what faction I played. Not race. Not server. Faction.

It matters.

Look, if you wanna consoom propaganda designed to sell you merchandise and split your game into halves, go right ahead. The actual ethos of these factions hasn't held up to scrutiny in decades. Any meaningful conflict went out the window when you can pop onto your Alliance toon in ICC and Saurfang is the aggressor, then hop on your Horde main and find it's Muradin. Everything is just calculated and manipulated to obfuscate any continuity for the purposes of jerking off taglines like "For the X" on a T-Shirt. Nothing matters and all of it is designed to create forum drama as a forced sense of investment.

People are going to point to the kumbaya softboi shit of current WoW only to realize that it's pretty much always been like this with the exception of WC1 and 2. You know, the ones with a single player campaignwhere you can have a satisfying canon ending.

Any faction war or faction involvement is just a temporary stop-gap to pad the crap out of things with filler while the A-plot waits in an MMO setting. The only time it ever worked successfully was Garrosh which, even then, was just a plot about how much he ended up pissing off everyone without the direct interaction of the two factions until the endgame. The one time it was done correctly was here because there were sympathetic reasons for the Horde to slowly push back against him vs. the times they attempted to replicate it with, say, Sylvanas, which ended up just being vague "honor" stand-ins as a homogenized Western values pile.

Cataclysm was an absolute slaughter purely because they already fucked up on release - Thrall, Jaina, and Bolvar were completely immobile characters with no reason for any kind of beef and things were stacked massively in Alliance favor as far as leveling zones, so we had a valid excuse for Garrosh to land-grab during an imaginary off-screen timeskip. But surely this meant we'd see satisfying outcomes for both sides---LOL NOPE. Compared to the stunningly good Silverpine revamp, get your goofy dog-ass to Darkshore, you're losing to the Forsaken off-screen. The Goblins get to actually do things in their sequel zone!

So no, it doesn't matter and creates new problems. It's why two-faction games aren't exactly popular anymore, certainly not in an MMO space, outside of...well, that thing Blizzard wanted Warcraft to be that they didn't get the rights for. And it's great, I love both Warhammer incarnations, but it only marginally worked for Age of Reckoning before it bombed because it was a PvP-centric game. There's no narrative payoff or investment intended. And even then, gods help you if you played Order.

Christ, even SWTOR couldn't sustain itself through its launch content without going soft uni-faction. Darth Malgus? That heavily marketed guy who is actually really successful in all his appearances at the whole being Sith thing because he actually accepted alien races and isn't a fucking moron? Both sides go ahead and kill him as the launch boss because we need a status quo. We can't have a satisfying ending otherwise because they can't script an MMO around that shit. Eternal Empire in sequels? More uni-faction! It's almost like it doesn't work for a theme park MMO model.

Oh, and then Malgus comes back...to be an antagonist for both sides again, basically, once they were done exhuming and fucking the corpse of Revan. It's almost like it was a doomed premise from the start.

WoW's literally the biggest version of the second most expensive genre you can make behind giant open world GTA-esque games, a theme park MMO. They don't need MORE bland content barriers to muddy the waters when they're already struggling to maintain a decent cadence.

You still have PvP if you want to LARP holding the world's biggest idiot ball while existential threats come knocking on a schedule of every 1.5 to 2 years.

The "Do you play the good guys or the bad guys?" question I got from mouth-breathers who never even picked up the game is so 2004.