Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nibelheimy]

I'd argue that the twist about the forge was garbage too.

The only reason why it was received relatively well was because it was a thing we were mildly familiar with.
But the twist itself came out of bloody nowhere, no setup, no hints, no context, no nothing, it was just as random as most things SL tried to throw at us.

Absolutely agree. It's funny how in that little raid cinematic the forges activate and sends a beam of energy up through icecrown towards Torghast, yet it somehow ends up in Zereth Morris. Why? Would of made sense if Torghast was the actual final raid of the expansion.

I've yet to see them answer how and why the beam reaches ZM through Torghast. Quite clear the ending was re-written and SoD was originally planned as the true final raid.

[Varodoc]

I would argue that the voice actor of Denathrius did the heavy lifting. At its core he is just a Vampire edgelord you can find in any franchise. The voice actor gave him that campy over the top twist that was really fun.

No that is not the only reason why Denathrius is popular. It's also because he is a simple villain to understand.

The most popular and beloved Warcraft villains are the simple villains.

Gul'dan is just an evil asshole who wants power.

Kel'Thuzad is just an evil asshole who wants power.

Azshara is just an evil asshole who wants power.

Deathwing is just an evil asshole who wants to kill everybody.

While the voice actor of Denathrius certainly deserves credit for carrying the character, Denathrius was destined to succeed by virtue of being like the old school villains: simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.

No "I was just trying to save you" BS, No " A Cosmos divided..." BS, just an old-fashioned villain who is an evil asshole and just wants to torture people.

But we live in an age where the new consumers (mostly Zillennials and Zoomers) think that every villain MUST be complex and morally grey. What happened to the villains who are just evil for the sake of being evil? Yet they are more often than not the more popular and beloved villains.

No one really cared about the Jailer's sob sad misunderstood story, everyone loved Denathrius smirking like an asshole and throwing some poor guy into the Maw for fun.

[Gurahk]

How can Denathrius be credited to Danuser if Shadowlands is credited to Afrisiabi?

[Lorgar Aurelian]

How can Denathrius be credited to Danuser if Shadowlands is credited to Afrisiabi?

The only real answer is that a lot of the concepts of SL were likely thought up while Afrisiabi was in charge with help of Danuser and others on the team, and then direction and how said concepts were actually made was all under Danuser.

[Murlocos]

Afrasiabi was fired in the summer of 2020, roughly around when the SL beta started. In an interview for 9.1, they stated that they didn't figure out the actual story for the patch beyond vague ideas of "fight Sylvanas, go deeper into Maw" until the end of 2020/start of 2021, so after 9.0's launch. I think it's safe to say that 9.1 onwards is wholly on Danuser and the team under him, and it's yet another reminder that they make all this up as they go and don't have some intricate master plan that mysteriously goes totally awry over and over again.

[Cherry123]

Charisma and aesthetics are the key to a character’s success. If you create a new waifu with huge breasts now, she will become the number one character, even if she doesn't even have a text. Or a cool sweaty muscle man who wants to crush skulls. Unfortunately, the current agenda does not allow for the creation of such characters.

So no talent for character writing + uncharismatic characters = failure.

Maybe if people stop lying to themselves and say "yes, I like sweaty muscle men who kill each other" or yes I want all the girls from 90-60-90 as Asmongold said... Then we will bring back the old Warcraft

Asmongold is someone who is not afraid of the truth.

[Nymrohd]

I would argue that the voice actor of Denathrius did the heavy lifting. At its core he is just a Vampire edgelord you can find in any franchise. The voice actor gave him that campy over the top twist that was really fun.

Pretty much. The Voice actor gave camp and camp has always worked in WoW.

[Super Dickmann]

Unfortunately, my doomer take regarding the factions is that gameplay overrides everything in their design philosophy, and their content creation pipeline would be a lot easier if the factions didn't exist. Not just them conflating the desire to do endgame content with the other faction as a desire to delete the factions in the story, but that any developer raising their hand now and going "Hey, what if we do faction-exclusive content that's scoped beyond a couple quests in this patch?" probably gets shut down very fast when the goal is to pump out content as fast as possible.

That's how I presume something like neutral Earthen came about: just make something for everyone, and (probably) ignore the fact that the "Horde dwarves, woo" was met with total silence at Blizzcon. Can't wait to play my orc warrior with a hero spec that was intended for a dwarf in TWW where I hang out with more humans and dwarves, and then go to Midnight which is about elves. At least Thrall will be there to perform the traditional Horde duty of servicing Anduin's character arc.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a faction renaissance, I'm not even expecting a WoD-tier spectacle. The fact that Anduin is being wheeled out and we're looking at a whole fucking expansion about making all the elves hold hands should make that blindingly clear. Rather, that Blizzard will tepidly begin moving back towards some form of conflict between groups once "Fight against Satan, but this time we can put Metzen on the cover" fails to patch over what's been missing since Legion, which is the acknowledgment that the franchise made its mark by presenting a variety of different takes on protagonists and one rotating gang of holier than thou clowns who act and talk the same and their subjects, who don't disagree and are by and large the same, can't cut it.

Nothing about the format prevents group conflict, if anything, dropping the factions makes it far easier to drop some of the more nonsensical alliances, e.g. the entire current Horde and have team-ups you couldn't otherwise have, e.g. tauren upset with goblins or void elves and Lightforged not actually getting along. Your only real limitation is that you can't wipe anyone out, but past that the world is your canvas. Blizzard has either not realized this or more likely purposefully avoids taking advantage of how the soft faction merge means you're liberated gameplay-wise and don't need to maintain the laughable coalitions you've had anymore. They still want (and likely always will) shill for unity between cosmetically different clones, hence why the Earthen are also a Horde race despite them being an alliance race that can team up with Horde characters is gameplay-wise effectively the same thing without infringing on common sense or future lore.

[Super Dickmann]

The only reason Denathrius was a hit was because of how incredibly uninteresting everyone else was in Shadowlands.

No, it's more about the very low bar of WoW villains in general. Even Arthas coasted entirely off the back of WC3 and a god-tier aesthetic that nothing could touch and was an abject mess in-game, past that, with the exception of Garrosh's stint as antagonist and Gul'dan, near every boss has been some variety of stoic, deep-voiced plank going through the motions of their retarded plan. Azshara and Denathrius were the only ones to ever break this mould and so they win by default. A camp vampire who's go-to minions are themselves among the most popular villains in the setting, also for breaking this mould, is a winning pick.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

You guys act as if Metzen likely didn't bullet point all of this before leaving...

He didn’t, Metzens own words on the subject is that he didn’t know what was coming in or post BFA.

[Super Dickmann]

Hard disagree. Plenty of interesting villains in WoW. Are they usually simple? Yes. But so is Denathrius.

Out of the major raid bosses, let's say raid boss or the end enemy of a zone, sans those I listed, who would you elevate? The carfire of the TBC TFT trio? Deathwing, going from a master manipulator to a godzilla who arbitrarily doesn't end the world despite being able to do so from Day 1? Anyone in the Twilight's Hammer? Archimonde II?

Denathrius benefits in being in the stoic and dull line-up of Shadowlands and having the Bald Man and Sylvanas as his immediate counterparts, but that wouldn't save the likes of G'huun or fucking Cata Deathwing. His true stand out in view of the fact that there's far more Dargruls than there are Gul'dans. He doesn't have to be complicated, Gul'dan is arguably the best villain precisely because he's just pure evil and entertaining in every scene he's in, but he does have to be evocative, which the grand majority of WoW baddies are not.

[Nibelheimy]

Yeah its been stated a lot that the last thing Metzen touched was the BFA cinematic. Which was very popular, and look how different Sylvanus was in that, compared to the rest of BFA. Almost as if it completely changed direction.

I only wonder who first got back in touch with working with Warcraft again, if Metzen made the first suggestion or blizzard themselves. Did he play at home and think, this needs improving, or did they think ah, we need someone good in charge here. Not saying the guys a perfect writer, but it was also obvious marketing to develop a new saga around the franchises 20th anniversary bringing the guy back in charge.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Oh really? Shiet where did he say that?

Time stamp 36:40
https://m.soundcloud.com/scott-johns...hris-metzen-20

And to paraphrase, he says he has no insight on where any things going or even the burning of the tree, that he stopped working on wow 2 years before BFA, and the last thing he worked on was the opening BFA cinematic.

[Lady Atia]

Yeah its been stated a lot that the last thing Metzen touched was the BFA cinematic. Which was very popular, and look how different Sylvanus was in that, compared to the rest of BFA. Almost as if it completely changed direction.

I only wonder who first got back in touch with working with Warcraft again, if Metzen made the first suggestion or blizzard themselves. Did he play at home and think, this needs improving, or did they think ah, we need someone good in charge here.

Iirc someone within met him private and joked if he wanted to come back, which he said they prolly wouldn't want him again, than he gave a phone call and was back. Something along these lines.

[doledippers]

at the end of the day, i wasnt necessarily the biggest fan of his work, but i can sympathize with the position he was in. He seemed like a good guy, he entered his role during the fallout of the lawsuit, and he's been crucified by the fanbase for his entire stay in the role. Again i wanna reiterate i don't think his work was the best, but he did make some villains i do quite like , such as iridikron and whatever part he played in denathrius. I hope he finds success in whatever his next venture is

[Murlocos]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a faction renaissance, I'm not even expecting a WoD-tier spectacle. The fact that Anduin is being wheeled out and we're looking at a whole fucking expansion about making all the elves hold hands should make that blindingly clear. Rather, that Blizzard will tepidly begin moving back towards some form of conflict between groups once "Fight against Satan, but this time we can put Metzen on the cover" fails to patch over what's been missing since Legion, which is the acknowledgment that the franchise made its mark by presenting a variety of different takes on protagonists and one rotating gang of holier than thou clowns who act and talk the same and their subjects, who don't disagree and are by and large the same, can't cut it.

Nothing about the format prevents group conflict, if anything, dropping the factions makes it far easier to drop some of the more nonsensical alliances, e.g. the entire current Horde and have team-ups you couldn't otherwise have, e.g. tauren upset with goblins or void elves and Lightforged not actually getting along. Your only real limitation is that you can't wipe anyone out, but past that the world is your canvas. Blizzard has either not realized this or more likely purposefully avoids taking advantage of how the soft faction merge means you're liberated gameplay-wise and don't need to maintain the laughable coalitions you've had anymore. They still want (and likely always will) shill for unity between cosmetically different clones, hence why the Earthen are also a Horde race despite them being an alliance race that can team up with Horde characters is gameplay-wise effectively the same thing without infringing on common sense or future lore.

I'd love for them to do actual inter-race conflict, but beyond the seeming lack of desire to touch on that as you've said, they also have to restrain themselves from making it a shoehorned moral lesson with no weight or stakes to it that swiftly ends up resolved when both parties talk for about 30 seconds, which seems a difficult task for them right now. They already swung hard from "existential civilian genocide war" to "everyone is best friends all belonging to the collective nation of Azeroth", and seem terrified to go anywhere near "wary armistice" that would actually give them room to tell more moderate stories.

At this rate we eventually reach a point where the story is just Azeroth vs. Cosmic Force of the week that are all identical to one another aside from their primary color, and every Azerothian race feels identical to one another aside from appearance.

The Jailer, and most characters in Shadowlands, are robotic both in nature and in personality. Even the the Winterqueen, who rules over a realm full of mischievous pixies, seems more sleepy than Kate Blanchett as Galadriel.

I describe it as feeling smaller than life. Big, bombastic high fantasy characters that spend most of their time quietly and calmly expositing about their thoughts and feelings. When characters start only speaking in the most generic one-liners and finishing each other's sentences, they start feeling less like fictional characters invested in their own fantasy world and more like actors reading scripts. Or Youtubers reading plot summaries.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

I see...

How strange, the Progenitor stuff and the Jailer stuff definitely felt like Metzen influenced additions.

I’d agree but only in that the influence is a worse writer trying to copy things Metzen came up and doing worse then Metzen on things that weren’t great to be grin with or trying and failing to one up him on decent parts.

[Varodoc]

I think that's very generous, and a low bar for calling somebody an "amazing villain" etc.

The only reason Denathrius was a hit was because of how incredibly uninteresting everyone else was in Shadowlands.

Nope. Pure evil villains are the best.







Pure evil/Simple villains FTW.


Less "Awww I was only trying to save us all" mOrAlLY GrEy and """Complex""" villains, More Pure evil villains who just want to have fun being evil.

[Nymrohd]

Out of the major raid bosses, let's say raid boss or the end enemy of a zone, sans those I listed, who would you elevate? The carfire of the TBC TFT trio? Deathwing, going from a master manipulator to a godzilla who arbitrarily doesn't end the world despite being able to do so from Day 1? Anyone in the Twilight's Hammer? Archimonde II?

Cho'gall was a solid villain for early Cataclysm "Words, words, words. The master wants murder!". Lei Shen only really had one patch but he ate that patch, from Cho's amazing deliver of the trailer to every time he showed up in the campaign quests and the raid. Vanilla Nefarian was a solid villain as well, especially as you'd piece together his and Onyxia's plot.

[Cheezits]

Pure evil/Simple villains FTW.

We still don't know why he helped the Jailer, considering the Jailer's endgame was complete universal destruction and subjugation. He may be secretly good in some weird roundabout way or have some 90000 IQ evil plan. He just acts/looks like a simple villain.