Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Varodoc]

Shadowlands is actually kinda neat when you don't have a bunch of morons in your ear telling you it's shit...

Speaking of which, a hot take: WoD, BFA, and Cata are worse than Shadowlands.

Shadowlands may not have been good storywise, and the Covenants may have been shit mostly, but the setting was fun to explore, it actually had content post launch, it didn't squish 3 expansion plots into 1, and places like the Sepulcher of the First Ones are goated as fuck. Ik some people don't like it, and that's fine, but it's not like we're gonna go to another Zereth for a bit lol

Ah Yes, let's call anyone who disagrees "morons".

By the way, Shadowlands was shit.

[Cheezits]

I am really happy there was a healthy spike for Sanctum of Dominion because I think that was the best raid in a long time. But that "they really didn't like how we committed character assassination on almost every character in shadowlands" slide made me feel seen.

I liked Sanctum a lot but doesn't that chart show 9.1 was the lowpoint of WoW for a while, not a healthy spike?

[Ersula]

I never cared for Sylvanas, and characters in WoW are always stupid every fucking expac, so it's nothing new to me. The Sanctum of Domination was a fine raid imo. It gave Garrosh a badass ending, it felt like a modernized, cooler Icecrown, and most of the bosses were cool. Only part I didn't like was, funny enough, Sylvanas. She is the most annoying boss ever holy shit. Oh and the ending was kinda shit lol. The Jailer seriously needed more characterization. Maybe a Saurfang esc cinematic series on his past would've helped? Just saying.

Not just Sylvanas, but Thrall is disempowered & Baine spent the expansion in a corner. Not great.

[Super Dickmann]

Not just Sylvanas, but Thrall is disempowered & Baine spent the expansion in a corner. Not great.

Thrall and Baine being worthless sadsacks lying on a rock while Jaina (who has nothing to do all story) saved them was a perfect representation of the Unifaction story. In that regard, Shadowlands was a teaching experience and well worth appreciating.

[Cheezits]

There is one good thing to SL faction leader stories- Thrall got his powers back, with no stupid arc about it.

It just happened, it was kind of a cool moment, we move on. No more mopes.

[Super Dickmann]

Wtf was Baine even doing in the Shadowlands btw? He legit had no reason to be there, unless he had a plotline that was scrapped midway of course...

...which was 100% likely the case.

I quite like the schizo theory that the Jailer and An'she were meant to be connected, missing heart at all, but I don't really believe it. The reason Baine, Thrall, Jaina and so on were there, despite being completely perfunctory to the plot at best and an active drag on it in reality is because Blizzard were trying to push the new "Superfriends vs. Ghosts in Space" model and failed. In the process they made characters who mainlined games and are the faces of the franchise like Thrall and Jaina so utterly boring and useless to the narrative that the Bald Man, the worst villain of the franchise, and the printing machine of the gods both got far more discussion than they did.

[Reive]

always assuming that the graph is not a fake, 1 thing is clear:

the idea of a wow 2 is moronic. if wow still averages 5m+ subs there is no reason for them to kill it in order to make a new game

[Makabreska]

always assuming that the graph is not a fake, 1 thing is clear:

the idea of a wow 2 is moronic. if wow still averages 5m+ subs there is no reason for them to kill it in order to make a new game

There was never any real demand for WoW 2. Those very little few who asked for it just didn't like the current graphics. Beside, we have already been playing WoW 2 for years, simply compare retail to Classic.

[Super Dickmann]

Well the An'She connection would be false regardless, as An'She is the "sun god" for the Tauren, so if anything, it'd be connected to Light or Life. Also, we know why there's a hole in the Jailer's chest. It's because he lost his sigil.

Yes, but the sigil thing is a dull, mechanistic plot device that the game only added to wrap itself up in 9.1 and the Jailer being connected to no race or prior plot point in a natural way is one of the many reasons he sucks as a villain, whereas a fable about the loss of his heart in connection with another deity in the wordl we know and a connection to an established race is interesting.

[Zardas]

Why is there no Y-axis in this graph ? It doesn't mean anything without it. We can't even be certain that it's linear.

[Super Dickmann]

Sometimes a character can be intimidating without being directly connected to a race. Even then, that's not exactly true as the Jailer is fundamentally connected to the Scourge. Hell, he was retconned into being the reason they run rampant across Azeroth to begin with.

Sure, sometimes, but not in this case. The Bald Man is the worst villain the franchise has ever sported because in the real world, where the actual players of teh game like you and I are, he only existed for about two years and came the fuck out of nowhere, and in-story, where they tried to connect him to other, more established and popular villains, it was as a barnacle to those stories that downgraded those villains without improving his profile.

[Cheezits]

Lmaooo Shadowlands' final sub count was higher than BFA's. That's crazy.

Remember how people (understandably) felt confused and abandoned when Sylvanas dipped out of BFA in a cinematic, leaving us to fight N'zoth in a single patch without a new zone?

Yeah. That's probably why.

[Super Dickmann]

Lmaooo Shadowlands' final sub count was higher than BFA's. That's crazy.

Yet another argument for why BFA is the worst expansion, not that it needed the help.

[Cheezits]

Yet another argument for why BFA is the worst expansion, not that it needed the help.

Counterpoint, Kul Tiran revamp. Zandalari got whipped but a solid upgrade for past Kul Tiras.

Shadowlands has little to no good things.

[Makabreska]

Remember how people (understandably) felt confused and abandoned when Sylvanas dipped out of BFA in a cinematic, leaving us to fight N'zoth in a single patch without a new zone?

Yeah. That's probably why.

I doubt story is ever a main factor in general sub count dipping. I think it had more to do with borrowed powers overload in 8.3. Every new char had to farm Azerite armor, Essences and then Corrupted gear to be on par with others.

[Vakir]

Lmaooo Shadowlands' final sub count was higher than BFA's. That's crazy.

That's a failure to read a graph. They explicitly stated historic higher churn. You're reading from the low point of BFA, not its end point. Classic impacted both in service of boosting them.

SL is terrible no matter how much you want to wrench around it to service your strange fixation on making more expendable power scaling figures to kill with zero depth.

[Mekkle]

Yet another argument for why BFA is the worst expansion, not that it needed the help.

alts were a fucking nightmare in BFA and gear catch ups were awful and wasted a good potential villain, Shadowlands was a bit better better, the worse part of shadowlands is that it FELT like the devs were contemptuous of its players and the scandals did no favors and probably solidified the idea of that, so that expansion is gonna feel worse then what it actually was. But in terms of gameplay Shadowlands gameplay was miles better then BFA.

[Dracullus]

Lmaooo Shadowlands' final sub count was higher than BFA's. That's crazy.

Remember how people (understandably) felt confused and abandoned when Sylvanas dipped out of BFA in a cinematic, leaving us to fight N'zoth in a single patch without a new zone?

Yeah. That's probably why.

Yet another argument for why BFA is the worst expansion, not that it needed the help.

You all 3 can't read. Graph is showing BfA had HIGHEST subs during content drought. Of course, 2019 Classic helped a lot, but Blizzard was saying it's most popular drought in years in their quarterly raport (imo mostly thanks to lockdown, but also various XP/rep/etc buffs had positive feedback).

[Super Dickmann]

The Jailer has a lasting effect on the overarching universe, for better or worse.

BFA had a profoundly larger impact in so far as it killed the factions and removed some of the longest-lasting characters from them in the process to reach its point. What it has in common with SL is that this impact is shit, notwithstnaidng that the Jailer didn't have any impact any way. The net result of his expansion is that Sylvanas is out of Azeroth (already the case as of BFA) and that Anduin is a manic depressive with an unjustified guilt complex. Fyrakk has less, but Fyrakk's meant to be an entertaining side gig, and succeeds at this whereas what the Bald Man was even intended to be is impossible to tell as not even his writers knew whether he was well-intentioned or pure evil, a mastermind or a brute, a sadist or a mechanical operator. Prior build-up is not necessary to work, neither is depth. Sargeras is as bland as they come, but what he has over the Bald Man is a clear, easily understandable concept - he's the Space Devil and he wants to destroy our world.

WoD and Cata suck more imo. Cata was more well received however because it came after Wrath and it had some game changing ordeals, which was neat at the time (sucks the game changing ordeals ended up being terrible).

It was also the first bad expac, so most people didn't care as much.

Gameplay-wise, WoD is the worst one by virtue of having nill content, with Cata second and SL very close behind, though both manage to have better actual blow by blow gameplay than BFA, re: @Cheezits. Cata had a much better status quo and leveling story, although yes, its main plot was absolutely bullshit in a similar way to SL's, down to SL in many ways being a rehash of the titan fate story. WoD had a much better setting, so much so it's not even worth being in the running for worst in that regard. BFA had a combination of the worst long-term impact story-wise, being a worse iteration of what came before in Legion gameplay-wise in all respects including endless turgid grinds and wasting the most capital. WoD and SL were bad while having profoundly shit premises. BFA was shit, despite having not only the best premise out of any expansion short of the TBC and Wrath no-brainers, but expending the largest amount of prior capital to get there.

[Vakir]

You all 3 can't read. Graph is showing BfA had HIGHEST subs during content drought. Of course, 2019 Classic helped a lot, but Blizzard was saying it's most popular drought in years in their quarterly raport (imo mostly thanks to lockdown, but also various XP/rep/etc buffs had positive feedback).

Yup.

The graph is also deceptive and missing an entire fucking axis to be fair. But the confusion and mistake is treating Classic as the end point of BFA when it wasn't. They were concurrent releases.

Would SL have had higher numbers than BFA at the end if we omitted players that only subbed due to Classic? We will literally never know.