Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Chickat]

holy shit lmao cata is gonna be only like 7 months long not counting the end of expansion 'drought', thats wild jesus

Progressing through the final raid is not a drought. Anything more than 6 months is. Cata is going to be a year long.

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Another step closer

Are we at the point now where it could launch this week without much issue on their part?

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Catching up to retail could be most elegant way to end "rerun" classic. Cause otherwise what they can do? Leave it on random patch to rot forever? Close and delete people's characters?

Most likely they will either start over, or run a few forever servers of the most popular eras while having a SoD like one always running.

So 10 years from now we have Vanilla, Wrath, MoP, Legion servers running. SoD something running. Retail running.

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They could simply extend SoD to other expacs. That should have an appeal.

SoD WoD would be the best. Give us the WoD we were promised.

[Marlamin]

Are we at the point now where it could launch this week without much issue on their part?

If they have a stable build, yep

[doledippers]

whatre we doing man wheres the news

[Ersula]

They could simply extend SoD to other expacs. That should have an appeal.

I bet that is part of the toss-up they are currently mulling at Blizzard. Do they extend SoD into other expansions, or do they just create new level 60 phases until they think of a good premise for a new season. I'm honestly surprised they didn't announce Cata Classic wasn't coming with the cancelled Abyssial Maw raid. I don't think any of the No-changes people were even asking for Cata.

Then for the Sod team they have to ask themselves, most of the new abilities added to SoD become baseline so it becomes a dilemma to make it different enough from Expansion era realms. Either way, I expect subsequent seasons to use Discovery's established phases with new gameplay mechanics added on top of what's already there.

whatre we doing man wheres the news

No "this week in wow" post is actually more ominous. They might even just give us a "Alpha & 10.2.7 on ptr tomorrow" post. I don't see a "Thursday...Alpha stats, Friday...March of the Tadpoles" post happening.

Yeah wtf are they going to do with Hero talents in future expansions anyways? They cant just keep stacking new systems on top.

I expect, since they already range between 2 and 4 per class, they might just add new ones when they think of a fun new gimmick. If people really hate it they'll redesign it but I expect the current plan is for this version of character progression to extend into the next saga. They already said a level squish is coming in 14.0 so i'll be 1 - 60 again, but even that works better with the current system: In 14.0 You'll get one class talent, one spec talent, then one of each, alternating while leveling then Hero talents for the last 10 levels, just like in TWW.

[doledippers]

No "this week in wow" post is actually more ominous. They might even just give us a "Alpha & 10.2.7 on ptr tomorrow" post. I don't see a "Thursday...Alpha stats, Friday...March of the Tadpoles" post happening.

yeah thats what i mean, i dont understand the decision to not post it.

[Ersula]

I think it would make more sense to turn them into class skins with 0 power after TWW or The World Soul Saga. It would be impossible to keep adding player power class skins forever. Eventually blizzard would be balancing like 15 classes with 3-4 specs each and 5-8 class skins per class. Wouldnt work.

I don't think that would be so cumbersome. It becomes a balancing nightmare when you add new talents to it, but per this system, that doesn't happen. These are whole, and purportedly stay that way indefinitely. If they add a new Hero tree & it's too powerful or not powerful enough they can just buff it with a flat percentage they do with specs now.

[Chickat]

I don't think that would be so cumbersome. It becomes a balancing nightmare when you add new talents to it, but per this system, that doesn't happen. These are whole, and purportedly stay that way indefinitely. If they add a new Hero tree & it's too powerful or not powerful enough they can just buff it with a flat percentage they do with specs now.

I guess that makes sense. I was thinking you would double down on another hero tree for some reason.

[Makorus]

I think it would make more sense to turn them into class skins with 0 power after TWW or The World Soul Saga. It would be impossible to keep adding player power class skins forever. Eventually blizzard would be balancing like 15 classes with 3-4 specs each and 5-8 class skins per class. Wouldnt work.

Sure, but that only happens because Blizzard decides to drastically redesign the majority of specs every expansion for some reason.

We generally (outside of a few outliers) have class balance sitting at a very good level right now. So realistically, they don't have to touch balance at all, outside of tier sets.

The "Blizzard struggles with balance" is kind of a self-made issue because they insist that players just can't play the game if the class stays the same between two expansions, resulting in extreme changes every expansion and having to rebalance every class.

Well, Hero Talents solve that. You just need to balance that talent set, and that's it.

So for Midnight, if they decide to add more Hero Talents, they don't need to rebalance every single talent tree in the game, nor do they need to rebalance the TWW Hero Talents, all they need to balance are the Midnight Hero Talents so they are in line with the older ones.

Once again: Dark Ranger would stay exactly the same between TWW and Midnight. It's just in addition, you can pick Void Hunter, so you would have to pick between 3 rather than 2 hero talents.

Any balancing issues stem from Blizzard trying to reinvent the wheel every expansion.

[Auxis]

Wishful thinking, but I'm wondering if they have no actual news/promos this week but will just drop 10.2.7 ptr on us at random and be like "Have fun!".

Obviously I'd love to have the News post but that would be a lovely compromise.

Incase you can't tell, this lack of News post is killing me..

[Jaggler]

Sure, but that only happens because Blizzard decides to drastically redesign the majority of specs every expansion for some reason.

We generally (outside of a few outliers) have class balance sitting at a very good level right now. So realistically, they don't have to touch balance at all, outside of tier sets.

The "Blizzard struggles with balance" is kind of a self-made issue because they insist that players just can't play the game if the class stays the same between two expansions, resulting in extreme changes every expansion and having to rebalance every class.

Well, Hero Talents solve that. You just need to balance that talent set, and that's it.

So for Midnight, if they decide to add more Hero Talents, they don't need to rebalance every single talent tree in the game, nor do they need to rebalance the TWW Hero Talents, all they need to balance are the Midnight Hero Talents so they are in line with the older ones.

Once again: Dark Ranger would stay exactly the same between TWW and Midnight. It's just in addition, you can pick Void Hunter, so you would have to pick between 3 rather than 2 hero talents.

Any balancing issues stem from Blizzard trying to reinvent the wheel every expansion.

Tbh balancing in Amirdrassil is really good. If you look at the DPS charts, it's almost a straight line (with the exception of sub and Aug)

[Nymrohd]

Tbh balancing in Amirdrassil is really good. If you look at the DPS charts, it's almost a straight line (with the exception of sub and Aug)

While this is very much true, there are several specs (not many though imo) that clearly need some work and I would hope that with TWW they see some significant changes.

[Jaggler]

While this is very much true, there are several specs (not many though imo) that clearly need some work and I would hope that with TWW they see some significant changes.

oh absolutely, i agree.

[Woggmer]

Azerite Armor and Covenent Abilites got the same panic. For Azerite Armor it was warranted, but Covenent Abilites was overblown.

Azerite only became a problem because a lot of classes were built around the Artifact Weapon system.. without them, the classes lost all purpose.. and it didn't help that Blizzard did nothing to adjust them to fit with Azerite armor.. which is why at the start you had Havoc DH and Shadow Priests struggling to even kill one enemy.

Covenants were only warranted due to the generic powers like the Venthyr teleport which was insanely broken because there wasn't a cast time. It was like a very advanced Blink, but then they nerfed so it wasn't the case... It was only later on in the expansion's life cycle that people began to notice that Night Fae had more better stuff in terms of Class Covenant Abilities and the Soulbind system..

[Auxis]

They're definitely posting articles this week, as there are several up already on the news site. It's just the TWIW post that was skipped, as far as I can tell.

So definitely possible they release something today or tomorrow about 10.2.7.

They'd better give Retail something, because we've got 2 Classic news posts. I'm desperate at this point!

[Hyrja]

Really expecting some news either today or tomorrow. The lack of a "This week in WoW" post is very curious indeed, or maybe the person that makes these posts just has a week off?

[Nymrohd]

Really expecting some news either today or tomorrow. The lack of a "This week in WoW" post is very curious indeed, or maybe the person that makes these posts just has a week off?

And no one is managing communications to figure out that someone else would need to write it?

[Reive]

Really expecting some news either today or tomorrow. The lack of a "This week in WoW" post is very curious indeed, or maybe the person that makes these posts just has a week off?

probably tomorrow. thursday seems to be the new "retail wow day of the week". if not, next week

[Jaggler]

Azerite Armor and Covenent Abilites got the same panic. For Azerite Armor it was warranted, but Covenent Abilites was overblown.

Covenants were way worse than Azerite armor, because of it forcing you into an aesthetic, storylines and content you maybe don't enjoy, just to have your most effective ability.

[Nymrohd]

Covenants were way worse than Azerite armor, because of it forcing you into an aesthetic, storylines and content you maybe don't enjoy, just to have your most effective ability.

I mean you are of course right about the issues with Covenants but Azerite armor had the issue were your much better gear was suddenly useless because you had not grinded hard enough and one less ring of power was unlocked. And it was also linked with the issue that specs were largely functional going into Shadowlands while the same was not true for BfA. Also the fact that feedback was not completely ignored in the SL beta like it was in the BfA beta. Yes, I know, the ripcord. But that was a difference of opinion; they wanted to try choice that matters. With BfA they simply did not respond to feedback and tested Azerite far too late. So the system was perceived as more problematic.

[Zardas]

Warlords of Draenor classic is going to last 5 months. At this rate, Classic might catch up with retail by 14.0 ...then they can start the cycle over again.

Edit: Let's theorycraft this. If length of classic expansions correspond to their original popularity:
TBC Classic - (June 2021) 15 months
Wrath Classic - (September 2022) 20 months
Cata Classic - (May 2024) 11 months
MoP Classic - (April 2025) 10 months
WoD Classic - (Feb 2026) 6 months
Legion Classic - (August 2026) 10 months
BFA Classic - (June 2027) 5 months
Shadowlands - (January 2028) Classic - 6 months
Dragonflight Classic - (September 2028) 8 months
TWW Classic - (May 2029)

5 months of BFA seems a bit short for an expansion with 4 raids and a mini-raid. I don't think that they would make each raid last only 4 weeks.