Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[milkmustache]

I wouldn't be surprised if we see all the Old Gods return. At least in as essences in new weapons that talk to you.

It would be a cool way to interact with them again. And that would still leave Yogg.

I'm curious if we'll see the Old Gods return, or somerthing in a new form. They seem to be slowly separating the void vibe from old god lovecraftian to more cosmic.

[Cheezits]

I'm curious if we'll see the Old Gods return, or somerthing in a new form. They seem to be slowly separating the void vibe from old god lovecraftian to more cosmic.

I think the idea is to separate the Old Gods of Azeroth/Black Empire and the Void Lords because the former have been so played out in WoW's lifetime. They will just say the Old Gods made their own culture and it's not 1:1 with how the Void looks and acts.

Like even if we get more Aqir stuff, like Nerubians, and Azshara and the Naga, they won't be the primary villains.

[Ersula]

We had both blood and high elfs in the rift since void elfs became playable.

You mean Void elves that just look like blood elves. In other instances where players ventured into un-protected riftspace we are shown a light-user using holy magic creating a habitable environment, like Turalyon. Void elves don't do that in their personal rift no other player race can access.

https://twitter.com/TheWindstalker/s...28128579346826

More stuff coming

She's says stuff like this so constantly for all we know she means 11.0

Alleria and Turalyom have been married for millennia. It's time to spice up the bedroom a bit with an extra participant. Alleria is just getting ready for her night out at the bars scouting.

Turalyon, like all handsome elderly men, also looks like a butch lesbian. So that checks out.

[Makorus]

I'll give two reasons: story precedent for the faith-based classes and the unique cosmetics that come with them.

Blizzard has demonstrated attempts to showcase the diversity of paladins and priests as far back as vanilla. Priests had different racial abilities to showcase their differing faiths, when new paladins were introduced they were given lore to show how they weren't just interchangeable with Silver Hand paladins. Warlocks differ in this respect because their power source is universal: I think it's neat to play with how different races approach it, but they're ultimately all drawing power from demons and fel magic. A Sunwalker is not the same as a paladin of the Light is not the same as a Prelate of Rezan, and while game mechanics dictate they operate the same, Blizzard has constantly made efforts to differentiate them in the lore.

This has been acknowledged as recently as last year, when they added orc priest NPCs to Orgrimmar and they were originally just orcs in human clothing with names like Brother Shineblade. People rightfully pointed out how boring and lame this was, and they responded by completely changing them to be more orcish and writing new lore tying them to Nagrand and Oshu'gun. That stuff is cool! It makes the world feel more fleshed out and it's such little effort to dress up a few NPCs and write a few paragraphs of dialogue for them.

Druids aren't terribly different in that respect even if the current obsession with night elves keeps them closely chained to that specific racial fantasy. You have stuff like the harvest witches or the troll loa worship that differentiate them from the night elves. Wouldn't it be cool to see the unique way other races explored their ties to and worship of nature and the elements? That'd be so nice compared to like 16 instances of them all just being Cenarion students.

That's why the Tyr's Guard is so profoundly uninteresting, because they're all a bunch of different races that all act, dress and talk exactly the same. It's why the idea of all new shaman races being associated with Primalists in any way is so boring, because they're a total asspull of a villain faction with nothing distinctive about them except a slavish adherence to a 20,000 year old dragon grudge that they gave up after thinking about it for about 10 seconds. There's little enjoyable fantasy in these new groups because they're so one-dimensional.

Cheezits mostly covered the cosmetics point, but the fear is exactly that just going "oh they're all Tyr's Guard/Primalists/whatever" is what will lead to them missing the appeal of the classes in the first place. Nobody wants to see a paladins for all races headline and then see every new race just rides an Order Horse or whatever, nobody wants to see druids for all races and then see every new race just gets to share 5 new generic forms because "oh they were all taught the same way at Bel'ameth". That's why I at least don't like the idea of generic new lore to standardize these new race/class combos, because it suggests they'd want to do it by performing a quintessentially Blizzard blunder of answering popular fan requests but doing so in a way that totally misses the point of why people wanted it.

I know this is a long rant but I want to genuinely make the case for why this stuff matters rather than just rebuke. I'm not accusing you of it, but I've seen other people really push back against all of this and the argument seems to be that Blizzard should actively regress the depth and scope of how they handle worldbuilding compared to the past, and they should do it because it's not fair to expect Blizzard to care about anything that isn't humans, night elves, or cosmology charts. I can't understand it as anything but a reflexive lashing out at anyone that has any expectations for the game and doesn't just clap at anything Blizzard puts out.

Ideally, yeah, in terms of Druids/Paladins, each race should ideally have their own unique flavour, but realistically, what's the point?

Outside of the unique forms (which, don't get me wrong, I would still want them to have, and for Paladins to have unique mounts and Shamans to have unique totems), how relevant is the Wicker lore of the Kul'tirans? How relevant is the Sunwalker lore? How relevant is the Orc Priest lore? How relevant is Priestess of the Moon lore?

WoWs lore is too bloated as is, and introducing unique and cool reasons for classes is nice and all, but it just makes it way, way harder to write satisfying stories.

You already get it with stuff like the Emerald Dream, an uniquely Druidy experience. But oh wait, not all Druids work that way. So you either alienate half the playerbase, and make it "Night-Elf-Druid-flavoured" (which is, lets be honest, the "default") or you bloat it up by adding representation for all kinds of Druidism, but you have to make sure that everything is evenly represented or your local Troll Twitter User is gonna put you on blast for being biased.

Imagine a Light vs Void expansion, but somehow they need to make sure that every single source of Faith is represented and has a reason to fight, and it just turns into a big mess imo.

I understand the Orc Priest thing, it was a stupid way of doing it, but I honestly don't see the issues of certain races learning from other races they spend time with.
Why do Draenei need some super secret unknown sect of Druids, instead of the lore just stating that they've picked up Druidism from the Night Elves?

[Xilurm]

It looks like they've decided to attract the feet crowd with TWW it seems. Ah well, business is business.

[Sondrelk]

It looks like they've decided to attract the feet crowd with TWW it seems. Ah well, business is business.

They're hoping to attract Tarantino for their next Warcraft movie.

[Kiivar86]

Hm, interesting. The Alliance wolf mounts have Night Elven aesthetic armor. That's curious.

[milkmustache]

I think the idea is to separate the Old Gods of Azeroth/Black Empire and the Void Lords because the former have been so played out in WoW's lifetime. They will just say the Old Gods made their own culture and it's not 1:1 with how the Void looks and acts.

Like even if we get more Aqir stuff, like Nerubians, and Azshara and the Naga, they won't be the primary villains.

But honestly, making some form of cosmic void Nerubian would be incredible.

That being said, I think they're going to divert Azshara from Old God/Naga aesthetics on a hard turn following her escape in Nazjatar. I wouldn't be too surprised if she gets a new Xal-esque model after having broken her curse or something.

[Makabreska]

We don't "know" anything, but unless the feature absolutely tanks, it will be repeatedly for other expansions as well, with MoP coming back around eventually, too.

Might even become a regular end-of-season event.

This would beat anything Fated has to offer. It may even be the reason why current Fated is so bare-bones.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Hm, interesting. The Alliance wolf mounts have Night Elven aesthetic armor. That's curious.

they did something similar in BfA with an Alliance wolf and a Horde horse. It's probably a "wolves/nightsabers captured by Kaldorei/orcs during Darkshore warfront" kind of thing

[Alanar]

I would fully expect Azshara to be waiting around in the Void and just snatch it while we went inside to fight N'zoth.

I expect her as well.

Some interesting mounts and this naga pet, which is basically a small Azshara sort off, face is off, but the white hair/tentacle and overral color.

[Ersula]

and then theres a whole ass expansion coming out in like 4-5 months

The thing that confuses me is what is their ultimate plan for classic. Seasons are great, but the expansion era classic will eventually catch up with retail since they are shorter than the basic expansion timeline. So will there be a point where WoW classic is only one expansion behind retail? I guess they don't have to worry about that for a while, but I wonder about what their long term plan are. Do they plan on stopping basic classic at legion, then restarting with classic, or do they plan on classic being temporary? They kept talking about not wanting to splinter the playerbase too much & now with Remix they'll have roughly 4 different wow communities.

Seems like they will have to eliminate one of these campaigns. Maybe in the future they won't have Seasonal Classic & Remix running at the same time. (Though I predict they will always have some sort of 6 to 8 week event game going, in the form of Plunderstorm, Remix or somethign else. I expect MoP Remix to go live as soon as Plunderstorm ends.)

[milkmustache]

they did something similar in BfA with an Alliance wolf and a Horde horse. It's probably a "wolves/nightsabers captured by Kaldorei/orcs during Darkshore warfront" kind of thing

Curious thing is why now. Unless they end up being Trading Post items.

[Sondrelk]

This would beat anything Fated has to offer. It may even be the reason why current Fated is so bare-bones.

Had they advertised Pandamonium/Timerunning as a feature specifically for Fated Season I would have definitely thought this was a massive improvement on Fated Season as a concept compared to SL, that's for sure.

[Cheezits]

Curious thing is why now. Unless they end up being Trading Post items.

They (Alliance Wolf Horde Saber) are listed as trading post mounts on the front page. Maybe they will add them along with recolors of the horde horse and alliance wolf from BFA.

Regarding fated: I think this season is the perfect way to handle it, with less effort on affixes and more focus on dinars and collectibles. Shift focus to the next expansion and additional seasonal experiments instead of spending too much time on an expansion that is 99% over that people are mostly tired of.

People that really like DF gameplay and aesthetics will keep playing if the collection stuff is good. But there's a much bigger audience that they can get, hence remix and dual expansion development.

[milkmustache]

Seems like they will have to eliminate one of these campaigns. Maybe in the future they won't have Seasonal Classic & Remix running at the same time. (Though I predict they will always have some sort of 6 to 8 week event game going, in the form of Plunderstorm, Remix or somethign else. I expect MoP Remix to go live as soon as Plunderstorm ends.)

I think that you're right, they'll entirely move into seasonal content for certain events. Cataclysm Classic has to be a huge testing ground for interest in Classic post Wrath. I mean, Cataclysm alone is out of the "Classic" era of WoW. Most of the zones in Azeroth are currently the same as they were from Cata's update, so they're losing that old world feeling. SoD seems to be a big success occasional issues aside. Continuation of Seasonal events for Classic until they either commit to a Classic+ or move on seems to be the remedy.

[Xilurm]

Anyone see this? They've updated Legion Dalaran npcs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...pdates_on_ptr/

[Sondrelk]

The thing that confuses me is what is their ultimate plan for classic. Seasons are great, but the expansion era classic will eventually catch up with retail since they are shorter than the basic expansion timeline. So will there be a point where WoW classic is only one expansion behind retail? I guess they don't have to worry about that for a while, but I wonder about what their long term plan are. Do they plan on stopping basic classic at legion, then restarting with classic, or do they plan on classic being temporary? They kept talking about not wanting to splinter the playerbase too much & now with Remix they'll have roughly 4 different wow communities.

Seems like they will have to eliminate one of these campaigns. Maybe in the future they won't have Seasonal Classic & Remix running at the same time. (Though I predict they will always have some sort of 6 to 8 week event game going, in the form of Plunderstorm, Remix or somethign else. I expect MoP Remix to go live as soon as Plunderstorm ends.)

Honestly, I think they are winging it. Classic was a success, and SoD was also a success. So I imagine they are banking on figuring out a long term plan for Classic by the time they get to TWW Classic or whatever.

Honestly, I wouldnt be shocked if their plans would be remaking SoD/Era, and Timerunning in perpetuity.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Anyone see this? They've updated Legion Dalaran npcs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...pdates_on_ptr/

It's probably ahead of the Alleria questline

[Nymrohd]

Azshara having the dagger and a chunk of N'zoth around to torture as revenge for their previous engagement would make a lot of sense thematically.

This is a crack shot, but if playable Naga are going to happen, maybe it has something to do with N'zoth starting a rebellion? "You should go join the factions they are very strong" etc

I have always wanted playable Naga and tbh they are among the races I've struggled to come with a good way to make them friendly to the factions