Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Inxotep]

On the topic of chromie time, I really wish they'd stop separating the playerbase too thin with it, all the phasing needs to go, we should ALL be sharing the same world.

Why can't I go to the old world as a max player and see people leveling (without having to group up and party sync)? If ganking is the issue, just make lowlvls untargetable unless they're within 5 lvls of you or something? The whole old world feels empty when every player who is leveling is in their own phase, and you as a max player have no reason to go there unless you're getting to a raid/dungeon for mounts/mogs. Its really weird.

I'd also love it if they sprinkled worldquests or renown tracks to all old content with new cosmetics and stuff.
Imagine going to the barrens as a max level for new cosmetics, and you actually see people who are leveling up and you do the same quests etc, make the world of warcraft feel lively again, like classic.

[Lady Atia]

Vanilla, depending on race/faction, was pretty straight forward story-wise and it made sure to introduce you to everything, you didn't feel like you started the netflix series on its 10th season with no previous knowledge. If you play human you learn the story of the defias and the mistery of the missing king, then you learn about the dark irons and their stuff with ragnaros. On night elf lands you learn more about the faction conflict and druidy stuff.

The story in vanilla was not like wow stories from wod onwards, they were worldbuilding stories and not character/hero stories. DF is a hero story where the heroes are the aspects, wrathion, tyrande and so on, with the incarnates as the main villains. It's disjointed as each zone features different and unrelated stories and characters that require previous lore knowledge. Kul tiras on itself is a pretty straight forward adventure in a human kingdom facing pirates, cultists and witches, where the major characters are all new besides Jaina, who doesn't appear after the intro until the postgame stuff that new players won't see before DF anyway.

Which was btw another big fail from BfA .... like, sure lets bring Jaina back only to have her missing for basically the whole start of the Expansion. Again, this has Afrasiabi written all over it lol.

Btw, they already said they plan to do the WSS expansions like a MCU movie - you enjoy it more with preview knowledge but you don't have to watch anything else in order to get a fun movie night out of it.

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On the topic of chromie time, I really wish they'd stop separating the playerbase too thin with it, all the phasing needs to go, we should ALL be sharing the same world.

Why can't I go to the old world as a max player and see people leveling (without having to group up and party sync)? If ganking is the issue, just make lowlvls untargetable unless they're within 5 lvls of you or something? The whole old world feels empty when every player who is leveling is in their own phase, and you as a max player have no reason to go there unless you're getting to a raid/dungeon for mounts/mogs. Its really weird.

I'd also love it if they sprinkled worldquests or renown tracks to all old content with new cosmetics and stuff.
Imagine going to the barrens as a max level for new cosmetics, and you actually see people who are leveling up and you do the same quests etc, make the world of warcraft feel lively again, like classic.

That's prolly a spaghetti code issue, since one phase has mobs that scale to max level and the other has not.

[Cheezits]

I really wouldn't be surprised if the use all of the setups from the various heritage quests to create new racial zones in certain revamps. I don't think every zone will be like Quel'thalas where it will get an expansion leveling feature, but revisiting racial groups as renown tracks and paying off the heritage quest setups (new Draenei city, Night Elves on Bel'ameth, a forest in Durotar, the growing tensions in a post-Defias Stormwind Kingdom, etc.) could do a great job at providing players both old and new with a way of understanding the world.

Yup, we've got a little something for almost everyone. To my knowledge:

Humans- House of Nobles
Dwarves- ??? Maybe Magni coming back?
Gnomes - ??? Gnomer?
Nelves- Gnolls attacking Bel'ameth
Draenei- New Shattrath
Worgen- anything to do with Tess

Orcs- Healing Durotar/Clans Assembling
Trolls- Hakkar, maybe? kind of hinted at in heritage
Tauren- ????
Forsaken- you can basically do anything with them but will probably be set up in Midnight
Blood Elf- postponed till Midnight
Goblin- maybe they start in Undermine? but they did say the cannon will be fired, so we could get a Bilgewater Harbor revamp

Going to guess that Pandaren and Dracthyr will keep their starting zones as they are HD quality and unique. The ARs won't get revamped as they are unlockable and so not as integral to new players, plus they already don't have starting zones.

[Xilurm]

Yup, we've got a little something for almost everyone. To my knowledge:

Humans- House of Nobles
Dwarves- ??? Maybe Magni coming back?
Gnomes - ??? Gnomer?
Nelves- Gnolls attacking Bel'ameth
Draenei- New Shattrath
Worgen- anything to do with Tess

Orcs- Healing Durotar/Clans Assembling
Trolls- Hakkar, maybe? kind of hinted at in heritage
Tauren- ????
Forsaken- you can basically do anything with them but will probably be set up in Midnight
Blood Elf- postponed till Midnight
Goblin- maybe they start in Undermine? but they did say the cannon will be fired, so we could get a Bilgewater Harbor revamp

Going to guess that Pandaren and Dracthyr will keep their starting zones as they are HD quality and unique. The ARs won't get revamped as they are unlockable and so not as integral to new players, plus they already don't have starting zones.

Wonder if they'll still keep the Exile's Reach option. The AR's don't need a revamp anyway, they all got their own little starting quests to introduce them anyway.

[Makabreska]

We seem to not have a big variety on enemy forces in TWW. From what I glanced over, we have Void corrupted Earthen, Void using Arathi sect and Void using Nerubians. And kobolds on the side. If Void presence is this strong in the opening of TWW, I wonder what will be going on in Midnight.

[Cheezits]

We seem to not have a big variety on enemy forces in TWW. From what I glanced over, we have Void corrupted Earthen, Void using Arathi sect and Void using Nerubians. And kobolds on the side. If Void presence is this strong in the opening of TWW, I wonder what will be going on in Midnight.

Probably leaning into the scourge for variety. With Darkhan. Scourge can attack Ghostlands AND Lordaeron.

Also ethereals, naga and SOME amani as well.

[Makabreska]

Probably leaning into the scourge for variety. With Darkhan. Scourge can attack Ghostlands AND Lordaeron.

Also ethereals, naga and SOME amani as well.

Maybe. Darkhan could easily be a S1 final boss.

[Lahis]

Not as much if you just take into account the leveling experience, which is what the new player experiences before being ported to DF, not the war campaign or content patch stuff. DF leveling is all over the place in terms of lore and touches too many old lore topics. The dream, deathwing, time travel, kirin tor, titans...

The NPCs do explain those things and each Dragonflight's responsibilities well enough. Most important established characters also have that "Who are you?" extra dialog option to tell players more about them.

[allegrian]

Maybe. Darkhan could easily be a S1 final boss.

How? He's double dead and BE players behead him in ghostlands before joining the horde

[Makabreska]

How? He's double dead and BE players behead him in ghostlands before joining the horde

...was only a setback.

[Ersula]

Going to guess that Pandaren and Dracthyr will keep their starting zones as they are HD quality and unique. The ARs won't get revamped as they are unlockable and so not as integral to new players, plus they already don't have starting zones.

So when they revamp Quelthalas, that will be 80 - 90 content. Then by either The Last Titan or 14.0, the revamped Quelthalas will be a new leveling zone for new characters. As they currently do with all subsequent expansions. We don't need a new Blood Elf starting zone on top of that. They will then follow suit with the rest of the original races in the subsequent expansions as they revamp the rest of Azeroth.

[allegrian]

...was only a setback.

Of course lol.

[Cheezits]

How? He's double dead and BE players behead him in ghostlands before joining the horde

Per Shadowlands intro, the scourge just keeps coming back and can't be permakilled if someone rezzes them. They have already teased that the scourge has broken into mini-factions with warlords, and I assume that Denathrius will play a part in arranging something with them.

Darkhan gets a random-ass shoutout during TWW questing, and he has a really goofy-cool anime design in the comics that I think they will lean on. The scourge features in both QT/North Ek and Northrend, the next two expansions, and will probably need some kind of leader figure. He fits.

[Lady Atia]

Per Shadowlands intro, the scourge just keeps coming back and can't be permakilled if someone rezzes them. They have already teased that the scourge has broken into mini-factions with warlords, and I assume that Denathrius will play a part in arranging something with them.

Darkhan gets a random-ass shoutout during TWW questing, and he has a really goofy-cool anime design in the comics that I think they will lean on. The scourge features in both QT/North Ek and Northrend, the next two expansions, and will probably need some kind of leader figure. He fits.

Wasn't Darkhan also connected to the void?

[allegrian]

I recetly killed Darkhan solo in cata classic with a BE mage, it felt like a really cool final boss for the BE intro zones. He would make sense in a midnight expansion that rameks those zones.

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Wasn't Darkhan also connected to the void?

I think they say the void elves follow some of his research in the VE intro quest.

[Makabreska]

I think they say the void elves follow some of his research in the VE intro quest.

This fits too well to not be utilised. Native High Elf undead void dabbling debonair traitor. He ticks all the boxes. Ez S1 raid final boss.

[Cheezits]

Yeah, I'm not sure if that's new lore or not, but the void stuff for Darkhan is too on the nose. Moreso than the old god thing under Zul Aman which will definitely appear.

[Raetary]

Wasn't Darkhan also connected to the void?

Yes, he was studying it.
But abandoned the topic after failing to locate Telogrus.

Umbric and co. found his research and built upon it.
It's one of the reasons why they got banished from Silvermoon.

[milkmustache]

Yeah, I'm not sure if that's new lore or not, but the void stuff for Darkhan is too on the nose. Moreso than the old god thing under Zul Aman which will definitely appear.

I wonder then will Darkhan be involved with the Amani story? They're both bound to feature fo the Ghostlands unless Zul'Aman becomes an entire zone (which... please).

That being said, I'll make an early prediction that our first look at Blood Elf druids will come from the Ghostlands with either Night Elf druids helping them mend the Ghostlands, or some form of Silvermoon botanists diving deeper into nature magic to cure it.

[Cheezits]

I wonder then will Darkhan be involved with the Amani story? They're both bound to feature fo the Ghostlands unless Zul'Aman becomes an entire zone (which... please).

That being said, I'll make an early prediction that our first look at Blood Elf druids will come from the Ghostlands with either Night Elf druids helping them mend the Ghostlands, or some form of Silvermoon botanists diving deeper into nature magic to cure it.

Zul Aman NOT being its own zone would be so shocking. They need a tribal Horde-themed area, as there isn't one in TWW, not even if Undermine appears (which it will)