Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nymrohd]

I think this tickles me the most. People insist that this is some modern "woke" pivot but it doesn't even reconcile with that. It's rooted in regressive bubble era bullshit where everyone is treated as identical and there was zero celebration of any cultural differences that the modern zeitgeist wants, whether they succeed with it or not.

Whether the faction conflict is desired or not, the fact that you can't competently differentiate groups and actually constantly depict cultural differences is a total writing failure. There is a version of this setup of NPCs and this exact scene that isn't as homogenous. It is a deliberate choice of incompetent writers at this point.

They sometimes manage some element of cultural variance in each expansion zone proper, but they funnel it into new additions/races only and ignore everything else that's already been established.

All the variance we ever get is aesthetic.

[Murlocos]

They sometimes manage some element of cultural variance in each expansion zone proper, but they funnel it into new additions/races only and ignore everything else that's already been established.

I've taken to referring to this as the story's version of borrowed power. Make a zone, center it almost entirely around worldbuilding for a new culture/race/etc., help them fight their evil/traitorous counterparts, move on to next zone. They will be virtually irrelevant after the expansion ends, maybe even by the following patch. Oops, you spent most of your launch story worldbuilding disconnected cultures, so the actual plot is disjointed and shoddy.

Wrap it all up and move to the next expansion, but you barely have anything to take with you since you spent all that time building up new places and cultures we'll probably never see again barring a cameo NPC here and there. So now it's time to spend most of your launch story worldbuilding new disconnected cultures, etc. At least the actual borrowed power or other one-off systems can often be retooled for use in other applications, like scenarios or the island AI.

The existing characters and dare I say, the factions, are our traditional anchors that help us bridge the gap between the old world and the new lands, they're there to help sell that brand new island #4 is part of Azeroth and always has been. But instead, now we have those characters shouting stuff like "For the Shadowlands!" and you see that they're just being used as puppets to prop up the new story that's about to be thrown away further. Hell, they're so homogenized they're finishing each other's sentences. Take a shot every time the microphone in a character's ear reminds them to say "For Azeroth" these next 3 expansions.

You could see the ending of dragonflight with the amirdrassil party as some kind of final faction unity, even Jaina looks happy there to finally see peace between factions.

Final faction unity from what though? You're describing a conclusion to a story that wasn't told. I'm watching an ending to a plot that wasn't written. 8.2.5 and Shadows Rising were not faction unity stories, they are very clearly on tense terms with one another with deep seated grudges remaining. "The time skip" is not a story because nothing happened in it, there is nothing to analyze or dissect.

The Amirdrassil Avengers bit is so comical because it's just mentioned "oh our allies can't teleport in" a couple quests before every racial leader on Azeroth and then some shows up. Zero buildup, zero story, you just have to infer all of this happened in the background and they saw no value in showing it. Not even a 10.1.7 questline where you have to go around spreading the word to your faction, convincing them to marshal their forces in a sudden defense of the Emerald Dream. The characters are just dumped in front of you like a bin of action figures and you're supposed to clap.

Why do you think Amidrassil's finale is so widely mocked and panned? Because it's yet another conclusion where Blizzard put in next to no effort into earning yet acts like they hit a home run on.

[allegrian]

I've taken to referring to this as the story's version of borrowed power. Make a zone, center it almost entirely around worldbuilding for a new culture/race/etc., help them fight their evil/traitorous counterparts, move on to next zone. They will be virtually irrelevant after the expansion ends, maybe even by the following patch. Oops, you spent most of your launch story worldbuilding disconnected cultures, so the actual plot is disjointed and shoddy.

Wrap it all up and move to the next expansion, but you barely have anything to take with you since you spent all that time building up new places and cultures we'll probably never see again barring a cameo NPC here and there. So now it's time to spend most of your launch story worldbuilding new disconnected cultures, etc. At least the actual borrowed power or other one-off systems can often be retooled for use in other applications, like scenarios or the island AI.

The existing characters and dare I say, the factions, are our traditional anchors that help us bridge the gap between the old world and the new lands, they're there to help sell that brand new island #4 is part of Azeroth and always has been. But instead, now we have those characters shouting stuff like "For the Shadowlands!" and you see that they're just being used as puppets to prop up the new story that's about to be thrown away further. Hell, they're so homogenized they're finishing each other's sentences. Take a shot every time the microphone in a character's ear reminds them to say "For Azeroth" these next 3 expansions.


Final faction unity from what though? You're describing a conclusion to a story that wasn't told. I'm watching an ending to a plot that wasn't written. 8.2.5 and Shadows Rising were not faction unity stories, they are very clearly on tense terms with one another with deep seated grudges remaining. "The time skip" is not a story because nothing happened in it, there is nothing to analyze or dissect.

The Amirdrassil Avengers bit is so comical because it's just mentioned "oh our allies can't teleport in" a couple quests before every racial leader on Azeroth and then some shows up. Zero buildup, zero story, you just have to infer all of this happened in the background and they saw no value in showing it. Not even a 10.1.7 questline where you have to go around spreading the word to your faction, convincing them to marshal their forces in a sudden defense of the Emerald Dream. The characters are just dumped in front of you like a bin of action figures and you're supposed to clap.

Why do you think Amidrassil's finale is so widely mocked and panned? Because it's yet another conclusion where Blizzard put in next to no effort into earning yet acts like they hit a home run on.

I'm not saying is good, but it's there and people are still surprised when they see faction peace stuff in TWW alpha or when someone mentions the obvious neutral silvermoon happenning in midnight.

BFA (and SL) was so hated and the faction balance was so bad that blizzard just deleted faction conflict from the game and spent an entire patch to bandaid the burning of teldrassil.

Blizz is no longer interested in faction war or tension stories, they want fantasy adventures in cool places with cool heroes and, well, the coolest and most popular themes/environments for the wider audience are alliance aligned (titans, tolkien fantasy, enchanted forests, magic elves...) and the remaining hero characters are mostly alliance as horde ones became villains and/or died.

The sooner we accept we are in a post faction story the sooner we'll be able to start enjoying the story they want to tell, even if the jump from 4th war to here didn't make sense/was timeskipped.

And yeah the avengers scene was cringe af abd super underserved. They should have used the other aspects as backup, who ended up doing nothin in the fight against fyrakk.

[Cheezits]

See a normal fanbase would just get over a series not going they want, or would go find another one, but we have had three expansions now where the expansion story was drastically changed because of people posting on twitter. So that isn't going to happen.

[Murlocos]

See a normal fanbase would just get over a series not going they want, or would go find another one, but we have had three expansions now where the expansion story was drastically changed because of people posting on twitter. So that isn't going to happen.

If Twitter comments are making you constantly rethink and second guess everything you do, I think you have larger problems with the quality of and the confidence in your writing.

[allegrian]

See a normal fanbase would just get over a series not going they want, or would go find another one, but we have had three expansions now where the expansion story was drastically changed because of people posting on twitter. So that isn't going to happen.

Changing main story points because of twitter whining shows weakness and lack of planning in their writing and overall directing team. I hope we see less of this stuff in the, apparently, planned out story of the upcoming trilogy.

I'm glad they backtracked from killing malfurion though, we got a nice kiss scene out of it.

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If Twitter comments are making you constantly rethink and second guess everything you do, I think you have larger problems with the quality of and the confidence in your writing.

Basically this.

[Cheezits]

If Twitter comments are making you constantly rethink and second guess everything you do, I think you have larger problems with the quality of and the confidence in your writing.

Irrelevant to my point. This is probably the only game, media product even, I've ever seen that can be bullied into changing its narrative content in the span of weeks.

I know it's a live service game that lives on people subscribing but it is incredibly frustrating. I don't care about the quality of the story or how right some of the complaints are: it's extremely anti-artist to write a story by committee.

[Makabreska]

Irrelevant to my point. This is probably the only game, media product even, I've ever seen that can be bullied into changing its narrative content in the span of weeks.

I know it's a live service game that lives on people subscribing but it is incredibly frustrating. I don't care about the quality of the story or how right some of the complaints are: it's extremely anti-artist to write a story by committee.

When did this happen?

[Murlocos]

It's entirely relevant to the point unless you think WoW Twitter has tapped into some unknown power that makes the writers physically incapable of ignoring them. Again, if they keep thinking that points raised by Twitter are salient enough to make them rewrite or totally scrap their existing plans, that's not inspiring a lot of confidence in their ability to create something coherent.

[Ersula]

Oh, of course not, but as said, these positions are zero-sum and so engagement is just for sport, no one's convincing each other. A position where the game attempts to discuss colonialism from a modern-day Western sensibility when its entire loop and premise is based around racial conflict will invariably either fall flat on its face or gut said foundation of the franchise and is thus undesirable.

I take two exceptions with that,
1.) I think that it's because of Americanized perspectives that it's undermining the war aspect of the game. The Alliance is the United States primarily because the devs are: The contradiction that colonialism is bad, but that it also refuses to contemplate its inherently imperialist conceptions about other cultures. Ironically, they whitewash the alliances flaws in the same way a nation based on the United States would, but I think they're doing it unintentionally. They should be doing in intentionally. This would improve the drama in the writing. I'm not saying the Alliance is evil: I'm saying the United States has a very "every conflict has a good side & a bad side" mentality & that Warcraft is taking a very "War is bad" is a mistake. Being anti-war is a good message but not for this franchise.
2.) As a narrative, Warcraft has heaps of artistic value. It is the story of people doing their best to survive with particular extreme circumstances created by cosmic forces infinitely more powerful than normal people & long before any of the characters were born. That is what resonates with people. So anyone boiling it down to "Alliance good, Horde bad" is undermining the entire narrative.

When did this happen?

I think they're referring to things like making a humorous time travel quest about when Alexstraza was kidnapped & forcibly impregnated. But that's more the result of individual quests being written by specific devs with little oversight. There is the idea that they're changing the entire direction of the plot based on social media reaction because people apparently think they're writing big story moments days before they appear in game, but that's just delusional.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

See a normal fanbase would just get over a series not going they want, or would go find another one, but we have had three expansions now where the expansion story was drastically changed because of people posting on twitter. So that isn't going to happen.

What expansion story was changed because of Twitter?

The only thing I can think o is that single Alex quest which was small beans and complained about every where.

[Nymrohd]

When did this happen?

I think it has happened a few times but it was extremely limited. It happened with the Vol'jin/Alliance interaction in Escalation, again with the Forsaken vs Tyrande in 8.1 and more recently with Alex in 10.1. At a larger scale it did happen with WoD when the orc fatigue argument led them to completely change the story in Gorgrond and presumably Talador (imo to the severe detriment of both zones).

[Makabreska]

I think it has happened a few times but it was extremely limited. It happened with the Vol'jin/Alliance interaction in escalation, again with the Forsaken vs Tyrande in 8.1 and more recently with Alex in 10.1. At a larger scale it did happen with WoD when the orc fatigue argument led them to completely change the story in Gorgrond and presumably Talador (imo to the severe detriment of both zones).

Well then this shit is waaay overblown and it all seems like dude is trying to stir up fake controversy.

[Nymrohd]

I've taken to referring to this as the story's version of borrowed power. Make a zone, center it almost entirely around worldbuilding for a new culture/race/etc., help them fight their evil/traitorous counterparts, move on to next zone. They will be virtually irrelevant after the expansion ends, maybe even by the following patch. Oops, you spent most of your launch story worldbuilding disconnected cultures, so the actual plot is disjointed and shoddy.

Wrap it all up and move to the next expansion, but you barely have anything to take with you since you spent all that time building up new places and cultures we'll probably never see again barring a cameo NPC here and there. So now it's time to spend most of your launch story worldbuilding new disconnected cultures, etc. At least the actual borrowed power or other one-off systems can often be retooled for use in other applications, like scenarios or the island AI.

The existing characters and dare I say, the factions, are our traditional anchors that help us bridge the gap between the old world and the new lands, they're there to help sell that brand new island #4 is part of Azeroth and always has been. But instead, now we have those characters shouting stuff like "For the Shadowlands!" and you see that they're just being used as puppets to prop up the new story that's about to be thrown away further. Hell, they're so homogenized they're finishing each other's sentences. Take a shot every time the microphone in a character's ear reminds them to say "For Azeroth" these next 3 expansions.

This is how an expansion like MoP can succeed. MoP did spend most of its content in worldbuilding Pandaria. But it both gave time to the individual factions (and even better, it gave time to cultures within the factions like the Blood Elf arc) and it also tied in Pandaria to the larger Azeroth worldbuilding in a very concrete way.

When we got the leaks about Shadowlands and heard about Soulbinds I immediately thought "Cool, they will repeat Legion fanservice and have us soulbind with important Azerothian characters" (then the reveal happened and we could see all the soulbinds for the Venthyr and no one there was someone we knew). I also thought they'd take a moment to show the afterlives of the different Azerothian cultures. But they did not do the first thing and they barely did the second except Ardenweald (which is why Ardenweald has remained relevant to the story).

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Well then this shit is waaay overblown and it all seems like dude is trying to stir up fake controversy.

Pretty much. If it is something minor and a lot of people seem to think it is problematic, they will change it. But it is extremely unlikely they will scrap something because of twitter outrage culture unless the team was already very ambivalent about it (which I think they were when it came to WoD and orc fatigue).

[Treegdar]

I've taken to referring to this as the story's version of borrowed power. Make a zone, center it almost entirely around worldbuilding for a new culture/race/etc., help them fight their evil/traitorous counterparts, move on to next zone. They will be virtually irrelevant after the expansion ends, maybe even by the following patch. Oops, you spent most of your launch story worldbuilding disconnected cultures, so the actual plot is disjointed and shoddy.

Wrap it all up and move to the next expansion, but you barely have anything to take with you since you spent all that time building up new places and cultures we'll probably never see again barring a cameo NPC here and there. So now it's time to spend most of your launch story worldbuilding new disconnected cultures, etc. At least the actual borrowed power or other one-off systems can often be retooled for use in other applications, like scenarios or the island AI.

The existing characters and dare I say, the factions, are our traditional anchors that help us bridge the gap between the old world and the new lands, they're there to help sell that brand new island #4 is part of Azeroth and always has been. But instead, now we have those characters shouting stuff like "For the Shadowlands!" and you see that they're just being used as puppets to prop up the new story that's about to be thrown away further. Hell, they're so homogenized they're finishing each other's sentences. Take a shot every time the microphone in a character's ear reminds them to say "For Azeroth" these next 3 expansions.

This is something that I really have been feeling a lot lately but haven't been able to articulate myself. There were some interviews about how they are expanding QT for Midnight's rework and one of the quotes went something like, "were expanding out the zones so that they fit a full expansion story, but also so we have space to add in smaller stories that explore the culture of the places we're adventuring in." And like I get that its a nice sentiment and its good that we don't focus 100% only on old stuff in new zones. But I do really think its emblematic of an overall issue of Blizz's worldbuilding/storytelling. They are so laser focused on making each zone its own little warcraft style take on a real world culture they completely lose any semblance of integrating those peoples into the greater world as a whole (or even just beyond there one zone). Its something I thought Vanilla did very well, probably on accident just as a by product of the 1-60 experience being the bulk of the game, but still. And MoP also did really well for Pandaria. Blizz should really try and put more emphasis on how the different settings and events they create in a zone have impact beyond the 2 hour leveling campaign. Like in MoP the Sha impact everywhere, which means the mantid are affected, which starts theyre cycle early, which impacts all the zones along the wall, and then beyond. Then there's mogu everywhere, and turns out theyve allied with the Zandalari, and also the faction war leading up to the horde rebellion is touched on in most zones and every patch.

In DF its like, well each zone has its own thing. Most won't impact anything in the future or even in the zone next door. Like taking back Aberrus should have had a direct link to taking back Obsidian Citadel since its supposed to be connected. Amirdrassil really should have been a zone before 10.2. Feels very weird that Fyrakk just decides to attack it basically out of nowhere. That wouldve also really helped give it the gravitas of being the finale of the xpac. If it'd been a place we'd already quested in and had recently bloomed into Azeroth proper it wouldve felt way more gratifying imo than as a pretty standard patch zone. Like imagine if Ohn'aran planes on launch had half the zone be in the emerald dream protecting it from a primalist assault. Then either at the end of the zone or as a patch questline it blooms into the zone proper with more quests establishing Bel'ameth, only THEN is it attacked by fully unhinged Fyrakk and becomes the center piece of the final patch raid.

They just need to put more effort into making stuff feel interconnected. If not with the existing world and its races we already know, at least with the world created specifically for that expansion.

[SilverLion]

This is something that I really have been feeling a lot lately but haven't been able to articulate myself. There were some interviews about how they are expanding QT for Midnight's rework and one of the quotes went something like, "were expanding out the zones so that they fit a full expansion story, but also so we have space to add in smaller stories that explore the culture of the places we're adventuring in." And like I get that its a nice sentiment and its good that we don't focus 100% only on old stuff in new zones. But I do really think its emblematic of an overall issue of Blizz's worldbuilding/storytelling. They are so laser focused on making each zone its own little warcraft style take on a real world culture they completely lose any semblance of integrating those peoples into the greater world as a whole (or even just beyond there one zone). Its something I thought Vanilla did very well, probably on accident just as a by product of the 1-60 experience being the bulk of the game, but still. And MoP also did really well for Pandaria. Blizz should really try and put more emphasis on how the different settings and events they create in a zone have impact beyond the 2 hour leveling campaign. Like in MoP the Sha impact everywhere, which means the mantid are affected, which starts theyre cycle early, which impacts all the zones along the wall, and then beyond. Then there's mogu everywhere, and turns out theyve allied with the Zandalari, and also the faction war leading up to the horde rebellion is touched on in most zones and every patch.

In DF its like, well each zone has its own thing. Most won't impact anything in the future or even in the zone next door. Like taking back Aberrus should have had a direct link to taking back Obsidian Citadel since its supposed to be connected. Amirdrassil really should have been a zone before 10.2. Feels very weird that Fyrakk just decides to attack it basically out of nowhere. That wouldve also really helped give it the gravitas of being the finale of the xpac. If it'd been a place we'd already quested in and had recently bloomed into Azeroth proper it wouldve felt way more gratifying imo than as a pretty standard patch zone. Like imagine if Ohn'aran planes on launch had half the zone be in the emerald dream protecting it from a primalist assault. Then either at the end of the zone or as a patch questline it blooms into the zone proper with more quests establishing Bel'ameth, only THEN is it attacked by fully unhinged Fyrakk and becomes the center piece of the final patch raid.

They just need to put more effort into making stuff feel interconnected. If not with the existing world and its races we already know, at least with the world created specifically for that expansion.

I'm usually very critical of how people word criticism on here because it's usually pretty garbage 9/10 times, but this is really good. I agree with some of it. World building is something that for me, peaked in Pandaria. I was hyped for WoD until the Draenei got absolutely shafted after Shadowmoon, and we learned practically nothing about them. Legion had terrible world building except Suramar which was amazing, and BFA had very good world building for the Zandalari and middling for Kul Tiras. Then Shadowlands was just a disaster. What strikes me so well with Zandalar and Kul Tiras is that both cultures feel distinct on Azeroth. Zandalar gives that glorious Continental African SuperKingdom vibes and Kul Tiras' take on Druidism and Shaman is incredibly refreshing.

Dragonflight kinda loses a lot of this. Ohnaran plains has a bit, the Maruuk are cool and all, same with the Tuskaar of Azure Span, but imo it's not enough. It also doesn't feel like, as you pointed out, connected. They feel like separate landmasses, not just different regions.

[Nymrohd]

Damn ok the new remix changes rock. I'm now sad I spend Bronze on my "Remix main" for cosmetics since I can buy it all with alts but what can you do.

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and BFA had very good world building for the Zandalari and middling for Kul Tiras. Then Shadowlands was just a disaster. What strikes me so well with Zandalar and Kul Tiras is that both cultures feel distinct on Azeroth. Zandalar gives that glorious Continental African SuperKingdom vibes and Kul Tiras' take on Druidism and Shaman is incredibly refreshing.

I think the world building in Zandalar in particular was middling. It failed to capitalize on existing lore and tie the island better to the rest of Azeroth. Meanwhile Kul Tiras did a better job at this though imo it should have explored the Drust link to the Vrykul better.

[SilverLion]

Damn ok the new remix changes rock. I'm now sad I spend Bronze on my "Remix main" for cosmetics since I can buy it all with alts but what can you do.

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I think the world building in Zandalar in particular was middling. It failed to capitalize on existing lore and tie the island better to the rest of Azeroth. Meanwhile Kul Tiras did a better job at this though imo it should have explored the Drust link to the Vrykul better.

Fair. I don't really agree but I despised the old Zandalari lore. I also didn't give a shit about the Drust because I'm sick of Vrykul. Different strokes.

[Nymrohd]

Fair. I don't really agree but I despised the old Zandalari lore. I also didn't give a shit about the Drust because I'm sick of Vrykul. Different strokes.

About how they handled Zandalar;

I think they should have just used Hakkar. Nazmir' blood trolls are former Hakkar worshippers, we find out how Hakkar's plague shaped the history of Zandalar and yet for some reason we get an entirely new villain . . . who has identical themes to Hakkar (blood and disease). Like, make Hakkar a loa that the keepers experimented on with Old God blood like that boss in Uldir and everything else works. Also changing Zul from a proud nationalist to a pawn for a slug was just horrid. Finally I think they should have done a better job representing the rest of the troll subraces (why was there not a snowy subzone at the top of Mt Mugamba with Tal'Drak? ) Any of these changes would have linked Zandalar so much better to the troll lore we already had while keeping its own themes.

To tie this in with TWW, I am probably the only one but I am extremely annoyed that they used Nerubians instead of using Qiraji. Of the three Aqir civilizations we know almost nothing about the Qiraji. We have a ton of world building on the Mantid and while world building on the Nerubian was limited (still much better than the Qiraji), they could always have kept them for Azjol Nerub.
Meanwhile the only Qiraji we have interacted with are those trapped in Ahn Qiraj and all we know about them is some descriptions from the raids. They even failed to use them properly in Uldum. Given that the majority of the civilizations of the other Aqir were NOT trapped with their Old God, having the Qiraji survive largely intact in their underground kingdom would have made so much sense and would tie Khaz Algar to the Southern Kalimdor better.

[allegrian]

What expansion story was changed because of Twitter?

The only thing I can think o is that single Alex quest which was small beans and complained about every where.

They put bwomsandi in shadowlands for being popular in bfa, they saved denathrius for the same reason. They backtracked from wanting to kill malfurion for ysera permanently in DF and they added the tyrande speech about going back to kalimdor because of twitter whining about night elves leaving their sacred lands.

And that's only the things we know, many more changes could have happenned internally.