Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Makabreska]

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.

Ummm, I'm fairly sure that giving new and well received characters more screen-time is NOT something negative, and that was the entire point of that guy posts. "Lul Blizz is caving in and adjusting story cuz Twitter-crowd". Were any of these changes even caused explicitly by peeps on Twitter?

[allegrian]

Ummm, I'm fairly sure that giving new and well received characters more screen-time is NOT something negative, and that was the entire point of that guy posts. "Lul Blizz is caving in and adjusting story cuz Twitter-crowd". Were any of these changes even caused explicitly by peeps on Twitter?

Twitter, forums, whatever. Twitter itself is not important in this discussion, just a way to say social networks in general.

[SilverLion]

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.

Oh I'm not calling out your opinion at all. I despise Hakkar, I despise a lot of the old Troll lore because it's just badly ripped off real voodoo. At the very least, the way Loa worked was way closer to Black Panther for a modern comparison, how the Wild Gods have Avatars that are distinct to a particular culture (Baast vs. Man-Ape). I don't think anyone who likes Hakkar is wrong at all, I just personally want him as far away from the story as possible. He's boring, he's unoriginal. G'huun wasn't particularly interesting, but I'd rather have a nobody as the big bad for the questing campaign than a villain who's a walking trope imo just to tie into old lore.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

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.

Bwom and denathrius id say is just generally listening to fans and not a twitter thing, I don't think the Malf Ysera thing was ever implied to be permanent but people did make a fuss about it either way and every thing about Tyranda and the tree was encrypted so that's no real reason to think any thing there changed.

[Raetary]

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.

None of those things have anything to do with the "twitter crowd", but with Blizzard responding to the general player reception.

The community liked Daddy D and Bwon, so instead of ingoring/gutting them, they stuck around.
The community reacted badly to the Nelven narrative direction, so they pivoted to save face as companies tend to do.

I find it hilarious that people single out wow twitter space as some giant pillar of influence, as if we didn't have the exact same arguments on here as over there.

We generally have the same discussions everywhere, the only thing that differentiates wows online spaces is how fast information gets around.
The resulting "discourse" is identical across the community.

[Ersula]

None of those things have anything to do with the "twitter crowd", but with Blizzard responding to the general player reception.

This. Bwonsamdi appears in shadowlands because people would have insisted on an explanation as to how the troll death god relates to the Shadowlands & Denathrius not dying at the end of the first raid has nothing to do with his reception because that plot development was obviously part of the same content tier & decided long before any players even saw Denathrius.

[Makabreska]

This. Bwonsamdi appears in shadowlands because people would have insisted on an explanation as to how the troll death god relates to the Shadowlands & Denathrius not dying at the end of the first raid has nothing to do with his reception because that plot development was obviously part of the same content tier & decided long before any players even saw Denathrius.

Dudewat? You said "this", then you contradicted him.

Both of these characters carried on mainly due to reception.

"Denathrius is voiced by Ray Chase. Blizzard originally planned for Denathrius to die at the end of Castle Nathria, but after being impressed by Chase's voice performance, they decided to keep the character alive so that he could potentially appear again in future storylines."

"Blizzard always planned to include Bwonsamdi in Shadowlands but didn't originally have a big plan for him. His role in the expansion was expanded after the developers saw the positive fan reaction to the character in Battle for Azeroth".

Not sure how you keep being wrong on stuff that is easily Googled.

[Makorus]

Dudewat? You said "this", then you contradicted him.

Both of these characters carried on mainly due to reception.

"Denathrius is voiced by Ray Chase. Blizzard originally planned for Denathrius to die at the end of Castle Nathria, but after being impressed by Chase's voice performance, they decided to keep the character alive so that he could potentially appear again in future storylines."

"Blizzard always planned to include Bwonsamdi in Shadowlands but didn't originally have a big plan for him. His role in the expansion was expanded after the developers saw the positive fan reaction to the character in Battle for Azeroth".

Not sure how you keep being wrong on stuff that is easily Googled.

Both of the quotes literally said that it has nothing to do with fan feedback? Did you even read the whole quotes before you posted them?

[Khaza-R]

I think its pretty clear that as they were working on BfA they knew they wanted a death themed expansion after. But the Shadowlands as a concept weren't fully fleshed out at that point. So likely the Drust and Bwomsamdi were suppose to bridge us there but instead we got the unfortunately mess that was SL.

[Makabreska]

Both of the quotes literally said that it has nothing to do with fan feedback? Did you even read the whole quotes before you posted them?

???

Denathrius was saved due to positive feedback from Blizz AND the players, or did you miss the general praise he received in SL? They planned him to be killed in Nathria, but he wasn't. And Bwon role in SL got literally shaped and expanded by "positive fan reaction" from BfA. None of these were due to some prior "big lore plans" Ersula claimed to be.

So how about that reading comprehension?

[Ersula]

Dudewat? You said "this", then you contradicted him.

Both of these characters carried on mainly due to reception.

"Denathrius is voiced by Ray Chase. Blizzard originally planned for Denathrius to die at the end of Castle Nathria, but after being impressed by Chase's voice performance, they decided to keep the character alive so that he could potentially appear again in future storylines."

So nothing to do with player reception: The character stuck around because the devs liked the actor's performance. A decision made long before players first see Denathrius...like I said. Reading comprehension.

[Super Dickmann]

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.

Yes, 'woke' is more correct on this point. Say what you will about blood elf reparations to the Amani or people assmad that tauren don't get their due, but the worldview acknowledges the basic fact of different groups with competing, incompatible interest and the impact of preceding actions. There's a reason that the most politically left author in their stable, Roux, was also the last one to actually portray meaningful cultural distinction and conflict and remember the grievances of component races, while it's largely their older stable who're all out on pushing for world peace and homogenization. The only thing that goes against arguing that a more 'woke' mindset would do well for conflict in the game is that the racial revenge fantasies of the people involved tend to be against pushovers and also lean towards having a defined point of equilibrium, neither of which lend themselves to a narrative of permanent conflict between competing groups.

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I take two exceptions with that,..

I generally agree with the premise of both your points, though 'heaps of artistic value' is pushing it. Yes, Warcraft is massively Americanized in so far as the people writing it can conceive only of ideological wars of choice and understand neither resource wars, or ones of territory or ethnicity. Their constructivist view also bleeds into this, which is why their desired endpoint (and that of Starcraft, which manages to be worse even than the current mess) ultimately boil down to everyone assimilating the same values and no more conflict coming out of it. Boiling down conflict to pure good vs. pure evil, which is the only real end point if both groups are ontologically the same and only compete based on belief systems of which one is nakedly correct, is a handicap. This also hurts any anti-war message, which shouldn't be made in the franchise anyway, because casting war as being between good and evil caricatures defuses any real-life applicability.

[Vakir]

The only thing that goes against arguing that a more 'woke' mindset would do well for conflict in the game is that the racial revenge fantasies of the people involved tend to be against pushovers and also lean towards having a defined point of equilibrium, neither of which lend themselves to a narrative of permanent conflict between competing groups.

And even then, there's something to be said that I think even that would be received well if the method of them introducing it between Wrath and Cata-era wasn't so awkward and scorched Earth. Pun not intended. You don't even need to like characters that are opposition to conflict: just introduce the catalysts against it without suspending the audience belief over a cliff.

I don't hate the idea of war, Metzen! I didn't even hate the idea of your Moses boy having to begrudgingly crack skulls almost 20 years ago! I just don't trust y'all to do it right on the logical basis of the established setting.

Tense, cold war following a soft reboot after Worldsoul Saga let's gooooo

[Super Dickmann]

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.

These changes, and others, are good actually. A SL where Denathrius permadies in the first raid, a BFA which is just a straight worse Mists repeat sans the loyalist questline and a Mists which continues with its intended route of being a Thrall return tour would all be worse than what we actually got.Lines like how the Forsaken are there to 'tirelessly defend the living' are better off in the pits. In turn, DF would be better if it committed to Ysera's return and Malfurion's permanent vacation. The Alex quest was much better than those that ended up being kept and was the most stark portrayal of the Bronze's role made. These things are not points of principle - the lesson isn't 'let Blizzard decide', it's purely one of pushing which things are good and which things aren't and chancing that the loudest lobby group succeeds. For TWW, the next three expansions and beyond, the lobby group going endlessly on about how the removal of factions is a cancer succeeding is the best possible result.

[Pheraz]

Has this thread become the new general chat or what? I thought I's about speculation of the next xpac

[Vakir]

Has this thread become the new general chat or what? I thought I's about speculation of the next xpac

This is about that. This is in explicit reference to an explicit statement Alleria makes that indicates the entire potential tone of the next 3 expansions.

There was never any true guarantee there was going to be no interracial or factional conflict over 3 expacs even if it's a big grand finale. This calls that into question.

[Staremonemesis]

As a narrative, Warcraft has heaps of artistic value. It is the story of people doing their best to survive with particular extreme circumstances

True

created by cosmic forces infinitely more powerful than normal people & long before any of the characters were born. That is what resonates with people.

Groan zone, boring Bakugan chart bullshit that scrapes the characterization out of everyone and everything

So anyone boiling it down to "Alliance good, Horde bad" is undermining the entire narrative.

Imo it undermines the narrative to try to frame either faction as good or bad, needless pigeonholing

[Nymrohd]

Damn after the changes I think I might actually be stronger than the froggers.

[Scyth]

Damn after the changes I think I might actually be stronger than the froggers.

I actually was ok with froggers, was nice to join a raid group and be carried

[Lahis]

Damn after the changes I think I might actually be stronger than the froggers.

Unless your gear is also 550 ilvl like them, then no.

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I actually was ok with froggers, was nice to join a raid group and be carried

That would assume you somehow got into groups without being a frogger.