Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Xilurm]

It's a bit disappointing that my blood elves will start out living in barbaric mud huts in the middle of the desert. It seems Blizzard hasn't learned their lesson from WoD. Don't they know that blood elves are THE most popular race?

And since the very next expansion takes place in Quel'Thalas, I thought it would be no-brainer to start from there. But enjoy your desert, I guess.

The time from the housing patch and the launch of Midnight will probably be a few months. And wouldn't it better if they introduced the new Blood Elf housing area alongside the revamped Quel'Thalas region?

[Scyth]

The time from the housing patch and the launch of Midnight will probably be a few months. And wouldn't it better if they introduced the new Blood Elf housing area alongside the revamped Quel'Thalas region?

That’s wishful thinking at this point unfortunately but hopefully it’s what their plan is!

[Adaeus Lightrin]

So with the clarification of instanced housing, I've been thinking about where the neighborhoods would be in the world based on what they've said. Yes, they'll be instanced, but that instance has to lorewise be somewhere, right? Also, trying to keep in mind where the portal to the neighborhoods may be.

So, with the Durotar/Azshara one, I think there is an easy place for this. Right now, there is a big mountain range near Orgrimmar that spans the Durotar and Azshara tilesets. There is also a convienent pathway that connects Orgrimmar to Azshara where a new instance portal could be placed. So I think, lorewise, this is where the "Horde" neighborhood would be.

As for the Elwynn/Westfall/Duskwood one, that is a lot more... complicated. The obvious place for the instance portal is the old portal between the Trade District and Old Town, placing the neighborhood in the current mountain range between Stormwind and Northshire Abbey. However, unlike the Durotar/Azshara one, there is no Westfall or Duskwood tileset near that area, so it kind of seems disconnected to those zones.

Another idea could be an expanded island in the river between the three. Right now, that would not be able to be reflected in the open world all, due to the fact that that would be a big shift in the landscape that is currently actually playable. And, where would the portal be? I guess they could add like, a bridge on one side to the current island and put the portal in a gatehouse, but eh?

Any thoughts?

[Sondrelk]

So with the clarification of instanced housing, I've been thinking about where the neighborhoods would be in the world based on what they've said. Yes, they'll be instanced, but that instance has to lorewise be somewhere, right? Also, trying to keep in mind where the portal to the neighborhoods may be.

So, with the Durotar/Azshara one, I think there is an easy place for this. Right now, there is a big mountain range near Orgrimmar that spans the Durotar and Azshara tilesets. There is also a convienent pathway that connects Orgrimmar to Azshara where a new instance portal could be placed. So I think, lorewise, this is where the "Horde" neighborhood would be.

As for the Elwynn/Westfall/Duskwood one, that is a lot more... complicated. The obvious place for the instance portal is the old portal between the Trade District and Old Town, placing the neighborhood in the current mountain range between Stormwind and Northshire Abbey. However, unlike the Durotar/Azshara one, there is no Westfall or Duskwood tileset near that area, so it kind of seems disconnected to those zones.

Another idea could be an expanded island in the river between the three. Right now, that would not be able to be reflected in the open world all, due to the fact that that would be a big shift in the landscape that is currently actually playable. And, where would the portal be? I guess they could add like, a bridge on one side to the current island and put the portal in a gatehouse, but eh?

Any thoughts?

I really don't think we will have instance portals. We have the Garrison tech to prevent that. And having it be out in the world is inarguably a better choice for interactivity.

In terms of space I don't think there is really that big an issue. Noone is really going to be that bothered if the area east of Orgrimmar is expanded slightly, alongside the mountain being removed to accomodate the houses. And Stormwind is surrounded by mountains that don't have anything in them. You could easily move Northshire abbey slightly more to the east and fit the neighborhood on the mountain separating Northshire and the entrance to Stormwind.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

I wanted to share a reddit comment that I think sums up my thoughts about neighborhoods (u/Grenyn).

It's quite upsetting that they went with the FFXIV style housing wards because that system fucking sucks and does not lead to the kind of social gatherings that developers want it to be.

People don't gather in their neighbourhoods unless they specifically plan to, because guess what, they're out and about playing the game.

This also leads to probably not getting the plot you want, which sucks and is a big obstacle to your freedom in designing your dream house.

And then finally, neighbourhoods are never quite as beautifully crafted as for example instanced houses are in ESO.

Edit to add: A further critique is them starting off with human and orc/troll zones that people have been pretty explicit in saying they've been sick off as representations of each respective faction. Blizzard can say zones take a lot of work, but it's so easy to then go for the cookie cutter fantasies of each faction.

And this also heavily limits the fantasy of housing. Zones take a lot of time to make, but you know what takes far less? Single-house instances like ESO uses. You could far more quickly make instances for different zones. Neighbourhoods guarantee that you'll be waiting years to see enough variety, and they guarantee that you'll never get zones that are more out there.

I wanted a house in the Eastern Plaguelands, for reasons relating to my character. I will never get that now, because of neighbourhoods. They'll go for all the basic bitch fantasies first, night elves, Gilneas, Silverpine, Mulgore, and there's so many of those that you can easily be waiting over half a decade to get more interesting zones, if those ever do come.

I really think it's a terrible idea. Forcing social interaction is stupid and hinders housing design.

[Sondrelk]

I wanted to share a reddit comment that I think sums up my thoughts about neighborhoods (u/Grenyn).



I really think it's a terrible idea. Forcing social interaction is stupid and hinders housing design.

The complaints here are way overblown. For one, nothing indicated that you have to pick a spot from the remaining ones like you do in FFXIV. You don't have to buy them, and therefore there is no reason to have scarcity over the best areas. There will likely be issues relating to people going for the "best" plots in the given areas, leaving some public neighborhoods partially empty as there are not enough people filling the relevant spaces, but that is base speculation on something which could change.

Also. The thing with housing in every zone is that it's a complicated system where the developers need to either assign areas in each zone manually. Or create some kind of complicated code to allow players to displace NPCs and such to accomodate housing.
Yes, it would be really cool. And I do wish I could have a house on the mountain overlooking Boralus. Or my Evoker living on a hill on Blackrock Mountain. But the truth is that features like that are difficult to make work.

I agree that socializing like the developers want probably isnt going to happen. But really only in the public neighborhoods. The private neighborhoods I imagine will be thriving fairly well. And depending on how versatile the housing system is. Will probably be quite a boon to the RP community, as they could probably make some interesting areas from a collection of houses.

[Ersula]

I really think it's a terrible idea. Forcing social interaction is stupid and hinders housing design.

Yes, but the model they described differs from ffxiv in a lot of ways. For one, plots are free, so it appears everybody gets a house, and they referred to it being open world, so that implies the layering matchmaking fills in the "50 plots" for you, allowing you to visit random people's houses. The public & private setting seems to mean you get to choose whether or not your house shows up among randos or friends & guildmates, giving players control over both how much visibility their house gets & what houses they will see in their neighborhood.

[Sondrelk]

As I have said many times before. Housing is best equated for Pet Battles.
It's a system completely divorced from any core WoW content. But which is there to give another avenue of reward structure.
It will start out basic. But will, barring it being a complete disaster, inevitably grow to become what I imagine most reasonable players would have expected.

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Yes, but the model they described differs from ffxiv in a lot of ways. For one, plots are free, so it appears everybody gets a house, and they referred to it being open world, so that implies the layering matchmaking fills in the "50 plots" for you, allowing you to visit random people's houses. The public & private setting seems to mean you get to choose whether or not your house shows up among randos or friends & guildmates, giving players control over both how much visibility their house gets & what houses they will see in their neighborhood.

I think it's important to mention that we don't know how the housing plots work in practice. Could be you pick a plot and the remaining ones are chosen from a random pool. Could be you get assigned to a specific neighborhood, and you only see the houses in other spots if players picked those specific ones. Could be that you have to divide up the specific houses, but only in Private neighborhoods.

Until we know for sure it's a bit unfair to make final judgments.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

Oh man, how I went from a dream to a nightmare. Neighborhoods might have worked in the vanilla days, but on retail today? A lot of people don't care about social interaction, it's all about playing solo in your own corner. And now they've come up with a good idea that would have worked 20 years ago? I get the impression that the housing team has no idea what WoW is like today.

There were a lot of us who wanted a nice little house in the open world somewhere in familiar areas that we love. Not instanced neighborhoods in new areas where you're forced to have neighbors and interact with them. They should have let people gather in specific places IF THEY WANTED, not forced it.

It's like that square in Dornogal where there's nothing but houses, I naively thought they'd be arranged to accommodate housing. But no, I won't be able to settle down in a place I love and relax. Instead, I'll have to move to new areas I don't know, build my house there and put up with neighbors, if I come across any from time to time. And above all, I'll have to wait YEARS for a neighborhood inspired by an area I love, with the risk that it simply won't happen.

[milkmustache]

Oh man, how I went from a dream to a nightmare. Neighborhoods might have worked in the vanilla days, but on retail today? A lot of people don't care about social interaction, it's all about playing solo in your own corner. And now they've come up with a good idea that would have worked 20 years ago? I get the impression that the housing team has no idea what WoW is like today.

I understand your reservations here and I think you have some valid points, but we also have to sit back and understand that they are using a lot of intentionality to deliver a vision that they have. It seems entirely possible that Blizzard is seeing the resurgence of social aspects in Classic, SoD, Hardcore, etc., that they want to return to Retail, and that's what they're doing here.

You're right, the game isn't as deeply social as it was 20 years ago. But I think they really want it to be, and are making this program with that in mind.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

The complaints here are way overblown. For one, nothing indicated that you have to pick a spot from the remaining ones like you do in FFXIV. You don't have to buy them, and therefore there is no reason to have scarcity over the best areas. There will likely be issues relating to people going for the "best" plots in the given areas, leaving some public neighborhoods partially empty as there are not enough people filling the relevant spaces, but that is base speculation on something which could change.

Yes, but that's just one problem among many... We'll have to wait and see, but I can't help being pessimistic.

Also. The thing with housing in every zone is that it's a complicated system where the developers need to either assign areas in each zone manually. Or create some kind of complicated code to allow players to displace NPCs and such to accomodate housing.
Yes, it would be really cool. And I do wish I could have a house on the mountain overlooking Boralus. Or my Evoker living on a hill on Blackrock Mountain. But the truth is that features like that are difficult to make work.

Yes, I imagine there are also complications in setting up this system, but they talked about it as if it were a possibility, which they swept aside very quickly, but a possibility nonetheless... it would have been a thousand times better...

I agree that socializing like the developers want probably isnt going to happen. But really only in the public neighborhoods. The private neighborhoods I imagine will be thriving fairly well. And depending on how versatile the housing system is. Will probably be quite a boon to the RP community, as they could probably make some interesting areas from a collection of houses.

Yeah, but if it's just to please Moonguard, it's a shame. D:

Yes, but the model they described differs from ffxiv in a lot of ways. For one, plots are free, so it appears everybody gets a house, and they referred to it being open world, so that implies the layering matchmaking fills in the "50 plots" for you, allowing you to visit random people's houses. The public & private setting seems to mean you get to choose whether or not your house shows up among randos or friends & guildmates, giving players control over both how much visibility their house gets & what houses they will see in their neighborhood.

Yeah, it still looks better than FF14, without some of the flaws and all, if I were to see a positive side it would be on that.

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I understand your reservations here and I think you have some valid points, but we also have to sit back and understand that they are using a lot of intentionality to deliver a vision that they have. It seems entirely possible that Blizzard is seeing the resurgence of social aspects in Classic, SoD, Hardcore, etc., that they want to return to Retail, and that's what they're doing here.

You're right, the game isn't as deeply social as it was 20 years ago. But I think they really want it to be, and are making this program with that in mind.

I honestly hope it works, or that at some point they consider making houses in the open world to complement the neighborhoods as some have suggested. I can understand them wanting to put a social side back into WoW, but I'm not convinced housing is a good idea for that. I don't know.

[Joshuaj]

It's a bit disappointing that my blood elves will start out living in barbaric mud huts in the middle of the desert. It seems Blizzard hasn't learned their lesson from WoD. Don't they know that blood elves are THE most popular race?

And since the very next expansion takes place in Quel'Thalas, I thought it would be no-brainer to start from there. But enjoy your desert, I guess.

The problem with Garrisons was that Blizzard overpromised and didn't deliver. With housing, Blizzard is starting off simple by laying a foundation first, and then expanding on said foundation once given proper feedback and good reception, etc. Oh, and did I mention WoD was expansion exclusive and didn't have a whole different group of developers working on it?

They're not the same.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

They really did say, "Gee, people want housing! They want to decorate? Move into an area they've loved for years? Move back home? No, they want housing for social interaction! Let's create zones that they have no connection to other than a general theme and force them to interact with their neighbors, because it wouldn't be fun if it were done with player consent!"

I'm exaggerating a lot, but that's how I feel about it. "Home sweet home" no, these new zones which will certainly be very beautiful are not my home. My home is [Insert zone name here], which has been around for years.

I'm extremely dramatic and I apologize again if you like what they're up to, if others like it I'm happy for you and hope to enjoy it in my own way as much. Maybe it won't be so bad, but it's clearly not what I wanted, and that's what happens when Blizzard has to make a decision for me. I need to digest and find out more.

[milkmustache]

They really did say, "Gee, people want housing! They want to decorate? Move into an area they've loved for years? Move back home? No, they want housing for social interaction! Let's create zones that they have no connection to other than a general theme and force them to interact with their neighbors, because it wouldn't be fun if it were done with player consent!"

I'm exaggerating a lot, but that's how I feel about it. "Home sweet home" no, these new zones which will certainly be very beautiful are not my home. My home is [Insert zone name here], which has been around for years.

I'm extremely dramatic and I apologize again if you like what they're up to, if others like it I'm happy for you and hope to enjoy it in my own way as much. Maybe it won't be so bad, but it's clearly not what I wanted, and that's what happens when Blizzard has to make a decision for me. I need to digest and find out more.

Would it land better for you if the revamped Durotar/Azshara and Elwynn/Westfall/Duskwood were 1:1 of their open world equivalents? So we get revampeed capital zones along with the housing and neighborhoods to kinda bring the start of a lot of people's WoW experiences back into the modern age? I know it's still not Grizzly Hills or Quel'thalas, but this seems to be a decent start for Housing 1.0.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

The problem with Garrisons was that Blizzard overpromised and didn't deliver. With housing, Blizzard is starting off simple by laying a foundation first, and then expanding on said foundation once given proper feedback and good reception, etc. Oh, and did I mention WoD was expansion exclusive and didn't have a whole different group of developers working on it?

They're not the same.

I think he meant aesthetics. I agree with him a bit, we were stuck in WoD in an exclusively orc/human architecture for 2 years and I think here people wanted something else to start with. Honestly, I'd be shocked and disappointed if there wasn't a new neighborhood in Silvermoon for Midnight.

[Adaeus Lightrin]

I really don't think we will have instance portals. We have the Garrison tech to prevent that. And having it be out in the world is inarguably a better choice for interactivity.

In terms of space I don't think there is really that big an issue. Noone is really going to be that bothered if the area east of Orgrimmar is expanded slightly, alongside the mountain being removed to accomodate the houses. And Stormwind is surrounded by mountains that don't have anything in them. You could easily move Northshire abbey slightly more to the east and fit the neighborhood on the mountain separating Northshire and the entrance to Stormwind.

You make a good point with the portals, I suppose I've been playing a bit too much classic lol.
Yeah, I drew up some sketches of where they could be. I think that, with the thought is that its more Garrison-esque with how you get to it, that removes the barrier of putting it into the world itself.

[Joshuaj]

I wanted to share a reddit comment that I think sums up my thoughts about neighborhoods (u/Grenyn).



I really think it's a terrible idea. Forcing social interaction is stupid and hinders housing design.

While the Neighborhood thing does exist, the actual housing fundamentals are quite different from FFXIV's. Heck, Blizzard even mentions this part. FFXIV's housing specifically failed due to weird things the devs did with the system.

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I think he meant aesthetics. I agree with him a bit, we were stuck in WoD in an exclusively orc/human architecture for 2 years and I think here people wanted something else to start with. Honestly, I'd be shocked and disappointed if there wasn't a new neighborhood in Silvermoon for Midnight.

Starting with Orcs and Humans ain't bad, as Warcraft's foundation is built around that. However, that doesn't mean we won't get Elven architecture, Dwarven architecture, potentially Arathi and whatnot architecture, etc in the future.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

Would it land better for you if the revamped Durotar/Azshara and Elwynn/Westfall/Duskwood were 1:1 of their open world equivalents? So we get revampeed capital zones along with the housing and neighborhoods to kinda bring the start of a lot of people's WoW experiences back into the modern age? I know it's still not Grizzly Hills or Quel'thalas, but this seems to be a decent start for Housing 1.0.

It would be a bit better, depending on how they set it up. But it sounds like lots and lots of work. Which means a lot of time to wait before I can move into an area I like, and that's what's bothering me among other things.

[Joshuaj]

They really did say, "Gee, people want housing! They want to decorate? Move into an area they've loved for years? Move back home? No, they want housing for social interaction! Let's create zones that they have no connection to other than a general theme and force them to interact with their neighbors, because it wouldn't be fun if it were done with player consent!"

I'm exaggerating a lot, but that's how I feel about it. "Home sweet home" no, these new zones which will certainly be very beautiful are not my home. My home is [Insert zone name here], which has been around for years.

I'm extremely dramatic and I apologize again if you like what they're up to, if others like it I'm happy for you and hope to enjoy it in my own way as much. Maybe it won't be so bad, but it's clearly not what I wanted, and that's what happens when Blizzard has to make a decision for me. I need to digest and find out more.

You are exaggerating. It's a foundational plan that they very clearly plan on expanding in future updates post-launch.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

Starting with Orcs and Humans ain't bad, as Warcraft's foundation is built around that. However, that doesn't mean we won't get Elven architecture, Dwarven architecture, potentially Arathi and whatnot architecture, etc in the future.

But I totally agree with you. I think it's logical and a good basis, but I can see what people object to. The fatigue of orcs and humans is understandable.