Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Chickat]

Yeah, I also think that is what we will get. Which is why I hate the idea of a revamp expansion. Because making textures nicer looking isn't enough to make helping the same NPCs fight the same enemy groups in mostly the same zones (for the third time in a 20 year progression) not sound like absolute torture.

Tbh, I think that if they only updated 25% of the quests in the game, they would also update rares, and add world events to the map to spice things up too.

I have a feeling every party is going to end up feeling a bit meh if its announced. Its cool to see it happen, but I dont think they will be able to go far enough. Then the people that dont want a revamp at all are also going to be annoyed.

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Even at its height, WoW peaked at 14M concurrent players while being available in markets that comprise >2B people. I'd argue MMOs never really got out of niche to begin with. Video games as a whole only really became mainstream relatively recently, historically speaking. Pong turned 50 last year.

Wasnt it 12m players?

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Changing minds is fine, just that they conveniently changed their mind to whatever changes Blizz made even though they would criticize others' people suggestions that led to Blizz's changes. Then they will magically support after the changes are made.

0 chars

Well I cant speak for everyone, but I do think the MoP system got a little stale by like BFA. Still better than the vanilla talent trees, but.

[Hyde]

Me manifesting my class that uses origami, calligraphy and paintings as their skills:

I personally want a lore walker to be the bard type of class in WoW.

I imagine lore-walker would use tome, quill and ink and harness their powers through origami/scrolls/calligraphy/paintings that come to life/sigils and leylines to fight enemies or heal their allies.

Mod Edit: Don't use giant fonts in this fashion.

[Luck4]

Fuck sake. These retarded clickbaits is the exact reason I don't click on vids like this.

Yeah, the titles are 100% lies most of the time.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Having been on team world revamp since WoD/Legion, I feel like this time it's going to be it for sure.

Same... it feels like this is now or never!

[Sondrelk]

Same... it feels like this is now or never!

It's definitely the best possible time they could ever have. From a gameplay standpoint it's the perfect continuation of Dragonflight revamping base systems of the game. Narratively it makes sense that we would actually see the consequences of the timeskip. And on a purely meta perspective there is no better time for a world revamp than a major anniversary like this.
I somehow doubt WoW will manage to get to it's 30th anniversary without reusing content. The backside of Azeroth is the only area left for a plausible location area that can easily accomodate an expansion, and also be somewhat known to players beforehand. 3 more expansion beyond that seems like a stretch to make new stuff.

[Kiria]

Same... it feels like this is now or never!

Please accept me as apart of your following, WoW needs a massive shake up and a revamp is definitely needed imho.

[Hugnomo]

Same... it feels like this is now or never!

We're in the endgame now buahahah

[Khaza-R]

I wonder if 11.0 is a revamp of Kalimdor and/or Eastern Kingdoms, will subsequent expansions do the same for Outland, Northrend and Pandaria ?

Unlikely. WoW shifted world building outside of Azeroth. Into planes and other cosmic nonsense.

That could change. But currently there is no reason to revisit these places. There's simply a void of lore as far as they are concerned.

[Mecheon]

Azeroth is starting to run out of room for new areas. There is always the possibility of the islands of the South Seas or even Avaloren beyond the Forbidden Sea, but after that? Where would we go?

Ancient Kalimdor, backside of Azeroth, fixing up Outland/accidentally merging Draenor in with Outland, still a few places before we get to off-planet stuff. Even then we have a few grounded ones in the moons and the Ethereal's homeworld before going completely crazy with like, other Titan planets

I'm still skeptical on revamp. Not that it won't be good (It'd be good and nice), but I just suspect we're going to have another Cataclysm. You have to incorporate the levelling experience into things otherwise you're going to have a weird disconnect where we have two Stormwinds and two Orgrimmars, one for high level and another for low level. Plus, well, even at their reduced sizes, I do think EK and Kalimdor are too big to serve as zones full of endgame activities. EPL was a chore enough for Alliance back in the day, heading up there for dailies is not going to be any better in this day or age

[Chickat]

I'd argue that a revamp doesn't actually make for much of a newcomer experience at all.

I've expressed this position before but: by necessity a revamp of this sort is targeted at veteran players. When you make EPL and WPL into a hilly green zone with ongoing farming efforts; that is only exciting for veteran players. It's made interesting because a veteran player knows the history of the area, they (obviously, assumptions) saw it fall in WC3, they saw the argents struggle to hold the line in Vanilla, they saw the fall of the Scourge in Wrath, the beginnings of recovery and healing in Cata, and that green zone represents a payoff for a 20 year plotline.

A new player just sees a generic fantasy forest zone. You can tell them it used to be a plagued hellscape, but they're just gonna take it as "oh, that's neat."

A veteran player sees Auberdine destroyed, or the bridge in Redridge complete, or Thousand Needles entirely flooded and it has deep meaning. A new one just sees ruins they have no connection to, a normal stone bridge and a weird long lake.

The solution for this presents even more problems. Because you have an uphill battle trying to impart the history and context of a location or race or NPC to a newplayer, in a way that doesn't feel like painful overexplaining for every existing player, who are still 95% of who is going to be doing those quests.

I agree that individual starter zones indicate racial identity more, but that's also (and this being good or bad is an entire debate in itself) not the direction that characters and narrative have been moving in. The Alliance and horde are no longer loose associations of largely independent racial groups that stick to their own and firmly embrace established traditions and racial identity. They are increasingly a cohesive society of culturally mobile individuals: A 2004 female night elf was (lorewise) presented as probably a priestess or some martial variety of sentinel, or exceptionally, a newly trained druid where males typically held that role. A 2023 female night elf might be someone more like Elise Starseeker, an explorer's league gal through and through, who dresses more like a dwarf and is, despite being a druid, more interested in cataloging and charting ancient troll ruins than typical night elf things.

Those racial groups don't really exist in the same fashion in the modern setting the way they did in Vanilla or Cata. Tauren are still Tauren, but they're also now two culturally distinct groups the HM associated and Bloodhoof, they're also Cenarion members, and Sunwalkers and members of the Earthen Ring. Even without getting into the arcane using tauren mages or piratey tauren rogues, they have a much larger and more difficult to gloss cultural distribution compared to when in 2004 they just needed to be plains hunters with typical indigenous-resembling ceremonies and rituals.

I think that's why they went with Exiles'. Because the idea they want to move forward with is that your character is an individual with their own agenda and context rather than just a sort of stamp generated by a preconceived racial identity and it's traditional values and identity.

We need a revamp not because the storys are old and tired, but because the content is dated now and the game is too ugly for new players. I agree a new player isnt going to care about an updated story but they will absolutely care about updated graphics and game mechanics.

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I am sure FFXIV's demo still skews to the 28-34 range. Even if its slightly younger than WoW.

Traditional MMOs with a sub are dinosaurs. F2P "Open world ARPGs" are slowly supplanting them and more popular with younger gamers. Which is fully what I expect Riot's MMO to be.

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In the context of speculating a new expansion, its sort of irrelevant either way. A revamp can both be rewardingly nostalgic and new player-friendly simultaneously. They aren't mutually exclusive.

Ive been opposed to it for years, but I think its time for WoW to drop the mandatory sub. Keep the sub plus lots of goodies, extra traders tender, perks etc for players that play alot, but make the game f2p for most. Then expand the cash shop to the levels of GW2 or other similar games.

Maybe it doesnt make financial sense to do that yet, but at a certain point they will probably have to to attract players back.

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Absolutely true. IMO WoWs base has always been Warcraft 1-3, especially WarIII for obvious reasons. Without that story, WoW wouldn´t have those 20 year old plotlines people could connect to. Therefore Blizz is in dire need of a new base to build Warcrafts universe on. They have been terrible at telling a cohesive storyline through expansions, often pushing central elements to books outside the game. I don´t see many other ways to get a new playerbase that cares for Warcrafts universe other than creating a bigger singleplayer experience with a decent storyline in multiple arcs, e.g. WarIV in the style of Starcraft IIs campaign. If they are not fond of RTS (which is very much niche today too), then resort to another genre. But it has to be a singleplayer experience with a focus on telling a cohesive and coherent story with multiple heros and baddies. Even Hearthstone is often better at creating such characters than WoW lately.

But WoW also has to return to the MoP-BfA way of telling a story through cinematics and ingame cinematics. The Shadowlands cutscenes often feel very generic and unrefined for obvious reasons. But DF is missing in that departement as well. WoD, Legion and BfA were best at that. There are a lot of very good ingame cinematics in those. Some of them really hit hard too: Varians death, AU Velens sacrifice... Also BfA with many real cinematics of Saurfang. I miss those things in DF.

Im fairly sure DF has the most high quality ingame cut scenes ever, and a large number of nice pre rendered ones too. Imo bad take. I think DF is the best wow cut scenes have ever been.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

No, keep the subscription, tbe business model doesn't need to change. On to new places to explore(Expansions) I know people dislike the cosmic realms...but....what do people suggest(Revamping a zone for max level isn't an answer cause it just brings "BLIZZ IS LAZY1111" rats out of the basement.


Edit: I realize someone gave suggestions earlier but I skimmed through it.

[Chickat]

Although I've to say that I strongly disagree with a World Revamp targeting mostly the leveling experience, Nixxiom made a great video that talks mostly about it, and how the current experience droves away new players.



With that said, I still believe that nearly all zones, after the leveling experience, should be made and scaled for level cap and endgame activities, such as World Quests, Rares, Community Events, Invasions, Campaign Quests, Treasures, Secrets, Collectables, and everything that level cap zones have these days, even if Blizzard decides to set up a rotation.

I think having more modern quest design, bettet graphics and some world events and more fun rares would be enough for new players. Add in some end game only events and world quests and put them on a weekly rotation. So 1 week you would have Barrens, thousand needles and Mulgore for weekly stuff, and then the next it would be Tanaris Ungoro, Silithus and Uldum. 4-6 per zone. Could even make them a weekly currency farm area for cosmetics and catch up gear. They dont have to give the best outdoor gear.

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Having been on team world revamp since WoD/Legion, I feel like this time it's going to be it for sure.

It certainly feels different this time doesnt it?

All other times it felt like a pipe dream. Back in the day it was actually an unpopular expansion idea. Now days I feel like over half the player base would enjoy a world revamp. Back in WoD or Legion it was much less popular.

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I know, still didn´t keep them from making those. It might be easier doing those, but I can hardly take Sylvanas in some of them seriously, because of the standard talk emote she is doing.

Ebyssians story has nice moments, but they also use some of those "uber cinematics" as well, contributing to emotional moments, because the standard models cannot express emotions very well.

Hard disagree. The in game cutscenes are starting to get eerily close to pre rendered ones. I would go as far as to say that current ingame ones are better than the pre-rendered ones from MoP and before.

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Yeah, the titles are 100% lies most of the time.

I agree but I dont blame them. You HAVE to clickbait on youtube to get a decent amount of views now. Everybody does it, so a realistic title wouldnt see nearly the same engagement numbers.

[Ersula]

Tbh, I think that if they only updated 25% of the quests in the game, they would also update rares, and add world events to the map to spice things up too.

The leveling experience does not need updating. Chromie Time has gotten almost universal praise & they spent a lot of time designing it. It makes no sense to render it irrelevant so soon. That and they relented that the development time they dedicated to revamping the leveling experience hurt the endgame experience during for Cataclysm. That's why a new world revamp is only practical if its treated like standard expansion, only the physical location is somewhere we've already been: Kalimdor & Eastern Kingdoms as level 70-80 zones.

[Luck4]

Azeroth is starting to run out of room for new areas. There is always the possibility of the islands of the South Seas or even Avaloren beyond the Forbidden Sea, but after that? Where would we go?

If WoW still has to last at least 10 years, I don't see how Blizzard can do in the long term if they don't reuse the old abandoned and obsolete content.

Not only that, but the fact that we also need a good reason and a good story before exploring a new place, otherwise it'll feel shallow and forced, like most filler arcs in other media.

That's the problem with recent expansions, we keep exploring new places but the story told is weak or boring, and the reasons are barely explained or noticed.

[Teriz]

Count me in for team world revamp. Definitely think its time to remove those dusty cataclysm quests.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

That's the problem with recent expansions, we keep exploring new places but the story told is weak or boring, and the reasons are barely explained or noticed.

The reasons are very obvious and boring? Like do you just ignore stuff, cause thats the only explanation for this kind of argument.


BFA: Factions go to their respective allied race's zones to help recruit them. They have their own problems and we deal with them.

SL: We go to the SL cause our faction leaders are kidnapped and its where Sylvanas has gone to. A big gaping hole above Icecrown and the Jailer's forces are coming in, the source of the Lich King and everything he did.

Dragonflight: the Aspects are asking for our help and they are technically allies and well the primalists want to cause havoc literally everywhere(See the pre event summoning elementals and such).


I just.. /facepalm

[FossilFree]

Count me in for team world revamp. Definitely think its time to remove those dusty cataclysm quests.

At the very least, I want a de-Cataclysming. Set all of that stuff as its own separate phase, then put everything back to a "neutral" state. Not saying remove the changes that came with the Cataclysm and pretend they never happened, just show it in a years-later sort of state. Westfall not burning. Barrens lava crack cooled, becoming just another canyon. Water drained from Thousand Needles. Loch Modan dam rebuilt, loch replenished, Menethil Harbor above water. That kind of thing.

[Chickat]

The leveling experience does not need updating. Chromie Time has gotten almost universal praise & they spent a lot of time designing it. It makes no sense to render it irrelevant so soon. That and they relented that the development time they dedicated to revamping the leveling experience hurt the endgame experience during for Cataclysm. That's why a new world revamp is only practical if its treated like standard expansion, only the physical location is somewhere we've already been: Kalimdor & Eastern Kingdoms as level 70-80 zones.

Nah, theres gonna be Cata classic soon most likely. Update it all and remove any quest or environmental feature mentioning Cata.

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Count me in for team world revamp. Definitely think its time to remove those dusty cataclysm quests.

Yep. I do think we are likely to go to Karesh or off world in 12.0, but im hoping 13.0 is the underground expansion with Tinkers.

[Xilurm]

I want a world revamp too. Which is weird, because even though I was looking forward to Cataclysm back in the day, I ended up disliking it after I saw what it did to the old world.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

All Blizzard has to do is drop a statistic on new players for the endless "new people don't play WoW lol" discussion to die. I wish they would because it's honestly tiresome, based entirely on conjecture, and goes against Blizzard's active developments towards content accommodating new players.

"WoW is dead" discussion in disguise.

They already put out that shadowlands had a bunch of new players in one of there investor reports, doubt we’d ever get any info beyond that given that the only other mention of new players I know of was back in wrath when they said 75% don’t get past lvl 10.