Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Lady Atia]

Honestly we are going to get to play ethereals visually this patch anyway. Just put on the Reshii Wraps, use one of the K'aresh mogs and that's it

I mean yeah. I already roleplayed an ethereal on my rogue with the nerubar palace tier set, it works quite well.

Never understood the "need" for having the name of your race under your characters name, it doesn't really matter at all aslong as you can look the part. Same with playable Darkfallen/Highelves/Halfelves - already in the game, no need to have seperate allied race slots for them. (although I would love them adding some void elf style skins to humans now that we have the pointy ears aswell haha)

In the end, you prolly have more options with Ethereals now since you can choose from a bunch of different body types / stances / dances.

Besides that, the new female Ethereal npc never looked that good to me anyways, especially compared to a void elf build.

[CodosAureo]

My personal speculation on 11.2, War Within in general, and the hooks towards Midnight.

• Dimensius is "killed", as in, the main fragment is destroyed at Manaforge Omega.
• Xal'Atath stays behind in the Dark Heart, it will not be a main point in Midnight. Probably she has planned a failsafe for TLT with Iridikron.
• A fragment of Dimensius will end up inside Alleria, inadvertedly
• The fragment will be slowly eating out L'ura powers within Alleria
• Heroes return to Silvermoon for celebration, or Alleria will get mind-controlled by the increasing influence of L'ura-Dimensius
• Alleria will use the Sunwell to manifest L'ura-Dimensius in Azeroth
• The War Within is the struggle within Alleria to contain the void, which I expect to be a main point of 11.2 as she gets near Dimensius
• Xal'Atath goal was always to find a weapon strong enough to destroy Dimensius and thwart the void goals, in a "fight fire with fire" manner.
• This is why she is looking to reach the Azeroth Worldsoul, so she can finish the job in K'aresh.
• Reminds me of how Wrathion approaches things.

This my speculation.

[Timester]

My personal speculation on 11.2, War Within in general, and the hooks towards Midnight.

• Dimensius is "killed", as in, the main fragment is destroyed at Manaforge Omega.
• Xal'Atath stays behind in the Dark Heart, it will not be a main point in Midnight. Probably she has planned a failsafe for TLT with Iridikron.
• A fragment of Dimensius will end up inside Alleria, inadvertedly
• The fragment will be slowly eating out L'ura powers within Alleria
• Heroes return to Silvermoon for celebration, or Alleria will get mind-controlled by the increasing influence of L'ura-Dimensius
• Alleria will use the Sunwell to manifest L'ura-Dimensius in Azeroth
• The War Within is the struggle within Alleria to contain the void, which I expect to be a main point of 11.2 as she gets near Dimensius
• Xal'Atath goal was always to find a weapon strong enough to destroy Dimensius and thwart the void goals, in a "fight fire with fire" manner.
• This is why she is looking to reach the Azeroth Worldsoul, so she can finish the job in K'aresh.
• Reminds me of how Wrathion approaches things.

This my speculation.

We know that Xal will be plotting through the entire Saga.

[Alanar]

playable ethereals would require a new rig and they won't make one just for a major patch.

Maybe so, but I would like a new rig and a set of animations to play around with tbh. That is the whole point in adding a "new" race that people want at this point. Not another reskin.

Hopefully Midnight then.

- - - Updated - - -

There are no `plans` for ethereals because they're already in the execution phase, they're already working on them. They're past the "plan" phase.

COPIUM

It would actually be a pretty cool turn, if afther the raid and dungeon the followup would be exactltly that; playable Ethereals. They know people want them and for some reason it feels like teasing right now. But I am not counting on it for tbh.

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

It would actually be a pretty cool turn, if afther the raid and dungeon the followup would be exactltly that; playable Ethereals. They know people want them and for some reason it feels like teasing right now. But I am not counting on it for tbh.

See how disconnected Blizzard is from its players. Many of us have come to expect playable ethereals, and that's a pretty predictable request.

Do you think Blizzard will seize the chance to please its community? Well, no, as with the endless list of popular races they've had the opportunity to give away at some point in previous expansions.

They hate fan service. I'm not saying they have to do it all the time, but when they've got a community that's been clamoring for races for decades and all they manage to do is give away a 3rd dwarf skin it's either they hate their community or they're just not passionate about the game. It's crazy at this point.

When I see other devs creating good games and satisfying their community because they're part of it themselves, you can see the passion right away. I don't see it in WoW, except maybe for the housing, which is 20 years too late. They're so far behind the times....

[Nibelheimy]

Regardless of your personal opinion on races and if they should or should not be playable. Ethereal are simultaneously one of the longest requested races, and more popular requested too.

You do have to wonder why Blizzard ignores home runs like the Iskaran Tuskar and the Ethereals.

The one issue I do see with playable Ethereals right now, is that K'areshi are now brokers as well, which I'm happy with. It would feel unusual to get Ethereals at this point without Brokers now the connections been established and they've returned to K'aresh from the Shadowlands.

I have a sneaking suspicion were getting the Blizzard "not giving you what you want, but something similar but not really" and getting some K'areshi returned to their original forms at the end of the dungeon. Brokers and Ethereals alike.

I've seen some cat people predictions in this thread, and with the Arabic culture vibes it could be pretty likely.

They're not working on Ethereals, they're working on K'areshi instead.

Starting zone in the ecodome. While the rest of us K'areshi are here reforming the planet and its people, we need you to venture to Azeroth with our new allies and make sure the void is taken care of. We can't risk it making its way back here.

Bonus points if the Ethereals and Brokers are distinct different races, and can have one for each faction. Ethereals a more regal, elegant igant race and brokers a more rough around the edges, sinister race. If we're talking animals, one could be feline, and the other reptilian. Tick a few boxes off the list.

[Joshuaj]

On one hand it's cool. On the other I wish we got to see something on the scale of the Titans in Chronicles or Sargeras in the Argus ending cinematic.

Your computer's graphics card would quite literally decimate lmaooo

That is, unless we become planet size ofc, then maybe?

[rainhard]

We're on the same wavelength, I also thought in my head that it would have been planted when they were still night elves, a relic of the past just like the Silvermoon name.

It could work like a bastion against the void there, perhaps it could be a dungeon or a quest hub, and the further from the tree the voidier the zone would get.

[Hitei]

Regardless of your personal opinion on races and if they should or should not be playable. Ethereal are simultaneously one of the longest requested races, and more popular requested too.

You do have to wonder why Blizzard ignores home runs like the Iskaran Tuskar and the Ethereals.

The one issue I do see with playable Ethereals right now, is that K'areshi are now brokers as well, which I'm happy with. It would feel unusual to get Ethereals at this point without Brokers now the connections been established and they've returned to K'aresh from the Shadowlands.

I have a sneaking suspicion were getting the Blizzard "not giving you what you want, but something similar but not really" and getting some K'areshi returned to their original forms at the end of the dungeon. Brokers and Ethereals alike.

I've seen some cat people predictions in this thread, and with the Arabic culture vibes it could be pretty likely.

They're not working on Ethereals, they're working on K'areshi instead.

Starting zone in the ecodome. While the rest of us K'areshi are here reforming the planet and its people, we need you to venture to Azeroth with our new allies and make sure the void is taken care of. We can't risk it making its way back here.

Bonus points if the Ethereals and Brokers are distinct different races, and can have one for each faction. Ethereals a more regal, eligant race and brokers a more rough around the edges, sinister race. If we're talking animals, one could be feline, and the other reptilian. Tick a few boxes off the list.

I've never really understood their weirdly stubborn approach with races.

Especially because they do not seem to have this hang-up, at all, with adding classes. DK, Brewmaster, and Demon Hunter were the top three player requested classes since basically the game's inception, and they added all three, even wildly bending the lore (to frankly a completely contrived degree for DK and DH) to justify them being playable.

Why the hell are ogres not playable? They have to know that players have been continually asking for them since day one. They have to be aware that people have been asking about playable Ethereals since BC launch. But instead the opt for random low end requests like mechagnomes or earthen, or just make up random things like Vulpera (not that I have a problem with Vulpera but when you have a backlog of highly requested additions, it's such a bizarre choice).

Even if this is all a smokescreen (which I doubt) and they're planning on adding K'areshi--why the hell would you do that? People have been wanting to play Ethereals for 20 years, not some weird reformed humanoid verison of them.

[micwini]

I've never really understood their weirdly stubborn approach with races.

Especially because they do not seem to have this hang-up, at all, with adding classes. DK, Brewmaster, and Demon Hunter were the top three player requested classes since basically the game's inception, and they added all three, even wildly bending the lore (to frankly a completely contrived degree for DK and DH) to justify them being playable.

Why the hell are ogres not playable? They have to know that players have been continually asking for them since day one. They have to be aware that people have been asking about playable Ethereals since BC launch. But instead the opt for random low end requests like mechagnomes or earthen, or just make up random things like Vulpera (not that I have a problem with Vulpera but when you have a backlog of highly requested additions, it's such a bizarre choice).

Even if this is all a smokescreen (which I doubt) and they're planning on adding K'areshi--why the hell would you do that? People have been wanting to play Ethereals for 20 years, not some weird reformed humanoid verison of them.

Even some excuses they used in the past, like "armor doesn't work" for races like naga no longer hold weight since they introduced Dracthyr.
It is weird why they constantly skip popular races, but then add shit like mechagnomes and vulpera, that no one asked for.

[COBRAstriker]

They hate fan service. I'm not saying they have to do it all the time, but when they've got a community that's been clamoring for races for decades and all they manage to do is give away a 3rd dwarf skin it's either they hate their community or they're just not passionate about the game. It's crazy at this point.

When I see other devs creating good games and satisfying their community because they're part of it themselves, you can see the passion right away. I don't see it in WoW, except maybe for the housing, which is 20 years too late. They're so far behind the times....

I think this is it, really. They simply hate fanservice. Sometimes they do it. I would say that the 20th anniversary event with updated T2 sets and (post nerf) BRD were pretty well received and it was a nice thing to do
But it's very rare. And this extends to areas outside of elements like playable races
There have been constant complaints about the story ever since BfA, and we have seen little to no improvement since then. Even in this very thread. And it's not minor things here and there, but the overall way things are written, the tone, the cinematics, it's just bad and feels way too sanitised and .. "modern", for the lack of a better word. Danath's tone deaf dialogue in the Arathi questline is the perfect example
And yet we see no improvement
I really can't explain why we can have devs listening to gameplay concerns and address those in a fairly quick manner, but feedback around things like playable races or customizations or story and tone of the game are completely ignored for years
I find it hard to understand this disconnect, and why we aren't seeing improvements in this area too
I know that as a creative you shouldn't let yourself be influenced by outside elements too much, but if what you're doing doesn't work, perhaps it's needed
They could have scored a massive win in Dragonflight if they gave us the big drakonids. But instead they went with twink lizards which have a very niche appeal
Really hard for me to understand from the outside looking in. At the end of the day, WoW is a product, and the main goal is to please as many people as possible, so I don't get their business strategy of constantly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

[Enteroctopus Magnificus]

It could work like a bastion against the void there, perhaps it could be a dungeon or a quest hub, and the further from the tree the voidier the zone would get.

Oh fuck that would be so cool. That's a great way to integrate it into the story. With Beledar's Light technology, they could totally do it.

I really hope they do something similar.

[Nibelheimy]

I've never really understood their weirdly stubborn approach with races.

Especially because they do not seem to have this hang-up, at all, with adding classes. DK, Brewmaster, and Demon Hunter were the top three player requested classes since basically the game's inception, and they added all three, even wildly bending the lore (to frankly a completely contrived degree for DK and DH) to justify them being playable.

Why the hell are ogres not playable? They have to know that players have been continually asking for them since day one. They have to be aware that people have been asking about playable Ethereals since BC launch. But instead the opt for random low end requests like mechagnomes or earthen, or just make up random things like Vulpera (not that I have a problem with Vulpera but when you have a backlog of highly requested additions, it's such a bizarre choice).

Even if this is all a smokescreen (which I doubt) and they're planning on adding K'areshi--why the hell would you do that? People have been wanting to play Ethereals for 20 years, not some weird reformed humanoid verison of them.

I agree. Hero talents in some respects push that even further by adding in older concepts like Dark ranger and Mountain Thane.

As someone that somewhat likes Earthern, I think they're half baked. But every race that's been added after Pandaria has been in my opinion. Some allied races get multiple heritage tints, some don't, even Mechagnomes didn't and the other two tints of their heritage set matches their mecha part recolours.

I was so ready for Mechagnomes when BFA was current. I was predicting them all along, I had Mimiron in my head and Jeeves and instead we got what we got. Something similar, instead of what players actually initially requested.

The same can be said for Drac'thyr, which I don't even want to get started on. But I am confused as to how Blizzard have seem to forgotten the pull a new race can have on expansion hype.

I miss the expansion reveals we're you'd get a slow buildup of the reveal, showing Kezan and Goblins to then reveal they're joining the Horde. Then the gates of Gilneas following and Alliance mains realising they're getting Worgen which was a huge deal at the time and pre-beta before the complaints started rolling in.

There are so many, high requested, high quality races that people love. They really need to reassess the way they look at playable races. With Holly acknowledging that new player experience needs improving, I'm hoping they reassess it all. The game starts with character creation.

And no, armour isn't enough. I could role play an Alliance orc if I had a green skin tone human and spiky shoulders.

They built Drac'thyr as a race around the concept of their new class. That was a mistake. They need to be fixed ASAP because if a new player selects that race they're not getting a real representation of what wow is and can be. I've literally seen it happen with people I get to try the game. It's embarrassing.

As an example, if Iskaran Tuskar were a pre order race for TWW, I wonder how many people would of loved that. So much effort and love went into Iskara.

My mad rambling aside. I agree, but if we're going to get Ethereals, by Blizzards own track recored it won't be the Ethereals that have been requested for near 2 decades. It'll be something else. We haven't got Ogre in 2 decades. We haven't got Troll beards. Comparative to the classes they add (sans evoker) its a strange comparison. Why not take the easy wins?

[COBRAstriker]

I think it also has to do with the fact that while the new people in charge like to take pride in their work, they show complete disregard or outright contempt towards the work of their predecessors. To me at least this is pretty apparent, and it goes beyond playable races. I still remember how they treated Arthas in Shadowlands
So while everyone knows the races people are asking for the most, they think they can do better, so we get OCs, which more often than not they flop, prompting them to take the safe route with a reskin

[Hitei]

I think it also has to do with the fact that while the new people in charge like to take pride in their work, they show complete disregard or outright contempt towards the work of their predecessors.

It doesn't. Those predecessors also sat there completely ignoring the obvious player desire for ogres for a decade even during WoD an expansion made almost entirely by original core team members like Metzen and Chilton, where ogres were a major storyline and theme. Arthas' treatment in Shadowlands pales in comparison to what happened with Illidan and Kael in BC.

This is just a culture war meme.

[Khaza-R]

The thing is that the devs do listen to player requests. Zandalari and Nightborne were both only added because they were popular. Half of the ARs are just copied from Shoc's subrace concept on this very forum.

The issue isn't really with them not listening, its with the implementation. A lot of that obviously stems from BfA and them taking a quantity over quality approach. But if we are just getting one new AR per expansion then there's no real excuse for races to be half-assed anymore. They should be fully fleshed out with their own unique animations. But seems like that is really what the devs or their superiors are against spending time on. I am guessing they consider it a bad ROI for whatever reason, so we will probably keep getting low effort re-skins for MN and TLT.

[Reive]

I think it also has to do with the fact that while the new people in charge like to take pride in their work, they show complete disregard or outright contempt towards the work of their predecessors. To me at least this is pretty apparent, and it goes beyond playable races. I still remember how they treated Arthas in Shadowlands
So while everyone knows the races people are asking for the most, they think they can do better, so we get OCs, which more often than not they flop, prompting them to take the safe route with a reskin

they need new lore elements but they don't know how to create them. everything they do comes off as cheap and tonally distant from what wow once was

[COBRAstriker]

It doesn't. Those predecessors also sat there completely ignoring the obvious player desire for ogres for a decade even during WoD an expansion made almost entirely by original core team members like Metzen and Chilton, where ogres were a major storyline and theme. Arthas' treatment in Shadowlands pales in comparison to what happened with Illidan and Kael in BC.

This is just a culture war meme.

WoD had far more problems than that. It wasn'r even finished and we got selfie cam and twitter integration as patch features
But we did get Blood Elves, Draenei, Goblins, Worgen and even Pandaren
Dracthyr or Earthen are total flops by comparison
Also that's the only explanation I can find for giving us dracthyr instead of the BWL drakonids. What else is there? In what realm would anyone think that most fans of WoW would prefer twink lizards over those big drakonids we all know?
That's why I personally don't want more new races, because I know it will be some new OC that looks nothing like Warcraft, instead of picking something like naga and just refining on what's already there
They should improve what we have already. Models are very outdated

[Makorus]

I've never really understood their weirdly stubborn approach with races.

Especially because they do not seem to have this hang-up, at all, with adding classes. DK, Brewmaster, and Demon Hunter were the top three player requested classes since basically the game's inception, and they added all three, even wildly bending the lore (to frankly a completely contrived degree for DK and DH) to justify them being playable.

Why the hell are ogres not playable? They have to know that players have been continually asking for them since day one. They have to be aware that people have been asking about playable Ethereals since BC launch. But instead the opt for random low end requests like mechagnomes or earthen, or just make up random things like Vulpera (not that I have a problem with Vulpera but when you have a backlog of highly requested additions, it's such a bizarre choice).

Even if this is all a smokescreen (which I doubt) and they're planning on adding K'areshi--why the hell would you do that? People have been wanting to play Ethereals for 20 years, not some weird reformed humanoid verison of them.

The last few sets of races they added, aside from Dracthyr, really, were made as NPCs first and playable race second.

Of course I don't know for sure, but I don't think they set out with making an Earthen race, however, they would need the assets anyway, might as well make an Allied Race. Same thing with Vulpera/Mechagnomes. They already had the assets, why not? Same with Zandalari and Kul'tirans. The last race that felt like an added race because they wanted to add a race rather than just recycling their story content was Worgen/Goblin.

People act like we got Earthen instead of something, when we didn't.

If WoD was released now, I can guarantee you that Ogres at least would be a playable race.

- - - Updated - - -

I mean it's pretty clear that the truce is largely one of convenience/temporary necessity (we've pretty much always needed assistance from some kind of godlike figure when toppling other godlike figures, after all), and that she'll be back to her plans once Dimensius is dealt with. Even with the dialogue that suggests that the fight ends with her staying in the Dark Heart to ensure Dimensius remains trapped, she's pretty much like "btw this isn't sacrificial, I'll be back lmao."

I am baffled that the takeaway from the majority of people is "Oh, Xalatath is good now?"? Like, I hate using that term, but jesus media literacy much?

Xal'atath got what she wanted: An absorbed Dimensius. She has a bargaining chip, which is her letting us escape seeing how we would probably easily beat her right now.

People are so blinded by their hatred for women that they cant put 1 and 1 together. All that is happening is literally playing right into her hands, and we know that because we know the next expansion.

[Hitei]

The last few sets of races they added, aside from Dracthyr, really, were made as NPCs first and playable race second.

Of course I don't know for sure, but I don't think they set out with making an Earthen race, however, they would need the assets anyway, might as well make an Allied Race. Same thing with Vulpera/Mechagnomes. They already had the assets, why not? Same with Zandalari and Kul'tirans. The last race that felt like an added race because they wanted to add a race rather than just recycling their story content was Worgen/Goblin.

People act like we got Earthen instead of something, when we didn't.

If WoD was released now, I can guarantee you that Ogres at least would be a playable race.

The thing is that the devs do listen to player requests. Zandalari and Nightborne were both only added because they were popular. Half of the ARs are just copied from Shoc's subrace concept on this very forum.

The issue isn't really with them not listening, its with the implementation. A lot of that obviously stems from BfA and them taking a quantity over quality approach. But if we are just getting one new AR per expansion then there's no real excuse for races to be half-assed anymore. They should be fully fleshed out with their own unique animations. But seems like that is really what the devs or their superiors are against spending time on. I am guessing they consider it a bad ROI for whatever reason, so we will probably keep getting low effort re-skins for MN and TLT.

The quality issue is somewhat tangential. The reality is that in the grand scheme of things, races in the allied race format (i.e. not requiring a starting zone or big quest chain or often even unique base models) require relatively little (efficient?) effort. If we assume that most recent races were made as NPCs first and races second because they had the assets, there's nothing to stop them implementing stuff like Ethereals and them being at the very least, similar in quality to launch nightborne or mechagnomes. There's nothing stopping them from modifying the Kul Tiran rig to make ogres.

Zandalari are like earthen and mechagnomes. Requested but so distantly behind others that it still doesn't really make much sense that they'd ignore the frontrunners, or as seems to be the case here, outright decide against a frontrunner. I don't really agree that they're listening to players on this point, most of the things added are sort of arbitrary, or fall under "we're dealing with them so add them" but then they don't even follow player feedback with those cases (see the whole covenant allied race debacle).

If it were just "races are hard to make so we couldn't", that would be a reasonable explanation, but they showed with allied races (and the continued lack of quality updates for some of them) that they are willing to put fairly jank racial additions into the game, so I don't see how this can be an issue of ROI. They burned resources on revamping moonkin form for a patch last expansion and still refuse to improve mechagnomes but they couldn't swing a few more customization options and the rigging for the 3.0 Ethereal models to be a somewhat lacking but playable allied race?