Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Lorgar Aurelian]

We have an official look of this design in-game btw. He's bronze.

Do we? where at?

[Cheezits]

We still don't know the end of campaign "surprise", do we? I doubt it's Xal as it's tied to the dungeon.

[Joshuaj]

Do we? where at?

https://www.wowhead.com/npc=126010/sargeras

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His model is used for when he's deceiving the Triumvirate.

[Nymrohd]

It would be cool if K'aresh chooses to talk to the player instead of the Soul Scribe. A World Soul already has chosen us as her champions, maybe K'aresh senses that and trusts us more than the locals.

[Eldryth]

We still don't know the end of campaign "surprise", do we? I doubt it's Xal as it's tied to the dungeon.

No, but I think that the one drop from the final dungeon boss with flavor text is probably a big hint. It's called "Whispers of K'aresh" and reads "Though her weakened words reached only one, her message reached across the stars." Clearly not talking about K'aresh's voice since he's male, so I'm expecting K'aresh to receive- and pass on somehow- a message from Azeroth. And possibly send his followers to aid her (and us) leading to playable Ethereals/K'areshi.

[Paula Deen]

We still don't know the end of campaign "surprise", do we? I doubt it's Xal as it's tied to the dungeon.

I had thought it was that Xala'toes was absorbing Dimensius?

[Cheezits]

I had thought it was that Xala'toes was absorbing Dimensius?

That very likely happens right after the raid.

[Hitei]

No, but I think that the one drop from the final dungeon boss with flavor text is probably a big hint. It's called "Whispers of K'aresh" and reads "Though her weakened words reached only one, her message reached across the stars." Clearly not talking about K'aresh's voice since he's male, so I'm expecting K'aresh to receive- and pass on somehow- a message from Azeroth. And possibly send his followers to aid her (and us) leading to playable Ethereals/K'areshi.

Or it just means Soul-Scribe's words reached someone.

[13last]

im not being sarcastic, i want to go to the moon and find moon bunny elves and live there lmao

and netherstorm is one of my favorite zones I would love having a tbc styled blood elf outpost in netherstorm to live in and a wastelander style sietch for ethreals would be my forever home i think

I dont think we'll get anything too out there at first but I would be more surprised if we went through midnight without getting a quelthalas neighborhood tbh

Aha well we have another 20 years of warcraft so anything is possible.

Yah I'm the same with the netherstorm and ethereals. I liked TBC aestheics a lot.

I reread the other 3 housing blogs and they mentioned in one of them that they initially want to keep the areas to one per faction so it doesn't feel like an empty community if we have to many. But it'd be nice to see more variety for sure.

Hopefully the devs can release 4 housing districts per year, otherwise it's going to take a decade before we get underwater bubble housing, Hallowfall housing, Townlongg Steppes, Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Jade Forest, Bastion, Valdrakken, Emerald Dream, etc.

More variety is always really cool, just have to figure out a way to deal with the empty community feeling if we're to spread out(Blizzards words). Maybe they could try to make the different zones merge together into a megahub or something.

[Eldryth]

Or it just means Soul-Scribe's words reached someone.

That's possible too, but I just don't see that fitting as well with her appearing to stand down and survive at the end of the fight. [I]Something[/I] needs to convince her to change her mind- which isn't easy given the new lore on K'aresh oaths. Maybe it can be something else, but a message from a Worldsoul seems like the most obvious fit.

[Makorus]

I think it's telling that they make sure to tell us Karesh is a he, and it's "her" words.

Then again, it's extraordinarily rare that item description or items in general are actually lore relevant.

Like, looking at the Worldkiller Iris out of context can bring up a lot of really interesting theories and implications, and it was just an item.

[Nibelheimy]

Man I remember being just a kid in high school. Spent one summer sprucing up one of my friends gardens for his parents for pocket change and spending days coming up with how the Nazjatar expansion would look (we imagined a spiral map that descended into the depths slowly through levelling zones), how we could have a raid at sea against a ghost fleet led by Davy Jones old god style admiral proudmoore, how Elune was actually Mimirons moonbase E.L.U.N.E (can't remember what we came up with for those letters to make it make sense), how we'd go to Ogrezonia and make Ogre warriors called tweedledee and tweedledum.

Crazy how time flies.

[Lahis]

They haven't avoided the pitfall of limiting the amount of houses you can have.

Nobody reasonable expected more than one house per neighbourhood with this level of complexity.

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We know that Quel'thalas from BC is too small to host an expansion. I think expanded Amani Zone, Eversong, Ghostlands and possible SMC as a full zone along with Quel'danas could be larger than even Dragonflight, and it feels possible to expand downwards into EK.

BUT, if they did a BFA split, I'm not sure where the second part could be.

I'm most interested in how will tehy incorporate teh updated Quel'Thalas into rest of the EK? Will there finally be seamless transition, or will we still need to go through the instance portal?

[Enrif]

I'm most interested in how will tehy incorporate teh updated Quel'Thalas into rest of the EK? Will there finally be seamless transition, or will we still need to go through the instance portal?

I'm in camp that Midnight zones will not be part of the rest of the EK map. It will stay separated as it currently is. We will likely have a reason why we cant fly over to the EK from QT, be it a arcane dome, a void wall or the freezing peaks. At best, and that is quite unlikely, they can use the airlock tech to load from QT into EK while we fly over. But that is unlikely.

[Lahis]

That sylvanas promo picture is a completely new CGI shot. Looks like its from Midnight cinematic (similar to how Bolvar was leaked from SL). I already compared it to all of her CGI shots and nothing matches, and they're not gonna make a new one for glasses promotion.

It is new render, but uses her red eyed and purple cloacked model from BfA cinematics. If it was a new model for new post-Shadowlands cinematic, it would have her blue eyes and blue-er gear:



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I'm in camp that Midnight zones will not be part of the rest of the EK map. It will stay separated as it currently is. We will likely have a reason why we cant fly over to the EK from QT, be it a arcane dome, a void wall or the freezing peaks. At best, and that is quite unlikely, they can use the airlock tech to load from QT into EK while we fly over. But that is unlikely.

The Airlock tech wouldn't really work when there is no airlock to load in. Zaralek had long enough winding tunnels and the zone itself was small enough that is always loaded in time. I have flown down the Coreway several times and ended up in unloaded void at the end of it because the three underground zones didn't load in time. With the border between Plaguelands and Quel'thalas being simply an open mountain range, there wouldn't be time for Airlock tech to work. It is either gonna be direct update on EK map itself, or separate instance with portal gate or really, really convoluted excuse for long tunnel between the zones.

[Marlamin]

No chance, if you remember Eversong/Ghostland foliage is completely unique modelwise. Now, Lordaeron/Plaguelands? Sure. And yeah we could get an island.

I just don't think housing team made these for the sole purpose of housing. That's all. I'm not even sure housing team made them, or if there is a squadron of the art team assigned for housing. We have yet to see a new piece of furniture after all.

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Now, art team members creating environmental assets for housing neighborhoods, with the justification that they will be used in future expansions down the line? Yeah, I can see that.

I think it's both, there's a bunch of models for housing specifically given it is going to be an evergreen feature, but as with most model kits they've made in recent expansions, a lot of other models are made in a way where they are easily reusable in the future as well. They started doing this a bit in WoD, a bit more in Legion, way more in BfA, (kinda skipped SL) and then did it A LOT in Dragonflight and TWW. There is a good amount of asset reuse in everything they do now (which is a good thing) and I expect that to be the case going forward as well. e.g. we'll likely be seeing a lot of the DF Reliquary kit in Midnight, DF Tuskarr kit in TLT, etc, etc. The reuse also goes further than just models with the terrain itself also being built in a modular way where they can easily copy paste and recolor it for elsewhere without it looking copied over unless you have a trained eye.

It is also worth noting that as of the last few expansions, an increasing amount of models for WoW are no longer being made in-house but are outsourced (with art direction still from Blizzard), so they're likely to be more strategic with what they make in-house and what they have made externally which fits with how they've changed their strategy on asset reuse more and more.

And yes, I do feel like this will all be mass-used in a major revamp in the future, but I'm not quite sure if it's going to be a gradual thing or a mass one after TLT. I'm leaning more towards the latter with the exception of more and more generic model kits being added that will get used in it.

The Airlock tech wouldn't really work when there is no airlock to load in. Zaralek had long enough winding tunnels and the zone itself was small enough that is always loaded in time. I have flown down the Coreway several times and ended up in unloaded void at the end of it because the three underground zones didn't load in time. With the border between Plaguelands and Quel'thalas being simply an open mountain range, there wouldn't be time for Airlock tech to work. It is either gonna be direct update on EK map itself, or separate instance with portal gate or really, really convoluted excuse for long tunnel between the zones.

I've experimented with making airlocks in the open world, it is doable with the current tech provided the transition point is in the ocean and far enough from land to be the generic-ocean color, or with a fog of war type situation where you fly through fog for a bit while being ported back and forth until the map is loaded. The latter is likely not to work well with the current system as it still fails every now and then (notably, it has a bunch of new issues with Delve airlocks specifically in 11.2.0, suspicious...), but I feel like a natural next level of the system would be what I described.

I don't know if they can manage to get over the issues the system currently has though and there's also the whole "locking people out of zones if you don't have the expansion/it hasn't launched" which might becoming a bit weird when airlocks are involved.

[Hitei]

I've experimented with making airlocks in the open world, it is doable with the current tech provided the transition point is in the ocean and far enough from land to be the generic-ocean color, or with a fog of war type situation where you fly through fog for a bit while being ported back and forth until the map is loaded. The latter is likely not to work well with the current system as it still fails every now and then (notably, it has a bunch of new issues with Delve airlocks specifically in 11.2.0, suspicious...), but I feel like a natural next level of the system would be what I described.

I don't know if they can manage to get over the issues the system currently has though and there's also the whole "locking people out of zones if you don't have the expansion/it hasn't launched" which might becoming a bit weird when airlocks are involved.

Could just bar the first "door" of the airlock, so that you can fly into the first segment of the fog or whatever, but if you don't have expansion access you just reach the end of it and hit an invisible wall without it segmenting or starting the teleport cycling.

[Marlamin]

Could just bar the first "door" of the airlock, so that you can fly into the first segment of the fog or whatever, but if you don't have expansion access you just reach the end of it and hit an invisible wall without it segmenting or starting the teleport cycling.

Yeah, just another thing they have to keep in mind though so another reason why not to use it in this case. I'm very curious to see which choice they'll make or if there's going to be another solution they apply.

[Lahis]

I've experimented with making airlocks in the open world, it is doable with the current tech provided the transition point is in the ocean and far enough from land to be the generic-ocean color, or with a fog of war type situation where you fly through fog for a bit while being ported back and forth until the map is loaded. The latter is likely not to work well with the current system as it still fails every now and then (notably, it has a bunch of new issues with Delve airlocks specifically in 11.2.0, suspicious...), but I feel like a natural next level of the system would be what I described.

I don't know if they can manage to get over the issues the system currently has though and there's also the whole "locking people out of zones if you don't have the expansion/it hasn't launched" which might becoming a bit weird when airlocks are involved.

Well the ocean obviously couldn't solve the Quel'Thalas transition, but the fog could be used if they make it look good enough and give some good enough handwaving to explain why it is there

[Nibelheimy]

Cursed timeline prediction: Silvermoon is built upon sacred amani ruins, is actually Uldaz.

We launch all of quel'thalas into the sky for reasons. We get our sacred flying sun city/ continent.