Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Sondrelk]

No. The new island, 8 dungeons, 1 raid followed by 1 zone with rares and 1 raid, is starting to get stale. They need to do something to spice it all up.

What could they possibly do though? It seems like there isn't much you could do outside splitting things up to have different numbers.

Best thing I could figure that would count as something different is to focus squarely on the zones we already have, though evne that would just be shuffling some stuff around from a new zone to upgrading an old ond. The game experience would be functionally identical.

What exactly is your idea of spicing things up?

[Nymrohd]

What exactly is your idea of spicing things up?

Using timewalking so you can make use of the massive backlog of content.

[Noirebene]

Scarlet Monastery looking a lot more "alive" in Patch 10.1.7

https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/16...564819456?s=20

I bet it's part of the Holliday refresh with the Horseman boss

[huth]

No. The new island, 8 dungeons, 1 raid followed by 1 zone with rares and 1 raid, is starting to get stale. They need to do something to spice it all up.

The same would happen with a world revamp. Everything gets stale after a while.

[Teriz]

Underground expansion seems unlikely now with Zaralek caverns but...who knows.

My bet is on Undermine for 12.0. Revamp of Kezan, Rachet, Tanaris, and Gadgetzhan will be part of it.

11.0 is world revamp.

[Auxis]

I'm just wondering: if the plan is to turn Azzy into a Dark Titan, what on earth are they going to do to corrupt her in such a short amount of time? Because last I checked, she seems pretty uncorrupted - scarred and hemorrhaged from a giant sword almost bleeding her dry, but uncorrupted none the less. I feel like Magni would have been able to sense if something was wrong with her energy as she played with it in BFA.

So going by that, and it seeming like she may wake up soon (the Waking Shore was waking up due to Azeroths soul stirring/being revitalized), what's the plan? Are they going to use whatever Iri got from Galakkrond? Is Xal going to usurp her in conjunction with Iri's disc (assuming it's the insatiable hunger of the void, will that destroy Azzy if injected directly?)?

Edit: late night thoughts, just wanted to get it posted b4 bed

[Hitei]

K'aresh was almost entirely destroyed though...

So was main universe Draenor, but we still have Outland.

Expansions typically take place on islands or continents that are scaled down to island size. The only thing you need for an expansion is for one tiny fragment (or multiple even smaller fragments) to remain intact.

[Nightshade711]

If we go to K’aresh I hope we get playable Ethereals.
I think there’s a lot of unique stuff they could do for Ethereal customizations.

[Well Done Steak]

K'aresh was almost entirely destroyed though...

Karesh is like Outland, the ethereals travel to and from. In that world event in blades egde where you kill waves of ethereals, the final mob says he just came from Karesh

[Bomba the Shaman]

I'm not going to speculate what the next xpack is going to be, only thing I want to say is that I'm tired of being shoved into an island theme park every expansion.
I want a whole world that's true sandbox rpg, not a disney world with co-op mode. I want a game that's 2005 in spirit but 2024 in technology.
I'm with the 'world revamp' team.

[huth]

K'aresh was almost entirely destroyed though...

K'aresh was a planet. A 30 kilometer thick plate the size of the US would be a tiny fraction of Earth, and having just that left would count as "almost entirely destroyed".

It would also be bigger than the entirety of the ingame world.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Old God whispers aren't straight forward and aren't necessarily accurate either so taking them by their word is just insanity(No pun). Even the whole idea that all the aspects will go bad(Alexstraza) is faulty, its more likely (With the way things are going atm without twists) she will go against Tyr cause Proto drake eggs and such.

Murozond might also not be super important because the questions of the "true timeline" are brought up again(See Iridakron pose the question to Chromie. Villianous as he is, its hard to not wonder if this true timeline is needed at all.

Old gods love twisting things, their word means as much as mud.

[Nymrohd]

The thing with K'aresh is, how and why do we go there? I'd love to see it but I've yet to see a good premise.

[Well Done Steak]

The thing with K'aresh is, how and why do we go there? I'd love to see it but I've yet to see a good premise.

How is easy. Ethereals could open a portal to it.

Why could be anything.

What I thought of was that relations between the light bound and alliance breakdown after yrel realize that Turalyon is married to Alleria.

Then things happen and Alleria and locus Walker are void-napped (teehee) to get the light bound to karesh and destroy the strongest foothold the void has in the universe, karesh.

Perhaps they have a portal straight into zereth umbra.

Yrel and her army hijack the vindeccar and travel to karesh.

We follow since the balance of the cosmos cannot have a dominant void or light

[Hitei]

Uhuh...

Don't expect it to be the setting of a whole expansion. Just letting y'all know ahead of time.

You could say the same about KT and Zandalar.

- - - Updated - - -

The thing with K'aresh is, how and why do we go there? I'd love to see it but I've yet to see a good premise.

In the interest of not having a world ending threat, it could be as simple as a group of Ethereals or Brokers (or both) putting together an expedition like the Dragonscale, but financially motivated instead of for research. A group of merchants and traders who decide the resources and riches potentially free for the taking justifies the risks and offers to hire Alliance and Horde players as escorts/bodyguards for their expedition. Actual mercenaries.

So you show up there just helping to set up a base camp, fighting off local wildlife and hostile forces, but end up involved in larger stuff, the Ethereals in a civil war, Light forces invading the shattered remnants of the world, etc.

You could even have the base camp build up with each patch until by X.2.5 or X.3 it's a fullscale city. Individual renown factions of different groups of merchants or traders, rival factions of competing cartels.

[huth]

You could say the same about KT and Zandalar.

They're just going to scale it up or down to whatever they want it to be, if it ever shows up. Like with everything.

There's definitely no reason it can't, in any case. We don't really have much information about it, so they can pretty much do whatever they want with it.

[Nymrohd]

How is easy. Ethereals could open a portal to it.

Why could be anything.

What I thought of was that relations between the light bound and alliance breakdown after yrel realize that Turalyon is married to Alleria.

Then things happen and Alleria and locus Walker are void-napped (teehee) to get the light bound to karesh and destroy the strongest foothold the void has in the universe, karesh.

Perhaps they have a portal straight into zereth umbra.

Yrel and her army hijack the vindeccar and travel to karesh.

We follow since the balance of the cosmos cannot have a dominant void or light

You realise how entirely random this plot is? If we are going to do a cosmic void expansion, why not just go straight to the Void and instead do a pit stop in K'aresh?
And open a portal to a planet elsewhere in the universe like it's nothing? It took Sargeras possessing a Guardian to open the Dark Portal, it took the Felstorm which is apparently an ancient portal that took the Pillars of Creation to contain plus the Sargerite Keystone in order to open a portal to Argus. And somehow Ethereals can open a portal to K'aresh like that?
Also how is that portal linked to the Ethereals and K'aresh? If it is going to be the expansion's area, then it should be the focus, not just a backdrop. Also why is K'aresh the strongest foothold of the Void in the universe? From what we know Dimensius left after destroying the planet (indeed by the lore, he couldn't stay there; once he is out of something to consume, he'd fade back into the void). We know there are void planets out there that are fully consumed by Old Gods, K'aresh is likely something like Outland only with far greater and more elaborate Ecodomes.

- - - Updated - - -

In the interest of not having a world ending threat, it could be as simple as a group of Ethereals or Brokers (or both) putting together an expedition like the Dragonscale, but financially motivated instead of for research. A group of merchants and traders who decide the resources and riches potentially free for the taking justifies the risks and offers to hire Alliance and Horde players as escorts/bodyguards for their expedition. Actual mercenaries.

I mean, Dragonflight absolutely had a world ending threat tied to it. Massive elemental storms taking over areas and the Aspects themselves in peril. Sure the intro is about a scientific expedition but the story is never about that expedition. We went there because Wrathion/Ebyssian and Khadgar told us to go there to help the dragons fight the Incarnates.

[huth]

You realise how entirely random this plot is? If we are going to do a cosmic void expansion, why not just go straight to the Void and instead do a pit stop in K'aresh?
And open a portal to a planet elsewhere in the universe like it's nothing? It took Sargeras possessing a Guardian to open the Dark Portal, it took the Felstorm which is apparently an ancient portal that took the Pillars of Creation to contain plus the Sargerite Keystone in order to open a portal to Argus. And somehow Ethereals can open a portal to K'aresh like that?
Also how is that portal linked to the Ethereals and K'aresh? If it is going to be the expansion's area, then it should be the focus, not just a backdrop. Also why is K'aresh the strongest foothold of the Void in the universe? From what we know Dimensius left after destroying the planet (indeed by the lore, he couldn't stay there; once he is out of something to consume, he'd fade back into the void). We know there are void planets out there that are fully consumed by Old Gods, K'aresh is likely something like Outland only with far greater and more elaborate Ecodomes.

And the Legion regularly opened invasion portals to everywhere else. Azeroth was specificially protected, that isn't the norm.

[Xilurm]

My hope for the Void Lords is that they are just as creepy/mysterious as the Old Gods. It's what set them apart from the other villains in the franchise. And if the Void Lords just end up being the Burning Legion but with a coat of void paint then that's just boring.

[Nymrohd]

And the Legion regularly opened invasion portals to everywhere else. Azeroth was specificially protected, that isn't the norm.

Azeroth was specifically distant, not specially protected. Dimensional Portals are repeatedly said in the lore to take massive amount of power to create and to be extremely dangerous (crafting the Scepter of Sargeras and using it threatens the fabric of reality). We don't actually see the Legion invading by portal; we see them having portals in places they invaded (which could have been powered by Soul Engines). On Azeroth their entire invasion hinged on the Felstorm; we have no idea how the Felstorm got to be except for it being ancient and having been sealed off in the past.

Look, Blizzard can ofc change the lore and open portals to K'aresh. But that again is not a reason for Azeroth's greatest heroes to leave and go to the other end of the multiverse.