Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Limayria]

If we get a third DH spec it would be cool if it had a permanent metamorphosis & was inspired by SoD Meta-lock. (Though obviously updated for the more modern gameplay style of retail)

this is basically what havocs current gameplay loop is?? sure its not 100% meta uptime but its going up and up with every single change to the spec

a spec that doesnt use Meta at all would actually be a new game play style for the class and help bring back the play style we lost with changes like, demonic being baselined, and meta cd going from 5 to 2 mins + the meta eye beam reset and cycle of hatred

its not even like that a permanent meta would offer ANY game play, it'd just be a stance

[Nightshade711]

this is basically what havocs current gameplay loop is?? sure its not 100% meta uptime but its going up and up with every single change to the spec

a spec that doesnt use Meta at all would actually be a new game play style for the class and help bring back the play style we lost with changes like, demonic being baselined, and meta cd going from 5 to 2 mins + the meta eye beam reset and cycle of hatred

its not even like that a permanent meta would offer ANY game play, it'd just be a stance

SoD meta-lock doesn't play like DH Havoc at all.
It would lean more into the caster-esque side of things like we see from the void-DH boss.

[Teriz]

"Nothing to announce about a third void spec for Demon Hunters."

That's pretty much confirmation that we're getting the spec.

Might actually get me to roll a DH.

[Ersula]

If you think the Darkness is referring to the Void and not the fel, you're simple as fuck. Sorry to say.

Think of the Light as being the Draenei's Patron, and during Renilash, the Light is calling in the Draenei's debt. The Light essentially saved their species & helped them defeat their biggest enemy, so now its the Draenei's turn to return the favor.

[The-Shan]

This is sort of retroactive. Beyond Uldum, Redridge, and Thousand Needles, the complaints at the time were not in large part because it eliminated the old world or had joke quests.

The overwhelming complaint re: Cata enviornments was that players felt it was lazy. They did not like how much of it was just old zones and that was only made worse when Hour of Twilight came and had two dungeons that were just parts of Dragonblight and a raid that was also just reusing existing locations. This "eliminated the old world" thing is a much more modern sentiment that has largely arisen out of the classic-associated "teh goin home, back to Azeroth" rhetoric.


This might genuinely be a case of "you think you do, but you don't" and it is exactly what caused Cataclysm to be disliked for nearly a decade after it happened. "Revisiting the areas you fell in love with" sounds great on paper, and it works in extreme moderation, but it just isn't viable on a larger scale. There is a reason why the story can't be primarily set in those old locations, regardless of being done right, and that reason is novelty. People want new things. They want to go to new places. They want to see new cool sights. Updated WPL is cool... for a few hours. People like updates to places, but it does not hold attention or feel engaging for long.

Consider the current thread. How much of the talk has actually been about revisiting the areas people have fallen in love with? How much have you seen people talk about Farstrider Retreat, or how they are excited to see the arcane sanctums again, or the Scorched Grove? Fairbreeze? Murder Row in SMC? I think I'm the only person who has even brought up Farstrider Square and it is in the context of it being paved over for an expansion of SMC to both sides. I think I've seen Duskwither brought up once and it was an advocation for it to be a whole new grand floating sky area.

People spend more time hypothesizing about a new expanded ZA, or Northeron (lol) than actual memorable Eversong and Ghostlands locations to revisit. I have a lot of fond memories of Eversong, but I can also go there right now and see all those places, or wait for Anniversary realms to reach the end of classic phase and hit BC. A new expansion should be mostly new stuff, and when it's old stuff, it should also still just be new stuff (see: Draenor).

If you started setting stories in old locations as a rule, I promise you, you will make it just about one expansion before people are absolutely losing their minds wanting to see some new random island instead. I'm genuinely not sure, regardless of the scale of updates, if we will make it to the end of TLT without people getting restless of existing zones and losing their minds about wanting to get to Alvaloren or the moon or wherever else.

It's harder to rewrite the whole world AND add four new leveling zones AND 2 new races (each with their own leveling zone) than it is to focus in on a single spot and reimagine it. Comparing Midnight to Cataclysm is tempting, but it has the lessons learned from Cataclysm, a pretty much completely different dev team where most of the current people were almost certainly hired after Cataclysm, and the scope is just entirely different as previously established.

It feels like with Cataclysm, the content was only six years old at that point. A lot of it was blizzard having a hammer (a desire to 'remake the world') and looking for nails (things to change). With Quel'thalas and Northrend, decades have passed canonically and in real life too. It's less of a case of trying to figure out a change for everything in the world, and more a question of how has quel'thalas changed, and how it can be brought up to modern standards.

I things plenty of people have hypothesized about Silvermoon and Quel'danas, but people are rightfully very curious about areas of the old world we've longed to see. Being thrown into another Dragon Isles like area, which besides the name had its context entirely retconned in and retroactively given significance is dull, and the area is forgettable afterwards. Yet people still look at the old world as places key to their characters identity. Quel'thalas is the homeland of the Blood Elf/Void Elf players, and to revisit these areas is to honor that identity.

Adding new areas is well and good, (i.e Aveloren, or whatever its called) but I think we also need to get back to the core of Warcraft, which is Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms and Northrend.

People LOVED revisiting Draenor and seeing the not-destroyed areas, that was the best part about WoD. Back in 2014 when that came out, people were going to all the familiar areas and comparing them to the lost, and seeing how the world had been filled in where new areas were added. It was pretty magical to see Auchindoun, Shattrath, and Karabor in their full glory for example.

- - - Updated - - -

I get a lot of people here are excited about world revamps, but, frankly, as someone who lasted through Cata? It wasn't worth it. Arbitrary Island #27 guarantees you a good levelling experience and an engaged endgame because its a contained area. If they revamp the entire world again, firstly, why should I, a max level player, even care? I didn't go back and do old quests on my mains when Cata hit, so the only relevant content was the new zones.

World revamps are associated with Cata in this game, and Cataclysm is associated with "Only saved from being the worst expansion by far, far worse ones happening". I see no reason I shouldn't dread the concept every time it comes up.

The world revamp was a extraordinarily strenuous because they revamped the whole world in 1 expansion AND four new leveling zones AND 2 new questing zones for the new races. Arbitrary Island #27 takes just as long to develop as new Quel'thalas, frankly... Probably less time in fact, since its already an established place and they don't have to do as much figuring out the identity of the location as much as they have to figure out what has changed. I survived Cataclysm as well, there are a lot more of us than you might think. It is as I said difficult to compare this to Cataclysm since the scope is entirely different.

[Mecheon]

It's harder to rewrite the whole world AND add four new leveling zones AND 2 new races (each with their own leveling zone) than it is to focus in on a single spot and reimagine it. Comparing Midnight to Cataclysm is tempting, but it has the lessons learned from Cataclysm, a pretty much completely different dev team where most of the current people were almost certainly hired after Cataclysm, and the scope is just entirely different as previously established.

It feels like with Cataclysm, the content was only six years old at that point. A lot of it was blizzard having a hammer (a desire to 'remake the world') and looking for nails (things to change). With Quel'thalas and Northrend, decades have passed canonically and in real life too. It's less of a case of trying to figure out a change for everything in the world, and more a question of how has quel'thalas changed, and how it can be brought up to modern standards.

I things plenty of people have hypothesized about Silvermoon and Quel'danas, but people are rightfully very curious about areas of the old world we've longed to see. Being thrown into another Dragon Isles like area, which besides the name had its context entirely retconned in and retroactively given significance is dull, and the area is forgettable afterwards. Yet people still look at the old world as places key to their characters identity. Quel'thalas is the homeland of the Blood Elf/Void Elf players, and to revisit these areas is to honor that identity.

Adding new areas is well and good, (i.e Aveloren, or whatever its called) but I think we also need to get back to the core of Warcraft, which is Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms and Northrend.

People LOVED revisiting Draenor and seeing the not-destroyed areas, that was the best part about WoD. Back in 2014 when that came out, people were going to all the familiar areas and comparing them to the lost, and seeing how the world had been filled in where new areas were added. It was pretty magical to see Auchindoun, Shattrath, and Karabor in their full glory for example.

I'm mostly taking aim at the requests wanting a big world revamp, or expecting Midnight to barely focus on BElf areas and go far south. Quel'thalas is in a unique position where it can be grabbed and modified quite heavily, especially as the area hasn't been touched since TBC and doesn't have flying access, letting you expand into those mountains and hills. The thing is, people are regularly posting in this thread requesting this go all the way to places we have visited far more regularly. Places like Undercity, even. Quel'thalas has potential for a larger, interesting world as youj can expand on what was there, but that's less so the moment you step over the border into Plaguelands

Draenor's completely different to a revamp, I wouldn't really call them comparable. WoD is the past of a place we know, before it blew up. If we revamp the world like people are asking for, all of these requests for "Sure we can go all the way south to Gilneas", that's a whole different thing. We've been to Gilneas not that recently, its not going to be anything like seeing Auch, Shat or Karabor in their primes. Its just.... Gilneas. Again. The same one we already have. A fresh new coat of paint won't change the fact we've already been there and done that, nor will upsizing it a bit.

The core of Warcraft is its world overall, finally getting to see long heard of places like Pandaria or Tel'abim. The best expansions of this game haven't focused on EK or Kalimdor at all, so I do question how much this is an actually desired thing to go back to them.

The world revamp was a extraordinarily strenuous because they revamped the whole world in 1 expansion AND four new leveling zones AND 2 new questing zones for the new races. Arbitrary Island #27 takes just as long to develop as new Quel'thalas, frankly... Probably less time in fact, since its already an established place and they don't have to do as much figuring out the identity of the location as much as they have to figure out what has changed. I survived Cataclysm as well, there are a lot more of us than you might think. It is as I said difficult to compare this to Cataclysm since the scope is entirely different.

All this talk of "Oh once TLT is done we can have a world revamp" absolutely is bringing shades of Cata back, however

[Lorgar Aurelian]

If we get a third DH spec it would be cool if it had a permanent metamorphosis & was inspired by SoD Meta-lock. (Though obviously updated for the more modern gameplay style of retail)

Messed around with sod meta till like 30 and it was alot of fun, Dk's geting a spec like it would likely get me to try the class out.

[Paula Deen]

That's the thing though, that's what's important. At the moment the game's good about this, with Delves, M+, daily quests, PVP and raids all to keep players invested and engaged. Developing stuff like Delves though takes time. Cata's new races only really helped in rolling a new alt and had no impact on your pre-existing characters, and Inscription flopped hard and was not a replacement for, you know, stuff to do. The optimum way to play Cata at endgame was to sit around in Stormwind or Orgrimmar for an hour plus, waiting on your dungeon queue to pop, so you could go and try to do a heroic and hope the random numpties you were grouped with could do it. That was it, right there, at least until Firelands came along and gave us a reason to go back to Hyjal.

Your 'ideal MMO player' is not an average World of Warcraft player. Raid logging is a thing in this game, and I can guarantee you, very few people outside of achievement hunters are going back and plugging through the old Cata quests they missed. Most people come on, chat in guild chat, do their raids/dailies/quests and head off. They're not thinking about the massive pile of Shadowlands quests they haven't even started, they're not thinking about that one random quest chain in WoD they never did, and the most interaction they'll have with MoP is coming over to beat up Sha of Anger on a lark.

They did learn from Cata, I'll agree from that, but the zones being 'bad' wasn't Cata's problems, nor is just utilising the zones at end game going to fix it. Revamping a world is a colossal task with minimum pay off; Random New Island #27 will always be more exciting than some place we've already gone to, simply due to being a new place with untold possibilities, rather than some old quest den we cleared out 10+ years ago and the mobs respawned

I honestly do not even understand the point of engaging with the discourse.

We already know we are going to Quelthalas next expansion, which at the least means a revamp of two/three zones.

We know we are going to Northrend after that.

Either in 13 days we will have a full Classic/Outland Revamp or we will have the first bit of precedent of one coming sooner rather than later.

[Nightshade711]

Messed around with sod meta till like 30 and it was alot of fun, Dk's geting a spec like it would likely get me to try the class out.

Agreed. I had a lot of fun with SoD meta. It was pretty well received too I believe, I don't think it'd be hard to see blizzard emulating gameplay like that into retail.

[The-Shan]

I'm mostly taking aim at the requests wanting a big world revamp, or expecting Midnight to barely focus on BElf areas and go far south. Quel'thalas is in a unique position where it can be grabbed and modified quite heavily, especially as the area hasn't been touched since TBC and doesn't have flying access, letting you expand into those mountains and hills. The thing is, people are regularly posting in this thread requesting this go all the way to places we have visited far more regularly. Places like Undercity, even. Quel'thalas has potential for a larger, interesting world as youj can expand on what was there, but that's less so the moment you step over the border into Plaguelands

Draenor's completely different to a revamp, I wouldn't really call them comparable. WoD is the past of a place we know, before it blew up. If we revamp the world like people are asking for, all of these requests for "Sure we can go all the way south to Gilneas", that's a whole different thing. We've been to Gilneas not that recently, its not going to be anything like seeing Auch, Shat or Karabor in their primes. Its just.... Gilneas. Again. The same one we already have. A fresh new coat of paint won't change the fact we've already been there and done that, nor will upsizing it a bit.

The core of Warcraft is its world overall, finally getting to see long heard of places like Pandaria or Tel'abim. The best expansions of this game haven't focused on EK or Kalimdor at all, so I do question how much this is an actually desired thing to go back to them.



All this talk of "Oh once TLT is done we can have a world revamp" absolutely is bringing shades of Cata back, however

I think WoD is the best comparison Midnight has, since it \is\ the same area, just as you said, pre-apocalyptic. Yet the scope very similar since its scaling up an existing area. Terrokar Forest is Talador, for example. Talador is slightly larger, and makes more effective use of the land given, since it uses better level design. Yet it is not a perfect comparison, since instead of the >25% increase in size Talador has over Terrokar, Quel'thalas will need to be designed with skyriding in mind... So it'll have to be 200%-300% larger.

As far as including Lordaeron goes, you're absolutely right that it SHOULDN'T be in Midnight because Quel'thalas is so rich already. I'd be okay if you wanted human/forsaken influence to add the area of Stratholme and the coast North of it, that could be neat. Between the elves and the Amani, there's a lot to work with.

...as far as a world revamp after TLT goes... lol, rofl even

That idea is ridiculous, I think we can already see their approach to revamping the world, which seems to be doing it incrementally.

[Mecheon]

Either in 13 days we will have a full Classic/Outland Revamp or we will have the first bit of precedent of one coming sooner rather than later.

Or we just get a new Quel'thalas that doesn't need a portal to go to, with no hints at any Classic revamp ever coming.

[Hitei]

Or we just get a new Quel'thalas that doesn't need a portal to go to, with no hints at any Classic revamp ever coming.

I cannot imagine a world in which they stick an entire second, modern detail continent onto the end of EK, especially with how it would completely alter the way the continent looks.

[The-Shan]

I cannot imagine a world in which they stick an entire second, modern detail continent onto the end of EK, especially with how it would completely alter the way the continent looks.

Exactly, its gonna need to be at least 200-300% bigger to accomodate skyriding and have some proper modern level design.

[Nightshade711]

I cannot imagine a world in which they stick an entire second, modern detail continent onto the end of EK, especially with how it would completely alter the way the continent looks.

I would imagine they’d use the airlock tech they’ve used previously. So it’s technically still a “different map” but you’d have the illusion that it is seamless.

But I’d be curious as to how they’d do it.
Like would we be flying through some magical entryway (like maybe Quel’thalas is shielded using the runestones like in WC3 and we fly through an open section?) or something boring like flying through some fog/clouds?

[Paula Deen]

Or we just get a new Quel'thalas that doesn't need a portal to go to, with no hints at any Classic revamp ever coming.

If this happens I will melt a statue of Rehgar.

Edit: Yes I own it. And yes I will post it here. Thats how confident I am.

[Hitei]

I would imagine they’d use the airlock tech they’ve used previously. So it’s technically still a “different map” but you’d have the illusion that it is seamless.

But I’d be curious as to how they’d do it.
Like would we be flying through some magical entryway (like maybe Quel’thalas is shielded using the runestones like in WC3 and we fly through an open section?) or something boring like flying through some fog/clouds?

There's not really anywhere to airlock. The function of the airlock is more or less to be a fairly lengthy (15-20s even when spamming boost with skyriding) confined space in which you cannot see what is behind you or in front of you, so that behind can be removed and in front can be loaded, but the terrain for Quel'thalas should be visible from south of Ironforge.

The entire time you'd be flying from like Stormwind to Quel'thalas, there'd just be visibly no terrain there . Unless the plan is to somehow have a giant continent sized fog wall or barrier that completely obscures the northern end of EK and is visible from any distance. And then you would need to hit that fog or barrier and be flying through it for 15 seconds only to always pop out in the exact same place and with a giant barrier or fog wall cutting the terrain in half at the southern border of Quel'thalas.

I'm not sure there's much gained over just having a load screen. You might honestly get quicker entry and a similar effect from some sort of weird animated, foggy load screen without a bar.

[Kilpi]

I see no evidence to prove the second paragraph has to be the most likely truth.

Oh I'm sorry I didn't add "in my opinion it's more likely". Hope you are feeling better now.

[-Midnight-]

Do we think the Dead Scar is completely gone in new Quel'Thalas or remain the same and still irreversible?

[blaatschaap]

I did notice the specific quest where the DH guy refuses to listen to the void elf and shit goes wrong and he gets pushed through the portal to become a raid boss is called "Chaos". So I'd place a cheeky bet that if we do get a third spec based on that raid boss, it'll be called Chaos

[Hitei]

Do we think the Dead Scar is completely gone in new Quel'Thalas or remain the same and still irreversible?

Considering the Argents were managing to heal even parts of the deep bits of the Plaguelands back in Cata, it should really be healed by now. Even if there's some leftover evidence like it's now a path of Arthas' Tears or Plaguebloom or something.