Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Wangming]

I think it would of made a lot more sense as a plot device if the TWW was supposed to conclude in the Coreway and her using the Black Blood to literally douse Azeroth and bring the whole world into the Unseeming. Sort of like a reverse Void invasion.

I guess its possible her story still ends that way. But it certainly seems like they just went on a tangent in K'aresh to power her up and now the whole Black Blood plot device isn't necessary anymore.

I mean if Blizzard wants the Midnight area to be instanced a way for it is to have Xal'atath just zap Quel Thalas into the Unseeming.
'Im sure with all the powers of Dimensius, she is capable of doing that even without having Black Blood around Silvermoon. Perhaps detonating the Sunwell is part of this process.

[Pheraz]

just compare the sand from vol dun with karesh ? what is happening to the quality? kinda worried for more things but I keep my positivity high xD housing looks amazing and the setting in queltalas is almost not to mess up .... lets hope they dont mess it up...... speculating about the next xpac... even though I thought this is not possible with the current race / allied race system... I hope and think they will rework the allied races to be just skins

[13last]

I mean if Blizzard wants the Midnight area to be instanced a way for it is to have Xal'atath just zap Quel Thalas into the Unseeming.
'Im sure with all the powers of Dimensius, she is capable of doing that even without having Black Blood around Silvermoon. Perhaps detonating the Sunwell is part of this process.

Queue the Midnight cinematic of 2 elves happily walking and talking to each other only to see the sunwell from the distance blow up.

I wonder if we can fill 85 pages with just us arguing over Xal'ataths mastermind plan.

[Foolicious]

PLaying the new patch... and I thin because the zone is actually worse in quality, details, level design and also asset quality than argus, I think they focused a lot of their resources into the next xpac. Or they have a crazy talent drain. I hope for the good and then it could really be that they have some crazy kick a'ss suprises for midnight

I get that there is only so much you can do with a destroyed desert planet, but its very bland. Also not a fan of phasediving because its the epitome of "just put a filter over existing stuff and sell it as new stuff" they started with some mounts and pets in dragonflight.
I don't mind it that much considering legion remix and midnight beta will cover the last few months for me anyway.

But generally speaking we have this discussion every last patch. We always think that there is something crazy they are working on. But maybe this time? You know what they say: 7th time's the charm!

[Enrif]

How?

How does that make her look like a bad manipulator?

If she has no way to stop a sentient planet sending Her most powerful champions to stop her, the next best thing she can do is impersonate a dead guy to erode the defenses of the city they took to take it down with her army and go from there.

A character adapting to something doesn't make them a less effective manipulator, because a character that's completely omnipotent is boring and devalues other characters. Her responding to make it work for her is her entire M.O. Again, K'aresh wasn't the plan, but she's still probably thinking fast to get the better from it.

If you have a character that's never defensive, you get another Sylvanas, who was defined by being smart by making everyone around her a drooling buffoon and made her entire central arc very tiresome.

Sometimes David Xanatos or Johan Liebert need to change plans on the fly.

Xal only got defensive AFTER the dark heart broke, we see how angry she is in the cinematics with her and Gallywix. At no point before that did she ever show she was not in control of what was going on. Now in 11.2 we see her being back to a more composed nature. But all of 11.0 she was not a single time on the defense.

[The-Shan]

just compare the sand from vol dun with karesh ? what is happening to the quality? kinda worried for more things but I keep my positivity high xD housing looks amazing and the setting in queltalas is almost not to mess up .... lets hope they dont mess it up...... speculating about the next xpac... even though I thought this is not possible with the current race / allied race system... I hope and think they will rework the allied races to be just skins

Maybe do a comparison where your camera is equally far from the ground instead of presenting it like this. I know you don't mean to do it, but its just not an equal presentation.

[Eldryth]

Aside from the many ways that people have already pointed out- correctly- that it wouldn't make sense for the Radiant Song to be a trick, it'd be an especially terrible twist if it were anything other than Azeroth's voice. It'd completely undermine the stakes they've been building up for absolutely no reason but cheap shock value.

The Song was pretty clearly introduced to evolve Azeroth from an emotionless, mindless being we happen to live on, to an actual character that we engage with and care about, who aids and warns us and who we protect in turn- a symbiotic relationship with the mortal races. I'm pretty sure I even remember interviews from TWW's announcement (or launch?) explicitly stating as much- that they wanted to make it perfectly clear that Azeroth really is a force for good that's worth protecting.

Take that away- make all the interactions we've had with her and all the help she's given us a lie- and she'll be back to being the boring, empty power source she used to be. Having Azeroth as an actual character is a necessary development, and improvement, at this point after all the Worldsoul buildup.

[Pheraz]

Maybe do a comparison where your camera is equally far from the ground instead of presenting it like this. I know you don't mean to do it, but its just not an equal presentation.

yeah probably not the best comparison. But instead of posting more images and risking getting banned, I encourage you to just see it yourself. move with one char to Argus in the vindicar and look over argus, then move one character to vol dun and then one to kharesh and swap. I don't think I make this up

[Makorus]

Plus, Xalatath is already a villain that is trying to take over Azeroth.

By making her ALSO fake the Radiant Song, you just take a character out of the story and gain absolutely nothing.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Why do we think there is a twist? Unless we see the N'zoth blade in a random location on a rock in Quel'thalas with a red circle and red arrows pointing at it this assumption that the Narrative Team is always going to keep making their audience think there is a twist and then not go through with it gets quite strange to obsess over. Absolutely, its fine to keep going at it I just find the whole dynamic a bit pointless because there's nothing that explicitly tells us over the past 5 years if not 10 years that they will ever actually go "Hah, got your nose audience!".

Xal'atath is already so insurmountably powerful and yet it is unclear if she will ever do anything in the story, hell her entire character would be the Unstoppable Force if it wasn't for Alleria damaging the Dark Heart and then somehow that led to Xal'atath gaining even more vast power than probably what her original plan involved which she can now also execute upon.

Theres' no reason to add this "She faked the Song on Azeroth" spiel, she could obviously have done so on K'aresh and we also have further evidence that she was extremely powerful prior to all the events of her manipulating events on Azeroth but it just seems farfetched to create this absurd goose chase that the entire Saga from Amirdrassil's song to now having been grand orchestration by Xal'atath and Azeroths' fate is even worse.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

This guy will save us from the void.

[Enrif]

Why do we think there is a twist? Unless we see the N'zoth blade in a random location on a rock in Quel'thalas with a red circle and red arrows pointing at it this assumption that the Narrative Team is always going to keep making their audience think there is a twist and then not go through with it gets quite strange to obsess over. Absolutely, its fine to keep going at it I just find the whole dynamic a bit pointless because there's nothing that explicitly tells us over the past 5 years if not 10 years that they will ever actually go "Hah, got your nose audience!".

Xal'atath is already so unsurmountably powerful and yet it is unclear if she will ever do anything in the story, hell her entire character would be the Unstoppable Force if it wasn't for Alleria damaging the Dark Heart and then somehow that led to Xal'atath gaining even more vast power than probably what her original plan involved which she can now also execute upon.

We think there is a twsit, because of the interaction between Xal'atath and Soul-scribe. It seems suspect, that Soul'scribe couldn't hear K'aresh for millenia, but Xal'atath gives a little energy push, and suddenly she can hear it again?

[Vakir]

Xal only got defensive AFTER the dark heart broke, we see how angry she is in the cinematics with her and Gallywix. At no point before that did she ever show she was not in control of what was going on. Now in 11.2 we see her being back to a more composed nature. But all of 11.0 she was not a single time on the defense.

I'm saying that, in the hypothetical scenario where she was responding to the Azerothian heroes coming to Khaz Algar as "defensive," that would not make her, as you put it, a poor manipulator.

There's a huge gap between "the champions are coming to stop my Nerubians" and "the K'areshi may revive the heat death of the universe."

Just because she's angry in one and not the other doesn't mean everything was flawlessly planned. Xal has failed and worked on the fly before without being a crybaby about it, we just saw it happen with her quest in Lorewalking.

Also, @Eldryth is right on the money.

Your story ideas and literacy are both just bad.

Re: K'aresh sand visuals, it's also important to remember that they said what they were going for the idea of a planet crumbling as if pieces of glass were coming up as you walked.

Doesn't mean they nailed it, but it is supposed to not be traditional sand.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean she did fail with the Dark Heart getting damaged and its unclear what her original plan was but she achieved far greater victories on K'aresh that also immensely empowered the Heart and Xal'atath further. So in many ways the Narrative Team negated the disappointment of the Great Manipulator failing for a moment only to go "Wait audience, she actually got even more out of Alleria damaging the Heart than if it did not happen.".

Even then if she can manipulate World Soul songs to this degree, its more a question of how, why and whether or not they are authentic and if so how did she learn it. It further just continues escalating questions about her identity and who she is in this universe.

[Houle]

Only question remains is, what's her fetish?

Blonde, tatted elf chicks playing hard to get, obviously

[Wangming]

Queue the Midnight cinematic of 2 elves happily walking and talking to each other only to see the sunwell from the distance blow up.

I wonder if we can fill 85 pages with just us arguing over Xal'ataths mastermind plan.

Not really. So let's include her foot size. Maybe cup size as well.

- - - Updated - - -

Blonde, tatted elf chicks playing hard to get, obviously

Relatable.

[Limayria]

We think there is a twsit, because of the interaction between Xal'atath and Soul-scribe. It seems suspect, that Soul'scribe couldn't hear K'aresh for millenia, but Xal'atath gives a little energy push, and suddenly she can hear it again?

The quest implied she needed the reagents (flowers/water) from the eco dome to do the ritual, something that wouldn't have been available until fairly recently afaik

I do still think xal tricked soul scribe but by having soul scribe connect to Azeroth rather than k'aresh, as is implied by the ring from the eco dome dungeon

[Vakir]

Relatable.

Universal, even.

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure all WoW players are human, and boy there's a reason all the Windrunners get with humans.

[Cheezits]

I like how they did Karesh but I am really hoping it has a fourth quarter of the map that opens up in the epilogue or next patch. It really needs some more Ethereals, ironically enough.

[Vakir]

I... don't understand your argument. You're saying that a plot twist of Xal'atath manipulating us with the Radiant Song, messages from Azeroth, etc., is impossible because... there was subtitles?

Yes. The Radiant Song's spoken dialogue is explicitly labeled as being spoken by Azeroth. There's also internal material for the player that explicitly states that it's Azeroth.

Twists can exist but their misleading needs to make sense in the context of the fiction and that needs to be checked at the door when you're talking about the actual audience.

If there was a screen crawl at the beginning of The Usual Suspects that tells us with absolute certainty that Verbal Kint is not Keyser Soze, it would feel pretty fucking cheap for the twist to be that he is. You didn't surprise your audience, you just wasted their time.

There's ways to lie to the audience in universe if there's some liberty with the fourth wall - Season 2 of Mr. Robot comes to mind where Elliot lies to the viewer, because we are one of his alters.

But in this? Unless Xal'atath is personally shattering the fourth wall and manipulating the player? And developers? That ain't it, chief.