Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Santandame]

I want to point out to the people who have said that the press kit leaks were fake because Lor'themar has a mustache; he looks to have a goatee in the image and you can create a blood elf with a goatee in game. It definitely could still be AI but it's not because he has a mustache lmao.

I’m of the opinion that the press kit image = AI is going to be this cycles the “dracthyr screenshots are fake” situation. Something that so blatantly looks like it can’t be true, that it actually is.

Tuesday will be interesting.

[Romanz]

Broken (Krokul) and Ogres could be a huge left field surprise if we play with the whole outlands being destroyed thing. Another thing, both races lack a body 2 female model, i saw some arguing on the other forums about ethereal models being the same but they are split into body type 1 and 2, with slightly different dimensions, the type 1 like salhadaar look like modified kul tiran rigs? just messing around with it, i think were just gonna get high elf for both sides

[D45]

People also called Bolvar screenshot fake.

[Joshuaj]

I dunno if anyones posted this yet, but the expansions name is kinda clever, since its 12.0

I LOVE how Wrath and Shadowlands are paralleled with eachother.

[bomberman]

The narrative around garrosh predicted the "incel revolution" he has charisma in the same way people like Andrew Tate do, they prey upon the dysphoria felt by young men in a world where traditional ideals of what it means to be a "man" are changing and the person they wanted to be when they were kids is now considered a bad thing, like with the orcs how they went from being raised in a culture where strength and honor were the most important things to becoming an adult in a culture where cooperation and compromise and very important thanks to the change in leadership from people like ogrim and guldan and grom to people like thrall and carine

Much like how many young men in the world today feel alienated from their identity as men for a variety of factors, from job market instability to changing sexual and social dynamics between men and women as a result of women gaining more autonomy to even a shift in the way our culture views what is and isn't violence and what kind of violence is/isn't justified

Who the fuck are you, and who the fuck made you an authority on what men feel or think? You placing Garrosh and Andrew Tate in the same paragraph just shows how out of touch and stupid you are to reduce the entire issue people have with WoW so it can fit your twisted narrative that exists only in tiny internet bubbles of culture warriors, which judging by your post history, you are definitely part of
Arthas. Tirion. Varian. Garrosh. Cairne. All these men are different from each other, but they all had 1 thing in common - they standed on business. Varian was far more diplomatic than Garrosh ever was, but he also didn't shy away from combat if needed. They didn't cower away. They had this one thing that modern WoW is sorely missing now - TESTOSTERONE
Men in WoW have been reduced to nothing more than pathetic sidekicks that immediately bend the knee whenever a strong, powerful woman is around. Men are placed in pink floating wheelchairs or killed, while women take center stage

I will just say this as a last thing, because I know how you people operate. Go back and analyze every story, scenario or cinematic, starting from BfA to now, where there is a man going against a woman, or vice versa. Do it. Prove to this entire thread that you're not a disigenuous culture warrior
And find an instance where the man is proven to be correct, or the man wins. I double dare you

[Wyrt]

Oh boy, we're crying about this again. 16 playable races are lead by men, 9 by women, and 2 by councils. And most of those lead by women are allied races that barely do anything.

You people are insane. You're mad Blizzard slightly evened out the sausagefest that was WoW lore with the female allied race leaders.

[Eldryth]

Nitpicking about the meaning of charisma is silly, both Azshara and Xal'atath are both clearly meant to be charming. Even so, their similarities are very surface-level, and would only make them play off of each other well... assuming they're enemies, at least. They'd work extremely well as both mirror characters and foils.

The biggest and most important difference between them, though, is that Azshara wants to rule and be loved by everyone, while Xal'atath wants wants to consume everyone and everything.


Xal'atath uses people and casts them aside in an instant, and makes absolutely no effort to hide it. We just spent a whole expansion seeing everyone who trusted her die because she either abandoned them (Ansurek and Gallywix) or outright betrayed them (Locus-Walker). And of course she wouldn't care, because nobody would survive her victory anyway- we'd all just be devoured, just like if Dimensius won.

Azshara, on the other hand, would want Azeroth intact and the people alive. As narcissistic and power-hungry as she is, she wants to be loved and worshipped, and sees us as hers. She will not cast her "subjects" aside lightly, and she actually keeps her word (to the letter, at least; she did try to mislead N'zoth).


Their personalities are also very different too. Xal'atath acts superior and bases all her manipulation on making people believe that they need her, while Azshara is a master of pretending to be kind and flattering people. And Xal'atath tends to throw tantrums the instant any of her plans go awry, while Azshara is calm and dignified to the end- even when being tortured by N'zoth's minions.


Aside from all those differences- cunning, manipulative characters like Xal'atath are at their best when they have an equally cunning opponent to play off of. It'd be good to have someone who can outsmart her- otherwise either our victories will all feel like a waste of time (because they can't affect Xal'atath's plan) or Xal'atath's plans will all seem worthless because they can be stopped just through predictable military force. Azshara and Xal'atath fighting over the world like it's a chess game would be far more interesting imo.

[Vakir]

Garrosh and Sylvanas didn’t last? Interesting take.

Garrosh, I will confess, is the exception that got better rather than worse. Wrath and Cata Garrosh was a knuckle dragging neanderthal that had to warp the intelligence of the characters around him to justify his own existence. It was only when he had a clear vision and went full antagonist that he had the banger after banger speech/line trend.

Sylvanas absolutely got worse. Her writing became comical and such a singularity sucking in all other focus and energy that she became one of the most hated and exhausting characters in the franchise after being one of the most popular. "Serve" and "HE MUST NOT REACH THE--" is a punchline almost as reviled as "what is to come." She completely screws up a total victory and gives us a fighting chance by losing all of her support due to not being able to shut the fuck up because she took a slight cut. The Sylvanas from TFT and Edge of Night is completely circled the drain compared to the absolute tumor she became later.

[bomberman]

Oh boy, we're crying about this again. 16 playable races are lead by men, 9 by women, and 2 by councils. And most of those lead by women are allied races that barely do anything.

You people are insane. You're mad Blizzard slightly evened out the sausagefest that was WoW lore with the female allied race leaders.

Sure buddy, it's all made up. However, I present you this:

forbes.com/sites/hnewman/2018/11/26/how-women-came-to-rule-the-world-of-warcraft/

Read this article, read between the lines of what is being said, and it will become a lot more clearer what a lot of people's issue with WoW is
Note the date of the article, and the period in the game when the article came out
Characters like Illidan, Arthas or Garrosh just don't exist in WoW anymore. And whoever is left, dies or bends the knee to a strong woman. Every time. They're all beta males
What happens to WoW isn't a natural evolution, it feels more like a revolution, and that's why the change feels so jarring

[Wyrt]

Nothing says "alpha male" like crying about a video game no longer being a complete sausagefest.

[bomberman]

Nothing says "alpha male" like paying for a product to watch men get humiliated by women

[The-Shan]

Yeah, outside of a miracle I think the leaks are done. We already got bits off the cinematic from Blizzard themselves even.

The only actual leaks were just releases by Blizzard themselves. I don't think anything came by accident or unintentionally.

[SunspotAnims]

Regarding the press kit CG "leaks", I'm a bit torn. It's easy to write off any visual leak as AI these days, but I still think a bit of analysis and critical thinking can go a bit further than kneejerk AI accusations. And to be fair a lot of AI stuff is pretty blatant and can be picked apart with basic scrutiny. These images I'm not 100% either way.

If it were fake, let's start by acknowledging it would be faked by prompting an AI model to re-generate screenshots of the character models as realistic CG models. In Azshara's case it would also probably include prompting it to apply features from her naga model to her old elf model. For me, the biggest pointers to it being fake is that Xal'atath is not part of the character lineup even though we know she's in the cinematic and that it's being assumed that the teaser art of the void guys invading Silvermoon is the key art and not just a teaser art.

Yes I can also see that Lor'themar and Turalyon don't match their in-game models in seemingly arbitrary ways BUT we already have a teeny glimpse of presumably Lor'themar in the CG and what stands out to me is that his ponytail is the same size as in the leak and also he has the same curved feather-shaped plate on the thumb side of his gauntlet. Neither of these details are present in his in-game model, but they are consistent between the leak and official CG still. So yeah, they deviate from their in-game models in random ways but there is precedent for that.

Major unanswered questions for me include where did it come from, why is Azshara an elf, and if someone was able to leak these images, why didn't they leak the rest of the press kit? It's possible the consistency between the leak Lor'themar and the official Lor'themar in the teaser was either a lucky fluke or intentional attention to detail from the faker, but I'm not convinced enough to write it off 100% and that's fine with me because I won't be eating crow if it turns out to be accurate.

[JDBlou]

Sure buddy, it's all made up. However, I present you this:

forbes.com/sites/hnewman/2018/11/26/how-women-came-to-rule-the-world-of-warcraft/

Read this article, read between the lines of what is being said, and it will become a lot more clearer what a lot of people's issue with WoW is
Note the date of the article, and the period in the game when the article came out
Characters like Illidan, Arthas or Garrosh just don't exist in WoW anymore. And whoever is left, dies or bends the knee to a strong woman. Every time. They're all beta males
What happens to WoW isn't a natural evolution, it feels more like a revolution, and that's why the change feels so jarring

I thought you lot reserved "hysteria" for the women.

--snip--

Same boat, I'm not 100% convinced it's AI, and it may be my bias but a CG Turalyon would go hard, I don't understand what's going on with that Aszhara though.

[bomberman]

I thought you lot reserved "hysteria" for the women.

I'm just a guy that refuses to pay for a product made by people that hate me, who hire die hard feminists that hate me (Madeleine Roux, even has an NPC in the game) to write stories for the game, who like to humiliate and emasculate men whenever they have the chance
Considering that you sport the avatar of a guy (most powerful mage in the setting, by the way) that they just placed in a pink floating wheelchair, I guess you became numb to the taste of shit

[Vakir]

Visual fidelity and Azshara design change aside, I see it as fake because I'm struggling to understand how those three characters fit together as renders in the cutscene.

Generally, besides the unfocused montages of the original and TBC, the opening cinematic tends to depict one specific scene with narrative consistency. It may have a lot of players (BFA for example) but it isn't like a Shadowbringers where we're jumping between multiple scenes in a story-centric but stylized way. You can argue Cataclysm, but that has literally one character and it's still the establishment of one exact moment.

So having Xal have a big standoff with Lor'themar that we know will end with some crazy void storm, a flood of voidlings, and likely the partial destruction of one of the most carefully designed and iconic sets of WoW...AND ALSO fitting in Turalyon and Azshara, the latter of whom has to be clearly established as reintroduced, is a tall order.

The last nail and the digging up of the lede for me is the lack of a Xal render. Why? Lor'themar is vague enough of what we see that you can pass off a press kit render. But the blips of Xal are very defined and front and center from the teaser. So a fake attempted press kit render would be easy to scrutinize as not matching up and that's why she isn't there.

[SunspotAnims]

Same boat, I'm not 100% convinced it's AI, and it may be my bias but a CG Turalyon would go hard, I don't understand what's going on with that Aszhara though.

The thing is I could totally see them making an elf "visage" form for Azshara for reasons relating to her just being easier to market as a major character in an elf-heavy expansion, but also how and why is she not a naga? If this is fake, why did the faker make this decision? If it's not fake, how will this be explained in the cinematic?

[Vakir]

Azshara being an elf is whatever. She's projected an elf illusion before in silhouette during Legion, even if it's an excuse because her naga form wasn't designed yet.

I maintain why she's randomly in this cinematic after a long absence is another story entirely and is the most suspicious. You can argue, "oh, Turalyon can show up and save Lor'themar" or something, but Azshara being reintroduced randomly would overshadow everything else built up to now.

The only character missing is the one character we've got a clear view of in the teaser.

[JDBlou]

I'm just a guy that refuses to pay for a product made by people that hate me, who hire die hard feminists that hate me (Madeleine Roux, even has an NPC in the game) to write stories for the game, who like to humiliate and emasculate men whenever they have the chance
Considering that you sport the avatar of a guy (most powerful mage in the setting, by the way) that they just placed in a pink floating wheelchair, I guess you became numb to the taste of shit

So let me get this straight - you created a new account to rant about a fantasy game because you think the developers personally hate you, you have grievance with an in-game NPC made in reference to a real person (I hope you extend that grievance to some of those infamous former blizzard employees), and you're interpreting a magical floating chair as a deliberate humiliation campaign... but I'm the hysterical one?

I chose Khadgar because of what I admire in him as a character, the willingness to cross faction lines in the face of a greater threat, the willingness to be pragmatic about the cost of victory and who he allies with. His warmth and kindness, and grandfatherly good nature. I didn't choose him for some arcane dick measuring contest to which your bigoted mind seems to be the only reason to admire a character

Also, Azshara has been canonically established as the most powerful mage since the original lore - long before whatever cultural shift you're imagining took place. If you're going to make sweeping claims about narrative patterns, at least get the basic lore right.
Your entire argument boils down to 'prove this conspiracy theory wrong for me' while providing zero actual evidence beyond your own interpretation of storylines and one Forbes article. That's not how burden of proof works.
Maybe the reason your previous account got banned wasn't because of some grand feminist conspiracy, but because this level of obsessive grievance-posting about fictional characters isn't what most people consider healthy discussion

Get. Help. Sincerely.

[Joszef Kiprich]

Or you could just ignore the ban evading troll.