Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Pheraz]

What I don't understand is why they don't advertise housing with elf houses of they exist. Most people on horde okay BEs and 3/4 of alliance plays night or void elves

[Limayria]

Frankly, i find these "simplified x" rather concerning. They're not exactly very complex systems to begin with.

Probably removing material ranks if I had to guess

[Mace]

First, I would change Liadrin's face to be more feminine. The chad jaw Western devs like to use all the time is tiring. Also her oversized lips are weird. Blood Elves are supposed to be beautiful and attractive.
Then, the cinematic. Starts the same, music is more subtle, Liadrin doesn't mumble but just stares into the Sunwell with a defeated look on her face.
Lorthemar comes by - "Liadrin, it's time"
They both go on the wall to oversee the ongoing battle, before joining it themselves. It's rough. Liadrin gets mortally injured. Lorthemar is gravely injured as well. Situation is dire as the remaining elven forces lose hope, watching their leaders fall.
Then boom, Velen, Turalyon, the Army of the Light, show up in a rebuilt Exodar.
Turalyon: "By the Light... quick, Velen, get us down there!"
They all get teleported on the battlefield. Turalyon and his troops immediately charge into battle. Velen checks up on Liadrin but it's too late. He then rushes to Lorthermar which is barely still alive and is seen slowly carrying him to safety.
But not even Turalyon and his troops are able to hold back the forces of the void for long.
Then, boom. Azshara and the naga show up. She only makes eye contact with Turalyon, they acknowledge each other with a simple head nod, before she slithers away into the shadows.
With new naga troops to bolster their ranks, Turalyon and the Army of the Light are finally able to drive back the evil. Xal'atath, realizing she's outmatched, sends one last wave of her minions before fleeing herself.
The cinematic ends with a final shot of the battle, before a naga does a charged attack towards the "camera" at which points the cinematic ends and the expansion logo shows up. The end.

Features
Spellbreaker class, 1h/shield, magic/physical, tank/healer roles, instead of a DH spec
Shaman for all races
Paladin for all races
DHs open to VE, Draenei, Orcs and Nightborne
Silvermoon City as a Horde hub
New Exodar as an Alliance hub
Naga as neutral allied race. Starting zone: new underwater zone off the coast of Isle of Queldanas, instead of Harandar and Harronir
New customization options for existing races
World tier difficulty system. Applies to all world content and all old dungeons and raids. Want to breeze through an old dungeon just for transmog or face an actual challenge for better, more relevant rewards? This system would help with that.
Exiles reach is removed. Revamped starting zones for each race
Revamped class order halls, now an evergreen feature
Housing

Now, I'm just a random poster, not a story writer or anything. Compare what I just laid out with what was unveiled by people getting paid 5-6 figures working at a multibillion dollar corporation. We're not even talking anything revolutionary here, just things that pretty much any person part of the WoW community and with common sense plus 2 braincells knows would generate a lot more hype.
They're really, utterly and completely out of touch with what WoW players actually want, and what they want to see on their screens. Whoever is feeding information and feedback to managers and execs, is either getting it from the wrong places, or they're lying to them on purpose.

I also don't buy housing being a thing as a copout for the lack of features. As far as I understood, it's mostly if not entirely being developed by the studio in Boston which Blizzard bought not too long ago. It's also been announced almost a year ago. And by their own words, they have been at it for a long time.
So what is the rest of the WoW team doing? TWW itself was full of recycled assets and content from BfA and SL. Siren's Isle is literally BfA content. Undermine was put together with mostly BfA assets. K'aresh with SL assets, but purple. Not to mention that it's not even really an ethereal patch in a true sense, it's more of a broker patch. None of the major patches in TWW had anything groundbreaking besides the usual. The minor patches had nothing notable either. XP/collection FOMO events which is just tuning some numbers, shit like Dastardly duos which was completely forgotten already or recycled Horrific visions.
So given all this, and the way they hyped up the expansion, using language like "truly monumental cinematic" and advertising Midnight as having features that "will knock players' socks off", I am sitting here looking at what they actually revealed, wondering, what the fuck happened?
A feature that would've actually knocked players' socks off would be a dye system for armor.
The radio silence from Metzen is also unsettling, given that it's a new expansion being unveiled and he's nowhere to be seen. Not even a tweet, or a retweet of something. I have a weird feeling that he will leave soon, he seems completely checked out. Holly looked uneasy on stage as well, and the last minute restructuring, where the initial panel with Ion, Holly and Metzen was scrapped, is weird. So what the hell is going on?
Where is the development going to? Why was TWW gutted for this?
How can Legion release with banger cinematics, M+, artifact weapons system, order halls for each class, an entirely new class with lots of new customizations and gameplay, more dungeons, world quests, actual strong features in patches like Mage Tower - 10 years ago, with less employees and most likely worse tech.
I am honestly baffled. Blizzard needs to come clean with all this because to me it makes no fucking sense. Or they've simply given up.
I had my suspicions that the Worldsoul saga is nothing more than a marketing stunt and they used Metzen's charisma to sell it. It's basically turning out to be a single expansion cut split into 3 with some new and mostly old content sprinkled in. But this is worse than even that. And Midnight is supposed to be the big one out of the 3.
This is so fucked. I had such high expectations for this expansion, being the first one with Metzen in a fulltime role again and all the hype they were building up, and honestly it's more underwhelming than even TWW. Like there really is no hype and you can tell. The live audience was completely dead. It's disappointment at worst and meh at best even on WoW fansites. Everywhere.

My only post on this thing as I have nothing else to say.

Didn’t you know the new ruling? We will give you crumbs and you will be happy with it.

[Dvalin]

Alright, some deepdiving into screens, stills and press-information:

It seems enough Amani trolls still have the signature 'Troll-nose' (just pause the feature trailer around one second in).

The Quel'thalas zone preview talks about 3 adversaries: the Void (and its cults; Presumably Twilight's Hammer or wannabe's), some Amani incursions as well as the new Lightbloom (originating from a certain Dawnwell - maybe located in Harander?). This bit of Quel'thalas can also be seen at around 00:32 in the feature trailer. One of the Harander dungeons is about the radiation of the Dawnwell, as well.

Also, those humanoid Void-creatures are called 'Domanaar'. There's a big one at the end of the feature trailer, probably one of the two new March on Quel'danas Raid bosses. You can cleary see the Sunwell emanating a Void-like light behind him. Seems we lose during the first chapter, somehow.

Some new Voidstorm creatures featured in trailers and other promo-material: those flying Felbat-like creatures, the big bipedal lizard-like creatures (and a boss-version with extra limbs in the Raid promo short), a hydra-like one in one of the presskit screenshots, as well as a more wolf-like/Felhound-like variant. Then there are new Void Jellyfish, those Domanaar, lean Voidwalkers, and new small flesh-horrors.

[blaatschaap]

This your first expansion release? Since when does anything we've seen compromise "all they've cooked up"?

I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase it? Only skipped mop btw. Played everything else since 2004

[huth]

Are you serious? In Dragonflight you couldn't even tell what quality end product you would be crafting without some kind of jerryrigged addon that simulated the craft based on experimentally acquired knowledge. Even now, the UI is completely inadequate to the complexity, with a lot of black box functionality that is inscrutable

Such as? The only uncertainty in DF was whether it would crit and become 1 quality higher, which was a displayed percentage, not some arcane knowledge. That is now a deterministic process instead.

I'm not sure what you're even talking about for TWW. There's a few random results, but they're clearly displayed, and mostly related to chances of saving resources.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase it? Only skipped mop btw. Played everything else since 2004

Because you very clearly missed that no expansion announcement has ever had the full feature and content list.

[Xilurm]

Do people forget that Legion was that big simply because they had to sacrifice WoD before it?

[Pyrophax]

First, I would change Liadrin's face to be more feminine. The chad jaw Western devs like to use all the time is tiring. Also her oversized lips are weird. Blood Elves are supposed to be beautiful and attractive.
Then, the cinematic. Starts the same, music is more subtle, Liadrin doesn't mumble but just stares into the Sunwell with a defeated look on her face.
Lorthemar comes by - "Liadrin, it's time"
They both go on the wall to oversee the ongoing battle, before joining it themselves. It's rough. Liadrin gets mortally injured. Lorthemar is gravely injured as well. Situation is dire as the remaining elven forces lose hope, watching their leaders fall.
Then boom, Velen, Turalyon, the Army of the Light, show up in a rebuilt Exodar.
Turalyon: "By the Light... quick, Velen, get us down there!"
They all get teleported on the battlefield. Turalyon and his troops immediately charge into battle. Velen checks up on Liadrin but it's too late. He then rushes to Lorthermar which is barely still alive and is seen slowly carrying him to safety.
But not even Turalyon and his troops are able to hold back the forces of the void for long.
Then, boom. Azshara and the naga show up. She only makes eye contact with Turalyon, they acknowledge each other with a simple head nod, before she slithers away into the shadows.
With new naga troops to bolster their ranks, Turalyon and the Army of the Light are finally able to drive back the evil. Xal'atath, realizing she's outmatched, sends one last wave of her minions before fleeing herself.
The cinematic ends with a final shot of the battle, before a naga does a charged attack towards the "camera" at which points the cinematic ends and the expansion logo shows up. The end.

Features
Spellbreaker class, 1h/shield, magic/physical, tank/healer roles, instead of a DH spec
Shaman for all races
Paladin for all races
DHs open to VE, Draenei, Orcs and Nightborne
Silvermoon City as a Horde hub
New Exodar as an Alliance hub
Naga as neutral allied race. Starting zone: new underwater zone off the coast of Isle of Queldanas, instead of Harandar and Harronir
New customization options for existing races
World tier difficulty system. Applies to all world content and all old dungeons and raids. Want to breeze through an old dungeon just for transmog or face an actual challenge for better, more relevant rewards? This system would help with that.
Exiles reach is removed. Revamped starting zones for each race
Revamped class order halls, now an evergreen feature
Housing

Now, I'm just a random poster, not a story writer or anything. Compare what I just laid out with what was unveiled by people getting paid 5-6 figures working at a multibillion dollar corporation. We're not even talking anything revolutionary here, just things that pretty much any person part of the WoW community and with common sense plus 2 braincells knows would generate a lot more hype.
They're really, utterly and completely out of touch with what WoW players actually want, and what they want to see on their screens. Whoever is feeding information and feedback to managers and execs, is either getting it from the wrong places, or they're lying to them on purpose.

I also don't buy housing being a thing as a copout for the lack of features. As far as I understood, it's mostly if not entirely being developed by the studio in Boston which Blizzard bought not too long ago. It's also been announced almost a year ago. And by their own words, they have been at it for a long time.
So what is the rest of the WoW team doing? TWW itself was full of recycled assets and content from BfA and SL. Siren's Isle is literally BfA content. Undermine was put together with mostly BfA assets. K'aresh with SL assets, but purple. Not to mention that it's not even really an ethereal patch in a true sense, it's more of a broker patch. None of the major patches in TWW had anything groundbreaking besides the usual. The minor patches had nothing notable either. XP/collection FOMO events which is just tuning some numbers, shit like Dastardly duos which was completely forgotten already or recycled Horrific visions.
So given all this, and the way they hyped up the expansion, using language like "truly monumental cinematic" and advertising Midnight as having features that "will knock players' socks off", I am sitting here looking at what they actually revealed, wondering, what the fuck happened?
A feature that would've actually knocked players' socks off would be a dye system for armor.
The radio silence from Metzen is also unsettling, given that it's a new expansion being unveiled and he's nowhere to be seen. Not even a tweet, or a retweet of something. I have a weird feeling that he will leave soon, he seems completely checked out. Holly looked uneasy on stage as well, and the last minute restructuring, where the initial panel with Ion, Holly and Metzen was scrapped, is weird. So what the hell is going on?
Where is the development going to? Why was TWW gutted for this?
How can Legion release with banger cinematics, M+, artifact weapons system, order halls for each class, an entirely new class with lots of new customizations and gameplay, more dungeons, world quests, actual strong features in patches like Mage Tower - 10 years ago, with less employees and most likely worse tech.
I am honestly baffled. Blizzard needs to come clean with all this because to me it makes no fucking sense. Or they've simply given up.
I had my suspicions that the Worldsoul saga is nothing more than a marketing stunt and they used Metzen's charisma to sell it. It's basically turning out to be a single expansion cut split into 3 with some new and mostly old content sprinkled in. But this is worse than even that. And Midnight is supposed to be the big one out of the 3.
This is so fucked. I had such high expectations for this expansion, being the first one with Metzen in a fulltime role again and all the hype they were building up, and honestly it's more underwhelming than even TWW. Like there really is no hype and you can tell. The live audience was completely dead. It's disappointment at worst and meh at best even on WoW fansites. Everywhere.

My only post on this thing as I have nothing else to say.

Sounds lame for me. I probably change Liadrin face, but not so much.
Cinematic about Horde characters is given, so I don't complain. No Alliance characters aside some no-name paladins are cool too.
Remember when ally fans claimed that Midnight is Horde expansion? So take your time and wait your turn.

[Jaggler]

Do people forget that Legion was that big simply because they had to sacrifice WoD before it?

People forget a lot if it benefits their argument.

Legion was big because blizz basically only had 1 patch for WoD

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Do people forget that Legion was that big simply because they had to sacrifice WoD before it?

I mean, people can hate BFA but it was "big" one too and nothing was sacrificed for it, from all quests being voiced, a lot of cutscenes and CGI cinematics, plenty of allied races and shit.

So far midnight feature wise looks pretty meh for the hype that they created themselves, yes housing is a big feature but i think people expected something "big" beyond that aswell, because housing systems in mmos aint for everyone at the end of the day.

Im still waiting for the panels, so maybe they will have more there.

[Mace]

What I don't understand is why they don't advertise housing with elf houses of they exist. Most people on horde okay BEs and 3/4 of alliance plays night or void elves

I also wonder that myself - the nicest building architecture totally u used - but hey

[Wangming]

Okay, I woke up. Time to see if the housing showcase can save this slop.
Annie is on the screen, looking nice and everyone is making pandaren stuff, so that's a good sign.

[allegrian]

You know I'm on Reddit and the official forum:


reddit dot com Beacon2001

us forums blizzard dot com Varodoc-Stormrage


This expansion, no, this entire Worldsoul Saga is tailor-made for me. Alleria, Anduin, Arator, Vereesa, Quel'Thalas, the Void, all tailor-made for me.

And yet I am alone in my excitement.

It's been disheartening to see so much negativity on the official forums and Reddit. I don't understand why. Cinematic was fine, Quel'Thalas looks beautiful, it's a fact that Blizzard never had a pro-Alliance agenda because there's no Alliance character in the trailer, and yet...

Liadrin looks ugly, so expansion must be bad, hurr durr hurr durr.

The War Within was an excellent expansion, and I am so hyped for Midnight.

NO SYLVANAS IN SIGHT.

A DREAM COME TRUE.

i am alone in my excitement. But it doesn't matter. My agendas remain strong, both on the official forums and Reddit. This is the Void expansion, this is the Alleria expansion, what I've waited since 2017.

And I won't let gooners ruin it for me just because Liadrin's ugly.

Oh and, btw, I'm not surprised by the negativity on this forum. This forum's infamous for being super negative and a retreat for all the toxic people banned from the official forums/official subreddit.

Whatever. Doesn't matter.

I won.

Silvermoon is neutral.

Naked gnomes will be dancing in the fountains and phoenixes of Silvermoon, and there's nothing you Hordies can do about it.

I have simply...

Won.

But alliance will have some blocked areas, they said.

[Dvalin]

Okay, I woke up. Time to see if the housing showcase can save this slop.
Annie is on the screen, looking nice and everyone is making pandaren stuff, so that's a good sign.

It may not be to your taste, but it is not slop. It's still a meaty expansion, like any expansion.

[allegrian]

Sounds lame for me. I probably change Liadrin face, but not so much.
Cinematic about Horde characters is given, so I don't complain. No Alliance characters aside some no-name paladins are cool too.
Remember when ally fans claimed that Midnight is Horde expansion? So take your time and wait your turn.

It's a horde characters cinematic... about pretty paladin elves (+ human paladins, for some reason) praying to the light. It feels much more alliance than the core horde vibes. So even if it's canonically and mechanically Horde, it's an alliance (classic human/elf/dwarf fantasy) feeling expansion.

In the end, the world soul saga will be mainly about humans, elves, and dwarves, with some extra races sprinkled it as extra (goblin, trolls...).

[Hearthfinder]

Do people forget that Legion was that big simply because they had to sacrifice WoD before it?

They abandoned WoD to enhance Legion. But that's the thing. TWW also felt a little bit abandoned, or rather restructured, since we saw so much use of time gating, farming events, and recycled content.

Several patches basically felt empty compared to their Dragonflight counterparts.

It was a general assumption that this was all because TWW was reworked into a trilogy halfway through its development, and that it would all result in a massive Midnight expansion when all of that reshuffling came to fruition.

Now it's starting to look like they just divided TWW up into three parts, and slightly expanded each part.

Three expansions that started out with 33% of their usual content on a whiteboard somewhere, but with enough added to bring them up to like 60%.

Midnight feels incomplete. That's the first problem.

The second problem is that Midnight should have been extraordinary, not just complete.

The third problem is what this implies for TLT. Will Northrend be 2 Northrend zones and 2 random zones nobody cares about? Will it add a class that feels like it should have been added in Midnight, and not much else?

"Hey guys, welcome to Northrend! Here's playable Spellbreakers while you enjoy questing through Icecrown, the Stormpeaks, the Undersea, and Iridikron's forgotten lair."

[blaatschaap]

Because you very clearly missed that no expansion announcement has ever had the full feature and content list.

Name a single significant new gameplay feature with staying power we got in TWW that they didn't talk about when they revealed the expansion. I'll wait (forever, since there aren't any). All we got is recycled content (visions, siren isle) and half-assed slop (nightfall, duos "event", phase diving, if you can even call that a gameplay feature)

[Pyrophax]

But alliance will have some blocked areas, they said.

Because it is Horde city? If guards are not killing blue team at sight is large victory to you. They probably even put neutral inkeeper for you. Oh, and 2 or 3 blue flags.
And its still much more Horde was given for 3 expansions.

Also - most of concerns are from overthinking and overdreaming about this 11th (!) expansion.
People just dreamed about some High Elf shit, some Void Elf shit, about merging elves. Remember, that was not what Metzen said 2 years ago.
We got huge thing - Housing.
We start revamping old world.
Story is not completely shit for now.
Horde got some attention.
Trolls! Amani trolls! Friendly Amani Trolls! PLAYABLE AMANI TROLLS IN THE FUTURE!
Half trolls from Underground.
New spec for DH
New race for DH
Probably paladins for all races will come too.
Not 2 but 3 Neighborhoods!

Nagas and NEs was made up. Merging elves was made up, Ethereal was made up, Entire North EK revamp was made up.
So calm your tits and wait story to deliver.

[Wangming]

I mean, people can hate BFA but it was "big" one too and nothing was sacrificed for it, from all quests being voiced, a lot of cutscenes and CGI cinematics, plenty of allied races and shit.

So far midnight feature wise looks pretty meh for the hype that they created themselves, yes housing is a big feature but i think people expected something "big" beyond that aswell, because housing systems in mmos aint for everyone at the end of the day.

Im still waiting for the panels, so maybe they will have more there.

BfA had tons of new features, risky inventive features. Just quite a few of them didn't land and the story was horrificly bad. It didn't fail from lack of effort, though.

Notes about housing: Everyone doing Pandaren stuff. Take a note, Blizzard

[micwini]

I AM wondering where all this extra effort is put in to now that it seems there is not much to the new expansion. Are they actually going to completely revamp the entire game post saga and is that what they are working on?

It's OK to be light on content for a while, but would like to know when/where this is going to pay off.
Thought it was Midnight, but so far thats not it.

Is it TLT? Post saga? World revamp?