Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Thinkpad]

Just to be clear is it Saturday as in Europe is in the future for the East Coast.

Or actually Saturday

[blaatschaap]

Just to be clear is it Saturday as in Europe is in the future for the East Coast.

Or actually Saturday

Saturday 11 am in Koeln IIRC, that's like roughly 5 am in US (depending where you are, of course) - quick mafs

[Samin]

Just to be clear is it Saturday as in Europe is in the future for the East Coast.

Or actually Saturday

Saturday 11am in Cologne, Germany

[Thinkpad]

Saturday 11 am in Koeln IIRC, that's like roughly 5 am in US (depending where you are, of course) - quick mafs

Oo sweet.

I love living in the past

So I should wake up to juicy info

[Hearthfinder]

A cool Haranir racial ability would be to be able to use the Rootways to travel to different continents with world trees.

[Nymrohd]

Oo sweet.

I love living in the past

So I should wake up to juicy info

Or to confusion as we are trying to piece together what was said by different streamers since we likely will not have Video for a long while.

[milkmustache]

What would be a massive change in understanding exactly there?

...If it is revealed that the Emerald Dream is actually the dreams of Azeroth? It would be a complete shift in everything we knew of the Emerald Dream, Eonar's essential template for life on Azeroth.

I wouldn't mind it if we found out the Titans were sort of utilizing a slumbering Azeroth for thousands of years to create the Dream and more, taking credit for it, but we'll see what direction they go.

[Timester]

I'm still feeling like it's not as simple as that. If what you're saying is true, it's a massive change from everything we know. I think there could be multiple things going on here.

Well, Maria said that the Rift of Aln is connected to the Haranir goddess (Azeroth), a place of Her Dreams and Her Nightmares.

It means that we have two Rift of Aln now, one in Emerald Dream and one outside the Emerald Dream. And the druids believe that the Dream originated from the Rift of Aln.

[Nymrohd]

A cool Haranir racial ability would be to be able to use the Rootways to travel to different continents with world trees.

So Druid's Dreamwalk?

[blaatschaap]

If we didn't know about housing in detail since basically over a year, people would be going crazy over it and not minor shit about whether trolls have short noses or whether the Horde capital should be a Horde capital

people keep saying that, but loads of people don't give a shit about housing. i've made this point yesterday, and no one has even tried refuting it, but if people played an mmo for housing, they wouldn't be playing wow, since it doesn't have housing. if housing is their killer feature, they're already 5 years invested in ESO, or other mmos with housing. actually, if we didn't know about housing, if anything, I might even be even more pissed off since they were working behind the scenes for 2 years on something I couldn't care less about. at least now I knew in the back of my mind we might get less content, even when they kept reassuring us it was done by an outside studio...

[Timester]

...If it is revealed that the Emerald Dream is actually the dreams of Azeroth? It would be a complete shift in everything we knew of the Emerald Dream, Eonar's essential template for life on Azeroth.

I wouldn't mind it if we found out the Titans were sort of utilizing a slumbering Azeroth for thousands of years to create the Dream and more, taking credit for it, but we'll see what direction they go.

Oh, it would still be a template. Eonar is strongly conected with the World Trees and their planting. Isn't a coicidence that the Rift of Aln is located on the nexus of all Roots.

[Hearthfinder]

So Druid's Dreamwalk?

Similar, yea. A Haranir Druid would be very efficient at travelling to natural locations.

[blaatschaap]

Oo sweet.

I love living in the past

So I should wake up to juicy info

I actually posted that comment 8 hours ago

[Dvalin]

the fact that voidstorm has stuff k'aresh doesn't have doesn't mean the identical stuff we do see wasn't copied from voidstorm, obviously they didn't copy it all. anyway, you can think what you want, but there is strong consensus forming among people who look into these things (literally) professionally as data miners for fan sites and other knowledgable creators that what I claimed is the case. why was orweyna prominently in the tww launch trailer if she has only a handful of throwaway quests in the campaign? here RedShirtGuy https://x.com/TheRedShirtGuy/status/1957966990498541688 points out k'aresh borrows from voidstorm and shadowlands. that's why they retconned brokers and ethereals to both be k'areshi, so they could reuse SL assets. the fact that they kind of made it work, because broker culture was already a fascimile of ethereals, doesn't mean 11.2 was always meant to be k'aresh. they likely pivoted around midway through TWW development. might be related to metzen coming in and turning it into a 'saga'. we'll never know the full details

A zone is more than just its props. K'aresh isn't the Timeless Isle part 2; Unique second patch zones are unique, and K'aresh has enough unique things going for it which you're conveniently ignoring. Things like the unique skybox, voice-acting, music, mob-design (Ethereals, boss-designs like Dimensius, Observers, etc.), raid-design (Manaforge: Omega is a very unique raid) as well as the short-stories and audio for the marketing. Some of the assets are obviously re-used, I'm not debating that. Things like the Brokers, Tazavesh (which wasn't a simple copy-paste as it needed roofs here and there) and some mobs which are also being used for Voidstorm. But as I said, those things are not the only things making a zone unique or pointing towards a rush-job or hastily changed plans. Even Zaralek Caverns reuses a lot of assets from the rest of Dragonflight. Zones do this all the time.

If you think you can just hastily put together all those unique things K'aresh has, then you're underestimating the amount of new stuff K'aresh brought with it. I also have strong doubts about the Broker/Ethereal retcon being a primarily economic one. It always seemed off why they didn't share any lore together, as they share the same archetype.

[Ferlion]

...If it is revealed that the Emerald Dream is actually the dreams of Azeroth? It would be a complete shift in everything we knew of the Emerald Dream, Eonar's essential template for life on Azeroth.

I wouldn't mind it if we found out the Titans were sort of utilizing a slumbering Azeroth for thousands of years to create the Dream and more, taking credit for it, but we'll see what direction they go.

That... has kind of been known for a while. Chronicles 1, which wasn't the first time this came up. It's always kind of been inferred that it's a bit of both, and that the Dream itself was a natural energy the World Soul was influencing, and then the Titans ordered a little pocket of it. Something reinforced with The Emerald Dream patch indicating that, actually, there was MORE to the Emerald Dream outside of the Titans influences.

*During the Ordering of Azeroth, the Emerald Dream was created by Freya, one of the nine titan-forged Keepers, to serve as the underlying blueprint for the planet. Some believe that she wove the Emerald Dream into being from nothing, others claim that this strange place had always existed in some form, a dream born from Azeroth's slumbering world-soul, which Freya tapped into and molded what would become known as the Dream as a way to commune with the nascent titan.*

All of which makes sense, of course, because the Emerald Dream is directly connected to the realm of life. So the World Soul taps into the realm of life by accident, dreams something, and blam, it becomes alive.

[Raetary]

The Rift of Aln being Azeroths manifested subconscious would be pretty cool ngl.

[Ibkee]

people keep saying that, but loads of people don't give a shit about housing. i've made this point yesterday, and no one has even tried refuting it, but if people played an mmo for housing, they wouldn't be playing wow, since it doesn't have housing. if housing is their killer feature, they're already 5 years invested in ESO, or other mmos with housing. actually, if we didn't know about housing, if anything, I might even be even more pissed off since they were working behind the scenes for 2 years on something I couldn't care less about. at least now I knew in the back of my mind we might get less content, even when they kept reassuring us it was done by an outside studio...

The reaction to the housing announcement was overwhelmingly positive and it's a feature that people have been requesting for literally decades - but go on.

It's a dumb arguement too, just because this thing exists elsewhere doesn't mean it's not something a plurality of players want in WoW. Like, people are addicted to this game, or their friends are there, or they just want one game in their lives, or they're invested in their character - TESO will never scratch the itch no matter what it does

[kahedakylar]

Ion: "Fun new info to share on Saturday" but probably don't get too excited since I'm not sure he knows what has been talked about already in their social media/shorts.

oh my god ethereal copers we are so BACK

[SunspotAnims]

If we didn't know about housing in detail since basically over a year, people would be going crazy over it and not minor shit about whether trolls have short noses or whether the Horde capital should be a Horde capital

Yeah, housing is massive and if everything we already knew about housing was just revealed this week it'd be a huge hype driver.

The decision that the devs made back in Dragonflight to focus on evergreen improvements to the game was, I think many of us can agree, a great decision for the long-term health of the game, but it did come with the drawback that every expansion needs to maintain the evergreen features that came before, and any new feature needs to be something that can also reasonably be maintained long-term. With that in mind, I'm looking at expansions now less as a list of box features and judging them more on the quantity/quality of the usual gameplay additions/improvements we've come to expect every expansion.

[Ferlion]

*But in one small corner of the Emerald Dream, in a vast, deepfissure, known to the druids as the Rift of Aln and believed to bewhere the magical realm itself first originated, even the combinedefforts of the archdruid and the high priestess could not entirelyend the struggle. The Nightmare held firmly in that place, whichthose of Malfurion’s calling believed bled into the Twisting Netherand the Great Dark Beyond. Gazing into it, Malfurion saw it as abottomless chasm which radiated with primeval energies that evenhe dared not investigate. Indeed, the very rift itself seemed half-dream, for it had a surreal quality to its expanse and to thearchdruid now and then seemed to ripple as if ready to fade or change.*

More or less what Stormrage said about it.