Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Hearthfinder]

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.

Here's probably what happened:

Azeroth is the Earth-Mother, life thrives around her.

Elune and The Winter Queen are somehow tied to that because of Life and Death, as well as An'she and Mu'sha due to the sun and moon caring for the world and its inhabitants. Unclear exactly how.

Eonar arrives with her Titan team, but realises how precious Azeroth is. Elune reaches out and forms a bond with her.

Together, they plan on undermining the Old Gods and the Titans by planting World Trees and shaping Azeroth's dreams into something they can more efficiently make use of. From the chaos, they create civilizations of life that sets out to protect and nurture Azeroth.

Aman'Thul feels worried and betrayed, takes down Elun'ahir at the center of Kalimdor.

Azeroth bleeds and Eonar weeps. But the roots survive. Eonar dies at the hands of Sargeras but Elune remains.

She finds new allies, giving rise to Alexstrazsa and Ysera, and she watches over the Night Elves as they grow. Her favoured children.

The Haranir working from below, meanwhile, tend to the roots in secret. The guardians replacing Freyja as she abandoned her task.

The dream is accessible through the Rift of Aln, which formed where Aman'Thul tore down Elun'ahir.

So while the roots of the trees reach into it, drawing power from the dream, so did the Old Gods. Corrupting the dream and creating the Nightmare. That's also where they drew their stength and also how they were able to do the Gift of Flesh, and grow kind of independent and conscious.

Now the Nightmare is gone but the Rift remains and can still be corrupted.

[blaatschaap]

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.

got a feeling a literal blizzard developer could tell you to your face my theory is what happened and you'd still deny it, so I guess this back and forth isn't really that productive. I'm not saying they decided 11.2 would be k'aresh after undermine. we already knew in June 2024, before TWW was even out, that we'd get an ethereal raid in the ex pac. that doesn't mean that was the plan when TWW development started. we know they concurrently developed TWW and Midnight at least in part, since we already saw updated Blood Elf assets before TWW was even out, so they were able to swap things around when their plan changes. anyway, I said the facts, you can believe what you want against all reason ;-)

[Samin]

...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.

This has all been already put into question, chiefly in On the Nature of the Dream. A going theory back then was that Eonar merely found and "ordered" (part of) the Dream, but considering what we learnt about the Manifold, even that may just have been a side effect of Azeroth's imprisonment.

There's also the Legend of Elun Ahir which is not directly related to the Dream, but shines some new light on Eonar and how her actions were perceived by the other Titans, especially Aman'thul.

[Fahrad Wagner]

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.

hehehehhee

[Ferlion]

As further consideration for the Rift of Aln being somewhere underneath Hyjal, I'd also like to point out we have Titan Ruins in Darkshore that were never really explained as well.

[Vakir]

Ethereal hype train! I think they will also announce playable Naga and Ogres.

And a pony.

[Marlamin]

hehehehhee

https://www.twitch.tv/esfandtv/clip/...KgFcRh2awks0on for the full Ion quote (you can click watch full video in the bottom right to watch the full speech, but that was the only interesting bit imo).

[blaatschaap]

playable ethereal aren't happening. they only have updated models for k'aresh, because they already made those because they will be a significant presence in Voidstorm for midnight. I just figured it out while I was writing this other post about haranir being pushed back to midnight. stop with the cope, it is not happening, people.

[Ferlion]

Didn't Scaleface list something about Rift of Aln during the buildup to the original TWW Midnight reveal? A domain or something.

[Andromedes]

Ion sounded really excited, when he talked about fun new info on saturday. This is big guys.

[rainhard]

Wait so the harronir goddess is azeroth and she dreams gods into existance? Very yog-sothoth of her.

Also noticed there are some naga there?

[Nymrohd]

Ion sounded really excited, when he talked about fun new info on saturday. This is big guys.

Please don't hype this, he is just going to tell us how talent progression will work on Midnight. And it absolutely can be exciting (especially if we are getting 10 more points on HEro Talents, that likely means new visuals and maybe even a few specs get a new active).

[Daniri]

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.

I'm playing WoW because it's WoW. I'm not shopping around MMOs looking for particular features. That doesn't mean there aren't features I want in WoW, but I'm not about to go play another game just for one feature I really want.

[Andromedes]

Please don't hype this, he is just going to tell us how talent progression will work on Midnight. And it absolutely can be exciting (especially if we are getting 10 more points on HEro Talents, that likely means new visuals and maybe even a few specs get a new active).

Sorry for my advanced sarcasm, i will tone it down, so it is more recognizable

[Marlamin]

Please don't hype this, he is just going to tell us how talent progression will work on Midnight. And it absolutely can be exciting (especially if we are getting 10 more points on HEro Talents, that likely means new visuals and maybe even a few specs get a new active).

It's funny because the fake hyping is so obvious but people are still going to be falling for it. Media literacy is dead.

[Vakir]

Ion sounded really excited, when he talked about fun new info on saturday. This is big guys.

His affect remained flat but I think his volume went up by about 0.3%!

Full world revamp confirmed!

Wait so the harronir goddess is azeroth and she dreams gods into existance? Very yog-sothoth of her.

If this is the return of Azeroth being thought of as Azathoth, two decades after people made that theory when we first saw C'Thun, I'm going to become the Joker.

[Ferlion]

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...

With respect to this, Blizzard has a tendency to take other features and make them better. It used to be their defining thing. They weren't original, but they were fun.

Housing may not be big for everyone in other games, but other games don't have something like neighborhoods.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Ion sounded really excited, when he talked about fun new info on saturday. This is big guys.

Ogres confirmed.

[Jaggler]

This has all been already put into question, chiefly in On the Nature of the Dream. A going theory back then was that Eonar merely found and "ordered" (part of) the Dream, but considering what we learnt about the Manifold, even that may just have been a side effect of Azeroth's imprisonment.

There's also the Legend of Elun Ahir which is not directly related to the Dream, but shines some new light on Eonar and how her actions were perceived by the other Titans, especially Aman'thul.

If we go by what we learned in 10.2, it seems that the Emerald Dream is basically an ordered portion of what you could call the "Lifelands"

[Nymrohd]

It's funny because the fake hyping is so obvious but people are still going to be falling for it. Media literacy is dead.

To be fair, Ion doesn't have an expressive vocal register