Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

The quality of the reveal cinematic suggests otherwise.

Yeah, I genuinely still feel like they could've conveyed the context of Lady Liadrins' story and a lot of other moves to enhance it to at least be a bit more exciting and interesting but alas they did just play it very safe and assumed the audience would grasp Lady Liadrins' entire backstory and feel the enhanced pathos from that and her receiving the Lights' help.

[Dvalin]

I'm also willing to add in the late game narrative pivot in TWW and the issues that may have brought up, like Orwenya in the cinematic vs representation in the game. I don't expect Midnight to have a drop off in cinematics at all.

I think the 'narrative pivot' was known before the cinematics were even made. It only feels like a pivot because we know Metzen changed things up during pre-production. Midnight wouldn't launch 18 months after The War Within if it was thought up that late during development. As the return to the Old World is Metzen's thing.

[milkmustache]

I think the 'narrative pivot' was known before the cinematics were even made. It only feels like a pivot because we know Metzen changed things up during pre-production. Midnight wouldn't launch 18 months after The War Within if it was thought up that late during development. As the return to the Old World is Metzen's thing.

I think maybe there's things that are on a larger scale in the pivot/return of Metzen, and lesser scale. I completely agree about Midnight and returning to the Old World. That was brought up waaaaay earlier on than the cinematics. But maybe Harrandar being pushed to Midnight wasn't, and since it was being developed for TWW, that's why we see a focus on Orwenya in the cinematics alongside Faerin and an Earthen.

[Nymrohd]

Yeah, I genuinely still feel like they could've conveyed the context of Lady Liadrins' story and a lot of other moves to enhance it to at least be a bit more exciting and interesting but alas they did just play it very safe and assumed the audience would grasp Lady Liadrins' entire backstory and feel the enhanced pathos from that and her receiving the Lights' help.

Oh I am not talking about the storyline of the cinematic. That's . . . whatever. I am talking about the weirdly plastic skin on both her and Bob and the fact that while we now know the Sunwell called actual people to its defense, the cinematic has a relatively small uniform group. It screams budget.

[COBRAstriker]

I'm still struggling to understand why did they market the cinematic as being "truly monumental" and that it is "bound to make an impact". That's the real head scratcher. The descriptions they used couldn't be further from the truth

From that wording, I was expecting something similar to Cata's cinematic with Deathwing ravaging the lands. And you got to experience that destruction as soon as you logged in. That's what "making an impact" looks like. Nothing really happens in Midnight's cinematic. There is some action but no tangible outcome. Sunwell getting corrupted or anything. It fell completely flat

[milkmustache]

I'm still struggling to understand why did they market the cinematic as being "truly monumental" and that it is "bound to make an impact". That's the real head scratcher. The descrptions they used couldn't be further from the truth

Easy excuse is there must always be hype.

The unfortunate reality is that there's probably a serious disconnect between what they think players want to see, and what players actually want to see. I'm guessing the "monumental" portion was the army emerging from the Sunwell to join the fight and the declaration that we can all do this together.

Which is cool in its own ways, but there's so much telling and not enough showing, especially with all this "together!!!" that they've been doing since Dragonflight. It's a cool cinematic, but it's far from monumental.

[Nymrohd]

Easy excuse is there must always be hype.

The unfortunate reality is that there's probably a serious disconnect between what they think players want to see, and what players actually want to see. I'm guessing the "monumental" portion was the army emerging from the Sunwell to join the fight and the declaration that we can all do this together.

Which is cool in its own ways, but there's so much telling and not enough showing, especially with all this "together!!!" that they've been doing since Dragonflight. It's a cool cinematic, but it's far from monumental.

It's also that the standard is SKY HIGH. This is the company that produced the Diablo 4 reveal cinematic and the BfA cinematic. They were the industry standard. For a different studio the Midnight cinematic would be more than adequate. But this is Blizzard.

[Joshuaj]

My biggest issue with the zone is less it not beign abstract enough, and more it just being bland. They definitely could have gone deeper into the mindfuck territory of having the zone visually look unfinished. But more than that, I just never understood why the area all about printing a fantastical afterlife made what looked to be the most boring meadow imaginable.
What kind of immensely boring dude is going to end up there?

Given one of the bosses in the raid are unfinished variants of the four covenant leaders, I always wondered if the zone would have been better if it was a weird amalgamation of the four covenant zones.

- - - Updated - - -



It's a problem because that is what the First Ones were explained to be in ZM. If the zone instead just said the First Ones were the Titans then the whole forces thing would be a moot point.

That would also go against their architecture and vibe being different from the Titans LMAO. So, while you see it as being a fix, I see it as a complete waste.

- - - Updated - - -

It's missing a little nuance. That "new creative lead" trying to "shake things up" was Alex Afrasiabi who was working on WoW since it started. And then when Afrasiabi was fired, Danuser was saddled with the responsibility of landing a storyline he probably didn't want in the first place. And then he was in charge of Dragonflight, which was like, whatever, dragons.If only for the sake that 11.2.7 is guaranteed to be a nothing-burger at this point.

11.2.7 is basically just housing early access for pre-order folks + maybe something else at best.

[COBRAstriker]

The unfortunate reality is that there's probably a serious disconnect between what they think players want to see, and what players actually want to see

This is my biggest fear. That the people which sit around in meetings while working on this stuff might think to themselves that it's the coolest thing ever. Terrifying, but it's probably also true. They have plenty of old material and a formula behind them that has been proven to work time and time again, no idea why does it have to be like this

[Joshuaj]

As with many things, the implementation of them is what really matters. And, Blizzard does not have a good track record of that, going by the general opinion every time they become the topic of dicussion. Recontexualization and "enhancing" (wether or not it does so is almost always subjective and dependant on the specific individual cases) of existing lore is by definition a retcon. When it changes the meaning or context of a previous story or scene, it is a retcon. It doesnt have to explicitly overwrite the entire events of the story or scene to be one.



Sure it is. But given that Dimensius seems to be the most powerful (or at least one of them) among them, and is also the first and only one yet the player character have even met, its pretty inconsistent to entirely remove him from the one main agenda that defined the VLs entire collective role throughout the story up until that point, without any explanation at all.



Chronicle Page 54:


Chronicle Page 59:


There is really not much to argue about here.


That is very much what i meant. And the fact that most forms of canon information in WoW exists in some form of in-universe PoV lore is what made Chronicle originally so special (for better or worse), and why the retcon of that is so significant.

Idk what y'all are arguing, but if we're talking the Titan Spirits being in the Keepers, I need to ask y'all one thing:

Did y'all forget that the Legion invaded Ulduar early in 7.0? Or? Cause it's entirely possible that's how Sargeras got ahold of their spirits.

- - - Updated - - -

I suspect Elun'Ahir, the creation of the Well of Eternity, the Earth Mother myth, and other similar stories all stem from some ancient chain of events that all come back to one central theme: the Titan conspiracy in The Last Titan.

They all read a bit like this:

- There was life on Azeroth. Verdant, blossoming, and fertile. Probably coming from the Worldsoul, singing and dreaming in the depths.
- Titans did something, or something just happened to take place when they arrived, and put a damper on all of it.

Questions remain:

- What is Elune's true role?
- What's the catch with the Old Gods? I feel like Blizzard is doing something there.

I mean, Elune's true role is probably more simple than people think. She's likely just the Goddess of Dreams or something, as everything about her is based around worlds and their moons + dreams.

[COBRAstriker]

It's also that the standard is SKY HIGH. This is the company that produced the Diablo 4 reveal cinematic and the BfA cinematic. They were the industry standard. For a different studio the Midnight cinematic would be more than adequate. But this is Blizzard.

Perhaps they should stop setting such high expectations by using more moderate language? Ever since WSS was announced all they did was overpromise and underdeliver

[Dvalin]

I think maybe there's things that are on a larger scale in the pivot/return of Metzen, and lesser scale. I completely agree about Midnight and returning to the Old World. That was brought up waaaaay earlier on than the cinematics. But maybe Harrandar being pushed to Midnight wasn't, and since it was being developed for TWW, that's why we see a focus on Orwenya in the cinematics alongside Faerin and an Earthen.

Both of us know 'the Rootlands' (presumably Harandar) was first set to become a zone for the War Within. The question is when this got changed during development, which is hard to guess.

Seeing the zone in the Midnight-previews does make it seem like they had to change quite a few bits to make it make sense in the context of the Midnight expansion; There are lots of new mobs and the 'antagonist' has something to do with a Dawnwell and the power of the Light. So, I guess the change was 'early enough' for it not to have a gigantic impact on the quality and patch cycle of The War Within. An expansion having 4 (big) zones at launch isn't that weird, either. Orweyna also does feature in Azj Kahet as well as in Undermine (a patch zone developed after the Worldsoul Saga was thought up).

So, we'll probably never know the exact things the developers wanted with the first iterations of TWW before the Saga was introduced, or Harandar's narrative place in that version of TWW. I'm curious how smoothly things will go with Harandar, narratively speaking, when the Midnight datamining hits us and we get to experience the main questlines there. That might shed some extra light on things (pun intended). For now I'm of the opinion that the big narrative changes happened early enough in mid/late pre-production for the Worldsoul Saga not to suffer too much from it, and us returning to the Old World as well as some fully unique and new zones is a very big plus.

[Joshuaj]

I just think personifying the cosmic forces is a dumb idea. Why does everything have to be so super sentai? Let magics just be magics. Don't give them a face, a being, a voice, etc. Just let them exist. It just dumbs the lore down a whole ton, especially in the state it's in where as previously discussed, everything has to equal real world values. It's just bad projection and bad writing.

Metzen and whoever else are inspired by things in DC, Marvel, etc. The reason why the forces might have a sentience or being is probably the result of them taking inspiration from both IRL beliefs and things from DC, etc.

Funny enough, a lot of supreme forces have a type of sentience or being in fiction. It's unique, really.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

This is my main issue. The scale of it.
If I was making Zereth Mortis I would have used the skybox to create Escher visual illusions of similar facilities that would peak behind inconsistent fog (so as not to tire player; you would be able to see and be bewildered by them if you stood still and observed but during gameplay they would be background noise). If you are going to keep screaming about the fractals, give me fractals.

That's cool and pretty technically doable, I like it.

[Joshuaj]

Wether or not its good for the stories is a different matter, it simply is that way. But what is also definitely not good for the stories is to constantly be retroactively changed, for obvious reasons.

Which is why i said that a good writer would try and find ways to integrate newer stories into the old ones, without having to constantly actively change or overwrite them. But, from what weve seen, they just dont care enough to do so, bc the other way is just much easier, and much more convenient.



Which goes directly against what Chronicle established as the VLs primary goal. Yknow, them "pooling their power" to create the OGs to corrupt and create a "Dark Titan" and all of that. Not simply gobbling them up.



We werent expecting the Titans to be around as prisoners in Antorus, bc Chronicle stated clearly and in no uncertain terms that they werent. It specifically described that everything left of them slammed into the Keepers on Azeroth. (which it later used to explain how and why Lei Shen got his powers.) But in the game, that was pretty much never referenced or shown at all, instead they are suddenly and without explanation shown as mostly captured by the BL, and Eonar hiding on some planet.



Which is why i said we can only speculate yet. Ofc its not set in stone yet. Leaving the "creation of the Warcraft universe" mostly open wouldve been better, and revealing it was one of Chronicles biggest mistakes.
But the implications so far are quite clearly pointing in one direction, considering they straight up retconned Chronicles canon status, the letters from Odyn, the plan for TLT to reveal some grand titan conspiracy, and the teases for a Seventh Force/First One as the new big bad.

Regarding the Void Lords and their plans, a couple things:

1. The Void Lords using the Old Gods may or may not have been for the purpose of creating a "Dark Titan". The writer says this was the case, but that's due to the known information given to them and therefore us. It's just as likely the Old Gods were used to simply weaken a worldsoul for consumption, or that the Void Lords had different usages for the Old Gods.

2. Kinda going with my first point, the Void Lords do NOT operate on the same wavelength. If Dimensius had no real major part in the Old Gods's creation, then it's possible he didn't fuck with the other Void Lords and their corruption plan, or something along those lines.

And 3. If we ignore the other 2 points, then it's entirely possible the Nathrezim were just bullshitting when they told Sargeras that "Dark Titan plot" information. Reminder, they wanted to terrifying a Titan and cause the Pantheon to break from within. Was that part ever stated in Chronicle? No. But even in clarified stories, the truth is still left open somewhat.

[COBRAstriker]

Another issue is that anyone who is actually invested in the story is shunned for their enthusiasm. You can scarcely talk about specific characters or factions without some absolute nutters coming out of the woodwork to screech about how liking X, Y or Z is 'problematic' because they, themselves, cannot separate fiction from reality.

So in part, writers embrace 'safe' writing as to not rock the boat which leads to the current trend of blandness.

Oh yeah, I know and have experienced this first hand. Liking Garrosh for example is verboten. But I stopped caring what these people say a long time ago, they're really not even worth engaging with. Waste of time

The issue is that a lot of the usual suspects also like to orbit the social media accounts of people that do write for WoW, often times trying to sway them into a certain direction, or to make certain changes to quests on the PTR that have made them feel "uncomfy"

It is a problem, for sure. These people are better off moving to something like Sims

[milkmustache]

This is my biggest fear. That the people which sit around in meetings while working on this stuff might think to themselves that it's the coolest thing ever. Terrifying, but it's probably also true. They have plenty of old material and a formula behind them that has been proven to work time and time again, no idea why does it have to be like this

I mean, I think it's definitely partially true. And that's not to shit on Blizzard only for this, it's a societal thing as well. I think they can recover, but I don't think their soul searching for alignment between themselves and the player base is anywhere close to finished just because they're getting some things right.

[Joshuaj]

This is my main issue. The scale of it.
If I was making Zereth Mortis I would have used the skybox to create Escher visual illusions of similar facilities that would peak behind inconsistent fog (so as not to tire player; you would be able to see and be bewildered by them if you stood still and observed but during gameplay they would be background noise). If you are going to keep screaming about the fractals, give me fractals.

Low-key, I'd like this, but it's entirely possible the different Zereths are distanced immensely far from one another. Also, we kinda do see different patterns and fractals, even in the skybox. Hell, the Heart of the Sepulcher literally shows us the original fractal (now balanced through the pattern), where the Progenitors reign.

- - - Updated - - -

Found this interesting statement from Danuser back in his 9.2 Millenium interview regarding the First Ones and their mysteries: "This is not a theme we expect you to see resolved in Eternity's End; it is a mystery that began with this patch and will continue for a while. It will be interesting to read and hear the fan speculation as it unfolds. new clues are being revealed about this."

Low key, I'm fairly certain the Worldsoul Saga is also being used as a means to continue this narrative, especially since 9.2 has things that certainly could imply some crazy stuff regarding Azeroth.

- - - Updated - - -

The interview also has Danuser stating that the Cosmic Forces seen in the Cosmology were created by the First Ones, but if Nobbels interview with him, as well as other things are anything to go by, he's likely just saying "Cosmic Forces" as in the Titans, the Void Lords, etc.

[Nymrohd]

That's cool and pretty technically doable, I like it.

I mean I just came up with it but I think it would work. It's 6 flat pieces of art in a cube around the zone. They already had the fog element that they used to cover the water borders at the entry area. And it would convey what I assume they wanted; abstraction and non-linearity.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I mean I just came up with it but I think it would work. It's 6 flat pieces of art in a cube around the zone. They already had the fog element that they used to cover the water borders at the entry area. And it would convey what I assume they wanted; abstraction and non-linearity.

I'd also say deliberately trying to make small parts of the area look unfinished in a way that resembles the original unfinished Emerald Dream zone would also work, but unfortunately I don't know whether people would realize it's intentional.