Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Rosstafa]

Probably not, but board skips in Lemix or not needing to roll into your spec defining Legiondary instead of dumping a Sephuz into your inventory puts into perspective how completely hostile the artificial lengthening process is to the game as a whole when relating the expediting to last expansions.

Even with the time gating of Lemix it at least gives you an idea of the story progression and the content cadence rather than just immediately face rolling into Argus at the right time.

The mechanics behind so many time wasters in BFA and SL made them actively worse than just having them be accessible regularly.



Expeditions didn't launch in the manner they exist now, though.

On launch, a big Azerite eruption was the mid event literally every queue. Nobody knew how rewards worked and they said it was for the purposes of mystery and exploration, but upon cracking it on the forums, it became increasingly clear that getting pets and mounts incentivized killing mobs but not the priority of winning via the intended end goal of getting your Azerite up as fast as possible. Creating a huge conflict between the two.

Naturally the final system was way more reasonable, just like Corruption and Legiondary vendors. It was all designed to be as hostile as possible to keep you playing until they said "we hear your feedback!" at the last minute until they realized nobody was taking that shit anymore around the SL exodus.

Of course, Warfronts were the opposite. Literally nothing mattered and it was a bland face roll. They didn't even try to construct what could have been an interesting smaller group MMO combat MOBA.

This was also pre-Warband where everything was deliberately anti-alt. All of this is WHY these content ideas failed.

They tried to make it more attractive as the expansion went on my giving it more cosmetic rewards, but it didn't change the fact that they just weren't that interesting. They didn't have the diversity or the progression that delves have now. Warfronts were obviously a much bigger drain on development resources which is why they were abandoned after Darkshore, while island expeditions got some small updates just to give people some reason to do them. I don't think it was ever enough really.

BFA had the problem of feeling like 3 litttle expansions instead of one. We went from kul tiras + zandalar and faction war to azshara and then nzoth. In Legion you were building up the counterattack to the legion (with a random sprinkle of emerald nightmare), from suramar, then closing the portal + killing kiljaeden and finally raiding argus. It was a continious story that made sense. TWW has a similar problem to BFA, were every patch is basically an standalone story mostly unrelated to the previous ones.

BFA was a bit all over the place, and it was criminal that we never got Ny'alotha as a proper zone - just what were basically invasions in old zones. I would agree that TWW has felt very similar in terms of the story, but at least Xal'atath has been maintained as this constant focus to tie everything together in some way.

[Vakir]

They tried to make it more attractive as the expansion went on my giving it more cosmetic rewards, but it didn't change the fact that they just weren't that interesting. They didn't have the diversity or the progression that delves have now. Warfronts were obviously a much bigger drain on development resources which is why they were abandoned after Darkshore, while island expeditions got some small updates just to give people some reason to do them. I don't think it was ever enough really.

See, they also changed how spawns worked, how enemy group rotations worked, how many events existed vs. just "whoa a huge Azerite cluster just came up!" halfway in, etc.

By the time it seemed reasonable enough as a fun time waster, we were like 2 major patches in and it was already asking everyone to try a new version of a cake that was made out of mud and goat teeth the last two times we had it. But that cake wasn't bad. It just showed up too late after nobody cared anymore.

As far as Warfronts, the idea is great but they should have been either smaller group MOBA style content with more of a push and pull (we should be HEROES, not Footmen/Grunts and Peasants/Peons) OR an Epic Battleground where we are, in fact, common ground units. One or the other. Instead we got this bizarre "big raid of heroes farming lumber" confused middle ground.

They did the absolute worst version of it. Which isn't to say that a good one couldn't exist. This was just an era where they kept shitting out stuff for us to beta test and now they know it isn't going to work anymore.

[Rosstafa]

See, they also changed how spawns worked, how enemy group rotations worked, how many events existed vs. just "whoa a huge Azerite cluster just came up!" halfway in, etc.

By the time it seemed reasonable enough as a fun time waster, we were like 2 major patches in and it was already asking everyone to try a new version of a cake that was made out of mud and goat teeth the last two times we had it. But that cake wasn't bad. It just showed up too late after nobody cared anymore.

As far as Warfronts, the idea is great but they should have been either smaller group MOBA style content with more of a push and pull (we should be HEROES, not Footmen/Grunts and Peasants/Peons) OR an Epic Battleground where we are, in fact, common ground units. One or the other.

They did the absolute worst version of it. Which isn't to say that a good one couldn't exist. This was just an era where they kept shitting out stuff for us to beta test and now they know it isn't going to work anymore.

I think warfronts should have been more challenging with a higher chance of failure, so people were actually forced to think tactically. In reality you could just spread out, fill some bars up, and push boss to win every time. There was no depth to it. It was basically 'what if we took all those boring add encounters that everyone hates in every raid, and made a whole feature around them?'

[Khaza-R]

Warfronts were so weird and poorly designed. I'm semi-convinced they were designed by people who never played the RTS beyond the campaign. Possibly not even that.

At the rewards were fantastic though.

[Sondrelk]

Remix gameplay is M+ and raid runs. Dragonflight had the least raid content of all expansions until TWW came with even less.

Which is why it wouldnt work if the idea is to have a Legion Remix "100 days of fun" event. And more of a Lorewalking++, with a heavy focus on relearning lore, and just giving players a shitton of cosmetics to farm in a short time. Probaby more like 4 weeks, rather than 10 or whatever Legion Remix comes to.

- - - Updated - - -

Warfronts were so weird and poorly designed. I'm semi-convinced they were designed by people who never played the RTS beyond the campaign. Possibly not even that.

At the rewards were fantastic though.

They were doomed the second the decision was made to make them into 30 or 40 man instanced events. had they been balanced around 3 to 5 players it could have been something halfway decent.

[Limayria]

Of course, Warfronts were the opposite. Literally nothing mattered and it was a bland face roll. They didn't even try to construct what could have been an interesting smaller group MMO combat MOBA.

100% even having warfronts still have been pve using the island expedition AI for moba style game play with lane pushing/objective taking would have been really interesting or having the zones themslves had been ashran styled or something. There was so much potential and if it was successful it could have come back in other places too. Like if the big battle/revolution at the end of undermine had been a more involved warfront style battle, where you're needing to push into and capture specific points before laying siege to the Galligo entrance or w/e

on one hand, yes, on the other we got some really great sets in TWW and DF that we would have not gotten otherwise.

I think there could be a middle ground, were raid themed sets, and class themed sets are used alternating. Even the maligned raid themed class sets (Sepulcher of the First Ones/Vault of the Incarnates) could have a place in there.

Example for TWW: the first tier is full on class themed, each class has their best version of class set that we got in TWW. second tier, full Goblin themed class sets. third tier, raid themed sets per armor type.

tbh I love a lot of the sepulcher sets, the rogue and DH ones are 10/10 imo

i think the best way to split this would be getting tier sets that are non class locked appearance wise and then having raids drop a single set of gear based off the raid, so in manaforge omega we'd have our tier that comes from tokens or catalyst and then having all the "off pieces" from the raid for that tier being the BFA style raid set.

[Sondrelk]

See, they also changed how spawns worked, how enemy group rotations worked, how many events existed vs. just "whoa a huge Azerite cluster just came up!" halfway in, etc.

By the time it seemed reasonable enough as a fun time waster, we were like 2 major patches in and it was already asking everyone to try a new version of a cake that was made out of mud and goat teeth the last two times we had it. But that cake wasn't bad. It just showed up too late after nobody cared anymore.

As far as Warfronts, the idea is great but they should have been either smaller group MOBA style content with more of a push and pull (we should be HEROES, not Footmen/Grunts and Peasants/Peons) OR an Epic Battleground where we are, in fact, common ground units. One or the other. Instead we got this bizarre "big raid of heroes farming lumber" confused middle ground.

They did the absolute worst version of it. Which isn't to say that a good one couldn't exist. This was just an era where they kept shitting out stuff for us to beta test and now they know it isn't going to work anymore.

What really annoys me with Island expeditions is that it could very easily have been amazing, if they just didnt make it instanced content. Just have two or three islands be available each week, with maybe two or three quests and rares on each, rotating all the time.
In other words, make them into actual expeditions where you travel to an exotic location and do weird stuff. Would have made it easier to add more content to the mas well.

[LarryWithTheWeatherReport]

BFA had the problem of feeling like 3 litttle expansions instead of one. We went from kul tiras + zandalar and faction war to azshara and then nzoth. In Legion you were building up the counterattack to the legion (with a random sprinkle of emerald nightmare), from suramar, then closing the portal + killing kiljaeden and finally raiding argus. It was a continious story that made sense. TWW has a similar problem to BFA, were every patch is basically an standalone story mostly unrelated to the previous ones.

.

This.

The faction war was cool even as someone that doesn't like faction wars. The Naga and Queen Azshara got wasted in a single patch, and N'zoth and the Black Empire along with Aqir wasted in another patch.

It should have been Azshara and the Naga mostly while still keeping Zandalar and Kul Tiras.

And the expansion after that will focus on Aqir and N'zoth and his faceless forces. Expanding on the Aqir race and N'zoth's minions with a Black Empire exploration zone for a patch or two.

BFA and WoD had the most potential for a remix.

WoD was bashed for it's lore but otherwise it was solid and the Infinite Dragonflight with time stuff would fit well into WoD too.

[Vakir]

I think warfronts should have been more challenging with a higher chance of failure, so people were actually forced to think tactically. In reality you could just spread out, fill some bars up, and push boss to win every time. There was no depth to it. It was basically 'what if we took all those boring add encounters that everyone hates in every raid, and made a whole feature around them?'

Yup. Agreed. 3-5 like me and Sondrelk mentioned would help put you in a position where you need to prioritize your time and feel like a Hero unit pushing the troops against an objective or go after an outside boss to get a buff.

Instead it's this dumb zerg fest that is the equivalent of playing WC2 or 3 with 40 hero units cheat mode.

What really annoys me with Island expeditions is that it could very easily have been amazing, if they just didnt make it instanced content. Just have two or three islands be available each week, with maybe two or three quests and rares on each, rotating all the time.
In other words, make them into actual expeditions where you travel to an exotic location and do weird stuff. Would have made it easier to add more content to the mas well.

I can understand them doing the instanced version for the PVP and "vs. the enemy faction team" modes, but during the off time they absolutely could've been their own mini-Siren Isle hubs with some tidbits of content, similar to Arathi or Darkshore while under control.

[Khaza-R]

They were doomed the second the decision was made to make them into 30 or 40 man instanced events. had they been balanced around 3 to 5 players it could have been something halfway decent.

Just bizarre design choices all around. Like who thought taking the one semi-automated part of the RTS games and making you manually go collect resources would ever be fun?

It should of been NPCs collecting and you needed to protect them from AI harassing your workers or go and harass theirs.

But I agree the whole concept would been better fit for a solo or small premade party mode where you could have more direct control over the units.

[Rosstafa]

WoD was bashed for it's lore but otherwise it was solid and the Infinite Dragonflight with time stuff would fit well into WoD too.

WoD was bashed because it had no content. You hit max level and literally all there was to do was farm super grindy reps for yet another wolf mount. The raids and levelling were excellent, but everything else was lacklustre, which is why they abandoned it to get Legion out quicker. A WoD remix might actually have more new content than the original expansion received.

[Cheezits]

Yeah WoD content sucked, it never got a new dungeon right? It would be a tiny remix.

[Vakir]

WoD was bashed for it's lore but otherwise it was solid and the Infinite Dragonflight with time stuff would fit well into WoD too.

While I will always hold WoD to be the closest thing WoW has to a "filler arc," even if I hate the modern discourse of the term, I will always think that it's a really unfortunate victim of narrative timing. (Just like Mists and how its marketing hurting it by misrepresenting it, really.)

Throughout all of Mists, we were explicitly introduced to the idea that the Legion was coming. Wrathion wanted a united Azerothian front, hence backing the Alliance covertly during the whole rebellion against Garrosh and getting pissy when Varian didn't dismantle the Horde, because of the existential threat on its way.

So naturally via a character introduced once in a daily quest hub and later in a book, that does not matter, he helps the primary individual against a united Azeroth to go back in time to become an equally bad existential threat.

If we fought the Iron Horde, or even just the Old one as a literal manifestation of the ghosts of the past, at any other time and any other context, I think people would be jazzed at the WC1 and 2 nostalgia at work. Scrapped ideas of Garrosh summoning their spirits via some horn on Outland, creating the Mongrel Horde, or even some other time travel concept, all of these are interesting ideas to do more with him and perhaps even keep him as the primary antagonist without overstaying his welcome... SOME OTHER TIME.

But introducing the idea of the Legion being on their way for almost 2 years...and then having us fight iron contraptions and orcs again after doing that in a bunker for over a year in Siege of Orgrimmar, followed by the Legion showing up and Wrathion doing absolutely fucking nothing is a surefire way to tell the player base as a whole that absolutely nothing mattered all along.

Now, obviously a lot of this was to delay things for the absolutely massive Legion expansion just as Hour of Twilight was pushing resources into how content dense Pandaria was. Was it worth it? Who could say.

But it's a story that could've been great at literally any other time. Instead they blew their load in the dumbest way possible for a tie-in with a movie that bombed domestically.

[SaintBigfoot]

Always did thought BFA had the potential to be the best expansion as it has a bunch of good stuff in it like the Zandalari, Kul Tiras, cool island pve mode where we see a lot of different variety of enemies. Naga, old god, N'zoth, Azshara. They just didn't use most of them to their full potential and wasted the Black Empire and Azshara along with N'zoth. While I'm not a fan of faction wars storywise but I'll admit the way they did it was pretty cool and awesome. The Cinematic trailer was one of my favorite easily top 3 at least or even first place like you say.

Even with some disappointing things, BFA still remains among one of the better expansions.

I’m still mad we never got the Barrens battlefront, the Tauren and Dwarven themed armor that I saw some fan make have always made me feel like we missed out big

[Zardas]

Yeah WoD content sucked, it never got a new dungeon right?

Well, neither did Mop.

[Rathwell]

This.

The faction war was cool even as someone that doesn't like faction wars. The Naga and Queen Azshara got wasted in a single patch, and N'zoth and the Black Empire along with Aqir wasted in another patch.

It should have been Azshara and the Naga mostly while still keeping Zandalar and Kul Tiras.

And the expansion after that will focus on Aqir and N'zoth and his faceless forces. Expanding on the Aqir race and N'zoth's minions with a Black Empire exploration zone for a patch or two.

BFA and WoD had the most potential for a remix.

WoD was bashed for it's lore but otherwise it was solid and the Infinite Dragonflight with time stuff would fit well into WoD too.

The primary complaint against WoD was its lack of content, or how it felt like half an expansion. But... That's not necessarily a problem for a Remix, because all that would really mean is that Blizzard wouldn't need to do a staggered release like they're doing with the current Legion one.

WoD had two raid tiers, and not big ones at that, and was overall a pretty bare-bones expansion. Pretty solid to blast through in a short one-month Remix patch

[Raetary]

For WoD to work out there would have to be either a major update to its gameplay loop, or the remix season would have to be really short.

The expansion is too dependent on the mission table which they can't use, there isn't exactly much endgame content to play through and the daily content that does exist is just one horrendous grind after the next (Do we all really want to redo Apexis Crystal dailies again?)

I'm sure it'd be easy enough to add Keystones, but i doubt Blizzard would bother actually adding anything more substantial to replace the Garrison.

[allegrian]

Wotlk classic would have the problem of super outdated quests, no clear main scenerario quest chain and super outdated cosmetics. Mop Remix mounts and gear already looked quite dated compared to the DF standard.

[Count Zero]

I'm always leery about reports of cut content, but they could probably do a WoD+ style remix. Even if they just reused assets to make "new" content like Karabor / Bladespire Citadel raids, add a keystone-like endlessly-scaling system to the Garrison invasions, etc, etc.

[Limayria]

For WoD to work out there would have to be either a major update to its gameplay loop, or the remix season would have to be really short.

The expansion is too dependent on the mission table which they can't use, there isn't exactly much endgame content to play through and the daily content that does exist is just one horrendous grind after the next (Do we all really want to redo Apexis Crystal dailies again?)

I'm sure it'd be easy enough to add Keystones, but i doubt Blizzard would bother actually adding anything more substantial to replace the Garrison.

just add Wod onto the mop remix rerun