Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Nightshade711]

GIF form of the login screen (to show the effects).
I'm a fan of it, personally.

[Nymrohd]

It's missing the ring on the left side.

Yes, people already made that joke. No, this isn't even the first time - the god awful diamond C'Thun hero on Hearthstone also gave Goatse vibes.

It's frustrating because literally all they need to do is pull back on the viewpoint and make the portal in the middle of the Voidstorm somewhere.

Or just show Silvermoon

[JDBlou]

GIF form of the login screen (to show the effects).
I'm a fan of it, personally.

It felt clear from TWW that all the login screens would be somewhat similar with a circular portal and some expansion specific architecture around it. Last Titan's will be curious indeed. Maybe the World Soul Core/prison complex.

[extasy]

I just realised logging screen was spoiled by collectors edition box lol

[THEORACLE64]

I just realised logging screen was spoiled by collectors edition box lol

That's quite funny, but also love the continuity.

[Nightshade711]

It felt clear from TWW that all the login screens would be somewhat similar with a circular portal and some expansion specific architecture around it. Last Titan's will be curious indeed. Maybe the World Soul Core/prison complex.

Definitely thinking that as well. If they continue with this "multi-expansion saga" type storytelling I bet every xpac in their saga will have similar looking login screens.

[Vakir]

Or just show Silvermoon

Marvel movie beam aside, the light vs. void pillar at the Well feels tailor made for a log-in screen.

[Hearthfinder]

I like it, but every expansion without a wondrous portal in a magical landscape is a bit of a shame.

Crosses fingers for Classic+.

[Cherry123]

Lol, these holes in loading screens show the level of developers.

Was it really impossible to create animated elven forests, where leaves fall from the trees and some ranger looks at the horizon?

I can already see the hole of the last titan

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

If they all correlate to Collector's Edition boxes, yeah I guess this is what we get.

Again, I'm wondering about the crystallized stuff. Also what and where is this supposed to be (I know considering the decision level here it probably doesn't matter but it got me curious.)

[Seasz]

isn't that the darkwell?

[Merryck]

The Warband screen has effectively replaced the login screen of old. With modern hardware, you only see the login screen for 2 seconds. The minimalist design that transitions to the Warband screen is better.

[GeometryWizard]

Part of this whole problem with what content can you do in a revamp is the almost complete death of Warcraft's multimedia presence building up lore to explore. In the 2000s we had tons of books exploring both current stories and adapting past games with new characters and additions, a roleplaying game with source books, comics and manga, short stories, etc. A ton of lore set between Warcraft III and WoW came from that material and it also helped to provide alternative content in the setting if you weren't a fan of the current expansion focus

Now that's almost completely died off. Everything except books and short stories are gone and the quantity of those has dropped immensely too. We got 1 book for SL and DF each and they were just background lore dumps released after the story already ended that the in-game story clearly wasn't written around existing. TWW didn't even get a single book just short stories most of which were exploring the internal state of characters that mostly did nothing in the expansion so it was all pointless. And it still had less short stories than Cata did which had several books release as well along with more comics. Hearthstone exists but it's more like a Warcraft-inspired goofy comedy game more than anything that can be real source material for new content so they've pulled from it very sparingly as a result. Half their expacs are just bronze dragonflight alternative universe characters anymore

The only short story that really broke the norm in TWW was Heartlands and how that's been handled summarizes how their storytelling has fallen apart. They decided to put the story in-game but it was just a retread of the same short story so it cheapened it by the exact same events happening twice and the only story they could come up for it is was "Somehow, the Scarlet Crusade returned". There's basically no other material to draw from so they look at what's in-game, see Scarlet Crusaders from Cata, and make them rise up again for the 10th time. It's why the Exploring books had barely any real zone updates and just told you every enemy group you see in-game is still around because they refuse to tell new stories or update lore outside of the game. We're stuck in a cycle of them regurgitating the exact same plot points over and over with no break because all they can rely on for new lore is an explicit zone revamp, and what's the point of trying to define any current lore for a non-revamped zone if a quest designer 10 years from now tasked with that zone's revamp can just choose to ignore all of it and write their own story

Warcraft's story is entirely at the mercy of fickle quest designers now and it's literally their job to only work in the moment with Twitter posters being unpaid quality control. You can see them realize that there's no point in writing an actual story because more likely than not it'll all be tossed out by the next person. Imagine Warcraft III's story if every other mission was written by a new person and they were told "you can just ignore anything that came before this, do whatever makes you happiest"

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

isn't that the darkwell?

If it is, its' not the Sunwell Plateau textures but updated ones from the Quel'danas raid as they do not match currently.

[Xilurm]

What are we hoping for in the first build? Login Screen is out. I want to see the entirety of Eastern Kingdoms now. Maybe they have also reworked the world map?

[Raetary]

It's certainly prettier than TWWs crappy portal hole, but i still would've much preferred either a shot of the Sunwell or the gates of Silvermoon.

Again, I'm wondering about the crystallized stuff. Also what and where is this supposed to be (I know considering the decision level here it probably doesn't matter but it got me curious.)

It's Void Glass.
We've tinkered with it in K'aresh.

[milkmustache]

I get it. The login screen's novelty diminishes exceptionally with the addition of warbound camps, but it's a really strange thing to decide to abandon simply because of how traditional the login screens are. I wish they'd revert.

[Vakir]

We've tinkered with it in K'aresh.

NO! Don't think it, don't say it!


@GeometryWizard I mean, people massively criticized books for existing to not have the story in-game. I'd say the bigger issue is the in-game storytelling remains shallow.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

So much crystallization, how quaint. Probably nothing though.

[Nymrohd]

Everyone waiting for the beta, I am waiting for a hotfix for Remix so they can finally fix Bringing Order to the Isles