Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Alanar]

This whole Alleria, Tyralyon and Arator stuff is just plain hilarious.

[Cheezits]

Catching up on more beta stuff, Arator runs off to tell his mom mid void storm siege that his dad hit him to start a fight between them while there men are actively dying, like da fuck is wrong with you to think that’s the time or place for your family feud.

And Alleria’s respond just feels so forced, and is made worse Turalyon in by blood ties actively telling Arator not to act out without telling other paladins on a battle field which is a rule they have to avoid paladins hurting each other.

While it's eyerolling that they keep using light-blinded (is it for dumb players that they repeat words? translations?), Arator is 100% in the right for telling his mother that the leader of the Vanguard did something weird and violent that seemed to be caused by his main source of power (aka he's getting corrupted, watch the fuck out). Now, if he really did run off in the middle of the siege, that's odd.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

While it's eyerolling that they keep using light-blinded (is it for dumb players that they repeat words? translations?), Arator is 100% in the right for telling his mother that the leader of the Vanguard did something weird and violent that seemed to be caused by his main source of power (aka he's getting corrupted, watch the fuck out). Now, if he really did run off in the middle of the siege, that's odd.

The quest prior to this confrontation is about void beast teleporting about taking out officers and how other vanguard members are dying all over, it’s absolutely not right to take the focus away from that to start a fight between your Parants instead of waiting till after the siege is over. It also isn’t weird and violent, a troll tried to kill them all so he tried to kill said troll, this is perfectly normal Arator is the one at fault for jumping in.

Arator just randomly comes to the conclusion that if his dad didn’t say any thing mid world ending threat he’d never bring it up at all.

[GeometryWizard]

This whole Alleria, Tyralyon and Arator stuff is just plain hilarious.

Midnight would be a better story with them removed from it this Windrunner family soap opera crap. In TWW they make it obvious that Alleria and Turalyon deeply love and trust each other and then in Blood Ties they retcon it to Alleria not having trusted or loved Turalyon for many years and trying to paint him as the problem despite him acting like a sad puppy in TWW. Character relationships not even one expansion old can't be relied on for consistency anymore and all they've done is make Alleria this extremely unlikeable and selfish character throughout TWW and Midnight that they seriously expect players to see as in the right. Arator and Alleria being written the way they are and as the protagonists it's like the game is being written by angsty 13 year old girls that got told no on something by their dad and are now ranting in their diary about how much they hate men

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

This is just stupid at this point. I genuinely do not understand how we fractured and completely collapsed any form of natural story progression and story structuring with a direction solely to tell cliche and pointless interpersonal drama storylines that at the end of the day has no impactful benefit or emotional resolution due to our truncated content update model.

[micwini]

Maybe it is just their intent to have Arator be someone that is annoying, not smart?
Idk, but you can't convince me that anyone would think Arator has any agreeable stances. It's not even in the area of morally grey.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Personally, I don't know how we ended up here. I fell off the train once I saw them misunderstanding Paladins completely and ascertaining the most bizarre logic to try and frame Paladins in the Warcraft Universe as bad.

Even in that scenario what is there to gain? Arators' character wasn't even established prior to this and now he's extremely unlikeable and extremely annoying while also just being another weird stand-in for a morality play by the writers. Its' not good and especially not when the expansion concept they got here is one of their best that is getting squandered because of this "trio driven" interpersonal drama conflict writing at the brink of the end of fucking Reality.

To me its just weird how they are framing the A plot storyline in such a potentially interesting expansion in such a devaluing and demeaning way that no one gets any value out of this beyond recognizing how infuriatingly funny it is that they find this compelling.

[Cheezits]

It's just a generic way of showing that Turalyon is getting corrupted to the point that he is hurting his family. Not well done, not in the least, and cliche.

They really should've made it more like Fel corruption where they actively start looking weird and getting mutated as opposed to "they get meaner". Or the Light actively possesses them/puppets them.

[Vakir]

It's worse - Arator explicitly asks the player if I'm not mistaken to not inform Alleria and then he chooses to after the whole situation escalates beyond that point so it's an even less good time to do so and it grinds things to a screeching halt.

Why is the end all, be all physical conflict between the two most prominent story forces in a magically created storm of devouring, endless hunger floating over the last line of defense on the planet not enough stakes for the writing? Why do we need family therapy here?

The conflict itself is fine in a vacuum, but do something with it. What if Alleria found out the wrong way at the wrong time, manipulated to by Xal, and then that was what caused her to crack under L'ura?

Or literally anything else besides "this is most concerning, side eye, ok back to extremely low stakes questing."

[Cheezits]

Why is the end all, be all physical conflict between the two most prominent story forces in a magically created storm of devouring, endless hunger floating over the last line of defense on the planet not enough stakes for the writing? Why do we need family therapy here?

Trying to appeal to people that like generic storylines/only care about "emotional storytelling" I would guess.

[Vakir]

Trying to appeal to people that like generic storylines/only care about "emotional storytelling" I would guess.

I like emotional storytelling.

This is the worst and dumbest way to tell it.

They keep proving my point that this is a competence issue and not a personal politics issue. If we had a cast full of bare chested testosterone fountains, they'd all be uninteresting, frothing retards because they can't do this stuff right.

[Cheezits]

I like emotional storytelling.

This is the worst and dumbest way to tell it.

They keep proving my point that this is a competence issue and not a personal politics issue. If we had a cast full of bare chested testosterone fountains, they'd all be uninteresting, frothing retards.

Yeah, no, it's not politics or california etc it's just a generic boring story. The dad gets corrupted so he hits his kid. Whatever.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean, I am not opposed to their storytelling style but like you know.. Maybe you should let your committees and writers know what the expansion is about and recognize there's a time and place for everything?

I'm sure 14.0 will have great emotional storytelling stories and hell there can still be great emotional storytelling even in hyper impactful and cataclysmic levels of danger and high stakes but I mean... Putting this squarely in the middle and going "We made this." and thinking anyone will be impressed is where I get extremely confused.

I'm not impressed at all about this, I just find this really uncomfortably funny because the sad part is they genuinely think they are writing gold.

[Cheezits]

I'm not impressed at all about this, I just find this really uncomfortably funny because the sad part is they genuinely think they are writing gold.

Why do you say that? I think that's pretty presumptuous to think everyone on the writing team enjoys having to focus on two-three characters doing soap opera drama for three expansions. It is very likely they are being forced to do a generic storyline like this because it's more marketable to a wider audience that doesn't care about race/faction politics etc, but will gasp at a dad hitting his son.

[GeometryWizard]

It's just a generic way of showing that Turalyon is getting corrupted to the point that he is hurting his family. Not well done, not in the least, and cliche.

They really should've made it more like Fel corruption where they actively start looking weird and getting mutated as opposed to "they get meaner". Or the Light actively possesses them/puppets them.

What's even the point of focusing on all these cosmic powers if they all just end up acting the exact same and the story has just become one character yelling about how there's too much purple in them making them evil and the other yells that they have too much yellow making them evil. The more they try to focus on the melodrama of these characters the less human and alive they feel

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Why do you say that? I think that's pretty presumptuous to think everyone on the writing team enjoys having to focus on two-three characters doing soap opera drama for three expansions. It is very likely they are being forced to do a generic storyline like this because it's more marketable to a wider audience that doesn't care about race/faction politics etc.

Well, I haven't learned astral projection yet. I will come back to you when I do. In all seriousness though, I don't disagree but again they don't have power to change the course as this is a very structured pipeline of direction and again, I do not think this direction they went with is suited for Midnight considering how much easier it would have been to just copy Legion instead for both Midnight and TLT instead of this.

Obviously, I am being more harsh because of what has been datamined next though. Everything just feels directionless and it seems more and more discourse will just turn to "Midnight was a throwaway expansion and The Last Titan was the only real expansion.".

[Vakir]

What's even the point of focusing on all these cosmic powers if they all just end up acting the exact same and the story has just become one character yelling about how there's too much purple in them making them evil and the other yells that they have too much yellow making them evil. The more they try to focus on the melodrama of these characters the less human and alive they feel

It's cool, turning this into a battle Shonen with a 7th, 8th, 9th greater force with power scaling nonsense, new colors, and no interesting motivations will surely fix the lack of investment.

Seriously, the best characters they've had all did their thing based on their own beliefs and trials and happened to just use their powers as tools, good or bad.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It's just a generic way of showing that Turalyon is getting corrupted to the point that he is hurting his family. Not well done, not in the least, and cliche.

They really should've made it more like Fel corruption where they actively start looking weird and getting mutated as opposed to "they get meaner". Or the Light actively possesses them/puppets them.

The corruption angle just flatly doesn’t work as he literally did nothing wrong at any point and then feels bad about it any way.

[Cheezits]

Well, I haven't learned astral projection yet. I will come back to you when I do. In all seriousness though, I don't disagree but again they don't have power to change the course as this is a very structured pipeline of direction and again, I do not think this direction they went with is suited for Midnight considering how much easier it would have been to just copy Legion instead for both Midnight and TLT instead of this.

While this particular plotpoint is stupid, Purple Legion would've been just as boring in a different way and we would've still been rolling our eyes. Voidstorm being kicked away after launch is more interesting than building up to Purple Argus over a year IMO (and having Purple Argus at launch, meaning patches can be a little more interesting).

Undermine was one of the best patches I've played since Mists and the Troll Patch has huge potential BECAUSE they don't fit the usual plot arc, even at the detriment of a three-patch-story.

[Vakir]

Obviously, I am being more harsh because of what has been datamined next though. Everything just feels directionless and it seems more and more discourse will just turn to "Midnight was a throwaway expansion and The Last Titan was the only real expansion.".

Obviously I'm projecting ahead, I don't know what's going to happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if the World Soul Saga branding and hype actually hurt the overall perception of these stories.

Imagine if Cata, Mists, and WoD were built up and called the Warsong Saga because there's some connective tissue of that larger theme around Garrosh. People might be way more disappointed than they were without it.