Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Xilurm]

This is actually quite hilarious trying to pretend that Dalaran "wasnt real" in vanilla as an alliance city.

The lengths some people on this forum go to in order to try and make their point.

Because in WoW gameplay > lore. Dalaran wasn't useable as an Alliance city, that's what's important. Saying that it's ok to make SW neutral because it happened to an inaccessible city is delusional.

[Nibelheimy]

I still think it'd be good to introduce smaller neighbourhoods in the future.

I get what they are going for with the current ones, and I appreciate the sense of progression and community they're going for.

But if we could have maybe even smaller 5 man neighbourhoods sprinkled in I could start making more themed houses for alts which id really like.

Getting one new small plot per expansion based on a release zone, with possibly another small plot in legacy zone mid expansion would be good.

The people want their Grizzly Hills shacks and their jade forest temples.

[LarryWithTheWeatherReport]

Yes the shadowlands slop was clearly not meant to be titans, but retconning it into a part of a titan conspiracy is the best way to take the current cosmology and offer the ability to expand upon it after unraveling the conspiracy

Or just go my route where Shadowlands aren't retconed to be a titan conspiracy but the Titans did came and Primus starts simping for them cause of their powers. We'll learn that Odyn and Primus both knew a lot more compared to the other Keepers and Eternal Ones and both of them sold their own creation out to the Titans.

I appreciate your sacrifice at trying to approach not just powerscaling but Shadowlands powerscaling from a standpoint of narrative. A thankless task.

That said, I don't think that the Bald Man is all that difficult to parse, so long as you are charitable and interpret "Titan++ threat' as being the actual threat he poses being higher than that of a titan and not that his power corresponds to such. Let's look at our contender, shall we?

For one, unlike Sargeras, when he turns evil he doesn't immediately smite all of his godlike kin with ease. There's not even an implication he becomes more powerful. On the contrary, he's defeated by the Primus et al and put in prison. It's only in prison that he develops basically every ability we see him use, which themselves almost entirely center not on fighting people directly, but subverting people and tools to avoid a fight. When the Primus goes to investigate, our intrepid hero doesn't beat him in a straight fight, but has him at an information disadvantage on his home turf. From then on until his boss fight we never see him fight, and indeed, his modus operandi is to avoid fighting wherever possible, which is just as well as he's in prison for 99% of the runtime and so can't do anything anyway.


Is he strong? Sure. He's a Keeper equivalent (and pending a retcon soon possibly a literal Keeper as well) who's like 20 feet tall in full armor clad in the equivalent of the LK's runeblade and outfit, he can also mind control most everyone at will. But he doesn't destroy cities, ala Archimonde or destroy planets, ala Deathwing, let alone Sargeras. Most importantly in a story that is otherwise very keen to tell you how strong something is ("Wow, the Mawsworn (original threat do not steal) are even more than the Legion!") everything is made out of the Bald Man being manipulative (compared to the Alzheimer's victims that form the SL cast) or dangerous, but not that he is personally uniquely powerful.

I'd put him just below KJ and Archimonde (and move Xal there pre-Midnight too).

Yep Sargeras is just a big cut above the rest, he's the type of character that will always be top tier whenever he shows up. While most comics/shows involves power creep from multiple characters. There would always be that ONE CHARACTER who stays at top tier whenever he shows up in the story again like the Joker for Batman, Palpatine for SW, Aizen for Bleach, Darkseid for Superman etc. Sargeras is THAT GUY for WoW. People like Deathwing, Kil'jaeden, Zovaal, Argus, Dimensues, and even Xal'atath will keep being powercreeped and surpassed by the next big shot but Sargeras won't as he is THAT GUY for Warcraft so he'll always be the head honcho.

And agreed I'll place him below Kil'jaeden and Archimonde too and Archimonde with the world tree/second well of eternity easily. I guess I'll place pre Midnight Xal below them too. Dimensues is definitely far above Zovaal in a actual fight though so he'll also be below Dimensues.

Second WoE Archimonde > Full Avatar of Sargeras > a prime old god > Midnight Xal'atath > Dimensius > Archimonde/Kil'jaeden > Reshi Warp Xal > Zovaal > Lich King> Deathwing > Ragnaros

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I cannot stress enough that I despise the First Ones concept and I think what potential existed (e.g. the divine geometry angle, which would be really nice to associate with something better) with their associated concepts was wasted on them, and I strongly believe they never should have been added to the lore at all, but I actually agree with respect to replacing the First Ones with the Pantheon being a bad idea. Making the First Ones a purely mythological construct and the Zereths spontaneously generated would be better than either keeping them as-is or making them the Pantheon. Nothing about them has indicated that the Pantheon have the ability to trap every soul in the universe in their soul-grinder and the First Ones' technology and gimmicks don't perfectly match the titans' (I'll grant some possible overlap with the musical angle, if we take it as an ability the titans inherently possess but which was somehow damaged/stripped away over time from the ones we know, with the younger and less conditioned Azeroth still having her radiant song) even if their role is similar enough to be irritatingly redundant.

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Although I don't mind his idea but I'm also someone that would rather make the best of the situation rather they outright retcon them out away. Same thing for AU Draenor in WoD. While at first I also did not like having a AU timeline but since it already happened. I'll rather they try to make the best out of it instead of outright denying it exists.

So I would actually like Yrel to get some focus and I will like a lore update to make it so there are indeed 2 Kil'jaeden and 2 Archimondes. The more demon looking Kil'jaeden from the sunwell/rogue and demon hunter class hall is the AU Kil'jaeden and the more eredar looking one is MU Draenor. The cape out high class looking Archimonde from Warcraft Reforge is the MU Archimonde and the barbaric mace holding weak Archimonde is the AU Archimonde.

And for Shadowlands, since it already happened, I'll want them to make use of it so instead of replacing them with all Titan creation. I;'ll rather have the Titans coming in and some place and forced the Primus and others to edit the shadowlands in order to benefit the Titans. And have the Tower of Torghast be put to good use like maybe Yogg-Saron comes back to full power somehow in the Last Titan and started involving the Shadowlands attaching itself in the Tower of Targhost and absorbing it's energy to become the multiverse god of death.

Denarithus being involved again and goes into the Twisting Nether and making deals with far greater demon lords within it.

Basically putting the characters or place that is already out to good use.

[Limayria]

Don't really see why a Silvermoon Neighborhood would be neutral. Would make more sense to pair it with an Alliance Night Elf neighborhood to pair it with the exteriors available to both factions.

All neighborhoods are functionally neutral you just have to build the house on a character of the faction it's aligned with and then you can go there on any character

Unless by neutral you mean "able to use any exterior" which would be nice, id love to see blood elf night elf and human stuff together

[Sondrelk]

All neighborhoods are functionally neutral you just have to build the house on a character of the faction it's aligned with and then you can go there on any character

Unless by neutral you mean "able to use any exterior" which would be nice, id love to see blood elf night elf and human stuff together

I guess you could also argue that Neutral means getting to go there through the portal room in both Stormwind and Orgrimmar.

[Ersula]

All neighborhoods are functionally neutral you just have to build the house on a character of the faction it's aligned with and then you can go there on any character

Unless by neutral you mean "able to use any exterior" which would be nice, id love to see blood elf night elf and human stuff together

weren't we getting people reporting there were strings allowing the blue versions of the blood elf exteriors in the alliance neighborhood in datamining?

[Dracullus]

I don't get this need of community of maintaining constant balance (to the point I saw arguing about number of Druids between factions). WoW evolved into game that is played with alts with mind, it would be perfectly fine if 1 patch add more Horde stuff and next focused on Alliance.

Result is that Blizzard often chose neutral path, because its easier to make neutral Earthen and neutral Haranir than giving them faction identify and deal with angry mob. At least they were brave enough to put Horde only district in Silvermoon (and you know what - this way chances for Alliance district when it will make sense increased).

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I don't think that the Bald Man is all that difficult to parse, so long as you are charitable and interpret "Titan++ threat' as being the actual threat he poses being higher than that of a titan and not that his power corresponds to such. . . when he turns evil he doesn't immediately smite all of his godlike kin with ease. There's not even an implication he becomes more powerful. On the contrary, he's defeated by the Primus et al and put in prison. It's only in prison that he develops basically every ability we see him use, which themselves almost entirely center not on fighting people directly, but subverting people and tools to avoid a fight. When the Primus goes to investigate, our intrepid hero doesn't beat him in a straight fight, but has him at an information disadvantage on his home turf. From then on until his boss fight we never see him fight, and indeed, his modus operandi is to avoid fighting wherever possible, which is just as well as he's in prison for 99% of the runtime and so can't do anything anyway.

Fair and frankly correct, I was probably putting too much stock into the "Titan++" bit and being hasty in saying he's too inconsistent to quantify.

Granted, I still think he's hard to rank. I figured, at least at first, that there's fewer things to reference him against in the same way I can, say, extrapolate Xal's ranking based on her doing something similar to what Archimonde did but faster, rank Argus above Dimensius because the latter eats planets relatively quickly and the former can destroy the universe, or rank Arthas above Illidan because he already beat him (albeit IIRC narrowly, and mainly by exploiting Illidan's cockiness) prior to the probable boost that comes with being the Lich King.

However, I forgot he gets a pretty solid show of power at the end of Sanctum by pulling the same stun move villains typically pull on PCs on the likes of Thrall and Jaina, as well as in brushing off Sylvanas attacking him. He also gets a solid show through Maw-empowered Sylvanas—while I made a point that Deathwing could still rank above the old gods despite being empowered by them (potentially only N'Zoth by that point in the timeline), Sylvanas doesn't have as much to bolster the Jailer's power through her in the way Deathwing has his powers as Earth-Warder, so I think it's fair to say Maw-empowered Sylvanas reflects more on the Jailer than on her. Specifically, Sylvie curbstomped Bolvar, who at that point was probably significantly offensively weaker than Arthas on account of lacking Frostmourne, but not by any exceptional margin. Going off this (somewhat limited) evidence, the best I can say with relative confidence is that he's anywhere between a released N'Zoth (given N'Zoth needed an external tool to kill him, specifically something meant to kill a planet, and the Jailer notably didn't) and Arthas. Your putting him just below Archimonde sounds solidly plausible.

Slight digression re: Deathwing: granted, Deathwing only really got his ranking at the Madness stage—prior to that point, he was also going after the exact same artifact as N'Zoth; in retrospect, I'm thinking it might be better to move him back below them because while there's a case to be made he's there at the Madness stage, he spends the bulk of the narrative weaker than them and able to wind up in a draw with Alexstrasza. It took the Forge of Origination, empowered and focused, to kill N'Zoth. While offensive power is being prioritized here, this is still a good point to consider in the ranking. I'm thinking pretty strongly now I'd move N'Zoth up and Deathwing down anyway, in which case the Jailer's position in turn changes to be between Deathwing and Arthas.


Moving away from the powerscaling side of things in itself, this digression has me thinking where Deathwing worked despite him typically not being a villain anyone thinks about on account of his lacking personality. While his personality was barely existent beyond raving and Dragon Soul infamously sucked, I'm honestly convinced he was one of WoW's better executions of a villain that's supposed to be powerful where actually demonstrating that power and using it to make him feel like a threat was concerned. His armor had to be pried off, he had to be crashed into the ocean (and specifically a storm made from the collapse of a nexus of magical power), and then he had to be whittled down with the help of four of the most powerful beings on Azeroth at the time and finally killed with the Dragon Soul. This combined with his regular appearances in questing (including to fry zones) that didn't universally end with him shaking his fist like Dr. Claw while spending most of his screentime losing ground like Arthas did and the fact his presence in the world entailed serious physical changes made him feel like some semblance of a threat, even if whatever menace he earned was seriously undermined by the fact he was a shell of his original personality and still flew away when he showed up because the good guys needed to not die.

[Joshuaj]

"The Jailer is below Archimonde"

...Are we serious?

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I'm out rn, but I'll provide a response as soon as I get back.

[Nymrohd]

I don't get this need of community of maintaining constant balance (to the point I saw arguing about number of Druids between factions). WoW evolved into game that is played with alts with mind, it would be perfectly fine if 1 patch add more Horde stuff and next focused on Alliance.

Result is that Blizzard often chose neutral path, because its easier to make neutral Earthen and neutral Haranir than giving them faction identify and deal with angry mob. At least they were brave enough to put Horde only district in Silvermoon (and you know what - this way chances for Alliance district when it will make sense increased).

That's charitable. I think Blizzard chose the neutral path because they just have to do one thing for everyone instead of different paths per faction. And they did the former for all expansions up to BfA.

[LarryWithTheWeatherReport]

Fair and frankly correct, I was probably putting too much stock into the "Titan++" bit and being hasty in saying he's too inconsistent to quantify.

Granted, I still think he's hard to rank. I figured, at least at first, that there's fewer things to reference him against in the same way I can, say, extrapolate Xal's ranking based on her doing something similar to what Archimonde did but faster, rank Argus above Dimensius because the latter eats planets relatively quickly and the former can destroy the universe, or rank Arthas above Illidan because he already beat him (albeit IIRC narrowly, and mainly by exploiting Illidan's cockiness) prior to the probable boost that comes with being the Lich King.

However, I forgot he gets a pretty solid show of power at the end of Sanctum by pulling the same stun move villains typically pull on PCs on the likes of Thrall and Jaina, as well as in brushing off Sylvanas attacking him. He also gets a solid show through Maw-empowered Sylvanas—while I made a point that Deathwing could still rank above the old gods despite being empowered by them (potentially only N'Zoth by that point in the timeline), Sylvanas doesn't have as much to bolster the Jailer's power through her in the way Deathwing has his powers as Earth-Warder, so I think it's fair to say Maw-empowered Sylvanas reflects more on the Jailer than on her. Specifically, Sylvie curbstomped Bolvar, who at that point was probably significantly offensively weaker than Arthas on account of lacking Frostmourne, but not by any exceptional margin. Going off this (somewhat limited) evidence, the best I can say with relative confidence is that he's anywhere between a released N'Zoth (given N'Zoth needed an external tool to kill him, specifically something meant to kill a planet, and the Jailer notably didn't) and Arthas. Your putting him just below Archimonde sounds solidly plausible.

Slight digression re: Deathwing: granted, Deathwing only really got his ranking at the Madness stage—prior to that point, he was also going after the exact same artifact as N'Zoth; in retrospect, I'm thinking it might be better to move him back below them because while there's a case to be made he's there at the Madness stage, he spends the bulk of the narrative weaker than them and able to wind up in a draw with Alexstrasza. It took the Forge of Origination, empowered and focused, to kill N'Zoth. While offensive power is being prioritized here, this is still a good point to consider in the ranking. I'm thinking pretty strongly now I'd move N'Zoth down anyway, in which case the Jailer's position in turn changes to be between Deathwing and Arthas.

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Well said, yeah Archumonde was a fricken beast especially in the last mission where he just walked through the armies and heroes during Twilight's End. I always thought N'zoth was underrated too as like you said we needed the strongest artifact to beat him and I'll even put the fully charged up Heart of Azeroth as the single powerup by far in wow even surpassing the Legion artifact powerup as the strongest. N'zoth in BFA wasn't as strong as a prime old god during the black empire but he was pretty darn close so I'll have

N'zoth BFA being stronger than everything in the whole Warcraft verse besides Sargeras, Prime Titans, and Prime old gods.

I agree that even a newborn 1% Argus is stronger than Dimensius and Zovaal. While nowhere near a prime titan aka adult titan, he's still a 1% piece of a world soul and can AOE the universe. Of course Sargeras or a prime Titan would just laugh at that aoe universe attack as it'll be like a small breeze of wind to them.

I got Argus at being above everything besides Sargeras, prime titans, prime old gods, N'zoth BFA, Midnight Xal'atath, Guardian Aeqywnn, full power Avatar of Sargeras, and Chaos Grom.

[Joshuaj]

Still shocked y'all forget that Sylvanas and Zovaal were growing in power throughout SL. 9.1 Sylvanas should be far beyond even her 9.0 self.

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Also, Argus definitely had unique power, but a lot of that might simply came from his natural worldsoul abilities, like him unmaking creation and whatnot. The physical power of Argus wasn't really akin to someone like Sargeras, however.

[Jaggler]

weren't we getting people reporting there were strings allowing the blue versions of the blood elf exteriors in the alliance neighborhood in datamining?

I've only seen a guy posting that the blue color option for the Belf Exterior is called "High Elf Blue".

[Nymrohd]

I've only seen a guy posting that the blue color option for the Belf Exterior is called "High Elf Blue".

Yeah I've seen no suggestion that the blood elf exterior will be available on the Alliance side. Maybe Alliance will eventually get a Void Elf style but that is way down the road.

[LarryWithTheWeatherReport]

Still shocked y'all forget that Sylvanas and Zovaal were growing in power throughout SL. 9.1 Sylvanas should be far beyond even her 9.0 self.

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Also, Argus definitely had unique power, but a lot of that might simply came from his natural worldsoul abilities, like him unmaking creation and whatnot. The physical power of Argus wasn't really akin to someone like Sargeras, however.

Night Warrior Tyrande and Empowered Sylvanas are both high tier, I'll put both at being above Deathwing.

Yeah Argus even at 1% is already way beyond Dimensius and Zovaal due to him being a world soul being like the other world souls that Thief Lord Aman'Thul stole. And to be fair nothing even comes close to Sargeras but Argus is still like over 9000 on the power scale and would wipe his ass with almost everything besides Sargeras, prime titans, prime old gods, Azshara, and N'zoth and midnight Xal'atath.

If Argus ever reaches his adult prime form like the prime titans than I can see him being above all besides Sargeras and Aman'Thul and maybe draw with a few other prime titans.

[Joshuaj]

I mean, I'll say this, if K'aresh and Argus were still around, and both were able to display their full might, then yeah they'd probably be top 5 easily lol.

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I've only seen a guy posting that the blue color option for the Belf Exterior is called "High Elf Blue".

When was this?

Also, yeah, there is a Blue exterior color. Likely won't be Alliance though, since it still uses the typical Red Belf windows and whatnot.

[LarryWithTheWeatherReport]

I mean, I'll say this, if K'aresh and Argus were still around, and both were able to display their full might, then yeah they'd probably be top 5 easily lol.

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It will be cool to see Karesh's titan appearance.

We got a new Titan in last year's Titan expansion.



While she's not named Karesh but that could be changed to Karesh if they decide to restore her and bring Karesh back somehow for the Last Titan.

[Jaggler]

I mean, I'll say this, if K'aresh and Argus were still around, and both were able to display their full might, then yeah they'd probably be top 5 easily lol.

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When was this?

Also, yeah, there is a Blue exterior color. Likely won't be Alliance though, since it still uses the typical Red Belf windows and whatnot.

Yeah. It's literally just a name. People sre just reading way too much into the littlest things

[Joshuaj]

It will be cool to see Karesh's titan appearance.

We got a new Titan in last year's Titan expansion.



While she's not named Karesh but that could be changed to Karesh if they decide to restore her and bring Karesh back somehow for the Last Titan.

K'aresh is a male though. Also, that depends on if Worldsouls are actually baby titans or not.

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Yeah. It's literally just a name. People sre just reading way too much into the littlest things

When did someone find the name though? Didn't realize that.

[DenPhoenix]

It will be cool to see Karesh's titan appearance.

I really hope we’ll get to see K’aresh in the future — the 10.2 epilogue felt really cut short and and incomprehensible, they could’ve at least had him address to Ethereals somehow.

And it really would be cool if K’aresh looked like the original k’areshi before they turned into Ethereals.