Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[COBRAstriker]

why would people pick wow over a game that does what wow is trying to do but better?

Because WoW does pretty much everything else better, especially gameplay. Regardless of how much we bitch about the story here, the truth is that you have to be a certain kind of special to look for satisfying and engaging stories in live service games. Stories end, arcs end, and at some point consistency goes out the window, people will receive subpar writing and will be pissed, which is what you're seeing. It's just not realistic to expect good stories every patch when there are deadlines to meet, so honestly, playing live service games which drip feed you content every other month while also asking for a monthly fee for the stories alone is just stupid

I think that the problem with WoW's creative direction isn't limited to 'story bad', this game isn't a stranger to that as it has never been known to have a great story, but more to the fact that it doesn't feel like Warcraft anymore. The dialogue, the characters, even the appearance given to some of the newer ones, the constant and obnoxious virtue signaling, the cinematics. Even when there is a potential for a decent story, they fuck it up with a godawful execution. Nothijg big or epic happens anymore. The complete lack of the masculine, hero warrior archetype is also an issue considering that the franchise got big in large part because of that. It just doesn't feel like Warcraft anymore, it's like a modern DnD session between ultra sensitive liberal college students. Retail WoW is so averse to conflict, its original themes and making people feel uncomfortable that it's honestly sickening, of course people won't stick around for vapid, sanitized slop. The fact that they keep writing the same tropes over and over again is the cherry on top of the poop cake

I don't think that WoW is trying to copy anyone, it's run by people, at least the CDev who are into this kind of.. Warcraft, I guess. An entire patch about a destroyed planet and the longest questline is about petting bees. I genuinely have no idea who the fuck the audience for this is, even normie millennials aren't shying away from mature RPGs with adult themes. Guaranteed that the new Divinity will sell like hot bread, proving once again that as far as RPGs go, that's what people are looking for, games who don't treat them like toddlers who need to be constantly lectured and preached to

[Santandame]

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t be pre-purchasing Midnight. Sadly, from what I’ve seen, the game just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. I’m not really keen on anything I’ve seen so far. Housing was the only feature I had a level of interest in but now I’m just over it. Just feel a tad apathetic.

I can’t justify the price tag for what I would personally get out of Midnight myself. I hope everyone else who feels the same follows suit rather. Vote with your wallets instead because it’s the only possible way we might see some changes to form.

[Limayria]

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this misunderstanding is basically dooming midnight lol

theres a huge focus on blood elves in the expansion, its honestly pretty close to pandas in MoP or trolls in BFA (for horde) sure theres other stuff happening, but the major focus of the expansion and 3 of the 4 zones are focused on thalassian elves or stories directly involving them (voidstorm, ZA, Quelthalas) we're getting troll customizations and theyre part of ONE ZONE. but not even a single new hair style for blood elves? even though theyre making new ones for npcs? LOL its not people "misunderstanding" shit thats gonna hurt midnight; its blizzard refusing to actually develop the races players actually wanna play.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Just to inject some life into the thread for a bit. What were people's favorite and least favorite patch or piece of content. What part of the expansion (besides maybe obvious ones like launch) do you look back at most fondly?

For me it would have to be the Nightfall patch for least favorite, as it really didnt offer anything besides some decent transmog options from Nightfall. And Dastardly Duos which were a complete failure when it came to being anything remotely interesting.
For favorite patch, probably Siren Isle. Reused content or not, it was nice to have good non-flying outdoor content again. And it had just enough variety to feel meaty, even if most of it was reused.

Hard to point to anything in TWW as being a favorite of mine when the whole expansion has been so disposable and had no staying power.

Delves are moving in the right direction for repeatable endgame PvE content, but it's not enough. What I'd like is something like Voidwatch from FF11, where you and your group can go out somewhere in the beautiful world and spawn a difficult boss monster, fight it, and then get good gear rewards from it. And you can do that over and over. Delves aren't as story heavy/scripted as rehearsing the same setpiece dungeons or climatic raids over and over, and don't have the timer, but they take place in enclosed environments rather than using the open world, and are capped at 5 players. And the open world events are scripted, are on a set schedule, are not challenging, and the rewards very quickly become worthless. I do appreciate delves existing but they are not the silver bullet they were promised to be.




The Nightfall patch was disappointing. The expansion is called the WAR Within, or in China it is called 地心之戰 "War at the Center/Core of the Earth". Bayard Wu's key art and loading screen illustration for the expansion depicts war against Nerubians. But where is the actual war in the expansion? In the levelling questline, there was 60 second segment on an airship as you used a ballista to shoot down at a lot of Nerubians. Near the end of the launch level cap questline, you flew around for 30 seconds to plop down and assassinate three Nerubian officers. And then that was it. That was all of the war "content" in the main story. No big pitched battles or frontlines to participate in, no formalized war content like battlegrounds or warfronts. The Nightfall patch added an event, but it involves just flying around a little area for 10 minutes mass pulling and zerging down mobs, and that's it. Very disappointing. I get a better war experience doing a 64 man Dynamis run in FF11 fighting armies of Beastmen.




I forgot Siren Isle even existed.

Undermine was just too small

The zones in general were missed opportunities. The Ringing Deeps could have been A LOT bigger. Hallowfall could have been A LOT bigger with Boralus sized towns or Nathria sized castles. The key art for the expansion advertised Nerubian cities hanging over an abyss which looked so cool, but that isn't what you get.

[Vakir]

Rare acceptable Val take. City of Threads was probably one of the most disappointing parts of TWW considering how pale of a shadow it was compared to the scope of Suramar which it's clearly trying to ape parts of.

[Sondrelk]

Rare acceptable Val take. City of Threads was probably one of the most disappointing parts of TWW considering how pale of a shadow it was compared to the scope of Suramar which it's clearly trying to ape parts of.

There was never a chance it would be anything like Suramar when flying is an option. It just immediately kills any sort of sense of hostility within the city.

[Joshuaj]

Hard to point to anything in TWW as being a favorite of mine when the whole expansion has been so disposable and had no staying power.

Delves are moving in the right direction for repeatable endgame PvE content, but it's not enough. What I'd like is something like Voidwatch from FF11, where you and your group can go out somewhere in the beautiful world and spawn a difficult boss monster, fight it, and then get good gear rewards from it. And you can do that over and over. Delves aren't as story heavy/scripted as rehearsing the same setpiece dungeons or climatic raids over and over, and don't have the timer, but they take place in enclosed environments rather than using the open world, and are capped at 5 players. And the open world events are scripted, are on a set schedule, are not challenging, and the rewards very quickly become worthless. I do appreciate delves existing but they are not the silver bullet they were promised to be.




The Nightfall patch was disappointing. The expansion is called the WAR Within, or in China it is called 地心之戰 "War at the Center/Core of the Earth". Bayard Wu's key art and loading screen illustration for the expansion depicts war against Nerubians. But where is the actual war in the expansion? In the levelling questline, there was 60 second segment on an airship as you used a ballista to shoot down at a lot of Nerubians. Near the end of the launch level cap questline, you flew around for 30 seconds to plop down and assassinate three Nerubian officers. And then that was it. That was all of the war "content" in the main story. No big pitched battles or frontlines to participate in, no formalized war content like battlegrounds or warfronts. The Nightfall patch added an event, but it involves just flying around a little area for 10 minutes mass pulling and zerging down mobs, and that's it. Very disappointing. I get a better war experience doing a 64 man Dynamis run in FF11 fighting armies of Beastmen.




I forgot Siren Isle even existed.




The zones in general were missed opportunities. The Ringing Deeps could have been A LOT bigger. Hallowfall could have been A LOT bigger with Boralus sized towns or Nathria sized castles. The key art for the expansion advertised Nerubian cities hanging over an abyss which looked so cool, but that isn't what you get.

I agree with some of this, yeah.

But with the pictures displayed at the bottom of your post, it sounds like you just wanted a Nazjatar zone underground lol

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blizzard has always taken things from other games but it's clear that xiv is having a stronger than average influence on modern wow. the problem is that some of the concepts they're "stealing" either don't fit wow (them leaning more and more into cute things) or blizzard doesn't have enough skill to implement them properly (this whole saga scam). the end result is some cheap-feeling chimera. i know ffxiv is doing badly right now, but what happens once that game recovers? why would people pick wow over a game that does what wow is trying to do but better?

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this misunderstanding is basically dooming midnight lol

"Some concepts don't fit WoW"

Everything can fit WoW, ngl. You just have to put it in the universe proper for it to work.

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Shit, if WoW and FFXIV had a crossover one day, and WoW players got a glimpse of Solution 9, while XIV players got a glimpse of the Sunwell or summ, would you really be surprised?

[micwini]

Full agree. Hallowfall was cool, but the other 2 zones could have been just as cool or even cooler with some more interesting concepts.

[Nymrohd]

I think modern Warcraft just lacks spectacle. We are a long way from 2004 when a large uninstanced world was enough to cause wonder. When the ship zoned in on Howling Fjord in Wrath the scale seemed unique; it gave me a similar sense with the transition from 2D to 3D gaming when I got my N64. Nowadays everything WoW does in scale, other games just do better. Yes the difference is that WoW is an MMO but the complete lack of challenge in overworld content makes the social aspect indifferent imo. As for the instanced areas, they are impressive but rarely are they that impactful.

Also not interested in discussing this but flight was the biggest mistake they ever made, it has completely ruined the scale of the game and instead of finding a solution with skyriding, they increased the speed even more making the problem even worse.

I was hoping Metzen would at least bring us some epic story moments but the storytelling is still too focused on interpersonal drama of a small roster of unlikeable characters and the budget for cinematics seems to have been slashed completely. I want more Alexstrasza fighting Razsageth in the sky and less 2-4 characters talking to each other. I don't think there is ever a reason to have cinematics for characters that are just talking. . .

The gameplay is fine, probably among the best periods it has had in WoW with a wide number of options. But the fact that this is a 21 year old game and there is yet to be support for basic archetypes or races that have existed since the RTS games like spellblades, tinkers or forest trolls is just maddening. Instead we are getting evokers and there is nothing wrong with evokers but that should have happened AFTER the archetypes that have been prevalent in the franchise since before even WoW and are used by multiple NPCs in WoW itself were all supported. Heck we are even regressing in some ways (I am so salty about Pack Leader taking a class with very versatile fantasy and just forcing three pets tied to a single NPC on it)

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Also not interested in discussing this but flight was the biggest mistake they ever made, it has completely ruined the scale of the game and instead of finding a solution with skyriding, they increased the speed even more making the problem even worse.

One of those things that is objectively true but will get a ton of pushback. Kind of a perfect example of why giving people what they want is sometimes bad.

[Nymrohd]

One of those things that is objectively true but will get a ton of pushback. Kind of a perfect example of why giving people what they want is sometimes bad.

It cannot be solved anyway. You cannot give people so much convenience and then take it away. I am just baffled at the choice they made with skyriding to almost double flying speeds. Why go from a top speed of 420% to 705% (830% initially) instead of just having at most 450 or 500%? Who decided that was a good idea? Again, I am not going to suggest restricting it because that would be a disaster to do now. But damn was it stupid to not only improve upon the existing problem but actually make it even worse. So there is nothing more to talk about; it is here and it will stay and people will act very strongly against any restriction.

[Zardas]

Also not interested in discussing this but flight was the biggest mistake they ever made, it has completely ruined the scale of the game and instead of finding a solution with skyriding, they increased the speed even more making the problem even worse.

The issue is not flying : it's that the world and the game is made with flying in mind. They could keep flying in the game but make new content like it was not. That way they can keep more detailled and interesting zones while not taking away any convenience for those who only care about such stuff.

[Vakir]

There was never a chance it would be anything like Suramar when flying is an option. It just immediately kills any sort of sense of hostility within the city.

It plays a role, but even Suramar with flying and Lemix bustedness was engaging despite not being threatening. Other than the one overly big Mana quest timegate, the economy and scarcity felt real and was well paced, you're still messing with leylines as a source of progression, the most economically flush area of it is flooded with elites, you still have a range of civilian reactions and people struggling you can choose to help or ignore, there's a wide diversity of areas that give you a sense of functioning pillars of a city - markets, canals, a harbor, stockades, etc. and there is a presence above and below.

There's only token attempts with any of this stuff in Azj'kahet. It's not bad by any means, but it feels like every other sub-area in the game that you get a disguise in. Everything is very brief and isolated and it's just...an area of pathing spider NPCs rather than feeling alive.

It's not just the hostility, though that matters. But I can self-impose no flight and it's still a non-factor. The Suramar illusion dispel was infamous. I had to TRY to get booted for the TWW meta even when I was on foot in the belly of it. I stopped needing to worry about earning Kej basically immediately. Even the side quests specifically keeping me in there long term were just..."fine, I guess?"

People cared about the Insurrection and it was a huge build up, I don't remember anything about the 3 spider rep people except that each had a mount to buy.

[Sondrelk]

It cannot be solved anyway. You cannot give people so much convenience and then take it away. I am just baffled at the choice they made with skyriding to almost double flying speeds. Why go from a top speed of 420% to 705% (830% initially) instead of just having at most 450 or 500%? Who decided that was a good idea? Again, I am not going to suggest restricting it because that would be a disaster to do now. But damn was it stupid to not only improve upon the existing problem but actually make it even worse. So there is nothing more to talk about; it is here and it will stay and people will act very strongly against any restriction.

Hopefully my dream comes true one of these days, and Prey and Heroic World Tier is where flying mounts are removed, and all the "endgame" open world stuff happens.

That way, you can have all the fun outdoor secrets and such without having it be ruined by flying.

[Joshuaj]

I think modern Warcraft just lacks spectacle. We are a long way from 2004 when a large uninstanced world was enough to cause wonder. When the ship zoned in on Howling Fjord in Wrath the scale seemed unique; it gave me a similar sense with the transition from 2D to 3D gaming when I got my N64. Nowadays everything WoW does in scale, other games just do better. Yes the difference is that WoW is an MMO but the complete lack of challenge in overworld content makes the social aspect indifferent imo. As for the instanced areas, they are impressive but rarely are they that impactful.

Also not interested in discussing this but flight was the biggest mistake they ever made, it has completely ruined the scale of the game and instead of finding a solution with skyriding, they increased the speed even more making the problem even worse.

I was hoping Metzen would at least bring us some epic story moments but the storytelling is still too focused on interpersonal drama of a small roster of unlikeable characters and the budget for cinematics seems to have been slashed completely. I want more Alexstrasza fighting Razsageth in the sky and less 2-4 characters talking to each other. I don't think there is ever a reason to have cinematics for characters that are just talking. . .

The gameplay is fine, probably among the best periods it has had in WoW with a wide number of options. But the fact that this is a 21 year old game and there is yet to be support for basic archetypes or races that have existed since the RTS games like spellblades, tinkers or forest trolls is just maddening. Instead we are getting evokers and there is nothing wrong with evokers but that should have happened AFTER the archetypes that have been prevalent in the franchise since before even WoW and are used by multiple NPCs in WoW itself were all supported. Heck we are even regressing in some ways (I am so salty about Pack Leader taking a class with very versatile fantasy and just forcing three pets tied to a single NPC on it)

Idk about you, but Midnight Silvermoon is pretty damn grand imo.

[Nymrohd]

Hopefully my dream comes true one of these days, and Prey and Heroic World Tier is where flying mounts are removed, and all the "endgame" open world stuff happens.

That way, you can have all the fun outdoor secrets and such without having it be ruined by flying.

The world is still created with that sense of scale though. It's why we need wide open spaces everywhere instead of more crowded options

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

There's still a chance there's Animated Shorts for Midnight, however if by launch nothing shows up and there's just another vague Xal'atath cinematic where she says "more Theorycraft pls lore nerds" I think we know what The Last Titan will look like too. I'm just giving them the benefit of doubt until the Midnight launch if so I assume they just have nothing and will scramble just like they did with Shadowlands conclusion but in a far more severe environment where epicness is supposed to take place and be on display.

The Roadmap saves this game at this point, its' the only saving grace that keeps my interest and excitement since everything is so left field because they have to be like that these days due to how hypercompetitive the market has become across the industry.

I do genuinely wonder if the entire Cinematics Team is just gone and was replaced with AI solutions and outsourcing because it was really strange how unified and exciting the prospects of what happened at the end of Dragonflight was.. Especially because of their understanding that creating Patch Trailers that connected everything over the span of an expansion was a good starting point for a more cohesive unfiied experience but alas as with everything good that happens it quickly reverts back to even worse states. The amount of iGCs in quick succession, their understanding of dialogue sequences between characters to be shown to consumers. There was just a lot of right moves at the time that made me truly believe we had actually turned a new leaf.

[Joshuaj]

We getting that roadmap at all this year or?

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Also, pre-patch on January 20th

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http://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/...ive-january-20

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Guess Roadmap will arrive in January/February. Considering Faries comment about starting of 2026 with a bang across Blizzard Entertainment according to Variety. (https://variety.com/2025/gaming/news...ew-1236610214/)

Obviously, it could still arrive tomorrow but we'll see.

[Lady Atia]

Guess Roadmap will arrive in January/February. Considering Faries comment about starting of 2026 with a bang across Blizzard Entertainment according to Variety. (https://variety.com/2025/gaming/news...ew-1236610214/)

Obviously, it could still arrive tomorrow but we'll see.

I mean, they are currently busy fixing bugs that showed china exclushit stuff for our store instead of making roadmaps or you know, releasing stuff for everyone instead of china only exclushit.