Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Luck4]

Why are people so negative about midnight? is it the story, the content, or the addon / class changes - or a combination of all of that?

People will give many reasons, but, honestly, I believe it's more about hype than anything, hype is contagious; when everyone around you is excited, it's easy to be excited as well, regardless of underlying issues. Legion/Pandaria/WOTLK had many problems, but the hype was real back then.

Midnight was fully revealed less than six months ago, but nobody cares; even the WoW creators are trying to diversify their audiences/content to survive.

WoW is not dead, but surely has seen way better days.

[Xilurm]

So the pre-patch event is just a few rares and world quests in Twilight Highlands?

[Avikur]

I’m concerned that the damage meter is due to go live with the pre patch in 10 days and is missing so much functionality. I know we have details now, but that is technically only a skin, I want to be able to see how hard a spell hit, what it crit for etc. Fingers crossed for a significant build next week, class tuning and ui improvements

[Nightshade711]

So the pre-patch event is just a few rares and world quests in Twilight Highlands?

That’s what it looks like…
Man Blizz just has been dropping the ball on pre-patch events lately.

Legion was the best by far, and man Midnight coulda been a chance to get us something a little closer to that with the void storm stuff.

[Kiivar86]

Personally, my main issue is the Haranir.

The race and their zone feel like cut War Within content

They totally are. I'm not sure if it was confirmed but it is pretty blatant to me how they were, and given how bare it is, likely swapped places with K'aresh during development.

So the pre-patch event is just a few rares and world quests in Twilight Highlands?

That's pretty much been the pre-expansion events for a while, hasn't it?

[Nightshade711]

They totally are. I'm not sure if it was confirmed but it is pretty blatant to me how they were, and given how bare it is, likely swapped places with K'aresh during development.

If I remember correctly the map file for Ringing Deeps on TWW Alpha had the entrance to Harandar there. (Called the “Rootlands” iirc)

[Kiivar86]

If I remember correctly the map file for Ringing Deeps on TWW Alpha had the entrance to Harandar there. (Called the “Rootlands” iirc)

Yeah, as I recall that's where we got the Rootlands name originally. Plus there's the root-choked entrance in at least one of the underground zones (if not more).

[whoisqnx]

I cant remember, wasnt Legion pre patch also just a bunch of invasion points? I always see people praising it but I genuinely dont know why when we have similar pre patches now with more cosmetic rewards

[Sondrelk]

I cant remember, wasnt Legion pre patch also just a bunch of invasion points? I always see people praising it but I genuinely dont know why when we have similar pre patches now with more cosmetic rewards

Legion pre-patch was just a bunch of invasion points, yes. But they also had a scale that the more recent pre-patches don't have. For one, there were simply more zones being invaded. Secondly, the way it had you start small, go big across the entire zone, then return to the starting area made it feel less like a straight up mob grinder. And lastly, the enemies you fought had an impressive scale. Flying across the Barrens to kill a giant fel walker feels more impressive than flying across a zone to kill a regular mob.

Though I would say that we have had good pre-patch events. And also good pre-patch rewards. Legion is just one of the few where it had both. BfA for instance had a great event in Darkshore with lots to do, but no good rewards for repeat play.

[SaintBigfoot]

People will give many reasons, but, honestly, I believe it's more about hype than anything, hype is contagious; when everyone around you is excited, it's easy to be excited as well, regardless of underlying issues. Legion/Pandaria/WOTLK had many problems, but the hype was real back then.

Midnight was fully revealed less than six months ago, but nobody cares; even the WoW creators are trying to diversify their audiences/content to survive.

WoW is not dead, but surely has seen way better days.

People been talking about better days since TBC.

[Dracullus]

Let be honest, most of pre-patch events were pretty shit. I think only 3 were above average:

1. Legion - invasions were not the best gameplay wise (especially for today standards), but from story POV definitely best event. Add Broken Shore, Demon Hunter, Karazhan/Ulduar stuff and we easily have best event, I was pretty shocked it wasn't reaused in any way for Remix.
2. BfA - people were pissed about Sylvanas burning tree out of blue, but overall we got Darkshore campaign and world content (war mode when people cared about it was pretty great), Battle for Lordareon and imo 2 best cinematics (Jaina song, Old Soldier).
3. TWW post hotfixes (which happened like 2 days in to be fair) - best gameplay, 3 zones, many objectives, pretty generous drop with option to fill blanks, option to turn it into tier set (for same reason I really liked Forbidden Reach). Storywise of course nothing special.

So my perfect pre-patch thing would be Legion 'skin' (massive enemy attack on whole planet) but with TWW gameplay. Weird that MD doesn't use opportunity for Void invasions in multiple zones.

People been talking about better days since TBC.

Bro, Assyrian texts from 3000 BC talks about 'better days'.
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/res...ablet-babylon/

Comparing hype for game in your memory from 10-15-20 years to current reality is pretty ridiculous thing to do. Plus of course it's 11th expansion, people more or less know what to expect.

[Makorus]

Quite frankly, the only good Prepatch we had was BfA. Legion is the same slop we have now, so I just genuinely don't understand where this amazement with the Legion Prepatch is coming from. People loved it because it was a braindead way to level, mostly.

[whoisqnx]

I know this is an extremely hot take but i enjoyed SL pre patch. I loved the quests, i loved that we went to Plaguelands and ICC, etc. but this is coming from someone who loved Shadowlands and is an edgy DK main for years now.

[Sondrelk]

I know this is an extremely hot take but i enjoyed SL pre patch. I loved the quests, i loved that we went to Plaguelands and ICC, etc. but this is coming from someone who loved Shadowlands and is an edgy DK main for years now.

Supose there is always the argument of whether you count the questline alongside the event. Because SL definitely had a good questline, and a really good cutscene when we killed Nathanos. The actual repeatable event just sucked.

[Lahis]

So the pre-patch event is just a few rares and world quests in Twilight Highlands?

Just like they always are.

[Sondrelk]

Quite frankly, the only good Prepatch we had was BfA. Legion is the same slop we have now, so I just genuinely don't understand where this amazement with the Legion Prepatch is coming from. People loved it because it was a braindead way to level, mostly.

I am going to say that it's because it had just enough of everything to make it feel exciting.

It had enough zones to not make each one feel excessive. It had enough variety in each actual event to feel like you were doing something unique each time, even if it was always the same "go here and kill this pack of adds/elite".
On the rewards front, it had enough rewards that you needed to spend a while getting everything.
The non-combat section of the event was reasonably interesting. What with turning into a Dreadlord in the middle of Orgrimmar or Stormwind and killing people. Not to mention the actual doomsayer pamphlets needing to be collected.
And most of this had its own achievement, so you had a tangible reward, even if very minor.

And of course, the big events were structured around World Quests, which were completely new to everyone who had not played the Beta.

[Hitei]

I cant remember, wasnt Legion pre patch also just a bunch of invasion points? I always see people praising it but I genuinely dont know why when we have similar pre patches now with more cosmetic rewards

Yes. There was literally nothing remarkable about it besides it being a cheese way to level characters from 0 to max, which was also true for DF and TWW.

[Cheezits]

Are we talking about the same Legion Prepatch that had you sitting at the Orgrimmar gate to Azshara the whole time tagging Infernals? I'm glad people liked it but aside from War of Thorns I don't remember a single prepatch that wasn't mindlessly tagging mobs for gear.

[Makorus]

I am going to say that it's because it had just enough of everything to make it feel exciting.

It had enough zones to not make each one feel excessive. It had enough variety in each actual event to feel like you were doing something unique each time, even if it was always the same "go here and kill this pack of adds/elite".
On the rewards front, it had enough rewards that you needed to spend a while getting everything.
The non-combat section of the event was reasonably interesting. What with turning into a Dreadlord in the middle of Orgrimmar or Stormwind and killing people. Not to mention the actual doomsayer pamphlets needing to be collected.
And most of this had its own achievement, so you had a tangible reward, even if very minor.

And of course, the big events were structured around World Quests, which were completely new to everyone who had not played the Beta.

You had all that in the DF/TWW Prepatches, including other things like dungeons, yet they are garbage apparently.

Don't get me wrong, Invasions were cool, and it was cool seeing all the NPCs and all that. However, after the first in each zone, it was a drag, and I remember the Nethershard farm to be incredibly grindy.

I genuinely think it's considered good because of the Legion bonus.

[Runick]

I really enjoyed the Legion prepatch, but I think the reasons for that are as follows:

Main reasons:
1. It coincided with the time that I was coming back from a couple-year break from WoW, so it's possible that I could have been entertained by anything the game had to offer, lol
2. I could be mistaken, but weren't the Legion invasions the first time we saw the invasion-style content format? If so, it would have felt more novel at that time because it wasn't retreading the format of previous prepatch stuff.

Side reasons:
1. The Legion invasions introduced an awesome new eredar model and doing the invasions let me look at that model
2. Demon Hunter early access hype