Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Sondrelk]

They could maybe delay the season but not the expansion? Give them a couple of weeks with people doing content at lvl 90 just to see how it all feels with Apex talents on.
It's not like they can do anything for the story, the voice acting and cutscenes have probably been worked on.

Probably the best option of the devs just want to delay something.
Again though, not sure why they would want to except to somehow prove they care enough about the game to delay (banking on the good press of taking hard choices outweighing the bad press of a delay I suppose)
At best they would get a couple of passes on tuning. But expecting a raid that doesn't need post-launch hotfixes is a reach at the best of times. And there isn't really anything that could be massively improved by a delay.

[Cheezits]

https://youtu.be/F1pkwARaVAY?si=keXW-WStYjyVY9N7&t=1119

This is old information that came out long before four gladiator mounts were datamined in Midnight alpha, following an expansion of people rightfully saying the faster content cadence came with problems.

They will probably continue with faster patches, but keeping an Awakened season at the end to give the next expansion some breathing room would be appreciated.

[guro-tchai]

All of those issues were much more frequent and much more prominent in the first three expansions than in anything in the past decade.

Nothing in the past 15 years has reached the abhorrent levels of retconning seen in BC or Wrath. No character arc in the past 15 years has been more rushed than shit like Kael, Illidan and the entire blue flight being off-screen turned incomprehensibly villainous, or Darion Mograine deciding in literally 5 minutes to go from kill all life death knight who lives to serve the Lich King to trying to make his dad proud and do good because the Lich King didn't give him enough hugs.

the janitor? bolvar going from "waste those dragons idgaf lol" to being a levelheaded wimp who's prostrating himself before his pouting daughter?

Hey, remember when the Night Elves "organically" decided 7,000 years late that the High Elves shouldn't be using magic and they needed to be attacked on another continent on the other side of the ocean, driving them to side against the Alliance? Even though the Night Elves were completely cool with working with mages to fight the legion in WC3 and also had just recently joined the Alliance were they worked alongside both human mages and also those same High Elves?

that's a frequent misconception. there's several here, actually, so lots to unpack here.

1) "night elves attacked high elves"
blood elves. the distinction is present in vanilla.
they never attacked blood elves: it was a reconnaissance group, which, as usual with the Alliance, never goes far enough. "but west sanctum overload" - confirmed by two separate blood elf NPCs not to be caused by night elves.

2) "night elves decided that the high elves shouldn't be using magic"

that's false, they're more or less fine with the rest of the Alliance using magic.

then what was so special about blood elf magic?

the answer is obvious both to the players and in-universe: blood elves accepted fel willingly and en masse. we know this both because of the events of wc3 and various quests in classic.
first, Darkshore BFD quest, where we are tasked to retrieve naga and satyr brains to determine the impact of the fel on those embracing it. turning it in, we learn that the questgiver deplores (apparently, a well-known fact) blood elves turning to demon magic.
second, a vanilla Horde Stonetalon quest, where a blood elf is given refuge in a Horde camp (!), asks various Horde hobos to slaughter dryads (!!) and doesn't hide her allegiance to the Legion (!!!). ignoring what it tells us about the Horde, it shows us the common career path for a blood elf post-fall: demon servitude. which was most likely noticed by the night elves.

next year, right next to Kalimdor, there's a significant conflict between a people fleeing from the Legion and blood elves, working under prince Kael's command alongside demons. no one in the Alliance could know that Kael'thas had gone nuts - even blood elves in Quel'thalas were working to rejoin him on Outland, which is mentioned in their starting cinematic. naturally, ignoring the blood elf problem any longer meant giving the Legion an enormous foothold on Azeroth. thus the question isn't "why was there a night elf contingent in Quel'thalas?", it's "why was it so small?"

Remember when the Forsaken very "organically" entered into an alliance with a group of orcs, trolls and tauren on the other side of the world that they had absolutely nothing to do with and no readily apparent means to contact or even know about the formation of?

they had four years, old world orcs and ships. maybe vengeful and pious humans after them, who remembered how Balnazzar was chased out of Lordaeron. on top of that, tauren: some, like Cairne, fools; some, like Magatha, machiavellians.

My favorite totally organic and cool moment was when the Blood Elves who were still struggling to recover after the Scourge all but wiped out their kingdom and left them a small handful of survivors struggling with magic addiction, somehow out of nowhere with no satisfactory explanation at all had entire legions of sci-fi warp engineers and managed to...

cf. void elves

"so now it's basically the same, right?"
yea it's still ridden with holes but now it's lame. blood elves being insane, corrupt and aggressive is a feature, as is forsaken plotting. sometimes you're willing to dismiss some inconsistencies, but the story and atmosphere being uninspiring (no are we really helping a 40 year old man mend connection with his dad?) burns through your patience rather quickly

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I don't think they're going to delay nor do I think they're going to reveal any form of acceleration here not only because the point of this is to portray the most positive message around Blizzard until we hit Blizzcon where they crescendo this period with whatever they are not revealing until then.

Any form of theory around acceleration would only really make sense at Blizzcon due to its concentration of news leaving any form of "Timeline cutting" to be completely ignored. It makes very little if any sense to start this period until Blizzcon with "TLT is sooner" it would immediately be questionable outside of agenda setting and establishing as a message to their consumers that you have to just deal with the continual changes to the Model.

Considering the entire point is positivity with this type of marketing, I fail to see why negative effects would even show up at all.

[Cheezits]

I don't think they're going to delay nor do I think they're going to reveal any form of acceleration here not only because the point of this is to portray the most positive message around Blizzard until we hit Blizzcon where they crescendo this period with whatever they are not revealing until then.

We are theorizing deceleration. Four gladiator mounts/potentially four delve mounts in the alpha build, plus a "meatier" setting to play with than Khaz Algar, plus two portal realms done with at launch means there's a lot they can take from in Midnight to do four seasons/three seasons plus an awakened season. Trolls, Lordaeron, Worldcore, etc.

I really do not think there would be seen negatively at all. For casuals, it means TLT comes out a few months later later, or it means nothing because casuals haven't even caught on to the patch cadence. For everyone else it means the current expansion plus the next expansion gets some more time to cook.

I'm overall expecting the following reveals from the direct-

-Overall Amani theme for 12.1 (already spoiled)
-Megadungeon tease (100% so if it's Stratholme)
-Shadowlands remix tease
-some kind of customization patch promised, even if it's just hair colors and Void DH customizations

I don't expect but would like to see the following-

-direct confirmation of Amani
-huge customization patch
-big feature from TLT announced, though this may just be at Blizzcon
-four major patch structure confirmed

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean I'm always going to be for more space for the creative side to do their work if deceleration occurs I am a very happy camper. So I'm not opposed to deceleration I just don't believe thats' where we're heading at the moment but again I'd love for them to take more time with Midnight and The Last Titan.

[Pheraz]

All of those issues were much more frequent and much more prominent in the first three expansions than in anything in the past decade.

....and the ones who taught the humans how to heal with the Light, they needed to steal the Light from something else to be able to be paladins and stuff.

What was your favorite very cool, organic, tonally consistent, well written moment from back when the game had much better writing? :^)

I totally agree with your post. People are not neutral when talking about "back" vs "now"
When I played vanilla wow 20 years ago I did not care much for the story because I was just having too much fun with being online
But this feeling first came up in tbc and was getting stronger in wrath, they wracked warcraft3 story lines very early on
And sorry 70% of the player base... I did NOT like wrath. Icecrown looked very bad, rehashed nax, arthas was overrated, except the super nice cinematic and for me the only cool part of wrath was ulduar and to come to your point, the story was almost absent and when present nonesense.

For me the best mix of drama and atmosphere was bfa, even if motives were vague at best and sylv had too much screen time

[Ersula]

Anyone wanna predict the roadmap? Here's my take, sprinkled with stuff that's just too far ahead for them to reveal on Friday.

12.0.5 - Spring/Noblegarden and character customisation

12.0.7 - Isle of Fangs build-up, Paladins for more races after the campaign is done

12.1 - Isle of Fangs, troll raid and ancient Old God connections

BlizzCon, The Last Titan unveiled, and 12.2.

12.1.5 - Mostly fluff with world events and cosmetics to farm, as an additional layer of content in the launch zones

12.1.7 - Light fanaticism build-up, exploring ancient secrets in EK including the Scion's temple, perhaps an Eaatweald revamp for world content. Scourge, Sylvanas? Arthas flashbacks?

12.2 - Ending the light's grip on Lordaeron, perhaps involving Avaloren invasion force, the Undercity, or Light's Hope Chapel. Having the Light launch an invading force in the south of Quel'Thalas would be an interesting twist.

12.2.5 and 12.2.7 builds towards the Northrend and Titan connection in all of this.

The roadmap isn't going to get specific on the other seasons because they never do that. They only put specific details on the roapmap when its the next patch. The 2025 roadmap doesn't give any info besides dates because they never updated it.

Isle of Fangs has to be 12.0.5 content, not 12.1 because they're obsessed with each season bringing an entirely new motif. The Amani are launch content.

Also we just updated Noblegarden in Dragonflight.

You're probably right about The Last Titan pre-order at Blizzcon but that's going to be fucking nuts because the Midnight expansion will have only been out for 6 months.

[Nightshade711]

The roadmap isn't going to get specific on the other seasons because they never do that. They only put specific details on the roapmap when its the next patch. The 2025 roadmap doesn't give any info besides dates because they never updated it.

Isle of Fangs has to be 12.0.5 content, not 12.1 because they're obsessed with each season bringing an entirely new motif. The Amani are launch content.

Also we just updated Noblegarden in Dragonflight.

You're probably right about The Last Titan pre-order at Blizzcon but that's going to be fucking nuts because the Midnight expansion will have only been out for 6 months.

Wasn't the next raid (or maybe one of the raids in season 2) troll themed? Would make sense for the Isle of Fangs to be 12.1 content if that's the case.

[Cheezits]

Isle of Fangs has to be 12.0.5 content, not 12.1 because they're obsessed with each season bringing an entirely new motif. The Amani are launch content.

Ula'tek is confirmed to be tied to 12.1 (Amani snake loa) and there is a poison-green gladiator mount. There is a possibility that 12.1 is fully Amani-themed, though I would hope that there is another piece of content besides Isle of Fangs. If not, then Amani should be an allied race to make up for the repetitive theming.

I am going to guess Ula'tek is a raid but there's also a supposed water themed dungeon and a good possibility of Stratholme being that season as well (megadungeon) or the one shortly after. Stratholme being a large story beat makes sense both with what is being built up in Midnight launch, but post-raid spoilers as well as the Arthas lorewalking.

Its a site of huge paladin trauma that is literally on fire 24/7 which may or may not play into the sacred flame lore they are building up. If the Vanguard needs a training arc, that would suit it. Can't tell you what the "red smoke that puts you to sleep" is about though. Genuinely mysterious for modern WoW. Maybe it's a huge Agony font?

[Polybius]

The roadmap isn't going to get specific on the other seasons because they never do that. They only put specific details on the roapmap when its the next patch. The 2025 roadmap doesn't give any info besides dates because they never updated it.

Isle of Fangs has to be 12.0.5 content, not 12.1 because they're obsessed with each season bringing an entirely new motif. The Amani are launch content.

Also we just updated Noblegarden in Dragonflight.

You're probably right about The Last Titan pre-order at Blizzcon but that's going to be fucking nuts because the Midnight expansion will have only been out for 6 months.

Would tend to agree if not for the fact that the troll area at launch is relatively small.

[Cheezits]

Would tend to agree if not for the fact that the troll area at launch is relatively small.

And it's the only launch storyline that is truly unfinished, dealing with more or less half of the conflict without getting into the actual issues of the Amani (history + loa hate). Also with zero Horde trolls getting involved yet, not even the Horde Amani.

[milkmustache]

Isle of Fangs has to be 12.0.5 content, not 12.1 because they're obsessed with each season bringing an entirely new motif. The Amani are launch content.

I think that a majority of this forum would agree that Isle of Fangs/Atal'Utek is suited for a .5 patch, if it weren't for the datamined tier.

There's of course an off chance that we get Atal'Utek in 12.0.5 and the "ulatekraid" icons refer to a different raid in 12.1, but I personally don't see it.

[Khaza-R]

I think that a majority of this forum would agree that Isle of Fangs/Atal'Utek is suited for a .5 patch, if it weren't for the datamined tier.

There's of course an off chance that we get Atal'Utek in 12.0.5 and the "ulatekraid" icons refer to a different raid in 12.1, but I personally don't see it.

Its possible Ula'tek could be part of the minor patch and a smaller raid in 12.1 (maybe like 1-3 bosses) and the rest the major patch is still something new.

[milkmustache]

Its possible Ula'tek could be part of the minor patch and a smaller raid in 12.1 (maybe like 1-3 bosses) and the rest the major patch is still something new.

This is also true. I'd normally push back, but our tier in Season 1 comes from March on the Isle of Quel'Danas, the 3 boss raid. So if this was the case, I'd assume that maybe Ula'tek has the biggest story focus?

[Cheezits]

This is also true. I'd normally push back, but our tier in Season 1 comes from March on the Isle of Quel'Danas, the 3 boss raid. So if this was the case, I'd assume that maybe Ula'tek has the biggest story focus?

I think it's going to be the opposite ala Aberrus and DOTI. The Troll story will be treated with lore respect but not importance to the overall saga story, unless Ula'tek is directly tied to whatever Xal went to by virtue of them being trapped underground (which I doubt is the idea).

Meanwhile, a "fix up the Light" story -does- have immediate story importance and points to Stratholme/Lordaeron, one of which was altered at launch and was also supposed to be in launch.

[Eldryth]

Its possible Ula'tek could be part of the minor patch and a smaller raid in 12.1 (maybe like 1-3 bosses) and the rest the major patch is still something new.

That really seems unlikely to me given how the files are named. Why would they label the sets under a smaller secondary raid? I wouldn't rule out there being multiple, but I fully expect Ula'tek to be the main one.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised to see that island as the main focus of a major patch after Undermined though. We've already had that patch that was just a mostly-irrelevant deep dive into a specific race, and despite complaints about it being disjointed from the main story and mostly filler, it still ended up incredibly popular. I can definitely see the potential in giving the Amani a similar deep dive patch; I just hope they learned to tie it in with the overall story better.

[Cheezits]

Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised to see that island as the main focus of a major patch after Undermined though. We've already had that patch that was just a mostly-irrelevant deep dive into a specific race, and despite complaints about it being disjointed from the main story and mostly filler, it still ended up incredibly popular. I can definitely see the potential in giving the Amani a similar deep dive patch; I just hope they learned to tie it in with the overall story better.

I think part of the problem is that not only is it not a huge area but it's too derivative of an existing zone. Even if it's a stellar Troll patch in general, Undermine still was its own area PLUS some of Ringing Deeps.

[Khaza-R]

That really seems unlikely to me given how the files are named. Why would they label the sets under a smaller secondary raid? I wouldn't rule out there being multiple, but I fully expect Ula'tek to be the main one.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too surprised to see that island as the main focus of a major patch after Undermined though. We've already had that patch that was just a mostly-irrelevant deep dive into a specific race, and despite complaints about it being disjointed from the main story and mostly filler, it still ended up incredibly popular. I can definitely see the potential in giving the Amani a similar deep dive patch; I just hope they learned to tie it in with the overall story better.

Sure, that's possible. I don't think it would be well received though. The forums might make it sound like "troll raid" is a popular request but literally 2 zones using the same assets and facing mostly the same enemy. It would feel very redundant once you're 6 months into the expansion. The only way I can really see Ula'tek being the main raid is if there's something else larger and otherworldly attached to the story of it.

[Cheezits]

Sure, that's possible. I don't think it would be well received though. The forums might make it sound like "troll raid" is a popular request but literally 2 zones using the same assets and facing mostly the same enemy. It would feel very redundant once you're 6 months into the expansion. The only way I can really see Ula'tek being the main raid is if there's something else larger and otherworldly attached to the story of it.

I'm sure that's the idea, as the main enemies of the ZA launch story are Witherbark Necromancers and Twilight Blade who are both definitively dealt with. We may be missing a big piece of context with what exactly Ula'tek is- it could be a demon robot for all we know. Or some kind of anti-Wild God (Decay God?)