Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Cheezits]

i cant get the link to work because it was removed but heres a reddit post courtesy of never closing my tabs

A survey justifying continued development on things already in motion is not a genius revelation. Maybe it is on r/wow where people seem to have the collective IQ of a cucumber.

[Hitei]

i cant get the link to work because it was removed but heres a reddit post courtesy of never closing my tabs

-snip-

This is pretty melodramatic nonsense.

[Jolly Roger]

This is pretty melodramatic nonsense.

it was reddit what do you expect lol

[Count Zero]

it was reddit what do you expect lol

Did you post it because you disagree, agree, or? What's your point, basically.

[Jolly Roger]

Did you post it because you disagree, agree, or? What's your point, basically.

essentially in the very small possibility that this is in any way from a real worker it shows we can expect one of those specs coming and that internally theres a lot of pushback from what players actually want and what the devs want

i absolutely agree that mid expansion specs are coming

[Count Zero]

essentially in the very small possibility that this is in any way from a real worker it shows we can expect one of those specs coming and that internally theres a lot of pushback from what players actually want and what the devs want

i absolutely agree that mid expansion specs are coming

They've done surveys like that before, that didn't amount to anything. Not saying it's not happening, just saying the survey in and of itself isn't proof. It might be evidence, but it's not proof.

Could just be a reasonable guess. Aug was added mid xpac, they have changed up their content release paradigm and will be changing it further (small raids in mini patches).

[Nymrohd]

I think Alleria is fine in small doses. But after 2 patches of seeing her say and do the exact same thing, the 3rd one gets dull pretty fast.

Fine as in inoffensive? Cause I don't think she was ever entertaining (outside looking hilariously goofy when she absorbs L'ura back in Legion)
At least Turalyon looks cool

[Joshuaj]

Love it when WoW fans realize it's never 1 person's fault. Like, yes people, that's how a company normally works...

[Hearthfinder]

I mean, there are so many things coming together to create the supposed downfall of WoW's glory days.

- Original artists and designers handing over the reins many times over the years. Heck, some of them are still there but got older and shifted their mindsets.

- Different ownership.

- New era, as society is literally in a different place from 2006 and even 2016.

- Shifting audiences.

- New IPs coming in to compete, both internal and external.

That probably explains a feeling of something familiar gradually becoming unrecognisable (Lich King to Shadowlands, or cinematic style of WoD vs Dragonflight).

But for Midnight in particular, I think we all expected a big Midnight because TWW felt rushed, Quel'Thalas is a major location, and Metzen is back.

Only problem is: does Midnight feel disappointing in some ways because of Blizzard having changed, or because it, too, is a stepping-stone towards TLT and whatever comes after?

TLT does seem like the Metzenified version of the story they were going to tell in TWW.

[Super Dickmann]

Only problem is: does Midnight feel disappointing in some ways because of Blizzard having changed, or because it, too, is a stepping-stone towards TLT and whatever comes after?

Neither, it's because in one respect (Metzen), Blizzard's marketing outdid itself and they correctly gambled that next to none of their audience had actually played anything of his in fifteen years and would fill in the blanks with what they wanted, rather than the reality of Metzen's vision at this time and that of the previous writers being basically congruent. The second aspect is that after Blizzard went up on stage and said 'we'll do three DFs really fast', people convinced themselves they'll produce neverbeforeseen longer expansions so even the aspects where the flow of content is obviously, transparently better than anything they've done earlier (Delves, Housing) in terms of evergreen features, people will lose it.

For the story though it's purely people who must have been asleep at the wheel for taking what are now eight years since BFA to be upset at the writers for killing the factions and turning everyone into a peacenik and taking it out on the first expansion where they actually do have playable groups clash in even the briefest way. I imagine it's hit in Midnight chiefly because every other avenue of denial has been exhausted. "It's the cosmic setting, it'd work if only it were on Azeroth!" one points at Shadowlands. "No, it's Danuser, Metzen will fix it!" another points at Dragonflight. "Idiot, it's that it's on a new continent, just bring it back home!" A third desperately calls out, waving at TWW. At this stage, it's not even closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, the horse has already escaped, found love, had kids and died peacefully of old age.

It's the factions and the violence, silly, there is nothing else. The boldness of a much younger, more capable Metzen and his pals, both with SC1 and Brood War as the baseline, and that had you spend most of TFT playing as Arthas and most else playing as various obsessives and cranks from Illidan to Maiev. That backtracked hard on Thrall, brought back Stormwind and made the best dwarf version of the franchise and then made the OG Forsaken playable.

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Good dialogue and meaningful character interaction is better than spectacle for me. A good balance is necessary though. I can enjoy both just fine. One of the issues I had with how Shadowlands characters interacted is that... they didn't. I remember encountering characters that hadn't seen each other for decades mid conversation and hearing only a couple of sentences before they fucked off to talk in private. I mean, ok I guess?

Moment to moment character writing is the least bad it's been in almost a decade, but that can do nothing when, for the most part, every single character we follow is the same guy (or girl) in different outfits and skintones. The flaw is summarized in Metzen's bit about regretting calling it Warcraft, the story will fail by default, always, when it is at war with its premise. The franchise, from a standpoint of flavor and setting exists and hinges on violence between larger-than-life groups with incompatible interests. You could get Charles Dickens to write every line of dialogue and fill it with explosions up to the ears and it will continue to fail if it's about neutrally nice people living among identical, neutrally nice, cosmopolitan societies, languishing in a vegetative state until a strawman runs along to upset them. It's also why the topic about scale is also completely moot - whether the strawman is the fifty-feet underworld devil or some guy's niece, Tyrande going on about renewal and Trollbane declaring he's about love and tolerance will suck equally as hard.

Now that the narcoleptic audience has finally picked up on this in some measurable way it'll continue harming what is otherwise a perfectly functional, even well above average state of the game, until it's resolved. There's no cheat around doing the premise of the franchise.

[Darkarath]

Chris Metzen has sometimes thought they shouldn't have called it Warcraft, believing the name may sound too intimidating, but Holly contends that nobody really thinks that about Warhammer.

I have to say that this statement bothers way more than I expected.

I fully agree with the notion that Warcraft should be more than WoW, though. Doubt that we'll see that materialize in a new (not mobile) game any time soon. Probably an animation TV show will come before that.

[Enrif]

- SNIP -

Nice read, and it makes sense. The question only remains, which of these are the "safe" bets and which are the "challenging" ones.

I wouldn't be surprised if different devs want to push their idea of a spec, and use data from survey to justify it. Also, which surveys? We had the spec survey recently, the class survey over a year ago, and who knows how many more that had no reports at all (like i don't report in the diablo surveys i get).

Aug was added mid xpac, they have changed up their content release paradigm and will be changing it further (small raids in mini patches).

the call out for the mini raids in mid patches is a good call out. also the addition of labyrinths as a non-main patch feature. We might see a total paradigm shift of what belongs into which patch. Sure, things already changed a lot after SL, but we might see a greater distinction from the old patch models. Heck, we already see that somewhat in the expansion structure of the saga. I would actually welcome it if blizz would use their smaller patches for new specs to be added.

[Pheraz]

To the ultra doomers in here I tell you what happened:

To an enjoyable classic hero villain story you need BOTH sides to be cool, a cool villain (xal is cool. Check) and a cool hero or hero group. And alleria is pretty annoying, Anduin is a weakling and the arathor young leader girl is hard for many people to identify with (even though she is the coolest out of this mess)

So that's the problem and now almost the same heros are taking us to the next xpac and this is where the hype vanished

We were penetrated by Allerias stupidity, Anduins weakling wimmering and on top of that we get Anduin 2.0 with Allerias son

They really need Alleria to either die or go to fade into the background like tyrande

The game and gameplay and reward structure itself is fine and imo has never been this good. Maybe more cust. would be also good but you alone won't bring back the hype

[Jaggler]

-snip-

That really is a bunch of nothing.

The surveyed specs aren't some wholly new idea by Bliazzard, they have been argues as such in the community for as long as i remember. Tank/heal specs for the pure DPS classes, ranged monk dps spec, priest holy dps spec, Lich/necromancer spec for DK, Tank shaman etc. are pretty universally liked concepts that have been bouncing around for YEARS.

So Blizzard took those community ideas, apparently worked a bit on them and now gauges how people feel about more concrete versions of them. Of course you could make a cynical post on reddit about how this is all a facade, or you could actually appreciate for once, that Blizz took community ideas and apparently is working to make them a reality.

The post really sounds like some pretentious douche lol.

[BaumanKing]

I think Alleria is fine in small doses. But after 2 patches of seeing her say and do the exact same thing, the 3rd one gets dull pretty fast.

Unfortunately, that's because Alleria isn't likable enough as a character to be a protagonist. It's no coincidence that in the WC2 novels, she was only a supporting character to the main characters, Khadgar and Turalyon. She's certainly a fine character, but only in small doses.

[Throwawayx]

What I'm finding especially odd are Holly's comments about WoW needing a broader audience and greater approachability. WoW became massive because it was approachable and had broader appeal vs its competitors. Its art style, tone, vibe and gameplay systems made it accessible without being shallow, which is exactly why it dwarfed every other MMO at the time. So I'm not really sure what the goal is here. Warcraft already is approachable and already has a large audience. What I'm seeing instead is people being turned off because WoW doesn't feel like Warcraft, it's not that cool, epic, action-packed setting with character anymore, even when compared to earlier versions of the game. People look at the Arathi cinematic and think to themselves "Why would I spend money on that when Warhammer exists?"

Another thing that is odd to me is how every Warcraft spinoff seems aggressively infantilized. Hearthstone, and especially Warcraft Rumble, feel like they're aimed at literal children. In all this time, Blizzard has never seriously tried a more mature, adult take on the IP. This is just speculation on my part, but I'd wager that a darker, more grounded Warcraft spinoff would perform far better than something in the spirit of Rumble. It seemed to work great for D4 going back to a more grounded, darker aesthetic than D3.

That ties into another confusing decision: making live-service games - designed to rely on long-term spending - aimed at kids, who generally don't have disposable income to support them. Unsurprisingly, Warcraft Rumble was shut down in under a year. It's just a bizarre pattern of decisions around this IP.

I don't understand why Blizzard keeps doubling down on softening and infantilizing an IP whose core audience is largely young adults or older, especially when games like Elden Ring, The Witcher, Kingdom Come clearly prove there's a massive audience for mature, more serious RPGs. Even Warhammer has stayed relevant and successful without abandoning its tone or factions. Warcraft used to be in that same space - and it's strange to see it drift so far from it for no added benefit. In fact, it's doing more harm than good.

Just a string of bizarre decisions all around.

[Super Dickmann]

Unfortunately, that's because Alleria isn't likable enough as a character to be a protagonist. It's no coincidence that in the WC2 novels, she was only a supporting character to the main characters, Khadgar and Turalyon. She's certainly a fine character, but only in small doses.

Hand to my heart, I may be the only person here who actually likes Alleria, or is at least fine with her. It may be because a neurotic who can’t properly balance her family life, who snatched the occasional W (launch) but who, even when right (K’aresh) can’t actually prevent the problem is a breath of fresh air when compared to such thoroughly boring, milquetoast protagonists as Jaina and Sadfang (BFA), Anduin and Sylvanas (SL) and everyone in DF. The biggest problem with her is that the launch content is partially from her standpoint (or worse, Anduin’s) and the end content is entirely from it. If you dislike Alleria or even don’t care about Alleria, that content is bunk.

Take Tirion in Wrath for example, by all metrics an awful protagonist. A boring motherfucker with only the most basic professional conflict with the main villain, pushing out everyone with an actually dramatic grievance either out of focus (Jaina, Sylvanas, the blood elves) or out of the game entirely (any orcish connection with Ner’zhul), leading a nonsensical hodgepodge organization of all races and beliefs larping as paladins. But unlike Alleria, the dude doesn’t even show up until the halfway point of leveling and you experience huge parts of the story, the vast majority of it with your faction and race, the natives of Northrend etc. all pushing their own goals and side-stories. He isn’t the only show in town so his problems don’t matter all that much.

[BaumanKing]

Hand to my heart, I may be the only person here who actually likes Alleria, or is at least fine with her.

I'd like to add that she's also one of the few most consistent characters (along with Bob). While many characters have narratively devolved into inconsistent messes or something else entirely, she's remained the same as she was in the WC2 novels (except for the Void), which is certainly an achievement on the part of Blizzard writers.

Take Tirion in Wrath for example, by all metrics an awful protagonist.

I remember back in WotLK days, Tirion was widely disliked for being a boring "literally who" guy who stole the Ashbringer from the players, reformed the Order of the Silver Hand into a neutral organization, and somehow became Arthas' main nemesis instead of Jaina and/or Sylvanas. But nowadays he's treated with so much reverence, which seems bizzare to me.

[Hitei]

Hand to my heart, I may be the only person here who actually likes Alleria, or is at least fine with her. .

I like Alleria.

[Nymrohd]

I just think she needs at least one strong action sequence. She is a magical archer. Does she have any scene that matches Sylvanas? Nope. Do you know how fucking common blond elf archer girl is? You can't swing a catgirl by the tail without hitting half a dozen of isekai with blond elf archer girl harem contenders. And I don't think Warcraft can claim to be the trope origin either, not that it matters for Alleria given how far apart her WC2 and Legion appearances are. All she does beyond archery is teleport around (and vague "I use the Void expertly" stuff that all casters do in WoW for their respective power type because the system has no real definition), the more aggressive void powers we saw briefly in Legion are barely used. And I cannot even be mad at that; they'd not even be effective against Xal most likely. Sure she got an actual win at launch content in TWW but it wasn't really that impressive as a scene. Visually she was boring to begin with and the redesign just does not resonate with me.

I don't think she is a bad character. Not sure exactly what else she could have done plotwise and she is pretty consistent. But I just don't see the appeal.

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I remember back in WotLK days, Tirion was widely disliked for being a boring "literally who" guy who stole the Ashbringer from the players, reformed the Order of the Silver Hand into a neutral organization, and somehow became Arthas' main nemesis instead of Jaina and/or Sylvanas. But nowadays he's treated with so much reverence, which seems bizzare to me.

Crowning Moment Of Awesome is a powerful trope and Tirion got multiple of those. Warcraft run on epic fantasy, no substance. Tirion and Sadfang are posterboys for that.

And can I say, there is nothing wrong with a bit of smooth brain no thoughts fan from your gaming fantasy. I've run campaigns like that on tabletop where we all agreed ahead of the time that the focus was epic fantasy and as long as I delivered the setpieces and the loot, the players ate it up. Problem is, Spectacle Creep and the Customer Expectation Gap are cruel mistresses for a story that spans over 30 years. At some point you just cannot deliver more.