Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Lorca]

just saw this unboxing of the collector's edition for Midnight, the guy doing his best (not really) to hide Atal'Utek starting at 13:40 lol.

HAHAHA, so ridiculous... but that confirms it definitely if there were any doubts, yes.

[Xilurm]

The lack of face means literally nothing. If anything it just makes things simpler because you don't need to animate talking and facial movement.

The lack of face means little 25 year old Timmy can't resonate with the characters enough so they just won't sell.

This is literally the reason they keep adding black pupils to elf characters that shouldn't have them.

[Jaggler]

Tbh, I think that trying to hide Atal'Utek that hard is kinda ridiculous, considering it is that huge island off the coast which is marked on the Zul'Aman zone map and you can't visit when flying over. The whole keeping it hush-hush just makes it more obvious lol

[Xilurm]

The Nu-Vrykul leader will be:
-Girlboss
-have a funny haircut
-unite the Fleshcursed, Valajar AND Helajar
-redeem Helya back into being a Valkyr and help kill Odyn

Quote this post next year, if I'm wrong I will post feet.

2016 called and it wants its trend back.

[Hitei]

The lack of face means little 25 year old Timmy can't resonate with the characters enough so they just won't sell.

This is literally the reason they keep adding black pupils to elf characters that shouldn't have them.

True. Famously no character without a face has ever resonated with people or sold well.

Spoiler: 

[Raetary]

True. Famously no character without a face has ever resonated with people or sold well.

Hell, you don't even need to go that far.

People very much resonated with the Ethereals in-game, even if the overall patch wasn't as satisfying.

[Xilurm]

True. Famously no character without a face has ever resonated with people or sold well.

Spoiler: 

Well, thanks for telling me something I know, I guess? Have you told it to Blizzard though? Because they certainly didn't get the memo.

Like, I'm sorry for being sarcastic but what are we doing? You know full well why Blizzard don't it. Stating the obvious won't change the fact that this is a business decision. They said so themselves last year that they changed Blood Elf eyes so that they can show more "human" emotion. Where do you think Ethereals stand in that grand plan of theirs?

[Super Dickmann]

The war crime that is diaper gnomes and the reality of dracthyr customizations basically kill any argument for the difficulty to implement Sethrak. You can lock them to a couple of customizable slots and the rest being cobbled-together assets. Ethereals are even more straightforward, as they have no face or name.

The lack of 'New Race' in the roadmap gives me faint hope we won't get neutral forest trolls. Package them with High Elves or not at all.

[Hitei]

You know full well why Blizzard don't it.

Because they're avoiding adding any races whose bodies necessitate additional significantly different armor scaling for each added 3D armor piece. Do you genuinely think it has anything at all to do with facelessness? They had no problem putting Ve'nari and Locus front and center in this very expansion.

[Lady Atia]

The war crime that is diaper gnomes and the reality of dracthyr customizations basically kill any argument for the difficulty to implement Sethrak. You can lock them to a couple of customizable slots and the rest being cobbled-together assets. Ethereals are even more straightforward, as they have no face or name.

The lack of 'New Race' in the roadmap gives me faint hope we won't get neutral forest trolls. Package them with High Elves or not at all.

Hahahaha. Imagine wanting an already playable race but with a different name tag so much as to sacrifice buff troll models for it.

[Elronas16]

Some really beautiful designs and concepts for what Silvermoon should have been in the art book.

There's a residential area with houses and more nature, a pretty dense looking market, a big square which seems like the palace court/entrance, and some very cool designs for Sunfury Spire.

Really makes one wonder what could've happened that they pivoted to the ugly style that made it into the game and a poorly envisioned theme park design with the city.

[Super Dickmann]

Hahahaha. Imagine wanting an already playable race but with a different name tag so much as to sacrifice buff troll models for it.

Alliance trolls are a complete joke, but Blizzard won't release a single faction race, likely at all, but definitely not without an addition for the other side. Thus, the only way it can happen is if they get a race and the most demanded, appropriate for the expansion and present in the game are High Elves. Another fringe benefit, as always, is that it'd give a future writing team that isn't this one a mandate to distinguish Blood Elves from this again, considering they've basically overlapped since TBC onwards.

[Xilurm]

Because they're avoiding adding any races whose bodies necessitate additional significantly different armor scaling for each added 3D armor piece. Do you genuinely think it has anything at all to do with facelessness? They had no problem putting Ve'nari and Locus front and center in this very expansion.

You aren't exactly going to be zooming in on either of their faces much. But when it comes to your character, you absolutely will be. They aren't going to be releasing a playable race without a face lol.

[Lady Atia]

Alliance trolls are a complete joke, but Blizzard won't release a single faction race, likely at all, but definitely not without an addition for the other side. Thus, the only way it can happen is if they get a race and the most demanded, appropriate for the expansion and present in the game are High Elves. Another fringe benefit, as always, is that it'd give a future writing team that isn't this one a mandate to distinguish Blood Elves from this again, considering they've basically overlapped since TBC onwards.

There is nothing wrong with ALLIED races interacting with both factions. We are friends and allies now, we are working together and there will never be a big war between Alliance and Horde EVER again, which is good. Faction locked allied races NEVER made sense anyways, and were just done for gameplay reasons.

And the Alliance even worked together with Vol'jin, you know, a troll, on two recent occassions (funny enough, the 2nd assault on Zul Aman and later the Siege of Orgrimmar), he even had his boat in the harbour lol. Alliance players help Zul Aman in Midnight as much as Horde players, so it makes sense to have them on both sides.

And it would be weird as fuck to give High Elves a new model all of the sudden. They look exactly like Blood Elves with blue eyes, which you can re-create using the void elves on Alliance side already.

[Super Dickmann]

There is nothing wrong with ALLIED races interacting with both factions. We are friends and allies now, we are working together and there will never be a big war between Alliance and Horde EVER again, which is good. Faction locked allied races NEVER made sense anyways, and were just done for gameplay reasons.

And the Alliance even worked together with Vol'jin, you know, a troll, on two recent occassions (funny enough, the 2nd assault on Zul Aman and later the Siege of Orgrimmar), he even had his boat in the harbour lol. Alliance players help Zul Aman in Midnight as much as Horde players, so it makes sense to have them on both sides.

And it would be weird as fuck to give High Elves a new model all of the sudden. They look exactly like Blood Elves with blue eyes, which you can re-create using the void elves on Alliance side already.

Three races use the dwarf skeleton and animations with zero changes, there's two sets of orcs and an additional set of gangly, malformed night elves to add to the original. A third set of generic high elves with maybe some face tattoos and lip filler would be completely in Blizzard's wheelhouse, easy to implement and soundly popular. For their fans they'd also not have the horrible receding hairline of void elves.

Forest trolls were the original Horde trolls, their entire background hinges on their wars with humanity and Quel'thalas. The human kingdoms were founded off of their destruction, a leading dynasty of theirs is literally called Trollbane. Them being alright with Blood Elves and disavowing Zul'jin because Liadrin was a nanny to his grandkids for a zone after milennia of zero-sum war is already completely wretched, but the idea that they'd now have ample reason to enlist with Stormwind is worse. Beyond surface aesthetics (and what aesthetics they are, the female model being what it is), a race, story-wise is a political entity. The moment the Amani become neutral, they die as a faction, because none of them will ever be able to express a position or engage in a story wherein it'd lose plausibility that their leaders can pal around with Anduin in the throne room. There's no story value of them as a neutral race, the opposite, it actively makes them and the Alliance worse, and the wages for it are a stub-nosed version of the troll male model, that, much like Earthen on Horde (and in general), next to no one in that faction will use anyway.

This is notwithstanding that neutral races in general are made even more pointless given that all relevant gameplay content is faction agnostic, so surely making Earthen Alliance-exclusive and now Amani Horde-exclusive would have no effect on any instanced content and would just create a more sensible story.

[Raetary]

Just because the alliance and horde routinely work together with the expansion relevant people, does not mean that those people have any actual interest in joining either faction or that the faction wants them there at all.

This attitude of all of us are being friends, no conflict ever, just dilutes the franchise.

The Horde and Alliance exist as entities in this universe, they would and should have vying interests even if they are not at all out war with one another.
Same goes for each individual subfaction within our outside of them.

With the addition of Cross Faction Gameplay, Blizzard should've actually become more conscious about what faction joins whom, as they aren't hindered by that gameplay element anymore but can focus on the narrative consistency unhindered.

[Ersula]

Well, thanks for telling me something I know, I guess? Have you told it to Blizzard though? Because they certainly didn't get the memo.

Isn't the more likely takeaway that if Haranir are introduced in 11.0 and become playable in 12.0, that if Ethereals were introduced in 11.2 that they wouldn't be ready to be playable till at least 12.2? If they made haranir playable based on the initial reaction, a full expansion is the basis for the turnaround on making a playable race.

[Lady Atia]

Isn't the more likely takeaway that if Haranir are introduced in 11.0 and become playable in 12.0, that if Ethereals were introduced in 11.2 that they wouldn't be ready to be playable till at least 12.2? If they made haranir playable based on the initial reaction, a full expansion is the basis for the turnaround on making a playable race.

No, Harranir were planned for TWW before they did the WSS. They literally had all the customization options with the earliest TWW builds lol.

[Cheezits]

Them (early CE people) being weird about Atal'utek makes me think there's a mandate about the patch and they are trying to have it be a big reveal. I wouldn't take the road map at face value as they didn't spoil a single big thing besides the labyrinth maybe being Amani and there being a one boss story raid. Definitely possible there's more going on with Helf and Amani.

[Xilurm]

Them (early CE people) being weird about Atal'utek makes me think there's a mandate about the patch and they are trying to have it be a big reveal. I wouldn't take the road map at face value as they didn't spoil a single big thing besides the labyrinth maybe being Amani and there being a one boss story raid. Definitely possible there's more going on with Helf and Amani.

Why is it part of the CE then? Makes no sense. Everyone who gets the CE edition is going to be spoiled if they didn't follow datamining and stuff.