Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Valysar]

I get that people react this way but people really need to check their perspective. We get about 5 minutes of huge fully rendered cinematics every two years. Plus about double that of pre-rendered cinematics using assets that look more like the in-game assets, (wrathgate style cinematics) these usually appear at the end of raids & campaigns ....but now, in addition to that, we have new, more elaborate in-engine cinematics: But these are the ones people are complaining about.

But they're only complaining about them because they look worse, and because we've never had them before. Of course they look worse; they're rendered in real time, in-engine. But they also allow actually our player characters to appear in the scene.

In comparison they look bad. But we're getting them in addition to what we usually get & overall its actually a major technical step forward. People just aren't appreciating that they've started doing real-time cutscenes 20 years into the game's lifetime.

Imo I'd rather have good quality cinematics than see my char in it.

[Reive]

I was talking about the cgi cinematics

The 2 class trailers for diablo>midnight's announcement cinematic

[Ersula]

Imo I'd rather have good quality cinematics than see my char in it.

Well, that's the opposite of what players have been asking for for 20 years. What did people think was going to happen when they kept asking for their personal character to be more involved in the events of the game? You can't put a player character in a pre-rendered cutscene.

I was talking about the cgi cinematics

The 2 class trailers for diablo>midnight's announcement cinematic

There's no good criticism of the Midnight cinematic. It was great. All you have is "liadrin man face."

[Reive]

Well, that's the opposite of what players have been asking for for 20 years. What did people think was going to happen when they kept asking for their personal character to be more involved in the events of the game? You can't put a player character in a pre-rendered cutscene.
There's no good criticism of the Midnight cinematic. It was great. All you have is "liadrin man face."

The models and the pace were bad

[NikolaiShade]

Hyping the playerbase is fine, but you don't want to hype them away from the current content. You don't want to focus on TLT with Midnight not even halfway done

I was less than clear, sorry. I was referring to any kind of "fanservice" content for Midnight, eg. new allied races or customizations... Always assuming theese things are going to come during Midnight

[Boomer Thor]

Biggest complaint i have of the d2 announcement is no d3 stuff

i kinda like the arcadey feel of that game. Also like the art. It reminds me of the peak art wow had before SL

[Hearthfinder]

You have to consider: WoW gets mayor content patches very frequently, which takes a lot of manpower to make it work in a 20 year old game. While also working on the one after that, and after that, and new expansions, adding a lot of assets too

Compare that to: a new class for a old game, it is not even in the same ballpark

Even Overwatches new heros are rather small additions in the grandscheme

MMOs in the style of WoW need a lot of work to be done

It's not like the patches are even that big anymore, though, or exciting for that matter. The "live team" creates some new grindy hub with a few rewards and very little questing and lore, or they'll revive some old system from the past.

Patches would be great if they contained the good old stuff, like new races, heritage armor, battlegrounds, character customisation, long quest hubs that take weeks to complete, etc.

- - - Updated - - -

I think so far, BlizzCon is looking like:

- StarCraft new game
- WoW: Classic+
- WoW: TLT (with a second deepdive teased for later in the year)
- Hearthstone 3rd secret expansion, possibly Northrend-based, and maybe a Pandaria reveal for the expansion after that (more like a tease)
- Diablo 1 remaster (something was teased)
- Hopefully a HotS revival unless they're insane
- New heroes and patches for Overwatch and Diablo 4

[Enrif]

It's not like the patches are even that big anymore, though, or exciting for that matter. The "live team" creates some new grindy hub with a few rewards and very little questing and lore, or they'll revive some old system from the past.

Patches would be great if they contained the good old stuff, like new races, heritage armor, battlegrounds, character customisation, long quest hubs that take weeks to complete, etc.

there could be better, sure, and some patches were more lackluster than others. But still, we have to acknowledge the work needed to do this like housing, remixes, getting all the classic versions running, and even modes like plunderstorm.

It may not be content we consider worthwhile to be made instead of the core game, but they were made nonetheless and to make them it took from elsewhere.

[Hitei]

It's not like the patches are even that big anymore, though, or exciting for that matter. The "live team" creates some new grindy hub with a few rewards and very little questing and lore, or they'll revive some old system from the past.

Patches would be great if they contained the good old stuff, like new races, heritage armor, battlegrounds, character customisation, long quest hubs that take weeks to complete, etc.

Ah, yes. Patches, famous for having new races, quests that "take weeks to complete" and battlegrounds.

[Hearthfinder]

there could be better, sure, and some patches were more lackluster than others. But still, we have to acknowledge the work needed to do this like housing, remixes, getting all the classic versions running, and even modes like plunderstorm.

It may not be content we consider worthwhile to be made instead of the core game, but they were made nonetheless and to make them it took from elsewhere.

I think they need to reconsider their priorities though, as right now it feels very telemetry-based. I think they're been so preoccupied with creating a perfect system for regular content releases that somewhere along the way, they forgot to pause and wonder what players are actually asking for.


Like, how many times is that poor dude on Twitter going to have to plead for troll beards before he's heard? How many endless High Elf threads over the years are we going to have, not to mention the endless comments about customisation for old races.

There's not even a "we hear you, we're listening, and just wait and see...," there's just complete silence on many of these topics and then "did you know Azeroth is calling you home?"

[Jaggler]

I was less than clear, sorry. I was referring to any kind of "fanservice" content for Midnight, eg. new allied races or customizations... Always assuming theese things are going to come during Midnight

Ah okay, i apologize, then

I hope they have something to hype up 12.2 at Blizzcon, and if we're lucky and 4th specs are a TLT thing, they could also drop them at Blizzcon i think.

I think they need to reconsider their priorities though, as right now it feels very telemetry-based. I think they're been so preoccupied with creating a perfect system for regular content releases that somewhere along the way, they forgot to pause and wonder what players are actually asking for.


Like, how many times is that poor dude on Twitter going to have to plead for troll beards before he's heard? How many endless High Elf threads over the years are we going to have, not to mention the endless comments about customisation for old races.

There's not even a "we hear you, we're listening, and just wait and see...," there's just complete silence on many of these topics and then "did you know Azeroth is calling you home?"

I think/hope, they are getting better with it. Their willingness to break up raid, introduce one-off raids shows, that MAYBE they are willing to break the modl, theyhave been in since DF up a bit. Maybe they got comfortable with the new content cycle by now and they are able to be more flexible now.

[Zardas]

- Hearthstone 3rd secret expansion, possibly Northrend-based, and maybe a Pandaria reveal for the expansion after that (more like a tease)

It is quite likely that Pandaria with a new monk class is for the third expansion of the year. They did it for DK and Blizzcon is the best spot to reveal something as major as a brand new class.

[Sondrelk]

While it would be nice to be in the world where we get constant updates on small stuff like customization. The reality is that this is the game where players complained when there was a tiny Blood Elf customization update in one of the minor patches in DF because of the sheer audacity from the developers on saying "customization update" and for it to not be a comprehensive one.

WoW players have been shown to constantly complain if we get something once, and then not every time afterwards for similar occasions. So I can see why the developers are hesitant to add small updates like that when players complain about there not being enough.

[Enrif]

Like, how many times is that poor dude on Twitter going to have to plead for troll beards before he's heard? How many endless High Elf threads over the years are we going to have, not to mention the endless comments about customisation for old races.

There's not even a "we hear you, we're listening, and just wait and see...," there's just complete silence on many of these topics and then "did you know Azeroth is calling you home?"

you're preaching to the choire. All of us would like if blizzard would head the wants of the playerbase more, but things are as they are, sadly

[Sondrelk]

you're preaching to the choire. All of us would like if blizzard would head the wants of the playerbase more, but things are as they are, sadly

Truth of it is that the developers do stuff the players want constantly. But like how Janitors are only noticed when they do a bad job, there is a tendency to focus on what WoW doesnt have, rather than what it does. Like how daggers being a valid transmog for one-handed weapons of any type is a new option that players have wanted for ages. Or how the civilian set for Silvermoon, or the dungeon sets now have proper 3d assets on them. Which is also a fantastic step forward making them more sought after alongside raid sets and what not.

Customization updates are more difficult because the reaction to them seems to indicate it has to be all or nothing. Either everyone gets a massive update that takes ages and is fully comprehensive. Or someone gets left out and players hate the developers for that forever.

[KyleEverett]

The main reason I believe Blizzcon will have a considerable amount of TLT information is that barring a 4th season, we'll be in 13.0 by September 2027. Expansions are usually revealed a year before they go live on average. There's no reason to do Blizzcon in September and then some sort of prealpha event in January.

[Nymrohd]

The main reason I believe Blizzcon will have a considerable amount of TLT information is that barring a 4th season, we'll be in 13.0 by September 2027. Expansions are usually revealed a year before they go live on average. There's no reason to do Blizzcon in September and then some sort of prealpha event in January.

The reason could be a number of other games? Warcraft doesn't have to be the focus of Blizzcon you know.

[Cheezits]

There is probably an internal reason for radio silence regarding old race customization options, and I'm trending towards an announcement being locked up in the "hype" drawer for a future major patch or expansion. It's 50/50 that or they are not putting any development into it as it A) can't be sold and B) the art team does not have the capacity to do it now, and they know enough people would actually quit the game if they were ever honest about this.

Regarding High Elves in Midnight, it's legitimately just story shit "no spoilers" mandate that is barring any dev discussion about them, as they technically don't appear until an encrypted story chapter in launch and their future story is tied to the damn finale.

[Limayria]

I get that people react this way but people really need to check their perspective. We get about 5 minutes of huge fully rendered cinematics every two years. Plus about double that of pre-rendered cinematics using assets that look more like the in-game assets, (wrathgate style cinematics) these usually appear at the end of raids & campaigns ....but now, in addition to that, we have new, more elaborate in-engine cinematics: But these are the ones people are complaining about.

But they're only complaining about them because they look worse, and because we've never had them before. Of course they look worse; they're rendered in real time, in-engine. But they also allow actually our player characters to appear in the scene.

In comparison they look bad. But we're getting them in addition to what we usually get & overall its actually a major technical step forward. People just aren't appreciating that they've started doing real-time cutscenes 20 years into the game's lifetime.

Yeah it's honestly crazy how much people complain

Should we go back to 1 cut scene every 2 years LoL


Also on regards to character customization, look at how much bitching and moaning we get every time they do an update for stuff like that, there's always the grognards who are like "me no like change" and then you have people complaining that more work is done on the handful of extremely popular races so now you have blizzard wanting to wait until they can do something cool for every single race so people don't feel left out

It's like how hero talents are going to struggle as a system because blizzard is too afraid to give some specs "extra" hero talents even though they'd really benefit from it, and now they've already gone ahead and added a 4th row to the hero talents which would make that even harder. Even though the system as a whole would be way better received if they showed an openness for classes like hunters to get additional hero talents so you aren't stuck choosing between Sylvanas, tyrande and rexxar

[milkmustache]

There is probably an internal reason for radio silence regarding old race customization options, and I'm trending towards an announcement being locked up in the "hype" drawer for a future major patch or expansion. It's 50/50 that or they are not putting any development into it as it A) can't be sold and B) the art team does not have the capacity to do it now, and they know enough people would actually quit the game if they were ever honest about this.

I refuse to believe there is any internal data showing that customization can't sell, especially with Housing being such a massive selling point for them. They're two sides of the same coin IMO.