Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Super Dickmann]

I mean, why would it be baffling? Look at Midnight's marketing alone. On one hand, the expansion is framed as this existential, apocalyptic conflict between the Light and the Void where Azeroth's fate is at stake. Doesn't even feel that way anyway, I feel like Wrath's prepatch with the Scourge invasions gave that vibe much better. And then, on the other hand, you've got constant ads about housing with this super whimsical, cozy vibe that completely clashes with that tone...

So yeah, I don't think it's just a matter of "bad vision" or "good vision". I think the "democratized" creative process and company culture are directly shaping the kind of vision that's allowed to come through in the first place, and right now that results in something that's overly safe, tonally inconsistent, and ultimately very bland and uninspiring.

There's nothing contradictory between having an evil smarmy villain who wants to end the world, with the story hyping up how existential the threat is and also having cozy beach episodes. That is in fact, how a lot of children's cartoons work at or below Warcraft's nominal T age rating. While the plot these last years has ranged from incoherent (Midnight), to functional and at least following cause and effect (SL and DF) to absolute barely connected nonsense (BFA, TWW), the themes of the plot, its message has been completely consistent. Every single racial and cultural conflict and variance from what one would consider cosmopolitan and nice, everywhere, must be eliminated by the end. Good people don't argue, they come together and leave their issues aside to hug it out. Stories are about basically nice people overcoming fairly minor interpersonal issues, which they get together with their friends. Collective group interests are either fake, or can all easily cohabit without contradiction. A leader is reluctant, kind, humble and doesn't want the job. Aggression, ambition, contradictory views, these things are either fruits of false consciousness cast by villains or itself villainy.

BFA's faction resolution, Uther and Tyrande learning about forgiveness in SL, DF's dragon hugging, TWW's Earthen and especially Undermine's godawful goblin story and now Midnight's elves are all the same story. They are products of a singular, cohesive creative vision. What sets something like DF apart from say, BFA or SL, is that the latter have laughably dark subject matter (genocide, determinism, damnation, the problem of the unlearned) accompanied by an absolutely grade school level delivery. DF is a children's cartoon, closer to HS, in all aspects and is therefore at least cohesive. Midnight and TWW have solved this by relegating anything remotely mean (the comedy DF characters having spiders lay eggs in their eyesockets while they die of exposure in TWW, Magisters draining street urchins in underground labs while the quest has you nod away and help the lesser evil) in one-off sidequests whereas their main messages are exactly the same as the aforementioned.

These sidequests though don't evince some new incoherence. It's why I bring up the gnome stitching quest in Icecrown relative to Matthias Lehner. You could really do it with everything, the Neferset relative to the Indiana Jones story in Uldum, an Ernest Hemingway reference next to Gurubashi and so far. Total coherence has never been there and isn't really needed. It's the overall message, the theme that suffuses the material and if anything mainline contradicts it. How tightly the people holding the IP clutch onto it, refusing to let it stray from the ending of Eternity's End being played on repeat.

That's why I bring up SC2 as often as I do, not just because it's liquid shit (though it is), or because it's done by the same guy in his singular vision (though it is that too), but because it's shit in precisely the same way. TFT and Brood War both end in roughly the same way. The villain, previously a fallen hero (Arthas/Kerrigan) overcomes the lesser evil (Illidan/the UED) and rises to power. The heroes are significantly weaker than them and either lose and don't participate (Thrall+Jaina/Jimmy and Artanis), all the while there's an omnicidal villain in the shadows (The Legion/Duran's master, eventually Amon) The overall standpoint is a situation where power and factions are at odds with one another and actions also have direct consequences, when a group is destroyed, it doesn't vanish, but keeps going - high elves become blood elves, the Legion continues to act through proxies, the Scourge splits into contesting groups. Brood War and Frozen Throne spent a lot of their runtime with different sorts of obsessive dickheads fighting each other and it was great. Now where did these franchises go?

Following a single concrete vision, Starcraft essentially collapsed into itself. All of the contradictory bad rulers were eliminated and replaced by Anduin (literally Josh Keaton, this time in space), life or death ruptures in beliefs and relationships get resolved with pithy 'I won't forget this' (Jimmy and Kerrigan), all evil stems from corruption and deceit (Kerrigan, again). The baddie is a progenitor race from a dimension of fractal shapes who's minions consist entirely of different blobs, lest a political force with a contrary motive be involved (Amon, the Bald Man's grandpapa). Given complete free reign and clarity of vision, Starcraft turned into what WoW is now. Every conflict was resolved, everyone was friends, where they differed it was on minor issues of cosmetics. The franchise was a storytelling wasteland.

By comparison, early Warcraft was wildly tonally different and rather than end its conflicts, it split into factions and races with contradictory goals and identities. The ending of TBC, a proto-version of BFA and SC2, one of the most abysmal dogshit endings the franchise has produced, effectively as bad as this is, which is complete regression of the Blood Elves and neutering of the race, would fit perfectly with today. However, something like Wrath's faction conflict most definitely would not - the idea that Thrall meant well but his rule fucked up and he lacked the backing of his people. That conflict between groups was inevitable and that, even in the hokey moralizing story ala Mists, the removal of the bad man would not eliminate other problems, which continue to rise as it goes on (ala the Purge), that is a view that is anathema to modern Warcraft. And it wasn't a product of Metzen, it, along with Thrall's story not being some comic book hero replacement story, was a direct result of the writing room having wildly different visions. You could have Knaak, Stackpole and whoever else writing, all within the same broad setting, but experimeting with tone. This is impossible in the current year, where the IP is on the tightest possible leash and no deviation from this prescribed ending is possible. All roads lead always to the the same place, compared to the push-and-pull that was.

Given individual reign, Metzen would make SC2 again and insert it here, as would anyone who shares his vision. Given collective reign, the people who now form the writing room, who aren't some wreckers, but vivid fans of his most terrible work who continue to go over and repeat its beats over and over, have and are doing the same. The vision itself is the problem. Any procedural argument for why the story sucks which doesn't stress the substantive point that group racial, cultural and interest-based conflict in a world with contradictory interests that can't accommodate everyone is the only baseline in which the game has worked will fail. A more tightened vision might give you a DF, the epitome of the current paradigm with no compromises, and DF is certainly more competent than any other recent expansion on its own terms, but being competent at sucking is something you should leave for the bedroom.

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Populations are always weird.

Tauren were basically almost hunted to extinction by the centaur. That tracks given how few and far between we see them in lore.

Blood Elves were massacred by the Scourge, then depleted the 10% of the their remaining population in a civil war in TBC. By all rights they should be the least populous race and basically narrowly evading extinction. They certainly should of never have been able to rebuild Silvermoon. It actually would of been a much more interesting elf reunification story if they needed the other elves just prop Silvermoon up and it turned into a new, metropolitan elf mecca because their race is vanishing.

I mean, there's races like void elves (the fanclub of one researcher in Silvermoon) or to go for less low-hanging fruit - Darkspear (a race entirely suppressed by a single battalion of Kor'kron), Stormwind (the survivors of an omnicidal army of axe murderers killing everyone in the kingdom and their refugees escaping) and the orcs themselves (who all fit on the ships Thrall stole from one harbor). Population in WoW is like portals. Don't think about it, the writers never have.

[Khaza-R]

I mean, there's races like void elves (the fanclub of one researcher in Silvermoon) or to go for less low-hanging fruit - Darkspear (a race entirely suppressed by a single battalion of Kor'kron), Stormwind (the survivors of an omnicidal army of axe murderers killing everyone in the kingdom and their refugees escaping) and the orcs themselves (who all fit on the ships Thrall stole from one harbor). Population in WoW is like portals. Don't think about, the writers never have.

More or less that's my point. It doesn't matter 99% of the time. Sort of classic Warhammer response that the populations are as big as they story demand. You have some weird one-offs like BfA where supposedly the core races were so diminished by the Legion invasion they needed the ARs to field their armies.

It would be cool if it did matter though. The Forsaken predicament of replenishing their numbers was actually one of the better plotlines in the game imo. That sort of actual stakes is what the story needs.

[Super Dickmann]

More or less that's my point. It doesn't matter 99% of the time. Sort of classic Warhammer response that the populations are as big as they story demand. You have some weird one-offs like BfA where supposedly the core races were so diminished by the Legion invasion they needed the ARs to field their armies.

It would be cool if it did matter though. The Forsaken predicament of replenishing their numbers was actually one of the better plotlines in the game imo. That sort of actual stakes is what the story needs.

Exactly, its main plot use currently would be if Blizzard had siad that the factions were so wrecked by BFA that they can't meaningfully contribute, explaining certain contrivances and also why there are threats. They have used this excuse exactly once and it was sadly for the Arathi story who's writers should face jailtime.

[allegrian]

I think blizzard will be going full Legion hype for TLT with class halls and artifact weapons again. Ion said not too long ago that a return of artifacts as borrowed power once in a while wouldn't be that bad.

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As I said in my previous post WoW will be WoW. But I think that after TLT a change akin to what we saw from SL to DF but bigger is a given. Some points that I see changing in one way or another:

- Obviously zones and story. More revamps are coming (not necessarily in 14.0 but more than likely) and a shift from this Cosmic dross to more grounded stories (at least for two expansions until they cannot help themselves to bring the Legion back, and inevitably more Cosmic dross alongside them).

- Say goodbye to the current talent system and (thakfully) to Hero Talents. They might go back to MoP talent system (probably the most sustainable option provided that Blizzard update them instead of completely abandon them like they did before). My favourite option, although I doubt that Blizzard has the balls to do it, is the removal of talents. Keep current classes and specs. They have their skills and that's it. Most players don't interact that much with talents (or with their skills since the addition of the Single-Button Assistant) anyways. Also I think that with such system it would be easier to add more classes and specs for current classes. Seeing Blizzard trying to reinvent the wheel every expansion with systems like Artifact Weapons, Azerite, Hero Talents... has become painful.

- I think that dungeons and raids will stay as they are but I can see a WoW were most content is done in such a way that you can complete it no matter how many DPS, Healers or Tanks you bring. So role-agnostic content but expanded to other areas beyond Delves. IMO Delves are the present and future of WoW and we'll see more resources pour into them.

- Obviously, a focus on customization. Not only regarding our races, but probably classes. This might expand to skills. What we have seen with Devourer DH will be expanded to other classes and specs.

- A revision of the game difficulties and systems in general. We have talked a lot about this, but again, WoW needs new players. It's a VERY complicated and overwhelming game. The new leveling experience has solved nothing. There are still hundreds of things that are not properly explained. This is part of the reason why I think that the WoW after TLT could be a new version of WoW. They can build a proper tutorial for that new experience, and the world would not be that big if we get a new map. Going back to the 25 years of content would be optional. Yes, I know that is optional now, but the simple fact that new players see all that is overwhelming. A more focused and new experience could help, I believe.

- WoW becoming truly account-wide, including professions, quests, followers... honestly, practically everything except gear, is not something that should happen after TLT, is something that should have happened years ago.

- Also, this is not related with what WoW will become after TLT, but, make less currencies ¡¡ What the fuck are they thinking? If a veteran player like myself roll his eyes every time he sees all that shit, I don't want to think what a new player would think.

I also think they should reset the story to a scaled down number of main and secondary characters and factions. Even if they say they did that in DF or the world soul saga, all characters and lorr featured there requires understanding of basically all the warcraft games and expanded media lore (dragons, titans, world trees, all the night elf stuff from dark trolls to amirdrassil, warcraft 2 heroes...)

For a new player that cares about the story in a game is far too much. They should do a big timeskip, kill or retire most of the original cast and set up new exciting protagonists and villains (which current blizz sucks at, but that's another topic).

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No, it would deepen your connection with your own character and remind you that there's other stuff you care about in Azeroth other than Xal'atath's shenanigans.

As a Paladin I'm obviously a bit spoiled in Midnight but take a Shaman for example, or a Warlock. What do they have going on?

Also, I just realised we basically haven't interacted with our own factions AT ALL this expansion, which is very weird and different from what we're used to.

We're usually at least sent to Stormwind or Orgrimmar to build some embassy or rally support from the King/Warchief or whatever. This time it's like they don't even exist, which creates a huuuge vacuum in what it feels like to play and experience the game and its story.

Alliance players interact with the alliance. The light vanguard is basically the army of the light, full of human and draenei paladins, led by the current leader of the alliance (Turalyon) and even anduin is there. Void elves are there. Velen, Moira, Alleria and now Shandris are there. The high elves as well.

So we have the leaders of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, Draenei and High and Void Elves. It just focuses on light and void aligned troops (and night elves).

[Joshuaj]

Play a human paladin, yes it is boring but somehow you ALWAYS feel relevant to the Warcraft story

Never call the best race/class combo boring again!

[Marlamin]

What would classic+ even be? How would it differ from SoD?

I'd personally like modern graphics and combat in the classic setting, but that'd piss off the classic players. A WoW 2 sounds like a better idea in every way.

There are an incredible amount of stories to (re)tell and a lot of things to explore/dive deeper into based on what we now know from all the years of retail WoW.

I personally don't care for Classic/reliving nostalgia, and SoD was still too far into that category for me, but I won't be surprised if for Classic+ we see some entirely new things as well as some very old things. I'm imagining a game-sized Caverns of Time, specific to whatever pre-WoW or in-between storylines that they'll be exploring. Story wise, it feels like WoW has largely been world-iterating these last few expansions instead of world building, and I want to see more world building. I know Blizzard can do that, and I hope a bit more freedom for something like Classic+ lets them explore that.

[Enrif]

I think blizzard will be going full Legion hype for TLT with class halls and artifact weapons again. Ion said not too long ago that a return of artifacts as borrowed power once in a while wouldn't be that bad.

i would hold my horses if i take Midnight as a precautious tale about that. We don't have a new class, just a new spec, which is also quite contrived. No new wanted races (forest troll, high elf, yet...), just Haranir. No new hero talents, just apex talent.

At least they give new stuff for delves. and housing is quite nice.

[Hearthfinder]

Alliance players interact with the alliance. The light vanguard is basically the army of the light, full of human and draenei paladins, led by the current leader of the alliance (Turalyon) and even anduin is there. Void elves are there. Velen, Moira, Alleria and now Shandris are there. The high elves as well.

So we have the leaders of Humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, Draenei and High and Void Elves. It just focuses on light and void aligned troops (and night elves).

At no point did it feel like it. It felt like interacting with a homogenic yellow mass of random people teleported out of nowhere to take up precious screen time from the elves, tbh.

When I say Alliance, I mean blue banners with golden lions on them. I mean visits to Stormwind or Ironforge. I mean taking orders from Anduin as King of Stormwind, not a whimpering boy. I mean receiving intelligence from Mathias Shaw and the SI:7, and working with a dwarf to blow up some bridge or munitions depot.

[Teriz]

i would hold my horses if i take Midnight as a precautious tale about that. We don't have a new class, just a new spec, which is also quite contrived. No new wanted races (forest troll, high elf, yet...), just Haranir. No new hero talents, just apex talent.

At least they give new stuff for delves. and housing is quite nice.

People were seriously misreading the tea leaves thinking there would be a new class in Midnight.

TLT is a better set up for a new class on multiple levels, and being the conclusion of the saga, I can see a return of order halls.

[Nymrohd]

For me the graphics are just the pain point with classic. I don't mind the gameplay but I prefer even the current graphics to what we had two decades ago which looked old even when it was released

[DenPhoenix]

Order has whatever Aluneth is.

I hope that one day Blizzard remembers Aluneth, and we get even more Matthew Mercer in the game.

We got the final questline from Harandar btw


Pretty much confirms that Aln'hara and Azeroth are one and the same, ripped away and put somewhere else by a "powerful force not of this world", her being held captive against her will and the reason the Haranir Elders don't reveal this information is to prevent the Haranir leaving Harandar on a rampage tearing the world apart to find her; the exodus would end the Haranir.

This is really strange… I mean, the Haranir have just been living in Harandar for no real reason(yes, we have Black Blood, but), while your literal goddess is calling for help—and you’re just ignoring it.

I'm certain there is a backdoor deal between the Titans and the Light and once the Titans go away and let Azeroth be post-TLT, the Light will be free to go crazy to preserve its singular timeline without anyone to protect Azeroth. That may have been the Lights end of the deal- if the Titans help the Light, the Light will preserve Azeroth instead of terraforming it.

++ Yeah, I also think we’ll be led to the idea that there’s some kind of pact between the Titans and something aligned with the Light. Mayby it’s probably connected to cleansing Azeroth from the aftermath of the Old Gods influence. We still have that line from N’Zoth— The Light has struck a bargain with the enemy of all - so...

I don't think we're getting "Titans are evil". I think that was the Danuser message, or something close. Old Tyr was definitely kinda evil, Launch DF spells it out, as does the book subtly foreshadowing he was morphing drakes. If the original plot idea was Tyr comes back but is factory reset, we would've gotten more of that.

I'm guessing Metzen's approach is going to be more reasonable. We have some hints that Azeroth's imprisonment may have been to heal her. And at least some of the Titans probably didn't want to make her a Titan- and that will probably be a big part of the TLT story as well. Aman'thul may be our bad guy... but maybe not. How much of it is the deal with the Light? Odyn is an asshole, but I'm not sure any of the Titans will be particularly villainous. There's enough there to point towards Azeroth's "imprisonment" being as much to heal her as it is to contain her, especially if you buy into the theory she was hurt by the Elun'ahir yank.

Post-DF rewrite, Tyr comes back as the nice guy the Aspects remember. I think in the current canon he genuinely changed by loving Azeroth and its peoples, like Archaedas did, and he'll have to come to terms with siding with Azeroth over the Titans and their goals in TLT.

By the way, if none of this is the current plan for TLT... Blizz devs, you're free to PM me.

I don’t think we should fully interpret the transfer of Azeroth from the Cradle to the Worldcore as a kidnapping. It feels more like a response to Elun’Ahir, and the Titans likely understood that if Life could reach her so easily, then other cosmic forces could as well. We still have Old Gods on the planet, so the world soul would always have been in danger.

Tyr has always been a good guy, and that’s what always set him apart from the other, like Odyn. I’m glad they moved away from that Danuser nonsense. I’ve always thought Danuser was just planning to rewrite things again—as usual—and that in DF he wanted to retcon the Dragons’ story. I mean, Saezurah speaking to us in Draconic in SL, and Raszageth’s line about “what dragonkind was meant to be”—it feels more like he was building toward some kind of “grand design,” where the Titans end up being the ones who usurped the dragons. That’s why we got that questline in DF about Tyr’s experiments on elemental dragons.

I do not think Xal was in the original draft of DF at all. Everything points to Tyr being the surprise baddy we chase to the Worldsoul in TWW

Harbinger was Danuser’s idea. He wrote all the in-game books in DF, so Harbinger from "A Song of the Depths" - Xal. Well, we know he has a fetish for elf woman corpses)

Never call the best race/class combo boring again!

Puh-puh, Joshuaj, so you’re playing a human paladin? Even supporting the First One concept isn’t that bad. Now question—do you like pineapple on pizza?

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Regarding the talks about Classic+ and SoD, I really wanted Classic+ to focus on various cut content from the game—like Hyjal in vanilla. So that, ten years from now, when WoD Classic+ comes out, we’d finally get the Gorian Empire and Farahlon.

[Pyrophax]

At no point did it feel like it. It felt like interacting with a homogenic yellow mass of random people teleported out of nowhere to take up precious screen time from the elves, tbh.

When I say Alliance, I mean blue banners with golden lions on them. I mean visits to Stormwind or Ironforge. I mean taking orders from Anduin as King of Stormwind, not a whimpering boy. I mean receiving intelligence from Mathias Shaw and the SI:7, and working with a dwarf to blow up some bridge or munitions depot.

If you don't like it - it doesn't deny representation and participation. Horde, on the other side - not represent at all.
Alliance leaders are here.
Alliance characters are in spotlight.
Story revolve around Alliance, Void Elves, High Elves and Arator (half-High Elf).

Horde just absent. Blood Elves stay in the corner of their city, waiting for give you quest to collect dragonhawk poop or find draenei soulmate.
Trolls just forgotten. Orcs are meme at this point. Forsaken forgotten. We have 1 Goblin as sidequest leftover from TWW not-cutten Harandar. We saw 2 Taurens as teacher for Arator. We saw 1 meaningful undead character Faol - and he is not even Forsaken. Litterally single undead in story - not Horde undead.

And when I say Horde, I mean red banners from horizon to horizon. Wolf riders, Kodo teamster. Sky filled with Trolls on the bats, Elves on Dragonhaws. Forsaken army on the march. Where Rexxar coming to be Champion of the Horde again. Where Rokhan and Talanji helps Amani to recover. Where Goblins throwing grenades from rockets. Where shamans calling Thunderbolts from the sky and Earth itself cracks under enemies.

On the background plays Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, not sad Blues.

Can you find me Horde mate?

[Joshuaj]

I used to not like the idea of Pineapple on Pizza, then I tried it, and now I don't think it's really bad or anything.

[Alanar]

I mean my blood elf paladin burned down a silver hand chapel to join the blood knights so it's a lil awkward joining the silver hand lul

Lmao, true that. But who cares anyway am I right?

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I used to not like the idea of Pineapple on Pizza, then I tried it, and now I don't think it's really bad or anything.

This is like people putting butter under jam or under peanutbutter. Weird people.

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If you don't like it - it doesn't deny representation and participation. Horde, on the other side - not represent at all..

Can you find me Horde mate?

If you say "horde" these days You get shoved into a corner here or the same old bombarbed about blood elves being in the wrong faction . Its the same people the whole time here who rattle up like its 2007. Idk why this is allowed as its pretty toxic. But for love of god people just move on already.

[Limayria]

Lmao, true that. But who cares anyway am I right?

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This is like people putting butter under jam or under peanutbutter. Weird people.

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If you say "horde" these days You get shoved into a corner here or the same old bombarbed about blood elves being in the wrong faction . Its the same people the whole time here who rattle up like its 2007. Idk why this is allowed as its pretty toxic. But for love of god people just move on already.

Tbf blood elves did fit into the horde, they just got replaced by high elf light fucker wannabes at the end of TBC

Which really it's pretty fitting considering how TBC was just shitting all over existing lore for no reason so ruining the most interesting group the franchise ever had immediately after introducing them was par for the course

[Skildar]

Dragonflight had some dark stories to tell. Enslavement, racism, terrorism, reign of terror on the Djaradin and centaurs, forced experimentations, world fauna corruption by the Titans, infinite dragonflight purpose and worth.

But they just never took the time to say one phrase about it but "spoke... with... huge... unbearable... pauses... every... line... of... dialogue... when... talking... about... bringing... everyone... together... and... peace...". On paper, the expansion has a lot of great themes and ideas to give us something worthwhile to think about and to keep us intrested about the story. But we know what stories they've ended up telling.

I think that amongst all expansion this is the one I would be the most at peace with the developers doing huge changes cancelling some resolution we've seen. For instance having Vyranoth switch sides again, the drakonids going terrorist because they ultimately feel cheated again, the infinite dragon flight finding Nozdormu not being able to accept that some changes should be made and able to defy the Titans, etc.

Maybe something interesting they should definitely do is work on some more important characters to represent the Dracthyrs and have them be explicit on what they're looking for now that they've been awakened and they know how psychotic Neltharion had become. When the story will focus on Iridikron, they could get some of this attention.

[Nymrohd]

This is really strange… I mean, the Haranir have just been living in Harandar for no real reason(yes, we have Black Blood, but), while your literal goddess is calling for help—and you’re just ignoring it.

The real villain of Harandar are the elders who intentionally keep the entire society stagnant to maintain their grip on power using the facade of tradition while also monopolizing the most important local resource. It's like patriarchy in a zone only a few of them are women instead.

[Hearthfinder]

If you don't like it - it doesn't deny representation and participation. Horde, on the other side - not represent at all.
Alliance leaders are here.
Alliance characters are in spotlight.
Story revolve around Alliance, Void Elves, High Elves and Arator (half-High Elf).

Horde just absent. Blood Elves stay in the corner of their city, waiting for give you quest to collect dragonhawk poop or find draenei soulmate.
Trolls just forgotten. Orcs are meme at this point. Forsaken forgotten. We have 1 Goblin as sidequest leftover from TWW not-cutten Harandar. We saw 2 Taurens as teacher for Arator. We saw 1 meaningful undead character Faol - and he is not even Forsaken. Litterally single undead in story - not Horde undead.

And when I say Horde, I mean red banners from horizon to horizon. Wolf riders, Kodo teamster. Sky filled with Trolls on the bats, Elves on Dragonhaws. Forsaken army on the march. Where Rexxar coming to be Champion of the Horde again. Where Rokhan and Talanji helps Amani to recover. Where Goblins throwing grenades from rockets. Where shamans calling Thunderbolts from the sky and Earth itself cracks under enemies.

On the background plays Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, not sad Blues.

Can you find me Horde mate?

See it's funny because on the one hand, you fail at taking in what I'm trying to convey to you about the Alliance perspective, and then on the other you go on to explain a similar viewpoint as a Horde player.

I understand that Midnight can feel odd as a Horde player. Now it's time for you to accept that humans being present doesn't equate to: Alliance expansion.

The truth is that Midnight feels like it caters to neither faction, because the story right now is all about homogenisation.

[Sondrelk]

The real villain of Harandar are the elders who intentionally keep the entire society stagnant to maintain their grip on power using the facade of tradition while also monopolizing the most important local resource. It's like patriarchy in a zone only a few of them are women instead.

It's very strange to have so much of the story hinge on character we have only seen briefly once. Orweyna goes immedaitely from "face judgement, and likely death" to allying with the friendly elder who has us fully go around the other elders back. To the point where they don't even seem to mind us using their main settlement as a base.
The only tangible setback we face from them is not immedaitely getting to use their giant stash of Azerite.

[GeometryWizard]

At the end of the day what happened is that the real devs on the team had to improve the gameplay from SL to save the game there was no ambiguity or ability to escape their responsibility there. They had to suck it up and make big changes to the game and they stopped the game from just completely bleeding out and salvaged it. The writers were able to escape any responsibility for Bfa and SL and never had their egos damaged like that and forced to reconsider what they're doing they've just been full march ever since they decided everything needs to be about healing and renewal during Bfa

The only way they will be punished is when content directly tied to the story begins failing or losing money for Blizzard and the most clear place to see that is the super rapid decline in people watching cinematics that doesn't line up with how retail's population recovered after SL. Blizzard would be dumb to greenlight a full animated series when they can barely get 500k people to watch the Liadrin or Arator fully animated shorts once on Youtube meanwhile those Laurel Austin xpac animatic shorts were getting 5+ million views in WoD and Legion and Bfa. The views on this stuff don't build up over time they just slow down because they have no reach and people have no desire to rewatch them as investment in the story and world continue to collapse. Clearly these aren't doing their job of reaching newcomers either because they literally aren't watching it since it isn't entertaining on its own and WoW players are just totally miserable about the story anymore and newcomers notice that and feel like they should stay away

If you have to yell at people over and over that everything is exactly the same and you need to shut up and stop complaining you have already lost you are not going to convince a single person and only look more and more like someone that just has a parasocial interest in defending Blizzard