Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Pheraz]

I still don't get why some people are so hell bent on getting another raid after Amidrassil .... I would rather have a few months of relaxed fated farm raids instead of having to do progress until the last minute. Also new expansion > any patch, so I would rather get 11.0 in late summer instead of another dragged out raid tier.

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Speaking about Judgement - I would like to see how really old classic sets would look with that uprezz since the styles/colours were a bit different back than compared to today.

I guess this has something to do with this hyper consumer/ customer mind set *Karen voice* I payed for three patches!!!!

[hattahat]

My prediction for the next chapter of the Dragonflight storyline are these.
The first guess is something like this, Tyr has always had the idea of creating a sixth Dragonflight, a silver dragonflight but his attempt to make Alexstrasza's brother the sixth aspect failed when he was killed by Galakrond.
However, after Tyr's resurrection, he realized that Vyranoth had befriended the Aspects and attempted to force her to become a new aspect.
Alexstrasza would then turn against Tyr to fulfill her promise to Vyranoth.
In this way, the two pillars of the Dragonflight story, the Incarnates story and the Tyr story, would merge.

My other speculation is that we'll just go ahead and make Tyr our ally, and then Iridikron will show up with the pseudo dragon soul in some way.
Dragonflight raids have a corresponding structure to the Cataclysm raids, with the Bastion of Twilight and the Throne of the Four Winds being the Vault of the Incarnates, the Blackwing Descent being Abberus, and the Firelands being Amirdrassil. I'm sure there will be an Iridikron-related raid that corresponds to Dragon's Soul, but that doesn't mean Iridikron will be the final boss and die right there. Even if Iridikron is the final boss, I think he will fulfill his purpose in some way and survive.

[Sondrelk]

My prediction for the next chapter of the Dragonflight storyline are these.
The first guess is something like this, Tyr has always had the idea of creating a sixth Dragonflight, a silver dragonflight but his attempt to make Alexstrasza's brother the sixth aspect failed when he was killed by Galakrond.
However, after Tyr's resurrection, he realized that Vyranoth had befriended the Aspects and attempted to force her to become a new aspect.
Alexstrasza would then turn against Tyr to fulfill her promise to Vyranoth.
In this way, the two pillars of the Dragonflight story, the Incarnates story and the Tyr story, would merge.

My other speculation is that we'll just go ahead and make Tyr our ally, and then Iridikron will show up with the pseudo dragon soul in some way.
Dragonflight raids have a corresponding structure to the Cataclysm raids, with the Bastion of Twilight and the Throne of the Four Winds being the Vault of the Incarnates, the Blackwing Descent being Abberus, and the Firelands being Amirdrassil. I'm sure there will be an Iridikron-related raid that corresponds to Dragon's Soul, but that doesn't mean Iridikron will be the final boss and die right there. Even if Iridikron is the final boss, I think he will fulfill his purpose in some way and survive.

I like the idea that Tyr had always planned to make a third iteration of Dragons. One specifically infused with Order magic, and who would then be part of Tyrs idea of a perfect hierarchy enforcing the Titans will on Azeroth. The Aspects were always just a stepping stone towards this final goal, and would be assimilated or kept in stasis as another of his research experiments if he managed to succeed.
We did learn somewhere that it was only Loken that was willing to let the curse of flesh humanoids live and get a chance. Whereas Tyr agreed with Odyn in that they were abominations that should be controlled or killed.

The easiest way to have Tyr "turn" is to reveal that he only truly saw the dragons as pets or tools. Something he could use to more efficiently establish Titan control over Azeroth. And in this way the aspects going against their programming as it were would be something he would look down on. Not wanting Alexstrasza to make peace with the Keepers enemies for instance.

[Ersula]

My prediction for the next chapter of the Dragonflight storyline are these.
The first guess is something like this, Tyr has always had the idea of creating a sixth Dragonflight, a silver dragonflight but his attempt to make Alexstrasza's brother the sixth aspect failed when he was killed by Galakrond.
However, after Tyr's resurrection, he realized that Vyranoth had befriended the Aspects and attempted to force her to become a new aspect.
Alexstrasza would then turn against Tyr to fulfill her promise to Vyranoth.
In this way, the two pillars of the Dragonflight story, the Incarnates story and the Tyr story, would merge.

My other speculation is that we'll just go ahead and make Tyr our ally, and then Iridikron will show up with the pseudo dragon soul in some way.
Dragonflight raids have a corresponding structure to the Cataclysm raids, with the Bastion of Twilight and the Throne of the Four Winds being the Vault of the Incarnates, the Blackwing Descent being Abberus, and the Firelands being Amirdrassil. I'm sure there will be an Iridikron-related raid that corresponds to Dragon's Soul, but that doesn't mean Iridikron will be the final boss and die right there. Even if Iridikron is the final boss, I think he will fulfill his purpose in some way and survive.

Your big theory is that we both turn on & befriend Tyr? Okay....

[Luck4]

Oh, definitely. There's much more stuff than has been reported on as well so far, even going back as far as 10.0.0. It'll be a lot of fun to see how many of those predicted dots actually end up connecting, and more interestingly, if not, why?

This information coming from you makes everything more exciting.

Regardless of a World Revamp in 11.0, this large amount of stuff makes me think 11.0 will be a huge deal.

[Scyth]

https://twitter.com/Portergauge/stat...76178338427042

And there's our seed for "Shamans for all." Vyranoth recruits Primalists, aka a bunch of elf shaman. Tyrs Guard, Dream Babies & the Primalists, our shortcut to Paladins, Druids & Shaman for every race.

Good to see it "confirmed". Might be possible to get Nelf Shamans this xpac and the rest at a later date then.

[Chickat]

Cope more.. Zereth Mortis was far larger and more involved than either 10.1 or 10.2 (so far). There is no trolling here. Stop with the binary nonsense you can enjoy the game and still criticise wasted potential, it's not one or the other.



It literally wouldn't though. Broken shores and Argus are both sizable pieces of content with far longer quest chains than either 10.1 or 10.2. You can combine the quest chains in 10.1.5 and 10.1.7 and add them to 10.1 and it's still smaller than broken shore, let alone no mage tower. What is wrong with your memory bud?

No, I dont think 10.1, .5 and .7 is smaller than Broken Shore patch, but 10.1 certainly is from a new content perspective.

10.1 had more to do outdoors than Broken shore, but Broken shore had a new dungeon, mage tower, and the class mounts. The problem with Broken shore was it was pretty barebones outside the mage tower grinding and additional class hall stories. If we just compare the zones 10.1 is far better, but as a whole 7.2 was a better patch overall I would agree.

By the time you add the mega dungeon and all the new world content and quests of 10.1.5 and .7 it certainly isn't smaller than 7.2 though.

I would argue that if 10.2.5 and 10.2.7 get as much content as 10.1.5 and .7 then DF had almost as much content as Legion patches. Certainly as much stuff to do in the world. The problem is DF content is dead and no one does it. Idk why but it has to have something to do with the mob scaling and difficulty? Not sure. Thats a whole other topic tbh.

Edit: I forgot about Suramar at launch plus the 7.1 Kara and Suramar story update. I actually dont think DF has as much world content with that in mind, but its certainly still a great content cadence and an acceptable amount of content for Modern wow either way. They just need to find a way to make the world content more worthwhile.

[Nymrohd]

I can't see Tyr becoming a villain. Every part of the questline tells us how much of a hero he is. Plus Tyr clearly opposed Odyn who is a much better fit for a villain.
I mean it could be a case of subverting expectations but that's such a cheap storytelling device imo. Especially given we have Alex and Nozdormu who have interacted with him

[Raetary]

I can't see Tyr becoming a villain. Every part of the questline tells us how much of a hero he is. Plus Tyr clearly opposed Odyn who is a much better fit for a villain.
I mean it could be a case of subverting expectations but that's such a cheap storytelling device imo. Especially given we have Alex and Nozdormu who have interacted with him

But that was OG Tyr.
And even then he kept secrets and was manipulative, so we don't really know how he operated outside the public eye.

The new Tyr could very well lack his compassion and try to impose his will on the dragons.
Which even OG Tyr did, unless it was some other keeper that ordered Vyranoths eggs to be corrupted, which is unlikely.

[Eldryth]

Wait... is Vyranoth going to be an Aspect too?

With this, I suspect they might drop the Aspect name and call themselves something new, with Amirdrassil giving them powers rather than the old Titan gifts... but whatever the title, she'll probably join as a 6th leader. Probably representing protodrakes and other minor flights like the Netherwing and Storm Drakes, since I think the devs talked about her gathering them in 10.2.

It looks like they called this file "The Great Dragons", so maybe they'll be going by that instead of Aspects? Or maybe it's a placeholder name?

[RahEndymion]

No, I dont think 10.1, .5 and .7 is smaller than Broken Shore patch, but 10.1 certainly is from a new content perspective.

10.1 had more to do outdoors than Broken shore, but Broken shore had a new dungeon, mage tower, and the class mounts. The problem with Broken shore was it was pretty barebones outside the mage tower grinding and additional class hall stories. If we just compare the zones 10.1 is far better, but as a whole 7.2 was a better patch overall I would agree.

By the time you add the mega dungeon and all the new world content and quests of 10.1.5 and .7 it certainly isn't smaller than 7.2 though.

I would argue that if 10.2.5 and 10.2.7 get as much content as 10.1.5 and .7 then DF had almost as much content as Legion patches. Certainly as much stuff to do in the world. The problem is DF content is dead and no one does it. Idk why but it has to have something to do with the mob scaling and difficulty? Not sure. Thats a whole other topic tbh.

Edit: I forgot about Suramar at launch plus the 7.1 Kara and Suramar story update. I actually dont think DF has as much world content with that in mind, but its certainly still a great content cadence and an acceptable amount of content for Modern wow either way. They just need to find a way to make the world content more worthwhile.

People forget quite how much was added in Legion. Black Temple time walking was 7.2.5 so was deaths of Chromie, 7.2 had the best iteration of legion assaults with broken shore, 7.1.5 Mop time walking and 7.1 had the big Suramar update plus dungeons and raids in each major patch. Like you mentioned, Suramar at launch, class hall campaigns, artifact weapons, Legos etc.

Plus 7.3 was pretty heavy on the content and 7.3.5 added a new battle ground, the quests around the sword in Silithus and Ulduar time walking and the first two allied races.

I would argue so far, 10.0.5/7 and 10.1.5/7 have given the illusion of more content rather than actually giving more content. The quest chains are very short and there's a vendor with a rep / currency to grind and a pretty benign world event. In comparison to Legion, both quality and quantity are lacking and 10.1 launch / 10.2 reveal both suggest the .5/.7 content has been moved from the patch rather than being an addition to the major patch.

7.1/7.2/7.3 were all large chunky content patches even if their .5's never happened. That cannot be said for 10.1 and so far 10.2.

I really hope they find a middle ground in cadence and quality/quantity of patches. I think I speak for most people when I say they would rather have a 11.1/11.2 patch that kept them busy for 6-10 weeks and take a break than have 11.1/11.2 last 2-4 weeks and come back for 10 days for a .5/.7 patch. I also don't think nerfing gear acquisition speed is the way to go about achieving that.

10.0 after valor cap was removed the m+ scene was more pumping than beforehand. I don't think speed of gear acquisition is the reason players were done so quickly, I think it was quantity and quality of the content.

/essay

[Lady Atia]

I guess this has something to do with this hyper consumer/ customer mind set *Karen voice* I payed for three patches!!!!

Yeah, but we would still get "three major patches" with a fated season since it would include new open world content this time (as confirmed via interviews from before the expansion even launched). Maybe I'm weird but I usually enjoy the "holiday farm" season at the end of an expansion and the fated raids really helped to spice that part up without another 4 months of progress, especially as alpha/beta is runing alongside that, so I would rather do raid testing there instead of having to push on life. Also people will want to farm the fire owl, and we dont need another raid to keep us busy since we will also have a new pvp season and m+ pool anyways.

The only thing I'm currently torn is how they will handle tier sets this time - at the start of the expansion I said I would love to have a pool of three tier sets to mix and match similiar to diablo, but on the other hand adding a tier set only for the fated/s4 would diminish the effect of "we just re-use the first three raids" since transmog hunters will have new content too (which was the downside of fated raids if you already had all transmogs from the past seasons).

Also, I really really hope they add a non-fire dreamowl mount for season 4, similiar to the slimetiger:



Just slap a saddle on it and it's good to go, and keeping it as season 4 only would help keeping the fireowl unique down the line.

[Sondrelk]

I can't see Tyr becoming a villain. Every part of the questline tells us how much of a hero he is. Plus Tyr clearly opposed Odyn who is a much better fit for a villain.
I mean it could be a case of subverting expectations but that's such a cheap storytelling device imo. Especially given we have Alex and Nozdormu who have interacted with him

Every part of the questline telling us how big a hero Tyr is is one thing. The other is questlines telling us about the shady stuff Tyr did to dragons that the aspects don't know about.

It's not exactly a very interesting story if we revive Tyr and nothing happens.
Either he is a perfectly stand up guy, in which case all the foreshadowing of him doing shady stuff is pointless and the Incarnates complaints are baseless. Or he isn't actually as great as the aspects built him up to be, in which case the story a really has something to build off of in the future as the aspects needs to find a new purpose without him.

[Chickat]

People forget quite how much was added in Legion. Black Temple time walking was 7.2.5 so was deaths of Chromie, 7.2 had the best iteration of legion assaults with broken shore, 7.1.5 Mop time walking and 7.1 had the big Suramar update plus dungeons and raids in each major patch. Like you mentioned, Suramar at launch, class hall campaigns, artifact weapons, Legos etc.

Plus 7.3 was pretty heavy on the content and 7.3.5 added a new battle ground, the quests around the sword in Silithus and Ulduar time walking and the first two allied races.

I would argue so far, 10.0.5/7 and 10.1.5/7 have given the illusion of more content rather than actually giving more content. The quest chains are very short and there's a vendor with a rep / currency to grind and a pretty benign world event. In comparison to Legion, both quality and quantity are lacking and 10.1 launch / 10.2 reveal both suggest the .5/.7 content has been moved from the patch rather than being an addition to the major patch.

7.1/7.2/7.3 were all large chunky content patches even if their .5's never happened. That cannot be said for 10.1 and so far 10.2.

I really hope they find a middle ground in cadence and quality/quantity of patches. I think I speak for most people when I say they would rather have a 11.1/11.2 patch that kept them busy for 6-10 weeks and take a break than have 11.1/11.2 last 2-4 weeks and come back for 10 days for a .5/.7 patch. I also don't think nerfing gear acquisition speed is the way to go about achieving that.

10.0 after valor cap was removed the m+ scene was more pumping than beforehand. I don't think speed of gear acquisition is the reason players were done so quickly, I think it was quantity and quality of the content.

/essay

The content cadence has been good, but I do think I would prefer the .5 patch and no .7 patch.

These days I want to play for a month or two of a new major patch, and maybe 1 month of a minor patch. So about 50% of an expansions life I want to play, and then i want to do other things with the other year.

I understand why Blizzard does this though. It keeps people subbed, and theres really no time to quit inbetween patches with patches coming every 2 months.

Ideally I think the best patch cadence possible for myself would be a content quantity approaching or exceeding Legion with 3 major patches and 3 minor patches.

This would be perfect for me.

11.0- subbed for 2 months.
11.0.5- Month 3/4 subbed again after 1-2 month break.
11.1- Month 5/6 subbed again after a 1-2 month break.
11.1.5- Month 9/10
11.2- Month 11/12
11.2.5- Month 15/16 conclusion to xpac story.
11.2.7-Month 20 fated season. I could either sub or wait for the next xpac depending on how good the season and content looks.


So I would sub for 2 months during launch, and 1-2 months for each patch after that for a total playtime of like 10-12 months of a 24 month expansion.

But maybe thats just me. I'm sure the current patch cadence model is perfect for some people.

[Nymrohd]

Every part of the questline telling us how big a hero Tyr is is one thing. The other is questlines telling us about the shady stuff Tyr did to dragons that the aspects don't know about.

It's not exactly a very interesting story if we revive Tyr and nothing happens.
Either he is a perfectly stand up guy, in which case all the foreshadowing of him doing shady stuff is pointless and the Incarnates complaints are baseless. Or he isn't actually as great as the aspects built him up to be, in which case the story a really has something to build off of in the future as the aspects needs to find a new purpose without him.

Why do the aspects NOT know about it though? Alex knows what happened to Vyranoth's clutch and considers what happened an abomination. She still thinks very highly of Tyr. And the very shady things that happened that were revealed largely happened because of Odyn with Tyr dissenting.

[Sondrelk]

Why do the aspects NOT know about it though? Alex knows what happened to Vyranoth's clutch and considers what happened an abomination. She still thinks very highly of Tyr. And the very shady things that happened that were revealed largely happened because of Odyn with Tyr dissenting.

They don't seem to know about Tyrs experiments on dragons in general. How Galakrond was seemingly created by one of Tyrs experiments, how he kept Proto-dragons imprisoned in order to run experiments on magic infusion.

The important bit is also that Tyr, while not as hardline as Odyn, is still very much someone who pushes the Titan agenda on Azeroth. Said Titan agenda has been questioned several times so far as something not necessarily great for our characters.

But of course, the biggest point in favor of Tyr becoming antagonistic is that there isn't much reason to have this protracted storyline of him being revived unless something will happen when he is.
There isn't anything he would necessarily solve that we know of. There isn't a Titan facility only he can activate that solves an unsolvable problem like there is for other macguffins. Which leads us to the other option, which is that he isn't all he is cracked up to be, and that reviving him causes problems.

[Nymrohd]

There isn't anything he would necessarily solve that we know of. There isn't a Titan facility only he can activate that solves an unsolvable problem like there is for other macguffins. Which leads us to the other option, which is that he isn't all he is cracked up to be, and that reviving him causes problems.

I mean, Uldaz. Also we already killed Tyr once this expac.

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Btw, what happened to the quest about Eredar skins for Draenei?

[Raetary]

Btw, what happened to the quest about Eredar skins for Draenei?

Happening next week.

[Hitei]

People forget quite how much was added in Legion. Black Temple time walking was 7.2.5 so was deaths of Chromie, 7.2 had the best iteration of legion assaults with broken shore, 7.1.5 Mop time walking and 7.1 had the big Suramar update plus dungeons and raids in each major patch. Like you mentioned, Suramar at launch, class hall campaigns, artifact weapons, Legos etc.

Plus 7.3 was pretty heavy on the content and 7.3.5 added a new battle ground, the quests around the sword in Silithus and Ulduar time walking and the first two allied races.

I would argue so far, 10.0.5/7 and 10.1.5/7 have given the illusion of more content rather than actually giving more content. The quest chains are very short and there's a vendor with a rep / currency to grind and a pretty benign world event. In comparison to Legion, both quality and quantity are lacking and 10.1 launch / 10.2 reveal both suggest the .5/.7 content has been moved from the patch rather than being an addition to the major patch.

Eh.

Sure, Legion added BT timewalking, but DF has more timewalking availability than ever before AND has brought forward 14(?) dungeons into current M+ rotation.
Sure, Legion had Deaths of Chromie, but I think it's important to actually contextualize that. It's a fun scenario but it's really not any more content than Zskera was. It was a fun little scenario that was relatively quick and easy to get through.

The "best" iteration of Legion Assaults were still pretty minor content compared to Fyrakk + Elemental Storms + Surges + Rifts + events like Hunts, Dragonbane, and Feasts. The idea that Legion is winning on quality and quantity is pretty silly.

You point out that the quest chains in DF are very short, but actually the entire pre-insurrection Suramar campaign is only ~10 quests longer than the Sarkareth (Forbidden Reach + Zaralek) campaign, which is pretty lackluster given that Suramar was a primary zone whose whole thing was being a story rich campaign area. And consider that a zone like Stormheim has about 85 quests in its main storyline (and following faction bit) and like 15 side quests. A zone like Waking shores has about 80 quests in its main storyline and 45+ side quests.

I don't know how anyone can claim that the quality of additions in Legion was better in comparison. It's "new zone" was a repurposed, single environment scenario zone. People like to laude the class hall campaigns and I end up wondering if they only did 1 or 2, because a bunch of them copy paste each other from the very start (artifact acquisition) to through to the end, and most of them were basically just "look for this relatively unimportant nameless boss NPC". Most of them dispensed any actual sense of class connection really early on and were just sort of generic quest chains. Some were stand out, but most were really mid.

Even something like Mage Tower was copy pasted across specs to share resources, with fights that were really badly balanced between the different specs doing the encounter because they didn't bother to alter the mechanics to a significant degree to match spec capability.

I really enjoyed Legion's content, but it was very much the expansion that gave the illusion of more content while cutting a lot of corners and repurposing a lot of things to stretch content: a dungeon that was updated from an existing single-room dungeon, a dungeon that just reused the DH starting area, a patch zone that was a relatively featureless island from the expansion intro, an existing city that was copy pasted to a new location with a few updates, an extremely limited pool of weapon appearances and types with lots of iteration of the same model with modifications.

Meanwhile DF has just been throwing in more and more content, both in the traditional lanes like the above assaults and m+, and in the side activities and availabilities.

It's reallllly easy to just count raid bosses or number of dungeons and go "OMG LEGION WAS SO MUCH MORE!!!"

Until you look at all the DF zone events, and look at them re-adding Naxx gear in craftable form with its own little acquisition puzzle, and trading post for all sorts of new vanity items and unavailable reskins alongside an absolute ton of just randomly thrown in transmog unlocks out in the world, and re-adding all sorts of items lost in the Cata updates, and adding dragonriding races to old areas, and doing several concurrent story-impactful campaigns, and multiple heritage armor questlines, and all sorts of new racial customization options just willynilly, and class customizations, and doing major updates to holidays, and multiple major class reworks mid-expansion, and random small story quest lines for the Blues, or Baine, and holiday events like Secrets of Azeroth, and QoL systems like the ping or the ability to re-gear old low level alts that you haven't played for a while.

I'm all for people not liking DF if they just don't like DF or its themes or whatever. But you are kidding yourself if your argument is "it's lacking content" or "it's just giving the illusion of content but it's all empty". They are stuffing the absolute shit out of patches, they just aren't as focused on instances. A lot of DF things are "small", Fyrakk Assaults are small, the ping addition is small, more dragon riding races is small--until you step back and look at just how many small things are being put in and realize that DF is probably the single most content heavy expansion the game has ever had by a wide margin.

[Alanar]

Why do the aspects NOT know about it though? Alex knows what happened to Vyranoth's clutch and considers what happened an abomination. She still thinks very highly of Tyr. And the very shady things that happened that were revealed largely happened because of Odyn with Tyr dissenting.

Now that Vyranoth is with her, we might see a different reaction when Tyr gets revived. That cinematic could be interesting if Vyranoth is pressent.
How will Tyr react and what would hes plan be?