Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Mecheon]

Jokes aside, I hope Blizzard isn't dumb enough to make a fully Underground (or Underwater) expansion... like FR.

Avaloren would be 100 times better even with no lore... Hell, I would say even Shadowlands' approach again would be better.

I can live without a World Revamp again, but I doubt I would endure two huge disappointments.

I'd argue its all in the execution but I could see it working. "Underground" doesn't just mean caves, if you have a big enough area that just haves caves over it (Like Deepholme) it'll basically be an enviroment in of itself. Heck, we're limited by ceilings at the moment, just slap a cave roof on top of what we already have and have a giant cave like that. Lost world enviroments are a bit of a widespread thing for a reason and there's heaps of ways to make 'underground' interesting. Crystals, weird minerals, underground oceans lit by thousands of gems on the ceiling, Titan installations, Nerubian empire stuff, the endless flesh of a giant monster burried eternally, plenty of stuff to dig through and tie into existing stuff

Mind I remain completely 'eh' on the sheer concept of a revamp to the point any new stuff an idea presents is what interests me, and I don't think a revamp is the sure 'getting people who've gone from the game' win folks say it is

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Idea of Underground expansion after zaralek patch just makes me feel like puking.

Still, until actual some facts or datamined stuff, real leaks happen i wouldn't give much thought to what towelliee says, dude is just f'n with you all.

I was ok with him but after i saw this guy yelling "one of us" on twitter to VP Mike Ybarra, yeah he might know something since he's a great ass kisser, but still in my opinion dude is just playing with you like with dolls.

[Nymrohd]

I'd argue its all in the execution but I could see it working. "Underground" doesn't just mean caves, if you have a big enough area that just haves caves over it (Like Deepholme) it'll basically be an enviroment in of itself. Heck, we're limited by ceilings at the moment, just slap a cave roof on top of what we already have and have a giant cave like that. Lost world enviroments are a bit of a widespread thing for a reason and there's heaps of ways to make 'underground' interesting. Crystals, weird minerals, underground oceans lit by thousands of gems on the ceiling, Titan installations, Nerubian empire stuff, the endless flesh of a giant monster burried eternally, plenty of stuff to dig through and tie into existing stuff

Mind I remain completely 'eh' on the sheer concept of a revamp to the point any new stuff an idea presents is what interests me, and I don't think a revamp is the sure 'getting people who've gone from the game' win folks say it is

Like, imagine a hollow world feel in a flying only zone at the core of the world. The World Soul is at the middle illuminating the entire area brightly and Titan facilities are orbitting the area. The ground exposed to the light of Azeroth's soul is covered by a vibrant forest. You effectively have a skybox (so as to create the illusion of size) of an endless forest at all directions and the playable part are the titan facilities. You can get there by diving with your flying mount from the surrounding underground zones and the transition has a small "forced" movement part where you are breaking through the forest canopy and are deposited in the air above the world soul.

[Makabreska]

There wont ba an underground expansion after Blizz was quick to acknowledged that Cata Vashj'ir totally exhausted people. We wont get entire "continent" underground, unless they do some massive Journey to the Center of the Earth stuff.

[Sondrelk]

Alright, I'll bite. What makes people think an underground expansion is likely?
Is it the part where the human fights a Kobold in Elwynn? Because that seems like an extremely tenous link.
Would a murloc be a hint at Ankoan being the main ally in an underwater expansion? A picture of booty bay a hint at Nightsquall creating a pirate empire in Pandaria?

[Nymrohd]

They'd never just place us in some mouldy, damp cave with a candle and a roof right above our heads. That'd be player retention suicide.

It's Kobolds and Catacombs!

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Alright, I'll bite. What makes people think an underground expansion is likely?
Is it the part where the human fights a Kobold in Elwynn? Because that seems like an extremely tenous link.
Would a murloc be a hint at Ankoan being the main ally in an underwater expansion? A picture of booty bay a hint at Nightsquall creating a pirate empire in Pandaria?

I';ve no idea, I just always loved the underdark concept so I am in if it happens.
I still think we are getting Avaloren, a "continent" with 4-5 zones.

[Pheraz]

The dude didn't start the idea of an underground expansion. There has been a lot of speculation and "leaks" regarding the idea of going below the ground, for example using the undermine.

It's also pretty much suggested by the current lore if you pay attention.

• The Harbinger wants the world-soul - where is that? In the planet's core.
• Iridikron is her lackey, and what is his element? Earth.
• Thrall is on the poster for BlizzCon, and what is he? World Shaman and (at least former) Earth-warder.
• We've run out of new continents to visit on Azeroth, and supposedly traveling with the pirates to the other side of the world isn't happening in this expansion.
• The story suggest a major Void showdown is coming up next, and the Harbinger is gathering powerful essences for something. What for? Resurrect some ancient monstrosity perhaps?

Jeez, this sounds really plausible. Actually, this is the most plausible causal chain of recent events I have seen.
As long as we aren't stuck the whole xpac underground I don't mind.
Deepholm was IMO a bit better aesteically than zaralek though.
Also, deepholm.
So maybe some people have forgotten it but eventually the existence of deepholm (themaically) is the only thing contraticting this idea?

[ImTheMizAwesome]

The dude didn't start the idea of an underground expansion. There has been a lot of speculation and "leaks" regarding the idea of going below the ground, for example using the undermine.

It's also pretty much suggested by the current lore if you pay attention.

• The Harbinger wants the world-soul - where is that? In the planet's core.
• Iridikron is her lackey, and what is his element? Earth.
• Thrall is on the poster for BlizzCon, and what is he? World Shaman and (at least former) Earth-warder.
• We've run out of new continents to visit on Azeroth, and supposedly traveling with the pirates to the other side of the world isn't happening in this expansion.
• The story suggest a major Void showdown is coming up next, and the Harbinger is gathering powerful essences for something. What for? Resurrect some ancient monstrosity perhaps?

There has been speculation yes, but whenever some content creator posts some bait tweet or whatever, the speculation here go from just speculating to "oh yeah, now this theme is all but confirmed, thats the next expansion".

But just to not derailing, i doubt that there will be more than 1 zone that will be underground, even if the "undermine" stuff happens.

What they did with zaralek caverns showed me that they are much better at doing zones that aren't in a cave, underground.

[Sondrelk]

There has been speculation yes, but whenever some content creator posts some bait tweet or whatever, the speculation here go from just speculating to "oh yeah, now this theme is all but confirmed, thats the next expansion".

But just to not derailing, i doubt that there will be more than 1 zone that will be underground, even if the "undermine" stuff happens.

What they did with zaralek caverns showed me that they are much better at doing zones that aren't in a cave, underground.

It certainly fits with how speculation usually works. A theme gets researched for a while, everyone agrees ok broad themes for an expansion, probably also where it's set. Then people grow bored of debating the same thing, activity grinds to a halt.
Then, all of a sudden a new shiny leak or hint or whatever comes along. It doesn't have much of anything to do with what we have already decided is happening, so it's exciting, meaning everyone pivots to it.

Question is. Will this be the popular leak theme that gets it completely and utterly wrong in comparison to the established theme everyone already agreed on months ago?


Also, I would argue that Kobolds is much more of a world revamp hint anyways. Elwynn and the surrounding zones are where they are most famous for existing, and they already got a visual revamp so it wouldn't fit with previous stuff like Quilboar in BfA being randomly revamped and stuffs into a zone.

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I think they'll aim for Deepholm times one thousand, but with more aesthetic nuance so it doesn't get stale.

Deepholm is similar in a way, but remember that it is also something the Titans constructed to imprison the elements within the Elemental Plane. Even its famous World Pillar that Deathwing once shattered, is made by the Titans. Think of it a bit like the way they shaped the Emerald Dream. There's probably an underlying, more primal and natural source of the Emerald Dream that the Titans shaped and ordered. Same thing here. There's something more primal than the Elemental Planes. Azeroth's fundament itself, where the Elementals are perhaps more pristine.



That's also true. It's fully possible that we're looking at another Cataclysm type of situation, in which we get a revamp plus a handful of scattered zones. The underground zone might be the main endgame zone where the story takes us first.

But who knows, perhaps the expansion takes a shocking turn halfway through. Maybe we protect the world-soul, but the Harbinger is still able to awaken "The Ancient One". Then Queen Azshara arrives, and it becomes more of a war against the forces of the Void, up above.

Revamp + new zones is precisely one of the main issues with Cataclysm though.
Unless you mean as patch zones, but even then you have so many zones that you could just withhold detail from one zone initially, and then give it large amounts of detail later.

[Hitei]

The whole idea the Undermine being a sandbox city the size of a continent could work if it was similar to something like Jak II (and Jak III)'s Haven City or even Bullworth from Bully rather than something like in Grand Theft Auto 5.

The idea of a city being the size of a whole expansion continent however is something that's never been done before in WoW. Having different sections of the city being quest areas with different plots... like one end of the city is a run-down dilapidated area that's been trashed by various gangs at war with each other, another section is a more high-end part of the city but corrupt moguls and trade princes run this area and will snuff out any competition that gets in their way.

And not every part of the city is liveable.. there's one part of the city where they test out the latest bombs and explosive technology resulting in mad bomber type goblins trying to test their products on real humanoids... or have one section of the city being a former residential zone turned into a quarantined radioactive wasteland where the goblins dump all their hazardous waste from the city. This leads to wild-life pouring in from the city like Troggs and Kobolds.

And finally the real "major city" aspect is a large plaza full of shops and vendors. The gimmick being that Gallywix owns every shop, but there is a growing group of goblins trying to topple his monopoly, which is how the factions come into play.

Now whether Blizzard can execute it well or even if they intend to go that route is a different matter all together, but it is possible.

The issue wasn't conceptual viability. Of course a theoretical expansion that takes place in a giant city could exist.

But there are so many issues with it, and it has such limited appeal, and it's so thoroughly against the basic design space of the game that the chances of it happening are effectively zero.


People have continually expressed they don't like compact or condensed zones--I don't mean "I don't like it", I personally don't mind it, but the playerbase does not enjoy that sort of zone design. Even Suramar, which retroactively is quite well liked, during Legion got a lot of flak for being a dense, mob-heavy area. While it's true that there is plenty of visual variety to be had in a city, there is a much narrower level of thematic and environment variety. A radioactive fallout city and a 20s gang war city are both still cities, it's still buildings and streets and city structure, and every zone being a different form of city is going to wear on people.

There's also just logistical issues here. A city environment is significantly more intensive, both on the dev end (a lot of assets to deal with making) and on the player end (several factors more objects and polygons to render). Consider these two pictures:



Each building in a city is going to be a fairly complex object, supports and windows and tiles and molding, wires and doodads, instead of flat terrain (a simplified plane with dressing on top) you have to deal with streets and curbs, you have alleyways full of boxes and bottles and garbage cans, etc. etc. Which is fine when it's one subarea of a zone, or even a zone, but it's a whole different thing when it's an entire continent. That's an entire continent that devs need to go through and individually dress the streets for if they don't want it to turn into a glaringly copy-pasted mess. It's also a massive amount for lower end PCs to have to deal with in every location of a continent.

Picture Boralus but the size of Azure span or the entire Dragon Isles. I mean, you're talking about something on the order of dwarfing like, GTAV's Los Santos, but with the object complexity for a player to arrive at some quest hub neighborhood and have the buildings feel of good quality when you're on foot fighting mobs next to it.

Even if 80% of the city is destroyed ruins of various flavors, I just can't imagine a world in which that isn't a logistical nightmare to make and to keep in a nicely running state for players.

If we were talking about a Black Empire city continent, or a Nerubian city continent, where the buildings are all very very large and simple and most of the environment is large open spaces, squares and colonnades and plazas like Zin-Azshari, maybe. Still doubtful, but maybe. But a whole continent or even the majority of a continent as a goblin city? Never gonna happen.

[Lazarel]

made a logo in 10 minutes

[Lazarel]

An entire underground expansion would be r.i.p for the game

But if its something like a World revamp with a single huge endgame zone underground ( gameplay inspired from Tears of The Kingdom ) would be sick

[Jaggler]

Tbh it would feel weird to be "cramped" underground after experiencing the freedom of Dragonflight. Of course you can create various biomes underground, but having a whole expansion underground would feel weird imho. Having sections of zones in caves/inside of mountains would be fine (as long as they are caves that don't dismount you) but not whole zones let alone an expansion.

[Lady Atia]

Definitely got weird hypermasc vibes too… like what does he mean by “gushy” stuff and “heartwarming”? Hopefully not an attack on inclusion efforts… the world needs more games to be positive, and Blizzard definitely does, at least with WoW. So any other takes on that are <WRONG>

Yeah. I get that people want a bit more "heavy metal", hell I just enjoyed John Wick 4 yesterday. But that doesn't mean they have to dial back what they did with Dragonflight. Current rl world is sad enough, I don't want another depressed world ending non-sense story like BfA.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Yeah. I get that people want a bit more "heavy metal", hell I just enjoyed John Wick 4 yesterday. But that doesn't mean they have to dial back what they did with Dragonflight. Current rl world is sad enough, I don't want another depressed world ending non-sense story like BfA.

So far dragonflight when it comes to characters under all this colorful paint, is much more depressing and emotional all the time instead of doing cool stuff, when it comes to watching the main characters.
It's like watching a support group you walked into by accident right now, a good comment that i saw on the webs about some of this expansion writing.

And the world ending scenario is coming with iridikron, Fyrakk wanting to destroy new tree and possibly new NE home.

Blizzard need to find a balance between cool, badass shit happening and emotional rollecoaster that doesn't end and not in a good way, because at some point there is this weird "emotional" overdose that is just bland and boring.

Especially coming from BG3 characters that can be emotional but also badass, funny, but when you see Alexstrasza in Dragonflight for example or Noz right now, it feels like a caricature of characters that writers don't have any idea whatsoever for them, when they can just go for easy scenario where they do badass stuff that will be remembered, especially when they're dragons.. Dragons do cool shit, but not in dragonflight.

Another thing is, that world is always sad and it shouldn't dictate how safe a video game expansion should be.

[Luck4]

Can I ask why you think a fully underground expansion would be dump?

I don't believe Blizzard is capable of pulling off 5+ zones with enough aesthetic variation without it also feeling non-sensical.

Want a quick and simple example?

Neither Zaralek nor Deepholm has day/night cycles. Also, neither has any weather, and I'm glad they don't have it!

It would be a lot easier to explain a variety of biomes in the Emerald Dream with very few additions/retcons than giving day/night cycles or weather to an underground continent.

I understand that some of you might like the idea of an underground expansion, but we must admit that this setting is a love or hate concept.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

I think you're raising an important issue, one that sort of gets to the heart of what's problematic with Dragonflight.

Dragons are COOL. In virtually every media, they're always seen as badass, larger than life, and super powerful. But in Dragonflight, they've focused so much on "what would Dragon society look like if we pulled away the curtains a bit?", it just ends up overexposing their culture and what they are.

Too many Visages. Too many Drakonids (everyone looks the same). Too many similar Dragon models. Too many buildings that kinda look like normal people live there. It's like Dragons prefer their Visage life, basically.

This in turn also forces Blizzard to explore a bunch of extra storywriting, like the inner feelings of Dragons, their romantic relationships, their self-doubt, and more. None of that is very appealing in large doses imo.

I remember when Dragons were something the Orcs would send into battle back in the RTS games.

Yeah man, i remember doing dragon hero fights in map edits in W3, it was like the coolest thing ever.

And like you said dragons are cool and with simple storytelling that works, then can just do some cool shit, intimidating shit that just pumps you out when you see these scenes, so far it has been dragon visages talking.. Just talking, slowly and with sadness, mostly.

I always loved WoW for simple storytelling that had some emotional atmosphere about zones, characters, quests but it was also done in a way that it should be, like dragons for me, before playing Dragonflight were a much cooler thing in my mind than they are now.

I had the same issue with afterlives of Shadowlands, it was this mystery and seeing the spirit after your death made you think always about some mysterious stuff, but then everything was unveiled that happens behind the courtain and there was just too much focus on it.

Now it's like superhero movies but without the action and epic scenes.

[Nymrohd]

I don't believe Blizzard is capable of pulling off 5+ zones with enough aesthetic variation without it also feeling non-sensical.

Want a quick and simple example?

Neither Zaralek nor Deepholm has day/night cycles. Also, neither has any weather, and I'm glad they don't have it!

It would be a lot easier to explain a variety of biomes in the Emerald Dream with very few additions/retcons than giving day/night cycles or weather to an underground continent.

I understand that some of you might like the idea of an underground expansion, but we must admit that this setting is a love or hate concept.

So it is more disbelief that blizzard could pull it off

[Shadowferal]

So it is more disbelief that blizzard could pull it off

Is that so unbelievable?

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Yep, all true.

I think something Legion did better than Shadowlands, in terms of being a "big expansion about a cosmic force", was involve lots of locations, themes and characters back on Azeroth. The Broken Isles were pretty varied by themselves, but then you also got sent on a bunch of adventures for your Order Halls, Artifact Weapons, etc. In a way, all of Azeroth felt like it was part of it.

For 11.0, they need to do the same I think. Let the Void be the big bad, but also make it feel like we're on Azeroth. Remind us why we're trying to protect that place.

Open up Void portals or Elemental chasms (temporary ones of course) in zones like Westfall and Desolace. Let us defend Stormwind and Orgrimmar against weekly or daily attacks.

Include lots of characters we know and love, like Genn, Baine, Jaina, Thrall, etc. Have them be part of, and lead the defenses at all these various locations.

But also offer that specific endgame experience in the large underground area, so we feel like we're witnessing something new too.

I agree with you.

I think some writers there at blizzard got carried away with overreaching and veeery vague up until the last patch scenario, going too deep on more mysterious creatures, themes that kills all the mystery, and i think they should just come back to - Balanced story, where we know who and what are the baddie intentions are, but during that some crazy twists, badass and emotional(legion Ysera or varian scene for example) scenes are happening like we had in legion(opening argus) in between.

Now with iridkron which is a cool character, we are pretty much waiting for a vague thing that might happen with him, especially when there's a chance that 10.2 might be the last major patch, but with more smaller patches later.

Like you said, we have void expansion and let's say we know what the goal of the big baddies is, but we have to go through hard times and challenges to finally get to the end and defeat this big baddie.

It's simple and we know what is happening, but there are stuff happening in between that excites us and makes us go "whoah did that really happened?", instead of main story stuff mostly being "wait and see", but not in a good way where most stuff ends up being not explained correctly.