Midnight 12.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Revamp Man]

Not really, why would they do it a second time instead of one of the other raids? Also this leak is too dumb to tell the difference between Skyreach (the High Arakkoa city) and Skywall (the elemental plane).

Yall kill my hype every time
Though tbh it is from a "best leak" thread

[Izalla]

Cata did also have 6 completely new zones alongside Hyjal though, so effectively the same amount of work to create new zones alongside the world revamp.
A new world revamp doesn't have to make the same mistake. Just focus on the actual revamped zones and don't make new zones at all.

Also, you say 50 zones, but most of those are much smaller than modern zones, and it's not like modern zones have voice acting for every single quest anyways.
If we assume the old idea I had for merged zones (narratively, not necessarily mechanically), then you could have stuff where for instance Westfall and Duskwood are the only zones with main campaign questlines and voice acting, and Redridge mountains are just for side quests, and therefore without voice acting.

Beyond that you probably have to consider zones that maybe won't be updated, or really touched on at all. Vashj'ir is unlikely to get updates, or any new content at all from that matter. Deepholm is almost certainly being ignored completely. Uldum doesn't necessarily need any updates at all to look decent.

Not only are they smaller geographically, but the amount of quests in those old zones compared to new zones is just... there's no comparison. Some zones are like, 30 quests long even including all side quests. Even by TBC and Wrath the zones had at least 50-100 quests (if I'm not mistaken, Dragonblight was like 130 or so for the loremaster achievement before they updated those to showing storyline requirements).

And I like how the post you're replying to says "they can't do it all in one go" as if they haven't been updating everything slowly for multiple expansions now. There is nothing "all in one go" about how the asset updates have been handled.

[Pyrophax]

And I like how the post you're replying to says "they can't do it all in one go" as if they haven't been updating everything slowly for multiple expansions now. There is nothing "all in one go" about how the asset updates have been handled.

Than we need some kind of wall between old unrewamped zones with new ones. I read somewhere about concept of losing to Void and slowly getting free zones gradually. Start with Kalimdor - Durotar and Hyjal, and EK with Silvermoon and Strmwind. And gradually add new lands.

[Dracullus]

That's why I'm all in for revamping (or rather returning to, cause I don't want Cata versions deleted) EK/Kalimdor in 2 expansions. One, even large continent per expac is feasible and all zones could get focus they deserve.

Especially cities, we all stay in single hub anyway (at best it's 1 hub per faction). If we split revamp to 2 expacs, 4 cities could get their moment to shine and smaller ones like Thunder Bluff or Gilneas could become patch hubs.

[Sondrelk]

That's why I'm all in for revamping (or rather returning to, cause I don't want Cata versions deleted) EK/Kalimdor in 2 expansions. One, even large continent per expac is feasible and all zones could get focus they deserve.

Especially cities, we all stay in single hub anyway (at best it's 1 hub per faction). If we split revamp to 2 expacs, 4 cities could get their moment to shine and smaller ones like Thunder Bluff or Gilneas could become patch hubs.

I don't see why we couldn't get both.
Most of the zones fully revamped with quests and whatnot. A few given less focus initially, but focused heavily on in patches.

As an example. Twilight Highlands, Eastern/Western Plaguelands, and Silithus/Uldum/Tanaris, are given minimal focus in the initial revamp, mostly just graphical for parity and a few side quests.
Then in the major patches each one get much more attention, both in terms of the zone and quests, to go alongside the raid.

The way I see it is that you make new "levelling" zones for each main race, mostly to ensure you have a solid foundation of race lore. Stuff like Dun Murogh and Loch Modan being dedicated to these lore heavy questlines.
That takes out a good chunk of the zones in one go.
After that you could easily amalgamate the remaining zones into 3 or so chunks for narrative purposes, which would add up to the usual amount of "zones" for an expansion.

[Polybius]

Would be interesting to see how often towlie was making stuff up or was selling his ideas as leaks
I still don't buy an underground expansion
Those new tech for zaralek where the area is loaded while you are in that tunnel could be reused though I guess
Maybe they'll do a partly revamp and little holes to that new area here and there

Folks are forgetting this tech can be used for locations like Blackrock Mountain/MC, Razorfen, Wailing Caverns, Blackfathom, and even Ahn Quiraj. That's especially if they plan to expand zones from within.

[Izalla]

Than we need some kind of wall between old unrewamped zones with new ones. I read somewhere about concept of losing to Void and slowly getting free zones gradually. Start with Kalimdor - Durotar and Hyjal, and EK with Silvermoon and Strmwind. And gradually add new lands.

Disagree because I think revamping two zones at a time would be pointless. We don't know how much work they've put into things behind the scenes over these years except from what we can see of the new buildings and what we can assume from things like terrain and other such environmental assets. The entire continent of Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms, when you look at actual size and not amount of zones, is not that different from previous expansion continents, and they've clearly been prepping for the revamp for much longer than they usually work on an expansion. How many times do you think they go "we should make a goat model for this zone because goats will be very important in 4 years and we can get a head start by using them in this expac"? Because that's basically what how they have set themselves up for whole world/whole continent revamp since maybe WoD when they made the garrison assets, and certainly in the expansions since. Just look at a zone like Maldraxxus that has giant diseased mushrooms for... no good reason. Maldraxxus is actually the worst afterlife ever. It's disgusting. It's not even a punishment zone, and there's not much sense in all the rot and corpses and crap that is based in physical death in the living world. Unless you're finding an excuse to revamp a ton of things you'll need for scourged areas of Azeroth. Hey, there is even a zone in Azeroth that has giant rotten mushrooms for trees! Maldraxxus has no business existing except as nostalgia bait for the Plaguelands, and for Plaguelands assets. It's conceptually horribly otherwise.

[Pyrophax]

Disagree because I think revamping two zones at a time would be pointless. We don't know how much work they've put into things behind the scenes over these years except from what we can see of the new buildings and what we can assume from things like terrain and other such environmental assets. The entire continent of Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms, when you look at actual size and not amount of zones, is not that different from previous expansion continents, and they've clearly been prepping for the revamp for much longer than they usually work on an expansion. How many times do you think they go "we should make a goat model for this zone because goats will be very important in 4 years and we can get a head start by using them in this expac"? Because that's basically what how they have set themselves up for whole world/whole continent revamp since maybe WoD when they made the garrison asset, and certainly in the expansion since. Just look at a zone like Maldraxxus that has giant diseased mushrooms for... no good reason. Maldraxxus is actually the worst afterlife ever. It's disgusting. It's not even a punishment zone, and there's not much sense in all the rot and corpses and crap that is based in physical death in the living world. Unless you're finding an excuse to revamp a ton of things you'll need for scourged areas of Azeroth. Hey, there is even a zone in Azeroth that has giant rotten mushrooms for trees! Maldraxxus has no business existing except as nostalgia bait for the Plaguelands, and for Plaguelands assets. It's conceptually horribly otherwise.

I think more alike half of continents. EK - Lordaeron and Azeroth (Line between Khaz-Modan and Arathi), Kalimdor - North from Barrens, and south of Ashenvale. Something like that.

[Woggmer]

Yes, and how did that go with Cata? Did you play the game during Cata? Cause let me tell you, the content draught was gigantic. There was nothing to do.
You think one studio is enough to quintuple the work load? It's incredibly unrealistic.

Not really... I don't remember there being much of a content draught during Cata near the end.. the biggest complaint people had about Cata was how easy heroic dungeons were made to make it easy for the "Wrath Babies" at the time, and then people complained again about Raid Finder being universally hated. With Heroic Dungeons being so easy... There wasn't much else to do besides Raiding or PvP.

However... that's been more than a decade ago. Times change. WoW has changed and so has the team. We're not limited to just Raiding and PvP anymore, people level alts, battle pets, renown/reputation farming, timewalking, Story Quests, Heritage Armor Quests, weekly events, open world event content (Fyrakk's Assault, Soup, Time Rifts, Dreamsurges), Mythic+ and even Transmog hunting. (One could even argue that DF is the complete opposite to Cata and MoP's content draught where there's too much content to get through).

So, yes, world revamp would mean new stories and changes to the zones, so it would still be a humongous amount of work. Add voice acting and cinematics too for let's say it together: 50 zones!
It's just not possible peeps. They can't do that in one go.

People already mentioned this but merging the zones into larger zones like with Hillsbrad and Alterac.. By combining the zones together it allows to work with overarching stories that span across multiple zones.. rather than have one contained story within each zone. It's a similar case back in Classic where Elwynn Forest and Westfall focused on the story of the Defias Brotherhood.. or how Durotar, the Barrens, and Desolace had a focus on the Burning Blade Cult. We'd reduce the 50-45 zones down to just around 5-8 zones depending on how many get merged and the stories they focus on.

One example would be taking Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Redridge Mountains, and Duskwood and combine into a single zone with an overarching story that spans across all those zones with a constant threat spread out on multiple ends.. This can allow Blizzard to focus on an actual narrative to tell rather than make people hop from hub to hub doing miscellaneous quests like in the past.. They can throw in a "Kill 10 wolves" side quest, but it doesn't effect the main story.. it just gives people more options to level up faster.

[Polybius]

Disagree because I think revamping two zones at a time would be pointless. We don't know how much work they've put into things behind the scenes over these years except from what we can see of the new buildings and what we can assume from things like terrain and other such environmental assets. The entire continent of Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms, when you look at actual size and not amount of zones, is not that different from previous expansion continents, and they've clearly been prepping for the revamp for much longer than they usually work on an expansion. How many times do you think they go "we should make a goat model for this zone because goats will be very important in 4 years and we can get a head start by using them in this expac"? Because that's basically what how they have set themselves up for whole world/whole continent revamp since maybe WoD when they made the garrison asset, and certainly in the expansion since. Just look at a zone like Maldraxxus that has giant diseased mushrooms for... no good reason. Maldraxxus is actually the worst afterlife ever. It's disgusting. It's not even a punishment zone, and there's not much sense in all the rot and corpses and crap that is based in physical death in the living world. Unless you're finding an excuse to revamp a ton of things you'll need for scourged areas of Azeroth. Hey, there is even a zone in Azeroth that has giant rotten mushrooms for trees! Maldraxxus has no business existing except as nostalgia bait for the Plaguelands, and for Plaguelands assets. It's conceptually horribly otherwise.

Gods this always bugged me. Part of Shadowlands should've taken place on Azeroth. The physicality of death in SL just didn't make a lot of sense. At least the Giants lore they never brought up was interesting, almost as if Maldraxxus were made from a corpse of a dead god.

[Dracullus]

I don't see why we couldn't get both.
Most of the zones fully revamped with quests and whatnot. A few given less focus initially, but focused heavily on in patches.

As an example. Twilight Highlands, Eastern/Western Plaguelands, and Silithus/Uldum/Tanaris, are given minimal focus in the initial revamp, mostly just graphical for parity and a few side quests.
Then in the major patches each one get much more attention, both in terms of the zone and quests, to go alongside the raid.

The way I see it is that you make new "levelling" zones for each main race, mostly to ensure you have a solid foundation of race lore. Stuff like Dun Murogh and Loch Modan being dedicated to these lore heavy questlines.
That takes out a good chunk of the zones in one go.
After that you could easily amalgamate the remaining zones into 3 or so chunks for narrative purposes, which would add up to the usual amount of "zones" for an expansion.

I think we just picture revamp differently.

I want old continents build from the ground up, not just refresh similar to Cata. Not new layer on Cata version, but completely new continent from technical standpoint. Mixing it with Cata zones would be pointless.


--

About 10.2, I think this week we will learn at least if it releases in October or not. No date reveal would be big hint since nowadays they do it pretty early, but more important I think it will get at least few Trading Post objectives same month it launches.

[Izalla]

I think more alike half of continents. EK - Lordaeron and Azeroth (Line between Khaz-Modan and Arathi), Kalimdor - North from Barrens, and south of Ashenvale. Something like that.

Why though? That would be like a mini continent not even the size of a modern expac, and would look jarring. Once all the zones are updated you can add whatever future max level plot line to it you want.

- - - Updated - - -

Not really... I don't remember there being much of a content draught during Cata near the end.. the biggest complaint people had about Cata was how easy heroic dungeons were made to make it easy for the "Wrath Babies" at the time, and then people complained again about Raid Finder being universally hated. With Heroic Dungeons being so easy... There wasn't much else to do besides Raiding or PvP.

However... that's been more than a decade ago. Times change. WoW has changed and so has the team. We're not limited to just Raiding and PvP anymore, people level alts, battle pets, renown/reputation farming, timewalking, Story Quests, Heritage Armor Quests, weekly events, open world event content (Fyrakk's Assault, Soup, Time Rifts, Dreamsurges), Mythic+ and even Transmog hunting. (One could even argue that DF is the complete opposite to Cata and MoP's content draught where there's too much content to get through).



People already mentioned this but merging the zones into larger zones like with Hillsbrad and Alterac.. By combining the zones together it allows to work with overarching stories that span across multiple zones.. rather than have one contained story within each zone. It's a similar case back in Classic where Elwynn Forest and Westfall focused on the story of the Defias Brotherhood.. or how Durotar, the Barrens, and Desolace had a focus on the Burning Blade Cult. We'd reduce the 50-45 zones down to just around 5-8 zones depending on how many get merged and the stories they focus on.

One example would be taking Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Redridge Mountains, and Duskwood and combine into a single zone with an overarching story that spans across all those zones with a constant threat spread out on multiple ends.. This can allow Blizzard to focus on an actual narrative to tell rather than make people hop from hub to hub doing miscellaneous quests like in the past.. They can throw in a "Kill 10 wolves" side quest, but it doesn't effect the main story.. it just gives people more options to level up faster.

There was no content drought during Cata, except at the end between the last raid and Pandaria, like every expac except the most recent years. There was a ton of cut content because they were too ambitious, but you felt that in plotlines that ended randomly like with the missing Abyssal Maw stuff, rather than the REAL cut content and nothing-to-do problem WoD had.

[Sondrelk]

I think we just picture revamp differently.

I want old continents build from the ground up, not just refresh similar to Cata. Not new layer on Cata version, but completely new continent from technical standpoint. Mixing it with Cata zones would be pointless.


--

About 10.2, I think this week we will learn at least if it releases in October or not. No date reveal would be big hint since nowadays they do it pretty early, but more important I think it will get at least few Trading Post objectives same month it launches.

You wouldn't mix it with Cata zones. It would be a ground up revamp with updated storylines, HD assets, and the works. Even Cata wasn't just a layer on top of Classic as well, it used the same framework, but still have different coastlines and such.
A new world revamp would basically be the same thing, just with HD assets instead of making the zones work with flying.

Not fully updating a zone would be less about ignoring it until later, and more about doing the minimal amount of stuff needed, with a big focus later. Perhaps most akin to how SL had a minimal amount of stuff in the Maw, with s big patch that added stuff later. The Maw was still a functional endgame zone, it just wasn't all that important compared to later when the raid entrance was there.

[Izalla]

Gods this always bugged me. Part of Shadowlands should've taken place on Azeroth. The physicality of death in SL just didn't make a lot of sense. At least the Giants lore they never brought up was interesting, almost as if Maldraxxus were made from a corpse of a dead god.

Yep I've never hated an expac setting more, and I didn't give a damn about the Jailer stuff retconning/recontexualizing so many previous events like others hate on Shadowlands for (I was begging for them to shove him into the end of Wrath Sylvanas suicide event to make proper sense out of all of that. It tied in perfectly with her Legion involvement, and her having been tricked by the val'kyr into thinking she was going to super hell worked better than people convincing themselves her behaviour change was from landing on saronite, or that she actually deserved super hell for basically just being a bitch because of undeath rather than being truly irredeemable at her core).

The way death was changed into an alternate dimension where you can die again for some reason and where it warped our view of everything; sure they say there are more areas than the few we saw, but it didn't feel like there were actually more. Why on earth would Draka belong in that scourge-y warrior zone instead of some kind of orc spirit ideal area with the rest of her people and loved ones? Stupid. Hate it. If dying just means I will end up repurposed into a soldier in an army full of rotten corpses and plague, I'll just take the perma death that comes after that, please and thank you.

Only part I don't mind is the Ardenweald "other half of the cycle" idea, but the part where you can die again is still stupid. Fade away like poor Ursoc sure, but the spirits nurturing the souls regenerating there should not be possible to stab to death >.>

[Jaggler]

Not really... I don't remember there being much of a content draught during Cata near the end.. the biggest complaint people had about Cata was how easy heroic dungeons were made to make it easy for the "Wrath Babies" at the time, and then people complained again about Raid Finder being universally hated. With Heroic Dungeons being so easy... There wasn't much else to do besides Raiding or PvP.

The content draught wasn't at the End of Cata (it was about 9 months until 5.0 launched) but rather during it. Endgame content was severely lacking. 4.1 was just two reused dungeons, and Firelands wasn't a bigger raid to make up for it.

[Lady Atia]

Why though? That would be like a mini continent not even the size of a modern expac, and would look jarring. Once all the zones are updated you can add whatever future max level plot line to it you want.

- - - Updated - - -



There was no content drought during Cata, except at the end between the last raid and Pandaria, like every expac except the most recent years. There was a ton of cut content because they were too ambitious, but you felt that in plotlines that ended randomly like with the missing Abyssal Maw stuff, rather than the REAL cut content and nothing-to-do problem WoD had.

I have to disagree - if you followed the interviews back than you would know that they almost cut as much stuff from Cata than from WoD. For some reason people just forget about it, prolly because we had 3 raids for the first tier, and although they were small they bulk out the overall amount of stuff Cata had. But lets see stuff that was cut that was initially announced/teased/spoken of:

- Abysal Maw Raid to go alongside Firelands (although it's implied they would have re-used assets here)
- War of the Ancient Raid Tier (although that was re-used for the Dungeon but I still think it would have been thousand times better as a propper raid with an open world zone, or as a part of the dragonsoul raid)

Than you have lots of straight up re-used stuff as soon as Firelands hits, which was the last major patch in term of assets:
- Zul Gurub and Zul Aman
- Dragon Soul's only new assets besides the transmog were the Deathwing models and I think the airship, everything else was just copy-pasted with no unique boss models ...

Again, I think what could have made Cata's last tier 10000x times better is if they merged End Time, War of the Ancient and Dragonsoul into one ~12 boss raid. Have us first battle with Murozond to rescue Nozdormu, than go back in time to get the Dragonsoul and than defend the Wyrmrest Temple against Deathwing. The catch up Dungeons were great, but it really feels like they spend all the ressources there although back than, we didn't had M+ so replayability was limited as most people would just go raid lfr or normal for better gear; meanwhile the raid was just a copy-paste shitshow with a boring last boss (since the only hard part was the last phase on heroic and you had to go through the boring 4 platforms which were basically all the same just with different aspect abilities).

I mean, just read through these comments they are gold:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-Ancients-Raid

It almost reads like our current thread with some people denying that Amirdrassil is the last new raid.

[Izalla]

I have to disagree - if you followed the interviews back than you would know that they almost cut as much stuff from Cata than from WoD. For some reason people just forget about it, prolly because we had 3 raids for the first tier, and although they were small they bulk out the overall amount of stuff Cata had. But lets see stuff that was cut that was initially announced/teased/spoken of:

- Abysal Maw Raid to go alongside Firelands (although it's implied they would have re-used assets here)
- War of the Ancient Raid Tier (although that was re-used for the Dungeon but I still think it would have been thousand times better as a propper raid with an open world zone, or as a part of the dragonsoul raid)

Than you have lots of straight up re-used stuff as soon as Firelands hits, which was the last major patch in term of assets:
- Zul Gurub and Zul Aman
- Dragon Soul's only new assets besides the transmog were the Deathwing models and I think the airship, everything else was just copy-pasted with no unique boss models ...

Again, I think what could have made Cata's last tier 10000x times better is if they merged End Time, War of the Ancient and Dragonsoul into one ~12 boss raid. Have us first battle with Murozond to rescue Nozdormu, than go back in time to get the Dragonsoul and than defend the Wyrmrest Temple against Deathwing. The catch up Dungeons were great, but it really feels like they spend all the ressources there although back than, we didn't had M+ so replayability was limited as most people would just go raid lfr or normal for better gear; meanwhile the raid was just a copy-paste shitshow with a boring last boss (since the only hard part was the last phase on heroic and you had to go through the boring 4 platforms which were basically all the same just with different aspect abilities; first ...).

Oh they cut a ton and cheaped out to make up for it and it was noticeable. But Cata still had things added to it as it progressed, and it felt like things were happening in the middle. WoD practically went from launch to final patch and there was almost no progression in the middle. Cata was disappointing in what they put in instead of what was cut, but WoD didn't even have the instead part.

I never got to do ZA at all before it was removed and only saw inside ZG once or twice so those dungeons never felt cheap or reused to me. I loved them! And they were at least added.

[Darkarath]

Ah, the eternal discussion about how the revamp would be. I wonder if Blizzard will surprise us in how they approach it.

The only thing that I am sure of is that zones will be mixed together, making bigger zones, more in line with what we are use to these days; and that every zone will be made from the scratch.

The reach of the revamp, together with when will it happen, are the most important questions, of course. Covering all Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms in one go seems impossible. Hopefully they will surprise us.

Also, if they do not take the chance to make the revamp for the 20th anniversary of the game, it would be such a wasted opportunity... It would be unbelievable if they send us in a cosmic trip again in 11.0. It would be such a way to show that they are completely out of touch with their playerbase. But Metzen is back, I have faith. Let us pray for the revamp.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The way death was changed into an alternate dimension where you can die again for some reason and where it warped our view of everything;

I've always felt this way, as well. It feels less like an afterlife and more like a gilded soul-grinder; certainly more grimdark in implication than is congruent with the previously established cosmology. There is no way, in fact, to reasonably reconcile its implications with any of the portrayal of the cosmology up until Shadowlands, and it irrevocably reframes WoW's cosmology as something very futile in nature. The ultimate objective of the existence of mortal life is invariably reduced to being fuel for the Shadowlands if the implications are followed to their logical conclusion, and the only way I could see it being taken forward in any constructive way is if the existence of the Shadowlands serves to scatter people into the hands of any given cosmic force to escape their fate there.

[Lolites]

Next expansion will get revealed and Metzen will try to sell us leper gnomes and giblins as new playable races.

as long as racial is throwing my arm at enemy im sold on leper gnomes