The War Within 11.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Super Dickmann]

I'm of two minds on the buffed Fyrakk model. On the one hand the purple to fire hue is cool. On the other hand, the red looks good from before and I already fear the Ny'alotha purple and orange overdose incoming.

I do think it's a good call for him not to be killed in this patch and show up only through those assaults. He and Vyranoth can be a council boss on the off-chance that Vyranoth doesn't end up becoming an ally.

[Zulggun]

OK, so I've flown a few laps around the new zone on PTR.

The entrance is admittedly pretty cool, but the zone overall is boring as hell.

It's like they combined the fiery Djarddin areas of the above (the least appealing biome) with a bunch of dark rocks, muted colours, etc. Not even the crystals do anything for the place, as they're all the same darkish green colour.

Major disappointment.

It's the kind of place where you go in, suffer through your dailies for 20 minutes, then fly out with a sigh of relief.

Paladin set looks super badass though.

I fear like it's gonna be Nazjatar 2.0 in terms of looks. Just mostly boring, stoney dump. Hopefully they will take a look back more at Deepholme to pump it up a bit.

[Zulggun]

I don't know why they keep giving trolls the bare feet. I mean, they do have the technology to make shoes for them, it can't be that much more work to just create the shoes.

[Nymrohd]

I'm of two minds on the buffed Fyrakk model. On the one hand the purple to fire hue is cool. On the other hand, the red looks good from before and I already fear the Ny'alotha purple and orange overdose incoming.

I do think it's a good call for him not to be killed in this patch and show up only through those assaults. He and Vyranoth can be a council boss on the off-chance that Vyranoth doesn't end up becoming an ally.

Dramatically, at least one of them needs to be alive so Iridikron can betray them.

Honestly for all my complaints, Blizzard has slowly been building some long term villains. BfA left us Azshara. SL left us Denathrius. Having one of the Primals survive would not be a bad idea. They need a supporting cast that can do b-plots to fill in the zones. E.g. how many zones historically have had some naga invading on a random corner? Remove Azshara and you don't get that (or you are forced to take up story space to introduce new leadership). If Fyrakk survives this we can have random dragon mobs showing up in any future zone and when asked we can say Fyrakk did it. My hope was that they'd have used Sarkareth+Chromatus to give us a chromatic Dragonflight as a long term villain but Fyrakk can work (Iridikron probably is going to die and open the story for the next expac, Vyranoth is more likely to get betrayed/redeemed because she seems more rational plus she is female).

Imagine if we had not killed Illidan, Vashj, Kael, Arthas in the first couple of expansions but got to keep them around so they could be involved in future plots, how much more interesting the story could have been.

[Dracullus]

Notice that on roadmap for 10.2 we have listed OPEN world challenges, not SOLO challenges. Which is interesting, cause I don't think open world challenge is really possible, since you can always throw more people into it.

[Nymrohd]

Notice that on roadmap for 10.2 we have listed OPEN world challenges, not SOLO challenges. Which is interesting, cause I don't think open world challenge is really possible, since you can always throw more people into it.

I guess they could perhaps had challenges that are there for the entire server like some massive world boss but the game's servers cannot handle a walrus cooking soup so I doubt that.

[Nebron]

OK, the lacklustre zone aside, I am pretty hyped about all the things that have been datamined.

While I'm 110% certain a lot of it is for the next few patches, for 11.0, or even things they'll leave to collect dust for a few years before suddenly pulling them out of a sock "when it makes sense" (see the Trading Post stuff from Exile's Reach), it's still real stuff and it does still hint about the future.

Not only a likely 10.2 Emerald Dream zone, but also a ton of stuff for old races and possibly even old zones. For example, they made a new Ironforge Dwarf tabard, and one of those dwarven tanks. Why?

I could see some of that stuff belonging in an updated Mage Tower perhaps, especially the weapons which look inspired by the Legion artifact weapons.

But some of it just reeks future content, either 10.2, 10.3 or 11.0.

The question is just how it connects together.

Will the entire world be revamped?

Will only Lordaeron see a bunch of updates with the Scarlet Crusade, Ironforge, etc?

Or will there simply be some type of event in one of these upcoming patches? Like, maybe the Scarlet Crusade messes with the Undercity, and Ironforge comes to help or something.

Also very interested in that Pantera armour set. It looks very much aimed for the store, as a 6-month promotion or something. Or possibly the Trading Post. But either way, we don't really have a "Pantera"-race in the game, do we? Could it be the natives of the Emerald Dream?

- - - Updated - - -

Also, there were a bunch of "child" versions added for different Dragonflight natives. Children's Week happens in the first week of May. Could that mean the patch is slated for late April? Seems so soon.

Absolutely! I must say, they really managed to pull that story off pretty well. Since we don't know the future content for sure, the breadcrumbs are pretty self-explanatory. The whole narrative around new World Tree in the Dragon Isles, Ysera showing up and Merithra's story left for possible exploration, now the hint of Emerald Dream in datamining files, Fyrakk possibly surviving 10.1, which would leave us at 3 Incarnates in 10.2 still to be dealt with. I mean, fully-fledged Emerald Dream is 100% legit this expansion.

Also, there are 3 main concepts that evolved throught DF - Emerald Dream, the Time stuff with Nozdormu/ Murozond and the Void part from Neltharion's corruption and now last raid boss fight. There's also Titan/Tyr stuff going on the side.

Must say, it's pretty exciting what's happening to WoW storytelling after that Sylvanas narrative arc. Now, imagine that they created these possibilties within 2 patches of Dragonflight in comparison to 3 expansions of Sylvanas build-up :O

[Nymrohd]

Btw the new models for world armor and weapons are very high quality.

[Grimbold21]

Stop fooling around and show us the Dwarven stuff. No one cares about the lesser races.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I do think it's a good call for him not to be killed in this patch and show up only through those assaults. He and Vyranoth can be a council boss on the off-chance that Vyranoth doesn't end up becoming an ally.

It is nice that Blizzard is finally learning how to conserve their baddies and not squander them on every passing raid tier. However, it would be a bit of a shame to make them a council boss, as it would really undermine the alleged threat that the Primal Incarnates are intended to pose. I'm definitely more of the mind that Vyranoth will either become an ally or will know to get the hell out of dodge and become a recurring sympathetic baddy—I'm personally inclined to the latter, honestly. "Female villain always gets redeemed" is a rather tired trope, anyway.

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Dramatically, at least one of them needs to be alive so Iridikron can betray them.

That works, too. However, I figure that could just come after we beat one of them in a raid—it'd make sense for Iridikron to finally get desperate after he sees his last ally start to waver, and then embrace the Void and go full Galakrond on them.

[Nymrohd]

It is nice that Blizzard is finally learning how to conserve their baddies and not squander them on every passing raid tier. However, it would be a bit of a shame to make them a council boss, as it would really undermine the alleged threat that the Primal Incarnates are intended to pose. I'm definitely more of the mind that Vyranoth will either become an ally or will know to get the hell out of dodge and become a recurring sympathetic baddy—I'm personally inclined to the latter, honestly. "Female villain always gets redeemed" is a rather tired trope, anyway.

Council fight could still let them seem powerful if we have help. We shouldn't be fighting these solo in the first place, they are the Aspect's jobs. If we fight them in the Dream, Merithra/Ysera could help. We traded Malf for her, she better do something.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Also, this is deviating quite heavily from the topic at hand, and I'm certainly aware that everybody's beyond sick and tired of the cosmic thread already, but I do feel like this is something I want to bring up—I've been considering the different interpretations I've seen of the Void, and I've been entertaining an alternative theory as to its nature partially based on @Golden Yak's observations on the topic. Given the several natures we've seen ascribed to the Void, I think his interpretation that the Void is more a cosmic representation of potential than nothingness is sensible—the Curse of Flesh imparted free will on the Titans' creations, a quality which inherently exponentially increases the number of possibilities per instance of itself, and we've all had the "LE ENDLESS POSUHBILITIES!!!!!one!!1" shoved down our throats so much we want to vomit purple, star-specked ichor into the faces of the writers. I think this might actually tie into other elements of the Void, however—namely, their desire to supplant the Titans. I've considered that the Void Lords may actually be almost cosmic embodiments of opportunity costs, a metaphysical "shadow" of everything that exists representing everything that could exist in its place. That's the idea I hinted in that poem I posted earlier, and the An'she - An'shuul thing has me feeling more confident about it. Another thing that adds to this is that the Void drives people insane—if my interpretation is correct, of course it would drive you insane. Logic, and therefore sanity, is usually fairly formulaic, and dependent upon soundness, which means that something needs to check out within itself and be true. If infinite, contradictory assertions of the status of the existence of things, or the absorption of non-things that represent the opportunity cost of everything that came into existence, were to be registered by a human mind, it would certainly exist outside the traditional confines of what is usually considered to be sound logic. Rather than being simply driven insane by the vastness or horror of the Void, it could simply be the un-logic of the Void supplanting the solid "is" and "isn't" logic of the reality your brain is meant to observe and process—it'd be like a normal computer processing a qubit in superposition, something built on ones and zeroes having to learn how to process both at the same time.

This sort of reconstructs the role of the Light, too—instead of just representing some other kind of small-o order than the Titans do, which is what has generally been taken from their limiting of possibilities and their theme of stagnancy in excess, perhaps the Light represents the world of the verifiable "Is" and "Isn't"? That manifesting in the Light exerting dogma by strictly defining everything that is and isn't, and making efforts to spread itself by further setting such boundaries. The conflict between the Light and Void, then, is the conflict between the strictly-defined and the undefined and things which could have been that never came to be due to their potential existence being supplanted by the thing that came to exist instead of them when what is and isn't became defined. The closest comparison, I suppose, is that the Void is like quantum uncertainty and the Light is wave function collapse or measurement.

The objective of the Void Lords, I think, could be to supplant the Titans on a conceptual level—the "Void Titan" being the Titan's analogous Void Lord manifesting in lieu of it after it has been so thoroughly rendered Void on a metaphysical level that it swaps places, and it becomes the "what could've been" while the Void Lord takes its place as something that is, or something that is in a strange, undefined position of simultaneous existence and potential existence. This is the "Hour of Twilight"—because it occupies a middle-ground between the Void (undefined, possibility) and the Light (defined, what verifiably is after being measured) and redefines the idea of existence outside of the black-and-white boundaries that previously existed. In destroying boundaries and creating a state that previously couldn't be, it also de-facto exerts the absolute authority of the Void, or something the Void would have mutated itself into, over all of reality.

The Void is specifically targeting Azeroth because I think she, as a Titan and being of Order, represents Order in the capacity of conquest—not just the conquest of Order, but rather Order as conquest. Although Order tends to exert itself, I think Azeroth's role as a representative of Order is to subjugate other forces and take elements of them into herself. This is why the Titans considered her so special—she was representative of the ultimate victory of Order over everything else without disrupting it and creating chaos, or perhaps worse, creating entropy, along the way. So, if her Opportunity Cost were to manifest in her place, it would also serve as an engine of conquest, but some form of conquest both of and in the capacity of the Void (i.e. the aforementioned state that is the Hour of Twilight). In this connection, the reason she was allegedly going to "defeat" the Void Lords is because of how key she was to their plans to manifest—if she hatched, this verification of her existence would preempt her being hijacked by things that could exist instead of her, thereby invalidating the Void Lords and preventing them from bringing about the Hour of Twilight or otherwise leaving their limbo into/conquering the realm of Is/Isn't.

Is this a theory I ought to pursue? I want to write a longer-form elaboration on this theory in the lore forum when it's no longer 4am if it is.

[Lahis]

Notice that on roadmap for 10.2 we have listed OPEN world challenges, not SOLO challenges. Which is interesting, cause I don't think open world challenge is really possible, since you can always throw more people into it.

Inb4 it is just jumping puzzles.

[Rageonit]

Notice that on roadmap for 10.2 we have listed OPEN world challenges, not SOLO challenges. Which is interesting, cause I don't think open world challenge is really possible, since you can always throw more people into it.

Not sure if it was a thing in Classic, but I fondly remember the Hunter challenges for Rhok'delar in vanilla WoW - with the biggest challenge being someone not despawning the mob by tagging it xD Good times. Doesn't have a place in retail WoW though, players would go mental.

[Darkarath]

Very surprised that no one has mentioned yet that Evokers are supposedly getting a new spec in 10.1, or at least there are a bunch of quest indicating that. I think that 10.1 will surprise us yet with many new stuff.

[Nymrohd]

*SNIP

Here is the thing. With First Ones added in the mix, I think we should not consider the different forces as what they are but more as what they are meant to do. If Light is meant to define, maybe the Void is just the cosmic junkyard of ideas. Life and Death move mortal agents into reality to set things in motion. Order is not stagnancy as I'd expect; it seems to mostly be about complexity; it takes basic building blocks like the elements or like simpler life forms and uses them to create complex structures and civilizations; fel works to dissolve those. So Order uses what Life throws in Reality to push the experiment to keep going.

If Order is not the force that tries to keep things still and constrained? Must be Light. Light could be the engine left by the First Ones to approve or abort what develops in Reality. In such a paradigm, Light needs a place to dump abortions and that's what Void would be; the junkyard of reality. It is not nothingness, it is WRONGNESS.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Ironforge and Forsaken tabards are getting revamped versions, including a NEW logo option for Forsaken with a skull. I hope this isn't just trading post.

OK, the lacklustre zone aside, I am pretty hyped about all the things that have been datamined.

While I'm 110% certain a lot of it is for the next few patches, for 11.0, or even things they'll leave to collect dust for a few years before suddenly pulling them out of a sock "when it makes sense" (see the Trading Post stuff from Exile's Reach), it's still real stuff and it does still hint about the future.

Not only a likely 10.2 Emerald Dream zone, but also a ton of stuff for old races and possibly even old zones. For example, they made a new Ironforge Dwarf tabard, and one of those dwarven tanks. Why?

I could see some of that stuff belonging in an updated Mage Tower perhaps, especially the weapons which look inspired by the Legion artifact weapons.

But some of it just reeks future content, either 10.2, 10.3 or 11.0.

The question is just how it connects together.

Will the entire world be revamped?

Can you guys share a link towards the new IF + Forsaken tabards please?

[Rageonit]

Very surprised that no one has mentioned yet that Evokers are supposedly getting a new spec in 10.1, or at least there are a bunch of quest indicating that. I think that 10.1 will surprise us yet with many new stuff.

I find it rather weird that they would hide that fact by not including it on the road map, cause it sure as hell would make some players giddy with excitement. So I'm not getting my hopes up. (The bits about it being a new support "role" sound even more unlikely, but who knows.)

[Nymrohd]

Very surprised that no one has mentioned yet that Evokers are supposedly getting a new spec in 10.1, or at least there are a bunch of quest indicating that. I think that 10.1 will surprise us yet with many new stuff.

Probably because the speculation by wowhead doesn't have much depth (and their idea is idiotic, you are not going to change the holy trinity in a game after 20 years).

[Darkarath]

Probably because the speculation by wowhead doesn't have much depth (and their idea is idiotic, you are not going to change the holy trinity in a game after 20 years).

My exact thoughts. Yet if they were to have the balls to make a change like that... They would have my full support (hehehe).