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

[Wangming]

I wish there was a separate thread for people to talk about classic+ so I wouldn't have to keep skipping through all of it.

Or you could actually suggest a topic for us to discuss.

[Hitei]

We have some additional hints;

Both the S.A.F.E Pilot and Survey Bot battle pets are old and were added in 9.2.0 PTR (but key was made around/between 9.1/9.1.5 PTR), the same patch as the BlizzCon 2023 mount that came out yesterday, so they are unlikely to have to do anything with future content, at least not in a manner that could have been intended at the time.

The Fyrn battle pet and "unknown mount A" (no achievement leaked for that one) share several assets that are also shared by other models with a "windy" theme (air/storm elementals, primalist wind totems, some wind spells), so that is indicative for a theme as well as a relation between the two even though they are encrypted under separate keys.

The Storm Rider achievements (and the likely 6 dragon races for it), Squally and Algarian Stormrider share an encryption key that also has a character boost, multiple in-game store assets and other things usual for what would be an encrypted package to release when expansion pre-orders come out.

Just gonna double down on my earlier take that Fyrn and the potentially elemental mount are probably Cata Classic deluxe edition rewards, with Squally being a baby version of whatever the Stormrider is.

[ro9ue]

Just gonna double down on my earlier take that Fyrn and the potentially elemental mount are probably Cata Classic deluxe edition rewards, with Squally being a baby version of whatever the Stormrider is.

I think this is a good call. Damn we have a lot that muddies the waters this year don't we?

AI stuff.

We're expecting a storm/elemental theme, but Blizzard uses storm related terms in their internal stuff "Sons of the Storm" maybe "Tempest".

Then we have Classic era coming up on Cataclysm... which heavily relates to dragons and storms, the current retail theme.


Seems like the Khaz'Algar, Stormrider and Gryphons, thus Dwarves are the only real thing we have to go on at the moment.

[Hitei]

I think this is a good call. Damn we have a lot that muddies the waters this year don't we?

AI stuff.

We're expecting a storm/elemental theme, but Blizzard uses storm related terms in their internal stuff "Sons of the Storm" maybe "Tempest".

Then we have Classic era coming up on Cataclysm... which heavily relates to dragons and storms, the current retail theme.

That's before we even get into all the additional complications this time around. In previous expansions we didn't have to deal with the Trading Post introducing all sorts of mounts, pets and transmog that often have strong themes but are wholly unrelated to ongoing content, and so many store promotions also introducing unrelated stuff.

[Raetary]

Why neither and not both? We can still get added customisation to the old races and add in much requested new races like Ogre, Jinyu etc. Best of both worlds. I’ll never understand why people wouldn’t want more playable races. Variety is the spice of life.

Broken and Mok’nathal can be a toggle for Draenei and Orcs.

Because Blizzards designers don't have the free reign to shower us with customization whenever they want to.

They struggle to even represent and maintain the races we already have, adding a bunch of new playable models on top of that just adds to their already overly ambitious workload.

There is a reason why most ARs started out with lackluster options and why they had to postpone AR updates until after the core races got their stuff in SL. (And even then you got core races that drowned in new shit while others got just handful of new options)

So, instead of adding another 6 playable races with like 3 skin options and 4 hair styles, i'd rather they just put all the budget and time they do get into expanding what we already have.

[Marlamin]

it was datamined a while ago that the regular version would have 500, 750 for the heroic, and 1k for the epic

Forgot about those tracking achievements, those aren't encrypted so I didn't really find references to them anywhere, woops.

What do we think about this Tempest thing? Legit?

Just an internal thing (several, really, including what the game gets patch data from on internal clients which is what the Reddit post found an SSL certificate for), not a name for an expansion although now that it's making the rounds it'd be funny if they did.

Just gonna double down on my earlier take that Fyrn and the potentially elemental mount are probably Cata Classic deluxe edition rewards, with Squally being a baby version of whatever the Stormrider is.

Yeah, this feels like one of the potentially likely options provided Cata Classic is real.

[milkmustache]

I think this is a good call. Damn we have a lot that muddies the waters this year don't we?

AI stuff.

We're expecting a storm/elemental theme, but Blizzard uses storm related terms in their internal stuff "Sons of the Storm" maybe "Tempest".

Then we have Classic era coming up on Cataclysm... which heavily relates to dragons and storms, the current retail theme.


Seems like the Khaz'Algar, Stormrider and Gryphons, thus Dwarves are the only real thing we have to go on at the moment.

AI is definitely making it a bit hazy, but I'd say this is probably one of the first real newish lore expansions we're seeing. Sure, Shadowlands and Dragonflight had mostly new lore, but we had some hints of heading that way.

The consensus options here are a revamp (feeling unfortunately unlikely) or going to the backside of Azeroth in some form (feeling a bit more likely).

We're kinda firing from the hip on guessing here, which is both really fun for the future but also a bit nervewracking.

[Dismayxz]

What would be you guys' somewhat realistic predictions for the Warcraft franchise as a whole at BlizzCon?

For me, it would have to be:

• World of Warcraft: 11.0 is announced. An expansion taking us to the lost kingdom of Khaz Algar, bordering the "other side of Azeroth" west of Kalimdor, beyond the storms. The main antagonist is Xal'atath, the 5th Old God, with Queen Azshara as her collaborator. Uldaz is a titan facility over there, where Innaria once ruled. We'll get lots of teasers about even more continents further to the west in this expansion. It's both the end of something old, and the start of something new. This is not necessarily where the Nightsquall sailed, or where the green dragon Erinethria flew, but it's nearby.
• HD update. Both retail and Classic get HD models for Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. (Optional toggle in Classic.) They'll also tease future updates to the two continents, where the landmasses and questlines will change in a major way to reflect the passage of time. We'll see some of this already in 2024, but the rest will happen over the course of a couple of years. For example, a patch might contain the "Liberation of Gilneas" scenario which is set in a revamped Gilneas.
• "Classic +" (with a different name). The ultimate "what if" scenario. Wake up 20-30 years ago in an Azeroth ravaged by war between the Horde and Alliance, but before the timeline of regular WoW. All the locations and characters you know and love, now in glorious HD. New stories waiting to be told on Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
• Netflix Series for 2024. We'll see a teaser and get the general outline of what the show is about.
• Hearthstone expansion and major changes. Not much to add.
• Rumble DLCs. Probably lots of MTX etc.

Not wishful thinking, rather think this wouldn't happen since it is a little wild, but: Avaloren/Khaz Algar is a new Continent and the expansion will release sooner than we think, but also go longer than we think. And the Continent will slowly unveil patch by patch beyond the usual leveling Zones, until we have completely unveiled the whole Continent. Sort of like Dragonflight leveling Content and size at the start of the Expansion, but then you can sort of see past the Borders of some available zone/zones and see that there is more to explore and the next major Patch brings in one or two new Zones with Main Quest/Side Quest density akin to a leveling Zone, so you can go there instead of some of the initial leveling Zones when leveling an Alt or simply have a slew of general leveling Quest Content to do at Max Level, mostly optional next to whatever the Patch's Campaign is at the time in said new Zone(s). If you do the Campaign you get the "need to know" stuff, but if you bother doing the Zone's Questing you get more lore and exposition on the Zone. And then you can also see past that border for the next one(s). Slowly the Storm peels away and at the end of the Expansion we have a functional new Continent, fully explored with a good variety of leveling options and Endgame Story Zones.

[Santandame]

Lol. I can have a problem with more than one thing, you know.



Except it's not? It's what an AI thinks it will look like. By that logic, you could post an AI-generated image of almost anything and it would still be valid for the discussion. Plus I never said anyone was trying to deceive anybody, don't put words in my mouth. I simply think there's a place for this sort of stuff and this thread isn't it, imo.

How is it not promoting discussion? It’s one person posting an image of something they’ve seen and believing it’s evocative of what they believe the new zone could look like. Others then look at it and share their opinion. It’s a discussion. And his post promoted discussion as several of us liked how it looked and discussed how we would like to see elements of it ourselves, which then led to a different thread of discussion revolving around future dungeons. This is such an odd complaint and I’m not going to get into it any further than this point.

[flan1337]

What would be you guys' somewhat realistic predictions for the Warcraft franchise as a whole at BlizzCon?

For me, it would have to be:

• World of Warcraft: 11.0 is announced. An expansion taking us to the lost kingdom of Khaz Algar, bordering the "other side of Azeroth" west of Kalimdor, beyond the storms. The main antagonist is Xal'atath, the 5th Old God, with Queen Azshara as her collaborator. Uldaz is a titan facility over there, where Innaria once ruled. We'll get lots of teasers about even more continents further to the west in this expansion. It's both the end of something old, and the start of something new. This is not necessarily where the Nightsquall sailed, or where the green dragon Erinethria flew, but it's nearby.
• HD update. Both retail and Classic get HD models for Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. (Optional toggle in Classic.) They'll also tease future updates to the two continents, where the landmasses and questlines will change in a major way to reflect the passage of time. We'll see some of this already in 2024, but the rest will happen over the course of a couple of years. For example, a patch might contain the "Liberation of Gilneas" scenario which is set in a revamped Gilneas.
• "Classic +" (with a different name). The ultimate "what if" scenario. Wake up 20-30 years ago in an Azeroth ravaged by war between the Horde and Alliance, but before the timeline of regular WoW. All the locations and characters you know and love, now in glorious HD. New stories waiting to be told on Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
• Netflix Series for 2024. We'll see a teaser and get the general outline of what the show is about.
• Hearthstone expansion and major changes. Not much to add.
• Rumble DLCs. Probably lots of MTX etc.

I think we might not see a world revamp but we might see a HD texture upgrade. It seems like there has been some items that been upgraded using AI-upscaling + touch ups which could benefit some of WoWs much older gear. I would love to see more systems added to make older content useful - timewalking is a huge miss opportunity to really leveraging or building tech to bring people to older content they have never played. Hell - I have yet to ever play MoP, WoD content.

Classic + is an interesting issue. If it comes out that would mean WoW will have basically 5 different versions? Retail, Cata(?), Classic, Classic Hardcore, Classic +. There needs to be a more realistic way with managing this. Unless classic becomes classic + with some fresh locked servers and dead servers merged.

Edit: Off topic - the fact classic do not get any blizzcon rewards is such a missed opportunity. Would be fun to give people an updated version of Blizzcon 08/09 pet.

[Kiria]

Towelliees in trouble, so confirmed next expansion will most likely be trash.

[ro9ue]

Having seen how EverQuest handled their "Classic" servers, people may be expecting a little too much from Classic+. Classic+ will probably be a bunch of new servers with different modified rulesets. Classic Hardcore is imo pretty much Classic+. Other examples could be more randomized and plentiful loot drops, rapid content release, permanent 60 level cap and all new content is released for level 60 (this might be a way for them to try an ESO style WoW horizontal progression server).

[milkmustache]

Towelliees in trouble, so confi4rmed next expansion will most likely be trash.

I think the only thing I like about the possibility of Towelliee's claims is that it seems to be required to be located in Kalimdor/Silithus, even if underground partially. Which of course fuels my hopes for an old world revamp. I don't too put much stock in it, though.

[Kiria]

I think the only thing I like about the possibility of Towelliee's claims is that it seems to be required to be located in Kalimdor/Silithus, even if underground partially. Which of course fuels my hopes for an old world revamp. I don't too put much stock in it, though.

My hopes of a revamp have been absolutely trashed so far, so now I am expecting an underground expansion which means I will be skipping WoW til 12.0.

[Marlamin]

Towelliees in trouble, so confirmed next expansion will most likely be trash.

Yeah that's definitely a thing that happened and he got in trouble for uhuh yep sure

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Towelliee will be the new boss in the stockades in stormwind.

They will call him "the leaker".

[Kiria]

Yeah that's definitely a thing that happened and he got in trouble for uhuh yep sure

Tbh all iI keep seeing is him referring to caves and Underground, what else am i supposed to think?

[Dracullus]

Just gonna double down on my earlier take that Fyrn and the potentially elemental mount are probably Cata Classic deluxe edition rewards, with Squally being a baby version of whatever the Stormrider is.

This of course could change this time, but both TBC and Wrath deluxe edition were not pre-orders available months before launch, but coming around or even same day as pre-patch.

Yeah that's definitely a thing that happened and he got in trouble for uhuh yep sure

Whaaaat, you don't trust Bellurar, beacon of virtue in WoW community?

[huth]

Towelliee will be the new boss in the stockades in stormwind.

The will call him "the leaker".

And he will be a Tinkler?

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

What if Towelliees' leaks were an inside job to steer away from the actual truth?

The only cope left for World Revamp lovers.