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

[Hitei]

Isn't Legion one of the most beloved expansions? I see why that could be seen as an issue, but I don't think most players see it is a big negative.

Legion is remembered fondly for good initial content releases, strong raid tiers, Suramar, and interesting story beats. It also saw tons of complaining at the time for how dumb the idea that everyone is an artifact weilding commander of their entire class's collective efforts. This isn't an issue of overall quality of expansions, it's a debate about the level of narrative focus given to the player character, spanning from being a no name unimportant soldier doing small tasks to being the chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm. Legion is on the far bad end of expansions for this aspect.

[Ersula]

Isn't Legion one of the most beloved expansions? I see why that could be seen as an issue, but I don't think most players see it is a big negative.

Yes, but that one stands out because that was the one period where they managed to balance it well: You were constantly with other adventurers who were doing stuff as epic as you were. The characters didn't single you out as being a messiah figure or the single hope for the world, but also you got to be the owner of a super unique legendary lore weapon.

[Wangming]

Interesting take for a post offering absolutely no fucking point.



It means that MMOs by design involve the fundamental obstacle that many players are going to do any given activity, which makes writing a storyline as if you are the only person doing a thing and your specific choices are the ones that matter a great way to completely break immersion and have an entire experience feel silly. Much like Legion asking every paladin to pretend they are the Highlord and the person weilding Ashbringer. Only SWTOR does this all over the place with storybeats everywhere, resulting in a whole lot of just goofy.

Except SWTOR specifically asks you to assemble a strike force whenever you do dungeons. Granted this falls appart when you reach KOTFE and even Smugglers and Agents are asked to sit on the damned throne.
But having at least the leveling experience tailored to your class in a story where you and what you want actually matters is much better than being forced to do something that your character would have absolutely fuck all reason to care about.

[Nightshade711]

Thank you for your insight!

I see, the airlock system could be used for other situations like the open sea as @Nymrohd said, i could see it used for a Beyond the Storm like expansion.

I wonder if they could use “storm riding” to get to the new continent (and/or new zones added in patches) using this system.

Someone mentioned it could be like the Kessel run which I could see them using this system for.
Now how fun that’d actually be in practice is yet to be seen.

[Leowyld]

Legion is remembered fondly for good initial content releases, strong raid tiers, Suramar, and interesting story beats. It also saw tons of complaining at the time for how dumb the idea that everyone is an artifact weilding commander of their entire class's collective efforts. This isn't an issue of overall quality of expansions, it's a debate about the level of narrative focus given to the player character, spanning from being a no name unimportant soldier doing small tasks to being the chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm. Legion is on the far bad end of expansions for this aspect.

Ah, so people hated the Class Order Halls, then? I liked it, myself. So, I didn't know.

[Yunravel]

Legion is remembered fondly for good initial content releases, strong raid tiers, Suramar, and interesting story beats. It also saw tons of complaining at the time for how dumb the idea that everyone is an artifact weilding commander of their entire class's collective efforts. This isn't an issue of overall quality of expansions, it's a debate about the level of narrative focus given to the player character, spanning from being a no name unimportant soldier doing small tasks to being the chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm. Legion is on the far bad end of expansions for this aspect.

I'd rather be the "chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm", leader of a class convenant, than an npc next to dev self insert characters, standing still in cutscenes like it was the case during BfA/SL/Dragonflights

but whatever

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Majority of people i've interacted across years with have been positive about class order halls from legion, it was cool to finally being kinda rewarded for the class you're playing and having that class specific content and history instead of just going who the fuck knows where and just being another nameless lackey.

I'd rather be the "chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm", leader of a class convenant, than an npc next to dev self insert characters, standing still in cutscenes like it was the case during BfA/SL/Dragonflights

but whatever

Same.


Like someone mentioned, whenever i see that someone just wants to be "an nameless adventurer" at this point in history of retail wow.. Is pretty "cringe".

[Marlamin]

Just a thought reading your post: they could use this tie Silvermoon and the surrounding zones to EK, removing the loading screen. Couldn't they? Same with Azuremyst. Imagine if this had been done in SL with the transition between zones

Sort of, it still wouldn't solve the reason why these zones don't have flying to begin with -- they weren't designed as such, so it'll need an art/design/QA pass for that.

[Nightshade711]

Legion is remembered fondly for good initial content releases, strong raid tiers, Suramar, and interesting story beats. It also saw tons of complaining at the time for how dumb the idea that everyone is an artifact weilding commander of their entire class's collective efforts. This isn't an issue of overall quality of expansions, it's a debate about the level of narrative focus given to the player character, spanning from being a no name unimportant soldier doing small tasks to being the chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm. Legion is on the far bad end of expansions for this aspect.

I liked the class halls & artifact system tbh. I love class specific content anyways, and I think most of the Order Hall campaigns were great. (Though there were some that weren’t the best)

Legion was one of the last expansions with the nice “hero moments” that Warcraft used to do well.
I still fondly remember most of Legion’s cinematics, but I can’t say the same about BfA/SL/DF.

[Wangming]

Legion is remembered fondly for good initial content releases, strong raid tiers, Suramar, and interesting story beats. It also saw tons of complaining at the time for how dumb the idea that everyone is an artifact weilding commander of their entire class's collective efforts. This isn't an issue of overall quality of expansions, it's a debate about the level of narrative focus given to the player character, spanning from being a no name unimportant soldier doing small tasks to being the chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm. Legion is on the far bad end of expansions for this aspect.

To be fair in the Pre-Chromie time Era it made sense, cause you have been doing stuff since the opening of the Dark Portal so by the time you reach Legion you are pretty much a demigod. But now if you Chromie time to legion for leveling it's just dumb. Although frankly so is every other expansion.
A while back. I went on a run with a Demon Hunter on PTR. After the starting experience I did BfA untill mid Nazjatar when the Shadowlands opened up so I hopped in there.
There wasn't a single point where I could justify my character's decisions.

[milkmustache]

I'd rather be the "chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm", leader of a class convenant, than an npc next to dev self insert characters, standing still in cutscenes like it was the case during BfA/SL/Dragonflights

but whatever

There's definitely a healthy medium between the two. I think the devs lean far too much into building big personality NPC characters which feel almost soapy, which could be a huge part of the issue. I don't think we necessarily need the recurring cast of characters to guide us through every questline or MSQ, but it's cool to see them pop up occasionally.

Our character can still be a huge hero without having to be a side character to side character NPCs in each expansion.

[Hitei]

Except SWTOR specifically asks you to assemble a strike force whenever you do dungeons. Granted this falls appart when you reach KOTFE and even Smugglers and Agents are asked to sit on the damned throne.
But having at least the leveling experience tailored to your class in a story where you and what you want actually matters is much better than being forced to do something that your character would have absolutely fuck all reason to care about.

I strongly disagree. I would rather be tangentially forced into doing something I don't necessarily want to do (a thing that happens to some degree in every story based choice-offering video game in existence anyway) than have canon be some nebulous approximation that begs me to pretend that I'm playing a different game genre and not surrounded by people who are treated as also being the exact literal figure I am supposed to be.

At least the first one maintains an immersive storyline even if I wish it had gone a different way. The second one is just a fundamentally nonsensical world that comes across as game-y and artificial.

[Xilurm]

Would you rather just tag along while others do the important stuff for you?

For WoW, yeah. Have less "main characters" too while we're at it. Less of Thrall and Jaina and Khadgar etc. I'd like the world to be the main character. Having NPC's being so prominent throughout the whole thing makes the world feel smaller.

[Nightshade711]

I'd rather be the "chosen prophesized savior of a cosmic realm", leader of a class convenant, than an npc next to dev self insert characters, standing still in cutscenes like it was the case during BfA/SL/Dragonflights

but whatever

The issue with this is that being all of that instantly means nothing when you’re then going right back to “kill x kobolds, collect x items”

I don’t think we’ve ever seen Thrall or Malfurion do such menial tasks.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Our character can still be a huge hero without having to be a side character to side character NPCs in each expansion.

You know i actually wonder now - The vyranoth questline with odyn in 10.2, wil me being a battlelord warrior be in any way aknowledged by NPC's and will they react to my character..

I remember someone posting here that Vyranoth pretty much "persuade" Eiyr, but do we have any different option there as warriors that did legion class hall questline or it's just "follow npc" kinda only stuff.

[Nymrohd]

As always there are very small things that show up in the client itself that either aren't used yet, are for something internal or are for another branch like 1.15.x so it's hard to tell if any of that will end up being for 11.0 or not, but I haven't seen anything that implies a larger world or anything like that.

Also some things could just have not worked out as they wished. I doubt they always scrub everything off.

[milkmustache]

You know i actually wonder now - The vyranoth questline with odyn in 10.2, will me being a battlelord warrior will be in any way aknowledged by NPC's and will they react to my character..
I remember someone posting here that Vyranoth pretty much "persuade" Eiyr, but do we have any different option there as warriors that did legion class hall questline, hmm.

I think the most you'll get is a dialogue option-- which is cool and more than they've done in past expansions-- but this kind of debacle shouldn't come up regarding a main storyline, we shouldn't have to wonder if it'll get acknowledged or not. If the player characters ever have history with said NPC, then it should be immediately considered in how the building of that quest works, or else it sort of just kills the immersion built through other questlines.

[Yunravel]

There's definitely a healthy medium between the two. I think the devs lean far too much into building big personality NPC characters which feel almost soapy, which could be a huge part of the issue. I don't think we necessarily need the recurring cast of characters to guide us through every questline or MSQ, but it's cool to see them pop up occasionally.

Our character can still be a huge hero without having to be a side character to side character NPCs in each expansion.

I mean, yeah thats the point, the healthy medium between the two sounds like the best of both worlds.

Or, in a more lazy way, we could just go back to vanilla type of story telling because I'd rather be non-existant and follow the story through books and patch cutscenes than being the side character of a side character NPCs like you said so well.

[MCMLXXXII]

Have what?

Non pre- rendered cinematic with the player character.

[Wangming]

I strongly disagree. I would rather be tangentially forced into doing something I don't necessarily want to do (a thing that happens to some degree in every story based choice-offering video game in existence anyway) than have canon be some nebulous approximation that begs me to pretend that I'm playing a different game genre and not surrounded by people who are treated as also being the exact literal figure I am supposed to be.

At least the first one maintains an immersive storyline even if I wish it had gone a different way. The second one is just a fundamentally nonsensical world that comes across as game-y and artificial.

That is completely valid as a personal preference, just don't pretend it is anything more than that. Okay?

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The issue with this is that being all of that instantly means nothing when you’re then going right back to “kill x kobolds, collect x items”

I don’t think we’ve ever seen Thrall or Malfurion do such menial tasks.

Which is great in FFXIV when you go somewhere with the Scions and they actually go to gather firewood with you.