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

[Jodmos]

I listened to it earlier, it wasnt bad i do like some of Tali's views as hes a huge lore nerd and is generally quite good with his predictions.

I do think he does the lore and speculation well because he goes through stuff I'd no idea existed.

[Murlocos]

Interesting they featured Starcraft several times in that trailer. I don't want to read too much into it but maybe there's a sliver of hope we could get something new in the Starcraft universe down the road....?

I'm not really one for reading a lot into advertising snippets as secret teasers, but it is odd how front and center Starcraft has been in the Blizzard IP reels since they announced the buyout. It's only one tier above HotS in terms of focus right now (SC2 still gets balance patches, I believe HotS is purely just keeping the servers running?)

I know Phil Spencer mentioned wanting to bring it back, but he mentions how cool it would be to bring back every single IP they own. I think he forgot they've been licensing the Mechwarrior IP to Piranha Games for over a decade now and was wistfully musing about bringing it back the other week.

[Harbour]

I just watched arclight cinematics at least those that i found and it didn't have a scene like that.

I guess it has to be from some HS expansion.

First time seeing it as well. My bet are HS, HotS or Warcraft Rumble. The style of murlocs, Grommas and animation gives off those vibes. Maybe HotS revival with Grommash new hero?

[Jodmos]

From BfA.

Never saw this before. Kind of funny that there's no gnome in it.

[Kiria]

Never saw this before. Kind of funny that there's no gnome in it.

Oh the gnome got punted off

To be honest Gnomes ruin anything so im glad they're under represented.

[Jodmos]

I just watched arclight cinematics at least those that i found and it didn't have a scene like that.

I guess it has to be from some HS expansion.

Didn't look like HS style although I've not paid attention to any of that stuff for years.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

First time seeing it as well. My bet are HS, HotS or Warcraft Rumble. The style of murlocs, Grommas and animation gives off those vibes. Maybe HotS revival with Grommash new hero?

Honestly it was one of the biggest "what the hell?" when it comes to not having Grommash as playable hero in Hots.

I will look through some HS trailers, but so far can't find the exact scene.

[Woggmer]

- Night Elves: The NE heritage storyline wasn’t the best indication of what could come.

We went through a whole ARC spanning several expansions, not even Orcs had this much development and story. Once the elves settle in, Blizz needs to stop focusing on the Night Elves for a while because it's becoming exhausting trying to both process and keep this story going. As Tyrande said it herself, "I am so tired, Malfurion."

Less is more as some say.

- Dwarves - I think it’s time to age up Dagran in game and explore his character. There’s a lot of diverse Dwarf characters that could and should get development such as Moira, Falstad, Muradin, Kurdran. I don’t know why we’re stuck with Dwarf characters like Toddy instead. Also some more focus on Dark Irons that isn’t just Thaelin.

I've said this premise a few times already and it needs to be hammered in.
Dagran is probably the most crucial part to Dwarf lore right now. The whole existence of the Council of Three Hammers is built solely because Moira can raise him and be a better leader so that he'll take the throne. If something happens to him like he got kidnapped by a radical group of Dark Irons that don't like the direction Moira is taking the kingdom (LIKE THE FUCKING CULT OF RAGNAROS) then not only would the Council fall apart but it could push the dwarves back into a second civil war. (I'd like to call The War of the Ashen Hammer)

It's all set, Blizz just needs to do it.

- Draenei: Probably the best position out of all the Alliance races, development wise. Velen is a decent character, and we got plenty development of Draenei characters in WoD and Legion. We’ll hopefully get some more with a spotlight on how Draenei society struggles to adapt with Manari, LF and Broken.

The problem with the Draenei is that they only ever get involved with the plot if it involves the Legion or the Orcs. We rarely see them interact with other things going on in the world aside from that starting zone areas for them... and that one case in the Swamp of Sorrows where they were trying to fix the Lost Ones. The biggest possible plot line I could see is maybe if someone stole and scattered the Ata'mal Crystal shards across Azeroth and we have to go on a giant search for each piece. Those things are basically the Infinity Stones/Lantern Corp rings of WoW.

- Worgen: I imagine we’ll see more with the hopeful Gilneas reclamation event. However outside of Genn who is probably the best written character on the Alliance side, they don’t get much representation. Hopefully the Bloodfang pack are reintroduced at some point.

What concerns me the most is that the Bloodfang pack was suppose to be holding territory in Fenris Isle... but then the Scarlet Crusade took it as a field base to launch against Lordaeron. And Genn is perhaps probably the only rational leader in the Alliance, even warned her daughter that being a Worgen isn't all that cracked up to be (though it did lead to the worst heritage armor questline in the whole game.) Though it does raise the question of how Genn will view the Forsaken now that Sylvanas is out of the picture.

If anything, it'd be interesting to see Gilneans look back at the roots of Classic human culture and see if they have connections to the Thornspeakers like the Kul'tirans (who were an offshoot of Gilneans who sailed across the sea and founded Kul'tiras).

[micwini]

Never saw this before. Kind of funny that there's no gnome in it.

Lol mate, there IS a gnome in this image. I'm not sure how you missed it.
The gnome is behind the logo.

[Nibelheimy]

Is this one from Hearthstone? havent' seen it before.

I don't recall ever seeing it previously and can't find it now. That's unusual.

[Nightshade711]

I think Azshara is wasted as a typical villain. She could fill the role of a character that is clearly a villain but is willing to work with us as and when she needs to.

I’d love to have her present for several expansions where we begrudgingly work with each other before the inevitable betrayal. I don’t think that’s a villain that’s been explored yet in WoW?

Tbh I honestly think that’ll be a thing. It would be neat and could be a way to introduce playable Naga.

Remember that Forsaken when they were originally introduced were a similar way, their intro literally said they were really only using The Horde to meet their goals.

And DKs in a sense were similar in that they started out as 100% the villains but later rejoined the factions becoming more anti-heroes.

[Kereberus]

[Woggmer]

Is this one from Hearthstone? havent' seen it before.

It can't be from Hearthstone because they use 2D illustrations for their trailers and not fully 3D rendered models.

Warcraft Rumble (aka Arclight Rumble) uses 3D but not in this level of detail, the ones used in Warcraft Rumble look more like toys and action figures.

And this isn't extremely detailed enough to be a WoW Cinematic, especially since Grommash is dead at this point.

So either one of few things.
A. This is just something they made for a bit fun to the trailer and has no hidden meaning behind it.
B. This could've been a scrapped bit of animation for Grommash in HotS.
or C. Something in relation to WC3...

(My money is on A.)

[Gloriandus]

Looks like Ironforge maybe in the background? It's a bit "cartoony" for a proper WoW CGI cinematic. Surely Rumble or somesuch, maybe Warcraft 4?

[Enrif]

maybe a new warcraft game?

[Futhark]

Ogrila + Chicken fingers = 20 letters = 20th wow anniversary = ogres playable race at the end of 2024.

It is my quest to keep posting this until it happens:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-Ogres-in-mind

[ImTheMizAwesome]

B. This could've been a scrapped bit of animation for Grommash in HotS.

I just watched some hots cinematics and it looks similar in graphics style, maybe it's some scrapped cinematic like you said or something new.

this is Varian hots cinematic for reference and his model.

It is my quest to keep posting this until it happens:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-Ogres-in-mind

I hope this year is the year for at least one of them, hope blizzard won't make me sad that it didn't happen again by adding some totally new race.. Ogres or mok'nathal i love both. #believe

[Murlocos]

Yeah it looks the closest to HotS. Hearthstone and Rumble's 3D CGI cinematics use a much more stylized and soft art style, and it lacks the detail of mainline Warcraft cinematics.

I'm not going to read a lot into it, but super weird if they had possibly had the whole SFX and visual work done for trailers made for content that never saw the light of day. From what I can remember, HotS support was already signaled to be slowing down by the end of 2018, and up through the end of 2020 they were wrapping up the rest of the content they had in the pipeline. It'd be strange if they had whole trailers finished and presentable for content they knew wouldn't be releasing months or years in advance.

Of course there's always the possibility some new Warcraft project just got accidentally shown off. Also, strange that Grom's axe seems to have some kind of Fel effect.

[Paula Deen]

And has absolutely nothing to do with my question. What good would a preorder Boat skin be?

We are well past proving that image fake, but even so, I don't think it was a boat skin...I think it was a transmog set. Boat skins in WoW would be out of pocket as hell.

I hope this year is the year for at least one of them, hope blizzard won't make me sad that it didn't happen again by adding some totally new race.. Ogres or mok'nathal i love both. #believe

Prepare for disappointment and sadness then lmao.

[Ferlion]

We went through a whole ARC spanning several expansions, not even Orcs had this much development and story. Once the elves settle in, Blizz needs to stop focusing on the Night Elves for a while because it's becoming exhausting trying to both process and keep this story going. As Tyrande said it herself, "I am so tired, Malfurion."

Less is more as some say.

I think the largest thing with this is, it's not really true but also 100% true.

May be an entire arc, but it's mostly just stuff shoved in with other stuff. I.E. It wasn't mentioned in BFA at all, until it was in Darkshore. Then in Shadowlands it was kind of a non issue, being more about Tyrande and Elune than Night Elves in general. Then that turned into a new world tree out of nowhere. Then Dragon Isles has really been the one that focused on that the most.

It's honestly not a whole bunch of focus sans 10.2 and the Emerald Dream..

But it's a little bit in everything else. It's just everywhere and old at this point