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

[Wangming]

Personally, i bet on a timetravel expansion. With no real hints at all, timetravel is the most likely, with Nozdormu getting his powers back and his fall to Murozond not yet happening.

Black Empire, Black Empire, Black Empire, Black Empire, Black Empire

[Enrif]

Black Empire, Black Empire, Black Empire, Black Empire, Black Empire

i'm not that keen on the Black Empire, but it could feature in a timetravel expansion. Perhaps as a single zone instead of all of it.

[Baraden]

i think going completely blind, without any supporting lore form the past is a big gamble. At least something familiar/known should be there. Be it Titans, Void or Medievh. Something that connects that completely unknown to the rest of Warcraft.

Personally, i bet on a timetravel expansion. With no real hints at all, timetravel is the most likely, with Nozdormu getting his powers back and his fall to Murozond not yet happening.

They'd be insane to do another time travel expansion after WoD

[Enrif]

They'd be insane to do another time travel expansion after WoD

Why? WoD's story was pretty decent, and certainly no trainwrack like SL. The issues with WoD wasn't the story.

[Nymrohd]

Why? WoD's story was pretty decent, and certainly no trainwrack like SL. The issues with WoD wasn't the story.

Laughs in "Draenor is free!"

[Skildar]

thinking back on how previous expansions were shaped out, I noticed that Dragonflight pivotal systems are :
- talent tree
- work orders
- dragon riding
- dragon customisation

Whereas previous expansions had (at their launch) :
(legion) artefact weapon, world quests, class hall, mythic plus dungeon
(bfa) azerite armor, island expedition, wafront
(sl) covenants, soul binds, thorghast.

I wonder what they could go for in the next expansion

[Sondrelk]

thinking back on how previous expansions were shaped out, I noticed that Dragonflight pivotal systems are :
- talent tree
- work orders
- dragon riding
- dragon customisation

Whereas previous expansions had (at their launch) :
(legion) artefact weapon, world quests, class hall, mythic plus dungeon
(bfa) azerite armor, island expedition, wafront
(sl) covenants, soul binds, thorghast.

I wonder what they could go for in the next expansion

The pitch for DF was very much about refinement of base systems, so I don't think it's out of the question that the next expansion will be about salvaging failed ones.
Islands and Torghast was Blizzard attempting randomized content, and we could very much do with a system taking those concepts and fixing them into something fun.

M+ is what I am curious about. DF did a massive step forward with adding old dungeons into the pool, and I am curious how they are going to continue to iterate going forward.
Not quite dungeon related, but I did have an idea a while back of making the second half of a season have a permanent Timewalking raid. Would be a continuation of the M+ dungeon pool idea.

[Enrif]

Laughs in "Draenor is free!"

a rushed ending, sure. but besides that?

[pacotaco]

thinking back on how previous expansions were shaped out, I noticed that Dragonflight pivotal systems are :
- talent tree
- work orders
- dragon riding
- dragon customisation

Whereas previous expansions had (at their launch) :
(legion) artefact weapon, world quests, class hall, mythic plus dungeon
(bfa) azerite armor, island expedition, wafront
(sl) covenants, soul binds, thorghast.

I wonder what they could go for in the next expansion

If they do as they said (stop redoing from scratch new systems each expansion) they have a lot of free workforce to instead add horizontally:
- Class team can add new classes/specs, expand talent trees (this is almost guaranteed because we'll have more character levels)
- Art team can add more customization
- Systems can add new dragonriding abilities and maybe one new system for the expansion.
- Profession team can rework archaeology and add a new special system.

[Nymrohd]

The pitch for DF was very much about refinement of base systems, so I don't think it's out of the question that the next expansion will be about salvaging failed ones.
Islands and Torghast was Blizzard attempting randomized content, and we could very much do with a system taking those concepts and fixing them into something fun.

M+ is what I am curious about. DF did a massive step forward with adding old dungeons into the pool, and I am curious how they are going to continue to iterate going forward.
Not quite dungeon related, but I did have an idea a while back of making the second half of a season have a permanent Timewalking raid. Would be a continuation of the M+ dungeon pool idea.

With seasons now divided in three parts, I actually would propose the following
.X.0 patch has the new raid release. Lasts 10 weeks
.X.5 patch adds more world content. Lasts 8 weeks. It also releases a Timewalking season. During this time a Timewalking raid is current and has two modes (an LFR version and a normal version). I'd make the normal version tough enough that you actually need to do a bit of work to progress through it (enough that any guilds that gets AotC can clear it within 8 weeks). Beyond that I'd consider having that TW season affect other things (maybe TW affecting outdoor content)
Then I'd do the same with the .7 patch but with a different TW raid.
So every season would start with a new raid and you'd also get 16 weeks of TW active with two different raids.

I absolutely would love them doing a system that merges Torghast with Islands. my idea on how to do it Evergreen would be to base it on Caverns of Time. Bronze flight would send you back in time in different scenarios. 1-5 players, strong cosmetics, its own rewards progression. Mostly reusing existing assets with some additional things created for it here and there. I am sure we can come up with well over a dozen of time travel ideas we would love to see.

Beyond that for cosmetics I'd want class skins and for additional gameplay, more specs in existing classes. Honestly I feel the only class we are really missing at this point is Tinker. Everything else I could see done with class skins and/or additional specs in existing classes.

[Skildar]

The pitch for DF was very much about refinement of base systems, so I don't think it's out of the question that the next expansion will be about salvaging failed ones.
Islands and Torghast was Blizzard attempting randomized content, and we could very much do with a system taking those concepts and fixing them into something fun.

M+ is what I am curious about. DF did a massive step forward with adding old dungeons into the pool, and I am curious how they are going to continue to iterate going forward.
Not quite dungeon related, but I did have an idea a while back of making the second half of a season have a permanent Timewalking raid. Would be a continuation of the M+ dungeon pool idea.

What's complicated with integrating a previous raid in z season is that if you introduce it at launch, it takes away from the new one and if you introduce it later in the deason, raiders will rush it or just ignore it.

Dungeon work well for this as they're of short duration and the random key helps bringing you in both old and new ones in the rotation.

I would really like to have old raids relevant as challenges once again though. I'm just lost on what is the right way to do it.

[Magistrate]

a rushed ending, sure. but besides that?

The pale orcs served no story purpose
The artifact (the entire point to the open world pvp zone) was built up and then dropped (no it was not the ogre runestone thing)
Chogall was basically pointless
Weird convoluted change to how demon respawn, multi universe, and time magic works
Iron horde sins erased without any ramifications or critic thought and everyone is chummy in 1 patch after it was the backbone of the story
A lot more I can't think of because I'm heading out for work and had 2 hours of sleep
TBC and all original lore showed making immense portals was a huge undertaking with outrageous cost. This was also true of the AU portal. But the mage/botani portal in the dungeon to invade sw amounted to little more than a gimmick.
Guldan was able to make a portal letting in archimonde whose equivalent in azeroth required I believe years of rituals and the entire well of eternity by the most powerful magical race on the planet at the time--he did this with a "fel volcano" and 1 piece of notebook paper

This doesn't even touch on the major feature of the x.1 patch being the SELFIE camera.

The launch content was good, that patch was good in a lot of ways, but so much was lost and broken. I think a lot of people really forgot. It was a very long time ago.

[Enrif]

With seasons now divided in three parts, I actually would propose the following
.X.0 patch has the new raid release. Lasts 10 weeks
.X.5 patch adds more world content. Lasts 8 weeks. It also releases a Timewalking season. During this time a Timewalking raid is current and has two modes (an LFR version and a normal version). I'd make the normal version tough enough that you actually need to do a bit of work to progress through it (enough that any guilds that gets AotC can clear it within 8 weeks). Beyond that I'd consider having that TW season affect other things (maybe TW affecting outdoor content)
Then I'd do the same with the .7 patch but with a different TW raid.
So every season would start with a new raid and you'd also get 16 weeks of TW active with two different raids.

too much raiding content in my opinion. One TW raid is fine. They should rather revamp one/two old dungeons to make it M+ viable.

[Nymrohd]

too much raiding content in my opinion. One TW raid is fine. They should rather revamp one/two old dungeons to make it M+ viable.

M+ already gets a rotation of old dungeons and most of the older ones do get revamped already. I'd understand that some people would like it to have more dungeons (10 instead of 8). I will say that for me, 8 is very much the limit of what I can memorize as a tank. I struggled a lot in BfA (it did not help that several affixes really switched the routes around).

And maybe people are raiding less not just because of the difficulty in organizing raids but also because of burnout. Having three different raids during a season at the Normal-Heroic lvl would affect the clear majority of the raiders and would give pretty much remove the concept of farm since most raiders would be able to move to fooling around with the TW raids instead of hitting a wall (both in difficulty and in attendance) trying to run Mythic once they are done with Heroic.

[Wangming]

The pale orcs served no story purpose
The artifact (the entire point to the open world pvp zone) was built up and then dropped (no it was not the ogre runestone thing)
Chogall was basically pointless
Weird convoluted change to how demon respawn, multi universe, and time magic works
Iron horde sins erased without any ramifications or critic thought and everyone is chummy in 1 patch after it was the backbone of the story
A lot more I can't think of because I'm heading out for work and had 2 hours of sleep
TBC and all original lore showed making immense portals was a huge undertaking with outrageous cost. This was also true of the AU portal. But the mage/botani portal in the dungeon to invade sw amounted to little more than a gimmick.

This doesn't even touch on the major feature of the x.1 patch being the SELFIE camera.

The launch content was good, that patch was good in a lot of ways, but so much was lost and broken. I think a lot of people really forgot. It was a very long time ago.

All valid points, but none of these invalidate the basic premise of time travel.

[NikolaiShade]

It's basically a Fantasy equivalent of convergent evolution - these "Dwarves" turned apparently mortal without the "Curse of Flesh" (there's still the theory that all "seed races" could change into mortal beings, integrating with the planet's native population, and the Curse either accelerated that, or is Old God propaganda entirely) but developed a society very similar to the Dwarves we know.
A real-world equivalent would be discovering a quasi-human species that split off from our lineage at the ape stage, but still developed a physiology and culture very similar to Homo Sapiens.

Exactly my first thought, the problem is the language, that's pretty strange, they use Khaz like the dwarves. Being a fantasy setting I was wondering if they found something "magic" in the fissure that influenced their development

[Sondrelk]

What's complicated with integrating a previous raid in z season is that if you introduce it at launch, it takes away from the new one and if you introduce it later in the deason, raiders will rush it or just ignore it.

Dungeon work well for this as they're of short duration and the random key helps bringing you in both old and new ones in the rotation.

I would really like to have old raids relevant as challenges once again though. I'm just lost on what is the right way to do it.

The way I would balance the old Timewalking raid is to make it very much a catchup mechanism. It's easier than HC, but gives almost equivalent gear and tokens. (much easier now with upgradeable gear)

The prestige will still be in completing the proper raid, but it's now both easier to get gear, possibly allowing some interesting combinations, and can have some extra cosmetics to give it a reason to exist beyond that. A new tint of the sets would be an easy way to go about it.

The point would not be to have another full blown raid, but rather some more ways to approach the current raid.

[Nymrohd]

The pale orcs served no story purpose

I have to say, the pale orcs become such a great concept in retrospect once you have Chronicle II with them being behind the creation of the Twilight Hammer and then so much of the Void activity on Azeroth itself. Heck if we had the concepts from Chronicle 2 from the beginning, you could even say that the reason C'thun and the others became more active suddenly would be the pale orcs. And you could use them as mad seers of the Twilight Hammer.

- - - Updated - - -

All valid points, but none of these invalidate the basic premise of time travel.

Time travel is invalid as a premise in general due to simple logic. And WoD is NOT time travel, it is alternate universe travel.

[Sondrelk]

M+ already gets a rotation of old dungeons and most of the older ones do get revamped already. I'd understand that some people would like it to have more dungeons (10 instead of 8). I will say that for me, 8 is very much the limit of what I can memorize as a tank. I struggled a lot in BfA (it did not help that several affixes really switched the routes around).

And maybe people are raiding less not just because of the difficulty in organizing raids but also because of burnout. Having three different raids during a season at the Normal-Heroic lvl would affect the clear majority of the raiders and would give pretty much remove the concept of farm since most raiders would be able to move to fooling around with the TW raids instead of hitting a wall (both in difficulty and in attendance) trying to run Mythic once they are done with Heroic.

8 dungeons definitely seems like the sweet spot. Though I imagine those feelings might change with the next season where only 2 (or 1 depending) of the the dungeons are actually from Dragonflight, and the rest are older ones.

[Nymrohd]

8 dungeons definitely seems like the sweet spot. Though I imagine those feelings might change with the next season where only 2 (or 1 depending) of the the dungeons are actually from Dragonflight, and the rest are older ones.

That's a problem with DF just not having enough instanced content. We should have had two additional dungeons added to reach parity with Legion/BfA