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

[Wangming]

THIS!

Nobody wants the geography of Duskwood to completely change. What we want is the story to acknowledge the things happened during and since Legion. Same for Tirisfal, Silverpine and Gilneas.

[Nymrohd]

THIS!

Nobody wants the geography of Duskwood to completely change. What we want is the story to acknowledge the things happened during and since Legion. Same for Tirisfal, Silverpine and Gilneas.

There are a few places where I would really like the zone borders to change. Like the entire eastern coast of Eastern Kingdoms south of Twilight Highlands is a mess. And that would not be doable without changing some zone borders. I also think a new version of Zul'gurub would look vastly different with current assets; the walls of ZG make very little sense in the geography they are on (And I wish the entire area could be open to questing in a revamp, same with Zul'aman which should have an entire zone around it.

[Lahis]

THIS!

Nobody wants the geography of Duskwood to completely change. What we want is the story to acknowledge the things happened during and since Legion. Same for Tirisfal, Silverpine and Gilneas.

Duskwood is built from 25 year old assets. It needs complete rebuild if they want to use it as current expansion content.

[Wangming]

There are a few places where I would really like the zone borders to change. Like the entire eastern coast of Eastern Kingdoms south of Twilight Highlands is a mess. And that would not be doable without changing some zone borders. I also think a new version of Zul'gurub would look vastly different with current assets; the walls of ZG make very little sense in the geography they are on (And I wish the entire area could be open to questing in a revamp, same with Zul'aman which should have an entire zone around it.

Well admittedly some zones need some work. Hell, I always wanted Zul'Gurub to be turned into a legit capital city for the Darkspears. But we are talking about a handful of zones with the combined size of one or at max two DF zones. The rest just need to push the story forward and maybe replace a few low poly character models.

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Duskwood is built from 25 year old assets. It needs complete rebuild if they want to use it as current expansion content.

I said geography. I mean if they are willing to change even the trees to better ones, all the better. But I doubt more mountains would grow just because there was a revamp.

[Nymrohd]

Duskwood is built from 25 year old assets. It needs complete rebuild if they want to use it as current expansion content.

The zone borders do not need to be rebuild though. You would retexture the zone, replace world objects with equivalent world objects. Perhaps shift the terrain to better integrate the Great Tree area (which was hedged off probably for gameplay only reasons).

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I said geography. I mean if they are willing to change even the trees to better ones, all the better. But I doubt more mountains would grow just because there was a revamp.

Arathi Highlands did change in several places, especially in the warfront area tbh. But the borders remained the same. The idea here is how well it could be done piecemail and the crucial part for that is to keep zone borders as they are so you can still move to the next area and the changes are done via phasing.

[George Lucas]

The zone borders do not need to be rebuild though. You would retexture the zone, replace world objects with equivalent world objects. Perhaps shift the terrain to better integrate the Great Tree area (which was hedged off probably for gameplay only reasons).

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Arathi Highlands did change in several places, especially in the warfront area tbh. But the borders remained the same. The idea here is how well it could be done piecemail and the crucial part for that is to keep zone borders as they are so you can still move to the next area and the changes are done via phasing.

This takes even more time than starting from scratch, if Blizzard wants to make something that isn't garbage like Cataclysm. Developers don't just click a button and all textures and assets are flipped (or they could probably make something like that, but the result would suck). The clutter density was completely different back then. The terrain looks horrendous compared to modern WoW, especially mountains. They need all to be rebuild in a sensible way and textures don't just need replacing but redraws basicly anywhere. They would also end up with a lot of unused space that you need to fill in anyway if it's supposed to look better then 2007 (I know Cataclysm came later, but the old revamped zones mostly are not better looking then Burning Crusade).

Arathi was made with a completely different intent and revamped zones shouldn't emulate it. At least unless you want just a tiny timeless isle sandbox that feels like WoW from 2012.

[Nymrohd]

This takes even more time than starting from scratch, if Blizzard wants to make something that isn't garbage like Cataclysm. Developers don't just click a button and all textures and assets are flipped (or they could probably make something like that, but the result would suck). The clutter density was completely different back then. The terrain looks horrendous compared to modern WoW, especially mountains. They need all to be rebuild in a sensible way and textures don't just need replacing but redraws basicly anywhere. They would also end up with a lot of unused space that you need to fill in anyway if it's supposed to look better then 2007 (I know Cataclysm came later, but the old revamped zones mostly are not better looking then Burning Crusade).

Arathi was made with a completely different intent and revamped zones shouldn't emulate it. At least unless you want just a tiny timeless isle sandbox that feels like WoW from 2012.

The idea I was presenting is, start with sandbox, add content to it when appropriate.

Also I don't get why you think it would take more time than to do it from scratch?

[George Lucas]

The idea I was presenting is, start with sandbox, add content to it when appropriate.

Also I don't get why you think it would take more time than to do it from scratch?

I highly doubt Blizzard would do just. If you just want to implement minor stuff like in 8.3 it's more sensible to not redo anything beyond phased in stuff. Wouldn't pay off ressource wise.

Because you have to replace everything from hand and that is a boring task that won't be done with enthusiasm by environment artists. It's not more complicated but not much less either.

[huth]

Uldum is in the same state that we saw in Cataclysm, they only added NPCs there, they didn't change the terrain or buildings, same thing with Valley of the Eternal Blossom, they only rolled back to the 5.0 version of the zone and added NPCs.

Which is still a revamp. You seem to have an incorrect idea of what that word means.

Also, Darkshore is still mostly in its Cata incarnation. As is Arathi. They weren't changed as much as you seem to think. And they're still Cata zones because they completely replaced the entire original world in Cata. There are no vanilla zones at this point. Even if Arathi superficially looks like the original, they rebuild the whole zone.

Nothing was changed or remade in Uldum. Invasion weeks just phase in Black Empire obelisks.

"Nothing was changed, they just changed it to have new assets".

Yes, they were revamped. Not at the scale of Cataclysm, but still revamped.

[Lahis]

"Nothing was changed, they just changed it to have new assets".

Yes, they were revamped. Not at the scale of Cataclysm, but still revamped.

It is the same unchanged zone that just spawns invasion assets.

Did they revamp broken Isles zones when Legion Invasions strike zone?

Are BFA zones under faction assaults revamped?

[Grimbold21]

The best thing about a possible world revamp is the unavoidable grief and whining it will cause, as it did with Cataclysm.

[Fahrad Wagner]

It is the same unchanged zone that just spawns invasion assets.

Did they revamp broken Isles zones when Legion Invasions strike zone?

Are BFA zones under faction assaults revamped?

I'm with Lahis, Uldum and the Vale weren't revamps in the same sense that Darkshore and Arathi were. I guess what constitutes a revamp or not can be discussed, but for me those two zones (Uldum + Vale) were rehashed, not revamped. The core questing experience of Uldum is still the (corny) Indiana Jones questline, the assets of the zone are still the same, they just added one storyline about the invasion a floating Black Empire raid assets. For me, a revamp is either a complete graphical update of the zone (Arathi + Darkshore) or a complete update of its storyline to progress the story further (like it was done in a few Cataclysm zones were graphically it didn't change much but storywise it did). Ideally, it needs to be both, but adding a few quests at high-level without updating the core-assets of the zone isn't enough to be called a revamp (in my opinion, agree to disagree).

That being said, Uldum didn't need the graphical update, nor did the Vale, both zones are gorgeous (not as HD as Dragon Isles of course, but still beautiful), and it's probably why Blizzard chose to use these for their patch. That and they conveniently had Old God / Titan machinery background that could be used.

The best thing about a possible world revamp is the unavoidable grief and whining it will cause, as it did with Cataclysm.

I can't see any world revamp happening without the current world being preserved, either through Chromie or through the Caverns of Time. Removing the "old world/content" was Cataclysm's biggest mistake, I don't think Blizzard would do that twice.

[Grimbold21]

I can't see any world revamp happening without the current world being preserved, either through Chromie or through the Caverns of Time. Removing the "old world/content" was Cataclysm's biggest mistake, I don't think Blizzard would do that twice.

Dunno what tech goes into it, but I guess they should do to the world what they did to Silithus.

As for the revamp itself, change/fix what Cataclysm brought about. Fix the Stonewrought dam in Loch Modan for instance.

But at this point I'm more exciting for the revamp of old gear, and wondering how much of it they'll do.

[Wangming]

I can't see any world revamp happening without the current world being preserved, either through Chromie or through the Caverns of Time. Removing the "old world/content" was Cataclysm's biggest mistake, I don't think Blizzard would do that twice.

Now with two Classic servers, I don't think preserving the world is an issue anymore. They could revamp the whole bloody thing.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Dunno what tech goes into it, but I guess they should do to the world what they did to Silithus.

As for the revamp itself, change/fix what Cataclysm brought about. Fix the Stonewrought dam in Loch Modan for instance.

But at this point I'm more exciting for the revamp of old gear, and wondering how much of it they'll do.

Yeah, they could probably go that way, but the superposing of past and recent zone can be annoying (I hate having to talk to Zidormi to do seasonal stuff for example, it's so confusing). And also that would only work if they do not upscale the zone to feel bigger like we were discussing before.

Also excited for the revamp of old gear, I hope we see more of it!

[Alanar]

THIS!

Nobody wants the geography of Duskwood to completely change. What we want is the story to acknowledge the things happened during and since Legion. Same for Tirisfal, Silverpine and Gilneas.

People talked about zones feeling small if dragonflying would be introduced, but outside that I think you are exactly right.

I remember everyone speculating how ek and kalimdor could change when we get back from the shadowlands and how nothing really changed, no new friendships, no new exploration groups and no new tree were planted. That was such a weird thing imo, literally time stood still when we were away. I had hoped in finding out how some races did this or that. Shame.

That being said, moving up borders and increasing the scale slightly and reduce the speed of df a bit would solve most of it I think.

[Lahis]

Now with two Classic servers, I don't think preserving the world is an issue anymore. They could revamp the whole bloody thing.

After Classic advances to Cata era, they just need to make sure all transmog, mounts and pets are still available on Retail servers and then they can nuke everything that currently exists.

[Shadowferal]

Now with two Classic servers, I don't think preserving the world is an issue anymore. They could revamp the whole bloody thing.

I think they should add a server to experiment with how a WoW 2.0 might work.

[Grimbold21]

Yeah, they could probably go that way, but the superposing of past and recent zone can be annoying (I hate having to talk to Zidormi to do seasonal stuff for example, it's so confusing). And also that would only work if they do not upscale the zone to feel bigger like we were discussing before.

Also excited for the revamp of old gear, I hope we see more of it!

One thing that I would want out of it is moving away from Humans/Orcs centrality. Yes, yes. Warcraft was about those two races originally, yes you could even argue that because there's less players now, Blizzard would want the existing population focused on one spot, but it would be nice to not have every single new hub have a portal just to SW/Org

[Fahrad Wagner]

One thing that I would want out of it is moving away from Humans/Orcs centrality. Yes, yes. Warcraft was about those two races originally, yes you could even argue that because there's less players now, Blizzard would want the existing population focused on one spot, but it would be nice to not have every single new hub have a portal just to SW/Org

I couldn't agree more