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

[Izalla]

-Each zone's aesthetic fits with its questing. (Some of that was lost in Cata for the sake of comedy.)
-The zones do not become irrelevant and uninteresting easily so they don't get deserted.
-There is satisfying and natural progression in the changes of zones. (Thousand Needles was not changed for the better in Cata. Western Plaguelands was.)
-The revamped world is default from level 1 and the Cataclysm version becomes accessible through a time travel spell which is unlocked once per account and can be used to teleport to a designated spot (graveyard of inn) in the Cata version of the zone one stands in. The spell is used again to go back to the revamp map.
-The leveling is changed so the player base is no longer extremely top heavy and leveling doesn't feel like a boring obstacle worth paying $60 to get around.
-New dungeons for zones that lacked them (e.g. Duskwood) that feel more like classic dungeons than M+ dungeons.

Oh god yes, I should add this to mine: shamans and druids managed to block up the hole in Thousand Needles and drain the water out so it can return to being a unique and interesting zone instead of a mostly unused abomination. And because you mentioned the Plaguelands, that reminds me: I absolutely HATED how lighthearted and goofy they made Eastern Plaguelands in Cata. They nerfed it from end of leveling experience territory and put that stupid caravan and "paladin pals" in it and I have despised it ever since. That zone used to be the one I found most intimidating when I first started playing. It was the end of the line, the most dangerous, the worst affected by the biggest/closest enemy, and it had my favourite dungeon. I'm just thankful the worst they did to Stratholme was splitting it where you cannot open the gate anymore.

[Catastrophy349]

Not sure how I missed this one...https://me.ign.com/en/comics/214182/...e-book-excerpt

[Reive]

- revamp
- housing
- new class
- new races

or it's a failure.

we didn't get all these things back in cata and we definitely won't get them now. not together at least

It's pretty impressive how good they still look compared to how bad the vanilla ones looked even compared to the TBC additions, but I agree with this because there are some I have never been satisfied with. The night elf female has a weird lopsided stance compared to the old one (maybe the old one was lopsided too but I didn't find it jarring enough to notice), human female faces have always been a bit iffy to me, and draenei female eyes are just wrong.

i think we've reached a point where our characters (and their armor) are the worst looking part of modern wow. would be nice for our character models to reach the level of more complex npcs like jaina

Depends on how it’s executed, and what the locations look like. With the latter, I never doubt the talent of the WoW art team.

eh idk. i still think it's going to be a miss, especially after dragonflight

I still half-expect this during 10.x as it's already mostly implemented as of 10.1.7, not sure if they're keeping it until after the various cups are done, the pre-order comes out or for some other reason. If they want to introduce it in 11.0 it wouldn't make sense to have all that on the 10.x branch already, but not impossible. Although not sure they'd wait until the cups are done considering they're currently planned to go all the way through 2024 with more planned afterwards.

blizzard is great at subverting expectations

[Merryck]

Is "Order" magic the same as Arcane magic?

[Catastrophy349]

Not sure how I missed this one...https://me.ign.com/en/comics/214182/...e-book-excerpt

Having read this has me VERY excited to read the rest!

[Reive]

Is "Order" magic the same as Arcane magic?

yes. danuser just loves to call it order magic

[Catastrophy349]

https://blizzardwatch.com/2023/10/17/scaleborn-wow/

[Chickat]

I mean, lore wise, we were the guys that defeated the Jailer (Granted, we had a LOT of power amps thanks to the Sepulcher armor, Azeroth, etc). The Eternal Ones were forbidden to enter Zereth Mortis lore-wise, so there's no way they could beat him.

Ah, I forgot about that you are right. Perhaps the souldbinds were powerful after all. Thats the only plausible explanation.

[KyleEverett]

Has Blizzard before ever implied the Isles were once part of mainland Kalimdor before the sundering?

[PotHockets]

Is "Order" magic the same as Arcane magic?

Yeah Arcane is part of Order because Arcane is math magic

[Imotbh]

What "major feature(s)" would you like to see be announced for 11.0?

Not really a feature but I'd like them to remove all the DPS-increasing spells from races (+X% stat, Blood Fury, etc.) so that you can really play what you prefer. Utility spells like the Goblin Jump, BElf dispel or Nightborne snare are all good and nice, they offer a little something I find cool.

They could also replace the DPS spells, instead of only removing them, by a utility one

[Darkarath]

What do YOU (MMO-C) consider a "good revamp?" Like, how do YOU "envision" it?

I feel that this topic has been discussed to death, but I always enjoy talking about the revamp that will inevitably happen (hopefully in 11.0), just in case that some new ideas arise. In my case, I will just expose the points that I have been talking about since forever, that would be mandatory for a world revamp IMO:

- Created from scratch.

- All current maps (except DF) go to a picture that they can call "Old Azeroth" or whatever, and the default map is the Dragon Isles and the revamped zones. They just have to keep building from there.

- Current zones are still accessible through CoT or whatever.

- Zones merged into bigger zones that tell a cohesive story.

- The story of the zones should aim at worldbuilding, factionbuilding, racebuilding, and classbuilding. They should be evergreen, not focused in the new villain of the week or nonsense (Uldum).

- There should ALWAYS be a reason to go back to these zones, even when they are not current content. The world would be bigger so they could have parts of some zones in which they could add new quests or dungeons in future expansions, but the most important thing is to create a new evergreen system that gives us a reason to go back to do WQs / Events / Dungeons of the revamped zones.

Not mandatory points but very close:

- Housing.

- Follower system. Let us have NPCs that follow us in our travels. One for open world and 4 for dungeons (no mythic). Let us customize their skills tree, gear and transmog. This should be an evergreen system continuously expanded. New important characters that have a relation with us and quests for each character to get us to know them better.

- A dragonriding system but for ground mounts.

- Account bound professions (both main and secondary ones).

- Account bound reputations.

- Account bound quests along with a New Game + feature to be able to replay the quests with our mains and alts.

- Account wide bank with far more space.

- Account wide gold.

- Account wide currencies including honor, conquest and PvE upgradable objects.

- Transmogrification limitations lifted. Every class can gain appaerances of any type of armor.

- Revamped glyph system. Purely cosmetic. Return of the glyph tab to custom how our skills look.

- New specs for current classes.

- Every race can be any class.

- Customizations options of every race expanded to match Dracthyr possibilities.

[Well Done Steak]

What "major feature(s)" would you like to see be announced for 11.0?

Open race class combos.

Cross armor type xmog.

Multi class (1 extra class to switch between using class trainers)

Spell glyph system

4th specs

3rd profession.slot

Playable ogres, ethereals,

[Catastrophy349]

Excited to read more about the "Scaleborn War." Rest of 2023 is going to be super packed and exciting!

[Well Done Steak]

Has Blizzard before ever implied the Isles were once part of mainland Kalimdor before the sundering?

Well according to the cinematic, the isles were not as you can see a fel storm in the horizon

[Nebron]

What "major feature(s)" would you like to see be announced for 11.0?

Maybe a complete quest system rehaul? Like, different type of campaigns: zone-specific ones, the ones that span over a couple of zones, class specific that would get updated every minor patch and faction-specific? It would make more sense for revamp though, but also allow for the story to flow better. A UI update for quest system. Get rid of world quests, as I believe it waters down the content and removes the agency I liked with daily quests.

Update the ground mounts system, which could open possibilities for mount combat? And mount families which would provide benfits of using them in particular environments?

I think I'd be happy with these

[Darkarath]

https://blizzardwatch.com/2023/10/17/scaleborn-wow/

Good find!! Interesting names dropped there and interesting zones... Did some leak talked about Northrend? Because between what this implies and that we know that we will have to face the Keepers at some point...

And more important, after reading this I still have hope on Vyranoth's betrayal. The schock of what Alexstrasza did might have changed her forever in a evil and twisted way... I certainly hope so.

[Catastrophy349]

Good find!! Interesting names dropped there and interesting zones... Did some leak talked about Northrend? Because between what this implies and that we know that we will have to face the Keepers at some point...

And more important, after reading this I still have hope on Vyranoth's betrayal. The schock of what Alexstrasza did might have changed her forever in a evil and twisted way... I certainly hope so.

I, too, want Vyranoth to betray us.

[Paula Deen]

While we speculate on things we want in a revamp. Something I'd like to point out. Lets fix the damn maps.

Lets make Draenor and Outland one solid globe with half the artwork for Draenor, the other half for Outland. Removes some crowding.

Zooming into Azeroth. Lets move the map for the Broken Isles onto the Map for the Maelstrom just South East of it next to Kezan and the Lost Isles. Removes some crowding.

Next, lets downsize Zandalar and Kul'tiras. Lets move Kul'tiras closer to its previous implementation near Tol Borad and lets keep Zandalar where it is at, just much smaller on the global scale.

Lastly, lets upscale all the map files in the game, Pandaria's map may actually be the current oldest one in the game and it shows on my 1440p Display.

We'd end up with a much less crowded world map at the expense of having to dig just a bit for the places we go, however, I think the trade off is worth it.

[KyleEverett]

Well according to the cinematic, the isles were not as you can see a fel storm in the horizon

That cinematic though was millennia after this war though. I'm wondering if perhaps the Scaleborn war destroyed large parts of the Broodlands leaving just the Isles.