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

[Skytotem]

But i like killing alliance...
Nothing better than killing a gnome!

But on serious note, even that i don't want another faction war i still want to see some disturbance in main factions leadership in the future.
Some inner politics explored more and citizens that live in their capitols, like we had in Human heritage questline.

EDIT: But thinking about it now, i don't see anyone from the horde council going bad/villain or from the Alliance.. Well maybe besides turalyon, when the light story happens again.

Orc: Let's see... Orcs are probably done with "Villainbat" internal conflict, they had enough of that with Garrosh and Zaela losing popular characters to being raid bosses, BUT it'd be interesting to see conflict where they don't straight up murder each other or turn evil. Arguments between Shamans, Warlocks, and the Industrial branches of orc society, debates between orc clans and troll priest groups, etc... I want to see Jorin Deadeye as a move and shaker in orc politics but NOT as a bad guy.

Troll: It'd be cool to see the Darkspear and Zandalari playing politics with the other troll tribes, recruiting folks, maybe even trying to resettle Zul'drak with Frost Trolls from other areas and Horde members, and a few of the undead Drakkari preserving their culture. Horde mending fences with the Sandfury wouldn't hurt either, since they could help negotiate for the Steamwheedle to trade with them and stop stealing their stuff if the Sandfury stop raiding the steamwheedle's workers.

Forsaken: Whew boy have they got a ton of potential cloak and dagger politicking to have go on, I'm hoping we see a Cult of Shadow member of their council at some point, maybe a councilmember to represent non elf/humanoid undead too if Blizz ever decides to acknowledge them as part of the Horde in any meaningful number.

Tauren: The big issue is mostly Magatha and the Grimtotem still hanging around, but even beyond that I can see something being done with the Bloodtotem remnants as well as cultural friction between the Taunka, Highmountain, and Mulgore tauren, maybe even some overtures to the Yaungol since we never properly saw Horde interaction with them.

Goblin: Gallywix is explicitly not dead, so he can still cause trouble and since he's not leader anymore they can also lean more into his dark comedy vibe without it feeling too jarring. Plus, Goblins are inherently competitive, so it'd be interesting to see some other cartels join the Horde and work alongside the Bilgewater. Or sabotage some non-Horde leaning cartels to crowd out their business if the Venture co is still causing trouble or some non-steamwheedle/bilgewater cartels are making trouble.

Nightborne/Belf: Lor'themar is regent and has had a pretty totalitarian hand to keep the belfs stable, while Thalyssra is taking charge of a society that's just now leaving the police-state that Elisande had running, so it'll be interesting to see what hiccups they encounter as they start relaxing their control and are forced to make the classic freedom vs safety decisions while leading their nations, and whether to keep power centralized with themselves or whether to delegate it a bit.

Dracthyr/Vulpera/Pandaren: I think these groups are too small and close knit to have real infighting, especially since the Dracthyr are already sorting out their internal issues in the DF story.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The factions are always(And should) matter. That doesn't mean we're always in full scale war and they're probably gonna be more careful if they face each other.

[Nymrohd]

If it means making half of your playerbase do questionable stuff and make them feel bad yeah, lets not repeat that.

Or make a faction that is unequivocally about doing questionable stuff so anyone who joins has signed up for it. Imagine a faction with the Forsaken (Lordaeronian humans in the classic Forsaken Zombie style and Quel'thalas banshees and wraiths inhabiting their rotting bodies) and add to it say Worgen but led by Ralaar and struggling to contain the beast and maybe Nerubians or San'layn (or heck I was thinking, we got Zombie, Ghost, Werewolf, Vampire, we need a Mummy, maybe develop a race of plagued trolls). If you joined that faction and it started doing all different kind of atrocities, you wouldn't really get to be angry about it. They are classic monsters, that's their job.

[Makabreska]

Or make a faction that is unequivocally about doing questionable stuff so anyone who joins has signed up for it. Imagine a faction with the Forsaken (Lordaeronian humans in the classic Forsaken Zombie style and Quel'thalas banshees and wraiths inhabiting their rotting bodies) and add to it say Worgen but led by Ralaar and struggling to contain the beast and maybe Nerubians or San'layn (or heck I was thinking, we got Zombie, Ghost, Werewolf, Vampire, we need a Mummy, maybe develop a race of plagued trolls). If you joined that faction and it started doing all different kind of atrocities, you wouldn't really get to be angry about it. They are classic monsters, that's their job.

Pretty crappy idea to introduce a faction with the intention of only doing nasty stuff and therefore hard limiting their story progression. What would such pigeonholing achieve? "Damn, here comes the new faction, they will surely do something bad". Not to mention that I doubt many players would want to be these bad guys. People who care about the story in general identify with their faction. Look how Hordies reacted to everything post Cata, they did not sign up for the atrocities and Warchief-turned-raidboss clown fiesta.

[Nymrohd]

Pretty crappy idea to introduce a faction with the intention of only doing nasty stuff and therefore hard limiting their story progression. What would such pigeonholing achieve? "Damn, here comes the new faction, they will surely do something bad". Not to mention that I doubt many players would want to be these bad guys. People who care about the story in general identify with their faction. Look how Hordies reacted to everything post Cata, they did not sign up for the atrocities and Warchief-turned-raidboss clown fiesta.

Oh I am absolutely not saying introduce a faction now. That makes no sense. I am saying about having had that from the start. Have a faction that follows up on Sylvanas from TFT. And I would not consider it a villain faction; they would not be trying to kill the other factions or anything similar. Just that they would defend their land with the most dishonorable means. Since the main stories would be about the overarching threats, they would ultimately be on Azeroth's side, you just would not want them to be fighting anywhere near you. If you picked to play a faction led by TFT Sylvanas and it betrayed people left and right while allowing experimentation and similar things, it wouldn't exactly be a surprise but at the same time you would expect that faction to be mostly about the end justifying the means with a Scourge theme on top (similarly you could have had an Illidari faction which would be similar but prettier). You would have signed up for it. As for people not wanting to be those bad guys . . . we'll never know how many Sylvanas loyalists were out there (and heck in that timeline Sylvanas would not be braindead) but at least this community makes me believe there are plenty of people who absolutely want to be the bad guys (and there is a third group that wants to be the bad guys but never get called out on it but you can't satisfy those buffoons).
It WAS a surprise for people who joined the Horde after playing WC3 and suddenly found themselves in the same faction with the Forsaken or attacking the Alliance unprovoked multiple times during the war with the Lich King which was clearly dishonorable.

[ChairmanKaga]

BfA should have resulted in both factions split in two based on an aggressive vs isolationist theme. I think NElf and Forsaken were positioned to take over from the central Orc v Human paradigm.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

BfA should have resulted in both factions split in two based on an aggressive vs isolationist theme. I think NElf and Forsaken were positioned to take over from the central Orc v Human paradigm.

No, the factions DO NOT need to splinter nor do the other races need to take center stage. They can have stories but stop trying to splinter the faction. There's been enough of that on Horde side as it is, lets not spread it around.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Click on thumbnails for fullsized image





Vault of the Incarnates

I have completed Vault of the Incarnates normal. Had to hop around between a dozen different PUGs before I finally got all the bosses down. I also saw Dathea heroic but didn't kill her.






Visually, the raid was meh. It's just underground rocky caverns all the way through. I guess the ice spider's blue icy room was different, but not memorable. The only vaguely interesting place was the humongous room at the end with the dragons inside the ring prisons from the second Pokemon movie.

Speaking of, if the Titans had built these Pokemon ring prisons to capture powerful dragons, why didn't the Aspects use these against Deathwing and the Black Dragonflight? Even if they weren't capable of flying and chasing Deathwing on their own, the dragons could have lured Deathwing into a trap and activated them.



Sure would have come in handy!

The boss fights I liked were the ice spider, and Dathea. I liked the ice spider fight because you are fighting her while ascending a spiral staircase, and she tries to yank you off of the staircase. The Dathea fight takes place on a circular platform (Boring!) but has you dodging the tornadoes that zip across the room, and then there is the part where you have to position yourself to get knocked off the platform to another platform to fight adds. The Raszageth fight was also sorta decent. The other boss fights were forgettable.

Voice acting. I think that's Patrick Seitz as the first boss? He sounds too much like Garrosh, but Patrick Seitz almost always sounds like Patrick Seitz no matter what character he's voicing, be it in WoW or anywhere else. The Broodkeeper's voice acting was weird. She sounded like a young woman pretending to act old. Raszageth had some good lines during her fight, particularly her maniacal "ruin, ruiiiin!" line, and her "arise and unleash your power!"

VoI's music was forgettable, a continuing trend this expansion. Guess we'll never get great raid music again like Dragon Soul or Siege of Orgrimmar or Blackrock Foundry.





Return to the Forbidden Reach



You are a soldier of the Blue Dragonflight. Why are you not reporting to Kalecgos? The death of the Blue Dragonflight's top leader does not absolve you of your responsibility to your Dragonflight There is a hierarchy you keep going down.




I don't understand. I have only done ONE quest for Damos, which was to check up on his 3 scouts, and now he's giving me more praise than most faction leaders in this game I have worked for over the... what? 15 years the WoW story takes place? It'd make more sense if Damos praised me after I had gone through a whole zone storyline with him rather than just one mundane task.

(In retrospect, random NPC questgivers probably thank me a lot, but that happens in paragraphs of unvoiced text that I forget whereas this gets a fancy voiced cutscene, which is very unusual).

I do not understand why Sarkareth killed Emberthal's people. Yes, Sarkareth dislikes the Aspects, but AFAIK Emberthal hasn't pledged allegiance to the Aspects. The Dracthyr just woke up, then saw the Primalists causing trouble, and then were invited by Wrathion and Ebyssian to go to the Horde/Alliance and ask for their aid, and then they went to the Dragon Isles and fought the Primalists. We literally have not seen Emberthal since the Waking Shores. For all Sarkareth knows, Emberthal's Dracthyr are just working with the dragons due to covenience, not out of loyalty. He could try persuading Emberthal to join him, but no, he just kills Emberthal's people for... reasons? They weren't even fighting each other before now.

They replaced Deathwing's voice actor. The new voice sounds a little less ridiculous, but I would have preferred consistency.

"You chose compassion over violence" what? The navel gazing and shouting match between two barely defined characters in the cave segment is drivle.




Too much drivel. Sanctimonious cutscenes where they are whisper talking and having subtle facial gestures. It's trying too hard to be prestige television. These moments have not been earned. Up until now, Embebrthal has had a grand total of... a minute and a half of screentime across the entire levelling experience, including the Dracthyr starting zone. The game has not endeared me to in Emberthal or has gotten me invested in... whatever is going on with him. The game has very poorly presented the Dracthyr story. I still have no idea what is going on with the villain Saraketh. In the Dracthyr starting zone, he shows up and then blurts out that he hates Neltharion and the Dragon Aspects for no reason I could decipher, and now he is trying to inspire Dracthyr by appealing to Neltharion's vision for them and wants to fulfill that. Maybe the writers have this grandiose storyline in their heads, but it's just not getting across through the game to its audience.

Wait, that's it?

Zskera vaults was okay.






Miscellaneous

I went back and finished sidequests I missed. Most of them were a snooze. The one about the kids and the baby proto drake was okay. Discovering all of these people lined up to enter this Pandaren's spa got a chuckle out of me, but it says a lot that the only sidequest people talk about was the one with the old dwarf/dragon at the Ruby Life Pools. The quality of the side quests this expac is awful.




Didn't expect to see him again. (He's one of the NPCs you adventure with through WoD's levelling campaign).

The Pokemon snap quests are okay, though it's weird you can't aim the camera up or down. The rock climbing minigame was neat, though it is strange that it is a post-game worldquest and doesn't occur during the levelling campaign.

In the Plains, centaur NPCs say that they do not recognize the Primalist's "storm" magic, and that it is "evil". No further elaboration is given. It's just generic fire/ice/earth/lightning powers, the same that shamans everywhere use, be it on Azeroth or in Outland. What makes it different? What makes it "evil"?

It's also strange for an expansion themed around the elemental powers of fire/eath/lightning/ice, we don't get any interaction with elemental spirits or new shaman lore. Even Mists of Pandaria, the monk expansion, had more shaman stuff going with the Dark Shaman and their lore.

There has ostensibly been a five year timeskip, but you certainly don't feel it. The only reminder was seeing Hemet Nessingwary being retired and driving wagon carts.

I've noticed that there was absolutely zero reference to the Cataclysm, the Legion invasion, or the literal lifeblood of the planet bursting out of the ground. These are global disasters that affected everywhere, and you hear not a peep. There should have been some indication that this happened. The dragonkin and centaurs and tuskurr should be saying "yeah, there was a big earthquake and tidal wave 10 years back. Yeah, firery green infernals rained from the sky and inflicted many casualties. Oh and this magical stones burst out of the ground". It's like the devs forgot the history of their own game. Even GW2 acknowledges these global disasters when you visit far away lands. In GW2's third expansion, End of Dragons, you travel to the newly built capital city of the southern continent, you find out that the old capital was recently destroyed when Zhaitan - the villain of the base game - awoke and caused a world wide tidal wave. You can even walk among the ruins, and fight the remnants of the Risen, Zhaitan's zombies from the base game.

Going to start working on my expansion review.

[huth]

Speaking of, if the Titans had built these Pokemon ring prisons to capture powerful dragons, why didn't the Aspects use these against Deathwing and the Black Dragonflight? Even if they weren't capable of flying and chasing Deathwing on their own, the dragons could have lured Deathwing into a trap and activated them.

When exactly should they have done that? AFAIK, they only became aware of his fall after they left the Isles. By the next time they had access to them, he was already dead.

I've noticed that there was absolutely zero reference to the Cataclysm, the Legion invasion, or the literal lifeblood of the planet bursting out of the ground. These are global disasters that affected everywhere, and you hear not a peep. There should have been some indication that this happened.

No, there actually shouldn't. The Dragon Isles were magically seperated from the world before the Sundering and only made accessible again shortly before we traveled there. They weren't merely hidden like Uldum.

[Khaza-R]

Doesn't DF have mentions of the Legion, the Jailer's neigh Cosmology Remake shit at the Heart of Eternity, etc tho?

Also, this isn't like BRF or Dragon Soul, some music is just not going to be as crazy as other pieces.

An example of underrated Raid music is the Sepulcher of the First Ones btw. That shit was PEAK!

You're solo enthusiasm for the First One and the cosmic trash storyline is so sad to witness.

[Wangming]

No, there actually shouldn't. The Dragon Isles were magically seperated from the world before the Sundering and only made accessible again shortly before we traveled there. They weren't merely hidden like Uldum.

Magically separated is probably amongst the laziest plot devices ever.
Something doesn't make sense?
It was done with special titan magic that has vaguely defined limits or characteristics. it just works.

[Skildar]

You're solo enthusiasm for the First One and the cosmic trash storyline is so sad to witness.

He is not the only one to like these story elements, this is just your claim.

[Nymrohd]

No, the factions DO NOT need to splinter nor do the other races need to take center stage. They can have stories but stop trying to splinter the faction. There's been enough of that on Horde side as it is, lets not spread it around.

While the factions absolutely should stay as they are, I could have seen War Mode be better defined in game by adding a Renown/Reputation faction on either side that contains the people who do not agree with a truce. Give them a proper space in the world and try and move all the pvp vendors and everything there.

[Wangming]

I can't believe I am saying this, but Taliesin does bring up an excellent point in his new video. According to new sources, the Titans imprisoned five Old Gods. That number is important not only because we only know four by name (G'huun not included), but because technically only three were imprisoned. Y'shaarj was squished and while his body parts were hidden, he might not qualify as imprisoned. So we might be looking at six Old Gods (plus G'huun) on Azeroth.

[Jekyll]

I can't believe I am saying this, but Taliesin does bring up an excellent point in his new video. According to new sources, the Titans imprisoned five Old Gods. That number is important not only because we only know four by name (G'huun not included), but because technically only three were imprisoned. Y'shaarj was squished and while his body parts were hidden, he might not qualify as imprisoned. So we might be looking at six Old Gods (plus G'huun) on Azeroth.

Why can't you believe that you can say that? I'm not a fan of Youtubers, but Taliesina is one of the rational and logical WoW content creators and doesn't make rage-mongering content. It's only weird if you agreed to Nazis people like the quarterpoundering.

[Soeroah]

Way I see it:

10.2: Emerald Dream/related to the green flight
10.3: "The Sands of Time" or something related to the bronze and Infinite flight, perhaps with an old god final boss (I'd rather Murozond, tbh)
10.4, I doubt we'll get this far, but if any recent expansion has a chance it'd be this one. If we do go this far, I reckon we'll see Galakrond.

11.0 I'd be surprised and disappointed if it's not a world revamp, or a new opt-in version of Azeroth that's up to date lore and gameplaywise - letting us go back to Cata version if we want, but otherwise a new Azeroth. Potentially a continent being released each patch, depends on what the story is.

[Nymrohd]

Way I see it:

10.2: Emerald Dream/related to the green flight
10.3: "The Sands of Time" or something related to the bronze and Infinite flight, perhaps with an old god final boss (I'd rather Murozond, tbh)
10.4, I doubt we'll get this far, but if any recent expansion has a chance it'd be this one. If we do go this far, I reckon we'll see Galakrond.

11.0 I'd be surprised and disappointed if it's not a world revamp, or a new opt-in version of Azeroth that's up to date lore and gameplaywise - letting us go back to Cata version if we want, but otherwise a new Azeroth. Potentially a continent being released each patch, depends on what the story is.

You want FIVE raid tiers? What are the stats gonna be at the end, 50% haste from items alone?

[Lady Atia]

You want FIVE raid tiers? What are the stats gonna be at the end, 50% haste from items alone?

Well, we will prolly get 4 raid tiers + a smaller fated season again. Also who cares about crazy stats at the end of an Expansion?

[Schwert]

Pretty crappy idea to introduce a faction with the intention of only doing nasty stuff and therefore hard limiting their story progression. What would such pigeonholing achieve? "Damn, here comes the new faction, they will surely do something bad". Not to mention that I doubt many players would want to be these bad guys. People who care about the story in general identify with their faction. Look how Hordies reacted to everything post Cata, they did not sign up for the atrocities and Warchief-turned-raidboss clown fiesta.

Can we stop pretending every single Horde player wasn't okay with that?
Almost everybody I played with back then either didn't care, or enjoyed it and played along with it.

I didn't pick Forsaken as my first race to invest into because I enjoyed being a "good guy".
People enjoy playing villains, and the factions - both of them - are allowed to do war things in a war IP.

[Varodoc]

It's like these guys here completely forgot how many Horde players online were making juvenile and childish jokes about "barbecue night elves", "crisp night elves", etc.

Horde players were 100% on board with being the villains, they only got mad once they realized that villains lose in the story and they suffer consequences.

The vast majority of Horde players back in Summer 2018 were making bad taste jokes about "barbecue elves" and don't even try to deny it because I'll pull out the posts and threads from that time.