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

[Chickat]

That's fine, but Pandaria was much better known to us than Avaloren.

I dont feel like that's true at all. We have more lore of Avaloren than Panadira. Or am i forgetting something?

[Teriz]

Oh so Playable Pandaren was our 'lore reason' for going to Pandaria 7 days before the announcement? Now that is being disingenuous.

By the time we hit MoP we knew quite well who and what the Pandaren were and what their culture was. Also Pandaren were one of the most requested playable races, so yeah part of the reason Blizzard made that expansion was to give players playable Pandaren, and a Monk class.

Funnily enough, the in game uldaman lore book on Avaloren has more substance and lore than an island expedition hand in quest saying 'Wrathion is looking for the dragon isles'

Yeah, but here's the difference; We didn't know anything about the dragon isles, but we knew a ton about the dragons that came from there. Further we had long established relationships with those characters.

Alex, Kalecgos, Wrathion, Chromie, Ebyssian, and Nozdormu picked up the slack for the isles being a huge mystery, because they weren't a mystery and we had worked and fought alongside them for several expansions by 10.0.

OK. Iridikron hates the titans. The heretics defied the titans. Iridikron goes there to rally support. There you go. But obviously you know all of this, you're trying to spin information to justify and enforce your discontent for a leaked expansion setting you just don't like.

Why would Iridikron need the heretics to rally support when he has the void version of the dragon soul and potentially an Old God working with him? What are the heretics going to do for him that he can't currently do himself? It's like Danerys in GoT rallying support from the nobles of Westeroes when she already has 3 dragons.

[Woke it Up]

Yeah but that's not how Blizzard rolls with their expansions. They're not going to push out an unknown location expansion with no major character linking us to that location. Like if you completely skipped Dragonflight you're going to have no idea what Avaloren is.

I mean if you didn't read the novel after Mop you would have nfi why we are going back in time

[Izalla]

Hate to play devil's advocate (or in this case, Teriz' advocate) but Gallywix is 100% a strong and recognizable character, alongside Gazlowe, Pozzik, and maybe some characters on the other side like Mekkatorque etc.

No idea who Pozzik is but Gallywix is important enough to have his own unique model among the goblins and was in that cinematic with Sylvanas. He is very recognizable.

I would love to see a neon cesspool grungy gritty fun time Undermine like it is depicted in Hearthstone, and I would also love to see an upgraded and populated clean Gnomeregan with shiny chrome and gussied up Mechagon assets. I just want them added in general, so I'm all for them being part of the revamp. And tinkers finally for godsakes. There's only so many times I throw together a lovely gnomish tinker looking transmog for my gnome and then transmog back to something else a day later because it completely throws off my vibe as a warlock. I want to be able to live that true gnome racial fantasy!

[Xilurm]

Doesn't have to be. I've said this a while back, but you could look at the Undermine as the WoW equivalent to Wall Market in Final Fantasy 7... and even view Gallywix as a goblin version to Don Corneo (big, fat, greedy sleazy man who runs the city and has a whole gang of thugs at his whim.)

It can lead to a lot of imagination.

I don't think an expansion can be carried by Goblins and Gnomes. Also the Wall Market is such a tiny piece of a much grander thing. I don't think anyone takes Don Corneo seriously anyway.

[Dismayxz]

Yeah my point overall was mainly that they seem to have set a higher bar for their feature trailers and I don't know that we would ever see them plunk in an untextured asset or borderline empty zone footage these days. They want to make them more "alive" and more of a spectacle than the pre-WoD days.

Yeah, that's a point I can understand, but also wasn't exactly what I was argueing against. It was an example of where the Quality of a couple of shots clearly didn't matter, despite the ongoing improvement of the quality of the formula, right? They were already 'past' the years of developing the game where something like this would've probably been more likely to happen or get the greenlight. So it was more to again argue the point that I honestly don't expect it to be harmful outside of a minority of viewpoints towards Blizzard, IF there were an unprecedented amount of reusing going on with the real deal, so long as the final product looks what it's supposed and expected to look like, it probably wouldn't negatively impact the overall reception. There can't be an inherent hard rule to certain degrees, because eventually things will adapt to the requirements to get the product to where they want it to be. And given all the things we have discussed over the course of the Thread, that do seem possible, I wouldn't be surprised if they do a lot more reusing, cut Art Team production load further, to meet a goal we haven't quite seen disclosed yet, perhaps. And it can still be a spectable overview/preview with that sort of thing going on, so long as the combination of assets works.

[Imotbh]

If we suppose it's real:

If this leak is real, why was there no titan or Khaz Algaran architecture shown?

Because it's 4 screenshots out of a trailer. Watch the Legion features trailer and you'll see plenty of different places too. Same for other expansions.

Why only random landscapes you can find in existing random zones?

See above. Plus it's Azeroth, not another planet and on Azeroth there are a bunch of zones looking alike granted they are similar biomes. A bit like Earth actually, crazy.

Why is the only artificial structures we see repurposed assets already in the game?

Are you actually playing the game? Or reading other posts here? This conversation about reused assets is getting silly.

I have no reason why we would go to Avaloren. None is given in the lore. Why would we concern ourselves with Odyn's heretics or some lost green dragon brood when we have a crazed Primal dragon with a void artifact hell bent on ripping the world soul away from the titans?

You give the reasons yourself. Let's imagine this "crazed Primal dragon with a void artifact" went through a portal and got to Avaloren for a purpose. Wouldn't it be insane if we followed him in order to stop him "ripping the world soul away from the titans"? We don't know the details for sure, but...

Legion => BfA : we learned about Azerite as we learned about BfA.
BfA => SL : we learned about Sylvanas going specifically to the SL when we learned about the expansion too.

There are clues about Iridikron right now and those are no different than what we had in the past. What we actually know for sure is that Blizz said DF and future expansions would be tied into a big narrative arc rather than 1 expansion = 1 story. Common sense tells me Iridikron will be featured in 11.0 and we'll learn how/why at Blizzcon and/or in 10.2 ending.

It's also the reason the main characters for 11.0 will most likely be the Aspects still, Iridikron still, Tyr still and you add Thrall + Azshara + Xal + whatever we'll learn about.

[Izalla]

Imagine of they come out abd show 10.3 plus 2024 roadmap. And announce the next expansion but say it won't be ready till 2025. So they are packing DF with a 10.3 and 10.4 to hold us. Then they show a Broll of in progress Azeroth remake and the logo 2025.

Oh my god I spent way too long wondering how Broll Bearmantle is tied to the revamp before realising what you meant.

[bruxx]

Playable Pandaren.

We got to the continent by accident, it wasn't some planned expedition for our new pandaren friends. We can really get to anywhere in the multiverse without having a prior reason as a reaction to whatever random event triggers everything

[Teriz]

Before mop, pandaria was just a name. There were no emperor shaohao, no mogu, cloud serpents, thunder king, ra den. Pandaria was no different than tell abim in terms of how much established lore there was.

Avaloren at least has books that give us a taste of what it could possibly be and who lives there

Well that's false. Pandaria was further fleshed out in the TTRPGs, CCGs and other books that Blizzard published in the 8 years between WC3 and MoP. Chen also appeared multiple times in WoW and related media becoming a franchise character.

By the time we got to Mists of Pandaira, it was rather obvious we were going to an Asian inspired continent with peaceful Pandarens and brewmasters. Everything else was padding to make things more interesting.

- - - Updated - - -

We got to the continent by accident, it wasn't some planned expedition for our new pandaren friends. We can really get to anywhere in the multiverse without having a prior reason as a reaction to whatever random event triggers everything

It was planned by Blizzard.

[Izalla]

It is worth mentioning that because of the adult version of the Briarhorn Hatchling was featured, the Briarhorn hatchling is sold from the Time Rift vendor who sells Titan related items from the Ulderoth timeline. Ulderoth being a timeline where the Titans were able to get rid of all forms of corruption and ruled Azeroth with an iron fist of Order and Life.

Soridormi did say stuff that we might learn more about this timeline.


We don't know much about Avaloren, but the bottom picture with the Briarhorn could be a possible location in which Eonar and Elune created the tree before Aman'thul pulled it.

That's just my deduction on it.

Using that pet and an adult version is a really friggin clever touch that is totally something Blizz would do.

[Teriz]

I mean if you didn't read the novel after Mop you would have nfi why we are going back in time

Eh, it was rather easy to figure out just by reading the introduction to WoD. If you never played MoP, you still knew what Draenor was, and you knew about the Orcs drinking the demon blood. That's rather classic warcraft lore.

[Dismayxz]

No idea who Pozzik is but Gallywix is important enough to have his own unique model among the goblins and was in that cinematic with Sylvanas. He is very recognizable.

I would love to see a neon cesspool grungy gritty fun time Undermine like it is depicted in Hearthstone, and I would also love to see an upgraded and populated clean Gnomeregan with shiny chrome and gussied up Mechagon assets. I just want them added in general, so I'm all for them being part of the revamp. And tinkers finally for godsakes. There's only so many times I throw together a lovely gnomish tinker looking transmog for my gnome and then transmog back to something else a day later because it completely throws off my vibe as a warlock. I want to be able to live that true gnome racial fantasy!

Pretty sure Pozzik is the guy from the Thousand Needles race track? I wouldn't exactly say he's a key figure of Goblins or someone most people would remember. He was in the Faction Assaults, and I think the Goblin Heritage Quest? So a lot of very minor appearances, you wouldn't necessarily remember save for maybe the Heritage thing.

[bruxx]

It was planned by Blizzard.

Haha, I didn't think the devs accidentally developped the place. I thought we were discussing in universe reasons.

[Kiivar86]

Pretty sure Pozzik is the guy from the Thousand Needles race track? I wouldn't exactly say he's a key figure of Goblins or someone most people would remember. He was in the Faction Assaults, and I think the Goblin Heritage Quest? So a lot of very minor appearances, you wouldn't necessarily remember save for maybe the Heritage thing.

Yeah he's also apparently some legendary minion in Hearthstone. But yeah, I had no idea who Pozzik was. You'd be better off referring to Revilgaz, Noggenfogger, or Mida for more well known goblins.

[Woggmer]

You made up that third one didn't you.

Honestly I just don't think Goblins or Gnomes have the draw to carry an expac. If they wanted to do a underground expansion, they need to start using these characters asap to build them up to the players. I'm sure if announced today a lot of people will say Gazwho?

It's not hard to re-introduce old characters in a new light... Remember, Khadgar and even Nathanos used to look extremely different before they complete make-overs in WoD and Legion.

Even if someone goes "Who the fuck is Noggenfogger?" Blizz can just as easily re-introduce the character with a new model and everything if they wanted to.

Heck, they gave us completely new characters in DF with Toddy and Naleidea.

[Zankai27]

Guys stop engaging Teriz he's basically clickbait content.

My take is I think it's real, but you can find 4 stills of re-used models in every features trailer. It's 4 stills that might even be a split second or less in an actual trailer.

And no they aren't "overstuffed with re-used assets" or whatever copium people are bringing.

I swear every fucking time the mental gymnastics get worse

[Mecheon]

Man this thread moved like wildfire last night, huh?

I hope not. That was the mistake Cataclysm made. A world revamp should utilize the revamped zones.

I argue otherwise: The new zones made Cata work. They were places in Azeroth we'd seen from a distance, like Hyjal, Grim Batol and Uldum, places that you knew about but just couldn't visit, and Cata finally made them able to be visited

Remember, Cata just gave you access to those new zones right away in the pre-patch. So if I can just explore the new, revamped zones.... Why should I buy the expansion? Because 'Access to these new zones' was what you got with buying Cata. Take away the new zones and there is no reason to buy it, because you can already access everything


Mind, I do find the "Maybe there's a revamp or something going on so this new zone uses limited stuff" as both an interesting idea and a showing of why world revamp stuff really fails to sell to a wider audience who aren't already committed to the world.

[Catastrophy349]

I'm genuinely curious: Are people that angry with the "leak" that they are creating "head canon" to dismiss it? OR, do people just genuinely not believe it is "real?"

[Teriz]

If we suppose it's real:



Because it's 4 screenshots out of a trailer. Watch the Legion features trailer and you'll see plenty of different places too. Same for other expansions.

From Legion's zone preview;



Where's the equivalent in those 4 screenshots? Are we to believe that there are no buildings in Khaz Algar?