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

[Wangming]

AP grind returns and is solely awarded from the surfing mini game trick scores.

You gather Archipelago Points. or Aloha Points.

- - - Updated - - -

Is Avaloren in this map? Or are we truly looking at an entirely new continent?

- map - ]

The idea is that Avaloren was never part of ancient Kalimdor. It is a completely new landmass with unique flora fauna and culture that....oh wait.

[Lahis]

Is Avaloren in this map? Or are we truly looking at an entirely new continent?

That map has modern Kalimdor, EK, Pandaria and Northrend at its edges. Most of the lands between those edges were destroyed in the sundering, leaving some islands th we have today behind.

Dragon Isles nor anything else beyond the Ancient Kalimdor has not been portrayed in the Chronicle maps.

[KurtMash]

Is Avaloren in this map? Or are we truly looking at an entirely new continent?

Entirely new continent that Titans don't want to talk about.

[FuujCraft]

Nice bait. Care to show us the picture of what is shown with the New Continent: Pandaria sign?

Shows off a lot more character than the "leaked" image

[caliphax]

And dragon Isles are rather north. Yet the northernmost zone is the most tropical, and the southernmost zone has has the deciduous forest and snow and permafrost. And then the high mountains little bot north from the ice have no snow or ice anywhere.


Yeah the geography of Dragon Isles make no sense, and I doubt they would care about it much more in Avaloren.

My thought was it was so tropical in the northern parts because of the volcanic activity? IDK i'm not a geologist or anything.

[Lahis]

Shows off a lot more character than the "leaked" image

Ironically though, that is not even Pandaria.

[micwini]

Shows off a lot more character than the "leaked" image

The funny thing is: That picture is not even on Pandaria. It is the starter zone for panda's :P

But yeah, great point:
All screencaps of "new continent/world" from all feature trailers have some WOW factor to them: Architecture, completely new landscape, etc.
This leak doesn't have that. But that also doesn't immediately mean that it is fake. The SL feature trailer also left lots to be desired.

[Nyel]

The idea is that Avaloren was never part of ancient Kalimdor. It is a completely new landmass with unique flora fauna and culture that....oh wait.

This is something they will never achieve simply because they will reuse models anyway and the ratio will most likely be 1:9 newld. Elder Scrolls Online had the same issue where we venture to new lands yet there live the exact same animals as everywhere else because they did not create new models.

[FuujCraft]

Ironically though, that is not even Pandaria.

Yeah true Never thought about that tbh ;D Still I think it really shows off that Pandaria was a Continent with a lot of character. I feel that really lacks in new zones. They all look quite samey and forgetable. SUre there are iconic places but they still lack character. And the leaked images all lack character imo. SO they might perfctly fit Blizzard modern idea of a continent.

[Wangming]

Shows off a lot more character than the "leaked" image

My point exactly, thank you.

The Avaloren title card shows....a foggy pine forest? Cool.

This one shows a giant fuckoff pagoda.

bUt blIZzarD reUseS AsSetS CAusE iT ISn'T rEaDy

This was 12 years ago.

[KurtMash]

My thought was it was so tropical in the northern parts because of the volcanic activity? IDK i'm not a geologist or anything.

Last I heard, Iceland was not a tropical paradise.

So yeah, I feel like Blizz just gave up on making the geography at least somewhat believable, which makes me sad

[Nymrohd]

Is Avaloren in this map? Or are we truly looking at an entirely new continent?

For what it's worth, the chronicle explicitly tells us that Kalimdor is just one of the continents.

[caliphax]

Last I heard, Iceland was not a tropical paradise.

So yeah, I feel like Blizz just gave up on making the geography at least somewhat believable, which makes me sad

Magic then, weird Dragony magic.

[Wangming]

This is something they will never achieve simply because they will reuse models anyway and the ratio will most likely be 1:9 newld. Elder Scrolls Online had the same issue where we venture to new lands yet there live the exact same animals as everywhere else because they did not create new models.

True. Granted, we are still in Tamriel. We have not yet gotten an Akavir expansion. Which I really want. Please!!

[Azalar]

this is basically the map of Zelda Breath of the Wild... with the lake being the hard-to-traverse-castle.
And there it works too...

Can you give me 3 reasons why this would be terrible from a level-design perspective?

Thematically yes, but Zelda maps aren't perfectly symmetrical, have a varied arrangement of terrain and aren't really a color wheel.

The main issue with that AI map is its shape and navigation. Having areas arranged in a circle is troublesome and even if it looks simple, it causes disorientation issues. Many people resorted to a compass weak aura or addon to navigate through Oribos because it was one hell of a mess.

Another issue is that their shapes are circular sectors. This kills any real variance in the zones, because you already know beforehand how the area is going to be like geographically when you're exploring. Ideally when you explore a new land, you want to cause players to find new stuff, new shapes, new terrain... not just some mountains in a self-contained space.

Zone boundaries are very clearcut (this is not only an issue in this map, but in whole WoW because of the theme park zones yada yada), even more so than in modern WoW. they tried to fix that in DF and they did it quite well imo.

But please don't get me wrong! If that particular shape is justified it can work, but it is quite a design challenge to make it do so, so more than often than not it's best to just avoid it. Another example, Zereth Mortis worked fairly better than Oribos. Yes, it was still a circle and had different biomes in each axis, but navigation was much better in between them and it didn't feel as such.

[Nymrohd]

Shows off a lot more character than the "leaked" image

The hardest thing to create a proper model off is a building. It's just vastly more involved than making a few custom rocks (which could simply be existing rock models that are somewhat manipulated) or through the right sfx on top of existing models.

- - - Updated - - -

This is something they will never achieve simply because they will reuse models anyway and the ratio will most likely be 1:9 newld. Elder Scrolls Online had the same issue where we venture to new lands yet there live the exact same animals as everywhere else because they did not create new models.

ESO is just cheap with new assets period. Which makes sense given how much time is spent creating assets for sale (housing) so they don't have the dev time for actual creatures. I'll say this, Blizzard is not at all lazy in that regard. The only time I felt they truly dropped the ball was Nightborne.

[Jaggler]

Last I heard, Iceland was not a tropical paradise.

So yeah, I feel like Blizz just gave up on making the geography at least somewhat believable, which makes me sad

Geography and Climate never made sense in WoW to begin with, tbh.

[FuujCraft]

Just for reference, these are shorts of the more recent announcement trailers. They look nothing like the leaked ones.

[Shadowferal]

Shows off a lot more character than the "leaked" image

Kinda makes me "homesick."

[Raetary]

Last I heard, Iceland was not a tropical paradise.

So yeah, I feel like Blizz just gave up on making the geography at least somewhat believable, which makes me sad

Wows geography has never been believable.
It was always vastly different biomes smooshed together.

Sometimes justified by magic, other times we get stuff like Stranglethorn directly bordering on Elwynn.