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

[Harbour]

That reminds me of when everyone was trying to theorize that Iridikron made a bargain with the light

I still do. If id was the writer and had existing conditions (Iridikron(Light) as an opposition to Neltharion(Void), Light and Void are the last unexplored themes, Iridikron name is ligh related, his visuals looks similar to Light ones) id surely make a twist with Iridikron working with the Light (he gets power and de-ordering of his bretheren, Light gets an open gates to Azeroth to clean all the filth).
Still waiting for this to happen in 11.0.

[Chickat]

They are going to announce that Blizzcon is canceled due to negative hype.

They realize we dont like Avaloren. The leaked images. So they are cancelling blizzcon and we will have a 30 month content draught.

[Rathwell]

I dont claim to speak for anyone but myself, but I was one of the only MoP champions when it was current. I loved it grom start to finish. It aside from the content draught at the end, was a literal Masterpiece in my view. I got a lot of shit for liking it back in the day too.

I'm with you there. Until Cataclysm, I had mained just one character since WoW launched, it wasn't until Cata's alt friendly leveling that my alts started popping up, and it wasnt until MoP that the specs felt like they "peaked". Literally all classes I've played felt the best, gameplay-wise, in Mists of Pandaria and it really encouraged me to play several characters as "mains"

MoP was just fantastic from both storytelling point of view and gameplay. I mean, I don't remember disliking any spec back then. Probably the most fun I've had in WoW to date.

[Pheraz]

Sure. But let's use that as an example:



Here is a press kit image.

"Woah, that's just a reskinned Draenei!" Sure, I guess. We can put aside that this is a completely different order of modification from the supposed leak's stone dwarf or direhorn reskin, but sure. It's just a Draenei.

So let's ignore that Draenei reskin altogether, and the reskinned grub. What do you have?

-Brand new faerie mobs right there.
-Brand new plant-pod doodads.
-Brand new swirly trees
-Brand new glow bushes
-brand new frond plants

This is my issue. That is what appears to be missing here. You can pause the DF or BfA feature trailers at any frame and there is some new architecture, or new doodads, or new creature, or new and interesting trees visible. Here, even if we assume these are "bad" pictures taken from a much better trailer, we have four different scenes with seemingly little to nothing new.

Agreed. I feel the same
The only justification would be that they really lowered their quality standards

[Bossmonkey]

Thunder King eas created and killed within 6 months of his coming into the game.

Thunder King IMO is a top 10 Warcraft villain.

Thats why I'm glad Blizz has better stated plan of letting stories breathe beyond the confines of their expansion, makes stories flow and evolve better over time vs in and done in 3 patches before going to next new world threatening event

[flan1337]

Sure. But let's use that as an example:



Here is a press kit image.

"Woah, that's just a reskinned Draenei!" Sure, I guess. We can put aside that this is a completely different order of modification from the supposed leak's stone dwarf or direhorn reskin, but sure. It's just a Draenei.

So let's ignore that Draenei reskin altogether, and the reskinned grub. What do you have?

-Brand new faerie mobs right there.
-Brand new plant-pod doodads.
-Brand new swirly trees
-Brand new glow bushes
-brand new frond plants

This is my issue. That is what appears to be missing here. You can pause the DF or BfA feature trailers at any frame and there is some new architecture, or new doodads, or new creature, or new and interesting trees visible. Here, even if we assume these are "bad" pictures taken from a much better trailer, we have four different scenes with seemingly little to nothing new.

totally agree now that people point out the over used assets are a big red flag. I will say however if blizzard was to do a world revamp reusing assets would cut down on the work but that would mean the 3 pictures below the first are zone revamp which idk I believe that.

[PotHockets]

I dont claim to speak for anyone but myself, but I was one of the only MoP champions when it was current. I loved it grom start to finish. It aside from the content draught at the end, was a literal Masterpiece in my view. I got a lot of shit for liking it back in the day too.

There are dozens of us. MoP has been from the announcement till WoD launch my favorite expansion. Every aspect of it in every way I loved. It probably helped that I was already a huge fan of Chen because DotA though. But my biggest wish before then since launch was eventually getting to be a pandaren brewmaster and god it was a ride.

[Rathwell]

Man, I wish my fake leak was real now

Hey, now. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. It's not fake as long as you believe it. There's still a chance.

[milkmustache]

The one from Legion would still be muh better quality, even scaled up to that size, so I imagine that one could have been used if you need something that looks like the Wildhammer one, but only from a distance.

Doing a quick eyetest comparison, the Legion one has a taller head at more of a downward angle. If any, the leak uses the Aerie Peak one.

Another thing that I noticed is the statue even further behind that, seemingly of a dwarf weilding an axe and a hammer, with the hammer raised to the sky. It's a strange statue to include; the dwarf creature in the foreground has these crystalized extensions to it's hands, something the statue is missing.

[Chickat]

I'm with you there. Until Cataclysm, I had mained just one character since WoW launched, it wasn't until Cata's alt friendly leveling that my alts started popping up, and it wasnt until MoP that the specs felt like they "peaked". Literally all classes I've played felt the best, gameplay-wise, in Mists of Pandaria and it really encouraged me to play several characters as "mains"

MoP was just fantastic from both storytelling point of view and gameplay. I mean, I don't remember disliking any spec back then. Probably the most fun I've had in WoW to date.

MoP was also pretty alt friendly by the later patches with the legendary quest line catch up and heroic scenarios/timeless isle catching you up enough for SoO flex mode. Flex SoO pugs were so fun.

[Dismayxz]

What you're saying is that statues we find in Gilneas or Kul Tiras should look exactly like the ones we see in Stormwind. The earthen of Khaz Algar came to be "vast swathes of time and distance" from the dwarves of Khaz Modan. It's one thing that they share similarities between their two cultures. It's another thing that their sculptors just had the exact same idea, down to the detail of what their sculptures should look like.

I'm not saying they should, I'm just saying I won't debunk it based on this flimsy ass argument, when the reality is, anything Blizzard wants, goes and we completely lack most of the necessary context to understand most of what a real Leak would entail, as usual. I'm keeping my mind open to it being real, by not taking the amount of reused assets without more context as an invitation to fully doubt the idea. I couldn't care any LESS if the whole damn Zone was reused, most people I know and I myself, could not give more of a singular FUCK. If it means the thing comes quicker, the features are good, it could not be less important that the structures or fucking butterflies look "slightly" better, when a lot of people still play this Game on veritable Toasters, to where every Social Raid I join, some other rando gets glitchy Graphics on the weirdest shit possible. It could be a 10.3, but most 'trends' for final patches go against that, but you don't see me out here going "10.3 won't happen because Augment Runes are coming and an AOTC Mount too!" - I don't take these ongoing trends as set-in-stone, when it suits the occassion, the chance is higher that Blizzard can and WILL deviate. If there's a surprise 10.3 and this is it and that's why so much is reused, great! Win in my book. If it is 11.0 and it heavily reuses assets like that? Let people seethe and cope all they want, I guarantee you plenty of people could probably not care less, if the Expansion's core loop does the trick and the impact on the Content cadence is big enough.

Every single Leak, we debunk these things on the spot, made up and created entirely by biased views and lack of information, that we simply won't have till the day of. So no, I won't immediately argue against any of the reused assets, when there is even the slightest chance that they may actually have a valid reason for doing things this way, this time around, for better or worse, really. And if it isn't, oh well. Good fake, whatever the real deal will be, great. I just don't see the point of citing headcanons with probably 10% of the actual information, to then go and debunk everything based on said headcanon and bucket list. Or irrealistic reading into words spoken, like Team Revamp immediately going "Revamp, Revamp, Revamp", just after Ion just brushed on the topic that it's very likely with no notion whatsoever that says it'll happen sooner rather than later. I'd very much prefer to just go with the flow. It has a webpage, a text leak and some cohesion in how it's done. It's either real and it'll all make sense on the Announcement, as usual, or it'll be fake and I won't have been on Team "Bash it till it ain't breathin' no more", when the reality is more work probably went into that to try and fool us and make things fun, than into anything previously done.

[Cheezits]

I could only rationalize empty zones with reused assets if it was because a world revamp took up most of the art team time, and/or a zones are empty because you are supposed to build settlements on them (aka the Frontiers) tag from the files.

[Chickat]

There are dozens of us. MoP has been from the announcement till WoD launch my favorite expansion. Every aspect of it in every way I loved. It probably helped that I was already a huge fan of Chen because DotA though. But my biggest wish before then since launch was eventually getting to be a pandaren brewmaster and god it was a ride.

The culture,zen atmosphere and general high bar for storytelling was phenomenal. There was a ton to do at launch with all the dailies. I know some hate that but to this day i still enjoy doing dailies.

[Sondrelk]

totally agree now that people point out the over used assets are a big red flag. I will say however if blizzard was to do a world revamp reusing assets would cut down on the work but that would mean the 3 pictures below the first are zone revamp which idk I believe that.

Even a revamp is likely to focus on the important stuff. Updated Loch Modan, or a more impressive entrance to Silvermoon.
As was pointed out a while back, even Cataclysm milked the giant fissure in Barrens for all it was worth. It didn't just focus on random shot of Westfall having slightly different enemies.

[Rathwell]

MoP was also pretty alt friendly by the later patches with the legendary quest line catch up and heroic scenarios/timeless isle catching you up enough for SoO flex mode. Flex SoO pugs were so fun.

Absolutely! I didn't mean to imply MoP wasn't alt friendly, I just meant that Cataclysm was the first expansion that became truly alt friendly (from memory, anyhow). Leveling alts was quite the chore in Vanilla and TBC, and although it was a little nicer in WotLK it wasn't until later that the idea of having a menagerie of characters started being a thing. So, Cataclysm was what got me started on having a bunch of characters, but MoP is what made them all fun to play

I loved the hell out of Flex SoO!

[ro9ue]

On the other hand, I'm not sure why a leaker would take the time to show something this, I dunno, pedestrian. A dwarf, a harpy, a rock dino, and zones that don't look unique in any particular way. The place isn't supposed to be Outland or Shadowlands level of weird but at least fake some landmark or whatever.

Occam's razor to me says they're a bit more likely to be real than not due to the effort involved in making it vs the effort involved in leaking it.

The webpage leaks however don't help its case. Again if you can get the webpage why not just reveal the name of the xpack and not just the places that are Avaloren and Khaz Algar, the two names we happen to actually know?

Because it's easier to execute something with no unique designs.

[Demonly]

@ercarp and I were discussing..

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

Potentially a machinima with a flag added to this building?

[Hitei]

totally agree now that people point out the over used assets are a big red flag. I will say however if blizzard was to do a world revamp reusing assets would cut down on the work but that would mean the 3 pictures below the first are zone revamp which idk I believe that.

I guess. But getting a new continent that is just made up of largely old assets would be really disappointing, and I think it borders on retreading their acknowledged split focus mistake from Cataclysm.

[Chickat]

It's also an expansion that was definitely made much better by the end.
Players who got into it in the final patch could see MoP as the expansion with challenge dungeons, Isle of Thunder, Timeless Isle, and Siege of Orgrimmar. Not the initial MoP with dailies unlocked by other dailies. All of which you were limited in being able to do by the daily hard cap.

MoP launch content was not perfect but still very fun imo. Dont get me started on the tillers,anglers, and cloud serpent reps.

MoP was so good that its the expansion that got me into the lore of WoW for the first time. Before that i didn't care.

[Hitei]

@ercarp and I were discussing..

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

Potentially a machinima with a flag added to this building?

Pretty sure it's something flying in the background.