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

[Makabreska]

Does he know something special?
https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1644484158574542849

No, he is speculating. Does not require a galactic brain to speculate that, knowing DF roadmap and the current cadence of patch release.

[Sondrelk]

Does he know something special?
https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1644484158574542849

No. He is guessing based on how the first major patch of DF rolled out. Seems likely that future patches will follow a similar cadence, which would mean 10.1.5 will show up soon after 10.1 comes out in a couple weeks.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

This is very true concerning their physical appearance. If you were to ask Samwise Didier to draw centaurs you would never end up with this generic and flavourless creature. His cartoon style shouldn't be the default but there is character in his work that is definitely lacking in a lot of art for this expansion.

It doesn’t have his tag so it could have been one of the other artist but the bigger centaurs really aren’t that far of the original concept art for the classic ones though static models are obviously less expressive now that they animate faces.

[Gimlix]

I for one absolutely LOVE this set. It's giving me mousquetaire with a bard flair! As for any conquistador-inspired faction... I believe it would have to be an antagonist, and it would fit the Scarlet Crusade even better. Maybe Avaloren has been shored/invaded by the Scarlet Crusade as previously discussed on this thread and when the Horde and Alliance find out, they go help the locals... only to discover there's more to it. *laughs in Old God corruption*



I cannot tell you how much of an absolute win that hat is. I. LOVE. IT.

Check the back of this set, it's already clipping through by default with the chest, which is odd for a Cash Shop set.

[huth]

No, he is speculating. Does not require a galactic brain to speculate that, knowing DF roadmap and the current cadence of patch release.

This strikes me as the "if it rains, it might get wet" kind of prediction. Not exactly a big leap there.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

These centaur models have the same problem as the big drakonid npcs or dracthyr, new furbolgs, they look like "im soo happy to be here, im so nice!".

It's like they're designing some of this new stuff to be pretty/clean but also more generic, i guess that's partially the fault of probably new faces in the art designing team.

Got curious so I looked in the dragon flight concept art book, the big centaur and drakonid were done by Jon McConnell, with blizzard from WC3, small centaur were done by christopher chang, with blizzard since 2009, no real concept art on furbolgs in the book so no clew who did them.

So the only real “new” artist in question would be the one who did dracthyr who I think joined in BFA.

[Makabreska]

And you thought this blog post belonged in the patch/11.0 speculation thread because...?

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Chromatus would make a ton of sense

10/10 contribution.

10.1.5 on PTR soon would be big, since we are supposed to get a mega-dungeon there. So more story progression as well.

[Nymrohd]

Does he know something special?
https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1644484158574542849

They added 10.1 Ptr before 10.0.7 was up. Makes sense they would do the same for 10.1.5 and so forth. They went into the trouble of supporting two PTRs at the same time for a reason.

[Marlamin]

Does he know something special?
https://twitter.com/MrGMYT/status/1644484158574542849

Just going off Blizz's new cadence as well as what we can see in monitoring various things like Beta servers being back up and bumped up to 10.0.7 which might be them preparing for the next PTR phase and getting rid of the weird construction they have now with a mainline PTR (10.0.7 PTR) being on the Classic PTR just so they can have 2 simultaneous PTRs.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Check the back of this set, it's already clipping through by default with the chest, which is odd for a Cash Shop set.

That's because I'm pretty sure it was a trading post set that Blizzard decided to port to the cash shop for some reason.

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Got curious so I looked in the dragon flight concept art book, the big centaur and drakonid were done by Jon McConnell, with blizzard from WC3, small centaur were done by christopher chang, with blizzard since 2009, no real concept art on furbolgs in the book so no clew who did them.

So the only real “new” artist in question would be the one who did dracthyr who I think joined in BFA.

That is a little surprising, but I can see the DNA there being the same. At the very least, it certainly looks far more like a problem with direction and overall art design than a change in artists on that front. Re: the Dracthyr artist, she goofed pretty significantly with those, but she can evidently do decent work otherwise, given she also made the Worgen model. In spite of my derogatory comments about the furry influences in her work (which I could also see in the Worgen model, albeit not to an obtrusive degree), she's not a bad artist overall. I'm not sure if it was poor direction or the lack of a preexisting design to work off of, but this is evidently not reflective of the usual quality of her work.

[Skildar]

That's because I'm pretty sure it was a trading post set that Blizzard decided to port to the cash shop for some reason.

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That is a little surprising, but I can see the DNA there being the same. At the very least, it certainly looks far more like a problem with direction and overall art design than a change in artists on that front. Re: the Dracthyr artist, she goofed pretty significantly with those, but she can evidently do decent work otherwise, given she also made the Worgen model. In spite of my derogatory comments about the furry influences in her work (which I could also see in the Worgen model, albeit not to an obtrusive degree), she's not a bad artist overall. I'm not sure if it was poor direction or the lack of a preexisting design to work off of, but this is evidently not reflective of the usual quality of her work.

The complaint I have with Dracthyrs is their posture, this is something very similar to the draenei, strong, proud, straight. There is a valley between this and feral like a worgen. I wish they would have found one I feel more in line with a dragon mage

[guro-tchai]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Azshara is an avatar of Azeroth, a splinter of her essence born into a mortal* shell. Maybe an attempt to to learn more about the mortal races, maybe a kind of backup made as the world soul sensed the coming invasion of the Legion - which then ironically happened mostly because of Azshara.
Being born with an innate ability to wield magic without issue, literally a messianic offspring of this world's equivalent of 'God', but anaware of it - that certainly could lead to having... a high opinion of yourself, to put it mildly. Azshara considered only Sargeras to be worthy to become her mate, and she might not have been that wrong...

love that idea actually. if Azeroth is also Elune, who needed a shell to recover after her defeat, she then had a dissociative disorder and materialized as Azshara, then it would be even funnier. explains Azshara's worship in the empire and in a weird way confirms the Elune-Old God rofl theory

hey, they redeemed Sylvanas, why not tentacle mommy?

[Nymrohd]

That is a little surprising, but I can see the DNA there being the same. At the very least, it certainly looks far more like a problem with direction and overall art design than a change in artists on that front. Re: the Dracthyr artist, she goofed pretty significantly with those, but she can evidently do decent work otherwise, given she also made the Worgen model. In spite of my derogatory comments about the furry influences in her work (which I could also see in the Worgen model, albeit not to an obtrusive degree), she's not a bad artist overall. I'm not sure if it was poor direction or the lack of a preexisting design to work off of, but this is evidently not reflective of the usual quality of her work.

Yup, artists don't get to do whatever they want on a project like WoW, they work on what the art direction shows and it should never advance so far before showing work that they cannot just scrap it if it doesn't meet the overarching aesthetic the art director was aiming for. It would be interesting to see how close the end product is to the concept art in the case of the Maruuk if anyone can find it.

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The complaint I have with Dracthyrs is their posture, this is something very similar to the draenei, strong, proud, straight. There is a valley between this and feral like a worgen. I wish they would have found one I feel more in line with a dragon mage

I do think they'd work better if they looked more regal.

[huth]

love that idea actually. if Azeroth is also Elune, who needed a shell to recover after her defeat, she then had a dissociative disorder and materialized as Azshara, then it would be even funnier. explains Azshara's worship in the empire and in a weird way confirms the Elune-Old God rofl theory

hey, they redeemed Sylvanas, why not tentacle mommy?

Given that Elune still exists as an independent being in a different plane, i find that unlikely at best.

[loras]

We already did mongols with the Yaungol so the Maruuk felt redundant.

The Mongols were but one of many hordes.
Hordes have reached everywhere from manchuria in the east to hungary and finland in the west, reaching south as far as pakistan, india and vietnam, and bringing the golden era of islam to a brutal end.

One might as well argue that yaungol were redundant because we already have Thrall's Horde in warcraft.

It's a bit like confusing "white" (or "black") for a singular race or culture; the steppe peoples were many and quite pluriform.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

It would be interesting to see how close the end product is to the concept art in the case of the Maruuk if anyone can find it.

I don't think like any of them are online so here some crappy pictures from my crappy phone while I have the book out.

https://pasteboard.co/KlKIQjE1br3d.png
https://pasteboard.co/Lb74tXYZUxjo.png
https://pasteboard.co/Xlto5SgwXylQ.png
https://pasteboard.co/EefqQ9bh2bms.png

[Nymrohd]

I don't think like any of them are online so here some crappy pictures from my crappy phone while I have the book out.

https://pasteboard.co/KlKIQjE1br3d.png
https://pasteboard.co/Lb74tXYZUxjo.png
https://pasteboard.co/Xlto5SgwXylQ.png
https://pasteboard.co/EefqQ9bh2bms.png

Yeah those look far closer to the original WoW centaur; more angular faces in particular and ofc quite more grimy

Yup went in game to check it out. The women have very clean faces and they miss the pronounced eyebrows. Maybe not clean, just smooth, that glossy smooth from poorly textured 3D animation. Also most of them miss the resting bitch face. I don't know why the concept art doesn't have the characteristic face masks that the Desolace centaur had though. The men are also a bit too smiley. There are a few that have a very different face which is much more true to the original (Balakhar's face which is used by several others)

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I don't think like any of them are online so here some crappy pictures from my crappy phone while I have the book out.

https://pasteboard.co/KlKIQjE1br3d.png
https://pasteboard.co/Lb74tXYZUxjo.png
https://pasteboard.co/Xlto5SgwXylQ.png
https://pasteboard.co/EefqQ9bh2bms.png

Seems to be a trend. The concept art for Dracthyr also looks much better than the product we got. Another casualty of Dragonflight's terrible art direction, I suppose.

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love that idea actually. if Azeroth is also Elune, who needed a shell to recover after her defeat, she then had a dissociative disorder and materialized as Azshara, then it would be even funnier. explains Azshara's worship in the empire and in a weird way confirms the Elune-Old God rofl theory

hey, they redeemed Sylvanas, why not tentacle mommy?

As I've asserted fairly ardently, I dislike the idea of Azshara getting Kerrigan'd after such a thing happened to Sylvanas. It was already fairly insufferable with her, but it was at least tolerable since Sylvanas hasn't been tolerable since MoP. Conversely, lobbing Azshara in the Kerrigan bin is far worse because she's a remotely enjoyable villain who has the potential to make something decent of herself.

[Nymrohd]

Btw completely irrelevant but I just found a "stay a while and listen" in Lunedane between Tyrande and Ysera that I had not noticed before (which obviously was there since launch). And it has them talk about the new homeland while staring forward, right towards that empty circular area west of Ohn'ahran Plains.

Likely place for 10.2. I was thinking an Emerald Dream zone but what if they just move part of the Dream with the new seed into that area. It is MASSIVE. And those mountains in the islands forming a ring are so damn tall so they are perfect for dragonriding.

[Dracullus]

They added 10.1 Ptr before 10.0.7 was up. Makes sense they would do the same for 10.1.5 and so forth. They went into the trouble of supporting two PTRs at the same time for a reason.

How it makes sense for future PTRs? Launch of PTR is just their intended release day minus days they estimate for testing. 10.1 release just 6 weeks after 10.0.7 and it's big patch, hence PTR had to start early.

We don't know date for 10.1.5 (only educated guess it will be somewhere in July), they get more efficient with testing so it's hard to speculate how long PTR has to be, so it's kinda strange to assume it will launch before 10.1 just because previous PTR did.