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

[huth]

While WC3 absolutely was about coming together against a bigger threat, Wrath, Cata, MoP and later BfA still happened.

And it was dumb and never went anywhere every single time.

How many times do they have to fail for you to realise that it isn't a good story hook?

I could see the argument for Ashran but not for Legion. It was the main storyline of Stormheim and the Warden Towers just continued on that story.

And it was a bad story because it made no sense in context. Legion is attacking us? Eh, who cares, lets warm up old grudges and beat our allies up!

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'm not advocating for faction removal (weird stretch, tbh). I'm telling people that Horde vs Alliance stopped being a main cornerstone of the story since W3, and we already had our fill of faction war. People pissed that were are not constantly at each others throat should better realize that, it will save them frustrations.

I'm not really pissed were not at each others throats. I am getting tired of this anti faction push going on as if it never mattered in the first place and other various hot takes. Like the factions existing is really not a modern wow problem or anything to keep them competitive or stuff like that.

And it was dumb and never went anywhere every single time.

How many times do they have to fail for you to realise that it isn't a good story hook?

I think it doesn't fail as a story hook. Its just not a stable one since you make the playerbase go after itself by 50%(Blue vs Red). I also think people are a bitt overreacting to the faction conflict to, for what it was it basically was a fuse that started and then died off super quickly in BFA.


TLDR: overreacting is bad mk.

[huth]

I'm not really pissed were not at each others throats. I am getting tired of this anti faction push going on as if it never mattered in the first place and other various hot takes. Like the factions existing is really not a modern wow problem or anything to keep them competitive or stuff like that.

That's completely ignoring what is actually happening though. Factions won't go away. Players just won't be tied to them. Not sure why some people insist on misreading it as faction being removed entirely. That's not what anybody is asking for.

[Skildar]

And it was completely non-sensical in Wrath, and MoP and BfA all ended with "Uh, maybe we should actually stop fighting".

in MoP it was very anticlimactic that it ends with Varian stating "if it ever happens next time will be the last"... for real? how many passes does the horde have buddy?
Then BfA is a retelling of MoP without the philosophy but more spectacle.

I'm a firm believer that MoP shouldn't have ended on that note and instead move forward with the war between alliance and horde and escalate.

BfA is just polluted by Sylvanas. Having all the motivation of war put on this character alone is absurd at best. There are thousands of reason these factions would want to engage. Take Sylvie's arc out of the expac and it becomes decent but unfortunately still ends with azerite necklace ray of erasing old gods.

Doing away with faction only works if they are willing to heavily rebrand their game and this is risky. I'm not sure they should go for it.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

in MoP it was very anticlimactic that it ends with Varian stating "if it ever happens next time will be the last"... for real? how many passes does the horde have buddy?
Then BfA is a retelling of MoP without the philosophy but more spectacle.

I'm a firm believer that MoP shouldn't have ended on that note and instead move forward with the war between alliance and horde and escalate.

BfA is just polluted by Sylvanas. Having all the motivation of war put on this character alone is absurd at best. There are thousands of reason these factions would want to engage. Take Sylvie's arc out of the expac and it becomes decent but unfortunately still ends with azerite necklace ray of erasing old gods.

Doing away with faction only works if they are willing to heavily rebrand their game and this is risky. I'm not sure they should go for it.

MoP ending wasn't bad. What was bad was having a new warchief only to kill them off in another expansion. Not to mention all the big talk about(In the cinematic) Varian fighting these Horde Orcs back in the day when they invaded Stormwind and such. Just somebad decisions were made WoD and Legion(Expansion was good but killing off Vol'Jin AFTER hes been warchief for maybe 1 year is just lame).

[huth]

Doing away with faction only works if they are willing to heavily rebrand their game and this is risky. I'm not sure they should go for it.

Which has nothing to do with what is actually being discussed, though i'd argue that they do not in fact have to do that. Horde and Alliance are artificial constructs anyway, it wouldn't be hard to have them break apart.

[Makabreska]

Which has nothing to do with what is actually being discussed, though i'd argue that they do not in fact have to do that. Horde and Alliance are artificial constructs anyway, it wouldn't be hard to have them break apart.

Not sure what does this even mean. Artificial how? They both teamed up together to face common dangers since like Warcraft 1. And the threats and challenges kept going on, making the alliances tighter. It would be giga weird if would suddenly split, after all they have been through. And yes, both these factions are basically a trademark of the series that many players still identify with, so there is that as well.

[huth]

Not sure what does this even mean. Artificial how? They both teamed up together to face common dangers since like Warcraft 1. And the threats and challenges kept going on, making the alliances tighter. It would be giga weird if would suddenly split, after all they have been through. And yes, both these factions are basically a trademark of the series that many players still identify with, so there is that as well.

Irrelevant either way as that is not the important part. Them being removed from the game is not actually being discussed as a real possibility, nor is there much demand for it.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

WC3 became so beloved because fans got invested in the factions (aesthetics, story, and their main characters) and their conflicts with each other (tension keeps the audience wanting to find out what happens next). One of the main reasons for WoW's black swan success was that it got players emotionally invested in the faction conflict. Your avatar, your virtual identity is a member of either of these two factions. You pick the faction you liked the aesthetics of and then find out your faction is at war with the other side, so you become motivated to participate and help your faction prevail in the conflict. There is a reason why Blizzard went back to the well of Horde vs Alliance for BFA: because it worked. Blizzard couldn't get people to care about fighting random threats of the week, but they cared about their faction and its war against the other side. Look at how many people came back for BFA. The strongest story arcs in WoW revolve around WC3 factions, be it the Horde and Alliance or the Scourge or the Legion. The biggest issue with factions is that MMOs are a poor way to advance a story. You can't have tension if there is no threat to the faction you are supposed to be rooting for, and since this is an MMO it is very difficult - if not impossible - for Blizzard to actually destroy the Horde or the Alliance, given that players have sunk thousands of dollars into sub fees and expansion boxes and merch being emotionally invested in their faction. Destroying that would be an unwise financial decision. A singleplayer RTS game where the player only sinks $60 and 20 hours of their time can actually kill off characters and eliminate factions to advance the story without the audience becoming so upset that they stop being customers. So the tension died off over time and people stopped feeling the urge to fight for their faction, to find out what happened next. Also didn't help that Blizzard diluted the factions over time, losing what made them appealing in the first place.

Covenants were an attempt to get the audience invested in brand new factions, but it failed for a multitude of reasons. The Covenants aren't appealing to Warcraft fans. Aesthetically, they're generic or don't have the raw cool factor of musclebound Orcs wielding axes and the elements or frosty dead knights or demons who conquer the galaxy. Blue greek angels talking about peace and tranquility, washed down discount Scourge, goofy fairies and fauns with tumblr faces, and generic gothic vampires, etc. Not cool or unique. Story wise, the Covenants were very tame and polite and did not have grit. NuBlizzard's writers could not get the audience to care about the Covenant leaders. People were eager to see what would happen to Illidan and Kael'thas and Arthas next. Nobody was eager to find out what the tall blue angel lady was going to do next. Also doesn't help that this is an MMORPG where you view the Covenant characters from the perspective of a foreigner, rather than playing as those characters in a singleplayer game. Lastly, there was no conflict between the Covenants, no tension to keep people wanting to find out what would happen next to the Covenants. They were all polite to each other and working with each other against a generic evil. Boring.

- - - Updated - - -

MoP ending wasn't bad. What was bad was having a new warchief only to kill them off in another expansion. Not to mention all the big talk about(In the cinematic) Varian fighting these Horde Orcs back in the day when they invaded Stormwind and such. Just somebad decisions were made WoD and Legion(Expansion was good but killing off Vol'Jin AFTER hes been warchief for maybe 1 year is just lame).

Vol'jin should never have been killed off. The Horde's faction identity is that of monstrous, barbaric races with rippling muscles. The appropriate options as its figurehead are Orcs, Trolls, and Tauren. Unfortunately Tauren wound up getting washed down and stereotyped as peaceful and tree huggers, and there were no prominent Tauren characters who were authoritative and aggressive at the time. So that just leaves replacing Thrall with (another) Orc (or perhaps Rexxar), or a Troll, and Vol'jin was the only really prominent Darkspear troll character. Making anyone else the figurehead of the Horde would have diluted its aesthetics, as adding the elegant and calculating undead elf did. The Horde Council is also lame, not only because there is no powerful musclebound monster man to rally behind, but because it highlights just how diluted the Horde has become with the addition of magic and human-like civilized elves, more magical elves, classier trolls, cute tumblr fox furries, and so on.

[Nathanyel]

The factions can easily still exist as distinct nations/confederacies that are rivals, but not direct enemies. Small-scale PvP can be explained as fighting over a limited resource, artifact, or favor of a Wild God etc. - Dragonflight has a beginning of that in the War Mode 'Announcer', her name escapes me...

On an individual level, people being unable to let go of old hatreds will always lead to fights breaking out.

Post-release, very few newcomers to the game were actually looking at servers and choosing. They went with their friends already were, their personal feelings be damned.

Yeah, that was me, started on a PvP realm because my best friend played there. And I don't think he signed up for the world PvP either. And that was in June 2006, before Vanilla was even over.

However, once highlevel players were funneled together into maxlevel zones, World PvP rarely happened, except in cases of massive numeric superiority. That was always what "World PvP" was, people attacking because they were sure they would win, via player count or level advantage.

This led to situations where, say, you're getting corpse camped and you get your girlfriend to come bail you out. And they were motivated to, since that was the sole option outside of simply logging out. And then that situation would spiral into a greater conflict. These days? Just fly away and turn WM off. Or log out / use group finder to fish for another shard.

You make it sound like that's a bad thing. Was having your levelling afternoon ruined because one random guy was bored somehow better?

[Dracullus]

Hope we will see drop rate buff from token that transform your 385 gear to 395. Now you can farm it for hours and only get few (or is there faster method than rares?).

[huth]

Hope we will see drop rate buff from token that transform your 385 gear to 395. Now you can farm it for hours and only get few (or is there faster method than rares?).

They should become obsolete soon enough anyway.

[Nymrohd]

Hope we will see drop rate buff from token that transform your 385 gear to 395. Now you can farm it for hours and only get few (or is there faster method than rares?).

Damn either I am very lucky or you are very unlucky. I got full 395 on alts in 2 or 3 days clearing the zone rares by following the rare train.

- - - Updated - - -

So, only 2 weeks until the new patch tomorrow.

Do you guys think we'll see 10.1.5 on the PTR in the next few days, or do you reckon it'll wait until 10.1 is out?

Entirely possible we will see it before the patch is out.

[Dracullus]

So, only 2 weeks until the new patch tomorrow.

Do you guys think we'll see 10.1.5 on the PTR in the next few days, or do you reckon it'll wait until 10.1 is out?

Probably after, no need to rush it, they probably wait to July with next patch after D4 initial hype will fade out. There is plenty of time to fit 1.5, 1.7 and 10.2 this year.

Btw, just checked Blizzcon dates from 2019, they announced it 25th April for 1st November event.

[Nymrohd]

Probably after, no need to rush it, they probably wait to July with next patch after D4 initial hype will fade out. There is plenty of time to fit 1.5, 1.7 and 10.2 this year.

Btw, just checked Blizzcon dates from 2019, they announced it 25th April for 1st November event.

With the new pacing and if they want the average season length to be about 6 months, considering most patches stay in the PTR for at least two months before release then every PTR will need to start soon after the previous patch is released if not sooner just to stay on schedule.

[Rhelyo]

Considering the devs said that they want to tie one expansion to the next i see only 2 outcomes. Next expansion is either void (from Nefarian shadowflame also one of the bosses in Aberrus) or most likely South Seas (from the hints of the book found in forbidden reach which tells of islands found west of Kalimdor,pirates found in Dragonflight,naga etc..).
My money on South Seas/pirate expansion fighting all pirate races band under one leader as the book said.

[Nymrohd]

Considering the devs said that they want to tie one expansion to the next i see only 2 outcomes. Next expansion is either void (from Nefarian shadowflame also one of the bosses in Aberrus) or most likely South Seas (from the hints of the book found in forbidden reach which tells of islands found west of Kalimdor,pirates found in Dragonflight,naga etc..).
My money on South Seas/pirate expansion fighting all pirate races band under one leader as the book said.

The same reasoning could lead you to any number of possibilities. It could be Order, it could be Avaloren. It could be anything revealed later on in the expansion.

[Makabreska]

I would gladly accept a South Seas expansion, with a powerful pirate with his fleet as a main boss. Tropical islands, skellie pirates and yo ho hos. I do hope traditional fantasy settings will stick for a while and we wont suddenly get ejected once more to a different realm/planet.

Considering the devs said that they want to tie one expansion to the next i see only 2 outcomes. Next expansion is either void (from Nefarian shadowflame also one of the bosses in Aberrus) or most likely South Seas (from the hints of the book found in forbidden reach which tells of islands found west of Kalimdor,pirates found in Dragonflight,naga etc..).
My money on South Seas/pirate expansion fighting all pirate races band under one leader as the book said.

This void stuff in 10.1 means very little. DF is about dragons and Aspects, so it is only natural they will explore Nelths story (since it had huge gaps in it), and you can't tell his story w/o showing Void corruption. It's simple as that.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Something other then pirates in the South Seas. Even if the equiv i we get to customize our own ship.

[Makabreska]