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

[Sondrelk]

On a scale of 1-10, how likely is it that the reveal on Friday is that the expansion is about Avaloren?

Avaloren specifically probably 6-7 out of 10. Khaz Algar though I would put as a 9 out of 10.
We don't have a concrete link between Avaloren and Khaz Algar after all, just them being mentioned in the same place.

[Hitei]

On a scale of 1-10, how likely is it that the reveal on Friday is that the expansion is about Avaloren?

7.5ish or thereabouts.

[Delever]

Okay, let me add another level.
What the Character wants.

Because as it so happens MoP is probably the best one in that regards. You see no one, not the Alliance nor the Horde, went there for Pandas. They went there for Anduin. If you are a die-hard horde player, hurting the Alliance King sounds just what you might want to do. And as an Alliance player who saw him every time you went into the throne room and his father ever since Wrath began, you might actually care for either of them. And if so you would be happy to embark on a rescue mission.

But now with Chromie time and you just doing one slice of the whole journey something like this might not work again.

And I agree wholeheartedly with what you just said. But this lore justification was given after the expansion announcement, not before. They can very well do the same with avaloren. Again I m not saying it will be good. I just fail to see why people suddenly think this is strange other than the fact that they would be attempting to add new zones instead of ones that already existed. I just don't see anything out of order here. It would happen at some point.

[Sondrelk]

Honestly there are many ways to introduce a new landmass: Odyn wants to go there and work out some stress; Iridikron goes there and tyr compels us to follow him; Freya warns us to go there.

The problem here is: what is known about that landmass? It's the first time the player and the character know the same things. Think about it, one of my toon is a dreanei paladin, what the heck should he have known about chen stormstout? on the other hand I knew who Chen was and what panadaria was. This time we (characters and player) know the same informations: there are heretics (very well defended and one could infer technological advanced) in avaloren; a dragon has gone to the west and could have given birth to new dragons (how? what kind of dragons are? what kind of "powers" do they posses?); pirates returned with riches after going to the west; and there are earthens that mysteriously act like dwarves in Khaz Algar, and we are presuming Khaz Algar is in AValoren or near it.

Honestly can I admit I find this setup more interesting than Dragon Isles and Pandaria?

We don't technically know about Erinethria yet, as that info is on the PTR, and not even particularly prominent.

[Gloriandus]

I would prefer to have Avaloren to be a goal to reach, not "go there from the start". Something that when you finally get to it, it's mind-blowing. Kind of like the first time you enter Divinity's Reach in GW2. Like, whoa! Maybe first patch is just "getting there".

[Teriz]

It is not because what I mean by lore reason is in game story events leading up to us visiting said place. The existence of pandaren just by itself is not a good enough reason to visit what was previously thought to be a comic relief analogy to the martial arts culture of china.

In your opinion. Blizzard stated that Pandaria was an expansion they wanted to do multiple times before MoP was announced.

And the reason for going to Pandaria was not Chen or because pandas existed. It was made up and was literally given when the expansion was announced and was not built up years before. Same thing will happen with Avaloren IF that is the next landmass we go to.

And that's perfectly fine for an expansion like Pandaria because it has strong enough lore characters to carry it through despite the lore justifications. It's the exact same reasoning in the dragon isles.

If you don't have a good lore reason to go, and/or you don't have strong characters to hook you into the expansion, you have nothing. You need one or the other or preferably both, as was the case with WotLk or Legion.

You are letting your own personal feelings interfere with logic because you just don't like avaloren being the potential next destination. And then you re projecting those feelings making other people sound as if they re defending avaloren being the next location as the best choice.
I personally don't really have an opinion on whether it's the best choice or not. It will depend how they justify it just like with previous expansions. It just doesn't seem any less possible to me than Pandaria did at the time.

Uh no. I'm pointing out the reasoning behind the justifications for going to new locations for expansions. It's either lore, characters, or both. Avaloren has neither.

[Plehnard]

I was gonna say. Couldnt you just shrink everything by 50% and make the player character 50% smaller. It would look the same yeah?

That would just shift the limit and there's a likelihood that there will be problems with float precision when it comes to scaling things down.
Streaming on the other hand does theoretically have no limit, you just have to make sure to reset the Pawn world origin to the currently streamed tile to avoid float precision problems, but with worlds in current WoW size that's most likely a thing that's been done at least at the Client side anyway

[Delever]

No, we went to Pandaria because Blizzard wanted players to be able to play as Pandaren and Brewmasters. Blizzard also wanted an expansion set in an East Asian style. Thing is, we knew that BEFORE we even went there.

And yes, as soon as Chen was established as a canon character (way back in vanilla) that made all of his exploits in WC3 canon as well.

Ok? And how is that any different than "we are going to avaloren because blizzard wants players to see what's on the other side of azeroth that they ve been wondering for so long. It just now has a name"? We know the other side exists before we go there. We just don't know it's name. And why do we even have to know every single thing of where we go? Wtf did we know about the shadowlands other than that it's the realm of death? Everyone thought the shadowlands was just the world with inverted colors just like when we die. We didn't know a single race that originated from the shadowlands before going there.

[Xilurm]

Avaloren specifically probably 6-7 out of 10. Khaz Algar though I would put as a 9 out of 10.
We don't have a concrete link between Avaloren and Khaz Algar after all, just them being mentioned in the same place.

So there's a chance they're completely different continents but both on the other side of Azeroth.

[Myrrh]

On a scale of 1-10, how likely is it that the reveal on Friday is that the expansion is about Avaloren?

I'm measuring it at about a 7, myself. Khaz'Algar being involved is like a 9.5 based on the heroic edition mount's name; it's reasonable to speculate that this is geographically connected to Avaloren in some sense (though not knowing if either is a continent, region, city, etc.). However, because we know so little it's still within the realm of possibility that Avaloren is/is on a separate continent.

[Sondrelk]

So there's a chance they're completely different continents but both on the other side of Azeroth.

Possible. Though with how stuff tends to get teased in WoW I think it's more likely that all the different stuff we have learned about mysterious locations this expansion is in the same place.

[Delever]

In your opinion. Blizzard stated that Pandaria was an expansion they wanted to do multiple times before MoP was announced.



And that's perfectly fine for an expansion like Pandaria because it has strong enough lore characters to carry it through despite the lore justifications. It's the exact same reasoning in the dragon isles.

If you don't have a good lore reason to go, and/or you don't have strong characters to hook you into the expansion, you have nothing. You need one or the other or preferably both, as was the case with WotLk or Legion.



Uh no. I'm pointing out the reasoning behind the justifications for going to new locations for expansions. It's either lore, characters, or both. Avaloren has neither.

The comic relief character of wc3 and Pandaria is a good enough reason to go there but the mysterious other side of azeroth isn't? So if Christ metzen comes up on Friday and says " oh we actually always wanted players to go to Avaloren" will that be good enough for you? Just like when danuser said "oh actually the jailer was the mastermind behind everything all along?" They can say whatever the fuck they want and you have no way of knowing whether that's the truth or not you know that right?

[Harbour]

Anyone else isnt fascinated with the prospect of Odyn being the focus (or one of the) of another expansion, as well as framing Titans as the bad guys?
We had him as the boss twice in Legion and then he appeared occasionally here and there.
He never gave the 'big bad' vibe.
More like 'local grumpy asshole we had to deal with occasionally but who would help against bigger and way more sinister foes'.

And obvious framing Titans as the villains would DEhype me.
I liked them in Legion and they were fine dudes in the Legion's end cutscene. I dont want to fight them at all, and i dont think the story and lore properly made me feel that what they did to primal habitants of Azeroth was very bad and warrant taking measures now, 2000000000gazillions years later, right after they SAVED US ALL.

Where i lead with that - every leak with Odyn being big bad and Titans being big bads is a fake and bullshit.

[NikolaiShade]

We don't technically know about Erinethria yet, as that info is on the PTR, and not even particularly prominent.

Come on, it will eventually go live alongside the book about the first world three and the roots (didn't mention it because I think it's in un'goro but I think it's important). And we are talking about a mysterious continent on the other side of the planet, and we know from the book about Erinethria, Tyr is actively dissuading from looking for it, so I think the scarcity of informations regarding Avaloren is a lore point

[Samin]

Small reminder that we know basically nothing of Avaloren. That doesn't mean there's no reason to go there, it means it's a blank slate. We could have ANY reason to go there - it's up to Blizzard to decide what that reason is going to be.

I think some of you are getting a bit too wound up with really strong opinions over things you're making up entirely in your head.

[Sondrelk]

For Avaloren specifically, I would say that if it's not in the expansion, I would be much more willing to bet that is because Khaz Algar is not on the backside of Azeroth than there being two different locations.

[Redwyrm]

To me the establishment of Garrosh as a major lore character was handled correctly (at least from a Horde perspective). We first meet him in Nagrand in TBC and do some quest chains to basically slap some sense into him. Then the big event at the end of that chain has Thrall arrive in Nagrand and eventually showing Garrosh how his father was a hero and saved the Orcs. Over the next few expansions Garrosh slowly gets more involved and we more about his character and motivations culminating in MoP and WoD.

So Blizzard took an unknown character in TBC and throughout WotLK----->Cata----->Mists----->WoD turned him into the leader of the Horde and subsequently villain.

I have not seen them do that with any other lore character or physical location since. With the few possible exception of Calia.

[Sondrelk]

Come on, it will eventually go live alongside the book about the first world three and the roots (didn't mention it because I think it's in un'goro but I think it's important). And we are talking about a mysterious continent on the other side of the planet, and we know from the book about Erinethria, Tyr is actively dissuading from looking for it, so I think the scarcity of informations regarding Avaloren is a lore point

I am talking in the context of the announcement. The green dragons and Tyr stating you shouldn't go west of Kalimdor would be a weird thing to bring up when it isn't technically in the game yet.

[Jaggler]

In your opinion. Blizzard stated that Pandaria was an expansion they wanted to do multiple times before MoP was announced.



And that's perfectly fine for an expansion like Pandaria because it has strong enough lore characters to carry it through despite the lore justifications. It's the exact same reasoning in the dragon isles.

If you don't have a good lore reason to go, and/or you don't have strong characters to hook you into the expansion, you have nothing. You need one or the other or preferably both, as was the case with WotLk or Legion.



Uh no. I'm pointing out the reasoning behind the justifications for going to new locations for expansions. It's either lore, characters, or both. Avaloren has neither.

Sorry, but Pandaria didn't have a "strong lore character", Chen was a side character in a side mission of WC3, barely even a "real character".

[Hitei]

What of Avaloren? They are heretics. To titans. For some reason. What does that even entail? What have they been doing? Definitely not anything that would affect Azeroth in a meaningful way. Maybe they are just minding their own business and smoking weed, but the Titans think that ganja is the Legion's lettuce so they need to die.
What if my character does not care about Heretics? What if they want to hang out in Pandaria and eat spicy noodles? Do they have a personal reason to go there?

If one or multiple of Elune, Azshara, Iridikron, or Xal'atath are involved with Alvaloren, I will instantly give more of a shit about it than AU Gul'dan's role in Legion or the entirety of WoD.

You're arguing from a flawed basis. You know why Legion was important and who is in it and WoD, we have no idea what is going to happen in 11.0.

Again, prior to Legion, where were the people we knew and tangible effects on our lives for a crumbling ruin in the middle of the ocean? Prior to WoD prepatch becoming a thing, why would literally any character give a shit about the past version of a destroyed planet in an alternate universe? Did anyone have a personal reason to go diving in the ruins of the tomb of Sargeras or open up a time portal to an alternate version of Outland before those expansions were announced? No.