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

[Throren]

Since wowhead showed a cloak with that design from a Diablo event. 99% chance it's that

The symbol on that banner and the cloak don't match at all.

Funnily enough, that cloak from the Diablo event is oooold, it's from MoP, it's a Kor'kron themed cloak with the Warsong orc symbol on it. All of Garrosh' Kor'kron wore it. The one from the diablo event is identical, just with up-rezed textures resolution.

That said, that banner is probably diablo related cause well, the face on it looks like diablo, horns included. But who knows really

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I liked Shadowlands' aesthetics of floating islands in a sky dimmension with floating threads of magic overhead and hyperspace flightpaths connecting the lands. The Demon Hunter starting zone and Argus were far and away the best parts of Legion and I would love to see more high fantasy stuff like that rather than strolling through boring plains or deserts.

The lore - the ruination of the mystique of the afterlife, adding precursors to the precursors (Titans+!), trying to connect everything in Warcraft history to the Jailer - that was awful. We could have kept the cool sky dimension stuff without keeping the shitty lore.

I thought that the idea of Covenants - new factions that the player could join - were a cool idea, but the actual factions themselves were unexciting. Boring themes such as blue greek angels or gothic vampires or disney fairies with tumblr faced NPCs or a discount Scourge rehash, and there was no faction/covenant conflict to get invested in since they were all on the same side fighting against a generic evil. It's also hard to care about the Covenants when the game doesn't get you to care about their leaders. The two tall blue ladies with resting RBF syndrome aren't endearing at all. Draka is okay but Krexus was cooler. Renathal is the only vaguely likeable character but you don't get to play as him like you got to play as Thrall or Arthas in WC3, only see him from a detached perspective, and he doesn't get to do anything outside of the Revendreth story.

The Mawsworn were aesthetically boring, tied with the Twilight's Hammer as the most disinteresting villain faction to fight yet. Shadowlands could have been easily rethemed as the second half of the Legion expansion. Make the various zones different shattered worlds that you are liberating from the Legion. Maybe Maldraxxus could have been rethemed as a world that the Ebon Hold establish a foothold on, like the DH starter zone/class order hall. The Maw could have just been a part of Argus with demons torturing souls or harvesting them for power. Zereth Mortis could have just been a Titan facility. Replace Brokers with Ethereals. Etc.

The soundtrack was bad. Can only rememeber Bolvar's theme, and the violin that plays in the Kyrian stronghold.

The levelling questline was okay. You spend three hours in each zone before discovering a new zone. But the Covenant campaigns and the patch questlines were really boring. You revisit the same places you already visited, interacting with the same characters, not discovering anything new and having to stand around and listen to cringeworthy dialogue and the gameplay is very uninteresting. Even worse, they're very long. I'd rather play a short, 15 hour game that is packed with fun throughout like The Banner Saga than slog through a boring, unfun game for 100+ hours like The Witcher 3. I feel the same way here. WoD didn't have a lot of content but what content it did have was fun. Don't waste my limited time with crap.

The Sylvanas fight wasn't bad.

Chasing Sylvanas along the chains was one of the only memorable gameplay moments of Shadowlands for me.

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I do wish the world quests were like in SL, not a on a every 3 day timer. I hate it(and don't do them if you don't want to, its not anyone's fault people have no self control).

Another issue with Shadowlands: to see the completed, finished zones as intended by the environment artists with the threads of magic flying overhead, you have to log in each day and do chores to grind tidbits of anima. You need 80,000 anima to build a tier 3 anima conductor for all four zones. If you spend 2 hours doing Korthia and Zereth Mortis dailies for 4,000 anima per day, it will take 20 days, or 40 hours of grinding to complete the zones. That's not fun. At most, the zones should have been restored upon completing the already lengthy and tedious Covenant Campaigns.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Catharsis isn't everything.

Isn't catharsis of some form effectively one of the cornerstones of storytelling?

[draugril]

Isn't catharsis of some form effectively one of the cornerstones of storytelling?

I would argue that it’s the point of storytelling. The success of the narrative is almost entirely dependent on how well you provide catharsis to the reader, or, in rare cases, deliberately deny it.

WarCraft as whole has been devoid of catharsis since WCIII. They ape the moments that other storytellers use to deliver it, but they forego all the character development that gives those moments meaning.

Blizzard storytelling is like watching a YouTube highlight reel of the coolest moments from a TV show you’ve never watched. It’s meaningless without context.

[Khaza-R]

Shadowlands as a setting was fine. Although the concept would of worked much better as a purgatory of sorts rather than the literal afterlife. It seems like they forced the afterlife concept to sell Sylvanas having come convincing reason to side with the Jailer. Which should of never been done in the first place.

If the next expansion were heavily Titan themed I don't know why we would need to go to the "Orderlands", if such a place even exists. There's plenty of Titan worlds out there. I would be interesting to see one that was successfully ordered with no Old Gods, Burning Legion or other forces.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Isn't catharsis of some form effectively one of the cornerstones of storytelling?

Not necessarily, consistency sure but that is hard to do as Wow's lore early times are messy but there's a bit of an appeal to it(Not the messyness, just how grand and "Fantastical" it is). Shadowlands is certainly dirty you could say but trying to do justify the SL, Lich King stuff connecting it to Zovaal and such while not entirely getting rid of everything that came before isn't easy.

I don't overemphasize with catharsis too much because as I said above, it feels like its catering too much to Nelf biases and those biases are understandable(In before I get a passive aggressive/ snarky response at me, not necessarily you Conceptuel) and certainly warranted. However they are biases and given that Pelegos is the new Arbiter the one who "judges". I believe picking the most biased person/most affected person colors the judgement. Yes it certainly makes Nelves fans happier in a "FINALLY JUSTICE FOR TELDRASSIL" but there was a reason(A flawed reason) Kyrian didn't retain their memory of their past lives. If they had to take a soul to the Arbiter they had some connection with, for example a negative one they might feel compelled to dip them in the Maw cause they "FEEL" it is justice. They have to be unbiased(As the Archon said they would only impede their sacred duty). That point makes sense but losing your sense of self and memories is a hard sacrifice and I myself would not want to do that. Hence why Kyrian society had to change.

As did to how the Arbiter delving out where to go to the afterlives. Pelegos even says he does not believe sending to the Maw for eternity isn't good because its callous and the Maw is shown to be really bad and well unfortuntely some don't come back and are nothing more then shadows of what they are. Even if you believe a soul deserves punishment, it would be overkill. People will disagree and such but eternal suffering is kinda grimdark. The arbiter or rather the robotic one was cold but did have the right idea. I just feel Pelegos or someone else should of given Sylvanas the punishment instead of Tyrande herself, she's too personally involved and therefor biased(Again understandable and I don't begrudge her feelings, but for non bias and actual "justice" she can't be the Jury persay). Catharsis has no part here.


Whenever the Nelves get their newhome, and no shennigans(Because I know we're headed to the Emerald Dream at some point and I hope that seed of all the Nelf souls aren't wasted by an external malicious force). That should be a moment where the Nelves can have "Their moment." Which I should say, I do not want the new Nelf home to be on the Dragon Isles nor not on Kalimdor due to...well thats where they live even if that clashes with the Horde. Thats fine, wounds aren't easily forgotten as they say.


Sorry for the long delayed response.


TLDR: Nelves deserve their day in the Moonlight but they should evolve and not regress into Xenophobic Purple orcs.

[Cheezits]

Nightmare banner could be a tease at the Dream zone, especially if there's some kind of lingering Nightmare that persists post-Xavius.

[Nymrohd]

Isn't catharsis of some form effectively one of the cornerstones of storytelling?

Tragedy is meant to lead to catharsis. Not all storytelling is drama and not all drama is tragedy.
WoW is an MMORPG. This is a very limiting format that severely restrain the agency of the roleplayer; you cannot really be an individual but rather at best an archetype (which is why I feel very strongly about race, faction and class fantasy; character creation is the singular point of agency in WoW)
Using the medium to tell the story of non-player characters is not really the standard narrative goal of roleplaying games. Or even games in general. If anything fantasy settings usually focus on telling the story of a world using characters instead of telling the story of characters using the world.
Within this paradigm I can understand an expectation of catharsis. The world is focused on characters, you identify with them, you share their trauma and find resolution to it as they find resolution to it. To this I'll say that the medium is uniquely unsuited to this goal. Tragedy tries to build up negative emotions but also intends to release that emotion within a short period of time. The intent is the release; spending two hours engaged with a story to gain this release in the last act is worthwhile.
But spending MONTHS for a trailer length of supposed catharsis very much isn't. In the MMO format a story can take months or years to be told. This means that the viewer will hold to negative emotion for protracted amounts of time. There is no value to that. The momentary release down the line is simply not an adequate payoff. You will notice that the strongest engagement the playerbase has with the dramatic elements of the story is colored in negative emotions;.e.g. it's about hostility to the other faction which is probably the strongest engagement WoW has. That is why I feel the medium should focus on more shallow fare or provide tragedy only when the resolution will be provided by the end of the same narrative segment. For instance campy, bombastic characters offer positive emotions and are in almost every case instant hits with the playerbase. Their storyline is secondary because the focus there is their presence; their drama is after all not tragic.

Consider how serial novels handle drama. Major events are usually contained within a single novel. Each novel will seed plots for future entries and possibly end with certain cliffhangers but if the goal of the story is catharsis, that always occurs at least within the individual novel. WoW however does not have the density in its storyline to allow for both realized contained storylines within a patch to allow for an overarching narrative to built without enduring negative emotional weight.

The problem is, IT COULD. It absolutely could provide denser fare when it comes to the stories. Many other games do. Even other MMOs do a much better job at it (FFXIV, ESO both do this with reasonable success at a similar pace). It is just either not a priority or not within the skill level of the storytellers at Blizzard.

[Skildar]

I think the latest character story that successfully provided catharsis was Jaina during BfA.

We've had quite a few character that have had their moments but they didn't fully work for me; Renathal, Sylvanas, Anduin, Baine, Kalecgos

[Nymrohd]

but there was a reason(A flawed reason) Kyrian didn't retain their memory of their past lives. If they had to take a soul to the Arbiter they had some connection with, for example a negative one they might feel compelled to dip them in the Maw cause they "FEEL" it is justice. They have to be unbiased(As the Archon said they would only impede their sacred duty). That point makes sense but losing your sense of self and memories is a hard sacrifice and I myself would not want to do that. Hence why Kyrian society had to change.

I just have to strongly disagree on this. Kyrian society became problematic because the lack of anima meant that souls could not be reshuffled. When the road to the Arbiter was open, Aspirants who balked at their tests could return to the Arbiter and they would likely be send to one of the myriad non-instrumental afterlives (or possibly Maldraxxus or Ardenweald since neither of those was antithetical to the quality sought by Bastion). Without this, asking a sacrifice from a soul is not problematic since it doesn't HAVE to make that sacrifice or just wait in paradise forever with nothing to do but feeling like a failure.
More importantly, the story presented this sacrifice as problematic at its core thus making a very pointed moral judgment, one that is quite antithetical to the social views of probably the majority of the planet that is nowhere near as individualistic as the society the writers were raised at. To me it felt extremely tone deaf to present as problematic something that is a cornerstone of collectivist societies not to mention a tenet of a major religion.

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I think the latest character story that successfully provided catharsis was Jaina during BfA.

We've had quite a few character that have had their moments but they didn't fully work for me; Renathal, Sylvanas, Anduin, Baine, Kalecgos

Problem is, it reversed that in the very next patch. Jaina learns a compromise between her viewpoint and that of her father (and people) and then immediately backtracks after the senseless events of Dazar'alor. But yeah, her story arc in BfA ending with the Siege of Boralus cinematic was satisfying.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Problem is, it reversed that in the very next patch. Jaina learns a compromise between her viewpoint and that of her father (and people) and then immediately backtracks after the senseless events of Dazar'alor. But yeah, her story arc in BfA ending with the Siege of Boralus cinematic was satisfying.

Which has happened before already. It was treading old ground. I also think in hindsight Jaina acting hostile towards Baine of all people should of at least been different. Baine is certainly not someone that would be cheering at Teldrassil's burning and the outright war between the factions but I digress.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I would argue that it’s the point of storytelling. The success of the narrative is almost entirely dependent on how well you provide catharsis to the reader, or, in rare cases, deliberately deny it.

WarCraft as whole has been devoid of catharsis since WCIII. They ape the moments that other storytellers use to deliver it, but they forego all the character development that gives those moments meaning.

Blizzard storytelling is like watching a YouTube highlight reel of the coolest moments from a TV show you’ve never watched. It’s meaningless without context.

I was chiefly thinking in the Aristotelian sense, though I confess I misrepresented it in a way, so thank you for offering a bit more grounding on the matter and refocusing on it in the Aristotelian understanding of catharsis as the primary object of art in general and how it can manifest. I suppose that's a better approach to how the catharsis was bungled than that limited justice was offered—obviously, catharsis can manifest in a number of ways, and its indulgence and deliberate withholding both suffice in producing a form of catharsis. The error Blizzard made was failing to give us an effective foundation for any kind of catharsis, giving us highly-unwieldy, shallow developments without much in the way of a strong conclusion. The Burning of Teldrassil was a very evocative and strong start to a story, but there was no long-term plan for how it would be resolved, so it became difficult to wrap it up effectively in the three ways they could have—have justice be found, have the malefactor make amends and pay penance, or frame it as an inescapable casualty of a dark world defined by war. The second option was what Blizzard decided to go for, but it was decided so late in the story and as a product of writers with wholly different interpretations of the relevant character that it became very poorly-handled and simply failed to produce any kind of release at all, be it relief or dark closure. It was a sloppy wrap-up that didn't feel like a satisfying conclusion in the slightest.

Tragedy is meant to lead to catharsis. Not all storytelling is drama and not all drama is tragedy. . .
Using the medium to tell the story of non-player characters is not really the standard narrative goal of roleplaying games. . . If anything fantasy settings usually focus on telling the story of a world using characters instead of telling the story of characters using the world.
Within this paradigm I can understand an expectation of catharsis. The world is focused on characters, you identify with them, you share their trauma and find resolution to it as they find resolution to it. To this I'll say that the medium is uniquely unsuited to this goal. Tragedy tries to build up negative emotions but also intends to release that emotion within a short period of time. The intent is the release; spending two hours engaged with a story to gain this release in the last act is worthwhile.
But spending MONTHS for a trailer length of supposed catharsis very much isn't. In the MMO format a story can take months or years to be told. This means that the viewer will hold to negative emotion for protracted amounts of time. There is no value to that. The momentary release down the line is simply not an adequate payoff. You will notice that the strongest engagement the playerbase has with the dramatic elements of the story is colored in negative emotions;.e.g. it's about hostility to the other faction which is probably the strongest engagement WoW has. That is why I feel the medium should focus on more shallow fare or provide tragedy only when the resolution will be provided by the end of the same narrative segment. For instance campy, bombastic characters offer positive emotions and are in almost every case instant hits with the playerbase. Their storyline is secondary because the focus there is their presence; their drama is after all not tragic.

The problem is, IT COULD. It absolutely could provide denser fare when it comes to the stories. Many other games do. Even other MMOs do a much better job at it (FFXIV, ESO both do this with reasonable success at a similar pace). It is just either not a priority or not within the skill level of the storytellers at Blizzard.

This is a much better summary than I could offer, honestly—it summarizes a good chunk of what went wrong fairly well, and addresses Aristotelian catharsis from a point of strong understanding. WoW's story induces passive and slow-burning emotions for minimal payoff, so it produces very little in the way of effective catharsis, and just ends up feeling hollow and underwhelming, with a lot of unresolved tension and emotion.

I'm not a fan of shallow storytelling in the slightest, so the option that appeals to me the most is to indulge more in providing catharsis within narrative segments throughout an expansion rather than build up to invariably-underwhelming conclusions after a span of two years, with each segment leading into the next but also concluding its own internal narrative in a satisfying way before doing so. We're in agreement that the medium is absolutely not incompatible with effective storytelling, and the release model WoW employs with its patches could fit a sequence of segments of self-contained drama that contain their own conclusions while still contributing an overall story arc across the expansion.

Dragonflight does actually seem to be leaning a bit more into this – which is further facilitated by its faster and more consistent release schedule – and it hasn't been as frustratingly slow-burning as Shadowlands was, so we can at least hold out hope that the narrative team is learning. We're at least at the start of something, I hope.

[Sondrelk]

Tragedy is meant to lead to catharsis. Not all storytelling is drama and not all drama is tragedy.
WoW is an MMORPG. This is a very limiting format that severely restrain the agency of the roleplayer; you cannot really be an individual but rather at best an archetype (which is why I feel very strongly about race, faction and class fantasy; character creation is the singular point of agency in WoW)
Using the medium to tell the story of non-player characters is not really the standard narrative goal of roleplaying games. Or even games in general. If anything fantasy settings usually focus on telling the story of a world using characters instead of telling the story of characters using the world.
Within this paradigm I can understand an expectation of catharsis. The world is focused on characters, you identify with them, you share their trauma and find resolution to it as they find resolution to it. To this I'll say that the medium is uniquely unsuited to this goal. Tragedy tries to build up negative emotions but also intends to release that emotion within a short period of time. The intent is the release; spending two hours engaged with a story to gain this release in the last act is worthwhile.
But spending MONTHS for a trailer length of supposed catharsis very much isn't. In the MMO format a story can take months or years to be told. This means that the viewer will hold to negative emotion for protracted amounts of time. There is no value to that. The momentary release down the line is simply not an adequate payoff. You will notice that the strongest engagement the playerbase has with the dramatic elements of the story is colored in negative emotions;.e.g. it's about hostility to the other faction which is probably the strongest engagement WoW has. That is why I feel the medium should focus on more shallow fare or provide tragedy only when the resolution will be provided by the end of the same narrative segment. For instance campy, bombastic characters offer positive emotions and are in almost every case instant hits with the playerbase. Their storyline is secondary because the focus there is their presence; their drama is after all not tragic.

Consider how serial novels handle drama. Major events are usually contained within a single novel. Each novel will seed plots for future entries and possibly end with certain cliffhangers but if the goal of the story is catharsis, that always occurs at least within the individual novel. WoW however does not have the density in its storyline to allow for both realized contained storylines within a patch to allow for an overarching narrative to built without enduring negative emotional weight.

The problem is, IT COULD. It absolutely could provide denser fare when it comes to the stories. Many other games do. Even other MMOs do a much better job at it (FFXIV, ESO both do this with reasonable success at a similar pace). It is just either not a priority or not within the skill level of the storytellers at Blizzard.

I feel the problem with WoW writing at this point is less the writers, and more how ungainly the entire setting has become. Every event has to somewhat reasonably accomodate decades worth of writing, good or bad, that has come before. Every small mistake in writing compounds on itself as new flaws are added.
This becomes massively apparent when the game tries to tackle older storylines, like BfA did. Or overarching world building, like SL.
Characters like Jaina comes across schizophrenic because each course correction careens the character into some other longstanding issue, which then demands further course correction, which in itself ends up creating problems.

Dragonflight I feel works so well precisely because it sheds pretty much all the prior baggage in favor of an entirely new setting. Though even then we can see the issues crop up whenever we have to touch the old lore.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't think the setting is the problem. I do think its kinda hard to do faction war that is split between two sides of the playerbase. Not that I'd want the factions intermingling I.E. Orcs in stormwind and Humans in Orgrimmar, none of that. The characters are important and they matter. And speaking of, I feel like Emberthal is the notable character here. Obviously the aspects are to but not as much as Emberthal IMO.

[Nathanyel]

Yeah I agree. Shadowlands proved to Blizzard we dont need or want that kind of content.

Considering the Shadowlands are about the same "distance" into the Realm of Death as the Emerald Dream is into the Realm of Life, does that mean the playerbase no longer wants an ED expansion/patch?

[Luck4]

Considering the Shadowlands are about the same "distance" into the Realm of Death as the Emerald Dream is into the Realm of Life, does that mean the playerbase no longer wants an ED expansion/patch?

As someone that once wanted an Emerald Dream expansion, yeah, after Shadowlands I completely rejected the idea. Also, the characters that I wanted to see from the Emerald Dream are either dead or already appeared in Azeroth.

I'm really glad that 10.0 turned out to be Dragons Isles instead of Gardens of Life/Lifelands/Emerald Dream.

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But as someone said above, I wouldn't mind Cosmic plane exploration on patches.

Cataclysm used a similar approach to explore the elemental planes: Firelands(Raid+Patch Zone), Skywall(Dungeon+Raid), Deepholm(Zone+Dungeon), and Abyssal Maw(Dungeon+Canceled Raid/Dungeon).

[ChairmanKaga]

I sincerely hope there aren't any more expansions set entirely in some cosmic plane of existence, like the Shadowlands. We've already tried that, and it's an awful idea.

It's fine to visit such places in patches and raids, just to get a glimpse. But to explore the whole thing and get nothing but that for an entire expansion isn't fun.

Agreed. I always hated the Emerald Dream as an entire expac idea for this same reason.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Agreed. I always hated the Emerald Dream as an entire expac idea for this same reason.

Thats...a very miniscule reason to not want to go to these places for a whole expansion. Its just a concept and doesn't mean it just fails just based on its existence. I mean I get the argument that visiting the afterlife shouldn't happen cause well it shows whta happens after characters die and thats just something better to leave alone. The Emerald Dream doesn't have such connotation. Really though its about execution(And luck and hopefully no pandemic pops out nowhere).

[Luck4]

I'm 100% sure Blizzard will make more expansions completely centered around cosmic planes, but I hope they at least take the BFA approach of dealing with multiple plots at once, like making an Order+Disorder expansion or Light+Void, so we can end this nonsense quickly.

[JMitchy96]

People on Twitter are chatting about a 10.2 leak. Anyone know what they're talking about?