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

[Zankai27]

I wonder what will they do with the talent trees next xpack? Sure they'll add 10 more points for new levels, and a few more talents, but will they try to expand the system somehow?

They did say back when they announced DF that they had designed the trees to expand both vertically and horizontally with time, so hopefully they'll have something interesting to show with them

[D4NNYB0Y]

Earthen and Artificer especially seem off to me. Earthen because why would that be a new race? It's not desired by players, it doesnt fill a niche compared to the existing two dwarves, and we already had a new race in DF.
Artificer because why wouldnt you just call it Tinker instead of Artificer? The class it's seemingly attempting to emulate is plainly the Tinker, the well established archetype in Warcraft lore. Mekkatorque is even called High Tinker. Only way it could make sense is if Tinker is a spec.

Artificer is a more general name for an engineer in fantasy RPGs.

Tinker is specific to Gnomish and Goblin engineers. If they wanted to proliferate the class to more races they would want to use a less race-specific term.

Artificer is the engineering class in DnD, and also leans more towards magitech than traditional engineering tropes.

[Puupi]

I wonder what will they do with the talent trees next xpack? Sure they'll add 10 more points for new levels, and a few more talents, but will they try to expand the system somehow?

5 points per tree. And then they probably add more point requirements for the first two tiers of talents so you actually can't get more capstone stuff. And I doubt they will add much more talents anyway. Maybe shuffle things around a bit and introduce one new talent that actually does something.

[Selorian]

Doubtful. The idea here seems to be that they want to just give old Talent trees another shot, and having them expand every expansion was a problem, and why they eventually scrapped it, though that is a good few years away still.

Morgan Day or Ion said something like "Eventually we'll have to change it, but we can get a good 10 years out of the system so it's worth it"

[Gwynvael]

Also, importantly, don't forget about the Shadowscrawled coin at the start of DF...directly linking to the Ethereals.

"Thank you for the opportunity to observe you. The information I've gathered has been illuminating, to say the least. This will be my final gift... for now."

Holy sh!t. That's right. Completely forgot about the journal coins. Very good point.

[Wangming]

While it's cool that he's back, it's a little disappointing that yet again the ONLY named void lord is Dimensius. Like we couldn't get a new name?

I'm sure with a much bigger void focus we will learn more. It might also turn out to be a title.

[micwini]

Who is Dimensius again?

Random voidwalker we killed in a quest in Netherstorm in TBC

[Cheezits]

Holy sh!t. That's right. Completely forgot about the journal coins. Very good point.

The journal stuff made sense with the idea that it was just foreshadowing Brawlers Guild (as the Ethereals were the enemy in the latest version) but now that that isn't happening in DF, it may be a future expansion hint.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

What got retconned by the First Ones existing?

Them ordering the universe instead of the light/void clashing creating it.

Doing the same with the pantheons.

Every thing about death and souls in the shadowlands.

The titans being granted “wonders by there makers” by then instead of just waking up and going about there nature as world shaping being of order.

Ect ect.

[taishar68]

Regardless of the where or the how, I am speculating that Thrall retakes leadership of the Horde, based largely on his place in the keyart, and the trend featuring Sylvanas and Alex in the last two virtual cons. If you want to speculate that due to being a shaman that leads more to a wink to Storms, knock yourself out . Having Metzen back plays a part in that as well.

I'd really like to see the Forsaken get their creepy vibe back too. Doing the Forsaken heritage armor questline, they seem a bit too...nice. Your OG Forsaken NPC would not fail to remind you that you're a little shit and to be quick about your business, now they're just too touchy feely, I think (Please don't make this a woke/not woke thing...please)

Lastly...bring back uncapped grinding. Reputation or Renown, whatever you call it, don't put governors on how fast I want to crank out a rep grind with weekly quests and such. I'm not saying I need to be exalted/max overnight, but when I want to target a specific thing, I don't want to sit on my hands until Tuesday rolls around.

[Zankai27]

Them ordering the universe instead of the light/void clashing creating it.

Doing the same with the pantheons.

Every thing about death and souls in the shadowlands.

The titans being granted “wonders by there makers” by then instead of just waking up and going about there nature as world shaping being of order.

Ect ect.

Who cares about any of those changes? As far as anyone in our universe is concerned, that's still the story. None of those are actually impactful.

Wait, how did the concept of death and souls in the Shadowlands change because of the First Ones? "Shadowlands bad" is a whole other discussion.

[Pinksocking]

Is this AI or real?

yes

10char

[Lorgar Aurelian]

No we didn't; we had "There was nothing and then there was Light and Void, somehow Titans hatched from planets."

Welcome to the Big Bang.

[Delever]

The binary stuff was kinda fun. Gave me too much hopium.

[Ersula]

Except... not really? In the previous lore, before the First Ones came around, the universe came about from Light and Void clashing.

This may be inaccurate, but if I recall, at first there was nothing. Then Light came into being. Light's existence created shadows for the first time, which coalesced into Void. Light and Shadow smashed into each other and the resultant explosion created The Great Dark Beyond, AKA the physical universe, alongside Arcane magic and the Twisting Nether which was a sort of twisted (heh) mirror reality, which came with Chaos magic.

You don't need a creator, sometimes thing can just happen.

That origin story would be a philosophical dead end making the light inarguably good & void inarguably evil. They had to get rid of that in order to make Illidan space jesus. I personally don't want a universe where space rocks are angels. I prefer the First Ones lore instead of lore that ties morality to aesthetics; It's more mature.

When people say Shadowlands was bad, it's because of the way the story was told. Only a very small subset of fans are saying the experience was bad because the minutiae of the lore itself was bad. The expansion conveying its ideas, its dramatization & rules of its universe poorly was why the expansion was bad. It wasn't bad because we found out the Titans were part of a larger project.

[Zankai27]

Welcome to the Big Bang.

"Oh no my video game with space magic and the ability for narrative exposition about the universe did something different than real life!"

Come on.

[Cheezits]

Ironically the binary leak (and implication of the cosmic items tbh) would be yet ANOTHER expansion where Blizzard ignores delving into the Light for a Titans vs Void war instead. They really don't seem interested in fleshing it out.

[matijwow]

No we didn't; we had "There was nothing and then there was Light and Void, somehow Titans hatched from planets."

According to the 1000 Years of War story, the Titans drifted through space at first, then planets formed around them.

[Nymrohd]

https://www.wowhead.com/npc=19554/di...-all-devouring
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dim..._All-Devouring

Let's try and use warcraft wiki links
https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Dimens..._All-Devouring

[Zankai27]

According to the 1000 Years of War story, the Titans drifted through space at first, then planets formed around them.

Right, so now looking at that, the First Ones making them still makes more sense.