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

[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.

[Nyel]

I mean PoT was intended to tie into archaeology somehow. They talked about wanting to do an arch revamp. So it does make sense in a way. Especially in an underground city of titan constructs.

Fingers crossed this will be the case. I love Archeology and I really hope it will be part of a coming system, it would make (too much) sense.

[Jaggler]

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.

considering we didn't know how the shadowlands worked or actually are, their existence can't retcon anything about it.

We weren't even aware of other pantheons, so them existing can't retcon that either.

The physical universe could still have been formed by the Light and Void clashing.

[The Stormbringer]

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.

Who says they have to be pure good and pure evil? Perhaps the Great Bang (for the Great Dark Beyond), in the process of creating other forces and reality as we know it, also affected them? Perhaps Light has a little Void in it now, and Void has a little Light? Yin and yang vibes, that sorta thing. Or maybe it changed them in other ways, adding levels of nuance and complexity they previously didn't possess. You can have your bits of grey with the old lore, something we had no problems with when you had the Forsaken using Shadow magic to comfort and heal their fellow Undead, and Scarlet Crusaders using the Light to harm innocents.

[matijwow]

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

But who made the First Ones?

[Zankai27]

But who made the First Ones?

Ion, probably

[Lorgar Aurelian]

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.

I don’t know about you but I’m not part of the Warcraft universe, I know that there retconning things even if my character doesn’t and doing it in such poor ways hurts the universe in my view.

And if there shaping the shadowlands around there idea of the first ones, which they did, all of those retcons are because they exist.

[Nerdslime]

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 think Thrall will be back as warchief too. I think Blizzard put the council in place as a safe placeholder after the Sylvanas fiasco, but I think also everybody involved from players to devs knows this is a very milquetoast, nondescript state of affairs that drains character and excitement and color from the faction altogether, so I don't think it sticks around after DF too long.

While I am making predictions, I think Brawler's Guild will finally come back, years and years overdue, and I think it will have seasonal cosmetic rewards and will take the place of the Mage Tower. There will be some FOMO involved and they're going to be fine with that and again try to explain to the fanbase that there needs to be incentives at all skill levels.

I have a lot of HOPES but not so many concrete predictions....

[Ersula]

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

Well, Metzen helped write Chronicles vol 1 & the very first page of that explains that Azeroth has a world soul because of all the different elemental powers, spirit is the one that fused with its core.

[Samin]

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.

Or they, despite inviting comparison with FF14, are planning to have us "deal with" void leading to a dangerous imbalance in the cosmic powers and some kind of Flood of Light that pits us against them to preserve existance as we know it.

[Zankai27]

I don’t know about you but I’m not part of the Warcraft universe, I know that there retconning things even if my character doesn’t and doing it in such poor ways hurts the universe in my view.

And if there shaping the shadowlands around there idea of the first ones, which they did, all of those retcons are because they exist.

None of what you're saying makes any sense. Nobody cares what your character thinks, and honestly the "very basic" light v void thing probably still happened in The Great Dark. First Ones irrespective.

"If they were shaping the Shadowlands around the First Ones, then Shadowlands is their fault"

So again, if your position is literally just "Shadowlands bad", why don't you say that? Then we can just disagree and move on.

[Houle]

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

Not really? The chronicles lore basically said that the titans were created with the warcraft universes equivalnt of the big bang - light and void clashing on a big scale, which caused a big explosion from which the physical universe was born. The titens were basically big leftover energies from that event. Thats pretty straight forward.

"The First Ones made everything" on the other hand only makes sense until you start asking, who made the First Ones then? Or how did they come into existence, when there was nothing before them?

[Jaggler]

Well, Metzen helped write Chronicles vol 1 & the very first page of that explains that Azeroth has a world soul because of all the different elemental powers, spirit is the one that fused with its core.

Can you tell me a page? I just looked, but i didn't find a reference to that.