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

[Aeluron Lightsong]

It's crazy cause TBC and Classic was terrible in terms of story development, though Wrath was pretty fucking clean, despite some issues.

Honestly, all of these guys have Ws and Ls to them. Danuser especially has a massive L with SL, despite there being some really cool settings and ideas, and a massive W with Dragonflight so far.

Shadowlands is basically the Pandemic expansion. Everything went crazy and a lot of tech companies had to endure a new situation that hasn't been dealt with(Since the Spanish Flu).

[Pheraz]

Just finnished timewalking magister's terrace (for the X time). Even though I extremly miss the old level design the TBC story was utter crap. HIgh elves are said to be almost extinct yet we fight blood elves the entire expansion under various flags. And even though I was not a fan of Sylvanas in shadowlands, Kaeltas' evil comic villain "Muaharrharr it'se me again" stand up comedian shows were never reached by sylvanas. And why the hell did Kael'jaden showed up in a super god form out of the sunwell? So random.
Dragonflight is very calm storywise but I dare to say it could get a little bit of BFA and shadowlands drama. It tends to be a bit boring...

Only some days left, finger's crossed this xpac catches up on the story, raid/dungeon and atmosphere where it already is gameplay wise, because the gameplay is very nice.

I found talis last video interesting where he speculated again about the next raid end fight. But I have a bad feeling that it will turn out much lamer than all the hype and speculation : /

[Worldshaper]

It's crazy cause TBC and Classic was terrible in terms of story development, though Wrath was pretty fucking clean, despite some issues.

Honestly, all of these guys have Ws and Ls to them. Danuser especially has a massive L with SL, despite there being some really cool settings and ideas, and a massive W with Dragonflight so far.

It's almost as if one person isn't solely responsible for the outcome of an expansion or its story, but just a member of a team with additional responsibilities.

[Murlocos]

Afrasiabi wasn't fired until partway into 2020, he was undoubtedly involved well into 9.0 and it's important to remember he's been there since the game launched. We know that the process is simultaneously collaborative and that a lot of smaller details typically fall down to individual devs doing their own thing. I remember Scrolls of Lore's admin interned on the WoW writing team in like summer 2012 or something and he offered a lot of insight into their functioning at the time, such as Metzen generally being absent given how many plates he juggled within Blizzard, but the site is sadly dead.

I think you can read into what particular writers care about and what their habits are from piecing together interviews and the content they're credited with over the years, though. Afrasiabi has a pretty apparent destructive, flippant approach to how he handled things. It seems like the less Metzen got involved, the more Afrasiabi liked to break apart the world and characters he largely created. Hell, looking back on Cataclysm as a whole is bizarre, a large part of it just feels like the team taking the piss out of the whole setting and tripling down on using it as a vehicle for humor (or to recycle movie scripts word for word).

[Val the Moofia Boss]

a fully scaling world like GW2's, so every zone remains evergreen and you can always return there and finds things to do with people.

When Blizzard was in its GW2 copy paste and desperate to stop bleeding players phase, during WoW's most execrable expansion which bled like 40% of the playerbase, they created the Timeless Isle, which like mentioned above, was a no tagging zone (mostly) focused around easy grouping and encouraging cooperation to take down difficult enemies.

First of all, the comparison only holds if you fixate exclusively on patch 5.4. Timeless Isle was only relevant during the 14 month long SoO period, when it was the latest content and its rewards were relevant. Once WoD happened and the gear treadmill progressed, Timeless Isle was forgotten. Meanwhile, people are still running 9 year old GW2 maps such as the Silverwastes, because there isn't a gear treadmill that has invaldiated those rewards. Blizzard would have to move away from a gear treadmill model in order for a GW2-styled world where all zones are relevant to work.

The second issue is that WoW's quality of game design has regressed from the TI days. Blizzard used to be good at analyzing game design, figuring out what other games did right and what they didn't. GW2 has 10 years of event design that has been thoroughly broken down in blogs and on forums, but whoever designed the Dragonflight events didn't even bother to do basic research given how bad the soup and Primalist Future events are.

It's just the short-sighted takes like "Just add WQs in every zone to make the entire world relevant xD" are gonna hurt the game more than it will help it.

World quests aren't engaging gameplay like Timeless Isle' rare trains or GW2's event trains are.

It's crazy cause TBC and Classic was terrible in terms of story development

It's unfair to judge TBC by modern standards. At the time, the WoW devs hadn't realized the possibility of telling a pseudo singleplayer RPG experience through an MMO. Phasing didn't exist yet. They only started to realize it during Wrath and Cata.

[Nymrohd]

I think you can read into what particular writers care about and what their habits are from piecing together interviews and the content they're credited with over the years, though. Afrasiabi has a pretty apparent destructive, flippant approach to how he handled things. It seems like the less Metzen got involved, the more Afrasiabi liked to break apart the world and characters he largely created. Hell, looking back on Cataclysm as a whole is bizarre, a large part of it just feels like the team taking the piss out of the whole setting and tripling down on using it as a vehicle for humor (or to recycle movie scripts word for word).

I mean I hear that but did you see TBC? My feeling with TBC was "well maybe we will do one more expac so let's use everything) and then by the time they got to Wrath they were "Now what?"

[Murlocos]

I mean I hear that but did you see TBC? My feeling with TBC was "well maybe we will do one more expac so let's use everything) and then by the time they got to Wrath they were "Now what?"

Oh you'll get no defense of TBC/Wrath from me. For as much as you can criticize some of the recent expansions for flying through storylines too fast, those first two were just throwing everything at the wall as a raid boss with reckless abandon. As was mentioned, you know it's bad when they make a major lore character an in-universe joke about their own writing in the same expansion.

[Makorus]

First of all, the comparison only holds if you fixate exclusively on patch 5.4. Timeless Isle was only relevant during the 14 month long SoO period, when it was the latest content and its rewards were relevant. Once WoD happened and the gear treadmill progressed, Timeless Isle was forgotten. Meanwhile, people are still running 9 year old GW2 maps such as the Silverwastes, because there isn't a gear treadmill that has invaldiated those rewards. Blizzard would have to move away from a gear treadmill model in order for a GW2-styled world where all zones are relevant to work.

The second issue is that WoW's quality of game design has regressed from the TI days. Blizzard used to be good at analyzing game design, figuring out what other games did right and what they didn't. GW2 has 10 years of event design that has been thoroughly broken down in blogs and on forums, but whoever designed the Dragonflight events didn't even bother to do basic research given how bad the soup and Primalist Future events are.




World quests aren't engaging gameplay like Timeless Isle' rare trains or GW2's event trains are.




It's unfair to judge TBC by modern standards. At the time, the WoW devs hadn't realized the possibility of telling a pseudo singleplayer RPG experience through an MMO. Phasing didn't exist yet. They only started to realize it during Wrath and Cata.

Timeless Isle Rare Trains or GW2 Meta Trains are not engaging gameplay, they are literally carrot on a sticks. They are the definition of skinner boxes. World Quests don't have the same effect because the reward is deterministic.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Timeless Isle Rare Trains or GW2 Meta Trains are not engaging gameplay, they are literally carrot on a sticks. They are the definition of skinner boxes. World Quests don't have the same effect because the reward is deterministic.

I'm talking about game design, the flow of the experience. In a GW2 event chain, you are being smoothly directed from one event to the next, performing different activities for a couple minutes, and you have a narrative that cobbles the whole experience together. You enter Verdant Bring. The first event in the chain has you descend the cliff and clear out the three Mordrem vine monsters and a few trash around them. Takes a couple minutes. End of event. 30 second break as Laranthir arrives. Second event begins as Laranthir and the Pale Reavers begin pushing across the bridge, so now you are participating in escort gameplay. A minute later, you climb up the stairs and the group stops. End of second event. 30 second period of rest. Then the raptor packs attack, and you can pick up a sniper rifle to pick them off as they approach, or melee them when they come up the stairs. Do that for a minute, then event done. 15 second break. Then you are pushing into the fortress. Etc.

The WoW world quest gameplay of landing at a location, spending 5 minutes straight fighting Gnoll elites with damagesponge healthpools to slowly push a bar to 100% for a measly few hundred gold and feeling too exhausted to mount up and fly to another disconnected world quest and do the exact same thing all over again is not fun. The Primalist Future event gameplay of standing at a portal and whacking away at incoming waves of mobs for 10 minutes, and then spending 10 minutes whacking a damagesponge boss is not fun. The Tuskurr soup event of tediously running around to vendors for 15 minutes straight is not fun.

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Or look at Silverwastes. You enter the map. Then you push down a lane and perform your first event: capturing one of the four forts. Once you capture it, you get a short break, then the next event begins where you cleanup the fort of debris. Break. Then you begin repairing the walls. Break. Then you need to go out and either escort caravans to the fort to upgrade it, or go help capture the other forts. Then eventually the Mordrem will attack the fort and you have to come back and defend it. And so on.

Second half of Dragon's End (not the first half, everyone agrees that's poorly designed) where you are escorting one of the NPCs, then break. Then miniboss. Break. Go help out the other lanes. Break. Then you have to collect the void crystals and pass them up the line of players to restore the Brand magic to Aurene. Break. Then the ascent to the Harvest Temple. Break. Big final boss battle of the game.

[Nymrohd]

Timeless Isle Rare Trains or GW2 Meta Trains are not engaging gameplay, they are literally carrot on a sticks. They are the definition of skinner boxes. World Quests don't have the same effect because the reward is deterministic.

TI rare train worked in some weird way because at least in my realm it was VERY social. People were always joking on general, several of the camp spots turned into Mammoth and Yak trains. I felt it was some combination of the size and terrain, the respawns timers and maybe the addons that were used at that time? Rare trains in later zones tend to be so hectic because you never really have a chance to socialize.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

And world quests are not daily anymore, which I think Shadowlands did fine but now its not. Wish they'd fix that. I didn't mind doing them daily. Hunting for Rares is.... ok but its not the most engaging thing ever. It should exist for sure though, same with treasure chests and such. The hunts are different but I think that should be a new open world thing to add in line with world quests.

[Makorus]

And world quests are not daily anymore, which I think Shadowlands did fine but now its not. Wish they'd fix that. I didn't mind doing them daily. Hunting for Rares is.... ok but its not the most engaging thing ever. It should exist for sure though, same with treasure chests and such. The hunts are different but I think that should be a new open world thing to add in line with world quests.

Worlds Quests not being daily is one of the best things they've done this expansion.

[Kokolums]

I miss the emissaries where you had 3 days to complete the quest. Those were hyper engaging. Some of them started to build large masses of players in one area enjoying the hell out of it.

[Gurahk]

I miss the emissaries where you had 3 days to complete the quest. Those were hyper engaging. Some of them started to build large masses of players in one area enjoying the hell out of it.

I also remember how they were called chore content. Like every aspect of the game apparently is.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Worlds Quests not being daily is one of the best things they've done this expansion.

No thanks, I disagree heavily. You don't have to do them.

I also remember how they were called chore content. Like every aspect of the game apparently is.

To be fair the renown system in DF is better then the SL version of it.

[Makorus]

No thanks, I disagree heavily. You don't have to do them.




To be fair the renown system in DF is better then the SL version of it.

The only argument for daily WQs is "It gave me something to do everyday" at which point you aren't playing the game to play the game but to cross things off a checklist.

[Nymrohd]

No thanks, I disagree heavily. You don't have to do them.

And you don't have to do them all on reset day. Goes both ways.

[Sondrelk]

The only argument for daily WQs is "It gave me something to do everyday" at which point you aren't playing the game to play the game but to cross things off a checklist.

I would argue that having something to do every day is important. I wouldnt go so far as to say that we should have as many World Quests as we did in previous expansions. But maybe stagger the ones we have so that they don't all reset at the same time.

[Revamp Man]

I would argue that having something to do every day is important. I wouldnt go so far as to say that we should have as many World Quests as we did in previous expansions. But maybe stagger the ones we have so that they don't all reset at the same time.

Make them reward only gold if you already did them once during a 3 day rotation

Example the ring of blood WQ
It gives epic gear or whatever the first time
Subsequent times it gives 600g
On the reset it gives the gear tier rewards

The cataloging quests give a bunch of rep or gold
Keep that the first time
Subsequent it gives half the gold until reset

[Nymrohd]

I would argue that having something to do every day is important. I wouldnt go so far as to say that we should have as many World Quests as we did in previous expansions. But maybe stagger the ones we have so that they don't all reset at the same time.

You have things to do every day. There is repeatable content, there are grinds and the vast majority of vignettes and rares in WoW give rewards on a daily reset.