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

[Vakir]

This is not unique to FFXIV. Isaac Asimov, Terry Prachet, Stephen King, Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis, Dr. Who, Elder Scrolls, etc have done the living world thing before. Babylon 5 and countless fantasy novels have done the "certain people are chosen ones who must unite to save the world" thing before.

Wow, I never knew that! These are all completely foreign names to me and earth-shattering implications for the foundation on which my history of media consumption rests--

Dude, it's literally a whispering female voice hitting chosen champions when it was only previously hitting one dwarf who fused with the earth for years, with everyone acting like it is a new and mysterious concept and a mystery box as to the voice's identity and purpose as the catalyst for "the final chapter" of an arc that WoW has never coherently melded as a cohesive "saga" until now (except for that time Danuser said it was and everyone ignored it because it was a terrible conclusion).

Also, the Scions in FFXIV always fought with the Eorzean Alliance against the enemy superpower, Garlemald. Never once did they renounce the conflict and call out both sides including the Eorzean Alliance and leave to go fight with Garleans and save the world from the true threat like what happens in every WoW expansion since Wrath, which predates FF14.

Yes, but the reason we focus on the Scions is largely because 14's universe has a ton of non-combatant characters or normies. The Echo isn't this all-encompassing concept and they're the most elite of the elite even when they don't have it. Even when new characters enter the setting that are hyper-competent, they usually end up joining. There's a few notable exceptions, but not many.

But in WoW, almost every major character is a fucking superhero. There's no reason for, say, Jaina to be absent. An entire god damn army of Light Draenei from space. A new portal-led group of orcs from another timeline. The dragons now extra-indebted to us.

The absence of many is a hail-mary with no political reason now so we can have a ragtag group of audience surrogates. Which, again, is not a bad thing. But it is a growing familiarity with clear parallels.

[bruxx]

I do wonder why the Sunwell would be so important but I guess we'll find out. I mean I know what we went through with it in the past but the whole "plunge the world into shadow" thing with taking it out by the Void seems a bit much.

Definitely has me curious.

Summoning a void lord, if I had to take a wild guess.

[Cheezits]

Funny enough, if you zoom in on this screenshot, you can see Talanji in the back.

Maybe a placeholder, maybe a spoiler.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F-C3sDza...name=4096x4096

[Osmeric]

- Heavy account-wide reward system.

The Warbound stuff means content in current tier basically never becomes useless, if you have alts. You're just getting gear for those alts.

[Vakir]

Funny enough, if you zoom in on this screenshot, you can see Talanji in the back.

Maybe a placeholder, maybe a spoiler.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F-C3sDza...name=4096x4096

See, this is the kind of continuity of presence I would kind of hope for in a three part finale. And they aren't even in the top 20 names I'd list of "Why is X not helping?"

[Worldshaper]

Okay, here's my first theory for the Worldsoul Saga's story.

• Azeroth's fate is uncertain. Queen Alexstrasza told us as much in the Dragonflight opening cinematic, and in the War Within features trailer, Alleria said that the fate of our world rests upon the edge of a knife. This is both a reference to Xal'atath, who is seeking to tip the scales in favour of the Void, but it is also a literal description of the Worldsoul's current status. It might be born into good, or evil.
• Xal'atath has recruited the Nerubians, aka. the Children of the First Flesh. They are the ones who, according to 'A Song of the Depths' must remember their oaths to the Old Gods, and who are toiling below to reclaim what was lost.
• The War Within is for the crystal at Hallowfall. Arathi humans from 3 000 years ago and nerubians in the service of Xal'atath are waging war over this artifact. It shifts between Light and Shadow, and might be the heart of a god. Perhaps Elune, or a First One? This is what 'A Song of the Depths' refers to as "what was lost", and the "dark heart left broken" which "awaits the taking". It is unclear why there are humans from 3 000 years ago here, and why they've been fighting the nerubians for centuries when Xal'atath only recently "gathered" them. Perhaps time travel shenanigans is involved for both parties. But what's interesting is that these humans were once allies to Quel'Thalas.
• The heart will infused into the Void Artifact, which in turn will be used on the Sunwell to create an endless night. It'll shift its Light-given energies over into darkness, and Void. This is what causes Midnight. Alleria's Void Elves and the Blood Elves will gather at Silvermoon in defense of the Sunwell, but unfortunately won't succeed (they will, however, become unified as a High Elf race). The well might be cleansed in the end, but the damage has been done anyway to the Worldsoul.
• Azeroth is born into shadow. But we'll still win in the end.

[Osmeric]

Ion has Shadowlands PTSD too

The big negative reaction couldn't have been fun for them as developers.

[blaatschaap]

I'm willing to bet one of them gets us even closer to the worldsoul at the heart of the planet.

Thankfully, we don't need to know for a good long while...

- - - Updated - - -



Hear hear! The thing I am REALLY happy about is that delves have an endgame progression system for open world players. I do raid with a team on my main character (and occasionally do an M+ or two), but I have a number of alts and all I do with them is open world content because it's fun. And the progression system will eventually get us close to heroic raid loot (which is perfectly fine, we are long past the days when someone else's gear has any impact upon you whatsoever.) So, win/win.

I basically can't raid or do mythic+, since I often *have* to leave at a moment's notice and I don't want to screw over other people doing raid progression or mythic+ keys when that happens. Basically I do only LFR, dungeon finder heroics and open world stuff. (And yes, I do feel bad when I have to leave during a heroic dungeon, it has come up occasionally. Actually got a macro for apologizing for it) Delve should really make the game a lot more interesting for me. I still hope they will add more stuff like what torghast should have been, mage tower, etc. the possibilities are endless. Sorry for the long story, nobody asked I know, just wanna explain why delve might be a gamechanger for me as a player.

[Vakir]

The big negative reaction couldn't have been fun for them as developers.

I empathize with how they had to deal with that, especially considering video game consoomers can be some of the most vicious out there, but such ample time there was to course-correct that they had nobody to blame but themselves. Same with many of BFA's initial systems.

[Raetary]

Friendly reminder that magic wells tend to have a history of being used as fancy portals in this franchise.
Xal is likely gonna use the Sunwell to summon a Void Lord.

It's also connected to every blood elf in Quel'thalas.
If the thing gets corrupted, it'd basically corrupt most of the Kingdom immediately.

[Nymrohd]

The big negative reaction couldn't have been fun for them as developers.

I don't know about everyone else here but while I adapted to working from home, it did take time. And they also had to deal with a massive scandal that must have been extremely demoralizing.

[vintage79]

Okay, here's my first theory for the Worldsoul Saga's story.

• Azeroth's fate is uncertain. Queen Alexstrasza told us as much in the Dragonflight opening cinematic, and in the War Within features trailer, Alleria said that the fate of our world rests upon the edge of a knife. This is both a reference to Xal'atath, who is seeking to tip the scales in favour of the Void, but it is also a literal description of the Worldsoul's current status. It might be born into good, or evil.
• Xal'atath has recruited the Nerubians, aka. the Children of the First Flesh. They are the ones who, according to 'A Song of the Depths' must remember their oaths to the Old Gods, and who are toiling below to reclaim what was lost.
• The War Within is for the crystal at Hallowfall. Arathi humans from 3 000 years ago and nerubians in the service of Xal'atath are waging war over this artifact. It shifts between Light and Shadow, and might be the heart of a god. Perhaps Elune, or a First One? This is what 'A Song of the Depths' refers to as "what was lost", and the "dark heart left broken" which "awaits the taking". It is unclear why there are humans from 3 000 years ago here, and why they've been fighting the nerubians for centuries when Xal'atath only recently "gathered" them. Perhaps time travel shenanigans is involved for both parties. But what's interesting is that these humans were once allies to Quel'Thalas.
• The heart will infused into the Void Artifact, which in turn will be used on the Sunwell to create an endless night. It'll shift its Light-given energies over into darkness, and Void. This is what causes Midnight. Alleria's Void Elves and the Blood Elves will gather at Silvermoon in defense of the Sunwell, but unfortunately won't succeed (they will, however, become unified as a High Elf race).
• Azeroth is born into shadow. But we'll still win in the end.

'But we'll still win in the end'

at the cost of complete destruction of Azeroth (as we know[gonna know] it)

and after that

back in time to Azeroth before sundering
aka BIG RESET /WoW2 /Full Revamp

2030++



Well of eternity
Ashara (ture one this time)
Legion (or so) ofc
and here we go again

[Nymrohd]

I empathize with how they had to deal with that, especially considering video game consoomers can be some of the most vicious out there, but such ample time there was to course-correct that they had nobody to blame but themselves. Same with many of BFA's initial systems.

That ripcord thing was so fucking stupid. It was obvious to every player that it was bad in day one. And there were already limitations in game anyway (it's not like you could advance all Covenants at once because progressions required those souls which were a limited resource) so it would never get unbalanced.

[Vakir]

Absolutely easy to explain. Tuure forced Dimensius back into the Void. Can they do it again? Nope cause they had to sacrifice themselves to achieve this. Sacrifice is a key theme for the Light. Perhaps one of the Naaru that guided Mereldar sacrificed itself to send these tribesmen to guard one of their own, perhaps even a Prime.

It's easy to explain THAT time.

You have countless other methods of sending things forward you can bullshit, theoretically, which is partly the visual gag behind the time-traveling snake storm episode from Rick and Morty.

That ripcord thing was so fucking stupid. It was obvious to every player that it was bad in day one. And there were already limitations in game anyway (it's not like you could advance all Covenants at once because progressions required those souls which were a limited resource) so it would never get unbalanced.

I was shrieking to the heavens how it was a big fucking mistake on here among the many others, all of us not streamers or influencers in any capacity, and the argument against it being a problem persisted that it was just poopsocking meta-slaves and Youtubers.

You don't hear those same people now and they are fully on board with Blizzard's philosophy simply because it's now theirs.

What do you know, voting with your wallets works, competition is a good thing, and people should sometimes listen to opinions that were more educated.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

My concern is that we are getting two expansions and 3.5+ years about fighting the starry black tentacles in a row, much like how we had two expansions and 3.5+ years about fighting against green lava demons in a row.

[Worldshaper]

Friendly reminder that magic wells tend to have a history of being used as fancy portals in this franchise.
Xal is likely gonna use the Sunwell to summon a Void Lord.

It's also connected to every blood elf in Quel'thalas.
If the thing gets corrupted, it'd basically corrupt most of the Kingdom immediately.

It would be cool if the expansion starts out with Silvermoon being this dark (yet beautiful) bastion of the Void, from whence Xal'atath rules and controls the Sunwell. Perhaps a bit too similar to Suramar thematically, but hey. Quel'dorei from all over Azeroth must unite under one banner, along with other allies, to breach their ancient city and reclaim the well before all is lost.

I wonder how they'd handle zones. I think some interview answer suggested they'll only revamp zones that matter? But Quel'thalas is tiny in-game, so they couldn't just give that particular zone a HD update, surely. They'd need to either expand it (which would look weird if the rest of Lordaerin isn't expanded), or just have the entirety of Quel'thalas be one zone out of like four new ones in the expansion.

[Cheezits]

My concern is that we are getting two expansions and 3.5+ years about fighting the starry black tentacles in a row, much like how we had two expansions and 3.5+ years about fighting against green lava demons in a row.

The black tentacles aren't in TWW so far. It will probably just be the last raid + a chunk of Midnight.

[Vakir]

My concern is that we are getting two expansions and 3.5+ years about fighting the starry black tentacles in a row, much like how we had two expansions and 3.5+ years about fighting against green lava demons in a row.

Eh. We're fighting spiders, then void tentacles, and then probably glowy constellars and order beings.

[Sondrelk]

So what do people reckon? Arathi tribe. Fanatical enemies we have to work around, or allies we help? We know there is a dungeon or two there, but who knows on whether it's because the people there are generally hostile. Whether we join forces with rebels trying to stop corruption. Or whether we are fighting against rebels trying to do something or other.

- - - Updated - - -

Eh. We're fighting spiders, then void tentacles, and then probably glowy constellars and order beings.

We could be fighting the Arathi in the second raid for all we know. Finally getting something close to the Scarlet Monastery raid we never got back in Vanilla.

[Vakir]

So what do people reckon? Arathi tribe. Fanatical enemies we have to work around, or allies we help?

Answer: Yes.

As is tradition. MMOs give us stuff we need to punch, and that means using hostile versions of any given visual kit. There's a trope for it.

Even the What's Next panel made fun of "boy, sure would suck if there's division." If there's a faction in WoW, it has division and a bad version.

We could be fighting the Arathi in the second raid for all we know. Finally getting something close to the Scarlet Monastery raid we never got back in Vanilla.

Maybe. I get the sense this is going to be a 2 raid expansion to accompany the faster timeline, but I could be wrong.

If they are the second raid, though, maybe Xal turns to corrupting the light crystal which ends up meaning she allies with them.