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

[RahEndymion]

I really hope Xal lasts for more than one expansion. She's already better than the Jailer due to being all the way from Legion but now that we have her as an actual important character I hope it remains that way until Midnight at least.

As the 'harbinger' she is definitely not the final threat but I agree it would be nice to have her as a talking head, antagonistic or otherwise, over the next few expansions.

The whispers and her attitude were quite refreshing in Legion.

[Varodoc]

The Old God Blood is the key to Xal'atath and the Nerubian's plans as they are mining it.

Much like it was in MoP, the Old Gods will continue to haunt Azeroth through their Blood, their legacy, and their whispers.

I expect a C'Thun return as a posthumous villain in TWW, especially since the Sword is returning and C'Thun's body was literally underneath it.

Regardless, as Blizzard stated at Blizzcon, the Old God Blood will be the key.

[Ersula]

As the 'harbinger' she is definitely not the final threat but I agree it would be nice to have her as a talking head, antagonistic or otherwise, over the next few expansions.

The whispers and her attitude were quite refreshing in Legion.

I hope she is either the main antagonist or she's not really an antagonist at all. Giving Iridikron some depth & him have to deal with him doing all this horribly destructive stuff to get the Harbinger, all for the expressed purpose of having some sort of brawl with the titans, only the Titans never come because they're busy, would be infinitely more interesting than his plan going as intended.

Also I'm assuming Azeroth is the titular "last" Titan. Right?

In retrospect, how does Iridikron's plan make sense? And by that I mean, how does it exist? He got it from Neltharian's research...but why would he need Galkarond's essence to summon Xalatath....if Xalatath was disempowered & already on Azeroth when Neltharian was doing that research?

Factions could be interesting if they weren't so binary, with the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other.

Make it a third where each faction is neither good nor bad, and each has its own interests that may or may not conflict in certain situations.

Like Cersei in Game of Thrones, I thought what would have been more interesting is if Azshara took the lawful evil route, and started dealing with the other nations rationally: Like, everyone wants to kill her but they can't because as a popular queen they're forced to deal with her politically instead of with violence. Imagine the Alliance & Horde having to discuss trade deals with Azshara & the Naga.

Is that compelling to anyone else or am I just old?

[Dracullus]

Considering that we know theme of next 3 expansions and world tree is blooming 'near', looks like it's pretty certain it will happen post raid. Maybe that's why whole zone is behind loading screen and not part of open world now.

[Valysar]

Considering that we know theme of next 3 expansions and world tree is blooming 'near', looks like it's pretty certain it will happen post raid. Maybe that's why whole zone is behind loading screen and not part of open world now.

The tree will bloom into Azeroth in 10.2.5 I suppose.

[Vakir]

Literally nobody asks this.

Literally what I've been asked by randos that were interested in WoW because of a South Park episode and a Mr. T ad but knew nothing else. WoW isn't the pop cultural juggernaut it used to be. Normies don't know what the Horde and Alliance are.

Not even bothering reading the rest of your insult laden dribble after attempting the first paragraph.

Then I'll soften it for you.

WoW is unable to have conclusive payoff for either side because of its nature as a theme park MMO.

Theme park MMOs are expensive and Blizzard has already struggled with content cadence trying to adapt it for 2 factions.

The overall ethos of both has been so warped and is already bland on its own that they're functionally the same regardless. This was the case the moment they tried to make Warcraft its own thing in 3, with noble savage orcs and fluffy native American cows teaming up with generic humans to fight back against a demon army, rather than continue the trend of trying to be a Warhammer property that got denied by GW.

More importantly, it's pretty much always been like this on the story level. Vanilla was everyone standing around with their thumbs in their asses because the primary players had no reason to actually hate each other yet. The main antagonistic force was internal, with Rend and Onyxia, a full-on team-up at the Scarab Gate, and more unifaction stuff with the Argent Dawn. Hell, Thrall literally sends you to kill Onyxia partially as an ASSISTANCE towards the Alliance: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/What_the_Wind_Carries

The finale of the Burning Crusade was literally an Alliance leader saving the asses of the Blood Elves from eternal withdrawal through fixing their source of power. This is promptly forgotten, by the way. I don't think it ever came up as a huge push for the Blood Elves to join when they were considering it back in MoP before crazy-Jaina messed everything up with Dalaran.

The only way they got to "put the war back in Warcraft" was for everyone to take stupid pills as an excuse to allow Garrosh into the driver's seat when there were about 15 other candidates that would've made more sense. We'll get to that.

Speaking of, Cataclysm. It also sucked and had no satisfying conclusion unilaterally. I explained why in the other post that you ignored because it challenges your view.

MoP was a faction war, but it was a faction war in service of talking about why the war won't work. They waffled a bit with the speech from the waiter to Wrathion about how "the Alliance and Horde make each other stronger" while conveniently ignoring the trillions of gold in cost, hundreds of thousands dead, and the idyllic center zone destroyed and corrupted. But they also had Taran Zhu going on a pedestal at Thunder Isle talking all about how we needed to walk away. The writing was on the wall during the announcement - Chris came out holding the Doomhammer and wearing an Alliance sweatshirt. It's all just circlejerk theatre.

Hell, even BFA was largely about how the faction war was a convenient distraction for the leader of Mega-Hell that has been plotting for thousands of years could break out and also how it was a convenient source of distraction from N'Zoth et al. to fuck us over.

When BFA was released, the first thing people said was "lol, it's probably an Old God expansion." Blizzard responded "...no! No it isn't! It's about having pride as your faction! Buy our t-shirts!" "Lol yeah it is." Hey, turns out it was more about Azshara and N'Zoth and the rest was a prologue about how we were stupid idiots that got played. And as it turns out, players don't like being told they're idiots that got played when they knew from day 1 that this was the fate. Shocker.

The Wrathgate absolutely sucked. I was there saying the Emperor had no clothes while everyone was talking how great it was at the time. It required everyone to grab a hold of the idiot ball for dear life and even now they can't be consistent about how much Sylvanas was or wasn't complicit in. Parts of it border on non-canon now with Sargeras in the event after (that has been removed, lol) yelling at Varimathras, even though now we know he had nothing to do with it.

In Cycle of Hatred, which released in Vanilla, Thrall shattered the skull of someone with the Doomhammer that attempted to fuck with his attempt at peace. Suddenly he's just sitting there, occasionally wagging his finger, while Garrosh is disruptive and antagonizing in the middle of a neutral zone 5 feet from the Lich King, purely because the story needs an excuse to restart a war. At this point, Garrosh had no reason to have that level of influence where Thrall would even allow him around logically, because he wasn't considered a war hero yet - which itself was contradicted by his incompetence demonstrated in Borean Tundra.

Even before the whole "High King of the Alliance Military" crap with Varian, it required him to completely overtake the narrative as the king of one kingdom relative to the rest of the entire faction. Jaina crying and calling him "my king" at Icecrown made absolutely no sense and is a pretty big low note. Making Varian the defacto leader also drained the Alliance of its difference from the Horde, because now it had a sole sovereign ruler and wasn't an alliance. They tried fixing this in MoP and it was largely just shilling Varian to hell while permanently damaging Tyrande's credibility.

It's never been good, dude. And it has never worked in a theme park MMO. If there was a sandbox MMO or PvP-centric MMO set in the Warcraft universe? One that touched more on the WC1 and 2 tone of the Horde before they were completely altered in 3? Bring on the faction war, absolutely.

[Polybius]

I hope she is either the main antagonist or she's not really an antagonist at all. Giving Iridikron some depth & him have to deal with him doing all this horribly destructive stuff to get the Harbinger, all for the expressed purpose of having some sort of brawl with the titans, only the Titans never come because they're busy, would be infinitely more interesting than his plan going as intended.

Also I'm assuming Azeroth is the titular "last" Titan. Right?

In retrospect, how does Iridikron's plan make sense? And by that I mean, how does it exist? He got it from Neltharian's research...but why would he need Galkarond's essence to summon Xalatath....if Xalatath was disempowered & already on Azeroth when Neltharian was doing that research?Like Cersei in Game of Thrones, I thought what would have been more interesting is if Azshara took the lawful evil route, and started dealing with the other nations rationally: Like, everyone wants to kill her but they can't because as a popular queen they're forced to deal with her politically instead of with violence. Imagine the Alliance & Horde having to discuss trade deals with Azshara & the Naga.

Is that compelling to anyone else or am I just old?

It is, but they’ll have to explain the murderous naga targeting important locations to steal artifacts.

They can always take… inspiration… from real life…

[Vakir]

I've known about Warcraft since the early days, and KINDA played it a bit since TBC and late Classic (My dad played since WC1 lol), but I didn't actually start getting into the lore til 2011.

Also, Durak ain't written to be the fallen Arbiter of Death.

My point is they can make any excuse. A generic fated role doesn't make a difference if it isn't earned characterization-wise.

And yeah, that tracks. Not gonna gatekeep explicitly, but if you don't have any actual investment dating back to much of this stuff and the establishment of the world, of course you're going to be more on-board with weird-ass deviations that make no sense.

[Sentynel]

Do you guys think we may get a mini 1 or 2 boss raid before 11.0? (ala FFXIV trial style)

Maybe fighting Tyr or Iridikron?

No clue why people keep bringing FF in to make some weird comparisons. We've had 1 boss raids since vanilla.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Respect his...?!

He's a fictional character!

Powerscaling and its consequences have been a disaster for fiction. They have greatly increased the short-term catharsis for those of us who view Marvel movies, but they have destabilized critical reading, have made fiction unfulfilling, have subjected preexisting narratives to indignities, have led to widespread psychological inconvenience (for the face-clawers, to physical inconvenience as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the metafictional environment. The continued production of Marvel movies will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject existing stories to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the environment of new ones, it will probably lead to greater media disruption and garbage entertainment, and it may lead to increased dubious writing even in “highbrow” media.

[Ersula]

No clue why people keep bringing FF in to make some weird comparisons. We've had 1 boss raids since vanilla.

I really expected to fight Irikikron in a small raid. I would still be assuming this if Holly hadn't said Amirdrassil was the last raid of Dragonflight at blizzcon. That's pretty definitive: No mini-raid either.

[Vakir]

I really expected to fight Irikikron in a small raid. I would still be assuming this if Holly hadn't said Amirdrassil was the last raid of Dragonflight at blizzcon. That's pretty definitive: No mini-raid either.

Might be a mega-dungeon...? To give 5-man gear at an ilevel around the lower end of the Fated amount? Pure copium from me.

If they're planning for boring-ass Iridikron to be the overarching guy moreso than Xal'atath beyond War Within, they are backing the wrong horse. Let's put that Saturday morning cartoon dweeb down before 11.0.

Powerscaling and its consequences have been a disaster for fiction.

Hear fucking hear.

As someone who can occasionally semi-enjoy a (pre-current) Marvel every so often, even scaling there or in other similar "brain fast food" franchises will usually get ignored in favor of a story if the people involved are semi-competent.

People obsessed with it in fandom are the absolute fucking worst.

Hell, even in WoW, powerscaling went out the fucking window the moment they made Anub'arak a leveling 5-man boss and then brought him back as a final raid encounter when people rightfully pointed out how stupid that is. They completely missed the point that it wasn't even about his level of strength, it was about him not being a major character and presence.

[Nymrohd]

Factions could be interesting if they weren't so binary, with the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other.

Make it a third where each faction is neither good nor bad, and each has its own interests that may or may not conflict in certain situations.

a real game of uno starts with 3 players, not two.

See this doesn't work because people want a specific fantasy from their cultures. The issue with WoW is that it forces very different cultures in the same faction. The Kaldorei have little in common with the rest of the Alliance (all of which work pretty well together). The Horde has like three very different cultures from the honorable savages of Thrall with the tauren, Darkspear and old guard orcs, the younger aggressive orcs like Garrosh and the orcs who grew up in the camps, the blood elves and the forsaken. Four different cultures shoved in one faction.

- - - Updated - - -

Might be a mega-dungeon...? To give 5-man gear at an ilevel around the lower end of the Fated amount? Copium.

If they're planning for boring-ass Iridikron to be the overarching guy moreso than Xal'atath beyond War Within, they are backing the wrong horse. Let's put that Saturday morning cartoon dweeb down before 11.0.

See, Iridikron works much better in the books. He hasn't had enough time in the front and he kind of needs it so people can like him. Xal'atath has had so much screentime so ofc people like her.

[Vakir]

See, Iridikron works much better in the books. He hasn't had enough time in the front and he kind of needs it so people can like him. Xal'atath has had so much screentime so ofc people like her.

Perhaps. It's hard for me to trust the books being worthwhile with how they've barely worked since...basically ever, and how they have consistently been a narrative crutch.

I still just don't really care for his whole schtick. His mommy/daddy issues towards the Titans are putting the cart before the horse for us - if the Titans are indeed going to be a future existential threat in the 3rd installment as is widely speculated, let us discover that naturally, rather than give us a strawman extremist we ignore who gets to be right later after he's probably died. Stories always do that and it's frustrating. Ed acts completely OOC in the first (filler) episode of FMAB because actually listening to McDougal would jump the plot ahead like 30 episodes? Wow, awesome writing.

It's always just bad communication for the sake of things. (Besides, we already did that with Algalon)

[Eldryth]

With what we know of the upcoming story so far, I can't see Iridikron not making it to The Last Titan. Of course the villain who wants the Titans to return and has a lair in Northrend will probably be important in the expansion where the Titans return and we go back to Northrend. I don't know if Xal'atath will make it that far (personally think that whether she lives or dies in TWW, she'll effectively win by causing the Hour of Twilight leading us into Midnight), but Iridikron seems to be set up for The Last Titan in particular.

[Vakir]

Maybe so. I really am just not excited to have to look at his turd-drake (or He-Man villain humanoid) design for another 3 expacs.

[Nymrohd]

With what we know of the upcoming story so far, I can't see Iridikron not making it to The Last Titan. Of course the villain who wants the Titans to return and has a lair in Northrend will probably be important in the expansion where the Titans return and we go back to Northrend. I don't know if Xal'atath will make it that far (personally think that whether she lives or dies in TWW, she'll effectively win by causing the Hour of Twilight leading us into Midnight), but Iridikron seems to be set up for The Last Titan in particular.

Iridikron, the earth dragon known for exploring the underground of Azeroth absolutely could show up and help Xal in the underground expansion where she is trying to use the spider kingdom to access the core of the planet.

[Eldryth]

Iridikron, the earth dragon known for exploring the underground of Azeroth absolutely could show up and help Xal in the underground expansion where she is trying to use the spider kingdom to access the core of the planet.

Sure, he can appear there and get more buildup. But now that we know that the Titans are actually returning, and it'll happen in the very continent where he has his lair, I can't see his story getting resolved until they do.

[Ersula]

With what we know of the upcoming story so far, I can't see Iridikron not making it to The Last Titan. Of course the villain who wants the Titans to return and has a lair in Northrend will probably be important in the expansion where the Titans return and we go back to Northrend. I don't know if Xal'atath will make it that far (personally think that whether she lives or dies in TWW, she'll effectively win by causing the Hour of Twilight leading us into Midnight), but Iridikron seems to be set up for The Last Titan in particular.

Keep in Mind they never said when or if the Titans actually come to azeroth. Heck, "the Last Titan" title suggests if the Titans die it happens before that expansion.

[Nymrohd]

Sure, he can appear there and get more buildup. But now that we know that the Titans are actually returning, and it'll happen in the very continent where he has his lair, I can't see his story getting resolved until they do.

I mean it would not be about getting his story resolved. It would be about getting his story TOLD.