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

[Chickat]

The Valentines Trading post will bankrupt me.

If you think thats bad, imagine if they add housing decorations too.

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Remember that they are working on TWW at the same time as Midnight, so that could explain the Dynamic Ground mount.

But how would people react to that? Would you not be able to fly anymore? If you can fly, why would people dynamic ground ride? They cant make ground mounts as fast as flying mounts. it would be impossible to control. Max I could see is 3 or 400% speed on the ground. I think it would be cool if they had fun dynamic 300 up to 300% mount speed ground mounts with different abilities, but only for the first tier. The .1 patch should bring Pathfinder. But most people would be mad.

[Vakir]

But how would people react to that? Would you not be able to fly anymore? If you can fly, why would people dynamic ground ride? They cant make ground mounts as fast as flying mounts. it would be impossible to control. Max I could see is 3 or 400% speed on the ground. I think it would be cool if they had fun dynamic 300 up to 300% mount speed ground mounts with different abilities, but only for the first tier. The .1 patch should bring Pathfinder. But most people would be mad.

Maybe certain areas will be flightless temporarily until you unlock them? Rather than entire zones. Giving some interesting ramps, climbing options, etc. for interesting mobility without requiring it later. GW2 does this with certain jumping puzzles for example.

Does KINDA mean a waste of a lot of dev time for a short period. Maybe mounts for inside locations with narrow corridors/low ceilings that aren't flight efficient?

As far as TWW, they said you'll get classic flying through finishing the story pretty quick on launch with no silly requirements at the panel.

[schmonz]

Preach just had an interview with Ion Hazzikostas. I would like to comment on the topic of their talk, which is about a "180° degree change".

Is there really a 180° change in means of progress?

My concerns:

1.) They make renown account wide. While they probably move gearing to delves, which probably become a replacement for any kind of progress renown ever gave. Which even could be slower than renown, as delves only give vault loot and not much more.
2.) Delves are not really revolutionary. They are extended world quests, where you get put into a (probably instanced) part of the open world to complete tasks, where i wonder how a typical progression works. Will delves have levels like mythic+? Will they simply scale to your gear? How useful is gearing progression to them?
3.) What else changes to talk about a 180° change? I mean, crafting stays the same. Dungeons stay the same. Raids stay the same. Raids will still give the best loot. World content will only provide gear up to heroic raiding gear level, as it already does in Dragonflight from world questing.
4.) There is not really any change in the mindset of blizzard to gatekeep the progress of raiders and mythic+ players. There is no 180° change towards anything like parallel gearing progression where you may get the best gear for your gameplay. There simply is a relabeling and a moving of progress from components to others, which blizzard always sold as "big changes".

I am not really convinced about their 180°-change. It sounds more like a typical relabeling and to keep existing systems where it is simply about generally keeping the reward structure in place. Blizzards biggest mistake is to not be able to overcome their gate keeping mentality, so you could have systems like crafting and world content be as rewarding as minority gameplay like premade group raids or high level mythic+ dungeons.

[Super Dickmann]

I don't see why it has to be Alliance-only, just entirely Worgen themed. The Forsaken questline at the end of SL did let you play it as Alliance but it was still Forsaken themed in its entirety; you interacted with Forsaken NPCs and every theme had to do with the Forsaken story. It could be that the Horde player will just be tagging along and every friendly NPC in the questline will be a Worgen or Worgen-aligned but it is still disappointing that the enemy will be the Scarlet Crusade with which the Worgen have no real history and which is primarily a Forsaken antagonist. There were many options for what to use. Heck it could have simply been some form of Scourge that moved there during the Shadowland storyline. I am sure we can come up with so many ideas that would be closer to the Worgen theme and not primarily Horde-themed.

A soft faction-exclusive story, like Lordaeron or the Man'ari questline would fill the same gist where it's entirely about one race and faction and there's just a figleaf for others to be able to experience it is fine. This might stil be how this goes really, with Calia giving you a permission slip to go do Genn's bitchwork. Personally I'd cut these "go undercover and help the other faction" quests in their entirety and replace them with the Caverns of Time/Dazar'alor approach of having some dickhead go "By the way, X happened" and have you replay it illusion'd up but that's neither here nor there.

That said, I don't think there's any neutral opponent that works, though plague beasts or dragon cult or what have you would be less clearly transplanted from a Forsaken story. At the end of the day, the hurdle this quest can't beat is that the worgen antagonist are the Horde in general and the Forsaken in particular. The only one to even come close are other worgen, and after the worst heritage quest of all time all about how the worgen shouldn't carry on, having the reclamation also be about killing your own guys would be a terrible choice. The Unifaction paradigm dooms this to be limp unless the focus is entirely on restoring the kingdom as such instead of fighting a specific baddie, which doesn't seem to be the case.

As for the Scarlets, re: @Skildar I don't think the Arathi are a replacement for them so much as they'll be brought together for when we go to the presumable kingdom the Hallowfall expedition came from.

[Nymrohd]

3.) What else changes to talk about a 180° change? I mean, crafting stays the same. Dungeons stay the same. Raids stay the same. Raids will still give the best loot. World content will only provide gear up to heroic raiding gear level, as it already does in Dragonflight from world questing.

World quests give Explorer loot. This is below Adventurer, Veteran, Champion and Hero (Hero being the Heroic raiding gear level). It is possible to get full Veteran loot through world activites slowly and with crests update it so it matched NORMAL raiding gear. Beyond that you can maybe get a few pieces of Champion gear and if you upgrade ALL your Veteran loot to max, you will be able to very slowly gain Wyrm crests to upgrade the Champion gear to low level Heroic raiding gear. So far the only form of Champion gear I've seen outside instanced content is that helmet I got from Renown. I assume you can get vault gear from heroic dungeons that is champion level (simply because you could in 10.1 by doing 5 heroics) but then again that stops being world content.

I'd say the 180 has more to do with them actually listening to feedback. They have been reasonably responsive to feedback from late SL forward. Many of the gameplay issues in BfA and SL (and arguably even Legion) were caused because they completely ignored all feedback (and WoW betas have a ton of constructive feedback written by posters who write respectfully and in detail and predicted the issues with Legiondaries, Azerite Armor and the Covenants to the minute detail).

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That said, I don't think there's any neutral opponent that works, though plague beasts or dragon cult or what have you would be less clearly transplanted from a Forsaken story. At the end of the day, the hurdle this quest can't beat is that the worgen antagonist are the Horde in general and the Forsaken in particular. The only one to even come close are other worgen, and after the worst heritage quest of all time all about how the worgen shouldn't carry on, having the reclamation also be about killing your own guys would be a terrible choice. The Unifaction paradigm dooms this to be limp unless the focus is entirely on restoring the kingdom as such instead of fighting a specific baddie, which doesn't seem to be the case.

I'd say the true antagonist of the Gilneans was not ever even in the game, Ralaar. He created the Wolf Cult, destabilized the Kingdom with the Starlight Slasher murders and opened the way for the Forsaken. Having some of his allies take over Gilneas because they were freed during either the Legion or the current events in the dream would work.

[Super Dickmann]

I'd say the true antagonist of the Gilneans was not ever even in the game, Ralaar. He created the Wolf Cult, destabilized the Kingdom with the Starlight Slasher murders and opened the way for the Forsaken. Having some of his allies take over Gilneas because they were freed during either the Legion or the current events in the dream would work.

Ralaar (or an associate) would've been good for the heritage questline in place of having it be about Tess's self-insert fanfiction, but that heritage questline is also the one edge Scarlets have over other choices. The reason the worgen heritage is uniquely bad is because while it isn't just a random generic questline for the race, the Forsaken one is, or a side-story like the tauren or goblin one, the way it engages with the themes and identity of the race is to do away with them. The premise of the heritage questline which should be all about why you should like playing a worgen is that you shouldn't be a worgen and the worgen should not carry on as a race. It's a Gilneas heritage, but not a worgen one, but Gilneans are just dapper humans in hats, that they're also werewolves is the additional fun part.

By having their opponents be Scarlets, i.e humans who's previous other fight is with another type of cursed human who come around to seeing it as a blessing, you can reinforce why the worgen curse is also a benefit. While a Wolf Cult antagonist would nix the overlap with the Horde and make it more thematically tied with Gilneas, having the primary foe of what'll likely be the most relevant worgen questline for another half decade be other worgen would just further drive the point home.

[Lady Atia]

Preach just had an interview with Ion Hazzikostas. I would like to comment on the topic of their talk, which is about a "180° degree change".

Is there really a 180° change in means of progress?

My concerns:

1.) They make renown account wide. While they probably move gearing to delves, which probably become a replacement for any kind of progress renown ever gave. Which even could be slower than renown, as delves only give vault loot and not much more.
2.) Delves are not really revolutionary. They are extended world quests, where you get put into a (probably instanced) part of the open world to complete tasks, where i wonder how a typical progression works. Will delves have levels like mythic+? Will they simply scale to your gear? How useful is gearing progression to them?
3.) What else changes to talk about a 180° change? I mean, crafting stays the same. Dungeons stay the same. Raids stay the same. Raids will still give the best loot. World content will only provide gear up to heroic raiding gear level, as it already does in Dragonflight from world questing.
4.) There is not really any change in the mindset of blizzard to gatekeep the progress of raiders and mythic+ players. There is no 180° change towards anything like parallel gearing progression where you may get the best gear for your gameplay. There simply is a relabeling and a moving of progress from components to others, which blizzard always sold as "big changes".

I am not really convinced about their 180°-change. It sounds more like a typical relabeling and to keep existing systems where it is simply about generally keeping the reward structure in place. Blizzards biggest mistake is to not be able to overcome their gate keeping mentality, so you could have systems like crafting and world content be as rewarding as minority gameplay like premade group raids or high level mythic+ dungeons.

You are aware that crafting pretty much is on par with mythic raid loot already? And it's not like mythic+ up to 21 is anything hard to do, and aspect crests drop on even lower ones. Heck, I usually run 18-20 keys this week, and it's the first one of the season.

[Nymrohd]

Ralaar (or an associate) would've been good for the heritage questline in place of having it be about Tess's self-insert fanfiction, but that heritage questline is also the one edge Scarlets have over other choices. The reason the worgen heritage is uniquely bad is because while it isn't just a random generic questline for the race, the Forsaken one is, or a side-story like the tauren or goblin one, the way it engages with the themes and identity of the race is to do away with them. The premise of the heritage questline which should be all about why you should like playing a worgen is that you shouldn't be a worgen and the worgen should not carry on as a race. It's a Gilneas heritage, but not a worgen one, but Gilneans are just dapper humans in hats, that they're also werewolves is the additional fun part.

By having their opponents be Scarlets, i.e humans who's previous other fight is with another type of cursed human who come around to seeing it as a blessing, you can reinforce why the worgen curse is also a benefit. While a Wolf Cult antagonist would nix the overlap with the Horde and make it more thematically tied with Gilneas, having the primary foe of what'll likely be the most relevant worgen questline for another half decade be other worgen would just further drive the point home.

I'll say this, if I'd made WoW, Worgen would probably not be part of the Alliance (Genn and a contingent of Gilnean humans would). I'd actually have them be part of the Forsaken. Two factions, a dominant one led by Ralaar which is just violent and Ralaar would try to manipulate them (and the Forsaken at large) into war with the Kaldorei, with him being succeeded by Ivar down the line cause if he did face Malf he would get his ass wooped and one led by Darius that would not fully embrace the beast but would absolutely hate Genn for abandoning the Gilneans outside the walls.
Plus I want a Werewolf (Worgen), Zombie (Forsaken), Ghost (Banshees and Spectres), Vampire (San'layn), Body Horror Monster (Nerubians) faction


Anyway on topic, beyond Ralaar, they could have just used a new threat. Having the Drust show up using Daral'nir's connection to the Dream would fit perfectly and Drust vs Worgen absolutely would work visually, they have very similar aesthetics and Drust are just an easy villain to hate. Beyond that you could just have some Scourge there to still given the zombie vs werewolf feeling (imagine if a necromancer had bound Liam's Ghost somehow, now that would give you emotional impact) or even have some demons set up shop (maybe including Nathrezim)
I'd love it if they used HS's ideas for the Blackwood instead but that would require at least a few unique models and they ain't doing that for a throwaway questline (Hagatha is just an orc but she is nothing without the Shudderwock and Baku)

I do hope WoWHead picks this topic up; we have no visibility with the playerbase and I am not sure how much visibility even the official forums get. Not that I have any hopes this will be resolved.
But given that the person who is most visible talking about reclaiming Gilneas time and again is Danuser, if the reclamation ends up being partially Forsaken-themed . . . yeah.

[Cherry123]

Why should we cleanse our kingdom with the Horde? Why can't Blizzard give the Alliance something cool for once? This must be the hour of justice for the Greymane family.
we tolerated Anduin for many years, now that Turalyon and Genn are on the throne we must win, but we are taking L again

[Nymrohd]

Why should we cleanse our kingdom with the Horde? Why can't Blizzard give the Alliance something cool for once? This must be the hour of justice for the Greymane family.
we tolerated Anduin for many years, now that Turalyon and Genn are on the throne we must win, but we are taking L again

We can hope that it will be similar to the Forsaken quest. A Horde Player will be able to participate in the quests by Calia's invitation and Genn's sufferance but all the friendly NPCs will be Worgen and Alliance-related; there won't be Forsaken military involved in any way. It still sucks that it is against the Scarlet Crusade. I very much hope this will be how it is with nothing similar to Shandris' quest with Lilian in the dream.

[Pheraz]

Have you guys seen all the night elf buildings on the PTR yet?


https://imgur.io/a/dcJzwEr

Pictures taken by manaborne on Twitter

[Reive]

Why should we cleanse our kingdom with the Horde? Why can't Blizzard give the Alliance something cool for once? This must be the hour of justice for the Greymane family.
we tolerated Anduin for many years, now that Turalyon and Genn are on the throne we must win, but we are taking L again

they're pushing hard to make horde and ally best buddies. this is the new norm

[Sondrelk]

I'll say this, if I'd made WoW, Worgen would probably not be part of the Alliance (Genn and a contingent of Gilnean humans would). I'd actually have them be part of the Forsaken. Two factions, a dominant one led by Ralaar which is just violent and Ralaar would try to manipulate them (and the Forsaken at large) into war with the Kaldorei, with him being succeeded by Ivar down the line cause if he did face Malf he would get his ass wooped and one led by Darius that would not fully embrace the beast but would absolutely hate Genn for abandoning the Gilneans outside the walls.
Plus I want a Werewolf (Worgen), Zombie (Forsaken), Ghost (Banshees and Spectres), Vampire (San'layn), Body Horror Monster (Nerubians) faction


Anyway on topic, beyond Ralaar, they could have just used a new threat. Having the Drust show up using Daral'nir's connection to the Dream would fit perfectly and Drust vs Worgen absolutely would work visually, they have very similar aesthetics and Drust are just an easy villain to hate. Beyond that you could just have some Scourge there to still given the zombie vs werewolf feeling (imagine if a necromancer had bound Liam's Ghost somehow, now that would give you emotional impact) or even have some demons set up shop (maybe including Nathrezim)
I'd love it if they used HS's ideas for the Blackwood instead but that would require at least a few unique models and they ain't doing that for a throwaway questline (Hagatha is just an orc but she is nothing without the Shudderwock and Baku)

I do hope WoWHead picks this topic up; we have no visibility with the playerbase and I am not sure how much visibility even the official forums get. Not that I have any hopes this will be resolved.
But given that the person who is most visible talking about reclaiming Gilneas time and again is Danuser, if the reclamation ends up being partially Forsaken-themed . . . yeah.

The Drust are currently completely separate from the Worgen though. The only real link between them is that they are both druid adjacent creatures. It could work, but really only in the grander metanarrative of giving the Worgen a new enemy to focus on in future content.

[Makorus]

Why are people losing their shit over "Nooooo, Forsaken are part of the Gilneas Reclamation RARRGHHH!!"" when we literally do not know if that is the case?

wtf is going on here? Are people once again making up a scenario in their head to get upset over?

[Dracullus]

"Why can't Alliance have cool things" said literally during patch when everything revolves around making brand new city for Ally xD. Compare it with Forsaken, where 'retaking Lordaeron was cleaning some green gas and calling it a day, Undercity remain closed to this day.

Oh I forgot, it's bad cause tree is on wrong random island, middle of nowhere west of Kalimdor is much better spot. Btw, whole situation reminds me of Rogue class hall - they got best one, yet everywhere you heard bitching that it's not random hut in old continent.

[Ersula]

Why should we cleanse our kingdom with the Horde? Why can't Blizzard give the Alliance something cool for once? This must be the hour of justice for the Greymane family.
we tolerated Anduin for many years, now that Turalyon and Genn are on the throne we must win, but we are taking L again

Justice against who? Sylvanas is in hell & Genn's son literally ran in front of that arrow. It's time to let it go.

[Jaggler]

Why should we cleanse our kingdom with the Horde? Why can't Blizzard give the Alliance something cool for once? This must be the hour of justice for the Greymane family.
we tolerated Anduin for many years, now that Turalyon and Genn are on the throne we must win, but we are taking L again

We are currently spending a whole patch and raid to give the Night Elves back their home. What cool thing has the Horde gotten recently lol

[Nymrohd]

We are currently spending a whole patch and raid to give the Night Elves back their home. What cool thing has the Horde gotten recently lol

Does it have to be reciprocal? Don't get me wrong, it should be over the long term. But this is more about making the faction specific events as equivalent as possible.

[Sondrelk]

We are currently spending a whole patch and raid to give the Night Elves back their home. What cool thing has the Horde gotten recently lol

The Baine questline in DF at least. SL had loads of Forsaken stuff through Sylvanas.

[Cherry123]

We are currently spending a whole patch and raid to give the Night Elves back their home. What cool thing has the Horde gotten recently lol

Should I thank the Horde for this?

They burn and kill night elves with a smile in 4K cinematic. We forgive everyone and grew a tree in a place where we will never return.

The Horde has a whole story about how they destroy Gilneas online. We are bringing back Guinness with the blessing of the Horde and their help. But instead of killing the undead who destroyed the kingdom, we kill other humans.

Sorry, but this feels like a throw bone.