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

[Lady Atia]

So, no 10.2.6. PTR for the first phase of it, confirmed.

[Worldshaper]

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com...ld-of-warcraft

Oh, jfc. So no news or content until MARCH?

Why the hell have they been teasing us for weeks if nothing is imminent?

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

The idea that they will be able to provide a better story within 18 months is still the most crackpot thing I've ever seen from marketing. Just market game features and game content instead of caring about the story.

The story sucking will continue no matter what due to the squeezed 18 month timeline. I am baffled that they keep thinking that this Saga is marketable, it will flop when the crunch and lack of major patches will make it obscenely clear how clownish of a marketing push this is.

Ion telling us that the story didn't matter at the end of The War Within is going to backfire so hard when he has to make that as a statement to explain their decisionmaking on the Story and the lack of major patches.

Also lol at still not being transparent with your community about what happened with 10.2 and Dragonflight and just continuing wibbly wobblying about how everythings' great.

[Lady Atia]

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com...ld-of-warcraft

Oh, jfc. So no news or content until MARCH?

Why the hell have they been teasing us for weeks if nothing is imminent?

Chill, we all told you the timeline but you were adamant you were right haha.

[johnnyd2]

maybe it will be Retail/Classic collection integration or something like that? We did see the "Bugs" of the Arborwyrm mount and some other REtail only things appearing in Classic as well.

[Nymrohd]

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com...ld-of-warcraft

Oh, jfc. So no news or content until MARCH?

Why the hell have they been teasing us for weeks if nothing is imminent?

How many people even know they are teasing us? I am pretty sure the number of people who are that much focused on speculation is minuscule.

[doledippers]

bro cooked

lmao thank fuck for that, even tho we didnt rly get any details, i super appreciate this post because it means we no longer have to think about / expect news until march

[Lady Atia]

maybe it will be Retail/Classic collection integration or something like that? We did see the "Bugs" of the Arborwyrm mount and some other REtail only things appearing in Classic as well.

If they would do that I would instantly start to play classic lol.

[doledippers]

maybe it will be Retail/Classic collection integration or something like that? We did see the "Bugs" of the Arborwyrm mount and some other REtail only things appearing in Classic as well.

"We can say that it is open to anyone with a WoW subscription if they want to participate (Classic or Dragonflight players)"

im curious about this, it can read in 2 ways. one being "this is available for both versions" and the other is that "you just need an active sub and not a max level character"

[Nymrohd]

maybe it will be Retail/Classic collection integration or something like that? We did see the "Bugs" of the Arborwyrm mount and some other REtail only things appearing in Classic as well.

I think it will be Secrets of Azeroth part 2.

[johnnyd2]

If they would do that I would instantly start to play classic lol.

you and me both!
would be a nice way to "collect" Vanilla era "lost transmogs"

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me too. hence my speculation on it being a "cross era " type thing

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Its the Robloxifying/Fortnite Creative Platform for WoW */sarcasm*

[Dracullus]

Guess they want to check if they can manage to release patch without PTR (with similar amount of bugs that we get on usual patch). I'm sceptical, but we will see, it's not big patch.

I still think we will have video with Feasel about patch, of course without big spoilers. But without PTR there is no rush for that.

[Worldshaper]

Chill, we all told you the timeline but you were adamant you were right haha.

Maybe focus more on Blizzard's poor strategy here and less on gloating?

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

It is quite weird that they would record a WoWCast only to basically delay its release until March, no idea what happened here.

[Cheezits]

The patch being "an event" really killed my interest. If it IS Plunder Isle they are going about it in a bizarre way.

Sounds more like yet another puzzle hunt thing which I don't really like. Especially with the "you don't need to have Drsgonflight" addendum.

[Ersula]

I'm concerned that their answer to the question, "How do we make WoW appealing to complely new players?" is "cold drop content as much a possible."

Our goal is to continue to keep it secret— and keep it safe

What are we talking about here? We've already demonstrated that content dropped without the PTR is generally more buggy, reasons why being obvious. But if their takeaway from Season of Discover is that its success is because they didn't do a PTR, rather than that they created sincerely fun new content for players, we're in trouble: This rationality means "Well, if any content we released in the past was not recieved positively and fell-off fast, it's clearly because we tested it on the PTR, not because it wasn't fun for players." By this logic, all content they make is fun, and the only problem is it's not being injected into the game fast enough. The inability to conceptualize this rapid launch of zones & raids regardless of quality is the thing keeping new people away, not the thing that's going to bring people in.

If people's takeaway is that the content not being spoiled is more important than the content legitimately being fun, we're done.

[Worldshaper]

It does sound like I might be right regarding the theme of the patch. I did say it would play into the Season of Discovery stuff, as an event that leads into Season 4. I expected it by the end of February though, not March. But who knows, maybe it's early March and I'll only be 1-2 weeks off.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Blizzard are doing a lot of obfuscation games now that they realize players won't stand up for 3 major content patches.

Seems like they will continue to play in the shadows while confusing the general audience as best as they can as value for consumers drop more and more.

Fundamentally, they've gotten the mandate to get away with a lot now. The continuous beating the drum of the "Saga is actually going to be taken seriously by us" when it is clear that is not going to be the case with the 18 month production timeline for the expansion and the reduction of major patches.

They're winning hard and they're taking advantage of the fact people no longer give a fuck.

Buy your Dark Magical Girl outfit and we sell you some more next week, who cares about the product itself anymore its just a platform to sell more MTX.

[Marlamin]

It is quite weird that they would record a WoWCast only to basically delay its release until March, no idea what happened here.

If the content is basically locked/done and just going through longer-than-usual internal testing, why not record it? Gives them more time to do stuff like record b-roll and stuff it they want to.

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I'm concerned that their answer to the question, "How do we make WoW appealing to complely new players?" is "cold drop content as much a possible."

What are we talking about here? We've already demonstrated that content dropped without the PTR is generally more buggy, reasons why being obvious. But if their takeaway from Season of Discover is that its success is because they didn't do a PTR, rather than that they created sincerely fun new content for players, we're in trouble: This rationality means "Well, if any content we released in the past was not recieved positively and fell-off fast, it's clearly because we tested it on the PTR, not because it wasn't fun for players." By this logic, all content they make is fun, and the only problem is it's not being injected into the game fast enough. The inability to conceptualize this rapid launch of zones & raids regardless of quality is the thing keeping new people away, not the thing that's going to bring people in.

If people's takeaway is that the content not being spoiled is more important than the content legitimately being fun, we're done.

They specifically mention it's experimentation, a risky one at that, treating it as a binary "this is their stance on PTR testing now" let alone something that somehow now applies to all content, without knowing the extensiveness of 10.2.6's content, is quite the stretch (especially given they've already announced TWW Alpha/Beta, which is public testing).