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

[Cheezits]

If the patch is crap, which I think the community will believe as it isn't based on endgame/is probably on a tiny team, we probably will never get this kind of mystery patch again. So there's that to look forward to!

[Reive]

We still got the 8 Week for new patches in play as per Holly Longdale and we got Dark Heart which will probably start to put the gas on The War Within and Void in Midnight.

There's also going to be Alpha + Alpha embargo interviews and video interviews.

I don't think you ever see a 6 month break in content again, sure this period sucked because we are usually innudated with news due to datamining but yeah I am definitely not the biggest fan of this Minor Patch mystery if it goes south and feel they wasted an opportunity doing it with a major patch instead.

i think a minor patch is a good testing ground. if something goes bad, it's just a minor patch, while a major one would probably create a bigger mess to deal with. I have 2 problems with what they're doing tho:

1) they did a lot of teasing for this patch. underdelivering would really suck.
2)i personally like spoilers, it's makes me more interested in something. no datamining feels boring to me

If the patch is crap, which I think the community will believe as it isn't based on endgame/is probably on a tiny team, we probably will never get this kind of mystery patch again. So there's that to look forward to!

i don't think the devs have the kind of relationship with the playerbase where they can allow themselves to go dark for months. Also, wow players are used to things like ptr and datamining. getting nothing for long periods of time makes people believe the game is on life support.

edit: doesn't help that patch 10.2.5 was pretty poopy!

[Cheezits]

i don't think the devs have the kind of relationship with the playerbase where they can allow themselves to go dark for months. Also, wow players are used to things like ptr and datamining. getting nothing for long periods of time makes people believe the game is on life support.

They are in the post-expac period where historically, people just unsubbed. They are probably happy for any subs they can get at this point.

[Reive]

They are in the post-expac period where historically, people just unsubbed. They are probably happy for any subs they can get at this point.

you're right, but i still see many complain about the lack of communication. there have been a lot of comparisons between retail and sod in terms devs communication lately

[Cheezits]

you're right, but i still see many complain about the lack of communication. there have been a lot of comparisons between retail and sod in terms devs communication lately

I saw those posts. I kind of think its half true what Blizz is doing: they really do want to experiment with mystery patches. However, I also think that because of what we saw with 10.2.5 and forecasted on the menu up till TWW, the DF dev team is tiny and on fumes, so I think half of it is because this patch is really pretty small and they don't want to admit it.

They can't admit it. 10.2.5 was small, 10.2.6 may be small, 10.2.7 will be small even if they revitalize the entirety of Mists of Pandaria (which would be really cool and I hope that's true). It's just reusing content. However, because of Western game culture, they can't say "yeah lol post-expansion content will be pretty small"

If that's true, there will be backlash that they were really hiding how shitty the patch was as opposed to how cool it is. We'll see what happens but I really hope they don't embarrass themselves.

[Worldshaper]

New Trading Post tomorrow.

Hearthstone Event + 10.2.6 within the next 2 weeks.

Alpha datamining within the next 4 weeks.

Season 4 in about 4 - 8 weeks.

10.2.7 in about 3 months.

Pre-patch in about 4-5 months.

The War Within in about 5-6 months.

Looks pretty stacked to me. This doesn't include any potential surprises they might have, like announcing WoW on Game Pass or whatever.

Nor any of the upcoming Trading Posts, War Within promotional material, general promotions, etc.

[milkmustache]

New Trading Post tomorrow.

Hearthstone Event + 10.2.6 within the next 2 weeks.

Alpha datamining within the next 4 weeks.

Season 4 in about 4 - 8 weeks.

10.2.7 in about 3 months.

Pre-patch in about 4-5 months.

The War Within in about 5-6 months.

Looks pretty stacked to me. This doesn't include any potential surprises they might have, like announcing WoW on Game Pass or whatever.

Nor any of the upcoming Trading Posts, War Within promotional material, general promotions, etc.

I have to agree. I think the lull is only due to the patch that they're keeping secret, a first for them as something they want to treat as a special event. A patch which is also new to the cadence, which has already been pretty large. Dragonflight has had it's issues with engaging content, but it's had content.

That being said, they're aware of the quiet coms. Blue post promising updates and a (presumably 10.2.7) PTR revival just went up.

[Viridiel]

The Vrykul thing is basically an old fan-concept where Arathi kind of resemble them/look more primal because they are the oldest Human tribe, so closest to Vrykul in culture. Also in lore they have been very smashy/warrior based, so big guys.

Kul Tirans are similarly big because of Drust/Vrykul half-breeding (this is canon despite what people said in interviews, lol) but they didn't give them a muscular option. So maybe this is where that will happen (plus, as you said, neutral Human-types would be a crazy gimmick for Horde)

I would assume that the drust aren't quite vrykul and are in fact much closer to the arathi. They descend from a group of vrykul separate to the ones who ended up in Tirisfal, but were still afflicted by the curse of flesh and should've similarly changed over time. The main difference would be that the drust started using different magic that could've affected their appearance, whereas the arathi seemingly stopped using any magic at all until Mereldar found the Light.

If the arathi are different to Stormwind humans, it'd have to be some side effect of living under the crystal in Hallowfall because they're otherwise not really any different to Stormwind humans. They'd have to be either immortal or longer-lived or otherwise preserved magically for them to still look the same as they did hundreds of years ago. I reckon they could go either way -- super skinny from living unnaturally long with a reliance on the Light, or super muscular from retaining and enhancing their old vrykul strength. I'd wager they're going to be really muscular because I think the skinny models are limiting when it comes to armour that works properly on their frame, plus we've seen a fat Kul Tiran model which might or might not be a placeholder.

Completely unrelated but while I was fact-checking the history of the vrykul I discovered that we have a translation of "valarjar" as "warrior of the storm" in the titan language, meaning "val" probably means "storm". So that's potentially one part of the name of Avaloren, provided the morpheme boundaries are a-val-oren or a-val-or-en. I would propose a translation of "stormless lands", interpreting "a-" as a negative prefix as it is in many real life languages, "or" as a word meaning land (potentially found in "Kalimdor"), and "-en" as a plural suffix, again as it is in many real life languages. But that's still just a guess.

[doledippers]

I have to agree. I think the lull is only due to the patch that they're keeping secret, a first for them as something they want to treat as a special event. A patch which is also new to the cadence, which has already been pretty large. Dragonflight has had it's issues with engaging content, but it's had content.

That being said, they're aware of the quiet coms. Blue post promising updates and a (presumably 10.2.7) PTR revival just went up.

yeah its absolutely because of 10.2.6 being a secret, we'd be more than a month into PTR testing for 10.2.6 if it were handled in the usual manner.

[Woggmer]

I saw those posts. I kind of think its half true what Blizz is doing: they really do want to experiment with mystery patches. However, I also think that because of what we saw with 10.2.5 and forecasted on the menu up till TWW, the DF dev team is tiny and on fumes, so I think half of it is because this patch is really pretty small and they don't want to admit it.

They can't admit it. 10.2.5 was small, 10.2.6 may be small, 10.2.7 will be small even if they revitalize the entirety of Mists of Pandaria (which would be really cool and I hope that's true). It's just reusing content. However, because of Western game culture, they can't say "yeah lol post-expansion content will be pretty small"

If that's true, there will be backlash that they were really hiding how shitty the patch was as opposed to how cool it is. We'll see what happens but I really hope they don't embarrass themselves.

Knowing the WoW community, they're going to embarrass themselves either way unless it's something major. And the thing is that the stuff they've tried to hide in the past like story quests and the Gilneas stuff was kept under wraps in PTS until the public got their hands on it at launch and became even more disappointed with the result.

Which only makes me not trust Blizzard when it comes stuff like this and now I have to check spoiler content to save myself the disappointment that could be coming.

[Varodoc]

I could see the Arathi becoming an Allied Race in the future, exclusively for the Alliance (Because Horde Humans is stupid and it will always be stupid).

Humans are the most important race of the entire Warcraft franchise, yet they only have two playable races... while Dwarves (unpopular and secondary race) have 3? Illogical.

Arathi allied race for the Alliance, reunification of Hallowfall and Stormwind, the reunification of the last remnants of the ancient Arathi bloodline (Stormwind was founded by refugees from Arathor and Lothar was the last of Arathi bloodline).

Arathi Human allied race for the Alliance.

[Cheezits]

Knowing the WoW community, they're going to embarrass themselves either way unless it's something major. And the thing is that the stuff they've tried to hide in the past like story quests and the Gilneas stuff was kept under wraps in PTS until the public got their hands on it at launch and became even more disappointed with the result.

Which only makes me not trust Blizzard when it comes stuff like this and now I have to check spoiler content to save myself the disappointment that could be coming.

They 100% should keep hiding story quests, they DONT change story quests based on feedback these days unless its something super topical IRL (Alex side quest with rape) or lore nerds point out they made a mistake (it wasn't Glup Shitto the Orc, it was Blug Farto!)

They kept the Gilneas stuff encrypted because it was small and was going to piss people off, nothing the players could have posted on twitter would've changed that. But they should really do more to keep the entirety of Launch questing from being datamineable and readable.

[Ersula]

yeah its absolutely because of 10.2.6 being a secret, we'd be more than a month into PTR testing for 10.2.6 if it were handled in the usual manner.

Again, a strange decision, when people were really positive about patches hitting the ptr immediately after the previous patch going live. Just to interrupt that during the content drought: They had unlocked the secret to avoiding a content drought then they just intentionally fumble it.

I want to chalk it up to the Cata Alpha being delayed (though who exactly is excited about Cataclysm? Besides the world revamp people are already tired of, everything else in Cataclysm has been stuff the community has been asking to revert for 15 years)

I could see the Arathi becoming an Allied Race in the future, exclusively for the Alliance (Because Horde Humans is stupid and it will always be stupid).

Humans are the most important race of the entire Warcraft franchise, yet they only have two playable races... while Dwarves (unpopular and secondary race) have 3? Illogical.

Arathi allied race for the Alliance, reunification of Hallowfall and Stormwind, the reunification of the last remnants of the ancient Arathi bloodline (Stormwind was founded by refugees from Arathor and Lothar was the last of Arathi bloodline).

Arathi Human allied race for the Alliance.

Undead. Also like I said before, you just explained why Arathi are still genetically closer to Stormwind humans & not enough time has gone by for them to be substantially different from them. You say "Ancient Arathi Bloodline" but compared to every other race, Stormwind & Arathi humans are the same thing. The only newer races are Undead & Void Elves & that required the intervention of actual cosmic forces. Stormwind humans are just Arathi humans who went for a long walk. Compare that to Kul Tirans who actually interbred with Vrykul, and broke off from the Arathi Culture 150% generations further back than Stormwind Humans.

[Cheezits]

Again, a strange decision, when people were really positive about patches hitting the ptr immediately after the previous patch going live. Just to interrupt that during the content drought: They had unlocked the secret to avoiding a content drought then they just intentionally fumble it.

I want to chalk it up to the Cata Alpha being delayed (though who exactly is excited about Cataclysm? Besides the world revamp people are already tired of, everything else in Cataclysm has been stuff the community has been asking to revert for 15 years)

They want to try and do a secret patch. Whether its because of full confidence in the patch, or because it is a shitty patch and they are trying to inflate hype, we have yet to see.

Nothing so far has shown that this post-expac DF team can make quality patches so there is no real reason to have much confidence, IMO. More than likely it will be another patch that only has a week's worth of content, and they will get bullied so hard about it that they never do this again.

[doledippers]

Again, a strange decision, when people were really positive about patches hitting the ptr immediately after the previous patch going live. Just to interrupt that during the content drought: They had unlocked the secret to avoiding a content drought then they just intentionally fumble it.

yeah idk, we'll see how it goes, im cool with them trying something new.

[milkmustache]

Again, a strange decision, when people were really positive about patches hitting the ptr immediately after the previous patch going live. Just to interrupt that during the content drought: They had unlocked the secret to avoiding a content drought then they just intentionally fumble it.

Sure, but when has there ever been a .6 patch in recent history? I'd love to know what's going on with 10.2.6, but I don't think this necessarily equates to them fumbling their open communication. Their communication has been pretty clear on this one too aside from a release date; this patch is being made as a secret for whatever reason, and that'll be revealed when the patch is out.

It's definitely sticking out amongst the recent open communication of Dragonflight's cadence, but it's a lot different than them being lips sealed on a major patch.

[Varodoc]

Undead.

An ugly rotting corpse is literally not a Human.

If someone wants to play a Human, they don't want to play an ugly rotting corpse.

Humans are Humans, Undead are Undead, the End.

Compare that to Kul Tirans who actually interbred with Vrykul,

People still pushing around this debunked headcanon in 2024, hilarious.

Kul Tirans are literally just fat humans. They do not have any Drust DNA. Drop that headcanon already.

[Reive]

1) arathi as allied race would be lame. the new nerubians are better

2) i'm personally excited for cata because i can start pvping again. blizzard has murdered pvp on retail this expansion

3) them going silent for patch 10.2.6 is definitely an odd choice, but if they really want to experiment, now is probably the best possible time. doing this earlier could have disrupted the flow of the expansion. again, i really hope all the teasing wasn't for nothing

[Cheezits]

1) arathi as allied race would be lame. the new nerubians are better

Unless theres a new race in Undermine it could be both of them added after Earthen.

[Ersula]

People still pushing around this debunked headcanon in 2024, hilarious.

Kul Tirans are literally just fat humans. They do not have any Drust DNA. Drop that headcanon already.

What do you think the Kul, in Kul Tiran stands for? (Vrykul Terran) Anthropologically speaking it's unheard of that a race that settles in the same region wouldn't interbreed with each other, even if they're at war. Kul Tiran's are literally the median height between Humans & Vrykul, unlike all the other human races. That's not headcanon, that's just inferring information the dev give us.