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

[Enrif]

My newest theory about TWW and into Midnight:

Alleria and Thrall were the bosses of the Visions of N'Zoth, Anduin was (request by blizzard to the Author of the book) in the post BfA book showing dark magic on his hands.

All three of them are the faces of TWW? and the expansion after wards is full on void focus? No coincidence. All three of them might fall to the void and Xal'atath might win the war within these characters, even if we beat the bosses in the expansion.

[Worldshaper]

Minor thing, but the Archives of Eternity boss room in Uldir have giant discs that have the Titan runes and definitely look like the prisons we've been seeing a lot of lately. I think they contain Void beings that have been trapped or something?

Worldsoul is definitely in stasis/prison.

[Makabreska]

My newest theory about TWW and into Midnight:

Alleria and Thrall were the bosses of the Visions of N'Zoth, Anduin was (request by blizzard to the Author of the book) in the post BfA book showing dark magic on his hands.

All three of them are the faces of TWW? and the expansion after wards is full on void focus? No coincidence. All three of them might fall to the void and Xal'atath might win the war within these characters, even if we beat the bosses in the expansion.

So, Anduin MC'd and turned into a boss again? Not very appealing, especially considering he is already plenty damaged by SL events.

[Worldshaper]

My newest theory about TWW and into Midnight:

Alleria and Thrall were the bosses of the Visions of N'Zoth, Anduin was (request by blizzard to the Author of the book) in the post BfA book showing dark magic on his hands.

All three of them are the faces of TWW? and the expansion after wards is full on void focus? No coincidence. All three of them might fall to the void and Xal'atath might win the war within these characters, even if we beat the bosses in the expansion.

Interesting observation, but they're just visions in the end. Maybe he sees all possible outcomes. Testing us against each of them.

[Reive]

My newest theory about TWW and into Midnight:

Alleria and Thrall were the bosses of the Visions of N'Zoth, Anduin was (request by blizzard to the Author of the book) in the post BfA book showing dark magic on his hands.

All three of them are the faces of TWW? and the expansion after wards is full on void focus? No coincidence. All three of them might fall to the void and Xal'atath might win the war within these characters, even if we beat the bosses in the expansion.

that would actually be great, but anduin already had his "dark" moment. next expansion is about finding himself again

[Varodoc]

Enough with the villain-batting of historic Alliance leaders.

Archbishop Benedictus, Fandral Staghelm, and now this?

Enough.

[Ersula]

Enough with the villain-batting of historic Alliance leaders.

Archbishop Benedictus, Fandral Staghelm, and now this?

Enough.

"Historic Alliance Leaders" is a funny way to say "random npcs." When Benedictus & Staghelm were introduced it seems like they were there solely to be future antagonists. Staghelm is overtly hostile to Tyrande in vanilla for no reason, and Benedictus is very generic but his name denotes his Wormtongue qualities... Benediction... or Benedict Arnold?

If Alleria is simply supposed to be a new protagonist figure who just wants peace & gets over her orc racism, great. But that would paint a pretty clear difference in whoever is steering the story during legion & whoever is doing it now. Besides her and her husband choosing the symbolism of the Alliance over their homelands, Alleria wanting to claim the Sunwell even after she causes a giant void incursion is definitely "villain-baiting"

If I was in charge of wow the expansion after the shadowlands would have been our characters returning to an Azeroth destroyed by nuclear war & then using time travel to undo it.

[Varodoc]

"Historic Alliance Leaders" is a funny way to say "random npcs." When Benedictus & Staghelm were introduced it seems like they were there solely to be future antagonists. Staghelm is overtly hostile to Tyrande in vanilla for no reason, and Benedictus is very generic but his name denotes his Wormtongue qualities... Benediction... or Benedict Arnold?

If Alleria is simply supposed to be a new protagonist figure who just wants peace & gets over her orc racism, great. But that would paint a pretty clear difference in whoever is steering the story during legion & whoever is doing it now. Alleria wanting to claim the Sunwell even after she causes a giant void incursion is definitely "villain-baiting"

We have already established that you are a Horde partisan who hates the Alliance to death, so I am not surprised that you know nothing about Staghelm and Benedictus.

[Teriz]

My newest theory about TWW and into Midnight:

Alleria and Thrall were the bosses of the Visions of N'Zoth, Anduin was (request by blizzard to the Author of the book) in the post BfA book showing dark magic on his hands.

All three of them are the faces of TWW? and the expansion after wards is full on void focus? No coincidence. All three of them might fall to the void and Xal'atath might win the war within these characters, even if we beat the bosses in the expansion.

You're forgetting Gazlowe. If that short story is anything to go by, he's going to be a major character in TWW as well. It would fit too, since it would be two alliance and two horde characters. For whatever reason, Blizzard is hiding Gazlowe's new look.

[Usagi Senshi]

FFXIV on consoles work because the pace of the game is sooooo much slower.

Tera had better, faster, and no tab-targetting combat (compared to WoW and FFXIV, and don't even come at me stating otherwise, its fact plain and simple. I'll ignore you for being stupid) and worked more than fine on a gamepad and consoles.

WoW is totally doable, just you guys seem to be hoping it never happens.

Its very entertaining watching you lot go on with that train of thought, lol

[Makabreska]

Tera had better, faster, and no tab-targetting combat (compared to WoW and FFXIV, and don't even come at me stating otherwise, its fact plain and simple. I'll ignore you for being stupid) and worked more than fine on a gamepad and consoles.

WoW is totally doable, just you guys seem to be hoping it never happens.

Its very entertaining watching you lot go on with that train of thought, lol

As entertaining as watching people thinking that console players will be able to handle split-second precise movement and targeting with gamepad we currently have in game.

[Makorus]

Tera had better, faster, and no tab-targetting combat (compared to WoW and FFXIV, and don't even come at me stating otherwise, its fact plain and simple. I'll ignore you for being stupid) and worked more than fine on a gamepad and consoles.

WoW is totally doable, just you guys seem to be hoping it never happens.

Its very entertaining watching you lot go on with that train of thought, lol

Tera, once again, was a way slower game than WoW, funnily enough. I am not talking about the combat system or whatever, that's completely irrelevant.

Look at any dungeon or raid. The amount of split-second decisions you need to take would be near enough impossible with a control. Any content needs to be clearable using controller as well. The thought of doing a fight like Tindral or Smolderon using a controller is just laughable, same with any high level M+. WoW is just too fast-paced.

[Ersula]

You're forgetting Gazlowe. If that short story is anything to go by, he's going to be a major character in TWW as well. It would fit too, since it would be two alliance and two horde characters. For whatever reason, Blizzard is hiding Gazlowe's new look.

Which would be true in a competent work of fiction, but in-game & in supplementary material, wow almost always throws their characters little bones in the form of vignettes that ultimately have nothing to do with the current or upcoming expansions. Based on that there's a higher chance the short story is indicative of nothing.

It's actually infuriating, personally. I'd prefer if they simply focused on relevant characters in each expansion era instead of misleading the audience into thinking side characters are going to play a larger role later further into an expansion's plot. It's like watching a movie where they dedicate scenes to characters that instantly disappear for the rest of the duration.

We have already established that you are a Horde partisan who hates the Alliance to death, so I am not surprised that you know nothing about Staghelm and Benedictus.

I know you know enough about WoW to remember the allegedly deep & meaningful backstories Staghelm & Benedictus have were created long after vanilla wow, where their characterization is limited to "mincing". I suppose that means the opposite of "villain-baiting" is "retconning."

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Better vignettes happening than nothing at all. The books are the last competently done thing we have regarding characterization due to the crunch of the live product and lack of planning leading to consistent schism of character writing.

[Varodoc]

It's actually infuriating, personally."

I know, right? It must be so infuriating that the Alliance still exists.

I know you know enough about WoW to remember the allegedly deep & meaningful backstories Staghelm & Benedictus have were created long after vanilla wow, where their characterization is limited to "mincing". I suppose that means the opposite of "villain-baiting" is "retconning."

Partisan stuff like this is precisely the reason why the Horde playerbase gets 0 sympathy from Me.

I genuinely, from the bottom of My heart, hope that the Horde gets villain-batted for a Third time.

If you are not able to understand the Alliance's loss in Staghelm and Benedictus, you don't deserve sympathy when your [ugly/crappy] capital gets raided and Warchief turned into loot pinata.

[Nymrohd]

Honestly I felt that if any Alliance NPC was ever going to go dark (other than Alleria) it would be Genn or Moira. Moira absolutely gives me "end justifies the means" and Genn is the original Alliance asshole. But both seem neutered. Which is sad cause Moira could have been an amazing villain plus imo she controls the strongest part of the Alliance; the dwarves have only consolidated while Stormwind keeps getting hits.

I guess Rogers as well but they never developed her enough and she ain't important enough.

[Varodoc]

Honestly I felt that if any Alliance NPC was ever going to go dark (other than Alleria) it would be Genn or Moira. Moira absolutely gives me "end justifies the means" and Genn is the original Alliance asshole. But both seem neutered. Which is sad cause Moira could have been an amazing villain plus imo she controls the strongest part of the Alliance; the dwarves have only consolidated while Stormwind keeps getting hits.

I guess Rogers as well but they never developed her enough and she ain't important enough.

True Alliance Fans picked the Alliance to be the Heroic/Noble/Protagonist side.

So why any Alliance hero should be villain-batted?

That is not the fantasy Alliance fans chose when they picked the faction.

[Reive]

Honestly I felt that if any Alliance NPC was ever going to go dark (other than Alleria) it would be Genn or Moira. Moira absolutely gives me "end justifies the means" and Genn is the original Alliance asshole. But both seem neutered. Which is sad cause Moira could have been an amazing villain plus imo she controls the strongest part of the Alliance; the dwarves have only consolidated while Stormwind keeps getting hits.

I guess Rogers as well but they never developed her enough and she ain't important enough.

genn retired in patch 10.2.5. he's looking for anduin now. only moira is left

[Super Dickmann]

There's a reason why that "B-but Camp Taurajo :'( " meme exists. The Horde playerbase literally does not want the Alliance to ever be aggressive or proactive.

We could waste our time going over about how the "Horde should be a conquering army" fanbase, your Sylvanases and Garroshes and the "Horde should be victims who get to kick back", going on about Taurajos and Purges, etc. who agree about wanting an aggressive Alliance collectively (and likely individually) outnumber the Alliance fanbase who actually want to both be proactive in the faction war and actually be presented as less than purer than the driven snow, but you make the point yourself like two pages later, so we'd be wasting our time more than usual:

True Alliance Fans picked the Alliance to be the Heroic/Noble/Protagonist side.

So why any Alliance hero should be villain-batted?

That is not the fantasy Alliance fans chose when they picked the faction.

And in any case it doesn't matter, only the writers' perspective does and while we have had writers who've portrayed an aggressive Horde and occasionally ones who've portrayed a victim Horde, said writers have since Cataclysm and a one-off in Mists portrayed the Alliance as the protagonist faction populated exclusively by copy-pasted clones of the same lawful good human guy and girl and the Horde as their put-upon helpers, occasionally castrating themselves for the collective good.

Instead of going on about this entirely zero-sum point, let's accept that within this paradigm, Turalyon can't be anything but a wet blanket who goes along with everything, much like the Alliance can't actually hold any beliefs that would lead to conflict. Hence both BFA, SL and the eventual neutral QT where all the assorted elves shake hands and hopefully take a brief hike right afterwards like their purple equivalent. For what it's worth, he'll be presented heroically in his capacity as a wet blanket, like the various Alexes, Tirions and Bolvars.

- - - Updated - - -

I agree that this is what they should do but we're pretty far from that. When's the last time anything faction related was used to promote the game? So far the face of TWW is an orc & human hugging in front of a giant sword in the desert.

Not to mention they've been bending over backwards to make the face of the Forsaken a generic white human woman.

Yes, an orc and a human in the background of it. Thrall for the Horde, Anduin for the Alliance, obviously the story will center around Anduin and Alleria. When Thrall got to participate in a (equally wretched) story where he was the world protagonist there were riots on the streets ally-wise and ever since a neutral expansion has been code for an Alliance expansion. However, for marketing purposes, the two are still distinct, and red and blue are spread enough for merchandise that fully ditching them is unlikely to happen in the near future. Even in the very unlikely event we get Horde humans and Alliance orcs, there'll still be teases of the factions so as to be able to wring attention and cash out of the remains.

- - - Updated - - -

Actually, addressing this point: the twitterati is obsessed with certain Horde races actually punishing Alliance forces that were bad to them in the past, to an obnoxious degree, so no they would NOT be appeased by the Amani being chill with the Helves. They want reparations.

This is true, but for now they'll eat a moderately fat one, in so far as the current crop of Blizzard writers are of the generation immediately prior to that standpoint and will instead write a story where reparations are provided but the races reconcile because they're only cosmetically different after all and are either a) sorry for what happened before or b) part of some big mix-up and didn't mean it. It'll take a couple years for fiction as racial revenge fantasy to hit this franchise. Sadly for the rest of us, said reconciliation and friendship angle is just as unfit for purpose.

[Ersula]

True Alliance Fans picked the Alliance to be the Heroic/Noble/Protagonist side.

So why any Alliance hero should be villain-batted?

That is not the fantasy Alliance fans chose when they picked the faction.

In the most surface sense the World of Warcraft Alliance are designed to be heroes & the Horde are designed to be anti-heroes, but those are both kinds of protagonists. Most forms of genre fiction do storylines in which protagonists-aligned characters switch sides. Halo, Game of Thrones, Marvel & DC comics... it's very common. But if you're asking for one side of a war to always be morally upstanding, that's simply unrealistic. Even Galadriel committed the first kin-slaying by mistake.

Yes, an orc and a human in the background of it. Thrall for the Horde, Anduin for the Alliance, obviously the story will center around Anduin and Alleria. When Thrall got to participate in a (equally wretched) story where he was the world protagonist there were riots on the streets ally-wise and ever since a neutral expansion has been code for an Alliance expansion. However, for marketing purposes, the two are still distinct, and red and blue are spread enough for merchandise that fully ditching them is unlikely to happen in the near future. Even in the very unlikely event we get Horde humans and Alliance orcs, there'll still be teases of the factions so as to be able to wring attention and cash out of the remains.

This is true, but the statement "Humans would never be in the horde" but also "Forsaken don't count" is fraught. If the creators want to do something they're going to do it. Justification is only for the sake of the audience. With different circumstances it would have made as much sense for the Gilneans to join the Horde; Werewolves would have fit the Horde aesthetic of playing as traditional rpg monsters. The same goes for Dark Iron Dwarves. Like Drow/Nightborne, Duregar Dwarves are traditionally villainous & if they hadn't reached political recompense before BFA it would have made sense for them to join the Horde as well.