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

[Woggmer]

Metzen said Midnight wouldn't go to plan. Alleria being a spy for the void would facilitate that. She betrays us in the final patch perhaps. Maybe she wont die and can be saved by defeating the void in Midnight, but I think shes dying.

I don't think it'll be just her dying... What I'm kinda hoping for is that Xal'atath is almost dying but in a last ditch effort, she takes control of Alleria's body and possesses it as her own. Alleria is gone, but Xal'atath acquired a new body with newfound powers making her stronger than ever.

[Chickat]

Your logic only makes sense if people can't play retail & classic simultaneously, but that's not true; most players play both with one subscription.

At no point on the ironforge graph justwatching posted did TBC have a million players; are you suggesting half a million people bought subs then just chose not to play during it's first month?

I don't trust the info graphics. People using those to predict subs were wildly off by at least a factor to two every time and now we can prove that.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think it'll be just her dying... What I'm kinda hoping for is that Xal'atath is almost dying but in a last ditch effort, she takes control of Alleria's body and possesses it as her own. Alleria is gone, but Xal'atath acquired a new body with newfound powers making her stronger than ever.

I mean shes already done that once. Would be kinda boring imo.

[Woggmer]

I mean shes already done that once. Would be kinda boring imo.

Yeah, but they treated that moment like a side-quest and it had almost no baring to BFA's plot just setting up stuff. You don't get a cinematic for it, it just happens in real-time while you're fighting off monsters.

Plus you'd have to go out of your way to actually do that quest... having it be a major plot-point in the story + cinematic will get a lot of people's attention and get a lot of click-bait reaction to it.

[Scyth]

Arator is a next-gen character, he's safe for another decade (at least) as are all the characters belonging to that group.

Turalyon can go either way, but Alleria has a rather obvious arc in all of this, especially when you take her Legion lore into account.

I say she'll inevitably break and fall to the void, likely with the help of Xal, maybe even be the one to corrupt the Sunwell in Midnight and later on get killed by Arator after a confrontation where she hesitates and refuses to kill him.

I think her almost messing up the sunwell and bringing void creatures out whilst back at Silvermoon at the end of Legion is foreshadowing that she will probably be what brings the void back.
She's got a pretty big death flag hanging over her imo.

[Nibelheimy]

TWW contrasting the battle inside the planet, with Anduin and Alleria's internal battles. One of them should loose, one of them is way more likely to loose in order for us to have Midnight. Alleria's probably loosing that internal battle and causing Midnight.

[Cheezits]

I would like Alleria to get corrupted and have to be fought in Midnight mostly because it would FINALLY allow Vereesa to get some much needed screentime in WoW proper.

[Khaza-R]

Assuming Alleria does fall to corruption in the TWW, I'll be interested to see how Midnight starts.

Will it begin with her assaulting the Sunwell or will that build and be the climax of the expansion?

[justwatching]

Your logic only makes sense if people can't play retail & classic simultaneously, but that's not true; most players play both with one subscription.

At no point on the ironforge graph justwatching posted did TBC have a million players; are you suggesting half a million people bought subs then just chose not to play during it's first month?

First of all there is absolutely no data anywhere to suggest that "most players play both with one subscription" most anecdotal evidence I've seen suggests otherwise.

As for the WCL Data. That Data is JUST weekly logged characters meaning any character that shows up in a log submitted to WCL in any Raid. What we are seeing here is 1.) not unique players its characters so you have to adjust for alts 2.) it is not even the majority of the raiding population(believe it or not most people dont log it seems) 3.) Raiding even in Classic is not done at a rate where we can comfortably assume it represents like 90% of the Playerbase or something liket. However, even if we adjust for alts here on the first few weeks of TBC and assume around 250-300k unique players that logged in those weeks means there were at least 300k weekly active players in that time period. Now obviously for this discussion monthly active Players is the more interesting statistic and we can do that conversion but its not straightforward. However, from comparing it to other MMOs and live service games where some of these relationships are known 300k weekly active players would probably translate to at least 1M monthly active. That is the absolute MINIMUM.

[Cheezits]

Assuming Alleria does fall to corruption in the TWW, I'll be interested to see how Midnight starts.

Will it begin with her assaulting the Sunwell or will that build and be the climax of the expansion?

As controversial is, the status of SMC is tentative I think. It could be invaded and made a raid. At the same time, why would she care about SMC when the real item is on Queldanas?

I think it would make sense for Queldanas to be the first raid.

[Scyth]

We've had a Sunwell raid before so they might go a different route this time. Maybe a campaign in which the Sunwell falls to the void and the raid is somewhere else?

[Khaza-R]

As controversial is, the status of SMC is tentative I think. It could be invaded and made a raid. At the same time, why would she care about SMC when the real item is on Queldanas?

I think it would make sense for Queldanas to be the first raid.

Personally I'd like to see something that's a nod to fall of Quel'thalas in WC3.

Maybe the raid starts out somewhere in Eversong and then you have Alleria's forces closing in. They could even make it a bit literal and have the actual magic gates fall as the raid progresses. You keep falling back, maybe even fighting in the city until the finale confrontation at the Sunwell.

I think that would be a good way to spice it up to its not just SWP 2.0.

[Nibelheimy]

I suppose Midnight hinges on whether the corruption of the sunwell is at the beginning or the end of the expansion. Is its corruption at the beginning of the expansion and we spend it across a perm-void corrupted Silvermoon and eventually Quel'danas? Is it at the end? That way, the whole midnight part of the expansion is sort of happening during TLT which is a little lacklustre if corruption at the end is the case.

I could hedge bets that if we aren't getting Karesh at some point in Midnight as patch content, we aren't getting it for a long time. My bet for the storyline at the moment is TWW leads to the corruption of the sunwell. Midnights intro cinematic is the corruption of the sunwell. 1st raid tier is us taking it back, then we try to revert the corruption with a side plot as tier 2. We go to Karesh for whatever reason for 3rd raid tier. While we're away, Xal'atah/Alleria/insert void aligned character here, succeeds in using the sunwell to usher Dimensious into our realm. (Maybe we chase Xal'atath to Karesh, and while we do Alleria turns and corrupts it fully) We have lost. Then we go to Ulduar in TLT to try and get the titans to help us.

Karesh could easily be tier 2 and Quel'danas tier 3, but I'm presuming the 'Midnight' aspect of the expansion will be prelevant from the get go. Maybe after the first raid tier? But the what the hell will the intro cinematic rule of cool hook be, and what would we even be doing till TLT? Midnights gunna have a big boi cinematic. Void corruption of the sunwell would be pretty.

There's only really a few viable story threads that would lead us from TWW to TLT. I wonder what they're going to choose.

[The-Shan]

Assuming Alleria does fall to corruption in the TWW, I'll be interested to see how Midnight starts.

Will it begin with her assaulting the Sunwell or will that build and be the climax of the expansion?

I sincerely doubt she'll fall to corruption, I think they want to push the narrative that the void can be used for good, and losing another Windrunner sister to evil sounds sort of weird.

[Nathanyel]

On the topic of upgrading gear. I wonder if they will add the Titanforging mechanic back. It's main weakness was always that it was always going to be better than the same unupgraded piece, but now that we have upgrade tracks the people getting them will in effect only get to save some flightstones and crests.

Been thinking that ever since Titanforging got removed, it should've been folded into the upgrade system, and a Titanforge just means it comes at a higher upgrade level - low chance to even be on a higher track, up to Myth if you want to emulate the extreme Titanforges of Legion.

Similarly, there should be a way to add Tertiary Stats to items that don't have them, or swap/reroll them.
Maybe on limited slots, so that these stats don't become too prevalent - sockets already have that, so non-weapon slots that can't get a socket could instead have a chance to drop with a Tertiary, or can get one added later.
Less costly than the socket addition, as these are not direct player power.

Your logic only makes sense if people can't play retail & classic simultaneously, but that's not true; most players play both with one subscription.

Exactly, and that will "smoothen out" the curve except for Retail expansions and Classic Era's launch, which pull back a lot of people that quit altogether - if you main one mode, you can swap to the other during lulls, lessening the dips, and you won't count as a new/returning sub for patch/phase launches, lessening the spikes.

[Eldryth]

We've had a Sunwell raid before so they might go a different route this time. Maybe a campaign in which the Sunwell falls to the void and the raid is somewhere else?

The way Metzen described it at Blizzcon, corrupting the Sunwell seems to be the Void's endgame. I don't really see it falling this time unless it happens at the very end of the expansion, and it's the reason everything spirals out of control leading into TLT. I'm hoping that the whole expansion will be one big last stand situation where we have to defend it at all costs.

I sincerely doubt she'll fall to corruption, I think they want to push the narrative that the void can be used for good, and losing another Windrunner sister to evil sounds sort of weird.

Yeah, I don't really see it happening either. I'm very hopeful that she's being used to set up a Void Hunter class in Midnight, and so far she's been the sole figurehead of the good use of the Void. We'll have to see how things progress in the Harbinger Quests and TWW, but I see her remaining as an iconic hero.

[allegrian]

They wont do yet another "woman falls to corruption/madness and becomes raid boss" with alleria, it doesn't look good given their history of female character treatment. They already backpedalled with Jaina who was clearly on that path since MoP.

[Sondrelk]

They wont do yet another "woman falls to corruption/madness and becomes raid boss" with alleria, it doesn't look good given their history of female character treatment. They already backpedalled with Jaina who was clearly on that path since MoP.

I disagree. It makes sense with Alleria so long as it's clear it's only going to be a short time. Possibly just a single expansion from the time she is corrupted to when she is freed.

[Hitei]

I suppose Midnight hinges on whether the corruption of the sunwell is at the beginning or the end of the expansion. Is its corruption at the beginning of the expansion and we spend it across a perm-void corrupted Silvermoon and eventually Quel'danas? Is it at the end? That way, the whole midnight part of the expansion is sort of happening during TLT which is a little lacklustre if corruption at the end is the case.

I could hedge bets that if we aren't getting Karesh at some point in Midnight as patch content, we aren't getting it for a long time.

Most of Midnight is not going to be in Quel'thalas. The region is too small. I argued this back during the initial reveal also, but it's likely that Quel'thalas is just going to be the Isle of Dorn for Midnight. It will be the first/initial zone and then questing at the end of it we'll go on the offensive and push into probably 2-3 zones of K'aresh/Void.

- - - Updated - - -

I disagree. It makes sense with Alleria so long as it's clear it's only going to be a short time. Possibly just a single expansion from the time she is corrupted to when she is freed.

There's nothing to gain from Alleria falling to corruption. She'd just be Xal'atath 2. I really can't imagine they're going to have a spooky female void elf be the antagonist of TWW and get defeated so that a spooky female void elf can be the antagonist of Midnight.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

I think it will be better if none of our heroes get corrupted/mind controlled this time around.

[Sondrelk]

Assuming Alleria does fall to corruption in the TWW, I'll be interested to see how Midnight starts.

Will it begin with her assaulting the Sunwell or will that build and be the climax of the expansion?

Would feel really anticlimactic to me if you start the expansion by fixing what seems to be the main issue. I would much rather Quel'Danas is a hostile hub we take back gradually, or at the very least that Sunwell Plateau is only retaken later in the expansion.

Though that being said, there are plenty of areas to explore surrounding Quel'Danas that would be great places to have raids or megadungeons, like Stratholme or Zul'aman.

The way I imagine the expansion is that the first raid is either Silvermoon with a big focus on something else in 12.1. Or more likely the first raid is something like Stratholme, with Silvermoon maybe just being retaken in 12.2, in the leadup to a Sunwell Plateau as a final raid.