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

[Makabreska]

We don't "know" anything, but unless the feature absolutely tanks, it will be repeatedly for other expansions as well, with MoP coming back around eventually, too.

Might even become a regular end-of-season event.

This would beat anything Fated has to offer. It may even be the reason why current Fated is so bare-bones.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Hm, interesting. The Alliance wolf mounts have Night Elven aesthetic armor. That's curious.

they did something similar in BfA with an Alliance wolf and a Horde horse. It's probably a "wolves/nightsabers captured by Kaldorei/orcs during Darkshore warfront" kind of thing

[Alanar]

I would fully expect Azshara to be waiting around in the Void and just snatch it while we went inside to fight N'zoth.

I expect her as well.

Some interesting mounts and this naga pet, which is basically a small Azshara sort off, face is off, but the white hair/tentacle and overral color.

[Ersula]

and then theres a whole ass expansion coming out in like 4-5 months

The thing that confuses me is what is their ultimate plan for classic. Seasons are great, but the expansion era classic will eventually catch up with retail since they are shorter than the basic expansion timeline. So will there be a point where WoW classic is only one expansion behind retail? I guess they don't have to worry about that for a while, but I wonder about what their long term plan are. Do they plan on stopping basic classic at legion, then restarting with classic, or do they plan on classic being temporary? They kept talking about not wanting to splinter the playerbase too much & now with Remix they'll have roughly 4 different wow communities.

Seems like they will have to eliminate one of these campaigns. Maybe in the future they won't have Seasonal Classic & Remix running at the same time. (Though I predict they will always have some sort of 6 to 8 week event game going, in the form of Plunderstorm, Remix or somethign else. I expect MoP Remix to go live as soon as Plunderstorm ends.)

[milkmustache]

they did something similar in BfA with an Alliance wolf and a Horde horse. It's probably a "wolves/nightsabers captured by Kaldorei/orcs during Darkshore warfront" kind of thing

Curious thing is why now. Unless they end up being Trading Post items.

[Sondrelk]

This would beat anything Fated has to offer. It may even be the reason why current Fated is so bare-bones.

Had they advertised Pandamonium/Timerunning as a feature specifically for Fated Season I would have definitely thought this was a massive improvement on Fated Season as a concept compared to SL, that's for sure.

[Cheezits]

Curious thing is why now. Unless they end up being Trading Post items.

They (Alliance Wolf Horde Saber) are listed as trading post mounts on the front page. Maybe they will add them along with recolors of the horde horse and alliance wolf from BFA.

Regarding fated: I think this season is the perfect way to handle it, with less effort on affixes and more focus on dinars and collectibles. Shift focus to the next expansion and additional seasonal experiments instead of spending too much time on an expansion that is 99% over that people are mostly tired of.

People that really like DF gameplay and aesthetics will keep playing if the collection stuff is good. But there's a much bigger audience that they can get, hence remix and dual expansion development.

[milkmustache]

Seems like they will have to eliminate one of these campaigns. Maybe in the future they won't have Seasonal Classic & Remix running at the same time. (Though I predict they will always have some sort of 6 to 8 week event game going, in the form of Plunderstorm, Remix or somethign else. I expect MoP Remix to go live as soon as Plunderstorm ends.)

I think that you're right, they'll entirely move into seasonal content for certain events. Cataclysm Classic has to be a huge testing ground for interest in Classic post Wrath. I mean, Cataclysm alone is out of the "Classic" era of WoW. Most of the zones in Azeroth are currently the same as they were from Cata's update, so they're losing that old world feeling. SoD seems to be a big success occasional issues aside. Continuation of Seasonal events for Classic until they either commit to a Classic+ or move on seems to be the remedy.

[Xilurm]

Anyone see this? They've updated Legion Dalaran npcs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...pdates_on_ptr/

[Sondrelk]

The thing that confuses me is what is their ultimate plan for classic. Seasons are great, but the expansion era classic will eventually catch up with retail since they are shorter than the basic expansion timeline. So will there be a point where WoW classic is only one expansion behind retail? I guess they don't have to worry about that for a while, but I wonder about what their long term plan are. Do they plan on stopping basic classic at legion, then restarting with classic, or do they plan on classic being temporary? They kept talking about not wanting to splinter the playerbase too much & now with Remix they'll have roughly 4 different wow communities.

Seems like they will have to eliminate one of these campaigns. Maybe in the future they won't have Seasonal Classic & Remix running at the same time. (Though I predict they will always have some sort of 6 to 8 week event game going, in the form of Plunderstorm, Remix or somethign else. I expect MoP Remix to go live as soon as Plunderstorm ends.)

Honestly, I think they are winging it. Classic was a success, and SoD was also a success. So I imagine they are banking on figuring out a long term plan for Classic by the time they get to TWW Classic or whatever.

Honestly, I wouldnt be shocked if their plans would be remaking SoD/Era, and Timerunning in perpetuity.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Anyone see this? They've updated Legion Dalaran npcs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...pdates_on_ptr/

It's probably ahead of the Alleria questline

[Nymrohd]

Azshara having the dagger and a chunk of N'zoth around to torture as revenge for their previous engagement would make a lot of sense thematically.

This is a crack shot, but if playable Naga are going to happen, maybe it has something to do with N'zoth starting a rebellion? "You should go join the factions they are very strong" etc

I have always wanted playable Naga and tbh they are among the races I've struggled to come with a good way to make them friendly to the factions

[Xilurm]

Nice they've actually made the Bel'ameth harbor active!

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...transport_way/

[Ersula]

I think that you're right, they'll entirely move into seasonal content for certain events. Cataclysm Classic has to be a huge testing ground for interest in Classic post Wrath. I mean, Cataclysm alone is out of the "Classic" era of WoW. Most of the zones in Azeroth are currently the same as they were from Cata's update, so they're losing that old world feeling. SoD seems to be a big success occasional issues aside. Continuation of Seasonal events for Classic until they either commit to a Classic+ or move on seems to be the remedy.

My current theory is Remix was born from the prospect of extending SoD into TBC. (And that TBC will be the 2nd Remix season.) I believe the premise of Remix & keeping seasonal classic in the vanilla game would have been easier than trying to convert the rune system to new expansion meta.

[Sondrelk]

Nice they've actually made the Bel'ameth harbor active!

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...transport_way/

Nice. I love Bel'ameth as a place to have my Hearthstone, and it's nice to make it even more thematically fitting.

[Murlocos]

Ideally, yeah, in terms of Druids/Paladins, each race should ideally have their own unique flavour, but realistically, what's the point?

Outside of the unique forms (which, don't get me wrong, I would still want them to have, and for Paladins to have unique mounts and Shamans to have unique totems), how relevant is the Wicker lore of the Kul'tirans? How relevant is the Sunwalker lore? How relevant is the Orc Priest lore? How relevant is Priestess of the Moon lore?

WoWs lore is too bloated as is, and introducing unique and cool reasons for classes is nice and all, but it just makes it way, way harder to write satisfying stories.

You already get it with stuff like the Emerald Dream, an uniquely Druidy experience. But oh wait, not all Druids work that way. So you either alienate half the playerbase, and make it "Night-Elf-Druid-flavoured" (which is, lets be honest, the "default") or you bloat it up by adding representation for all kinds of Druidism, but you have to make sure that everything is evenly represented or your local Troll Twitter User is gonna put you on blast for being biased.

Imagine a Light vs Void expansion, but somehow they need to make sure that every single source of Faith is represented and has a reason to fight, and it just turns into a big mess imo.

I understand the Orc Priest thing, it was a stupid way of doing it, but I honestly don't see the issues of certain races learning from other races they spend time with.
Why do Draenei need some super secret unknown sect of Druids, instead of the lore just stating that they've picked up Druidism from the Night Elves?

I don't think we're going to be able to reach common ground on this from the bolded.

What's the point of adding new races (playable or not), cultures, etc. at all? You can frame almost everything beyond just having wireframes fight cubes on an untextured flat square as an unnecessary burden on writers, quest designers, and artists, but obviously we know the value of those elements vastly outweighs the cost of adding them.

I honestly don't think most people are clamoring for every single possible race/class niche to be represented 24/7, but they're asking for something every now and then. These are people at fist pump at an An'she name drop in a trading post item, most of them aren't asking to completely derail the story to be about the intricacies of tauren ancestor worship. It's not in a vacuum; people are highlighting it in contrast to us getting the umpteenth Teldrassil trauma porn questline. It's against the backdrop of an "in-universe" book taking the time to laugh at how dumb shamanism is, then coincidentally the supposed elemental expansion DF comes out and there's like two Earthen Ring NPCs compared to an entire dedicated druid patch with a giant suite of new customizations.

Even if you're a night elf druid main, you're not here to just see nonstop night elf and druid stories. Variety is the spice of life and the popular races and classes are clearly going to be in the spotlight more often than not, but a massive chunk of your playerbase doesn't play those races and classes, and there's risk in neglecting them.

I just don't view expanding the depth of the world and the races and cultures in it as a burden on the writing, I see it as a benefit that allows them to craft more interesting stories and plots because the world they take place in is feels more like a real place and not just a cardboard backdrop. It helps you naturally create characters that all have different upbringings and beliefs rather than a cast that all feel identical to one another. You say that this stuff makes it much harder to write satisfying stories, but SL and DF have been tossing out a lot of this depth so that the writers can chase the exact stories they want to tell without prior lore getting in the way. Do you think they're succeeding?

[Cheezits]

I have always wanted playable Naga and tbh they are among the races I've struggled to come with a good way to make them friendly to the factions

They honestly have a very easy in on both factions. The Nelves are cool now with most of the redeemed bad sects of themselves (Highborne, Druids of the Flame) and Nightborne are Highborne of a different flavor. Also they have ties to the Illidari who are on both factions.

There are lore hooks less crazy than "N'zoth in the Xalatath blade incites a rebellion against Azshara to have player naga join the factions to do his bidding" but I think that would vs fun.

The biggest lore issue is "they all serve Azshara" which is already not exactly true and can easily be written away with a good plot hook. Their biggest issue in general is the tail and they can just Drac them, both with barbershop armor and maybe a visage form.

[Sondrelk]

My current theory is Remix was born from the prospect of extending SoD into TBC. (And that TBC will be the 2nd Remix season.) I believe the premise of Remix & keeping seasonal classic in the vanilla game would have been easier than trying to convert the rune system to new expansion meta.

Timerunning (I refuse to call it Remix) is also much more approachable and tempting to Retail players. Not just the rewards carrying over of course, but also how it's the classes you already know, from the character selection you already use, with the graphical quality you are used to.
I know I will be playing Timerunning, and I bet a lot of players who would like to try Classic, but just can't get into the game for a variety of reasons will be loving this feature.

[Xilurm]

Nice. I love Bel'ameth as a place to have my Hearthstone, and it's nice to make it even more thematically fitting.

Yes, and don't forget that this is just one ship. Wonder where the rest can go. Darkshore/Feralas/Suramar(which seems to be getting updated) are one of the few choices I can think that make sense.

Also what if Bel'ameth is the new starting zone for Night Elves with Gilneas having an updated starting zone for Worgen and those ships are like a choice give to the players to level in Dragon Isles or EK from level 10 onwards.

[Ersula]

Anyone see this? They've updated Legion Dalaran npcs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...pdates_on_ptr/

I'd guess it's because enough time has passed since the sunreaver purge in Cata. I know Umbric is recieving a new model but I don't think it would be him. I predict Vareesa might be getting a new model soon as well, but she's not a mage. Anyone have a guess who the new Dalaran council member it could be?