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

[Nymrohd]

I have to say, I'd have appreciated if they are discontinuing This Week in WoW for them to give us notice.

[Worldshaper]

I have to say, I'd have appreciated if they are discontinuing This Week in WoW for them to give us notice.

Agreed on this one.
Part of good communication is communicating when you won't be communicating, if that makes sense.

[Ersula]

I mean the night elves turning against orcs, who are trying to get their wood, makes sense. They have barely a grudge against humans. I'd say the ones who have reason to leave are the tauren (at least in future expansions from vanilla), peaceful nature lovers who are allied with the undead and war hungry orcs.

BFA made sure to close all possible doors for the NE to join the horde as well.

Except 1.) The Night Elves joined the alliance before all that, 2.) Humans also cut down trees for resources, 3.) Your characterization of orcs in relation to the Tauren tells me you never actually played the founding of durotar.

[allegrian]

Except 1.) The Night Elves joined the alliance before all that, 2.) Humans also cut down trees for resources, 3.) Your characterization of orcs in relation to the Tauren tells me you never actually played the founding of durotar.

I played the founding of durotar, replayed it recently even. But we're talking about wow orcs, who were very different from W3 orcs, specially from cata to BFA. It's bad writing, but it's there. I'd have prefered the horde in wow to be like W3, but it wasn't.

[Chickat]

You know TWW is an expansion you pay for, right? So having the same features doesn't make it an expansion. It should EXPAND the game, therefore ADD more/new features, which TWW has only like 2.

- Dynamic Flight is Dragonriding for everything. It isn't new, should be a patch.
- Warbonds aren't new content, it's just QoL features. Nothing you can really "play".
- Hero Talents will be just color skins for spells or smth.
- Earthen are reskin of Dwarves.

+ Delves is the only "new feature". And even that sounds like smaller Torghast or something.
+ New continent (only 4 new zones), new dungs etc.

Oh my god. Warcraft andys at it again. Defending undefendable.

ex·pan·sion noun the action of becoming larger or more extensive.

Adding new content is expanding. New landmasses and dungeons/raids/bgs/etc are expanding the game. How do you defend the bloat that would happen if they added more features? Sure maybe 1 more would be nice, but I don't want 6 new features every expansion. I would hate that. Feature bloat started around WoD and Legion. Its real and its a negative for the game. Having less features is worse for marketing, but its also better for the long term health of the game.

[Woggmer]

I played the founding of durotar, replayed it recently even. But we're talking about wow orcs, who were very different from W3 orcs, specially from cata to BFA. It's bad writing, but it's there. I'd have prefered the horde in wow to be like W3, but it wasn't.

It isn't just bad writing (well it is but there's more to it than that), it's the refusal to make the Alliance look bad. Very rarely do you ever see the Alliance be the aggressors or commit a war crime (the most recent being in BFA when they burnt down vulpera caravans for information about the Horde.)

And the one time they actually make the Alliance "evil" is through an alternate timeline in with the "Glorious Good Alliance" from the Time Rifts

[Chickat]

Not even tanks would want to solo those mobs. I am a tank. The mobs were no danger at all to me. But it would still take several minutes to solo them.

- - - Updated - - -



That is just an unfair comparison though. Not only are you going for a very old raid, you are going for one that was so poorly implemented.

IMO Elite rares should only spawn like every 4 hours in a zone and have amazing rewards to make them worth doing by everyone normal mode raider and under. They rarely 5% chance drop a piece of normal mode gear. They drop 5 times the currency of a normal rare, and every one would have a pet or mount tied to it. 3% drop rate. 10 minutes before the rare becomes active a server wide announcement lets everyone know its spawning in 10 mins. Everyone can rush from all over the continent to kill it with plenty of time. These type of rares would actually be rare, and would require 5+ players to kill. If the rare hasn't been killed for 1 hour after spawning it downgrades to a soloable rare.

Normal rares spawn like clockwork every 5 mins on a rotation. 12 spawn per day per zone with like 24 or 36 rares per zone possible. Once you kill them all for the day you can stop. Launch zones only spawn 6 each every 10 mins. So that is a potential of 24 rares per day possible at launch with a pool of around 80 total rares rotating by day. Rare trains are consistent, quick, rewarding, and fun.

Thats how I would fix world content gameplay.

The War Within daily launch content.

Kill all 24 rares that day.
Each zone has a buffed once a day Delve to do. So do 4 delves.
Do your daily heroic or mythic dungeon for a chance at extra loot.
Any world of daily quests you want to do for rep or gear upgrade items.
Fun collectors only activities that are soloable and not important like Soup event or hunts. I think untying gear from these, but making them reward cosmetic satchels would be a lot better.

So if a serious world content player wants to max all gear avenues for the day it would take about 5 hours which is plenty of content, but its tuned to not be mandatory for mythic+ PVP or raiders as their content rewards quicker gear and higher amounts of Flightstones/crests etc.

Casual world players tend to not care if they miss some stuff, so having all of that to do should feel refreshing and not mandatory to them. Raiders and PVPers would be better rewarded in raids, dungeons, and PVP so they don't need to do it past maybe rep requirements.

- - - Updated - - -

Fine. If you don't want quantified statements I'll put them as simply as possible:

In every aspect except writing, Shadowlands is a better expansion than Dragonflight.

Dragonflight is marginally better than BFA and the only expansion worse than BFA was WoD. I was feeling better about Dragonflight when they said there was a lot more coming in 2024 but I don't it's even appropriate to attribute a fortnite reskin & another leveling revamp to an expansion.

So when they've shown us almost nothing about TWW why should I listen to Holly & other devs making vague statements about all the cool things coming in TWW. What am I getting excited for? My own imagination?

Shadowlands has the worst writing of any expansion ever by a mile. It makes BFA look clear and concise. DF writing isn't amazing, but its serviceable and a little boring. SL was actively tearing down the franchise one patch at a time. SL was absolutely more destructive to the IP than any other expansion.

- - - Updated - - -

Besides that they'd never done that before, what would be the point in not revealing all the big features at blizzcon? Besides deliberately hurting the pre-order figures.
We've pretty much reduced the expansion to some sort of boogieman. The main problem was torghast and the writing but somehow that turned into Shadowlands becoming the worst expansion ever in our minds: But in actuality, now that we have post-legion subscription numbers, Shadowlands pulled in more subscribers than BFA. (Don't say it was all classic. The Shadowlands release spike was bigger than the classic release spike & BFA release spike combined.)Because BFA didn't have a Sylvanas arc, right?

Covenants were fuched, but still a million times better than Azerite armor. That's not even a hot take.

Not true. Legion had at least a few decently sized features left out of its initial reveal. They may have revealed them later at Blizzcon, but still.

- - - Updated - - -

SL was better than WoD because SL actually had content patches where WoD only had one legitimate content patch.

In some ways I would agree, but SL story was ten times worse than WoD story. WoD was actually pretty good until the whole infinite Legions thing.

- - - Updated - - -

What do you mean??? It added the selfie camera!!

- - - Updated - - -



SL had more content and more to do.
Gameplay wise except the need to grind choregast it was fine. I enjoyed M+ and raids in SL.

WoD basically had nothing to do and garrisons were terribly implemented. Not to mention all that was promised for the expansion that just never came to fruition.

WoD had much better potential though. WoD is still the best continent they have made, and has the best leveling by a mile. Rares and treasures were better in WoD and they have never hit the mark since. WoD, with even 1 more major patch zone and raid, and with world quests and Mythic+ would have been one of the top expansions. It wouldn't take that much to turn wod from a turd into gold. A dev team with a 6 month beta could totally turn WoD classic into the best thing ever. Add the real capital cities, Farahlon zone, a new dungeon, Shat raid, replace the weird bonus objective areas with world quests, and turn the mythic dungeons into mythic+ dungeons and you have a fantastic expansion.

You could probably say the same about SL too, but SL lore was too far gone to save. WoD could easily be saved and turned into greatness.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know what to tell you. It's all right here. Shadowlands had a 9.1 uptick. BFA's upticks are just Classic & the announcement of Shadowlands.

That was TBC classic which launched in the middle of 2021, exactly where that uptick is.

Also, before classic Patch 8.2 Nazjatar and Mechagon were so well liked they stopped the huge loss in subs and leveled them out. It was a very successful patch. I will say even though BFA is a stinker in some ways, 8.2 is one of the best patches they have ever made for WoW, if not the best. It was incredibly fun.

- - - Updated - - -

So when subs are good it's classic's fault & when subs are bad it's retail's fault? That's convenient.

For being the expansion that almost killed the brand it's weird that it's subscription figures are extremely close to Legion's. It's almost like that statement is enormous hyperbole.

9.1 was so bad it makes TBC classic launch look small. IMO they lost another 500k subs with 9.1 launch but you cant see it because TBC ate that loss and added some. TBC classic launch would have been much larger if 9.1 wasn't so bad. I dont have any proof of that of course, but neither do you.

[allegrian]

It isn't just bad writing (well it is but there's more to it than that), it's the refusal to make the Alliance look bad. Very rarely do you ever see the Alliance be the aggressors or commit a war crime (the most recent being in BFA when they burnt down vulpera caravans for information about the Horde.)

And the one time they actually make the Alliance "evil" is through an alternate timeline in with the "Glorious Good Alliance" from the Time Rifts

I'd say the Glorious Good Alliance VS horde timeline would have made for a more interesting expansion than wod and bfa, or just making it the main universe. It's probably what most people expect for Turalyon but it's not going to happen with the current writing direction.

That being said, I want my player character and faction to be the heroes of the story, not the villains. If the alliance were to become evil, my character would have to be inmediately against it, not like horde players during mop and early BFA and its prepatch.

[Cheezits]

I think any controversial development for Turalyon is going to come post-TWS, which I believe will involve a dead Alleria (or Arator, but I think Alleria biting is it more likely).

It's a trope, but I think it's the kind of understandable character change for Turalyon that they want to do for him to do anything even remotely edgy. Otherwise it will inevitably be compared to Garrosh/Sylvanas.

[Chickat]

Again, compared to pre-WoD subscriptions Legion to present day is extremely stable. While vanilla to wrath the subscriptions rose, and from then until Legion the subscriptions fell. But since legion its basically stabilized. It's like that meme "What are the difference between legion figures & shadowlands figures?" "It's the same picture"I'm just going to have to accept this is how you people are going to talk about "slightly lower subscription figures than Legion at it's lowest point," huh?

Yeah, but thats only because of classic. Without classic subs would be up to 50% lower.

- - - Updated - - -

That's WoW Classic's uptick, not 8.2 - Rise of Azshara released almost 2 whole months later (and it sucked.)TWW is the best expansion ever. Hope I get to see it one day.

Really lmao? We have completely different tastes then. Rise of Azshara is a top 5 if not top 2 patch in all of WoW history. Its the best patch of the last 6 or 7 years for sure.

[Zardas]

9.1 was so bad it makes TBC classic launch look small. IMO they lost another 500k subs with 9.1 launch but you cant see it because TBC ate that loss and added some. TBC classic launch would have been much larger if 9.1 wasn't so bad. I dont have any proof of that of course, but neither do you.

If it was the case, the curves wouldn't be so smooth (and Blizz would have maube kept a TBC classic server).

[Chickat]

Have we gotten any firm indication of map size from the material released so far?

Always an awkward thing to try and gauge without proper maps. This time especially because Azj-kahet and Ringing Deeps seem built out of sprawling interconnected cave systems and the footage/press release screenshots were all focused on specific set pieces, which makes getting a sense of the full space difficult. In the airlock demonstration Hallowfall looked like it might be on the order of Azure Span in terms of size, but in the rough blocking map they showed it seemed like Isle of Dorn and Ringing Deeps were quite small, more like Legion zones.

Didn't they say one of the zones is the biggest they have ever made, or am I misremembering a quote?

- - - Updated - - -

last I checked the numbers on Bellular's graph are pulled out of a hat, only the curve is of official sources. So maybe we ought to ignore these numbers for a while, don't we?

His logic is sound if you actually watch the video. They are accurate to within a few hundred thousand for sure.

- - - Updated - - -

Here's hoping. It's just so hard to tell with what they provided. All of the Ringing Deeps screenshots are of like two small specific questing areas so who knows how big that zone is, and Isle of Dorn could be anything from Forbidden Reach sized to Stormsong Valley and Tiragarde Sound combined.

At least with DF you could immediately from some of the outdoor shots that Azure Span was going to be absolutely massive and there were long distance outdoor shots to give a sense that the overall scale was big.

Maps are always one of the big highlights of initial builds, with the weapon/armor models and mount/creature stuff.

Isle of Dorn looks small to me. Id guess its Legion zone sized with the others being larger underground. Probably bigger than Broken Isles as a continent but significantly smaller than Northrend or DI if I had to guess. Pandaria is around 10m pixels where as DI is around 17m. So 13-14m if I had to guess.

- - - Updated - - -

I want to say there was an interview that mentioned the Isle of Dorn was the size of a large DF zone like Azure Span.

Maybe thats what I heard, but the Map for it looks small. If thats true, the other zones were even bigger so that would be exciting.

- - - Updated - - -

I've literally never understood the whining from people who want shit loads of weird new kinds of systems or content from wow every xpac. You do realize that of the various kinds of content introduced to wow over the last 20 years the only ones that have stayed are heroic dungeons, daily quests, world quests, and M+. All the other shit was abandoned at the end of the xpac or even before the xpac was over because it was recieved poorly.

Cata: archeology (guess it continued for a while but has since been abandoned)
MoP: scenarios
WoD: garrisons
BFA: Islands & warfronts. Warfronts were basically abandonded before the xpac even finished
SL: Torghast

The only stuff that has actually had any staying power within the game is basically just existing content, but making it replayable and adding rewards for replaying it. And then in Legion they shook both of those up again. The base systems of wow are actually fucking incredible. The initial leveling and zone exploring is fun AF. Dungeons are awesome. Raiding is awesome. Please dear god stop asking them for the next version of Warfronts that everyone hates every single expansion and maybe we'll actually get a 5th zone or more dungeons in patch content. Morons who think expansions should fundamentally change the core of the game should just play something else. Its been 20 years, we've got a pretty good idea of what works and doesnt work in wow at this point.

This is exactly how I feel.

- - - Updated - - -

Warbands is the #1 feature of TWW. I can't wait, and this is massive for the game. Perhaps one of the most significant features ever implemented.

I know you're memeing but I actually am excited for them. Take the best from Withered army training, Treasure Trove of the Thunder King, Scenarios, Islands, Torghast, Followers etc sounds amazing. Those systems failed for a lot of reasons, but this is the first time one will be an actual end game pillar. I'm excited to gear my alts up with great gear while doing world content. There are 13 delves, and even if they only have 3 variations each, that's a lot of content.

- - - Updated - - -

Warbands is the #1 feature of TWW. I can't wait, and this is massive for the game. Perhaps one of the most significant features ever implemented.

Warbands is like Flying on Azeroth. No one will care in 3 years but its incredibly exciting for right now, and just makes the game a lot better for ever. Its not flashy to some players, but its probably one of the best things they have ever done.

- - - Updated - - -

Which is sad because making quest progress & currencies account wide for all intents & purposes could be a minor feature in a minor patch. Honestly my biggest question is why is it limited to 4 characters? That's such an arbitrary number. I have 5 alts I want to play.1 month later. Not months. We're 4 months further in than that right now. They might not have had playable builds but they did show us all the artifacts at Blizzcon, as well as detailed Mythic+ (being an extension of MoP challenge mode) as well as screenshots of all those features. But for delves, Ion could barely explain what it's even supposed to be.

TWW is clearly the outlier here.

I just want to remind everyone that they called the Dragonflight Profession system "the new 4th pillar" of the game alongside Mythics, Raids & PvP....then they said that exact same thing about delves. As if we're goldfish with no memory. So it's fair to predict Delves are going to be as disappointing as the profession system was.

You severely misunderstand Warbands omg lol. You only display 4 or 5 on the screen, but every character on your account shares everything.

[Woggmer]

I'd say the Glorious Good Alliance VS horde timeline would have made for a more interesting expansion than wod and bfa, or just making it the main universe. It's probably what most people expect for Turalyon but it's not going to happen with the current writing direction.

I don't know, the end result of that would be the total extinction of many Kalimdor races like Tauren, Night Elves, and even the Darkspear Trolls since the Blood Horde ravaged the land and the Glorious Good Alliance dropped toxic bombs on them to get rid of them. It would work for maybe a "What If" Warcraft scenario story mission, but not in an MMO.

That being said, I want my player character and faction to be the heroes of the story, not the villains. If the alliance were to become evil, my character would have to be inmediately against it, not like horde players during mop and early BFA and its prepatch.

I would say they should make it a choice like with BFA, only with better rewards for being loyal to one side instead of having to wait a whole expansion just for some of the rewards (like the Sylvanas Loyalist stuff).

Like let's say Turalyon goes off his rocker and decides to make everyone in the Alliance become Lightbound like him or join his cause in removing the Horde permanently. However, the major downside is that once you go against Turalyon, then he'll have the entire city guard go after you and chase you out. All the knights replaced with Paladins instead and turns Stormwind (temporarily) into a hostile area. [But this is only phased for those who actually did the quest, anyone else who didn't do the quest won't have to worry about it.]

[Chickat]

I agree.

While I understand that some people might see it as something that should have been in the game 10 years ago and that it is in fact a QoL feature, that does not diminishes its value in any way.

Warbands are going to be loved by 99% of the playerbase. It will make the game so much better and it will allow us to play whatever character we want.

I have been meticulously killing all my alts for years because eventually I realised that I had so many things done with my main and so much shit to do still, that spending time in alts seems like a waste of time (my problem, I know, but I think that many players share this mental illness). With Warbands this problem will be (eventually) gone.

I will play even more WoW (if that's possible) thanks to this feature.

Also, Warbands while not epic to everyone take a ton of work to pull off. Like talent revamp levels of work. Its an engineering nightmare to make everything account wide.

[Scyth]

I see people on reddit saying many streamers aren't streaming until Wednesday (US time I guess) so Alpha will start in the next day or so. We probably should expect a lot of WoW news soon then.
Hype!

[Chickat]

Blizzcon 2015 was 3 Months after Gamescom. So yes it was Months later.

Also Ion explained perfectly fine what Delves are.

He even walked us through how 2 or 3 would go. If people lack the imagination to follow along and comprehend that, its on them.

- - - Updated - - -

The fact that they include this in every expansion as an agenda doesn't make it popular among the community. He's too spineless and uninteresting a character to pay for. No woman will buy his statue because he's that nerd in high school. No man will buy his statue because Anduin has a small penis aura. So I guarantee that Anduin will never get a statue or anything worth more than $15 in his life. At most, a chibi-style sticker or something like that for a couple of cents.

They are and have been building him up to be the face of Warcaft since at least Legion, if not MoP.

Hes sticking around and incredibly important. Get over it.

[allegrian]

I don't know, the end result of that would be the total extinction of many Kalimdor races like Tauren, Night Elves, and even the Darkspear Trolls since the Blood Horde ravaged the land and the Glorious Good Alliance dropped toxic bombs on them to get rid of them. It would work for maybe a "What If" Warcraft scenario story mission, but not in an MMO.



I would say they should make it a choice like with BFA, only with better rewards for being loyal to one side instead of having to wait a whole expansion just for some of the rewards (like the Sylvanas Loyalist stuff).

Like let's say Turalyon goes off his rocker and decides to make everyone in the Alliance become Lightbound like him or join his cause in removing the Horde permanently. However, the major downside is that once you go against Turalyon, then he'll have the entire city guard go after you and chase you out. All the knights replaced with Paladins instead and turns Stormwind (temporarily) into a hostile area. [But this is only phased for those who actually did the quest, anyone else who didn't do the quest won't have to worry about it.]

The choice in bfa made no sense and has no place in wow. In lore, loyalist playable characters should be dead or have left the horde, instead they join Tyrande to help her defend her new tree. It doesn't make sense, hell, not even Sylvannas herself should like the playable loyalist characters as they helped and agreed with her evil self, which she hates (thus the speciall message for loyalists in the undead heritage makes no sense).

You can't be evil just sometimes and then be a hero like everybody else afterwards while helping your former victims for no reason. If they want a villain faction/race, they have to be always evil and have limitations and different quest options for the whole game.

Loyalist choices were a rushed afterthought and the whole horde as playable faction is a mess lorewise thanks to BFA. That's why it's hard for me to play it and stay inmersed in the game world, story and logic.

[Chickat]

They do this, which is why we don't have any merchandise featuring Anduin. He is like an icon of non-toxic masculinity, a universal man who should be a constant presence in history and teach boys about sensitivity. But they know that people will only pay for hot characters. Therefore, everyone plays their role. Characters like Illidan and Sylvanas will receive the thousandth statue for thousands of dollars. Anduin gives propaganda for free

Yet. They took him through a trauma arc. An arc btw in which you would also have terrible PTSD in real life from. Hes going to come into his own and be a badass by the end of TWW. Its clearly what they are doing. Going through tough times makes people stronger.

Varian would not have been as cool if he didn't go through all he went through.

- - - Updated - - -

https://twitter.com/christiegolden/s...86529281839104

Thats not propaganda its the truth. Sorry you don't believe in loving kind fathers and men. Stay mad I guess?

[Ersula]

Shadowlands has the worst writing of any expansion ever by a mile. It makes BFA look clear and concise. DF writing isn't amazing, but its serviceable and a little boring.

Correct.

SL was actively tearing down the franchise one patch at a time. SL was absolutely more destructive to the IP than any other expansion.

Hyperbole: You have the figures right in front of you. Compared to pre-wod where subs swell up to 12 million, Shadowlands have the same average subscriptions as Legion. If the consensus is that players loved Legion & hated Shadowlands, the subs would reflect that, but they don't.

Yeah, but thats only because of classic. Without classic subs would be up to 50% lower.

Citation needed.

[Chickat]

Sorry, what's he propaganda for?

Being nice?

Yeah, men are tough and rough. They cant wear any feminine colors, or show their emotions. Thats what people like him think. The world will be a much better place as soon as that thought process dies out.

- - - Updated - - -

If it was the case, the curves wouldn't be so smooth (and Blizz would have maube kept a TBC classic server).

They dont want to fragment classic players that much. TBC is popular, just not as popular as vanilla. Are you implying TBC didn't bring over 1m players back because thats a take for sure lmao.

- - - Updated - - -

Correct. Hyperbole: You have the figures right in front of you. Compared to pre-wod where subs swell up to 12 million, Shadowlands have the same average subscriptions as Legion. If the consensus is that players loved Legion & hated Shadowlands, the subs would reflect that, but they don't.
Citation needed.

From both of us. Neither of us have proof to back up our claims on classic sub numbers.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know, he looks pretty damn hot to me.

Yeah, hes giving daddy energy.