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

[Alanar]

I remember when the BfA zandalari were first shown, their animations and rigs were identical to those of the night elves. But I remember this from footages of the tests being made at blizzcon reveal. I don't know if they have time to do the same treatment to earthens for TWW

They were not actually identical. The mop version was what they improved apon. Which already had adjusted troll casting animations, own running/proud walking animation that fits their standing.

A lot of models have modified exciting skeletons, but they were far from identical.

[Eurhetemec]

And who's gonna play a broken? Serious question. Why implement another race that only a minimal fraction of player would even dare to touch? They are ugly and most people don't want to play ugly characters. That's why you barely see Kul'Tiran females or mecha gnomes.
Instead of creating another fringe allied race they should spend their resources on more options for the established ones.

I sort of sympathize with this position, but let's be realistic - if they added broken, they'd go over their appearance again and make them look cooler than they currently do. Further, a lot of people play characters despite them being "ugly" - for example, we see no shortage of Tauren of either body type. Why? Because they've got a real vibe, and they're huge and whilst they're ugly, that vibe really works. Part of that is animations.

And that's where things get more complicated - because Allied Races are likely to reuse skeletons and 95%+ of their animations. So this is where Broken actually fall down - they'd just be reusing the current Draenei animations, most likely. So they wouldn't have a personality of their own, which is a lot of what makes "ugly" races work. If you did broken with a slight re-do to make their faces cooler-looking (could still be noseless - there are plenty of cool-looking noseless aliens in sci-fi and anime), and they had own set of cool animations with real personality - they'd get played. But they won't. Which means they're less likely to see real use.

That said, I think one you don't account for is that players wildly overvalue Allied Races. They get insanely excited about them. They see them as a huge value-add. You can reasonably say "That's dumb, most people who unlock them won't even play them!" (or at least won't play them to max level), but it's still how people think. And it's a relatively low-intensity thing for Blizzard at the time they add them, because they can so heavily re-use stuff. It does mean, in the very long term, next time it's "visual upgrade time" (probably in about six years) Blizzard will have significantly more work to do though.

Mok'Nathal kind of flip the issue though - they'd be immediately, significantly played. People would be paying for race changes from Orcs and Tauren (I'm assuming they'd be Horde) like, immediately. That's literally money in the bank to Blizzard. Even if only say, 100k people paid for a race-change to Mok'Nathal (which I think is a conservative estimate), that's $2.5 million. It is very unlikely the costs involved in creating and adding Mok'Nathal (as an Allied Race, with just an intro quest, no starting zone and so on) would add up to $2.5 million. And that's just the initial benefit - people will also see them as a huge value-add, people re-subscribe to get them - there are obviously situations where it would be smart to add Allied Races - but you do have to assess whether they'll actually excite people, against how much cost to add them (if you're adding detailed races anyway, for general content purposes, also adding them as playable may be cheap - I'm pretty sure that's the sole reason we have Mechagnomes, for example).

You don't get that same benefit from just adding options for established characters. You'll pretty much never get people doing paid races changes just because X existing race now has more options. You rarely, if ever, get people resubscribing because they have more options (not never, but rarely). Instead people who do resubscribe, are usually surprised and happy by the new options (a friend who re-upped recently was pretty happy about them - but she had no idea that they existed prior to re-up'ing). Whereas an Allied Race? People hear about that. Lapsed subscribers see an article, or hear from a friend, or idly look at MMO Champ or WoWhead, and go "Ooooooh that sounds like a cool race!", and Blizzard gets actual money because of it.

TLDR: Broken might not make sense, but Mok'Nathal would literally make Blizzard cash money in a way more options for existing characters will not.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

TLDR: Broken might not make sense, but Mok'Nathal would literally make Blizzard cash money in a way more options for existing characters will not.

I mean, i would probably race change many of my orcs to mok'nathals.

No big belly means no crazy stretched chest pieces and 3d elements.

I like kultirans too, but stopped playing my kultiran rogue and warrior until they get paladins but i might get annoyed again by belly streatching everything.

[Dancaris]

They were not actually identical. The mop version was what they improved apon. Which already had adjusted troll casting animations, own running/proud walking animation that fits their standing.

A lot of models have modified exciting skeletons, but they were far from identical.

Well, in Nazmir still exist models of pre-rework zandalari trolls. It was mere darkspear hunched model with skin from modern zandalari. So anything from now to release is posible.

[milkmustache]

I think between the Tyr's Guard questline, the Sins of the Sister/other Primalist questlines and some hints around 10.2, it seems it could've been a major goal to deliver Druids, Paladins and Shamans for all races, but it got diverted early on due to art team constraints.

There's just so much leading up to it that it feels weird it was never delivered, especially with some of the other class/race combos being added. It seems to not be a victim of cut content, but shifted resources. The content is kinda there. The quests serve as worldbuilding I suppose (particularly some of the 10.2 night elven quests with the Druids of the Flame and Koraleth), but they did seem to be leading to something undelivered. Maybe eventually in the saga.

[Lady Atia]

Seems like MRGM found a new void Slitherdrake skintone:

[Auxis]

Have we seen much about rewards or new items in 10.2.7, or is it all encrypted?
Just wondering if we'll get anything neat from the Harbinger quests.

[milkmustache]

Have we seen much about rewards or new items in 10.2.7, or is it all encrypted?
Just wondering if we'll get anything neat from the Harbinger quests.

I believe it's all encrypted, but MrGM seems to have found the void Slitherdrake seen above. Pretty much everything with the three major questlines in 10.2.7 is under tight wraps.

[Auxis]

I believe it's all encrypted, but MrGM seems to have found the void Slitherdrake seen above. Pretty much everything with the three major questlines in 10.2.7 is under tight wraps.

That's good to know. I'm glad they are trying to keep things locked up lately.

[Lady Atia]

That's good to know. I'm glad they are trying to keep things locked up lately.

Idk, I'm more hyped about a patch if I know the rewards. Right now 10.2.7 seems like nothing besides the Pandaria event lol.

[CrossNgen]

I believe it's all encrypted, but MrGM seems to have found the void Slitherdrake seen above. Pretty much everything with the three major questlines in 10.2.7 is under tight wraps.

There are three questlines?

[Ersula]

There are three questlines?

Dark Heart Campaign
Draenei Heritage questline
Troll Heritage questline

[Chickat]

A lot of irl stuff going on. Did I miss anything in the last 4 or 5 days?

[Skildar]

They were not actually identical. The mop version was what they improved apon. Which already had adjusted troll casting animations, own running/proud walking animation that fits their standing.

A lot of models have modified exciting skeletons, but they were far from identical.

The ones from BfA started out as a whole different model and rigs compared to the MoP one, I've tried finding footage of the BfA testing at blizzcon but didn't manage to unfortunately :/

[Throren]

Seems like MRGM found a new void Slitherdrake skintone

MRGM didn't find it, you can see right in the picture it was datamined/found by Stiven, Wowhead's lead dataminer, hence the wowhead background and his tag in the bottom right corner

[Raetary]

A lot of irl stuff going on. Did I miss anything in the last 4 or 5 days?

Christie Golden got fired.

That's pretty much it.

[Lady Atia]

MRGM didn't find it, you can see right in the picture it was datamined/found by Stiven, Wowhead's lead dataminer, hence the wowhead background and his tag in the bottom right corner

And it wasn't reportet by WoWhead so the credit goes to MRGM, because that's where I found it, lol.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

Random discovery on 10.2.7 PTR, they repositioned mag'har heritage armor belt so it no longer clips like crazy. Left PTR, Right Live

[Murlocos]

Blizzard really needs to come out and make a statement on what's going on with addons in the near future. I'm not referring to that brief period of them being disabled on the alpha, but sudden changes to the 10.2.7 PTR severely rate limiting addon functions that would apparently make popular roleplaying and other addons nigh unusable or intentional alpha changes removing whole functionality.

I have a blind guildmate that relies on addons to be able to play the game at all that was very stressed out by this last night and it's how I found out. I don't know what they're doing here, but the worst part is that from what I've gathered the addons that everyone are actually railing about (Weakauras, DBM, etc.) would be the least affected by these changes.

[Gurahk]

Random discovery on 10.2.7 PTR, they repositioned mag'har heritage armor belt so it no longer clips like crazy. Left PTR, Right Live

That's neat. Now if they only bothered giving the Mag'har a proper hub like every other AR, and maybe even actual characters.