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

[Lady Atia]

I'm doing the Isle of Thunder questline on remix right now, and ngl, the Zandalari there peaked at their design, which for some weird reason BfA never really managed to achieve imo. Prolly because they used player gear on the playable Zandalari and we didn't have skirts yet, which is quite a shame.

[Nathanyel]

After that, though, it is just a matter of time that we start killing each other again. The Arathi Empire could be the perfect reason to increase tensions between factions, as there will be Alliance that would like to ally with this Empire.

Before Legion, I still had some delusions that I could write fanfic, or at least expansion concepts.
Had some ideas: shake up the factions by introducing e.g. Naaru and other Light-associated beings offering help against the Burning Legion, so the Paladin-focused races, Humans and Dwarves, Blood Elves, Draenei and a good chunk of the Tauren would form a new faction, with the Orcs, Trolls, Night Elves and most Tauren going "fuck no" (particularly the Orcs not wanting to submit to yet another cosmic force) and forming an independent faction.
Another was an expansion hook that some alien empire would sent envoys, they had also driven back the Legion from their world, but were quasi-fascist lawful evil, coercing the faction leaders to comply via hostages and other methods, and there'd be a player choice to either side with these oppressors, or join the resistance, all while the Legion is already invading.

[BaumanKing]

Are you forgetting who attacked first? The Orcs invaded from a whole another planet and then Turalyon and co pushed them back and entered their own world to end things for good. They didn't go there to "save" anyone except the people on Azeroth, and they basically sacrificed themselves.

A crystal chandelier appeared to Turalyon in a vision and urged him to proceed with his decision to "put an end to the orcs' evil forever". Turalyon then agreed that he could not allow the Horde to invade other worlds. His motivation was precisely to save other worlds:

"We have to stop them," Turalyon stated firmly. "We can't let other, innocent worlds have this unleashed on them. It ends here. On Azeroth. No one else should have to suffer as we have. The Light shines on other worlds than ours, and it needs our help. It will have it."

"Sir . . . why don't we just let them go? If they have fresh worlds to take, maybe they'll just go away and leave us alone."
"Even if it were that simple, we can't let that happen. Don't you understand?" Turalyon said. "We have to stop them. We can't save our world at the expense of countless innocent lives!"

Beyond the Dark Portal, chapter 13

And how exactly is Geya'rah to blame for her... Wait, I was going to say "father's sins", but Duratan was an honorable man who opposed the Iron Horde. You know what in the end happened to him, right?

[Xilurm]

A crystal chandelier appeared to Turalyon in a vision and urged him to proceed with his decision to "put an end to the orcs' evil forever". Turalyon then agreed that he could not allow the Horde to invade other worlds. His motivation was precisely to save other worlds:



And how exactly is Geya'rah to blame for her... Wait, I was going to say "father's sins", but Duratan was an honorable man who opposed the Iron Horde. You know what in the end happened to him, right?

You're twisting this a lot into something it isn't. Him wanting to put an end to the Horde so they don't rampage all over the universe is logical? And you've made it clear that for you this is an issue because he is a "white male".

The fact that you even think talking like this is ok is insane to me.

[Ksgrip]

This is getting out of hand

[Nymrohd]

You're twisting this a lot into something it isn't. Him wanting to put an end to the Horde so they don't rampage all over the universe is logical? And you've made it clear that for you this is an issue because he is a "white male".

The fact that you even think talking like this is ok is insane to me.

You can practice slavery, commit genocide, destroy the environment with pollution and practice dark magic that focuses on torturing souls but as long as your opponent is white-coded, you are obviously the underdog and victim.

[Enrif]

https://www.wowhead.com/news/dalaran...poilers-341085

And there we go. I guess you didn’t have to keep my comment pinned for that long

There is nothing new on the topic. that part about magni was already there in the last alpha phases. Try next time when we get real insight.

[Ersula]

You can practice slavery, commit genocide, destroy the environment with pollution and practice dark magic that focuses on torturing souls but as long as your opponent is white-coded, you are obviously the underdog and victim.

The Alliance to Pandarans in Pandaria. The Alliance to the Trolls historically, The Night elves trying to turn southern Kalimdor into a forest is equally messed up what the Forsaken do, considering ecologically, its not destroyed, its just better suited to the Forsaken specifically. That last thing I assume you're talking about is either warlocks or blood magic, which the Alliance has, not to mention enslaving souls against the natural order was invented by Odyn, a vrykul dogma that evolved into the church of holy light.

The alliance are European imperialist coded based on how they look and what they do. Given the norms of medieval fantasy & various civilizations trying to survive in this chaotic, magical world, the methodology isn't out of the ordinary for any of the major factions. The core difference between the two factions is that the Alliance are extra judgmental about it. They push their culture on everyone because they believe it's better while the Horde accepts different cultural perspectives. Basically, the Alliance is colonialism.

What's there to dissolve, this is already the end state.

Tell that to Nato. Personally I don't think the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was the result of Nato existing, but a lot of people insist that's the reason.

[Murlocos]

What's there to dissolve, this is already the end state.

Seriously, do people not realize we're already post-faction? Shadowlands and Dragonflight are your post-faction stories. Hell, Shadowlands is what the GREATER THREAT crowd wants whether they realize it or not; Azeroth is basically a distraction from their desired story at this point.

I wish we knew how she came to this conclusion.

The best part of the faction unity story is that they didn't write it. There's nothing to discuss about it because it didn't happen, you just have to infer your own plot that happened offscreen because they didn't feel like writing it. Defenders of the story always make the argument that the best solutions are the ones where Blizzard has to write as little as humanly possible, so it's not surprising that the story frequently feels like it has huge chunks missing. You're supposed to just assume about half the plot happened offscreen.

[Cheezits]

The one Alleria quote is badly written. Per dev statements the factions aren't going away.

However, they will not do faction battles, skirmishes or political intrigue until they see the profit in it. BFA probably traumatized the devs as much as it did the players... not even getting into how bad the community was at that time, per the sub chart, it had a very small amount of players.

If the twitter cabal bullies the devs enough you may see some quest text tweaks, but they aren't going to do two-faction expansions for at least 6 years.

[Super Dickmann]

I wish we knew how she came to this conclusion.

So do I, considering even after returning from space her first order of business was to (rightly) talk shit about orcs and attempt to recruit Bob and company into the Alliance. But the answer, as the answer on all these fronts is literally nothing, as @Murlocos said, she just felt the subliminal signal radiating across the planet and joined the hivemind.

[Cheezits]

"Alleria is the main character of the saga, so have her say everything, even the things Jaina or Magni is better off saying"

That's it. She's the main character because Windrunner because money, just like how Sylvanas's bizarre psuedo-redemption (THAT Sylvanas died but it doesn't feel like it) was a higher up decision. I wish it wasn't that cynicallyobvious but it is.

[Super Dickmann]

Personally I don't think the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was the result of Nato existing, but a lot of people insist that's the reason.

What did you mean by this? Warcraft at present is exactly a setting wherein the 90s US mindset was right and you did in fact turn every Tom, Ahmed and Sheng into differently dressed versions of yourself.

[Ersula]

I wish we knew how she came to this conclusion.

I feel like they're walking back their instant allegiance to the alliance when they returned in Legion. Sure, Alleria & Turalyon hate Orcs & Trolls, but for both of them, their homelands changed sides to horde since they left: That should matter to them. If they were fighting the horde to protect the people of Lordaeron & Silvermoon it should matter to them that those people switched sides. Since Legion I was saying it would have made more sense for them to be Neutral figures like Khadgar. I suppose it just took them longer to understand the complexities of what's happened since Warcraft 2, and Vareesa, an alliance stan, whispering in their ears didn't help.

That being said it's a wild thing for her to say considering her husband is in charge of the Alliance.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Basically, the Alliance is colonialism.

This is always the funniest and dumbest thing people can bring up. the horde is literally colonialism and always has been.

They tried to colonize Azeroth in WC1/2

Tried to colonize Ashenvale in WC3.

Do colonize Duratar in wow with explicate quest about how they are killing and chasing the quillboars off there land for the horde to claim.

Let the blood elfs join in TBC who lead all the troll Colonizing.

Try to colonize mop with it being the express purpose of them being there.

The iron horde then shows they don’t need the legion to be colonizers.

And then try to colonize the rest of Kalimdor in the war of thorns before expanding to the rest of the world again.

When it comes to colonialism the horde are the bad guys and always have been.

[Super Dickmann]

This is always the funniest and dumbest thing people can bring up. the horde is literally colonialism and always has been.

Talking about colonialism in an RTS and then MMO near exclusively about war and conquest is laughable and trying to imbue lessons about it in the game is even more so. The format and premise of the game is explicitly about incompatible groups competing and killing each other precisely for the reasons later outlined. However, he who says A must say B, and if with the Unifaction you've made clear that the playable races are all effectively recoloured versions of each other with no barriers in the way of being friends and that also having hostile races is a grievous mistake and must be corrected (see your centaur), then your logic must inevitably lead you to extrapolating this to every tertiary mob race the killing of which has been the bread and butter of the franchise for its entire lifespan. See also the twitter drive about the blood elves paying reparations to the Amani and apologizing for their colonialism rather than the move that's both cogent with the function of the game and its story of having both be playable and killing each other to physically conquer the land.

[Alanar]

I'm doing the Isle of Thunder questline on remix right now, and ngl, the Zandalari there peaked at their design, which for some weird reason BfA never really managed to achieve imo. Prolly because they used player gear on the playable Zandalari and we didn't have skirts yet, which is quite a shame.

Its the detail on the buildings/tents and armor.

In bfa there was a certain shine or polish on everything. It looked to new. None of the masks and design were used, only as inspiration. The questing gear was suppose to look somewhat like that. They failed at bringing back that design, which people loved.

It all ended up looking very polished and new, altho the empire is suppose to be old. I liked the mop version way more.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Talking about colonialism in an RTS and then MMO near exclusively about war and conquest is laughable and trying to imbue lessons about it in the game is even more so.

It is but the fact that it seems to exclusively be pointed towards the alliance when it’s the horde who actually have a endless stream of doing so makes it so much more so.

Like missing the point is one thing but doing it this hard is just extra silly.

[Ersula]

This is always the funniest and dumbest thing people can bring up. the horde is literally colonialism and always has been.

I know you're the master of whataboutism, but I already said both factions actions are considered normal for a medieval fantasy setting focused on war. Though you are treating the old horde like its the same thing, despite the current horde being started by Thrall, a war orphan who was born into slavery by the alliance. And even then the old horde were conscripted by literal space demons who destroyed their planet & who were only there because they were chasing the Draenei.

Also the founding of Durotar was specifically not colonialism considering it was the expressed purpose of rebuilding the Tauren & Troll's homes who were destroyed by the centaurs & kul tirans, who were actually colonizing the area. The orcs were invited to live there.

Alliance are culturally colonialist. In that their actions aren't any different from the Hordes, but they constantly take the perspective of moral superiority.

[Cheezits]

Its the detail on the buildings/tents and armor.

In bfa there was a certain shine or polish on everything. It looked to new. None of the masks and design were used, only as inspiration. The questing gear was suppose to look somewhat like that. They failed at bringing back that design, which people loved.

It all ended up looking very polished and new, altho the empire is suppose to be old. I liked the mop version way more.

It makes sense for Zul's wacky expedition to have weathered armor, but yeah, it was touched up to make Zandalar look more "grand" to the average customer.

While I have a lot of problems with how BFA did Zandalar, establishing them as a "fancy kingdom" on par with Silvermoon and Suramar (they are the third "magic empire" Horde has under its belt imo, almost a subfaction) was well done and if it means they have to look more garish than Mists, i'll take it.