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

[Raetary]

What do you think all that military training in Bastion is for?

Their martial training is primarily for their own benefit, they use it to improve themselves and cleanse themselves with the end goal of becoming an ascended.
Their job is ferrying souls past the Veil, not being a military.

i think he means the necrolords are the official military force of the shadowlands

Not just an official army, its their own and only purpose for existing at all in this cosmic machinery.

If we call the Kyrians a second standing army just because they a fighting force, then might aswell proclaim all covenants an army as the Venthyr got the Stone Legion and the fae have the Wild Hunt.

[Ersula]

If we call the Kyrians a second standing army just because they a fighting force,

A fighting force, in other words, an army

The Kyrian and necrolords are the standing army afterlives. They even talk about how they've fought together over the eons. Because the Stone Legion don't have souls & the Wild Hunt is a temporary thing.

[Eurhetemec]

A fighting force, in other words, an army

The Kyrian and necrolords are the standing army afterlives. They even talk about how they've fought together over the eons. Because the Stone Legion don't have souls & the Wild Hunt is a temporary thing.

The Necrolords are certainly the "official" army, and they go on about it. The Kyrians are clearly trained and organised fighters too - maybe they're more like well-trained and equipped nobles fighting alongside a professional army. They certainly do fight as you say.

[Kiivar86]

So far Blizzard is really quiet this week.

I mean yesterday was a federal holiday, so I wouldn't expect much word then. I know my friend at Blizzard was off.

[allegrian]

I remain morbidly curious about how they'll handle it in this upcoming Chronicle, given what a mess it is. The whole 'slip and your soul is perma destroyed' bit is hilarious, especially given that the two afterlives that work best, Maw aside, Maldraxxus and Ardenweald are a lot more sensible in this, with the latter just being a recycling station for gods with perma death being a necessity and the former being by far the most interesting one in a place where no one really dies so everyone is recycled into becoming stronger and stronger as part of its permanent arena. Mind, Maldraxxus would be even better if all the Scourge 'memberberry appearances were cut.

Maldraxxus has double dead zombies, it makes no sense.

[Santandame]

I have to agree, I did not remember MoP questing and worldbuilding to be this good. The lore was really interesting back then. Everything related to the Mantid is top-notch IMO.

I still think that WoD was better in terms of questing and especially in the world itself. Draenor is still the best continent. Pandaria as a continent is good, it is what it should be, but it is just not as spectacular as Draenor (personal taste, of course).

I believe that it would be difficult for Blizzard to make an expansion so important, expanding and mysterious as MoP lore-wise. Especially because back then we did not have the Chronicles books, which took out much of the magic of the Warcraft's universe, even if at the time the first Chronicle book was cool.

Fair enough if you enjoy Draenor but the more I think about it, the levelling really wasn’t as good as people seem to think. The only decent zones were Shadowmoon, Frostfire and Spires. Talador was a complete mess, Gorgrond suffered from a late rewrite and Nagrand was underwhelming with the majority of the zone reserved for apexis dailies with no story.

As contentious as the expansion is amongst the community, I still think BfA is the superior levelling experience within a bubble of Zandalar and Kul Tiras.

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Well we will get WoD Remix some time soon and you'll then remember better. WoD had three superb zones (Shadowmoon, Frostfire, Arak), a zone that had no real storyline (Gorgrond) and two zones with so much promise and a completely disappoint finish that left significant areas simply unexplored (Talador, Nagrand)

Every zone in MoP delivered the story it had to deliver including with continuing max level campaigns (And it is so annoying that the real story for the Vale is completely lost here).

You’ve surmised my thoughts on Draenor to a tee.

[Nymrohd]

I guess no build today. Still hoping for beta to start before the month ends.

[Makabreska]

The only thing I look forward now are raid tests.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I've played through 3 full pandaria zones and man, the story and even gameplay is so much better than DF leveling, it's like night and day. The world building in pandaria is top notch, and the story flows and connects each zones in a logical way, as well as having story threads that are introduced and keep moving like anduin, the sha, mogu, the insect invasion... And it's all written in a way that new players could understand most of what's happening.

DF on the other hand has us meet different shamanistic copycat races in each zone that are forgotten once you leave and make us look for macguffins that are dropped and forgotten before the first raid. The fountain of youth questline in pandaria is better than anything in DF and let's not even talk about big set pieces like the dragon statue or the giant insect destroying the wall in pandaria as the climax of 2 zones.

I really hope TWW and midnight are closer to pandaria leveling...

Jade Forest questline: you are sent on an urgent mission to rescue the prince. First thing you do is machinegun a Horde base. Then you drink dreambrew and get an epic vision of war and meet Lorewalker Cho aka Jim Cummings aka Winnie the Pooh and he sounds great. Then you go rescue Admiral Taylor from maneating monkeys and meet the fish people, who were the former emperors of Pandaria. Then you play as Rell Nightwind's crew of operatives in a series of four fun missions (also has replay value because on the other side you find out that Amber didn't shoot Socks. It was the Horde sniper). Then you go to a Panda village and meet the people there, and then kill a creepy Jade Witch who was turning children into garden lawn statues. Then you go to Tian Monastery and get a humorous introduction to three kung-fu masters, then beat them up, and then win a 100 man gauntlet and get certified. Then Admiral Taylor calls you back to the fish village and you arm them for war and march out to fight the Horde, and then a humongous evil goo monster erupts from the ground.

Waking Shores questline: you sail to the Dragon Isles, get off the boat and then follow the weakling drakonoid around, fight some fire vrykul. Then you collect bugs or fight air/water elementals or something for some four legged dragon wearing glasses who talks about the environment. More fighting fire giants. Weakling Drakonoid dies an admittedly heroic death but that was about it for her. Then you get to the Ruby Life Sanctum and get to listen to Alexstraza overenunciate every line. Then Raszageth attacks and you have to listen to the annoying majordomo. You kill some dragons and then do a dungeon where you're fighting Peta or Team Plasma from Pokemon BW, except these guys come from nowhere and you don't understand how so many people think the Titans are bad or whatever and are fighting against dragons who have saved Azeroth over and over. Moving on. Wrathion comes back and he's cool and has assembled his own army offscreen, and you're about lead this epic castle assault when some background NPCs from long long ago show up and upstage you. More fighting fire Vyrkul. Wrathion and the other dude have a stare off and then that's it, on to the next zone.



Valley of the Four Winds: adventuring with the charming crew of Chen Stormstout and his rambunctious niece, and later joined by the funny Mudmug. Funny segments such as rescuing a kidnapped Pandaren girl from giant rabbits who get excited that she tosses carrots at them, or Li Li remarking on the sidequests you're doing. Stormstout Brewery is hilarious. Also some informative segments with the silk moths and different types of grains. Fun kung-fu martial arts training sequence. Cool final battle at the end where all of the NPCs you met come together and you use your kung-fu train to punch a giant bug kaiju from the inside.

Onharn Plains: you go to an encampment of mongol centaurs and the girlboss is constantly talking down. You slowwwwww walk to a river and camp there and fight some bugs and lizards before slowww walking more to the larger encampment. You go inside the big tent and then there is a fight with other centaurs all of the sudden. They all look the same. Then you go to burial mounds and fight ghosts or something. You meet a weakling centaur shaman. Then you go looking for the spirit bird that has been trapped and fight more centaurs and primalists and air elementals. Then you do a dungeon but I forgot what happened in it. Then you go down the cliffs to the Emerald Dragonflight area and fight more elementals and centaurs, and then at the end you click on the four centaur leaders as they present feathers or something to the emerald dragon lady.


Townlong Steppes: after having been attacked by the Yaungol, you and the panda military spearhead a fierce counterattack across the wall and massacre a lot of fire wielding oxen. Then you and Taran Zhu go around recruiting an A-team to go hunt and kill a giant Sha monster.

Azure Span: you follow some weakling Tuskarr men around. Kalecgos shows up and you roll a ball or control a giant treant and kill rothide gnolls, then you go to the Tuskarr village and get an unearned cinematic, and the tuskarr girl is lecturing this old war veteran dragon as if he's a teenager with no life experience. Then you meet Khadgar again and shoot down some dragons, and then after that you go to a tower and fight a big battle against an army of incoming elementals and then Raszageth flees.


In the MoP questlines, there is almost always something interesting happening. There is either tension from fighting some enemy or you are discovering something brand new and want to learn more about it. Also the characters talk like actual people rather than sissies or overenunciating their lines like a drama kid. In Dragonflight you spend a lot of time doing stuff that isn't important, and you are dealing with familiar overexposed factions like dragons, or boring old factions like centaurs or vrykul. Nothing to get on the edge of your seat and become curious about.


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I have to agree, I did not remember MoP questing and worldbuilding to be this good. The lore was really interesting back then. Everything related to the Mantid is top-notch IMO.

I still think that WoD was better in terms of questing and especially in the world itself. Draenor is still the best continent. Pandaria as a continent is good, it is what it should be, but it is just not as spectacular as Draenor (personal taste, of course).

I believe that it would be difficult for Blizzard to make an expansion so important, expanding and mysterious as MoP lore-wise. Especially because back then we did not have the Chronicles books, which took out much of the magic of the Warcraft's universe, even if at the time the first Chronicle book was cool.

I agree that WoD has a very strong levelling questline in that feels like you're playing through a cinematic RPG/game, but that is also to its detriment. In WoD, there aren't strong selfcontained zone storylines. You have to do the whole thing to get a payoff, whereas with MoP there is almost always a payoff at the end of each zone storyline.

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Draenor is still the best continent. Pandaria as a continent is good, it is what it should be, but it is just not as spectacular as Draenor (personal taste, of course).

I've always felt that Pandaria was the strongest continent as it felt the most real, like a populated place. In Jade Forest there are houses everywhere. It feels like an actual country. VotFW and Kun-Lai don't have as many houses but still feel somewhat populated. There are also shrines and tablets and so on everywhere. Whereas in other continents, it feels like there is only one village and then maybe one or two enemy mobs villages and that's it per zone. They don't feel like lived in places. And the Dragon Isles are supposed to be the seat of the Dragon Empire but you go outside of Valdrakken and only find a few small encampments.

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Do you think we'll see more Azerite in TWW?

If the writers remembered Azerite then there would have been dried up Azerite on the surface of the Dragon Isles and NPCs talking about how all of this stuff erupted from the earth recently. But they didn't do that, so I suspect the writers want to forget about it.

[allegrian]

Jade Forest questline: you are sent on an urgent mission to rescue the prince. First thing you do is machinegun a Horde base. Then you drink dreambrew and get an epic vision of war and meet Lorewalker Cho aka Jim Cummings aka Winnie the Pooh and he sounds great. Then you go rescue Admiral Taylor from maneating monkeys and meet the fish people, who were the former emperors of Pandaria. Then you play as Rell Nightwind's crew of operatives in a series of four fun missions (also has replay value because on the other side you find out that Amber didn't shoot Socks. It was the Horde sniper). Then you go to a Panda village and meet the people there, and then kill a creepy Jade Witch who was turning children into garden lawn statues. Then you go to Tian Monastery and get a humorous introduction to three kung-fu masters, then beat them up, and then win a 100 man gauntlet and get certified. Then Admiral Taylor calls you back to the fish village and you arm them for war and march out to fight the Horde, and then a humongous evil goo monster erupts from the ground.

Waking Shores questline: you sail to the Dragon Isles, get off the boat and then follow the weakling drakonoid around, fight some fire vrykul. Then you collect bugs or fight air/water elementals or something for some four legged dragon wearing glasses who talks about the environment. More fighting fire giants. Weakling Drakonoid dies an admittedly heroic death but that was about it for her. Then you get to the Ruby Life Sanctum and get to listen to Alexstraza overenunciate every line. Then Raszageth attacks and you have to listen to the annoying majordomo. You kill some dragons and then do a dungeon where you're fighting Peta or Team Plasma from Pokemon BW, except these guys come from nowhere and you don't understand how so many people think the Titans are bad or whatever and are fighting against dragons who have saved Azeroth over and over. Moving on. Wrathion comes back and he's cool and has assembled his own army offscreen, and you're about lead this epic castle assault when some background NPCs from long long ago show up and upstage you. More fighting fire Vyrkul. Wrathion and the other dude have a stare off and then that's it, on to the next zone.



Valley of the Four Winds: adventuring with the charming crew of Chen Stormstout and his rambunctious niece, and later joined by the funny Mudmug. Funny segments such as rescuing a kidnapped Pandaren girl from giant rabbits who get excited that she tosses carrots at them, or Li Li remarking on the sidequests you're doing. Stormstout Brewery is hilarious. Also some informative segments with the silk moths and different types of grains. Fun kung-fu martial arts training sequence. Cool final battle at the end where all of the NPCs you met come together and you use your kung-fu train to punch a giant bug kaiju from the inside.

Onharn Plains: you go to an encampment of mongol centaurs and the girlboss is constantly talking down. You slowwwwww walk to a river and camp there and fight some bugs and lizards before slowww walking more to the larger encampment. You go inside the big tent and then there is a fight with other centaurs all of the sudden. They all look the same. Then you go to burial mounds and fight ghosts or something. You meet a weakling centaur shaman. Then you go looking for the spirit bird that has been trapped and fight more centaurs and primalists and air elementals. Then you do a dungeon but I forgot what happened in it. Then you go down the cliffs to the Emerald Dragonflight area and fight more elementals and centaurs, and then at the end you click on the four centaur leaders as they present feathers or something to the emerald dragon lady.


Townlong Steppes: after having been attacked by the Yaungol, you and the panda military spearhead a fierce counterattack across the wall and massacre a lot of fire wielding oxen. Then you and Taran Zhu go around recruiting an A-team to go hunt and kill a giant Sha monster.

Azure Span: you follow some weakling Tuskarr men around. Kalecgos shows up and you roll a ball or control a giant treant and kill rothide gnolls, then you go to the Tuskarr village and get an unearned cinematic, and the tuskarr girl is lecturing this old war veteran dragon as if he's a teenager with no life experience. Then you meet Khadgar again and shoot down some dragons, and then after that you go to a tower and fight a big battle against an army of incoming elementals and then Raszageth flees.

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I agree that WoD has a very strong levelling questline in that feels like you're playing through a cinematic RPG/game, but that is also to its detriment. In WoD, there aren't strong selfcontained zone storylines. You have to do the whole thing to get a payoff, whereas with MoP there is almost always a payoff at the end of each zone storyline.

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I've always felt that Pandaria was the strongest continent as it felt the most real, like a populated place. In Jade Forest there are houses everywhere. It feels like an actual country. VotFW and Kun-Lai don't have as many houses but still feel somewhat populated. There are also shrines and tablets and so on everywhere. Whereas in other continents, it feels like there is only one village and then maybe one or two enemy mobs villages and that's it per zone. They don't feel like lived in places. And the Dragon Isles are supposed to be the seat of the Dragon Empire but you go outside of Valdrakken and only find a few small encampments.

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If the writers remembered Azerite then there would have been dried up Azerite on the surface of the Dragon Isles and NPCs talking about how all of this stuff erupted from the earth recently. But they didn't do that, so I suspect the writers want to forget about it.

DF stories didn't even have a common theme, it was all so random and relied on past lore too much while pandaria was almost 100% new, perfect for new players. The primalists and djaradin as enemies are an asspull with no lore while all the enemy races in pandaria have their own cool lore.

I hope the devs themselves are playing remix and realizing how bad DF is to make the world soul saga closer to pandaria quality.

And I'd say the kul tiras islands are pretty good as they felt lived in as well, with a great main city and different cultures. Too bad it's only three zones and is one half of an expansion release, exclusive to alliance and is not explored further in the next patches. BFA was a mess of too many different stories told at the same time while focusing on none.

[Hitei]

I see we're attempting to wildly cherrypick things.

[Raetary]

Some nice bit of world building in the IoD world event.

We got the name of the watcher that tyrannized the Earthen and, at least according to the play, he's alive and banished/imprisoned somewhere.
Good guy Archaedas also appears.

[Cheezits]

Some nice bit of world building in the IoD world event.

We got the name of the watcher that tyrannized the Earthen and, at least according to the play, he's alive and banished/imprisoned somewhere.
Good guy Archaedas also appears.

I bet Dornic is being saved for Team Odyn in TLT. Sounds like he's off Azeroth, so a Celestial realm?

[Zardas]

Claiming killing/torturing innocent people is "cool" in the sense of a good thing you want to see more of is definitionally edgelord behaviour absolutely.

When you are playing the bad guy in a game, killing innocents is absolutely is the directive line of your character and, therefore, cool. I don't see what's edgy about it.

[Merryck]

Do you think we'll see more Azerite in TWW? Or the WSS in general? Feels like it makes sense right.

Btw, how come the well of eternity didn't look like it was Azerite?

Earthen do an azerite blast for their racial.

[Scyth]

I think the text descriptions for the one that plays ingame said it was about Earthen history in Khaz Algar.

Ah I see. Hope not, I really want a Xal one lol

[Joshuaj]

I wonder if TWW ends with us actually losing, hence why the Void is able to engage in a full scale invasion of Azeroth.

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Brings me to a question: if Argus was speeding up the revival process of demons, what is the normal/usual length of time for demons to regenerate in the Twisting Nether?

I don't think that was ever established, and I'm sure as of now people really don't care, but always wondered.

Depends on how powerful the demon is, probably

[Eurhetemec]

When you are playing the bad guy in a game, killing innocents is absolutely is the directive line of your character and, therefore, cool. I don't see what's edgy about it.

You being unable to see a totally obvious edgelord behaviour as edgelord doesn't make it not edgelord mate. None of us are "playing the bad guy" either - I can't even think of a time in WoW when you do when you're not either reliving some historical event, or in the DK starting zone, where you're not under your own control until the end. Instead a bunch of clumsily-written quests in Cata and MoP (specifically - less so other expansions) attempt to temporarily force you into being the bad guy, before acting like it never happened.

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I see we're attempting to wildly cherrypick things.

There's some really incredible revisionism going on. Playing through Pandaria I'm seeing a lot of tedious and badly-implemented quests, a lot of very questionable writing and juvenile thinking (some that isn't, to be fair), a lot of lore absolutely as bad as stuff people complained about in SL and so on, and we're just seeing people pretend it's good because it's old. Literally things the same exact people boosting MoP here have complained about in other expansions are being praised in their posts now. It's just incredible hypocrisy and two-faced-ness.

I'm sure we'll see the same with Shadowlands Remix in like 2032 or whatever.

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I've always felt that Pandaria was the strongest continent as it felt the most real, like a populated place. In Jade Forest there are houses everywhere. It feels like an actual country. VotFW and Kun-Lai don't have as many houses but still feel somewhat populated. There are also shrines and tablets and so on everywhere. Whereas in other continents, it feels like there is only one village and then maybe one or two enemy mobs villages and that's it per zone. They don't feel like lived in places. And the Dragon Isles are supposed to be the seat of the Dragon Empire but you go outside of Valdrakken and only find a few small encampments.

I think most of what you're saying is revisionist nonsense (and I say that playing the same stuff in Remix, just I'm not very impressed with most of it), and you spiced it up with a bit of cheap homophobia, which was really classy, but this is the one thing which is actually true - that it feels more like there are actually people living there.

I don't think the DF criticism is valid - why would dragons need tons of houses? There aren't even very many of them. They have a few impressive towns/cities. But Pandaria feels vastly more like a real place with people living in it than pretty much any other expansion, except maybe BfA, which is kind of similar (but still a little underpopulated).

[Eldryth]

I'd agree that Pandaria is one of the best continents we've gotten, but it's less about things like houses and more about cultures. They created a whole bunch of new races- Pandaren (technically existed before this but with almost no lore), Jinyu, Hozen, Mantid, Mogu, Yaungol, and Grummles- and almost all of them feel developed well, fit together well, and it all feels consistent. And they actually have a developed history together.

Compare to many other expansions since then, where most groups fit cleanly into their specific zone and barely mix. Did Dragonflight's Centaur and Tuskarr even interact once? Or in Legion, we had a thriving Druidic/Night Elven stronghold in Val'sharah that somehow had no contact with the Night Elven ghosts in Azsuna, and I think they didn't even notice that Suramar is still around right next to them? Or in Warlords, how much did the various Orc clans really interact beyond whatever conflicts happened in any given zone.

I'd say that Kul'tiras is probably the best continent we've gotten since then, if only because the various zones actually fit together to make a real society. Even Shadowlands is better than most post-Pandaria continents in this regard because it actually bothered to have the covenants interacting, which says a lot because it was infamously awful.

Hopefully future expansions handle that aspect better again. At least early leaks suggested that the Arathi visit the Earthen, so they should have some connection... and all the setup for the Arathi Empire seems solid. That alone already puts TWW's world-building above a lot of other expansions, but I'd need to see a lot more interactions to know if they did enough to actually make it good.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The intro was also quite .... cruel, especially for the alliance.

I mean, yeah. That's the point. The whole point it was hammering in is (1) war bad, (2) goo people come from bad thoughts. Honestly, the meme Panda expansion arguably handled itself much better than BfA ever did in that department.