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

[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.

[Joshuaj]

"...also it's the Titans' perspective."
"But this has things that don't work with what the Titans would know and believe. And also it says the world of Warcraft in the first chap---"
"TITANS'. PERSPECTIVE."

How does it not work with what the Titans know? Don't we literally have an in universe reason for why Chronicle is the way it is anyway?

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Like, at least play the game before you jump to conclusions

[Super Dickmann]

Maldraxxus has double dead zombies, it makes no sense.

It's the only part of it that followed its logic through to its natural conclusion, compared to the existential nightmare of tripping in a rock in Elysium and having your eternal soul be atomized. If your premise is an afterlife where an immortal army constantly goes at it, accumulates power and weapons and when dies just gets up again like in a roguelike and gets right back to it, then both the body horror elements and the whimsy fit in. Obviously no participant would take it too seriously since there's no consequences until shit gets serious and just as obviously the flesh-eating blights brewed up by your immortal plague doctors would be a lot less silly when released not on invading demons or on your co-zombies, but on a planet of actually living things. There's this one book in Revendreth which is a treatise by some Venthyr bitching that while going after someoen who fucked with the Veil on the other side, the Maldraxxi army made the world they went to into a complete shithole just through waging their standard warfare which pushes this point further across.

That and, not to put too fine a point on it, an eternal battlefield of undead presided over by a necromancer warlord which is itself either a giant undead body growing hairs, boils and weapons for them or the amalgamated mass of all those that'd killed each other, is pretty sweet. The only things letting it down are the unnecessary tacked-on Scourge aesthetics and not letting us actually see them deployed in a context like the one from the book above, but then the latter applies to virtually any of the Shadowlands races, save for the Ardenweald ones, which did get a showing and do fit right in because they're the least alien to the setting.

[Vakir]

How does it not work with what the Titans know? Don't we literally have an in universe reason for why Chronicle is the way it is anyway?

Like, at least play the game before you jump to conclusions

We have an in-universe reason that the Titans wrote a book that talks about the "world of Warcraft" in its contents? Do tell me that one.

But no, I'm actually referring to facts in the book contradicted by the information put out immediately after in Antorus that the Titans would be aware of.

This is, of course, ignoring that it was pitched as a lore bible to clarify things before they went back on it.

[Nymrohd]

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).

The various dragonkin who served them though are quite many and presumably they'd need housing. Even slaves get some form of barracks. But honestly I don't think calling DF's world building disjointed is that controversial.


Jade Forest is indeed one of the best examples of this with Kun Lai nearly as good (lower Kun Lai clearly was full of villages, the Yaungol just destroyed a lot of them). Valley of Four Winds is the part of Pandaria were they overdid it with the massive fruit and vegetables and the exceptional farms surrounded by so much empty space; imo most of the zone should have been farmlands. The old world is probably the worst (Orgrimmar in particular imo).

[Super Dickmann]

The various dragonkin who served them though are quite many and presumably they'd need housing. Even slaves get some form of barracks.

The tie-in book of all things actually pokes fun at/explains this in a way that checks out when Vyranoth flies over to check out Valdrakken and is galled that not only have they built stone castles that they don't actually need and can't properly negotiate, but that they did so in imitation of the Titan watchers and henchmen they're meant to host.

Past that, while Valdrakken however pretty was mostly meant to be played safe it's obvious that most of the infrastructure is meant to host the dragonkin subject races and to impress the various savages at a time when the dragons were caretakers of the world. In visage the dragons can then enter them to do whatever, but they don't really need them.

[Nymrohd]

The tie-in book of all things actually pokes fun at/explains this in a way that checks out when Vyranoth flies over to check out Valdrakken and is galled that not only have they built stone castles that they don't actually need and can't properly negotiate, but that they did so in imitation of the Titan watchers and henchmen they're meant to host.

Past that, while Valdrakken however pretty was mostly meant to be played safe it's obvious that most of the infrastructure is meant to host the dragonkin subject races and to impress the various savages at a time when the dragons were caretakers of the world. In visage the dragons can then enter them to do whatever, but they don't really need them.

I disagree that they don't need them. Sure a dragon does not need housing to protect themselves from weather and cold. But they still would want comfort and luxury (most of them do not sound like spartan soldiers to me) and they would need spaces for their unique flight functions, in particular a ton of library space for all the data collected by the Bronze and Blue.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

A massive, beautiful citadel has aesthetic value anyone can appreciate, and has prestige status. It makes people envy you and think you are rich and resourceful and powerful and want to be your friend or under your protection, and intimidates your enemies. A huge underground cavern is a more niche taste that fewer people will appreciate, and can have the undesired effect of making people think you are unsophisticated or a recluse. Maybe it can help a little bit in making people underestimate you but you really want to be making as good of an impression as you can to win people over.

[Lahis]

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.

Normal WoW expansion writing. The global cataclysmic events somehow never have affected the place we visit after dealing with the end of the world.

[Zardas]

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.

It's an mmorpg mate, you play as whoever you want. If I want my character to be a psycho who takes a sadistic pleasure in killing other, then I can. That wouldn't be "edgelord" behavior, or is develloping a virus to wipe out humanity in plague inc also "edgelord" behavior ?

[micwini]

Normal WoW expansion writing. The global cataclysmic events somehow never have affected the place we visit after dealing with the end of the world.

Zandalar was obviously in shambles after cata, which they touched on in BFA.

[Lahis]

Zandalar was obviously in shambles after cata, which they touched on in BFA.

Naaah, not really.

Cata and MoP said that whole of Zandalar was sinking into ocean and th the Zandalari were desperate to get new homeland on Pandaria after Mogu conquer it.

Come BFA, and nothing of that is the case anymore. Zandalar just has societal problems stemmed from stagnation and stuck-ass King. Nazmir has always been a swamp and not something that resulted from Cataclysm.

[micwini]

Naaah, not really.

Cata and MoP said that whole of Zandalar was sinking into ocean and th the Zandalari were desperate to get new homeland on Pandaria after Mogu conquer it.

Come BFA, and nothing of that is the case anymore. Zandalar just has societal problems stemmed from stagnation and stuck-ass King. Nazmir has always been a swamp and not something that resulted from Cataclysm.

what about the massive crack between zuldazar and nazmir. I'm pretty sure its even mentioned in quests

[Hitei]

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.

I think it's especially transparent when you have someone nitpicking shit like Ohn'ahran Plains has (completely optional and skippable) walking segments and you keep fighting centaurs that all look the same, while arguing that Valley of the Four Winds, a zone with unskippable walking segments where you fight identical giant rabbits (and the monkeys you've already been fighting for most of a zone as Alliance) over and over is great.

[Sondrelk]

what about the massive crack between zuldazar and nazmir. I'm pretty sure its even mentioned in quests

It is there, and Nazmir is mentioned as being caused by the shattering. But it's still a clear cut case of changing Zandalar to fit the version of the story they wanted to tell. It wasnt just that Zandalar was hit by the Shattering. It was that Zuldazar was rapidly sliding into the sea. The entire marketplace was below sea level, and Rastakhans throne, and by extension the entire ziggurat, was visibly crooked as a result of sliding into the ocean.

I get the logic behind wanting the Zandalari to be a strong faction to oppose the similarly strong Kul Tiran faction to not make the Horde feel like they are just there to be UNICEF for a dead culture. But it would have been nice if they didnt completely undermine the best part of MoP to do so.

[Cheezits]

It is there, and Nazmir is mentioned as being caused by the shattering. But it's still a clear cut case of changing Zandalar to fit the version of the story they wanted to tell. It wasnt just that Zandalar was hit by the Shattering. It was that Zuldazar was rapidly sliding into the sea. The entire marketplace was below sea level, and Rastakhans throne, and by extension the entire ziggurat, was visibly crooked as a result of sliding into the ocean.

I get the logic behind wanting the Zandalari to be a strong faction to oppose the similarly strong Kul Tiran faction to not make the Horde feel like they are just there to be UNICEF for a dead culture. But it would have been nice if they didnt completely undermine the best part of MoP to do so.

Zandalar definitely got fucked lorewise by having to "match" Kul Tiras. The Zandalari in Mists are (mostly) villains with a bad ideology and a destroyed homeland. But in BFA they (Blizz) have to pretend their homeland is as a great as Kul Tiras, and neuter their ideology while also keeping it somewhat similar, to the point where Horde PCs have to help them kill innocent trolls of "lesser" tribes and it's treated as no big deal/not a villainous or odd thing. It's a mess.

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Also, on Dragonkin lore, the Drakonids/Dragonspawn being a slave race is NOT bad lore, and it's honestly better than them being mortals that transformed into dragonthings but not really dragons. People just are uncomfortable and have a no-tolerance policy on some not PC topics in modern Warcraft.

[Super Dickmann]

Zandalar definitely got fucked lorewise by having to "match" Kul Tiras. The Zandalari in Mists are (mostly) villains with a bad ideology and a destroyed homeland. But in BFA they have to pretend their homeland is as a great as Kul Tiras, and neuter their ideology while also keeping it somewhat similar, to the point where Horde PCs have to help them kill innocent trolls of "lesser" tribes and it's treated as no big deal/not a villainous or odd thing. It's a mess.

Why would it be treated as an odd or bad thing? We'd been doing it to them for fifteen years by that point, they're all hostile, and if one tribe is a group of literal sand people who's vestigial empire consists of some hovels around a single ziggurat and the others rule a massive metropolis and command several retinues of god-blessed soldiers and one of the world's prime fleets, it's pretty obvious who's superior.

There's also nothing to pretend or an adjustment to be made regarding having them require a buff to 'match' Kul Tiras. Kul Tiras' strongest force lead by its head of state was effectively destroyed by the orcs back when they'd barely settled in and we had zero prior information on its relative power. What we did know is it had a naval tradition and a strong fleet, which was maintained.

[Chickat]

The only thing I look forward now are raid tests.

Well, seeing how end game world content and delves look is interesting to me too.

[Lady Atia]

Well, seeing how end game world content and delves look is interesting to me too.

Yeah, and I doubt we will get beta before that. Usually beta means "feature complete", and idk, alpha seems a bit lacking rn.