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

[Nymrohd]

Why is battle.net so horrible about downloading?

[Zers Editor]

I wish the board game quest (with Anduin and Faerin) was voiced, given they've confirmed that it's contextually important for how things will go for Anduin.

[Dracullus]

I hope after race we will hear more about Warcraft Direct. Imo it should have same date as usually Blizzcon, would be nice to hear about 11.1 before we get spoiled by 11.0.7 PTR prequel quests like both major DF patches.

[allegrian]

The quests to kill the queen are so low cost and boring, man they are makig her feel like an afterthought.

I also hate that most dungeons ar ejust not part of the main plot, but they should clearly be, like the ringing deeps ones, while the isle of dorne one is part of the msq and it's great doing them with npc followers. Now that everyone can just do them with followers, they should stop shying away from making all players go though the dungeons for the story.

[Nymrohd]

The quests to kill the queen are so low cost and boring, man they are makig her feel like an afterthought.

I also hate that most dungeons ar ejust not part of the main plot, but they should clearly be, like the ringing deeps ones, while the isle of dorne one is part of the msq and it's great doing them with npc followers. Now that everyone can just do them with followers, they should stop shying away from making all players go though the dungeons for the story.

The crazy thing is, they actually add scenarios with custom events that could have simply been replaced by making people run the Ringing Deeps dungeons on follower or normal. The Hallowfall and Azj'kahet ones are less integrated.

[allegrian]

The crazy thing is, they actually add scenarios with custom events that could have simply been replaced by making people run the Ringing Deeps dungeons on follower or normal. The Hallowfall and Azj'kahet ones are less integrated.

Yeah, it was weird to just go stealthing through the kobold dungeon and not just doing it lol. And the ringing deeps final boss just runs away and goes right next to where you fight him in the campaign, where the actual dungeon where you kill him is. It's all very weird. My theory is that they added follower dungeons late in the base TWW development and they already had the dungeons as optional for the poor "solo players".

The thing is, they did this in bfa as well, where dungeons are not required but they are still clearly the end of the zone story, i'd prefer the BFA way to this.

[Nymrohd]

The thing is, they did this in bfa as well, where dungeons are not required but they are still clearly the end of the zone story, i'd prefer the BFA way to this.

I just thought that with follower dungeons the intent was to just have it work like this. Especially when you finish the first zone and do the Rookery with a fully custom group and having Baelgrim lead the group and interact with NPCs. Having Dagran as a voice over for Stonevault after was so silly because you just had to ask, why not just have him inside instead.

[CasualFilth]

Thoughts and comments about the Ethereal presence in Azj-Kahet and the Palace?

[milkmustache]

Thoughts and comments about the Ethereal presence in Azj-Kahet and the Palace?

Is there another Ethereal besides Ky'veza?

Regardless, love it. There's a lot more to be seen of the Ethereals, and they're just teasing it. My thought is that Ky'veza was a late addition to the raid post-Metzen and the reframing of TWW as a precursor to The Worldsoul Saga. There's not really anything that we get from her other than the fact that she's serving someone presumably not Xal'atath? She states that we must be killed for seeing what is happening when we enter her room, which I don't see being the reaction to her talking to Xal.

It'll be fun to see what comes of it. I love the Ethereals and can't wait to hopefully play as one soon.

[Eldryth]

Thoughts and comments about the Ethereal presence in Azj-Kahet and the Palace?

I don't know, but hopefully it's leading up to playable Ethereals and some major story presence. They've been the race I wanted to play most since Burning Crusade.

I feel like going to K'aresh and fighting Dimensius would be a great ending for Midnight, but I know there's some strings and speculation about getting an Ethereal raid in TWW instead. But without seeing where the story goes next, it's hard to guess how they would fit in.

[Scyth]

Big fan of them giving robeless options for the remade T2 sets. Some of them look so much better without the robe.

[Lahis]

Big fan of them giving robeless options for the remade T2 sets. Some of them look so much better without the robe.

Judgement is not one of them unless they add some 3D pieces on the pants.

[Scyth]

Judgement is not one of them unless they add some 3D pieces on the pants.

The one just datamined is surely a placeholder though, not a chance it's the final one. Based off of how the lock, shaman, priest ones look at least.

[micwini]

Thoughts and comments about the Ethereal presence in Azj-Kahet and the Palace?

Curious who this 'master' is she refers to before she ports in.

[Chickat]

I'm guessing they do a cinematic reveal of Midnight 2nd quarter 2025, then do a full reveal of features & surprise alpha launch at 2025 Blizzcon: Beta in March 2026. Summer 2026 release.
While I'm sure they've been conceptualizing it, that might count as "working on it" nothing is set in stone at that point. As well as if you ask about any future expansion the devs will always say they're "working on it". I'm sure a dev will say they're 10 expansions ahead if you press them. Doesn't mean its true though.
You say that's a prophecy, but by all means that's just propaganda. Naga are probably the worst at predicting whats going to happen, historically speaking.

They said they wanted expansions to come faster. Alpha at Blizzcon but not releasing until summer doesnt make much sense.

Imo if they can actually stick to their plan, Midnight is coming early Spring. April most likely. They may want to do Blizzcon in October with Alpha launching right after and beta right before Christmas in early December. Prepatch end of March.

And if the 18 month thing people talked about is the plan, Midnight needs to release in February. I just don't see them hitting that. But July or August is way too late, and no different than any other expansion timeline. May is really the latest they can release it while claiming it was actually significantly faster.

Imo March in a perfect world with a Feb prepatch would be perfect. Tier 3 of TWW in August. Final story patch and bridge to prepatch in early December.

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As for TLT dev, im sure they are finishing its story and maybe even some basic feature ideas, but they probably wont start full production on it until the final major patch of TWW. So if TWW Season 3 big patch is in August 2025, they will leave a small team to do the last smaller patches of TWW, and put like half of the team on TLT for full production and some of TWW people on Midnight to finish the main bit of development. Once Midnight is close to release a lot of its devs will move onto TLT.

Thats how I imagine the dev workflow would go at least.

[Dracullus]

They said they wanted expansions to come faster. Alpha at Blizzcon but not releasing until summer doesnt make much sense.

People bring that again and again, while it was just said by Metzen once to live audience. After that Blizzcon clarified they want Saga to end before 2030, which doesn't sound like 3 super short expansions.

If TWW will have DF length, early Summer '26 is good prediction. I don't think S4 will be cut, if anything they will make S1-S3 shorter. It's just good tool to send off expansion, also gives main 8 dungeons a little more time, they are underused (by design of course) compared to Legion/BfA/SL dungeons.

[Sondrelk]

People bring that again and again, while it was just said by Metzen once to live audience. After that Blizzcon clarified they want Saga to end before 2030, which doesn't sound like 3 super short expansions.

If TWW will have DF length, early Summer '26 is good prediction. I don't think S4 will be cut, if anything they will make S1-S3 shorter. It's just good tool to send off expansion, also gives main 8 dungeons a little more time, they are underused (by design of course) compared to Legion/BfA/SL dungeons.

The extra time after the X.2 patch has to end up somewhere though. There are four options here. 1. Shorter expansions. 2. 9 month drought. 3. Content cadence suffers immensely. 4. Meaty X. 3 patch.

If option 1 is correct, then the expansion would release later winter, early spring to fit the usual content cadence.
If option 2 is correct, then we have a massive drought after each X.2 patch before we get to the next expansion.
If option 3 is correct, then all the promises of a sensible content cadence like what we had in DF evaporates.
If option 4 is correct, then we do have a X.3 pathc with a new zone and a new raid and all of that. But that also kinda goes against the whole smaller expansions thing the developers talked about leading up to TWW.

One of these has to be true.

[Nymrohd]

The extra time after the X.2 patch has to end up somewhere though. There are four options here. 1. Shorter expansions. 2. 9 month drought. 3. Content cadence suffers immensely. 4. Meaty X. 3 patch.

If option 1 is correct, then the expansion would release later winter, early spring to fit the usual content cadence.
If option 2 is correct, then we have a massive drought after each X.2 patch before we get to the next expansion.
If option 3 is correct, then all the promises of a sensible content cadence like what we had in DF evaporates.
If option 4 is correct, then we do have a X.3 pathc with a new zone and a new raid and all of that. But that also kinda goes against the whole smaller expansions thing the developers talked about leading up to TWW.

One of these has to be true.

Or we keep having a 3-4 month fated season? Heck it could be just 2-3 months and run concurrently with something like Timerunning to keep people subscribed.

[Dracullus]

The extra time after the X.2 patch has to end up somewhere though. There are four options here. 1. Shorter expansions. 2. 9 month drought. 3. Content cadence suffers immensely. 4. Meaty X. 3 patch.

If option 1 is true, then the expansion would release later winter, early spring to fit the usual content cadence.
If option 2 is correct, then we have a massive drought after each X.2 patch before we get to the next expansion.
If Option 3 is correct, then all the promises of a sensible content cadence like what we had in DF evaporates.
If Option 4 is correct, then we do have a X.3 pathc with a new zone and a new raid and all of that. But that also kinda goes against the whole smaller expansions thing the developers talked about leading up to TWW.

One of these has to be true.

...or fill it with experimental stuff and casual patches like DF. You show 4 options but somehow forgot about scenario we just experienced xD.

[Sondrelk]

Or we keep having a 3-4 month fated season? Heck it could be just 2-3 months and run concurrently with something like Timerunning to keep people subscribed.

I dunno. DF worked because it launched so late in the year. TWW launched a good 4-5 months earlier. Even assuming Midnight releases a month or two before than even int the early summer, that still leaves a good two months of extra headroom that needs to be filled with something. And as much as I thought Plunderstorm and Remix were great ideas that should return in a similar seasonal format. There is a limit to how much juice can be squeezed out, barring new innovations that make it last longer.

That being said, there is plenty of time for Blizzard to create new formats or gamemodes that lengthen the time needed between major patches. SO I guess we can only wait and see.

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...or fill it with experimental stuff and casual patches like DF. You show 4 options but somehow forgot about scenario we just experienced xD.

DF to TWW was also only 19-20 months long though, which is the part I think many people forget.