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

[Ersula]

It's just cosmetic thing, but I never understand why number and item level squish wasn't done in TWW. We would get SL numbers now, DF numbers in MD and current huge numbers in Last Titan.

Calculating larger numbers do in fact require more effort from your hardware. Alone its negligible but thousands of players constantly calculating 3 digit numbers is easer on people's computers than 6 or 9 digit numbers.

[huth]

Calculating larger numbers do in fact require more effort from your hardware. Alone its negligible but thousands of players constantly calculating 3 digit numbers is easer on people's computers than 6 or 9 digit numbers.

No, it doesn't. Not in any way that actually matters. In particular because the data type is a floating point value, not an integer.

[milkmustache]

Agreed. K'aresh seems like a very safe bet. The recent mentions of it also having something like the Radiant Song before its destruction, how it suffered a Void assault like what Azeroth will...

I predict it as the setting for the final season, patch zone and raid.

Totally, I envision some sort of combination of K'aresh and Isle of Quel'danis as an Argus and Sunwell combination patch.

Now that I think of it, I hope they reinstate the Shattered Sun in some form. I like the idea of bringing back older factions and military orgs.

[Jastall]

I hope WoW section won't go dark after race to make room for Diablo 4, I really want 11.1 reveal on Warcraft Direct, not through datamining in small patch like Zaralek and Dream.



It's just cosmetic thing, but I never understand why number and item level squish wasn't done in TWW. We would get SL numbers now, DF numbers in MD and current huge numbers in Last Titan.

Yeah, it would have flowed better, rather than do millions of DPS in the first part of the Saga then go back to doing a couple thousands during its midpoint. Not a big big deal, just a bit puzzling is all.

[Jaggler]

I hope WoW section won't go dark after race to make room for Diablo 4, I really want 11.1 reveal on Warcraft Direct, not through datamining in small patch like Zaralek and Dream.

An announcement of 11.1 is still some ways off, considering 11.0.5 isn't even out yet. We still have 11.0.7 to go before that, so whether they let Diablo 4 take the spotlight or not doesn't really matter anyway.

[Ersula]

No, it doesn't. Not in any way that actually matters. In particular because the data type is a floating point value, not an integer.

It does matter. And data load is the exact reason the Devs stated for the stat squish in the first place.

[Darkarath]

An announcement of 11.1 is still some ways off, considering 11.0.5 isn't even out yet. We still have 11.0.7 to go before that, so whether they let Diablo 4 take the spotlight or not doesn't really matter anyway.

Yeah this week was all about SoD an it is unlikely that we will get anything relevant until 11.0.5 is out, especially since the D4 first (and last? ) expansion is coming out really soon and they will want the focus there.

[Dracullus]

An announcement of 11.1 is still some ways off, considering 11.0.5 isn't even out yet. We still have 11.0.7 to go before that, so whether they let Diablo 4 take the spotlight or not doesn't really matter anyway.

They were talking about Warcraft in house events around anniversary and Warcraft Direct was mentioned this Gamescom. I hope it will be replacement for Blizzcon panels where they talked about future patches beyond current PTR.

If there won't be such event, we will probably get spoiled in 10.0.7 PTR, cause very likely it will have prologue quests for next season. That's how we learned about 10.1 and 10.2 before annoucement.

[Lady Atia]

They were talking about Warcraft in house events around anniversary and Warcraft Direct was mentioned this Gamescom. I hope it will be replacement for Blizzcon panels where they talked about future patches beyond current PTR.

If there won't be such event, we will probably get spoiled in 10.0.7 PTR, cause very likely it will have prologue quests for next season. That's how we learned about 10.1 and 10.2 before annoucement.

Yeah, my guess would be a proper 11.1 reveal + 2025 roadmap + 11.0.7 ptr for the warcraft direct thingy. Hopefully they tease a rated pvp rewards rework there, aswell as the new brawlers guild and maybe another remix to spice things up. Should also give us a look at the length of the expansion if they add Midnight Alpha/Beta to the roadmap aswell.

[Sondrelk]

I doubt Blizzard cares. It's the players that get their knickers in a bunch over scary big numbers. Mechanically, it won't make any difference until we close in on much, much larger numbers. The first squish was a mechanical necessity, but we're not even remotely close to experiencing any similar issues again.

It's an UI issue. Big numbers are more difficult to parse effectively with a cursory look.

Seeing the difference between 10946 and 30194 is easy. Seeing the difference between 229181618 and 5582967 isn't.

The smaller the number, the easier it is to intuitively understand for the casual player.

[MauroDiogo]

My gut's telling me we'll see the presumed Goblin raid in 11.1 along with the "Rootlands" in the same patch.

We've seen a lot of Goblin activity in the new zones and I just keep thinking that we'll most likely be finding them trying to siphon off or collect Black Blood in the Rootlands, much like they were doing with Azerite.

I haven't really seen anyone else mention it but in the Alpha, just behind Opportunity Point, there was another area that we still don't have access to, but you could see it from above in the map. There's a section of the cave wall in Opportunity Point that looks like a tunnel blocked off by rubble. But in the Alpha you could see that there was something else on the other side.



And from the top view it looks like pools of black blood, tainting the area around them and you can see a lot of pipes and grey structures on those same pools.

Xal'atath could be on a more secondary role while she takes a breather during 11.1 and the focus is shifted slightly to telling the story of the Haranir while they try to protect their lands from Goblins who want more of the black blood.

Gallywix is seen having some ties with Ethereals in the Shadowlands, so it could somehow be a thread that would then lead to a potential 11.2 Ethereal raid with Xal'atath coming back to do her thing. Whatever that might be.

[huth]

It's an UI issue. Big numbers are more difficult to parse effectively with a cursory look.

Seeing the difference between 10946 and 30194 is easy. Seeing the difference between 229181618 and 5582967 isn't.

The smaller the number, the easier it is to intuitively understand for the casual player.

That's a formatting issue mostly. And for your example to work, the first two should also have different magnitudes.

In reality, only the first 4 digits of the larger value are actually important. Anything below that is to little to meaningfully affect things in the timeframe the game is played.

[Kiivar86]

Here's something I got to thinking tonight - just how much should we expect the Quel'thalas area to be altered? I don't just mean for story purposes (and to make them larger zones in general), but also for skyriding purposes.

A lot of the old world (and I'll include the TBC zones in that too) are remarkably flat, which wouldn't really be good with skyriding. Even the Isle of Dorn itself, which I would say is probably the flattest of the four zones in TWW, still has a good amount of terrain variation.

Northrend won't have much an issue with that as it does slope from north to south as is and has some extreme variation already.

But just got me thinking how they may do stuff in Eversong and Ghostlands.

[lostsoup]

Here's something I got to thinking tonight - just how much should we expect the Quel'thalas area to be altered? I don't just mean for story purposes (and to make them larger zones in general), but also for skyriding purposes.

A lot of the old world (and I'll include the TBC zones in that too) are remarkably flat, which wouldn't really be good with skyriding. Even the Isle of Dorn itself, which I would say is probably the flattest of the four zones in TWW, still has a good amount of terrain variation.

Northrend won't have much an issue with that as it does slope from north to south as is and has some extreme variation already.

But just got me thinking how they may do stuff in Eversong and Ghostlands.

Complete remake from the ground up. As it is, the zones are way too small and outdated to be the focus of an expansion.

[Worldshaper]

October 1 -
October 8 - Vessel of Hatred
October 15 - Warcraft Direct
October 22 - 11.0.5 released, 11.0.7 public PTR
October 29 - Anniversary continues
November 5 - Anniversary continues
November 12 - Anniversary continues
November 19 - Anniversary continues
November 26 - Anniversary continues
December 3 - Anniversary continues, 11.0.7 released
December 10 - Anniversary continues
December 17 - Anniversary continues
December 24 - Anniversary continues
December 31 - Anniversary continues
January 7 - Anniversary ends

The Warcraft Direct is featured on Warcraft's channel and the Xbox channel on YouTube.

They'll outline 11.1's setting, go into detail about 11.0.7, and reveal a roadmap for 2025 that gives a rough time frame for the release of 11.2 and 12.0.

[Enrif]

This is the part that stumps me over it all. I just don't see there being an Ethereal raid, which makes the icons confusing.

The only thing I can sort of think of is that an Ethereal raid was planned earlier in development, but got shuffled around and is now moved to Midnight. These bits are leftovers from it, along with Ky'veza's inclusion in Nerub'ar with no other mention of Ethereals aside from the one abducting nerubians in the Burrows. I'm fairly certain that the icons matched the trinkets dropped by Ky'veza, which makes it weird why the singlular boss would break naming format. The Ethereal's inclusion altogether feels like a thread thrown in to bring us closer to a cohesive story, especially with Ky'veza's dialogue with an unknown master (if it was Xal, why wouldn't she just say so?) and her survival in the fight.

An Ethereal raid would be awesome regardless, especially if it finally gives us playable Ethereals.



It's also something to note that the amount of references to Undermine lately have been increasing, including in SoD where we see the Tarnished Undermine Real currency and Undermine Trader NPCs. Xal'atath has been inserted in SoD to help weave her story into the Saga, so I don't see why something like this would also apply.

I still think we'll get a Haranir patch, and with someone else's previous suggestion that it could be a far spookier briarpatch forest, I'm super excited at the idea. It's also obvious that there's a heavy possibility of them becoming an allied race at some point down the line with their customization features, so I couldn't imagine we never visit their full community.

I'm still torn on a Beledar patch. I think it'll be the megadungeon because I truly have no clue what it could bring. We know it's a Naaru ship, but anything past that is up in the air, and it's really exciting. I'm still in the copium that they full circle the AU Draenor plot by having the Naaru timeywimey teleport the Lightbound armies on a ship to Azeroth. It'd be funny if they were just stuck inside for 15 years and summoned the Arathi to try and help, but they've just been twiddling their thumbs and worshipping. It would give a little context to the inclusion of Geya'rah, Gorgonna and the Warsong tribe as the bulk force for the Horde troops. Wildhammer checks out with Kurdran and the Earthen, Warsong would check out with them having to face orcs who betrayed the Mag'har (led by Warsong chieftan Grommash) to join the Lightbound.

The Ethereal Raid and the Beledar patch could be one and the same. If my theory holds water, and i have not seen any indication it doesn't, Beledar is the source of the radiant song instead of the world soul. But they are connected. The ethereals heard also a radiant song before a void lord came onto their world which probably didn't had a world soul, but something like the Beledar. Here's the theory: Beledar (the biggest source of light magic aside of the sunwell that we know of) will be used to try to summon a void lord, the shadowguard ethereals will help xal in trying to do that. The raid will be a half light and half void. And in the end the Beledar might be lost and a powerful void entety, but not quite a Void lord, is unleashed, and Xal was its harbringer. Midnight will start with that void entitry hungering for more Light magic to feed upon and heads towards the sunwell, thus que Midnight.

[Nymrohd]

Btw anyone else experiencing this bug? Almost every time I do a Skyriding race, if I reset it and try again, I can start the race with 1 or even 2 seconds left on the countdown (which is quite the generous head start to get your gold)

Now on the Beledar. We know that the Arathi cannot reach it now because of the giant void squids around it that would crush their airships. But where those there at the start before Legion when Beledar was always on?

[Golden Yak]

The Ethereal Raid and the Beledar patch could be one and the same. If my theory holds water, and i have not seen any indication it doesn't, Beledar is the source of the radiant song instead of the world soul. But they are connected. The ethereals heard also a radiant song before a void lord came onto their world which probably didn't had a world soul, but something like the Beledar. Here's the theory: Beledar (the biggest source of light magic aside of the sunwell that we know of) will be used to try to summon a void lord, the shadowguard ethereals will help xal in trying to do that. The raid will be a half light and half void. And in the end the Beledar might be lost and a powerful void entety, but not quite a Void lord, is unleashed, and Xal was its harbringer. Midnight will start with that void entitry hungering for more Light magic to feed upon and heads towards the sunwell, thus que Midnight.

One thing that makes me doubt this concept as a raid is precisely the prominence of Light and Void elements, because I think we're going to get a lot of that in Midnight already. Blizz isn't likely to want to exhaust players with a ton of Light and Void elements even before we get to the Light and Void expac proper.

I could see this concept being a megadungeon instead though. The DF one was used to introduce elements for future expansions (Dark Heart, etc.), so a Beledar Light/Void megadungeon seeding a bunch of elements that will unfold in Midnight is more plausible I feel.

A minor point really, since I think basically everything you outline could well unfold in a megadungeon. It would just come before the final raid, which I predict will be more Earthen/Titanish.

I think the final patch of TWW will involve an attack by Xal'atath and her forces on the Worldsoul itself, somewhere deeper than what we've seen, likely the 'Rootlands' Haranir region. Her plan with the Black Blood will unfold there as a prelude to the main Void incursion.

[Worldshaper]

Don't forget about Uldaz. The Coreway has to lead somewhere.

The owl loa in the Emerald Dream teased the crap out of the concept of using stasis as a form of imprisonment.

I am thinking Uldaz is where we'll go to save the worlssoul in 10.2, but inside that raid we'll perhaps end up on K'aresh as well (unless they choose to save that for 12.2).

A mix of ancient Titan-forged and machines completely loyal to the Titans, some Void cultists working to "prepare" the worlssoul, a few Void-corrupted beasts and Ethereals, and maybe Xal'atath herself.

Picturing a final boss room with the worldsoul swirling in the background, Void energies amassing around it, before boom Midnight happens and we're all forced to escape.

Azeroth is saved from the Titans' grasp, i.e. stasis, but this also renders her vulnerable to the Void.

This is what triggers them to make their way to Azeroth, arriving in TLT after we've stopped Midnight.

[huth]

Complete remake from the ground up. As it is, the zones are way too small and outdated to be the focus of an expansion.

My guess is they'll make a completely new Quel'thalas for however much of it is part of Midnight and connect that to the EK map, while providing some alternate means to access the BC Quel'thalas.