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

[Eurhetemec]

Kind of interesting that we have mention of the Goblins and the Arathi showing interesting in building airships in the future and the new Hearthstone set has a lot of cards playing off a Starship keyword. I'm wondering if we do help the Goblins and Arathi build Airships and over the course of the Saga, the technology is then evolved and used to craft Starships?

I feel like we've been burned by interpreting stuff from Hearthstone so many times at this point that it's kind of a suicide mission, lore and plot-wise, to expect anything from Hearthstone to have any bearing on WoW whatsoever. Sometimes concepts or aesthetics or characters appear there first, but more often they appear there and never in actual WoW.

Chris Metzen did say in an interview that they are building up to something "ridiculous". Which seems to imply grandiose or cosmic in scale. Since he left us with Legion before he went away for a few years and we know where the Lore went throughout the expansion.

And yeah, we already have Naaru starships in the Lore, but they are very few that we know of and even less of them are in or have ties to Azeroth. So we might need more Starships to transport a lot more than we did in Legion if we do end up fighting something on a more cosmic scale.

I don't think WoW players of any kind would be really very happy if the game suddenly became spaceship-focused. It's fine for them to be used for transport, as backdrops for battles, and so on, but I don't think they could really be a much bigger thing than they were in Legion without beginning to push people away from the whole WoW vibe.

Metzen's idea of "ridiculous" is pretty broad so it's hard to read much in to that.

Whatever they do, I expect they'll be aiming for a massive "reset" to more standard WoW-style fantasy* after The Last Titan, together with a level squish. If we get a real world revamp, it'll probably be then.

* = which is not "medieval fantasy", I have no idea why people say that, it's always combined elements of steampunk, D&D-style generic fantasy, heavy metal and prog rock album covers, late 1990s Image comics, revival-era Disney, and more.

[Ersula]

I don't think WoW players of any kind would be really very happy if the game suddenly became spaceship-focused. It's fine for them to be used for transport, as backdrops for battles, and so on, but I don't think they could really be a much bigger thing than they were in Legion without beginning to push people away from the whole WoW vibe.

Metzen's idea of "ridiculous" is pretty broad so it's hard to read much in to that.

Whatever they do, I expect they'll be aiming for a massive "reset" to more standard WoW-style fantasy* after The Last Titan, together with a level squish. If we get a real world revamp, it'll probably be then.

* = which is not "medieval fantasy", I have no idea why people say that, it's always combined elements of steampunk, D&D-style generic fantasy, heavy metal and prog rock album covers, late 1990s Image comics, revival-era Disney, and more.

The first warcraft game features an alien invasion. Prog Rock also includes a lot of cosmic stuff. Warcraft is He-man fantasy, even if people forget He-man starts with he-man's mother being an american astronaut that gets stranded on Eternia. And I don't agree with the shadowlands takeaway that people didn't respond well to cosmic themes: The theming was fine; the storytelling & mechanics were bad.

[MauroDiogo]

I don't think WoW players of any kind would be really very happy if the game suddenly became spaceship-focused. It's fine for them to be used for transport, as backdrops for battles, and so on, but I don't think they could really be a much bigger thing than they were in Legion without beginning to push people away from the whole WoW vibe.

Metzen's idea of "ridiculous" is pretty broad so it's hard to read much in to that.

Whatever they do, I expect they'll be aiming for a massive "reset" to more standard WoW-style fantasy* after The Last Titan, together with a level squish. If we get a real world revamp, it'll probably be then.

* = which is not "medieval fantasy", I have no idea why people say that, it's always combined elements of steampunk, D&D-style generic fantasy, heavy metal and prog rock album covers, late 1990s Image comics, revival-era Disney, and more.

The first warcraft game features an alien invasion. Prog Rock also includes a lot of cosmic stuff. Warcraft is He-man fantasy, even if people forget He-man starts with he-man's mother being an american astronaut that gets stranded on Eternia. And I don't agree with the shadowlands takeaway that people didn't respond well to cosmic themes: The theming was fine; the storytelling & mechanics were bad.

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not implying WoW taking a huge turn into a hard sci-fi focus, what I meant was more along what Ersula mentioned. You can explore Cosmical, Astrological themes while keeping the aesthetic and feel of it all more grounded in fantasy and without going too deep into full on sci-fi.

If we did see actual Starships being made and used, I was thinking they'd be just for transport. I didn't consider actual space battles and the like. Just a huge fleet of Starships to transport us somewhere else. And in WoW's case, we can't discredit space travelling because... 1) The whole WoW Mythology starts with and always has Cosmic entities and dimensional planes at their core and 2) We've already done space travelling before.

And between Ethereals, the Void, Burning Legion, the Naaru, Elune & Titans, there are a lot of places in the cosmos for some good ol' interstellar shenanigans.

[Alanar]

Sure, but that doesn't make Jaina a novice. Also, Jaina's forte is long-distance mass teleportation, which is not what Occuleth is good at. Or Azshara, for that matter, who has actually shown relatively little competence in that area.

She was still able to block both from teleporting. Even in some of her spell descriptions you see things like: she is so strong in the arcane so she is able to cast spells while casting a spell. Just as an example, we have enough to know what she is capeable off. Basically being one if not the strongest in her field.

As of Jaina.. sure she aint a novice, but she aint on Azsharas level. We had human mages before her who did remarkable things as well. As I said, jaina is just a very typical character with blizz who is there as a strong as she needs to be, which results in questionable power levels. Sometimes she is op and sometimes she cant do shit type of thing. Sure "story", but its not very consistant either. In the end tho..her teleportation skills are really what ever and arent that groundbreaking.

I guess Azshara saying that to her, is more in the context of age/experience. Azshara has been around a lot longer and spits on lesser races. She aint wrong tbh.

Ps: fyi I never said Jaina is a novice.

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Story too vague for any definitive argument here, they can still pretty much make any character as strong or weak as the story needs them to be, it's the main reason for their hallmark vagueness in their franchises lore

This is correct. There are also to many inconsistancies with her as well. In general comparing powerlevels in wow is the most idiotic thing you can do anway. However you can make an argument about experience. Azshara is 10k+old highborne vs how old is Jaina?..

[Mace]

This is correct. There are also to many inconsistancies with her as well. In general comparing powerlevels in wow is the most idiotic thing you can do anway. However you can make an argument about experience. Azshara is 10k+old highborne vs how old is Jaina?..

Yep, but remember how frightened 10k + year old Thalyssra was of Jaina when the horde went in to rescue Talanji and how ridiculous that came across to many who understood the lore of the Highborne, power levels have no metric, we don't even know how to measure them. At least in other stories, like Wheel of Time, there is some explanation of power levels. We know that some people are born stronger in the one power than others, males and female also have varying strength, but finesse matters too, and there are strengths in different elements of the one power, like in earth, fire, wind, water or spirit with some having special skills and talents with certain weaves and abilities.


No such thing in warcraft.. power and even a measure of capacity is completely undefined. Was Azshara more powerful because she is born that way? or is it merely intelligence and knowledge that develop power in the arcane? The arcane is a talent it seems, WotA says all night elves can use and learn magic, but not all are talented enough to pursue a career or life as a mage, presumably they had standards, that would have been quite high back then - but what that means compared today is completely unknown.


And it isn't just power levels that are vague and determined by the narrative of the moment, the worse is numbers. Numbers of a race, no definition at all, so they can just spawn who and what they want with as many quantities as whatever zone/plot story they conceive of requires, and free themselves of the need to remember their own lore. It's so ridiculous I wonder how I was so drawn to this for so long - and just ignored how much garbage it is - they have no respect for their own lore, it is far from a priority, the story can chop and change as if it's not important, as one minute things can be so and the next minute not at all. Things keep changing, and what was originally said seems quite irrelevant in the chase for a new thrill, as if they can't be bothered to try and at least make it consistent.. too much effort to give their lore team, or just not important to care enough.

So if they don't care, why should I?

I resent them for not trying hard enough, for teasing us into the world then not living up to an acceptable and decent level of writing, consistency and scrutiny - all un-necessary. Just treating it as important as the art, the systems, the music and other production elements could have yielded so much better.

[Eurhetemec]

The first warcraft game features an alien invasion. Prog Rock also includes a lot of cosmic stuff. Warcraft is He-man fantasy, even if people forget He-man starts with he-man's mother being an american astronaut that gets stranded on Eternia. And I don't agree with the shadowlands takeaway that people didn't respond well to cosmic themes: The theming was fine; the storytelling & mechanics were bad.

I hope you don't think I disagree with any of that lol. Because I agree with literally all of that, though re: the cosmic theme-ing in Shadowlands, I think it was a bit more complicated, because I think a lot of people had some kind of dumb "All dogs go to heaven" ideas of the afterlife in WoW, and were deeply offended by that not being the apparent case.

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Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not implying WoW taking a huge turn into a hard sci-fi focus, what I meant was more along what Ersula mentioned. You can explore Cosmical, Astrological themes while keeping the aesthetic and feel of it all more grounded in fantasy and without going too deep into full on sci-fi.

If we did see actual Starships being made and used, I was thinking they'd be just for transport. I didn't consider actual space battles and the like. Just a huge fleet of Starships to transport us somewhere else. And in WoW's case, we can't discredit space travelling because... 1) The whole WoW Mythology starts with and always has Cosmic entities and dimensional planes at their core and 2) We've already done space travelling before.

And between Ethereals, the Void, Burning Legion, the Naaru, Elune & Titans, there are a lot of places in the cosmos for some good ol' interstellar shenanigans.

I just don't think people are going to engage very strongly with starship this starship that. I think having one starship (like, a rebuilt Exodar or something) makes sense, but anything beyond that is going to turn people off, slowly but surely.

Also if it's all very alien worlds I don't think people will engage with it as much emotionally as they will with worlds that seem less alien. So I think some care may be needed here. Spectacle and coolness and so on have their place, but if it's all that all the time, which I think is a real risk with Metzen running things, I feel like it'll end up all feeling a bit overdone before long.

[babalou1]

So Beledar is just a calcified chunk of the Worldsoul's Essence and the whole area was a Worldsoul observation post.


Since we now know what Beledar is, makes sense for the song to come from the crystal (or atleast resonate with it). With the shifting, does that mean the Worldsoul is aligned mostly with the Light and being corrupted by Void?


Also since it bears a striking similarity to Naaru ships, does that mean the Naaru have found other worlds that had souls and used their calcified chunks for their ships? Since the crystals look extremely similar?

[Cheezits]

If Beledar is indeed Azerite, that's a very interesting twist. Especially when it is named in the usual Draenei fashion.

Does that mean that Naaru come from AZEROTH?

Or are we seeing the Light crystal within Azeroth and she has crystals attuned to every magic? Fel, Life etc

[babalou1]

If Beledar is indeed Azerite, that's a very interesting twist. Especially when it is named in the usual Draenei fashion.

Does that mean that Naaru come from AZEROTH?

Or are we seeing the Light crystal within Azeroth and she has crystals attuned to every magic? Fel, Life etc

Now, this is just me saying this but I feel like Worldsouls are ALL of the 6 essences and which ever one takes hold is what it eventually ends up being.

The only ones we've seen though are Order (Titans) and Fel (Argus). So presumably they can manifest any of the 6, with the "Prime" being able to be all 6. However Azeroth appears to be losing that fight and is shifting more towards void


Naaru came from the OG fight between the light and void, with the Prime Naaru being the first to form and assumed to have been created by Elune.

[JDBlou]

If Beledar is indeed Azerite, that's a very interesting twist. Especially when it is named in the usual Draenei fashion.

Does that mean that Naaru come from AZEROTH?

Or are we seeing the Light crystal within Azeroth and she has crystals attuned to every magic? Fel, Life etc

Bereldar was named by the Arathi, and seems to mean "The Emperor's Vision"

"While caught in a tempest above the Storming Sea, the Third Fleet became enveloped in Holy Light. In a flash, the light transported the entire fleet underground, into Hallowfall. Those who survived the resulting crash settled in the cavern under the light of the crystal they named Beledar, which they interpreted as the Emperor's Vision and the fulfillment of the prophesied star."

Source: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Beledar

So it appears to just be some co-incidental naming but who knows maybe the Arathi language is based on Naaru language, given how light-focused they are? So in a circular fashion both interpretations can be true?

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The first warcraft game features an alien invasion. Prog Rock also includes a lot of cosmic stuff. Warcraft is He-man fantasy, even if people forget He-man starts with he-man's mother being an american astronaut that gets stranded on Eternia. And I don't agree with the shadowlands takeaway that people didn't respond well to cosmic themes: The theming was fine; the storytelling & mechanics were bad.

I actually strongly agree with this. He-Man fantasy is a very good way of categorizing the original genre of WoW and making clearer what I contrast it with when I talk about "tonal modernism". It's a very particular kind of fantasy where the anachronisms are more palatable and thematic, as opposed to being totally incongruous and damaging to the fantasy (e.g. selfie cameras, which deviate because they're strongly rooted in a modern cultural trend even if selfies technically predate the current conception of them and because they are a kind of civilian amenity that executed in such a way that it takes you out of the fantasy more than, say, a tram). I've also always genuinely like high-concept WoW—TBC, as bad as the story itself was, was pretty aesthetically suitable to the setting and felt like a reasonable implementation of those cosmic elements into WoW. Shadowlands' core problems were (1) its possibly accidental existential nihilism and (2) its absolutely horrendous, incongruous aesthetic.

[Kiivar86]

Where's this Beledar info coming from? Is it the weekly quest?

Also another cat mount I see. They must've been sitting on that one for ages.

Also the silhouette for the zodiac mount, next year's a snake with the wood element and that does look kinda snake-y.

[Raetary]

Bereldar was named by the Arathi, and seems to mean "The Emperor's Vision"
snip

So it appears to just be some co-incidental naming but who knows maybe the Arathi language is based on Naaru language, given how light-focused they are? So in a circular fashion both interpretations can be true?

They named it after the Emperor's vision of a falling star.
So i would infer that "Beledar" is the name of the star and they got the name from the vision.

As for the new infodump, very interesting developments.
Guess the new island the goblins found isn't the top of Beledar but another crystal entirely.

As for Beledar itself, i don't think we should now immediately take this info for granted.

It's a wholly cut and refined crystal, covered in Naaru runes and sticks out of the cave ceiling as it would by falling through it rather than naturally forming from it.
The Emperor's vision also has it fall onto Azeroths surface.

[Worldshaper]

Keep in mind the in-game dialogue says the Beledar is maybe one of those crystals. While I agree it seems likely at this point, it could be a bit of a red herring. Why does it look like it was smashed in the roof of Hallowfall, and why was there a vision of a falling star?

I think there's still a 10% chance the Beledar could be something else. Blizzard loves their "godlike beings falling to Earth like stars"-stories. So it wouldn't surprise me if we still end up discovering something like a Naaru, or Elune in there.

That said, it's also fun to speculate about the implications of it being merely Azerite.

Is Xal'atath collecting this stuff? Is she seeking to attune it to the Void as a way to ger to the worldsoul?

Visiting another island out at sea to fight goblins over a chunk of Azerite seems like a bit of a repeat.

[Cheezits]

If there is really a "goblin crystal island", it is either a minizone before Undermine or, sadly, the PVE area attached to an Underrmine raid or megadungeon.

Maybe the island is Kezan?? No idea why they wouldn't say that outright.

[huth]

If there is really a "goblin crystal island", it is either a minizone before Undermine or, sadly, the PVE area attached to an Underrmine raid or megadungeon.

Maybe the island is Kezan?? No idea why they wouldn't say that outright.

I don't see Kezan making sense for the mystery island. The way they speak about it, the place is way smaller with its main feature being that abandoned mine. Kezan would also be way to far away for a journey there from the Isle making much sense, and it's hardly abandoned.

[Merryck]

That's kind of lame. I was hoping it would be the Light equivalent of an Old God. Guess we're going back to Goblins mining azerite ...

[huth]

It's a wholly cut and refined crystal, covered in Naaru runes and sticks out of the cave ceiling as it would by falling through it rather than naturally forming from it.
The Emperor's vision also has it fall onto Azeroths surface.

I wonder... could it be that rather than smashing into the cave from above, could it have been flung against the ceiling from below? Based on its full design, it seems the majority of the crystal is visible.

[Marlamin]

It's a wholly cut and refined crystal, covered in Naaru runes and sticks out of the cave ceiling as it would by falling through it rather than naturally forming from it.

Blizzard called it a "Naaru Crystal" internally during concepting the zone, so I'd say it being that is pretty much solidified at this point (unless plans changed).

[Viridiel]

That's kind of lame. I was hoping it would be the Light equivalent of an Old God. Guess we're going back to Goblins mining azerite ...

It still might be. Calcified to me invokes the image of something having been grown over, in this case seemingly something that produces a huge amount of Light. My thinking is that regular Old Gods seeds attract the energies of a planet to create a tumour that eventually grows into an Old God, whereas an Old God seed captured by the Light instead attracts the energies to create a calcification that spreads into veins of crystals instead of flesh. When one of these crystals is broken apart, it creates the naaru which come to sing their own song instead of just resonating with the worldsoul's. If the seed inside the crystals dies or is otherwise made dormant, its veins become ley lines and the crystals themselves become ley line nexuses. Beneath the Sunwell is a Beledar-like crystal that's been shifting between Light and Void in resonance with Beledar, but it's been kept a secret and blamed on Alleria and the void elves.