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

[Hitei]

I work in schools. This is patently false. More accurately, new players have very little interest in WoW. As an entry point into the genre, at least. GW2, ESO, and especially FFXIV get a lot of young players. WoW itself is more of a niche. That being said, I do think Dragonflight is a step toward getting these younger casuals interested.

That you've seen a couple kids play niche, low population MMOs doesn't change the reality of what 97% of kids are playing now. There is a reason that things like Runescape and early wow were culturally massive and now the bar for MMO success is simply not going under. Kids do not give a shit about MMORPGs. They are playing Valorant, Apex and Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, Genshin, fotm things like Fall Guys and Among Us, even LoL is still more popular with kids despite how old the MOBA genre is also getting.

I grew up in a generation that had strong investment in MMORPGs. Where everyone was playing runescape during breaks and even people not normally into video games were playing pseduo MMO shit like Coke Music and Habbo. I have a 12 year old niece, I see what she plays, and what her friends (across two countries) are also into, we talk about games. You can see with even a casual glance what youtubers and streamers are popular with young demographics.

All of MMORPGs are niche in 2023. It is a niche genre. When new MMOs are successful, their success isn't from all sorts of kids who have never played an MMO jumping in and discovering the genre for the first time; their success is from cannibalizing decades-old MMO players from other existing MMOs. There is a reason that most new MMOs base their whole sales pitch on "it's like X old MMORPGs back in the day, remember?"

It's a genre that has been downtrending for a decade, with an archaic core design philosophy. Kids do not want a years long character progression journey based on leveling individual skills, pressing buttons to cast a spell at a boss, and doing written out quests to kill 12 wolves and collect haunted pinecones. They don't want a spell book with a bunch of tooltips they have to read through and decide when to use what. They want drop in, drop out, fast and fun, typically match based MP games where story (if there is one) is accessory.

Of course there are exceptions. I played Starsiege: Tribes when I was a kid; No one else I knew, even the other "gamer" kids, knew what the fuck that was or had ever heard of it. But exceptions are exceptions, and youth as a whole have very little interest in MMORPGs as a genre.

I understand, and I agree with you, but I dont think it will happen. That would be building 2 contients completely from scratch at that point. The scale would end up being like 4 or 5 Dragonflight continents combined. Just not feasible in a live service already launched mmo.

I think what we get is Darkshore/Arathi type revamp. New mountain shapes, new textures, trees, doodads, skybox, buildings, mobs etc. I think in a lot of scenarios they will even leave half the quests as they are and only update the ones directly mentioning the cataclysm.

Yeah, I also think that is what we will get. Which is why I hate the idea of a revamp expansion. Because making textures nicer looking isn't enough to make helping the same NPCs fight the same enemy groups in mostly the same zones (for the third time in a 20 year progression) not sound like absolute torture.

[Worldshaper]

World of Warcraft - C'THUN
The Burning Crusade - N/A
Wrath of the Lich King - YOGG-SARON
Cataclysm - N/A
Mists of Pandaria - Y'SHAARJ
Warlords of Draenor - N/A
Legion - N/A
Battle for Azeroth - N'ZOTH
Shadowlands - N/A
Dragonflight - ??

It's pretty interesting how they had a particular Old God take a pretty big role in every second expansion, up until WoD and Legion when it became less of a routine.

You could argue the pattern is more visible in the early expansions (Vanilla -> MoP). But then their "trilogy"-concept took root and for N'Zoth they sort of decided to build him up slowly across Legion (using Xal'atath, the Il'gynoth whispers and so on) before ultimately unveiling him in BfA.

It's really anybody's guess what's next for these dudes.

A. They're all gone forever, and now it's time to first deal with their mess (Xal'atath, Queen Azshara, etc.) and then just go straight to the Void.
B. There's a fifth one still out there (either Xal'atath or somebody else) which we'll need to deal with.
C. They're kinda dead but also kinda returning. N'Zoth in the dagger, Yogg-Saron's presence felt, minions trying to bring C'thun back, etc.
D. They're gone but their essences have seeped into Azeroth.

I kinda like D.

"Her heart is a crater, and we have filled it."
"From the earth, he draws strength. Our strength."
"At the hour of her third death, she will user in our coming."

This could imply the Old Gods have corrupted Azeroth's interior, or her heart.

1. The Sundering metaphorically killed her, forcing her to bleed (Well of Eternity).
2. The Wound metaphorically killed her, forcing her to bleed (Azerite).
3. The Whatever happens at the end of Dragonflight metaphorically kills her, ultimately ushering in the Old Gods, i.e. some type of Void Lord sprung from Azeroth herself, or some type of curse covering the land, or simply Azeroth herself being corrupted and becoming the villain we need to purge.

Maybe the dagger Wrathion used to stab N'Zoth with is a type of key which will make it all happen. Perhaps N'Zoth is all that remains to infuse Azeroth's heart with enough Void ooze.

The Shattering (in Cataclysm) didn't really harm Azeroth in the same way, because that mostly harmed the surface structure around her as well as the elements.

So, enter Thrall, and the five restored Dragon Aspects (plus one additional one from a new dragonflight). Time to TAKE AZEROTH BACK!

Continued:

It really does seem like Yogg-Saron, Il'gynoth etc. prophesied the future and we're still not done with it. Some of their whispers involve the past Old Gods and the events of Shadowlands. But there's still some that are interesting now.

"Beneath the shadow of the darkened spire, there is no light, no mercy, only void, and the chaos within." - The darkened spire could be Tyrhold, and the beacon which had gone out for several millenia. We just went to Zarelek Cavern, where there indeed is Void shenanigans going on. But is there even more to it?

"The vassal of life disguises treachery. Beware the eyes of green." - Could have something to do with the upcoming Emerald Dream and Green dragon content. Could somebody betray us from within?

"Before the last shadow falls, the Father of Sleep shall savor his feast." - The last shadow could mean "the last Old God", as the Old Gods represent the cosmic force of Shadow/Void. The Father of Sleep is Mueh'zala, and he was indeed involved with all the feasting of souls going on in Shadowlands. But the whisper implies that the last shadow falls after Shadowlands. So...

"The giant rook watches from the dead trees. Nothing breathes beneath his shadow." - Take a look at the latest trailer for patch 10.1.7 and tell me Muruzond doesn't fit this description.

[Raetary]

The newcomer experience can only be fixed with a full revamp.

Imo, they should shelve all legacy content, and gate it behind Zidormi and Chromie for veteran players only, and basically make the game focus entirely on the new experience that Newzeroth brings to the table.

Fuck exiles reach, return to racial starting zones as a simple and straightforward introduction to the culture and and racial identity of the playable race they chose.
Return class trainers as quest NPCs to explain the basic gameplay mechanics.

The game needs a proper introduction into the world of Azeroth.
For which Exiles reach simply is too inadequate to do, it's too arbitrary and too disconnected from the rest of the established World.

Entering Azeroth with a new character should be a very simple affair, and lvling up and moving to other areas should feel organic, clear and satisfying.

As is, after finishing ogre island, the game just throws you into the void, with the aim to get you into a particular piece of content (BfA) which it more often than not seems to fail at (cue, every newcomer being stuck in god knows where, instead of the places that they are intended to be in), all while punishing you for it by restricting your access to dungeons, and making it a pain in the ass to progress through that old content because of Introductory scenarios and lack of direction and transport.

It's confusing, not fun and exhausting.

[Kiria]

The newcomer experience can only be fixed with a full revamp.

Imo, they should shelve all legacy content, and gate it behind Zidormi and Chromie for veteran players only, and basically make the game focus entirely on the new experience that Newzeroth brings to the table.

Fuck exiles reach, return to racial starting zones as a simple and straightforward introduction to the culture and and racial identity of the playable race they chose.
Return class trainers as quest NPCs to explain the basic gameplay mechanics.

The game needs a proper introduction into the world of Azeroth.
For which Exiles reach simply is too inadequate to do, it's too arbitrary and too disconnected from the rest of the established World.

Entering Azeroth with a new character should be a very simple affair, and lvling up and moving to other areas should feel organic, clear and satisfying.

As is, after finishing ogre island, the game just throws you into the void, with the aim to get you into a particular piece of content (BfA) which it more often than not seems to fail at (cue, every newcomer being stuck in god knows where, instead of the places that they are intended to be in), all while punishing you for it by restricting your access to dungeons, and making it a pain in the ass to progress through that old content because of Introductory scenarios and lack of direction and transport.

It's confusing, not fun and exhausting.

I absolutely agree with this, as it stands WoW is too big and conflated for its own good, new players will absolutely lose interest almost immediately.

[huth]

All of MMORPGs are niche in 2023. It is a niche genre. When new MMOs are successful, their success isn't from all sorts of kids who have never played an MMO jumping in and discovering the genre for the first time; their success is from cannibalizing decades-old MMO players from other existing MMOs. There is a reason that most new MMOs base their whole sales pitch on "it's like X old MMORPGs back in the day, remember?"

Even at its height, WoW peaked at 14M concurrent players while being available in markets that comprise >2B people. I'd argue MMOs never really got out of niche to begin with. Video games as a whole only really became mainstream relatively recently, historically speaking. Pong turned 50 last year.

[Hyde]

snip
- - - Updated - - -

Changing minds is fine, just that they conveniently changed their mind to whatever changes Blizz made even though they would criticize others' people suggestions that led to Blizz's changes. Then they will magically support after the changes are made.

0 chars

[Hitei]

The newcomer experience can only be fixed with a full revamp.

-snip-

I'd argue that a revamp doesn't actually make for much of a newcomer experience at all.

I've expressed this position before but: by necessity a revamp of this sort is targeted at veteran players. When you make EPL and WPL into a hilly green zone with ongoing farming efforts; that is only exciting for veteran players. It's made interesting because a veteran player knows the history of the area, they (obviously, assumptions) saw it fall in WC3, they saw the argents struggle to hold the line in Vanilla, they saw the fall of the Scourge in Wrath, the beginnings of recovery and healing in Cata, and that green zone represents a payoff for a 20 year plotline.

A new player just sees a generic fantasy forest zone. You can tell them it used to be a plagued hellscape, but they're just gonna take it as "oh, that's neat."

A veteran player sees Auberdine destroyed, or the bridge in Redridge complete, or Thousand Needles entirely flooded and it has deep meaning. A new one just sees ruins they have no connection to, a normal stone bridge and a weird long lake.

The solution for this presents even more problems. Because you have an uphill battle trying to impart the history and context of a location or race or NPC to a newplayer, in a way that doesn't feel like painful overexplaining for every existing player, who are still 95% of who is going to be doing those quests.

I agree that individual starter zones indicate racial identity more, but that's also (and this being good or bad is an entire debate in itself) not the direction that characters and narrative have been moving in. The Alliance and horde are no longer loose associations of largely independent racial groups that stick to their own and firmly embrace established traditions and racial identity. They are increasingly a cohesive society of culturally mobile individuals: A 2004 female night elf was (lorewise) presented as probably a priestess or some martial variety of sentinel, or exceptionally, a newly trained druid where males typically held that role. A 2023 female night elf might be someone more like Elise Starseeker, an explorer's league gal through and through, who dresses more like a dwarf and is, despite being a druid, more interested in cataloging and charting ancient troll ruins than typical night elf things.

Those racial groups don't really exist in the same fashion in the modern setting the way they did in Vanilla or Cata. Tauren are still Tauren, but they're also now two culturally distinct groups the HM associated and Bloodhoof, they're also Cenarion members, and Sunwalkers and members of the Earthen Ring. Even without getting into the arcane using tauren mages or piratey tauren rogues, they have a much larger and more difficult to gloss cultural distribution compared to when in 2004 they just needed to be plains hunters with typical indigenous-resembling ceremonies and rituals.

I think that's why they went with Exiles'. Because the idea they want to move forward with is that your character is an individual with their own agenda and context rather than just a sort of stamp generated by a preconceived racial identity and it's traditional values and identity.

[Schwert]

"Kids" - teenagers - not being into MMORPGs doesn't feel quite right, when I can walk into any local gaming or anime convention and see XIV cosplay and fan merch everywhere. That game is extremely popular with younger players.

Is it Fortnite levels of popular? No. Nothing will really reach those levels, but teenagers and young adults are absolutely playing MMOs. Their reasons for playing differ though, and a lot of that focus is on the more social features. While not roleplayers, a lot of these people play for the questing / easy raids and to just simply hang out at events. Something that WoW has been lacking due to it's refusal to put in features like player housing for years. (Although, XIV has a more modern aesthetic mixed into it's look too, which WoW cannot emulate.)

And I agree that WoW is way too bloated and complicated now.
I tried to get my boyfriend into the story, and he just couldn't figure out what was going on. BFA is an awful introduction as it just launches you right into "you hate this guy" without the build up that Vanilla to WoD gave us, Shadowlands is just garbage in general, and Dragonflight is "why do I care about any of this?" because it has nothing to do with the actual player races.

World revamp of EK + Kalimdor back to Vanilla style basics would be immense in helping the new player experience, and to help veteran players rekindle interest in the core of the story, and keeping things more grounded like they were back in Vanilla too. None of this world scale insane conflict stuff; stories related to the player races, their rebuildings and their conflicts.

I don't care about big bad taking over the world.
I care about taking Gilneas back from the Forsaken.
I care about healing Darkshore.
I care about the House of Nobles.
I care about... whatever the hell Void Elves are doing, anything, a crumb of content.

Just give us back stories that invest us in what we're actually playing. Shadowlands and Dragonflight have both fallen completely flat on that, and BFA isn't an introductory experience, as much as I liked the start of it.

[Hyde]

"Kids" - teenagers - not being into MMORPGs doesn't feel quite right, when I can walk into any local gaming or anime convention and see XIV cosplay and fan merch everywhere. That game is extremely popular with younger players.

Is it Fortnite levels of popular? No. Nothing will really reach those levels, but teenagers and young adults are absolutely playing MMOs. Their reasons for playing differ though, and a lot of that focus is on the more social features. While not roleplayers, a lot of these people play for the questing / easy raids and to just simply hang out at events. Something that WoW has been lacking due to it's refusal to put in features like player housing for years. (Although, XIV has a more modern aesthetic mixed into it's look too, which WoW cannot emulate.)

And I agree that WoW is way too bloated and complicated now.
I tried to get my boyfriend into the story, and he just couldn't figure out what was going on. BFA is an awful introduction as it just launches you right into "you hate this guy" without the build up that Vanilla to WoD gave us, Shadowlands is just garbage in general, and Dragonflight is "why do I care about any of this?" because it has nothing to do with the actual player races.

World revamp of EK + Kalimdor back to Vanilla style basics would be immense in helping the new player experience, and to help veteran players rekindle interest in the core of the story, and keeping things more grounded like they were back in Vanilla too. None of this world scale insane conflict stuff; stories related to the player races, their rebuildings and their conflicts.

I don't care about big bad taking over the world.
I care about taking Gilneas back from the Forsaken.
I care about healing Darkshore.
I care about the House of Nobles.
I care about... whatever the hell Void Elves are doing, anything, a crumb of content.

Just give us back stories that invest us in what we're actually playing. Shadowlands and Dragonflight have both fallen completely flat on that, and BFA isn't an introductory experience, as much as I liked the start of it.

TBF younger generation couldn't really afford to pay wow subscription. I started playing wow during TBC because I finally got a stable job after a couple of years of graduation.

[huth]

"Kids" - teenagers - not being into MMORPGs doesn't feel quite right, when I can walk into any local gaming or anime convention and see XIV cosplay and fan merch everywhere. That game is extremely popular with younger players.

That might have more to do with Final Fantasy as a franchise that by now spans more than 20 games than XIV in particular though.

Not every story is going to appeal to you. That's not automatically a fault of the author, people just have different interests. I don't care about the things you named and would not be invested in those stories, either. I find another world revamp highly unappealing as a concept, aside from it being unlikely to be an economically viable path.

[rainhard]

You are bang on, my baby brother who has only just turned 20 asked me to give him a recruit a friend a few weeks ago so I obliged and he checked out the new content and his response was literally "This is shit" he quit a few hours in stating it was boring and confusing and asked me about the old game, I pointed him in the direction of the Classic servers and I've not heard from him since as he's enjoying the challenging aspect of it and the fact its abit more straight forward and not too big.

A friend of mine to start retail and for it to work had to begin guided by me nearly always so that i can make the complicated things simpler for him and at the same time start at the pre patch of an expansion so that he sees its progression from the start which is also very important for new retail players, although he also tried classic afterwards and couldn't stand the slow pace of it (DH main what can i say), but point is retail requires a lot to be new player friendly.

[Mecheon]

XIV does have a different vibe to it that does attract a difference audience. It has its tight character focused storyline that very specifically is telling a single story. No matter what starting zone (of three) you pick, you're eventually going to be pushed along to the same storyline as everyone else. The thing is though, XIV's story is surprisingly dang good and makes the best of these limitations. Sure there's the MMO, but the main part of it is the story. Hardly a unique thing (ToR's also a bit sold on that, though I dunno how good the story is)

WoW on the other hand has made its main thing the dungeon and raiding experience which is a bit of a different thing. As WoW folks say, the game pretty much doesn't start until endgame where you've got your dungeons and whatnot. Cutting down the sheer number of quests and forcing everyone along a single storyline is certainly a Choice they could do, but its also basically against how WoW's done basically everything in its history

I'd also argue WoW's sheer reputation as having The World of Warcraft player base. Like it or not, a lot of people's opinion of WoW players is 'you are going to go into a dungeon you know nothing about and someone is going to scream at you and kick you immediately'. Which, isn't exactly wrong and is sort of bred from the above. The absolute hardcores in XIV are pretty much kept to their own stuff that most people won't ever touch, but WoW definitely wants you to try to get there and you'll have to deal with them everywhere. The fact a ton of those "Leaving WoW going to XIV" videos mentioned the community should tell a lot. WoW's community keeps people away from the game.

(also just saying, XIV's free trial including Heavensward kind of helps things along because HW is a fan favourite for a reason. Was even more effective at just 2.0 when it basically left you at the mother of all cliffhangers to get you to go all in on HW and get rewarded for that purchase. I sure fell for that one hard)

[Cheezits]

All Blizzard has to do is drop a statistic on new players for the endless "new people don't play WoW lol" discussion to die. I wish they would because it's honestly tiresome, based entirely on conjecture, and goes against Blizzard's active developments towards content accommodating new players.

"WoW is dead" discussion in disguise.

[Khaza-R]

"Kids" - teenagers - not being into MMORPGs doesn't feel quite right, when I can walk into any local gaming or anime convention and see XIV cosplay and fan merch everywhere. That game is extremely popular with younger players.

I am sure FFXIV's demo still skews to the 28-34 range. Even if its slightly younger than WoW.

Traditional MMOs with a sub are dinosaurs. F2P "Open world ARPGs" are slowly supplanting them and more popular with younger gamers. Which is fully what I expect Riot's MMO to be.

- - - Updated - - -

All Blizzard has to do is drop a statistic on new players for the endless "new people don't play WoW lol" discussion to die. I wish they would because it's honestly tiresome, based entirely on conjecture, and goes against Blizzard's active developments towards content accommodating new players.

"WoW is dead" discussion in disguise.

In the context of speculating a new expansion, its sort of irrelevant either way. A revamp can both be rewardingly nostalgic and new player-friendly simultaneously. They aren't mutually exclusive.

[Auxis]

The bar for me in terms of QoL is letting daggers be transmogged with 1h weapons and vice versa. Anything more than that is a bonus.

Ffs we can transmog WANDS into 1h weapons, what the hell is the excuse for no daggers? "It'll make animations look goofy" we have floppy fish, murloc backpacks, yeti onesies, frying pans, magnifying glasses, the list on.

[Dracullus]

The bar for me in terms of QoL is letting daggers be transmogged with 1h weapons and vice versa. Anything more than that is a bonus.

Ffs we can transmog WANDS into 1h weapons, what the hell is the excuse for no daggers? "It'll make animations look goofy" we have floppy fish, murloc backpacks, yeti onesies, frying pans, magnifying glasses, the list on.

That's one thing. but in general transmog restrictions for obtaining stuff needs to be completely lifted. It's not 2016 when you had just old raids/dungeons to farm, now there is shit ton things to collect every patch and restrictions just make you stressful you dropped something ultra rare on wrong character. We should be able to collect everything on single toon.

[Nymrohd]

That's one thing. but in general transmog restrictions for obtaining stuff needs to be completely lifted. It's not 2016 when you had just old raids/dungeons to farm, now there is shit ton things to collect every patch and restrictions just make you stressful you dropped something ultra rare on wrong character. We should be able to collect everything on single toon.

if anything, I'm more likely to play an alt if I have a great mog for them than to play them in order to get a decent mog

[Jiastanna]

I'd argue that a revamp doesn't actually make for much of a newcomer experience at all.

I've expressed this position before but: by necessity a revamp of this sort is targeted at veteran players. When you make EPL and WPL into a hilly green zone with ongoing farming efforts; that is only exciting for veteran players. It's made interesting because a veteran player knows the history of the area, they (obviously, assumptions) saw it fall in WC3, they saw the argents struggle to hold the line in Vanilla, they saw the fall of the Scourge in Wrath, the beginnings of recovery and healing in Cata, and that green zone represents a payoff for a 20 year plotline.

Absolutely true. IMO WoWs base has always been Warcraft 1-3, especially WarIII for obvious reasons. Without that story, WoW wouldn´t have those 20 year old plotlines people could connect to. Therefore Blizz is in dire need of a new base to build Warcrafts universe on. They have been terrible at telling a cohesive storyline through expansions, often pushing central elements to books outside the game. I don´t see many other ways to get a new playerbase that cares for Warcrafts universe other than creating a bigger singleplayer experience with a decent storyline in multiple arcs, e.g. WarIV in the style of Starcraft IIs campaign. If they are not fond of RTS (which is very much niche today too), then resort to another genre. But it has to be a singleplayer experience with a focus on telling a cohesive and coherent story with multiple heros and baddies. Even Hearthstone is often better at creating such characters than WoW lately.

But WoW also has to return to the MoP-BfA way of telling a story through cinematics and ingame cinematics. The Shadowlands cutscenes often feel very generic and unrefined for obvious reasons. But DF is missing in that departement as well. WoD, Legion and BfA were best at that. There are a lot of very good ingame cinematics in those. Some of them really hit hard too: Varians death, AU Velens sacrifice... Also BfA with many real cinematics of Saurfang. I miss those things in DF.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Absolutely true. IMO WoWs base has always been Warcraft 1-3, especially WarIII for obvious reasons. Without that story, WoW wouldn´t have those 20 year old plotlines people could connect to. Therefore Blizz is in dire need of a new base to build Warcrafts universe on. They have been terrible at telling a cohesive storyline through expansions, often pushing central elements to books outside the game. I don´t see many other ways to get a new playerbase that cares for Warcrafts universe other than creating a bigger singleplayer experience with a decent storyline in multiple arcs, e.g. WarIV in the style of Starcraft IIs campaign. If they are not fond of RTS (which is very much niche today too), then resort to another genre. But it has to be a singleplayer experience with a focus on telling a cohesive and coherent story with multiple heros and baddies. Even Hearthstone is often better at creating such characters than WoW lately.

But WoW also has to return to the MoP-BfA way of telling a story through cinematics and ingame cinematics. The Shadowlands cutscenes often feel very generic and unrefined for obvious reasons. But DF is missing in that departement as well. WoD, Legion and BfA were best at that. There are a lot of very good ingame cinematics in those. Some of them really hit hard too: Varians death, AU Velens sacrifice... Also BfA with many real cinematics of Saurfang. I miss those things in DF.

Those uber cinematics you are talking about aren't as easy to create compared to the cutscenes we sometimes see and well don't have the player character in them either. I also feel like people are ignoring some of the character moment for Ebyssian, Wrathion, Sabellian

[Luck4]

Although I've to say that I strongly disagree with a World Revamp targeting mostly the leveling experience, Nixxiom made a great video that talks mostly about it, and how the current experience droves away new players.



With that said, I still believe that nearly all zones, after the leveling experience, should be made and scaled for level cap and endgame activities, such as World Quests, Rares, Community Events, Invasions, Campaign Quests, Treasures, Secrets, Collectables, and everything that level cap zones have these days, even if Blizzard decides to set up a rotation.