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

[Darkarath]

The trading post rarely predicts the theme of future content. Has it ever?

Not that I'm aware.

I think that the Drust will come back when the Life theme takes the main stage, and that will not happen in the WSS. They would probably make an appearance in TLT, when the Harranir would probably be relevant again.

[Hitei]

The trading post rarely predicts the theme of future content. Has it ever?

We technically got the Titan/Sargeras/Xal weapon set just before WSS' announcement. I don't know that it's reasonable to compare patch stuff with a Blizzcon triple expansion announcement though.

[milkmustache]

The trading post rarely predicts the theme of future content. Has it ever?

Although it was telegraphed all over the place, the Soot-Stained Shalewing pet's description naming Undermine was a pretty big indicator. This was a month before Warcraft Direct. Loose example that I'm not willing to commit to a trend, though.

I can definitely understand this sentiment.

In my view, K'aresh, the Undersea and the Beledar, "Rootlands", and some type of "Uldaz" + Worldcore type of patch are all equally plausible.

But I also can't quite shake the idea that it seems silly to just scrap "Rootlands". It seems like such a WoD era move in a modern development pipeline, back when they could do just about anything if they felt like it. Surely if "Rootlands" exisists within Khaz Algar with roots and a doorway and everything (including notble Haranir character and questlines), then it was still in the plan as of quite recently.

I think the Worldcore is the only 100% lock. K'aresh feels certain in some form, especially with the statement being we'd know where 11.2 will take us after 11.1. If we take that cinematic literally, we're going to K'aresh.

But I also agree about hte situation with the Rootlands. It seems like the Rootlands was meant to be a leveling zone in development that got shifted into something else, but it doesn't scream "final patch" for any reason other than us vaguely knowing about it through both in game and out of game sources. If we're hunting Xal'atath and the Dark Heart this entire time, but for whatever reason pivot to helping clean the Rootlands of the Black Blood, then it'd be a huge egg on our face duh moment when the Void invades or takes over, as we did nothing to really combat it.

It truly feels like a 50/50 split between K'aresh and Rootlands. Maybe we luck out and get both. The raid is 100% bringing us to the Worldcore my gut says.

[Limayria]

I mean we do have the horrific visions returning to prepare us to face the unseeming which is directly tied to the black blood, and is also potentially Xal's blood from her original body being destroyed and was a driving force of her instigating conflict between us and the neurbians

[Catastrophy349]

Happy Monday! https://x.com/MrGMYT/status/1916948262075928590

Happy Tuesday! Hope everyone is ready for tomorrow

- - - Updated - - -

Happy Tuesday! Hope everyone is ready for tomorrow

Big Day tomorrow

[Marlamin]

I have a gut feeling Rootlands got scrapped, and to be fair the only reason we know that name is because of the -very- early in development map where they were still deciding on what the sizes of zones were going to be, there was no sign of the actual zone itself on the map. There were some minor signs of it being at least made into a demo zone going off some database records, but that's about it, nothing since. I don't want it to be scrapped as I'd be interested to see what it looks like, but alas, maybe they thought it would be too similar to Amirdrassil. I'm holding out a sliver of hope that it might show up as a smaller zone maybe in one of the smaller patches or maybe with 11.2 on top of (part of) K'aresh, but that's a pipe dream.

11.2 is almost definitely going to be K'aresh with what we've seen teased as well as knowing for a fact that the next tier is the Ethereal Raid which would be kind of out of place in the Rootlands (unless it's something very different than what I imagine in my head).

EDIT: Or maybe they're throwing us a huge curveball and we're circling back to the Rootlands in a later expansion which is why they hadn't actually done much (apparent) work on it during early TWW development.

[Merryck]

The parrot has spoken.

[SunspotAnims]

I have a gut feeling Rootlands got scrapped, and to be fair the only reason we know that name is because of the -very- early in development map where they were still deciding on what the sizes of zones were going to be, there was no sign of the actual zone itself on the map. There were some minor signs of it being at least made into a demo zone going off some database records, but that's about it, nothing since. I don't want it to be scrapped as I'd be interested to see what it looks like, but alas, maybe they thought it would be too similar to Amirdrassil. I'm holding out a sliver of hope that it might show up as a smaller zone maybe in one of the smaller patches or maybe with 11.2 on top of (part of) K'aresh, but that's a pipe dream.

11.2 is almost definitely going to be K'aresh with what we've seen teased as well as knowing for a fact that the next tier is the Ethereal Raid which would be kind of out of place in the Rootlands (unless it's something very different than what I imagine in my head).

My guess is that Rootlands was planned before the Worldsoul Saga was planned out, and was pivoted to K'aresh to accommodate the storylines coming in Midnight/TLT. I also would've liked to see what the Rootlands would've looked like—the tiny forested section in Azj-Kahet where the Haranir lived was very pretty and was seemingly teasing a larger underground jungle somewhere.

[Eldryth]

Not that I'm aware.

I think that the Drust will come back when the Life theme takes the main stage, and that will not happen in the WSS. They would probably make an appearance in TLT, when the Harranir would probably be relevant again.

I don't know about it being a hint towards imminent content, but their item descriptions for the red ones really stand out from the usual Trading Post item text. Usually these items just get a pretty simple description with no lore. At most, a passing mention of an unknown group with no real lore (and the only other case I can find that even goes this far was the Twilight Witches mentioned in passing a few times). And the sole big exception was the Cosmic Weapon collection they used to tease the Saga before Blizzcon.


So this, a bunch of connected details about an entirely new group of Drust- "Deathwarders"- fighting the Nightmare (something the Drust never interacted with until now) and overthrowing their wicked Bloodsage King, feels pretty different. And it's something that I could see fitting in pretty well with the Black Blood story, however that's resolved (still think Undermined ending seemed like a very blatant tease that K'aresh is next, but I'm sure the Black Blood will be important- if not in TWW's ending, then I'd expect Xal'atath to use it in Midnight's invasion).

The Unseeming seems pretty similar to the Nightmare, after all- I could see them being connected (or even the same thing- maybe the Black Blood is showing us the Nightmare without us physically entering, like most times we engaged with the Dream apart from the Nightmare raid and Dragonflight.

[Nymrohd]

I have a gut feeling Rootlands got scrapped, and to be fair the only reason we know that name is because of the -very- early in development map where they were still deciding on what the sizes of zones were going to be, there was no sign of the actual zone itself on the map. There were some minor signs of it being at least made into a demo zone going off some database records, but that's about it, nothing since. I don't want it to be scrapped as I'd be interested to see what it looks like, but alas, maybe they thought it would be too similar to Amirdrassil. I'm holding out a sliver of hope that it might show up as a smaller zone maybe in one of the smaller patches or maybe with 11.2 on top of (part of) K'aresh, but that's a pipe dream.

11.2 is almost definitely going to be K'aresh with what we've seen teased as well as knowing for a fact that the next tier is the Ethereal Raid which would be kind of out of place in the Rootlands (unless it's something very different than what I imagine in my head).

EDIT: Or maybe they're throwing us a huge curveball and we're circling back to the Rootlands in a later expansion which is why they hadn't actually done much (apparent) work on it during early TWW development.

The way I could see it would be for Rootlands with Ethereal invasions and an Ethereal raid (and maybe dungeon/delves) all set up in K'aresh; the zone or zones proper to be visited at a later point (Midnight?)

At the same time, all projects have cut content and it's not because of lack of time (well it's not always that) it can simply be that they couldn't fit the content properly in the cycle. It's not unlikely this happened to Rootlands. It could also be moved to TLT; if Rootlands is at the World Core it could just as easily be a patch zone accessible beneath Sholazar..

- - - Updated - - -

Also good points!

But you're forgetting a couple of things:

1. While I respect the fact that you don't think the West Studio are much to go by, it's still notable that when they show 4 portals, these are themed based on Earthen, Arathi, Nerubians, and something else plant/mushroom themed.

2. There's an actual entrance to the zone in the game. Or what bears all the hallmarks of being an entrance, anyway. I'm thinking of when you travel into Azj-Kahet to the area with all the huge roots, and you look up to a greenish "portal" of sorts. Which, when approached, teleports you somewhere else and makes you fall asleep.

3. Orweyna and the Haranir exist, are heavily featured in cinematic and promotional material, have a lot of Allied Race-level quality assets in the files, and seemingly have some issues going on at home that are still unresolved.

4. The roots of Elun'ahir are actually featured on an early concept map of Khaz Algar shown at BlizzCon 2023. The Beledar is the other notable visual element on that map.

5. A big part of the content involves the Freysworn, which hasn't really resulted in anything major yet.

6. Delves have themes based on content within the different zones. Kobold, Kobyss, Nerubian, Shadow Caster, and the new Goblin delves all fit within the existing zones. But the Fungarian ones do not.

So while it's certainly possible "Rootlands" got scrapped in in favour of a new direction for the Worldsoul Saga, I do not think it could have happened early on in development. It must have happened after the expansion was announced basically. In fact such a drastic and late shift could even explain why the patches of TWW so far seem to be rather light on content.

Concept art happens at the earliest of stages. It would have happened BEFORE any level design for sure. Parts of concept art and being scrapped is the norm, just look at the art for any other expansion and 20-25% of the themes never make it live.

[Xilurm]

The new Nightfall event is a letdown. Blizzard hyped up the war between the Arathi and the menacing Nerubians, but in this event you just run around roflstomping normal mobs for 10 minutes and then slash at the back of the ankles of a Cryptlord for 2 minutes and then you are done for there week. Just another chore. No grandiose 2 hour long epic war event like in GW2's Dragon's Stand/Drizzlewood Coast/etc.

Man, I don't think how you'd look at the footage they've shown us from this event and think that it's anything other than that.

[Nymrohd]

Sure. But you're kind of ignoring 90% of my post when you say that. The concept art is just to re-inforce the rest, that there actually was a portal somewhere not only planned but also built within the game.

Had there not been a portal present within the game, fine. I would have assumed "Rootlands" was an early concept that got scrapped. But it's actually built. That stuff is not early in development.

In fact, why would they even include the "teleport" functionality if they had no intentions of ever using it? They could've just let the roots be a nice visual element and then delete the rest.

Could simply be the early concept for Khaz Algar. Instead of the current skyriding entrance through the Coreway, we'd go to each area by portals which is an extraordinarily common concept in Warcraft.

[Hitei]

I have a gut feeling Rootlands got scrapped, and to be fair the only reason we know that name is because of the -very- early in development map where they were still deciding on what the sizes of zones were going to be, there was no sign of the actual zone itself on the map. There were some minor signs of it being at least made into a demo zone going off some database records, but that's about it, nothing since. I don't want it to be scrapped as I'd be interested to see what it looks like, but alas, maybe they thought it would be too similar to Amirdrassil. I'm holding out a sliver of hope that it might show up as a smaller zone maybe in one of the smaller patches or maybe with 11.2 on top of (part of) K'aresh, but that's a pipe dream.

11.2 is almost definitely going to be K'aresh with what we've seen teased as well as knowing for a fact that the next tier is the Ethereal Raid which would be kind of out of place in the Rootlands (unless it's something very different than what I imagine in my head).

EDIT: Or maybe they're throwing us a huge curveball and we're circling back to the Rootlands in a later expansion which is why they hadn't actually done much (apparent) work on it during early TWW development.

I just don't see how K'aresh functions narratively or as well thought out, ongoing gameplay design.

TWW is an underground expansion, it is literally the War Within. Pivoting to an outer space patch, on a different planet entirely, with little to no setup would be nuts. Going to K'aresh would also mean they've somehow unlearned their lesson from SoO -> WoD and HFC -> Legion that extending enemy groups and aesthetics over two expansions leads to fatigue. You can't expect players to spend 6 months in a purple-blue zone with a purple-blue skybox, fighting purple-blue enemies and then drop them into Quel'thalas and go "hey, feel like fighting some purple-blue dudes for the next 18 months, culminating in a really big purple and blue raid?"

Likewise, from a tension building point of view, you can't expect players to take any Void invasion seriously if they've just finished kicking the Void's ass up and down the Void's own backyard. Like I've said before, it's the Argus problem. If Argus had been the last patch of WoD and followed by Legion, the Legion's invasion would have been an absolute joke. How do you take fighting demons in Suramar or Highmountain seriously when you've just been fighting their even more elite forces on their own home planet and just finished a raid where you killed 10/11 of their most powerful figures? Even being forced to retreat at the end of a raid means you mowed through 90% of their forces in their own territory where they are strongest and you have the least amount of support.

It also still doesn't make very much sense that they'd make the visions redux in 11.1.5 about preparing for black blood exposure rather than void madness if they'd scrapped the Orweyna plotline and are shipping us off to a completely different planet, about as far from black blood as it gets.

[Nymrohd]

I just don't see how K'aresh functions narratively or as well thought out, ongoing gameplay design.

TWW is an underground expansion, it is literally the War Within. Pivoting to an outer space patch, on a different planet entirely, with little to no setup would be nuts. Going to K'aresh would also mean they've somehow unlearned their lesson from SoO -> WoD and HFC -> Legion that extending enemy groups and aesthetics over two expansions leads to fatigue. You can't expect players to spend 6 months in a purple-blue zone with a purple-blue skybox, fighting purple-blue enemies and then drop them into Quel'thalas and go "hey, feel like fighting some purple-blue dudes for the next 18 months, culminating in a really big purple and blue raid?"

Likewise, from a tension building point of view, you can't expect players to take any Void invasion seriously if they've just finished kicking the Void's ass up and down the Void's own backyard. Like I've said before, it's the Argus problem. If Argus had been the last patch of WoD and followed by Legion, the Legion's invasion would have been an absolute joke. How do you take fighting demons in Suramar or Highmountain seriously when you've just been fighting their even more elite forces on their own home planet and just finished a raid where you killed 10/11 of their most powerful figures? Even being forced to retreat at the end of a raid means you mowed through 90% of their forces in their own territory where they are strongest and you have the least amount of support.

It also still doesn't make very much sense that they'd make the visions redux in 11.1.5 about preparing for black blood exposure rather than void madness if they'd scrapped the Orweyna plotline and are shipping us off to a completely different planet, about as far from black blood as it gets.

If Rootlands gets scrapped then yeah, it is very much clear that TWW was effectively scrapped and an expansion made with the scraps left.

[Sondrelk]

If Rootlands gets scrapped then yeah, it is very much clear that TWW was effectively scrapped and an expansion made with the scraps left.

If Rootlands got scrapped in favor of K'aresh, then it's not just that TWW was scrapped. But it was scrapped somewhere during 11.0.5 or something. Far beyond when we would expect.

All signs point toward something dealing with the Black Blood deeper in Khaz Algar. The only thing pointing towards K'aresh is the cinematic briefly showing it. Something which could just as easily be buildup to Midnight, similar to how the Dawn of the Infinites megadungeon ended with Xal'atath, and 10.2 was the Emerald Dream.

[Darkarath]

I just don't see how K'aresh functions narratively or as well thought out, ongoing gameplay design.

TWW is an underground expansion, it is literally the War Within. Pivoting to an outer space patch, on a different planet entirely, with little to no setup would be nuts. Going to K'aresh would also mean they've somehow unlearned their lesson from SoO -> WoD and HFC -> Legion that extending enemy groups and aesthetics over two expansions leads to fatigue. You can't expect players to spend 6 months in a purple-blue zone with a purple-blue skybox, fighting purple-blue enemies and then drop them into Quel'thalas and go "hey, feel like fighting some purple-blue dudes for the next 18 months, culminating in a really big purple and blue raid?"

Likewise, from a tension building point of view, you can't expect players to take any Void invasion seriously if they've just finished kicking the Void's ass up and down the Void's own backyard. Like I've said before, it's the Argus problem. If Argus had been the last patch of WoD and followed by Legion, the Legion's invasion would have been an absolute joke. How do you take fighting demons in Suramar or Highmountain seriously when you've just been fighting their even more elite forces on their own home planet and just finished a raid where you killed 10/11 of their most powerful figures? Even being forced to retreat at the end of a raid means you mowed through 90% of their forces in their own territory where they are strongest and you have the least amount of support.

It also still doesn't make very much sense that they'd make the visions redux in 11.1.5 about preparing for black blood exposure rather than void madness if they'd scrapped the Orweyna plotline and are shipping us off to a completely different planet, about as far from black blood as it gets.

K'aresh is already more developed as a possible zone in 11.2 than the Rootlands, which at this moment, do not exist. We might go to The Cradle, but I doubt it very much. Maybe in TLT or hopefully as a new Siren Isle at some point.

I also very much doubt that players will get tired of the Void theme. We just don't really know who we would be fighting in Midnight. In the majority of cases in which we have faced the Void, it has been as a corruption force that takes control of different races. But the Void doesn't has at the moment a group of different races that we can identify, other than Voidwalkers in different forms, as the Old Gods seem to be their own thing now.

Also K'aresh is first and foremost the Ethereals native world. We don't know what happened after Dimensius came. Maybe he consumed the world and left. Maybe he established a foothold for the Void. I think that in K'aresh we would face mostly Ethereals, and get to know more about their culture and motives. Obviously the Void would be present, but the focus would be mostly on Ethereals.

Finally, the Void would not be seen as a joke by players, because we are fated to lose in TWW. Whether we end up going to K'aresh or to the Rootlands, something would happen that gives way to the Void invasion. The stakes would be higher than ever in Midnight. And regarding the Black Blood, again, the Dark Heart has tons of it, so it would still be a relevant topic, even in K'aresh.

[Catastrophy349]

Today is the day! See you after the news!

[Hitei]

It's quite simple, really.

Yes, you just posted about it last page, and the page before that, and twice on the page before that, and on the page before that one, and the page before that. We get it. You think the patch will get announced today.

[rainhard]

MMO-Champion speculation in a nutshell: nobody ever acknowledges when you are correct, only when you are wrong. So if you want the record to show that you were indeed right on something, you had better point it out yourself.

Sir, this is Wendy's.

[Hitei]

MMO-Champion speculation in a nutshell: nobody ever acknowledges when you are correct, only when you are wrong. So if you want the record to show that you were indeed right on something, you had better point it out yourself.

That takes two posts, not six.