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

[Sondrelk]

The world boss lag in Undermine can be pretty annoying. I thought it was just me at first.

Undermine is one of those zones that are just uniquely suited to be laggy. Small and cramped, with lots and lots and lots of detail.

And of course the world boss. Which might be the laggiest world boss since the Mantid Queen in the updates version of Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

[allegrian]

- The whole point of 10.0 is activating the Aspects stones to regain their powers. Abandoned plot

- Heavily teased Blue Dragonflight prison in Azure Span. Abandoned plot

- Aberrus' final raid encounter is in a voidy room with huge chains and no character makes a comment about it. Abandoned plot

- Malfurion changes places with Ysera for reasons, supposedly to come with new powers of Death (teased by Danuser) Abandoned plot

- Whole point of the expansion if bringing back Tyr for... Nothing. Abandoned plot

- Iridikron teased as the main baddy of the expansion just to dissapear mid-expansion after an still unexplained connection with the Infinite Dragonflight. Abandoned plot

- The reasons behind the Dracthyr's stasis are not explained in game, but in the book. Abandoned plot

- Vyranoth changing sides in a 10 minute pathetic questline for reasons. Abandoned plot

- This might be a more personal one, but for my, even with the mega-dungeon, the Infinite Dragonflight and Murozond plot was mostly abandoned. Murozond was heavily teased and we just see him 3 seconds and then re-wind time. Abandoned plot

It is very clear IMO that DF story was drastically changed to fit into the WSS, and the consequences were noted in the game experience (even if the Primal Incarnates are very cool).



Good point. I completely agree

I feel something similar happenned with TWW, which was partially done before shifting to the WSS. The whole earthen coreway, arathi and nerubian plot feels unimportant, rushed and abandoned while trying to focus on Xalatath and her mcguffin. The haranir and their rootlands seems kinda abandoned as well. What do the alliance and horde armies actually do? Why are we still in dornogal?

How would you describe TWW's main plot? It's a mess.

[milkmustache]

I hope they never do "area infected by glowing bad stuff" ever again. It was barely in classic and I really like how its barely in TWW.

I hated the primalist areas.

I've been half jokingly referring to it as a power rangers effect on things. I think it extends past just area with glowy effect; they've been doing this sort of color coded thing a lot. With the dragonflights... sure, it makes sense (without bringing up my issues on the design approach to the flights in DF), but it feels the most egregious in Undermine. I know that there has always been some colors associated with some of the Cartels, but the solid single color paint on metal being swapped out for each cartel is maybe the laziest approach to this. I don't mind recoloring armor sets a la Zaralek, etc., but at least those had a lot more variation than the 11.1 color themes. Everything else in this patch knocks it out of the park for me, but this one thing sticks out in a way that bothers me a lot.

[Xilurm]

I feel something similar happenned with TWW, which was partially done before shifting to the WSS. The whole earthen coreway, arathi and nerubian plot feels unimportant, rushed and abandoned while trying to focus on Xalatath and her mcguffin. The haranir and their rootlands seems kinda abandoned as well. What do the alliance and horde armies actually do? Why are we still in dornogal?

How would you describe TWW's main plot? It's a mess.

Orweyna was with us during the Undermine campaign so the rootlands aren't abandoned at all. The coreway is just an aspect of the world. They don't need to go all the way with it. We've yet to see what the armies will do though.

As far as TWW's plot goes, it's one of the most well paced and detail packed stories of the entire game imo.

[Viridiel]

I feel something similar happenned with TWW, which was partially done before shifting to the WSS. The whole earthen coreway, arathi and nerubian plot feels unimportant, rushed and abandoned while trying to focus on Xalatath and her mcguffin. The haranir and their rootlands seems kinda abandoned as well. What do the alliance and horde armies actually do? Why are we still in dornogal?

How would you describe TWW's main plot? It's a mess.

The Nerubian plot is the only one I'm actually worried about. The others are very likely to be addressed either before the expansion ends or in future expansions (TLT for the earthen stuff, perhaps Midnight or after the saga for the Arathi), or are just vaguely bad writing but not particularly concerning (lack of development regarding the armies we brought, Anduin's story seemingly resolving very quickly and non-impactfully). I'm sure we'll have some sort of continuation of the Nerubian plot in TLT, but we really needed some development to happen in Azj-Kahet and it needed to happen a while ago. I don't always love zones being updated mid-expansion, especially if we can't access the older version, but Azj-Kahet really needed to be changed to recognise the major shift in leadership and culture following the defeat of the queen. Shouldn't there be a full-scale civil war between the Sureki and the rest of the Nerubians? I doubt Nightfall is going to address that satisfactorily.

[allegrian]

Orweyna was with us during the Undermine campaign so the rootlands aren't abandoned at all. The coreway is just an aspect of the world. They don't need to go all the way with it. We've yet to see what the armies will do though.

As far as TWW's plot goes, it's one of the most well paced and detail packed stories of the entire game imo.

TWW has very good world building and side quest writing, but the main plot itself is all over the place and has no focus. It feels like a xalatath-powered monster of the week kid show with no main goal besides just reacting to whatever xalatath does next.

- - - Updated - - -

The Nerubian plot is the only one I'm actually worried about. The others are very likely to be addressed either before the expansion ends or in future expansions (TLT for the earthen stuff, perhaps Midnight or after the saga for the Arathi), or are just vaguely bad writing but not particularly concerning (lack of development regarding the armies we brought, Anduin's story seemingly resolving very quickly and non-impactfully). I'm sure we'll have some sort of continuation of the Nerubian plot in TLT, but we really needed some development to happen in Azj-Kahet and it needed to happen a while ago. I don't always love zones being updated mid-expansion, especially if we can't access the older version, but Azj-Kahet really needed to be changed to recognise the major shift in leadership and culture following the defeat of the queen. Shouldn't there be a full-scale civil war between the Sureki and the rest of the Nerubians? I doubt Nightfall is going to address that satisfactorily.

Azj-Kahet feels completely abandoned both lore and gameplay-wise. Queen ansurek was turned into a simple xalatath pawn and did absolutely nothing besides showing up 1 second in Dalaran, which was destroyed completely by xalatath and she wouldn't have needed the nerubians at all.

The city itself felt like a failed attempt to a Suramar 2.0, where rep npc sell items to help you go thorugh the city and avoid guards... while you can just turbo fly through it. It may have been designed with no flying in mind, and it should have had a longer reputation based questline.

You can even see anubazal dying in a reputation quest while he appears on the raid, it makes no sense and feels rushed.

[Foolicious]

Queen ansurek was turned into a simple xalatath pawn and did absolutely nothing besides showing up 1 second in Dalaran, which was destroyed completely by xalatath and she wouldn't have needed the nerubians at all.

Thats the point, isn't it? Ansurek was played by xalatath. There never was a grand plan involving the nerubians. They were supposed to wage war and die. And with ansurek as a young and naive queen they did.
Xal didn't need the nerubians to destroy dalaran. She gave us a scapegoat to go after.

[Hitei]

Azj-Kahet feels completely abandoned both lore and gameplay-wise. Queen ansurek was turned into a simple xalatath pawn and did absolutely nothing besides showing up 1 second in Dalaran, which was destroyed completely by xalatath and she wouldn't have needed the nerubians at all.

The city itself felt like a failed attempt to a Suramar 2.0, where rep npc sell items to help you go thorugh the city and avoid guards... while you can just turbo fly through it. It may have been designed with no flying in mind, and it should have had a longer reputation based questline.

You can even see anubazal dying in a reputation quest while he appears on the raid, it makes no sense and feels rushed.

What? Ansurek was never not a pawn, that was the entire point of her short before the expansion even launched. Xal didn't bring in the Nerubians to destroy Dalaran, she had them attack as a distraction so she'd have time uninterrupted to siphon Dalaran's magic into the Heart. The Anub'azal quest takes place after the raid.

[shoc]

I've been half jokingly referring to it as a power rangers effect on things.

If Xal'atath is Rita Repulsa, who is Lord Zedd?

[Darkarath]

I feel something similar happenned with TWW, which was partially done before shifting to the WSS. The whole earthen coreway, arathi and nerubian plot feels unimportant, rushed and abandoned while trying to focus on Xalatath and her mcguffin. The haranir and their rootlands seems kinda abandoned as well. What do the alliance and horde armies actually do? Why are we still in dornogal?

How would you describe TWW's main plot? It's a mess.

TWW has one of the best questing experience of the game, if not the best, IMO.

It is to soon yet to know if there are some abandon plots. If we don't see much more of the Harranir in the rest of the expansion, then yes, that would be clearly an abandoned plot, but decent worldbuilding, nonetheless. Not a big loss, as the perception that I have is that most players do not particularly enjoy them.

But I feel that TWW did many things well:

- As a said multiple times, having a short and focused main questline and hundreds of secondary quests was a big success IMO.

- The Earthen were surpringsily good and well-developed. I had 0 expectations for them, and I like them quite a bit now (although they should have never been a playable race).

- The Arathi are super interesting and I just love every bit of lore about them.

- The Nerubian are pretty cool, although I expected more of them, but the expansion is not over yet and hopefully they will give us something more.

- Amazing job with the Goblins.

- I bet that they will also do an amazing job with the Ethereals in 11.2, which is not difficult, as they have always been mysterious and cool.

[Nymrohd]

I think they've done a great job world building for the most part in TWW. But the main story feels directionless largely because we are halfway through and we still have no clue what Xal'atath is trying to do. Waiting for the big reveal is almost never worth it.

And she should not have to reveal it itself. What are we all doing sitting around in Undermine after Gallywix's fall instead of searching every arcane library for any evidence of this Dark Heart and what its purpose was?

[Xilurm]

TWW has very good world building and side quest writing, but the main plot itself is all over the place and has no focus. It feels like a xalatath-powered monster of the week kid show with no main goal besides just reacting to whatever xalatath does next.

Isn't that normal though? We were told to go to Khaz Algar, and on the way Xal'atath attacks. Then most of the people are trying to figure out what this place is while a smaller party chases down Xal'atath.

That is the goal. At first it was Xal using the Nerubians so we take care of that threat and Alleria damages the Dark Heart. Then because Alleria did that, Xal gets help from the Goblins in order to fix it. This sounds more like Xal reacting to what Alleria did instead. Undermine starts out as an expedition of sorts, where we help Gazlowe and Reznik. But then we find out there's black blood involved so Orweyna comes along with us. And then we find out the Ethereals and the Dark Heart are involved so Alleria arrives too.

To me the pacing seems fine. It's not too fast where you wonder how did something happen. And they take their time to explain things, well if you read the quest text and optional dialogue that is.

[Jaggler]

I feel something similar happenned with TWW, which was partially done before shifting to the WSS. The whole earthen coreway, arathi and nerubian plot feels unimportant, rushed and abandoned while trying to focus on Xalatath and her mcguffin. The haranir and their rootlands seems kinda abandoned as well. What do the alliance and horde armies actually do? Why are we still in dornogal?

How would you describe TWW's main plot? It's a mess.

Tbh, most of what is labeled an "abandoned plot" there is just flat out wrong.

The oathstones weren't abandoned, the plot more or less ended when Vyranoth blasted the Mother Oathstone.

I really see how the final room of Aberrus is an abandoned plot. It's a void-y room in the sancotum of a guy who got corrupted by the void.

Tyr had a very close connection to the Dragon Aspects and will almost certainly play a role in TLT.

Iridikron has been set-up as a villain later on. His connection with the Infinite Dragonflight is via the Void and Xal'atath who he hands the Dark heart over.

The Dracthyr stasis has been explained in-game as well.

Vyranoth changing sides happened rather quick, yes, but that doesn't turn it into an abandoned plot.

I feel like the mega-dungeon was supposed to 1: Introduce the Dark Heart and 2: wrap up the infinite storyline because (frankly) timetravel in WoW is a mess.

The only real missing piece here is Vakthros in the Azure Span, but i feel like it's good that some places have some mystery left. Blizz has been overexplaining too much anyways. It could be something to go back to for storylines down the line during the WSS

[Xilurm]

I think they've done a great job world building for the most part in TWW. But the main story feels directionless largely because we are halfway through and we still have no clue what Xal'atath is trying to do. Waiting for the big reveal is almost never worth it.

But then having it get revealed instantly and then wait 4 years for it to get resolved is also not very good. We know Xal'atath will be around for Midnight as well. IMO that would be boring.

And in Undermine we don't even get much about her anyway. This patch would've happened even if she wasn't involved. She wasn't pulling any strings or whatever because Gallywix would've done all of this by himself anyway.

[Limayria]

But then having it get revealed instantly and then wait 4 years for it to get resolved is also not very good. We know Xal'atath will be around for Midnight as well. IMO that would be boring.

And in Undermine we don't even get much about her anyway. This patch would've happened even if she wasn't involved. She wasn't pulling any strings or whatever because Gallywix would've done all of this by himself anyway.

Why would we have gone to undermine at all if pamsy didn't drill through the wall as a cry for help??? They wouldn't have been there drilling for black blood if not for xal

[Worldshaper]

About a month to go before 11.1.7 is announced. Considering how 11.1.5 ended up being rather lacklustre by the looks of things, I can't wait until we learn what comes after.

I genuinely think that the current timeperiod we're in, from now until around May, is probably the worst in terms of WoW news for years to come. Once we hit the 11.1.7 and 11.2 cycle, things will really ramp up and then before we know it, it's time for the grand Midnight reveal at Gamescom. Followed, of course, by Alpha, Beta, Housing, Pre-patch, and launch.

Exciting days ahead! Soon...

[Nymrohd]

About a month to go before 11.1.7 is announced. Considering how 11.1.5 ended up being rather lacklustre by the looks of things, I can't wait until we learn what comes after.

I genuinely think that the current timeperiod we're in, from now until around May, is probably the worst in terms of WoW news for years to come. Once we hit the 11.1.7 and 11.2 cycle, things will really ramp up and then before we know it, it's time for the grand Midnight reveal at Gamescom. Followed, of course, by Alpha, Beta, Housing, Pre-patch, and launch.

Exciting days ahead! Soon...

personally really enjoying 11.1.5 on the PTR. I love Horrific Visions. Wish we could actually test more of it without grinding it for hours upon hours. . .

The Hallowfall thing makes no sense. It's an easy grind for some decent cosmetics though. It makes me wonder if the spider raid was originally the mid tier raid.

Dastardly duos are also a ton of fun. The ilvl cap on it and the scoring system makes me wonder what this is a test for.

[Worldshaper]

personally really enjoying 11.1.5 on the PTR. I love Horrific Visions. Wish we could actually test more of it without grinding it for hours upon hours. . .

The Hallowfall thing makes no sense. It's an easy grind for some decent cosmetics though. It makes me wonder if the spider raid was originally the mid tier raid.

Dastardly duos are also a ton of fun. The ilvl cap on it and the scoring system makes me wonder what this is a test for.

Oh, I'm sure. I mean more in terms of progressing the story, seeing new features, allied races, classes, and all that sort of stuff. WoW gameplay is less appealing to me these days, and I'm mostly interested in seeing what's around the corner, or those initial immersive sessions when a new expansion campaign is out, etc.

[Nymrohd]

Well duos are interesting because Blizzard has actually added a performance scoring system there. And that makes me wonder what that might be for

[Ersula]

If Xal'atath is Rita Repulsa, who is Lord Zedd?

Irridikron, obviously.