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

[Nymrohd]

Oh damn, Neighborhood activities . . .
yay/s

Still, expected we'd see professions. I do think I am missing a few at max level across all expacs so I guess I have some time to work on that. And damn my guild bank is already full with old expansion materials, I need more space. SO many expansions by now!

[Joshuaj]

So it WAS the "How do we get Decor/How do professions fit in" article that came next...interesting. Seems Exterior stuff might come after.

All in all, honestly really happy reading this article. Honestly cool you can make decor from any expac, and get rewards after facing specific bosses and whatnot. The fact we can make a Brill coffin definitely gets me excited. Also, the mentions of us placing things in our lawn? Very unique, and it seems like our lawns will be massive lol.

This DOES make me wonder though, will we be able to make our house look any specific way in terms of exterior? Like, can we make a Human and High Elf mix house? Can we make a Goblin house?

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Also, the image with the head of Onyxia being place on the wall is also cool, as it showcases a darker lit house with Orc-esc fire pits. Pretty cool, pretty cool.

[Khaza-R]

I mean, even while WoD was happening people suspected that some of the production that would normally go into the current expansion was shifted into the next expansion, and that suspicion turned out to be completely true.

People thought that might be what they were doing with Dragonflight, but that wasn't true....but that feeling is even stronger now in TWW. It's like "Oh Dragonflight wasn't a filler expansion, this is a filler expansion" Time Rifts & a Mega Dungeon does not compare to a glorified worldquest that's still broken & recycled content from BFA.

Well first, I doubt the lack of megadungeon was influenced by them transitioning the narrative to be a part of 3 part saga.

And second, you have no idea if this supposed extra work you're claiming was robbed from 11.1.5 was put into Midnight or 11.2 or anywhere for that matter. Claiming this expansion is filler, when you have no idea what, if anything, was even changed is wild even for this forum.

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So it WAS the "How do we get Decor/How do professions fit in" article that came next...interesting. Seems Exterior stuff might come after.

All in all, honestly really happy reading this article. Honestly cool you can make decor from any expac, and get rewards after facing specific bosses and whatnot. The fact we can make a Brill coffin definitely gets me excited. Also, the mentions of us placing things in our lawn? Very unique, and it seems like our lawns will be massive lol.

This DOES make me wonder though, will we be able to make our house look any specific way in terms of exterior? Like, can we make a Human and High Elf mix house? Can we make a Goblin house?

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Also, the image with the head of Onyxia being place on the wall is also cool, as it showcases a darker lit house with Orc-esc fire pits. Pretty cool, pretty cool.

Making old expansion professions relevant again was unexpected but very cool.

[Joshuaj]

Well first, I doubt the lack of megadungeon was influenced by them transitioning the narrative to be a part of 3 part saga.

And second, you have no idea if this supposed extra work you're claiming was robbed from 11.1.5 was put into Midnight or 11.2 or anywhere for that matter. Claiming this expansion is filler, when you have no idea what, if anything, was even changed is wild even for this forum.

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Making old expansion professions relevant again was unexpected but very cool.

Making us do old expansion professions, and making us get old expansion rep up is peak tbh. Also, us having to buy things from specific vendors across Azeroth and potentially other places? Yes please!

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Would be like how we get furniture and decor IRL. Gotta explore, ya know?

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Everything seems fine, I guess I am a bit disappointed we didn't get Carpentry but at least I guess having Housing Furnishing being relevant for every profession is good and will be interesting to see on the Auction House. (Also a very good utilization of each expansions Crafting category being used!)

Still with the nature of this being 1 chair = 1 chair, I do wonder how the Monetization for this will go cause buying a bunch of $40 bundles but maybe they keep them Unique. Will be interesting to see how that goes later down the line. Also how gold sinky will the system be, its going to be interesting to see how much a total furnishing of a house can go with gold.

If nothing else it seems good? Obviously, I am a bit surprised they want a Unique thing but ultimately if they feel that its better and sometimes there are going to be furnishing that should be unique even if someone would want to have Onyxia heads all over their house for some reason. I guess its' just interesting they settled that Onyxia heads is where the limit goes.

[Dracullus]

Looks like they have special button "release housing post when people grab pitchforks".

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Looks like they have special button "release housing post when people grab pitchforks".

But I wanted the Exterior post not this, like this isn't that interesting.

[Dracullus]

Relatively big news is that there won't be legacy dungeons/raids farming for housing stuff.

but the thought of someone farming a mount for years across multiple characters every week, finally earning it, and then being told “welp, time to go back and grind for the couch” is rough. We’d like to avoid this.

[Khaza-R]

Relatively big news is that there won't be legacy dungeons/raids farming for housing stuff.

Also retroactivley adding them to meta achievements was a nice touch.

Farewell to Arms was one the biggest PIA I've completed in this game. Nice to be thrown a little extra reward for doing it.

[Worldshaper]

I like everything in that blog post (except maybe the neighbourhood activities tease, I don't want forced social gameplay).

The idea of having old expansions' content, and even old profession reagents, matter is exciting. Makes me want to start completing any old content I might have abandoned and skill up all proffs on my alts.

Probably a good idea to start with the ones whose themes you enjoy the most.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

The social gameplay in neighbourhoods should be emergent rather than something invoked by the Team. No one wants gameplay systems blaring while they're relaxing in a RP Neighbourhood/Club Social Setting/Friend Neighbourhood Chilling.

Definitely worrying that they might intend to maybe do the "INVASION IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD" shtick or other things that take away from the systems purpose. Hopefully they're not too coked up on iterative design that they drag that stuff from Garrisons into Neighbourhoods just because ITERATION.

[Dracullus]

I like everything in that blog post (except maybe the neighbourhood activities tease, I don't want forced social gameplay).

The idea of having old expansions' content, and even old profession reagents, matter is exciting. Makes me want to start completing any old content I might have abandoned and skill up all proffs on my alts.

Probably a good idea to start with the ones whose themes you enjoy the most.

I have all legacy professions maxed just as completionist. Guess it's my time to shine and mass buy old reagents while they are cheap xD.

[Darkarath]

The Housing blog is pretty good. I am going to spend so much time collecting everything... I love it!

Neighbourhood activities could be very nice if they are just relaxing activities with no difficulty attached. Happy that they are trying, though.

I'm not very convinced about needing to have 4 chairs of the same kind if I want to put 4 in my dining room. Since decorations will come literary from anywhere, I believe that it could become bothersome to farm them, but we'll see.

[Sondrelk]

Everything seems fine, I guess I am a bit disappointed we didn't get Carpentry but at least I guess having Housing Furnishing being relevant for every profession is good and will be interesting to see on the Auction House. (Also a very good utilization of each expansions Crafting category being used!)

Still with the nature of this being 1 chair = 1 chair, I do wonder how the Monetization for this will go cause buying a bunch of $40 bundles but maybe they keep them Unique. Will be interesting to see how that goes later down the line. Also how gold sinky will the system be, its going to be interesting to see how much a total furnishing of a house can go with gold.

If nothing else it seems good? Obviously, I am a bit surprised they want a Unique thing but ultimately if they feel that its better and sometimes there are going to be furnishing that should be unique even if someone would want to have Onyxia heads all over their house for some reason. I guess its' just interesting they settled that Onyxia heads is where the limit goes.

I would imagine many items come in stacks. So four chairs and two tables. Or 6 candles. With more unique items being single drop.

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The Housing blog is pretty good. I am going to spend so much time collecting everything... I love it!

Neighbourhood activities could be very nice if they are just relaxing activities with no difficulty attached. Happy that they are trying, though.

I'm not very convinced about needing to have 4 chairs of the same kind if I want to put 4 in my dining room. Since decorations will come literary from anywhere, I believe that it could become bothersome to farm them, but we'll see.

If I were to guess, I would say that only some specific furniture will be limited. Can't imagine that regular Hillsbrad Table #2 will have much of a limitation beyond getting one of it. Whereas something like Kil'jaeden mission table from the 7.2 trailer will be something you need to farm if you want more than one. Just as an example.

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The social gameplay in neighbourhoods should be emergent rather than something invoked by the Team. No one wants gameplay systems blaring while they're relaxing in a RP Neighbourhood/Club Social Setting/Friend Neighbourhood Chilling.

Definitely worrying that they might intend to maybe do the "INVASION IN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD" shtick or other things that take away from the systems purpose. Hopefully they're not too coked up on iterative design that they drag that stuff from Garrisons into Neighbourhoods just because ITERATION.

Definitely a potential stumbling block. But I will keep an open mind. Reoccuring events could absolutely be something to liven up the neighborhood if implemented correctly. Though admittedly mostly if it's small stuff like a trade cart setting up shop, or a parade.

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But I wanted the Exterior post not this, like this isn't that interesting.

For me it is the most exciting news. My fear was exaclty the scenario they mentioned. That you would just be given all the furniture on the vendor, or worse, outright. And that gaining them would just be a matter of waiting for the next patch to come out.
This version of it is what I have been championing for ages. Where, like transmog, it saturates the entire game, even retroactively, with content.

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Maybe a reach. But the mention of the items being unique per warband, rather than unique per character does make me wonder whether it will be possible to have a neighborhood of alts, and to have all of them be visible simultaneously. Wouldnt really make sense to me to have that limitation otherwise.

[Hitei]

Maybe a reach. But the mention of the items being unique per warband, rather than unique per character does make me wonder whether it will be possible to have a neighborhood of alts, and to have all of them be visible simultaneously. Wouldnt really make sense to me to have that limitation otherwise.

It's alluded to previously that you get one Horde plot and one Alliance plot.

Your houses are also shared amongst your Warband with your different characters being able to come and go as you see fit (so your Orc character can hang out in your Alliance house without a problem). Housing rewards are also shared across your Warband, so you’ll be able to use your décor collection no matter which character earns it.

Furthermore, it’s not just Warbands that cross factional lines but friendships as well, so you’ll be able to live in or visit your friends’ or guildmates’ houses and their neighborhoods with minimal restrictions regarding faction. For example, while it’s not possible for your Human character to buy a house in the Horde zone, your Troll character in the same Warband can, and then your Human can use it as if it were their own.

Hence the follow-up example in the unique per warband thing:

If you have four fountains and place three of them on the lawn of your Alliance house, your Horde house will have only one available to place.

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If I were to guess, I would say that only some specific furniture will be limited. Can't imagine that regular Hillsbrad Table #2 will have much of a limitation beyond getting one of it. Whereas something like Kil'jaeden mission table from the 7.2 trailer will be something you need to farm if you want more than one. Just as an example.

It's implied to be (sort of) the opposite. The point is that they are quantity limited. It creates demand. So Hillsbrad table #2 you can place a hundred of, but you will need to buy a hundred off the vendor, or floating books, if you want a whole huge library with dozens, you will need to buy dozens of them off the AH or craft them with an Enchanter. That keeps every recipe from being a "everyone wants exactly 1 forever" because maybe five years from now you change a room and want two more coffins, so then you go buy them, they're continually in demand for crafters which means old world mats are also.

But then big set pieces you can only place one of, so there's no incentive to farm a boss over and over for multiple copies of their fancy singular thing.

[Sondrelk]

It's alluded to previously that you get one Horde plot and one Alliance plot.



Hence the follow-up example in the unique per warband thing:



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It's (sort of) the opposite. The point is that they are quantity limited. It creates demand. So Hillsbrad table #2 you can place a hundred of, but you will need to buy a hundred off the vendor, or floating books, if you want a whole huge library with dozens, you will need to buy dozens of them off the AH or craft them with an Enchanter. That keeps every recipe from being a "everyone wants exactly 1 forever" because maybe five years from now you change a room and want two more coffins, so then you go buy them, they're continually in demand for crafters which means old world mats are also.

But then big set pieces you can only place one of, so there's no incentive to farm a boss over and over for multiple copies of their fancy singular thing.

Ahh, that's a shame. But I suppose it makes sense for the initial rollout.

[Hitei]

Ahh, that's a shame. But I suppose it makes sense for the initial rollout.

I think it's the superior approach. It creates a longer term gameplay loop than just "buy a thing once" and increases the value in old world profession leveling and mat farming.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

By the way, I doubt we're able to notice the impact Metzen has had on scrapped/changed content, as he took office 10 months into the development of tWW. Which is earlier than pre-production. It wouldn't have been too hard to change direction a bit at that stage of development.

*sigh* How many times do we have to break this down? Metzen never had full authorial control over the franchise. He was frustrated during WC3's and early WoW's development that the devs didn't "get" the Forsaken faction storyline he was setting up. He was frustrated by the addition of Blood Elves to the Horde because the higher ups wanted to appeal to Asians who couldn't get their girlfriends to play Horde and thus fix the lopsided Asian faction ratio. Metzen didn't want playable Death Knights but got vetoed because the other devs thought it would be cooler. The original idea that the devs came up with for WoD was that Garrosh would gather up the C-tier races of Troggs and Kobolds and form a Mongrel Horde. We got lucky that the devs got convinced to instead do powermetal orcs. And then Metzen didn't get to make the Starcraft 2 he envisioned ("Gone with the Wind in space") because he wasn't an almighty JRPG director. He is in a heavily democratic American game company where the game is made by committee, and the other devs didn't want a JRPG-esque story experience. And then when Metzen came back, he said he was astounded by how much Blizzard had changed (read: powermetal and WAR in Warcraft is not in vogue anymore. We now live in the age of Friendship is Magic and tumblr scalie rainbow dragons). Also, while Metzen was away, Christie Golden joined the WoW team and was far and away the best writer they actually had, having actually published many books and short stories, and yet she couldn't salvage WoW's storytelling because ultimately the game is designed by committee, and the game also fundamentally does not present a good story experience with the zoomed out camera, paragraphs of quest text, flaccid player character, etc. Metzen coming back is not going to save WoW's storytelling.

Ah, we're back to the old "expansions I don't like are clearly filler content"

Never change MMO-C

A major issue I think is that WoW's content is too intertwined in a single story that doesn't update often enough. If you don't like the main story or idea of the expac then it is pretty hard to like the expac at all. Don't like neon green lava and demons? Well fuck you that's what you get in the Legion expac for two years straight. Whereas with Final Fantasy XIV, the expac is seperated into a few different isolated storylines and themes. If you don't like how the main story of Shadowbringers is about fighting Organization XIII rejects from Kingdom Hearts and talking about peace and friendship, that's okay because there are two other storylines about grounded geopolitical conflict and the war, aka the stuff you loved about earlier FF14. If you don't like the current main story about taco princess and "PEACE!", well at least you got this other WWE story. Another alternative is to have a faster release schedule than one box release every 2 years followed by two patches you can finish over a weekend. Classic Final Fantasy and the current Trails series released a box every year, and then for other live service games GW2 during the 2016 through 2019 and the current Genshin Impact were releasing new zones every 2 to 3 months. If you don't like the current thing well that's okay because the next thing is right around the corner. You're not waiting over two years to get out of the hell of the thing you currently disilike.

[Sondrelk]

I think it's the superior approach. It creates a longer term gameplay loop than just "buy a thing once" and increases the value in old world profession leveling and mat farming.

Meant the part about just one Alliance and one Horde plot per account.

The stuff about furniture I am one hundred percent down with. Having five Gallywix statues should be something special.

[JMitchy96]

Snip

There's still a chance we could get Carpentry (or similar profession by a different name). As others have pointed out, they still haven't told us anything about the exteriors of houses. Carpentry could be a profession that primarily focuses on and specialises in that (alongside interior stuff, too - but other professions will also have access to stuff for interiors as well).

They could even be saving it to be announced alongside the Midnight reveal! Would definitely add to the hype of what's already being anticipated as WoW's greatest expansion of all time (potentially)!