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

[Joshuaj]

Metzen saw the original plot, which would likely have Xal'atath corrupting the planet and the whole Titans are bad VIA Earthern storylines and said hey, this is too big to fit into one expansion and suggested the saga.

The most likely first addition of his is Undermine, it was hinted in an interview recently if it wasn't for the Saga format we wouldn't have got it. The future return to Ulduar is also likely his influence. He's just adding in now what's left of his old world map.

There is nothing to suggest Metzen conceived the incarnates whatsoever. I don't know why this is always repeated.

I kinda misread it, but Metzen still played a part in making the Incarnates how they are today.

"As we look to the future, it's no secret…we've almost exhausted the Warcraft III-era canon of what are the villains we have yet to face and what are the places we have yet to go, and we are creating new ones as we speak," Hazzikostas said. "The Primal Incarnates that are central to Dragonflight are a new creation to World of Warcraft. Having Chris available as a resource and as a partner as we start to create new things, new places, and yet have them still feel quintessentially Warcrafty is something he is uniquely suited to do"

When he was still a creative director, Blizzard went to Metzen a ton regarding new ideas and how to approach them. The Incarnates were one of those ideas.

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To be fair with Danuser, he stated in an interview (post DF I believe) that the Ethereals were fun to work with and that they tend to have their hands in the cookie jar, and that we will eventually see them from a new perspective.

So he definitively was planning to do something with them. Who knows? Maybe K'aresh was always ment to be 11.2.

Found the interview:

https://www.wowhead.com/news/highlig...danuser-331205

Been telling y'all from the get-go, Danuser, Terran, and Metzen 100% laid down the framework for the Worldsoul Saga together before he left.

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The idea that Blizzard just kicked Danuser and his ideas out without a second thought is very silly, especially when you consider they believe Dragonflight a narrative success.

[Mecheon]

Hmmm what could 11.2 be about? Why should we know more about Ethereals just in 11.1.7?

Ethereals doesn't mean K'aresh, especially with the multiple references to "K'aresh is destroyed" that 11.1.7 has

Will ethereals show up? Probably. But they don't need a K'aresh to show up

[Cheezits]

Ethereals doesn't mean K'aresh, especially with the multiple references to "K'aresh is destroyed" that 11.1.7 has

Will ethereals show up? Probably. But they don't need a K'aresh to show up

This is like the "11.1 is Goblins in the Rootlands" all over again. Why cannibalize both Rootlands and Ethereal themes by mashing them together?

[Mecheon]

This is like the "11.1 is Goblins in the Rootlands" all over again. Why cannibalize both Rootlands and Ethereal themes by mashing them together?

Because K'areh is a terrible location for 11.2. That's the long and short of it.

The expansion's been about underground, we've got three mysteries with unsolved stuff all dealing with the underground, two of which are most likely linked (what the Coreway's on top of/what the haranir are protecting), one of which is linked to the Old Gods and the content that just got revealed this sub-patch with the Horrific Visions revamp in the Black Blood. We've got so much setup pointing at us staying on Azeroth for the next patch.

Giving all that up to fart off across the galaxy to a destroyed purple ruin of a planet does not an exciting end patch make, especially just because of an end cutscene where the person in question wasn't even on K'aresh but instead looking at its ruins. Doesn't make sense with the story, doesn't make sense with the game, its the equivalent of stopping Wrath before we fight Arthas. There is no reason go to go K'aresh. Ethereals don't live on K'aresh, they left centuries ago and the 11.1.7 content even refers it as 'destroyed' and 'used to live there', not exactly great words for 'we're going there in 11.2'

Ethereals showing up on Azeroth to try to save what's left of K'aresh by sacrificing Azeroth? That's stakes and it ties into everything else. Us going to K'aresh to chase down some random ethereal? Doesn't make sense, exceedingly limited stakes because now the big threat (Azeroth dying and ending up like K'aresh) is pushed to the periphery, it absolutely would be an awful way to end the expansion that would disappoint everyone

[Cheezits]

Giving all that up to fart off across the galaxy to a destroyed purple ruin of a planet does not an exciting end patch make, especially just because of an end cutscene where the person in question wasn't even on K'aresh but instead looking at its ruins. Doesn't make sense with the story, doesn't make sense with the game, its the equivalent of stopping Wrath before we fight Arthas. There is no reason go to go K'aresh. Ethereals don't live on K'aresh, they left centuries ago and the 11.1.7 content even refers it as 'destroyed' and 'used to live there', not exactly great words for 'we're going there in 11.2'

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Eco-dome

Also, the idea that TWW will be disappointing if it isn't following the cookie cutter plot beats expected of it is crazy to me. I am fairly sure people liked the twisty moments so far (Xal losing at launch, Khadgar's alive, Xal losing again/Azir isn't with Xal, 11.1 ending tease).

[Mecheon]

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Eco-dome

Also, the idea that TWW will be disappointing if it isn't following the cookie cutter plot beats expected of it is crazy to me. I am fairly sure people liked the twisty moments so far (Xal losing at launch, Khadgar's alive, Xal losing again/Azir isn't with Xal, 11.1 ending tease).

Don't use fandom, use the better wiki

Regardless though, given we didn't see a planet wide eco-dome, I don't see it as much of a point given its been established for years they live in the Twisting Nether in general and not on K'aresh.

Stories have to be build ups. You have to set things up in such a way that there's a logical progression, and so far TWW has been pretty good on that. Your 'cookie cutter plot beats' is anyone else's 'someone actually planned this story out'

Otherwise, well, you get Warlords of Draenor or BfA where the original final boss instead gives us "Draenor is FREE" and the whole Sylvy mess

[Cheezits]

Don't use fandom, use the better wiki

Regardless though, given we didn't see a planet wide eco-dome, I don't see it as much of a point given its been established for years they live in the Twisting Nether in general and not on K'aresh.

Stories have to be build ups. You have to set things up in such a way that there's a logical progression, and so far TWW has been pretty good on that. Your 'cookie cutter plot beats' is anyone else's 'someone actually planned this story out'

Otherwise, well, you get Warlords of Draenor or BfA where the original final boss instead gives us "Draenor is FREE" and the whole Sylvy mess

Yeah no idea why that came up before Wowpedia when I searched.

I get what you're saying, but I don't think Undermine was built up at -all-. Teased (in one sentence, in one questline), yes, and it fits the theme, but the connection to the rest of the expansion is extremely tenuous to the point that it was a common argument that Undermine would only be a raid/megadungeon attached to the Rootlands. Xal went to Gallywix of all people to fix her broken artifact? A nice theory for loreheads to guess (Xal needs goblins because dark heart = dragon soul v1, goblins made dragon soul) but that is about the only way they could fit Goblins into this plot.

This is a very unconventional story. Most of those plotbeats I mentioned were not expected at all, while most WoW stories have been very predictable. They've talked about how different the saga structure is and I think Rootlands is being built up to- just, not for this $60 expansion. Another one.

I also think it's worth noting there is absolutely nothing building up to Quel'thalas as well ingame.

...and one more for the record, it seems the crazy bastards are making the "Gallywix in Tazavesh" easter egg into an actual plotpoint, so there is actually build up to go from Goblins -> Brokers (and so Karesh). They even shout out Tazavesh in, just like the Launch Undermine quest, one sentence in one quest.

[Wyrt]

This is like the "11.1 is Goblins in the Rootlands" all over again. Why cannibalize both Rootlands and Ethereal themes by mashing them together?

Rootlands sounds super boring anyway, it needs to be combined with something else.

"Here's not-night elves in the not-Emerald Dream" isn't going to draw players back.

[Mecheon]

Yeah no idea why that came up before Wowpedia when I searched.

That's search engine optimization for you, IE, what fandom spends their money on rather than a usable website that won't turn your phone into a brick of thermite

[Dracullus]

Rootlands sounds super boring anyway, it needs to be combined with something else.

"Here's not-night elves in the not-Emerald Dream" isn't going to draw players back.

Beside stuff they could invent (since it's not as limited as ED):

- root area with Harranirs,
- black blood source,
- more Beledar crystals,
- Worldcore, which supposed to be most important Titan facility,
- I guess some 'molten core' biom is needed as well.

Notice that it takes something from each Khaz Algar zone (extention of Coreway and Earthen structures, roots and black blood from Azj'Kahet, Beledar from Hallowfall).

Personally I think Worldcore was definitely part of original TWW plan, maybe with Rootlands alone for 11.1 (hence it's existence in beta files). So question remains which way Metzen extended TWW idea to full Saga - by adding steps in between (Khaz Algar -> Undermine -> Karesh -> Quel'Thalas -> Northrend -> Worldcore) or simply expanding story (KA -> Worldcore -> QT -> finale in Ulduar).

All we know is that game (datamining + stuff like last seconds of Undermine epilogue) STRONGLY suggest Ethereals. For several reasons (keeping underground theme, and not jumping around places) I would prefer Ethereal invasion on Worldcore instead of K'aresh, but as @Cheezits said - it really repeats "Goblin in Rootlands" situation when we tried to invent reasons to stay in Khaz Algar to save Undermine for Kezan/South Seas expansion; so if we see Ethereals for next patch, Occam's Razor points at K'aresh ruins where we simply retrieve Dark Heart and learn a lot about the Void.

Strongest hint against Worldcore now (beside Ethereal hints) is one piece of dialogue from world quest "Coreway Maintenance Request". When we finish it Merrix say: "It is going to take years to restore the Coreway to full working order" - which sounds more like end of Last Titan than 11.2. If Worldcore is indeed end of whole Saga, I hope at least it will be HUGE with entrances both in Northrend (Ulduar, Old Kingdom) and Khaz Algar (Coreway, Azj'Kahet).

[Hitei]

Strongest hint against Worldcore now (beside Ethereal hints) is one piece of dialogue from world quest "Coreway Maintenance Request". When we finish it Merrix say: "It is going to take years to restore the Coreway to full working order" - which sounds more like end of Last Titan than 11.2. If Worldcore is indeed end of whole Saga, I hope at least it will be HUGE with entrances both in Northrend (Ulduar, Old Kingdom) and Khaz Algar (Coreway, Azj'Kahet).

Orweyna also makes comments that hint that the roots themselves are connected to the core. The Coreway isn't the only way down, it is just the manufactured straightest road there.

It really repeats "Goblin in Rootlands" situation when we tried to invent reasons to stay in Khaz Algar to save Undermine for Kezan/South Seas expansion; so if we see Ethereals for next patch, Occam's Razor points at K'aresh ruins where we simply retrieve Dark Heart and learn a lot about the Void.

It also repeats every single expansion where this thread has become absolutely convinced that the next expansion was going to be a revamp, because look at all these updated assets, and this heritage armor quest says a jungle is gonna grow in Durotar, and the devs answered a question about world revamps saying anything other than "we're absolutely never gonna do it".

Maria Hamilton, in an interview for 11.1 (y'know, the patch with the K'aresh tease) specifically mentioned that part of the benefit of the Saga method was that they could seed very early things to be paid off later. They did nearly this exact same thing last expansion with the Dark Heart, Harbinger and Iridikron, in a nearly identical cutscene as the Undermine one.

I do not think K'aresh 11.2 is impossible, by any means (I think it has glaring issues in narrative and design, but Blizzard can also choose weird directions). But I really wish people would stop mistakenly taking any piece of evidence, even those with zero actual relation to 11.2 (read: them updating a toy in 11.1.5 with models from 11.1, devs pointing out that Ethereals are going to be relevant at some point soon) as confirmation for how it must be the next patch, and couldn't possibly be the next expansion being set up instead, despite the devs expressing on more than one occasion how these three expansions were going to be more interconnected, and how they wanted people to remember that TWW is just the first act.



What we really have at the end of the day, the actual evidence, is the Ethereal-looking seasonal tabard, and that two raid icons (ignoring that one of them was from the first tier's raid) are labelled Ethereal. That's all. Nothing else says K'aresh is 11.2 any more than it says K'aresh is 12.2 or K'aresh is a base zone in 12.0.

[Dracullus]

snip

Too many people treat this discussion as politics, "my side is always better and I ignore all arguments from other side". In my post I simply presented arguments for both, and yeah Orweyna presence is really weird if K'aresh is next, it would make more sense to replace her with someone more relevant in 11.1 and reintroduce in Last Titan - most people will forget about her anyway before 13.2.

In general this expansion is hardest to predict, since even strong hint could be something planted for 2nd and 3rd part of trilogy. Worldcore could be place when we fuck up and start Void shitshow - could be also place where we will finish everything and witness Azeroth birth. K'aresh could be place where we learn more about Void and run away from Dimensius - could be also final showdown with Void source in our universe.

Add some Metzen madness (throwing some Undermine patch cause why not) and we end up with really interesting speculation season. Compare it to Dragonflight when
we saw next part from miles away, they didn't even bother to hide it in prologue patches.

[Darkarath]

Compare it to Dragonflight when
we saw next part from miles away, they didn't even bother to hide it in prologue patches.

I don't think that this is fair at all.

In DF we suspected that we were going to an underground zone in 10.1 because it was datamined, but we didn't have a single clue about Zaralek Caverns. Since that happened, then we could infer that for 10.2 we would get the Emerald Dream because some Emerald Dream stuff was datamined for 10.2. But even with that clear precedent, there was quite a bit of discussion of where we were going in 10.2.

Now we are in TWW, we have even more evidence about what zones we are getting, yet people still don't want to see what is next.

We got the datamined Goblin stuff and we were all saying "But the Rootlands!!", "Rootlands with Goblins!!" (myself included). Yet we got the Undermine (fantastic zone BTW, I still enjoy it everytime I get there).

We have strong Ethereal evidence for 11.2. Not only that, we are getting continuous hints from developers about Ethereals. People were saying again "But the Rootlands!!". Eventually it got so obvious that Ethereals were going to be the main force of 11.2 so now they are saying "Rootlands with Ethereals!!", "Worldcore with Ethereals doing shit!!".

I simply would point out again Ion's words when 11.1 was released: "By the end of 11.1 we would know where we go next". Unless what was shown in 11.1 end cinematic is not K'aresh (which is VERY unlikely), we are getting K'aresh in 11.2.

[Lady Atia]

Being able to track healing cooldowns, defensives, potions/healthstones, interrupts, CC, etc. of your party/raid members is super important. Removing it from addons means people are going to have to use Discord even more for communicating and coordinating those things, which is the exact opposite of Blizzard's stated goal of trying to reduce reliance on 3rd party stuff.

Not to mention it's the permanent death of Aug evoker, and any future support spec, for the 12 people who care about that. Not being able to track your buff target's DPS cooldowns means you can't time your cooldowns properly.

Or, hear my out - it makes the game better because you have to communicate and think yourself instead of having a fucking addon play for you? If you don't want to use discord (oh, so hard) just use the INGAME VOICECHAT that exists since I think Sepulcher of the First Ones (you know, the raid with the awesome among us mechanic that got fucked by that shitty weakaura instead of being solved via communications like it was supposed to be, which was the fun part about that encounter).

Also Aug really needs a rework for raid, make it so that it targets only one group and remove the spreadsheet playstyle, makes balancing a lot easier and bridges the gap between actual good augs and most other aug players out there. Just make presc only smart targeting within your group instead of allowing you to target specific players, with ebon might being locked to your group and it's fine, simply because you don't want to hold your Ebon Might window anyways.

And again, for good players it won't make that much of a difference, and for bad ones - knowing that everyone just used their kick on the same target doesn't help you to survive the big aoe that now kills everyone, it only helps with blaming others. People will just go back to "you kick condom, I kick green and she kicks star" or "interrupt if an enemy targets YOU".

[Wyrt]

In what fucking world is seeing other players' cooldowns addons playing the game for you? The absolute complete lunacy.

[Lady Atia]

In what fucking world is seeing other players' cooldowns addons playing the game for you? The absolute complete lunacy.

It isn't as much a problem in pve (besides potential toxicity) but much more in rated pvp.

Fun fact, everyone mocked them for saying things like "we don't like spell customizations because it can be confusing in pvp" but honestly, that point (sadly) becomes more valid if they actually remove the shitty addon support there.

[Hitei]

I don't think that this is fair at all.

In DF we suspected that we were going to an underground zone in 10.1 because it was datamined, but we didn't have a single clue about Zaralek Caverns.

You what?

In 10.0 we had a bunch of blocked off cave entrances. We had an Ohn'arahn quest in the ruins of Deathwing's research outpost that concluded in a whispering relic that talked about "below". The 10.0.7's Forbidden Reach questline openly discusses Aberrus and it being located underground and that the Primalists want to go there and the entire goal of going there is to get the (shadow)flame, setting up 10.2's plotline of fire vs ED as well.

[Dvalin]

Some great discussion going on here, with people actually referencing interviews, in-game dialogues, etc. I also think most of us are agreeing that K'aresh (or whatever Azir was looking at) as well as Ethereals are currently the best contenders for 11.2. And that the 'Rootlands' as well as other Coreway-related areas could very well be reserved for later.

Also, I'm glad I'm not the only one who isn't all 'Danuser=bad', and how it seems like he, Metzen and others basically laid out the framework for the future together. We'll never 100% know their inner workings.

[Darkarath]

You what?

In 10.0 we had a bunch of blocked off cave entrances. We had an Ohn'arahn quest in the ruins of Deathwing's research outpost that concluded in a whispering relic that talked about "below". The 10.0.7's Forbidden Reach questline openly discusses Aberrus and it being located underground and that the Primalists want to go there and the entire goal of going there is to get the (shadow)flame, setting up 10.2.

Again, we knew that we were going underground. But we didn't know that we were going to Zaralek Caverns. We could have gone to Uldorus, an underground Titan facility, and everyone would have said: "Makes sense".

Although it is fair to say that we knew that 10.1 was going to be related to the Black Dragonflight and to the Dracthyr up to some point. No one expected a Dracthyr end boss, though.

[Hitei]

Again, we knew that we were going underground. But we didn't know that we were going to Zaralek Caverns. We could have gone to Uldorus, an underground Titan facility, and everyone would have said: "Makes sense".

Although it is fair to say that we knew that 10.1 was going to be related to the Black Dragonflight and to the Dracthyr up to some point. No one expected a Dracthyr end boss, though.

The name of the zone is pretty irrelevant. The point is that "we just knew because of datamining, there wasn't a single clue in-game" is objectively wrong. There were significant hints in both the base 10.0 launch version of the game and front and center set-up in 10.0.7 of "the bad guys are going to this place and we need to follow them" nearly identical to ZM's setup in Korthia.

I find it especially weird you of all people would point to the "underground" datamining in specific, when that was a minor mention in early 10.0 datamining builds. Literally what "Rootlands" as a named concept exists as.