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

[Nymrohd]

I don't know that portals require specific locational understanding. Sargeras may simply have been attuning to Azeroth's magical signature, which he already would have understood from previous contact with the world during the war of the ancients. Documenting planar coordinates requires you to understand the location you're in. If the Legion showed up 10,000 years ago and above was a sky with zero recognizable stars, because who knows how the Great Dark even works, if Azeroth is a nearby constituent or the equivalent of in a different galaxy.

The legion doesn't traditionally operate by physically crossing the distance to a location, they magically connect to the region and invade. As above, that's probably based on some sort of magic-based recognition rather than the exact coordinates (this wouldn't even work because planets are orbiting around stars and stars themselves aren't stationary, so targeting the exact location of Northrend 10,000 years before would just put you in open space.

See you are missing one half of the magic. Guess you don't play D&D (Scry and Die!). Sargeras used Scry and then Teleport. He had the magic means to Scry (ie. to extend his sensory perception) to Azeroth and with enough persistence to be able to surveil the planet over years until someone like Aegwynn showed up. Heck the Legion probably does extensive magical reconnaissance before invading planets.. Teleportation may require more exact data or not but that becomes irrelevant given that we know he can use divination to reach Azeroth. And yes, maybe they beacon on the planet's ley line signature or something but what is important is, that still means they know how to reach the planet. The argument was on why they cannot reach it. Huth says its location is obscured, I am saying the issue is distance.

As for Dreadlords, perhaps they have a very strong portal network of their own separate to that we saw on Argus. Or maybe they know how to move through other means; the Legion uses the Nether but perhaps the Dreadlords know how to travel through the Veil or the Void and that might be a more effective way to do so.

[Kyriani]

I have to wonder if Blizzard won't subvert our expectations in some way when it comes to the void. What I mean is, maybe things aren't so cut and dry with the Void Lords. The Old Gods may not be what we think they are. Maybe they were agents of the Void Lords that went rogue, maybe it was only some Void Lords that sent them while others opposed, there's a veritable cornucopia of possibilities. I'm not trying to imply that Void Lords are benevolent beings, but they might not all be as malevolent as we've been led to believe. Xal'atath is a great example of what I am trying to get at here. She was... interesting... in her own way, definitely not a good guy, but not a super "kill them all! I r teh evuls!" kind of bad guy either. There could be far more to the Void Lords than we are currently privy to.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Afaik there's nothing to suggest it was pulled into the Void (especially since the Ethereals are able to still easily access it) and the Legion wasn't involved so there's not much reason for it to have somehow been shifted into the Twisting Nether.

Fair enough; you're right that the evidence would generally suggest it's still in the Great Dark. I wouldn't be too surprised if it was in a state similar to Telogrus, however. Telogrus was teetering between the Great Dark and the Void, so I figure that K'aresh may be somewhere between the two as well.

[Nymrohd]

I have to wonder if Blizzard won't subvert our expectations in some way when it comes to the void. What I mean is, maybe things aren't so cut and dry with the Void Lords. The Old Gods may not be what we think they are. Maybe they were agents of the Void Lords that went rogue, maybe it was only some Void Lords that sent them while others opposed, there's a veritable cornucopia of possibilities. I'm not trying to imply that Void Lords are benevolent beings, but they might not all be as malevolent as we've been led to believe. Xal'atath is a great example of what I am trying to get at here. She was... interesting... in her own way, definitely not a good guy, but not a super "kill them all! I r teh evuls!" kind of bad guy either. There could be far more to the Void Lords than we are currently privy to.

Eh, Blizzard has played with this postmodernist shit so much that it would subvert my expectations if they made the Void unequivocally evil, not if they tried to "shades of grey it

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Fair enough; you're right that the evidence would generally suggest it's still in the Great Dark. I wouldn't be too surprised if it was in a state similar to Telogrus, however. Telogrus was teetering between the Great Dark and the Void, so I figure that K'aresh may be somewhere between the two as well.

I think it is very clear that in Warcraft the various dimensions can end up bleeding into each other fairly often. It could even tie into a greater narrative of the world originally being a singular dimension that was "ordered" by the First ones into an unnatural state so the moment the artificial borders fail, things start bleeding into each other.

[Catastrophy349]

Blizzard is setting up the Titan/Void expansion next with Iridikron escaping through the void portal and mentioning "finding a way to get the Titans to show up". Sargeras' sword will finally be relevant!

[Santandame]

Uhuh...

Don't expect it to be the setting of a whole expansion. Just letting y'all know ahead of time.

The ''domain of order'' which you keep going on about, which will in your eyes definitely be the theme of an upcoming expansion, next or following. But K'aresh definitely wont be in your eyes? Lol.

You can't make this up sometimes.

[Foolicious]

I'm just wondering: if the plan is to turn Azzy into a Dark Titan, what on earth are they going to do to corrupt her in such a short amount of time? Because last I checked, she seems pretty uncorrupted - scarred and hemorrhaged from a giant sword almost bleeding her dry, but uncorrupted none the less. I feel like Magni would have been able to sense if something was wrong with her energy as she played with it in BFA.

So going by that, and it seeming like she may wake up soon (the Waking Shore was waking up due to Azeroths soul stirring/being revitalized), what's the plan? Are they going to use whatever Iri got from Galakkrond? Is Xal going to usurp her in conjunction with Iri's disc (assuming it's the insatiable hunger of the void, will that destroy Azzy if injected directly?)?

Edit: late night thoughts, just wanted to get it posted b4 bed

I don't know if the real goal is to turn her into a dark titan immediately. The primary goal seems to get rid of the titans first. So Iridikron starts to use galakronds essence to corrupt the world soul which triggers all the titan machinery that is supposed to prevent that. Since most of it is broken or destroyed by now something like Algalon happens; a signal to the titans directly that all systems have failed so they have to intervene directly.
Iridikron somehow gets rid of the titans as soon as they arrive and has now all the time in the world to slowly corrupt azeroth.

[huth]

See you are missing one half of the magic. Guess you don't play D&D (Scry and Die!). Sargeras used Scry and then Teleport.

No, he didn't. He explicitly did not come himself, he sent an avatar. We ultimately ended up destroying it. Sargeras has at no time ever been able to fully manifest on Azeroth until Illidan opened the giant portal after the Tomb. He also sent that avatar for the express purpose of securing a way to open a portal on Azeroth eventually. If the Legion knew how to get to Azeroth, why didn't they just dump a bunch of their ships in orbit and invade from there? The issue can't simply be distance. We also know that the Titans went to Azeroth without Sargeras and then met up with him afterwards, meaning the distance cannot be insurmountable to their kind.

Your claim does not track with the reality of what we observe.

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Because K'aresh was destroyed by Dimensius, who is a manifested "Void Lord", so I imagine he either consumed literally every single piece of the planet, or that the planet itself is left in small fragments, and we'll likely explore said fragments in a patch or so. I may end up being wrong, but I wouldn't expect much, cause people (myself included) thought that Argus would be it's own expac.

And considering we just had SL, yes, I imagine that a "Domain of Order" expac is gonna occur.

We already had an entire expansion set on small fragments of a world. That is not an argument against it. As i said before, a 30km thick plate the size of the US is a small fragment. Planets are much larger than you seem to understand.

[Nymrohd]

No, he didn't. He explicitly did not come himself, he sent an avatar. We ultimately ended up destroying it. Sargeras has at no time ever been able to fully manifest on Azeroth until Illidan opened the giant portal after the Tomb. He also sent that avatar for the express purpose of securing a way to open a portal on Azeroth eventually. If the Legion knew how to get to Azeroth, why didn't they just dump a bunch of their ships in orbit and invade from there? The issue can't simply be distance. We also know that the Titans went to Azeroth without Sargeras and then met up with him afterwards, meaning the distance cannot be insurmountable to their kind.

Again with the selective quoting.
I answered to you

I literally gave you examples that you decided to cut out of your quote though? Sargeras was scrying on Azeroth, knew of Aegwynn, used the Scepter and opened a portal to send an Avatar to Northrend (not to Aegwynn, to Northrend) with no one on the other side helping. Kathra'natir somehow got on Azeroth by himself.

and you choose a different post to Hitei when I am playing on a D&D paradigm to make your argument instead.

And I do not understand why you struggle with the idea that the greater the distance, the harder it would be to open a portal. It goes along with the idea that the greater the mass transferred or the greater the duration of the portal the harder it is; every variable of the spell you scale up increases the power needed to power it.

As for how the Titans traveled from Azeroth to Nihilath to meet Sargeras, why are we assuming those two events happened anywhere close? We do not have a clear timeline there. From the things we do know, Sargeras corrupted the Eredar about 13k years ago. The dracthyr were created 20k years ago. Nothing further back has a clear date. It is entirely possible that between the formation of Azeroth and the Pantheon meeting with Sargeras at Nihilath, thousands of years could have passed.

I do think the Titans have a way to communicate even across the cosmos; when Sargeras destroyed Telorgus (assuming it was Telorgus) he did contact the rest of the Pantheon (and the chronicle says he did so IMMEDIATELY). Perhaps they have the ability to project themselves to the Seat of the Pantheon somehow. What is the Seat of the Pantheon anyway? I assumed it was part of the Great Dark, just a location in space, but Xal'atath calls it a "realm". Maybe the Seat is actually in Order or even in Zereth Ordos.

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Because K'aresh was destroyed by Dimensius, who is a manifested "Void Lord", so I imagine he either consumed literally every single piece of the planet, or that the planet itself is left in small fragments, and we'll likely explore said fragments in a patch or so. I may end up being wrong, but I wouldn't expect much, cause people (myself included) thought that Argus would be it's own expac.

And considering we just had SL, yes, I imagine that a "Domain of Order" expac is gonna occur.

The Ethereals specifically have created extensive technology that allows them to stabilize an environment in pieces of land floating in space with little atmosphere and completely irradiated by the Nether in the Ecodomes. Why do you think they have that technology? Doubt they came up with it to colonize Outlands. They probably made it so they could sustain communities back home on K'aresh.

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Iridikron somehow gets rid of the titans as soon as they arrive and has now all the time in the world to slowly corrupt azeroth.

I don't think Iridikron cares to corrupt Azeroth. The way the character was presented I think his goal is simply to deal damage to the Titans for some slight. Heck maybe they humanize him and we find out later that he and his partner had a clutch of eggs that were stillborn because of Tyr's intervention or something. He has a reason to loathe the Titans and I hope it is a good reason instead of just blind zealotry.

If he does have a goal then that goal has to do with the Pantheon more than with Azeroth given that they are his target.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'm pretty sure that portal to Northrend which is already on Azeroth didn't require that much power. Much like sending an avatar of yourself to Azeroth requires WAAAY less then fully manifesting himself near Azeroth. Nor is Aegywwn teleporting to Northrend via the Scepter.

I don't think Iridikron cares to corrupt Azeroth. The way the character was presented I think his goal is simply to deal damage to the Titans for some slight. Heck maybe they humanize him and we find out later that he and his partner had a clutch of eggs that were stillborn because of Tyr's intervention or something. He has a reason to loathe the Titans and I hope it is a good reason instead of just blind zealotry.

If he does have a goal then that goal has to do with the Pantheon more than with Azeroth given that they are his target.

I believe thats more Vyranoth angle more then anything. I think Iridakron is probably the least sensible of his Incarnate siblings(The book will have to show that.....again offscreen, might change my mind about it). I think its important to note that these Primalists are still not gonna be shown in a good light, except maybe whatever the Titan Keepers want to do that might be slightly suss.

[Xilurm]

I just did the Blue Dragonflight questline from last patch. Such a nice questline. Felt like there was a lot of character progress made for the entire flight.

But, why would you give me a letter from Kirygosa that's meant for Kalecgos and not let me deliver it to him?

And, why would you give me this mog...



And not:

1: Give me legs to go with it
2: Let me hide the legs slot in transmog so I don't have to choose some shitty pants that don't really go well with it.

[Nymrohd]

And not:

1: Give me legs to go with it
2: Let me hide the legs slot in transmog so I don't have to choose some shitty pants that don't really go well with it.

The tabard/cloak works great with the blue version of the campaign armor set. Try them together.

[Xilurm]

The tabard/cloak works great with the blue version of the campaign armor set. Try them together.

Oh you mean the 10.1 campaign mog. I see. Now that I look at it it seems like it was made like this on purpose, because the two sets complement each other. Same goes for the other colours too.

I haven't started that campaign yet, I wanted to finish all other campaigns first before moving on to the Forbidden Reach and eventually to the Zaralek Caverns. Of course it was only later that I realized the blue dragonflight campaign was added like a month ago.

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Speaking of which though, do the Aspects get their powers back by activating the mother oathstone or no? The questline ended kinda abruptly I feel. Alexstrasza sent me into the vault to kill Raszageth and then it just stopped. I get that there's more pressing matters but still.

[Nymrohd]

Oh you mean the 10.1 campaign mog. I see. Now that I look at it it seems like it was made like this on purpose, because the two sets complement each other. Same goes for the other colours too.

I haven't started that campaign yet, I wanted to finish all other campaigns first before moving on to the Forbidden Reach and eventually to the Zaralek Caverns. Of course it was only later that I realized the blue dragonflight campaign was added like a month ago.

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Speaking of which though, do the Aspects get their powers back by activating the mother oathstone or no? The questline ended kinda abruptly I feel. Alexstrasza sent me into the vault to kill Raszageth and then it just stopped. I get that there's more pressing matters but still.

Not yet. They probably need Tyr to figure out the Oathstone.

[Xilurm]

Not yet. They probably need Tyr to figure out the Oathstone.

If the expansion ends and they go with "You know what, we don't need our powers to guide/protect/be cool/special etc." I'm gonna be really annoyed.

[Murlocos]

Maybe the real power Tyr gave us was to trust in our friends

[huth]

As for how the Titans traveled from Azeroth to Nihilath to meet Sargeras, why are we assuming those two events happened anywhere close? We do not have a clear timeline there. From the things we do know, Sargeras corrupted the Eredar about 13k years ago. The dracthyr were created 20k years ago. Nothing further back has a clear date. It is entirely possible that between the formation of Azeroth and the Pantheon meeting with Sargeras at Nihilath, thousands of years could have passed.

Last i looked, the Draenei had been on the run for 25k years. Meanwhile, that would mean the Dracthyr had been sealed for 10,000 years already by the time the Dragons left the isles and Neltharion corrupted for just as long.

Meanwhile, the ordering of Azeroth cannot have been that long before Argus, and that was very early in the Legion's timeline.


Also, the distance would be immaterial anyway; the Legion does its portals through the Nether, which does not have a normal concept of distance to begin with. The enormous energy needed for the portal in the War of the Ancients stemmed from the fact that it was meant to let Sargeras through, not from how far he was meant to travel. Energy use is dependent on size, not distance.

Getting back to the Avatar, the Scepter was used to transfer a piece of Sargeras' soul, not his body. What physical form it had was manifested by Sargeras on location. There were also explicitly demons already present where he traveled to.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Last i looked, the Draenei had been on the run for 25k years.

I don't mean to be a pedant, but that's a common misconception. Eredar society emerged 25k years ago, the Draenei have been fleeing the Legion for 13k years.

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If the expansion ends and they go with "You know what, we don't need our powers to guide/protect/be cool/special etc." I'm gonna be really annoyed.

Sounds quite in-character for the tone of the expansion and the sort of thing that the writing staff would mistakenly think is subversive. While I see the value in that message, it's hardly novel, and it would definitely not add much of note to an expansion that has been entirely in that spirit from the beginning.

I don't see why the Alliance needs an edge. People are happy to play the "bland" faction. So many people make that choice in every game I know, playing the obvious heroes, the paladins etc. You have an option for an edgier faction, go play that. People did not pick to play Horde because it is edgier (if they had, the faction would have been the more populous from the start and half the Horde players would not be elves). You do not need the Alliance to be edgy to produce a better narrative, you just need stakes (and you absolutely can have stakes vs a third party threat). Sorry but you are just projecting your own desires on the playerbase. There is no desperate need for anything like that. There is a need for more people to have a chance in the front than the Night Elves and the same five humans but that's it.

Perhaps "edgy" is the wrong word; "bellicose" is the keyword insofar as my central sentiment goes. The Alliance is remarkably passive, and it's very much to the detriment of the faction. While I certainly appreciate a straight-edged, good-aligned faction, it's important to maintain nuance and proactivity for a faction to remain interesting. The Alliance's role in the story has thus far been mainly regulated to reaction: they're always slated to win, yet never to do anything on their own terms. Although I do not care whether or not the Alliance wins in its next engagement, I definitely would prefer for it to be proactive. Similarly, the Alliance will never be valuable as heroes if they never face internal conflict. The fact is that a sequence of solely-external threats is unlikely to allow the faction to develop in a healthy way, because it solely vindicates and never challenges the principles on which the faction is founded. Internal conflict in the Alliance could highlight its virtues rather than diminish them, at least insofar as one faction doesn't wind up exterminated or Anduinized. Similarly, while I can understand that third-party enemies could theoretically keep the stakes high, I am doubtful that there is much room for investment if the game's conflicts remain based so heavily around the facets that are consumed for the will of the gameplay loop. The faction conflict, if fed properly and with no clear villains or heroes, could become a perpetual generator for interesting and nuanced stories that won't invariably culminate in one party becoming a raid boss.

Eh, Blizzard has played with this postmodernist shit so much that it would subvert my expectations if they made the Void unequivocally evil, not if they tried to "shades of grey it

Honestly, the main issue with the effort Blizzard makes in hammering in greyscale morality is that they typically wind up bungling it or applying it to forces that it shouldn't be applied to (e.g. the Light). Greyscale morality would work perfectly fine if applied to the right forces or factions, but it simply never seems to be. For whatever reason, all of the cosmic forces need to be perfectly greyscale, yet the Defias that don't reconcile with the Alliance and immediately abandon all their sunk costs must be unequivocally-evil cackling baddies while their sympathetic former kingpin shrugs off her own grudge and retires with no outstanding issues.

As for the Void in particular, I actually think it would make sense to classify it as not strictly evil, but particularly difficult to reconcile with mortal biological life as we understand it because it represents something that our intelligence isn't designed around. "Infinite possibilities" can become a bit of a problem when our understanding of a gradient and nuance is based around a mix of truths and falsehoods instead of simultaneous truth and falsehood applied to every possible notion, even where some outcomes may be entirely contradictory.

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Blizzard is setting up the Titan/Void expansion next with Iridikron escaping through the void portal and mentioning "finding a way to get the Titans to show up". Sargeras' sword will finally be relevant!

While my primary precedent for buying this can be chalked up to an educated guess on the reasonable and ridiculously-likely, I will go ahead and give a bit more of the benefit of the doubt to theories and leaks in this spirit just for the meme and the sake of fun.

[Xilurm]

Sounds quite in-character for the tone of the expansion and the sort of thing that the writing staff would mistakenly think is subversive. While I see the value in that message, it's hardly novel, and it would definitely not add much of note to an expansion that has been entirely in that spirit from the beginning.

It's stupid is what it is.

I don't know how to describe it. It's that kinda storytelling that makes everything more "human" or "earthly/closer to irl". Like the horde and forsaken councils.

If they did that with the aspects it would be stupid. The same way it would be stupid if the Night Elves had said "its fine we don't need to plant another tree we can move on and live like the other races". It would be nice for them to get their immortality back too at some point but I don't expect Blizzard to care.

Trying to make things more "human" so that people can have more stuff to relate to is such a stupid type of storytelling.

Reminds me of the movie Jupiter Ascending, where at the end the protagonist could literally inherit the entire universe/galaxy and make her family the richest people in existence without there being any catch or consequence and instead she chose to go back to cleaning toilets for a living as if that's a good thing.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

It's stupid is what it is.

I don't know how to describe it. It's that kinda storytelling that makes everything more "human" or "earthly/closer to irl". Like the horde and forsaken councils.

I know precisely what you mean, though I don't think it's meant to make it more "human" so much as it is an effort to bring it closer to modern values. The reality in which we live is one which values democracy and individualism, so the same must apply in some capacity to the lore, regardless of how good it is for the story. No effort will be made, of course, to demonstrate precisely why these things are valuable, only to hammer in that they are and that any other possible state of being is inexplicably unacceptable.

In the theoretical that was being discussed with the Dragon Aspects, I think the reason it is tragically likely is because the writers may become concerned that it would constitute an implicit endorsement of despotism, regardless of if that despotism is entirely justified in the story. It doesn't help that modern audiences are highly oversensitive and often demand that everything they consume entirely vindicate their Twitter-based worldview, regardless of how nonsensical it may be.

Another element is the desire to be subversive, again regardless of the actual value of it for the core message and morals of the story, or even the health of the story in itself. The Light is AHKTUALLY super-flawed because it's totally not what you'd expect (if this were written in the '70s, before all fantasy jumped on the "subversion" bandwagon so much that portraying a religious power as good is itself now more subversive), the Horde is going to get a council because that's never happened before, Sylvanas is going to destroy the single most iconic item in the lore just to get a shocking moment in the trailer, etc. The writers want to change things seemingly solely because they assume (false) novelty is more important than the health of the story.

Reminds me of the movie Jupiter Ascending, where at the end the protagonist could literally inherit the entire universe/galaxy and make her family the richest people in existence without there being any catch or consequence and instead she chose to go back to cleaning toilets for a living as if that's a good thing.

I've not seen the film, but if it's anything like what you're saying, that sounds like the problem was poor execution. By all means, the rejection of undeserved power is definitely a valuable message. Too often does modern power fantasy give everything to its protagonists at no actual cost or by no real merit (beyond the occasional told-and-not-shown character shilling for the beneficiary), so I could see a protagonist acting in the spirit of Cincinnatus being interesting insofar as the virtue of it was actually highlighted and the benefits were shown.