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

[Xilurm]

Hahahaha.

New Blizzard actually realized that clinging to "the foundational aspects of WOW" was bullshit and the reason BFA and Shadowlands flopped so hard. Why do you think do we have so many good changes recently?

BECAUSE THE FOUNDATIONAL ASPECTS OF WOW ARE SHIT in 2025.

Deal with it.

But those are not the foundational aspects of WoW. I'm sorry but whoever says that is wrong. Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, it was never about faction conflict. Those things are part of WC1 and 2. During WC3 that was gone. The foundational aspects of WoW are about having two unique factions that add unique content for each which gives you plenty of replaybility.

Garrosh starting a faction war is solely based on WC1's and WC2's nostalgia. Hell, WoD was precisely marketed as such. BFA was also a poor attempt at that, sorry to say.

Also I'm always going to die on the hill that Garrosh's war was the Fourth War. Sylvanas's was the Fifth. No idea why they don't count Garrosh's as one.

[Paula Deen]

Ah yes, the penultimate state of the WoW community before a major announcement, unreasonably high expectations leading to eventual disappointment. Classic.

Honestly all the excitement I have for a full lordaeron revamp....I'd be perfectly cool if we didn't get a single thing except 4 zones and a patch cycle with 10 levels.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

My own biggest reasonable(in my opinion) expectation is to have a bunch of new customization options and fixes for all races, like the the amount of pick and choose that dracthyr visages have for all, no bullshit like only one body type being able to pick a necklace from options and such, i don't think it's something impossible for blizzard to do.

[Berkilak]

Honestly all the excitement I have for a full lordaeron revamp....I'd be perfectly cool if we didn't get a single thing except 4 zones and a patch cycle with 10 levels.

Honestly, beyond housing, all I expect is “HD elf stuff pass.” And I find Elves boring. So it would be very difficult to disappoint my rock bottom expectations.

[Ersula]

I don't hate the concept of faction conflict but since the game is so faction agnostic right now, we have two scenarios people keep proposing:

• Creating Non-Void Alliance High elves in the void expansion - Solely to appease the people who refuse to play horde, despite there being no distinction between Alliance & Horde atm.
• Merging the High elves, making their differences more ubiquitous & making it even more confusing for new players. People keep saying making new players pick between subraces they have no context for improves the experience but nothing could be further from the truth.

"Faction doesn't matter so we need to make faction not matter?" Either way: Merging the races, or otherwise making Neutral Blood elves or Alliance High Elves doesn't make sense. Especially if they want to option to make faction matter again in the future.

[Auburst]

Archaeology mentioned.

Interested in why a high elf race would have a completely different skeleton than blood elves or void elves when they are essentially the same race just with different magic addictions.

So that they can have huge chestiorbs:

[Magistrate]

I don't hate the concept of faction conflict but since the game is so faction agnostic right now, we have two scenarios people keep proposing:

• Creating Non-Void Alliance High elves in the void expansion - Solely to appease the people who refuse to play horde, despite there being no distinction between Alliance & Horde atm.
• Merging the High elves, making their differences more ubiquitous & making it even more confusing for new players. People keep saying making new players pick between subraces they have no context for improves the experience but nothing could be further from the truth.

"Faction doesn't matter so we need to make faction not matter?" Either way: Merging the races, or otherwise making Neutral Blood elves or Alliance High Elves doesn't make sense. Especially if they want to option to make faction matter again in the future.

I think the solution is that factions need to be revised after the trilogy. Trying to sort it out with the largest cosmic threats about to be taken on in the games history probably wouldn't work well.

I also strongly feel there should be four factions like in wc3.

Figuring out some political stuff like helfs before then might help simplify how they approach whatever solutions they decide on.

[NikolaiShade]

Let's be frank. The two big flops were Warlords of Draenor and Shadowlands where they fucked up the patch cadence and people ran out of things to do.
The majority of players don't care if it is slop. They don't play WoW to get a gourmet meal. They want their cheesy, pulpy, rule of cool slop. Some are written better than others, some are TWW, but in general as long as people don't run out of things to do, the expansion will land.

And guess what, these two came with neither a class, nor a race.
If there is a race, a class, or both added, people roll new characters. Ergo it takes longer for them to run out of things. Consequently they will demand new stuff later.

I have my personal hill to die on: Battle for Azeroth was worse than Shadowlands

[Samin]

Blizzard can win themself a free ride if they have another significant improvement to the transmog system. If we get armor dyes, even just for new items, I don't care if the only other new feature in Midnight is housing. I would also take Hats with Hair or maybe removing restrictions to weapon and armory type in a pinch.

[Vakir]

New Blizzard actually realized that clinging to "the foundational aspects of WOW" was bullshit and the reason BFA and Shadowlands flopped so hard. Why do you think do we have so many good changes recently?

I'll grant you how BFA was marketed, not so much how it actually went, but how did SL represent that foundational aspect? SL had nothing in the way of faction conflict whatsoever. It was probably more the WoW Superfriends Coalition of bland good guys than even anything in TWW.

For the record, I'm more a "slow boil" kind of faction conflict person than someone who wants the tired bullshit max intensity one where nothing matters in the opposite direction, but there's no denying that there's a cultural loss somewhere and homogeneity of the content to some extent.

It may work for a big finale plot but it's gonna have to pivot eventually. Especially for smaller scale conflicts.

[Ersula]

Vanilla, TBC, Wrath, it was never about faction conflict.

The most insane statement you've ever said. You can't quest for more than 10 minutes without the game bringing up the faction conflict during that era.

Honestly, beyond housing, all I expect is “HD elf stuff pass.” And I find Elves boring. So it would be very difficult to disappoint my rock bottom expectations.

This is the biggest reason why I think the new class race combos leak is real. Midnight needs something substantial for the elf-haters.

[Berkilak]

Blizzard can win themself a free ride if they have another significant improvement to the transmog system. If we get armor dyes, even just for new items, I don't care if the only other new feature in Midnight is housing. I would also take Hats with Hair or maybe removing restrictions to weapon and armory type in a pinch.

Dyes will never happen. Recolours are the lifeblood of so many reward systems.

[Sondrelk]

Blizzard can win themself a free ride if they have another significant improvement to the transmog system. If we get armor dyes, even just for new items, I don't care if the only other new feature in Midnight is housing. I would also take Hats with Hair or maybe removing restrictions to weapon and armory type in a pinch.

I do wonder how dyes would work with the way armour is designed though. Will it just be a colour overlay or slider, and the armour will still be different per difficulty and source? Given the sheer amount of detail on armour, I cannot see a fully freeform dye system really work.

[milkmustache]

Dyes will never happen. Recolours are the lifeblood of so many reward systems.

Exactly, and I personally don't mind it. I'd rather they get their palettes aligned, especially in metal tints.

[Vakir]

Dyes will never happen. Recolours are the lifeblood of so many reward systems.

Compromise. Unlockable dyes on a UI built for it, getting them the same way you normally would, with items retrofitted to be easily swapped between recolors that exist on it, instead of cramming 70 recolors into 50 different items.

It would just be cleaner. And easier to look at new items and be like "ok cool, this version exists that I can get in this way for my collection."

[Paula Deen]

I have never understood how people enjoy that. Speculating and hype is fun but don't actually set ones speculation as expectation and then get mad when disappointment arrives.



Yeah, also expecting some generational crashouts.

Only way I see it getting generational is if they somehow combine classic and retail OR they have wow on the consoles.

[Hearthfinder]

Honestly, all races could be Neutral provided that there are backstories. We tend to forget that the playerbase represents between 1-40 people or so in the lore, depending on the expansion. Just as Renzik and Valeera Sanguinar went Alliance, so could any player character. They're adventurers on a journey, not soldiers of a military (except in WoD, I guess).

As long as Stormwind isn't full of orcish NPCs then it won't make a difference.

If you want to keep some uniqueness to the factions then maybe a handful of races could remain exclusive, such as Humans, Orcs, Trolls and Dwarves, etc.

[Alanar]

Ah yes, the penultimate state of the WoW community before a major announcement, unreasonably high expectations leading to eventual disappointment. Classic.

As always.

[SaintBigfoot]

Honestly, all races could be Neutral provided that there are backstories. We tend to forget that the playerbase represents between 1-40 people or so in the lore, depending on the expansion. Just as Renzik and Valeera Sanguinar went Alliance, so could any player character. They're adventurers on a journey, not soldiers of a military (except in WoD, I guess).

As long as Stormwind isn't full of orcish NPCs then it won't make a difference.

If you want to keep some uniqueness to the factions then maybe a handful of races could remain exclusive, such as Humans, Orcs, Trolls and Dwarves, etc.

I genuinely loathe this idea.

[Anoregon]

I don't have any super high expectations, but lord do I hope that if they are adding high elves it is part of some overall reworking of how races work and not just "you can make your blue eyed blood elf on the blue team now, stop bothering us about it."