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

[Makorus]

The evidence for K'aresh being last minute is also that Voidstorm is such a nothing zone. But if we assume it was meant to be K'aresh. Then it makes sense. Loads of Ethereal presence. Cosmic rock in space. The raid has Ethereals prominently in it.

The theory is very much that Rootlands (partially) swapped places with K'aresh. Specifically be splitting it in two, and making the Void heavy part of K'aresh into the Voidstorm. Then taking the Ethereal bit, bolstering it with a quick Broker retcon, and shipping it as its own zone.

It would explain a whole lot. Specifically why K'aresh is very barren (especially lacking enemies like Void Ray mounts and such), and why the Rootlands story in TWW abruptly stopped when it would have made much more sense for that expansion when you can literally see the old entrance to it.

Yeah, but that's all it is, assumption.

There's literally no indicator whatsoever. Voidstorm being Karesh wouldn't really make much seense anyway because it's not even the same concept. Once again, there is nothing indicating that Rootlands was EVER anything but a 11.0 zone.

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Oh, duh. I still stand by my point, maybe even more so now. The Dimensius theme is very solid, so much so that it was just the highlight of the patch.

idk, I do think Eco'dome Aldani, Untamed Wilds and Wastelanders are all better tracks than anything from Undermine.

Don't get me wrong, Undermine had a more "bombastic" OST, however, I grew tired of it very, very quickly.

[milkmustache]

idk, I do think Eco'dome Aldani, Untamed Wilds and Wastelanders are all better tracks than anything from Undermine.

Don't get me wrong, Undermine had a more "bombastic" OST, however, I grew tired of it very, very quickly.

I really think my issues with K'aresh just stem from the overall patch being relatively boring. Undermine's killer OST underscored a really dense and interesting zone in my opinion.

K'aresh has some really, really beautiful tracks, and as a former ethereal truther (RIP), I was super excited to see the K'areshi culture and overall vibe fleshed out more, but the zone itself is a bit of a dud to me, so while we have beautiful tracks... that's all we have.

[Enrif]

In the Alliance housing area there's a portal to Silvermoon with the high elf banner but with blood elves arount it. Curious. Maybe it's unfinished.

the blood elves are part of the endeavor, one of several cultures that switch every month. Another month it will be mechagnomes in the horde housing area as an example

[Vakir]

I mean I did like the Karesh patch better overall, but the open world content? Absolutely not. Undermine was great.

I think it's overhated, I just could not let Lady Atia say that. Absolutely insane take.

Undernine: *Has jazz and clicky things*

Players: "Oh my god, this is so innovative 10/10 patch."

Meanwhile I'm just sitting over here thinking about days of yore when we had patches like Isle of Thunder and Nazjatar.

...and on the other side of "overhated," that's a you problem. Nobody or not many said that Undermine was a masterpiece either.

Isle of Thunder and Nazjatar were superlative, but they were also attached to expansions with really mixed content cadence and that had chunks before or after them as sacrifices to their quality. Nyalotha's poor outdoor patch content, the length of the Siege drought, etc.

Or in the case of Nazjatar, a great patch attached to an expansion with dogshit systems.

None of these things can really be evaluated in a vacuum unless you're assessing it disingenuously. That's why people are more inclined to give credit to something "good enough" if the cadence isn't crap.

[Cheezits]

For whatever reason, the team just did not or could not do a proper patch about Ethereals. I'm guessing sadly they just weren't seen as a worthy focus as opposed to something from Azeroth proper, so K'aresh overall got Siren Isle'd in regards to its importance in Warcraft.

Great raid and music though! Everything else was a miss IMO.

[Xilurm]

As much as I don't like Goblins, Undermine was better than K'aresh simply because it felt like it had more. No flying helps with that a lot. And I'm someone who loves big wasteland like zones so K'aresh was visually stunning for me. But that was about it. Flying makes it pointless like everything else when it comes to zone design. It also felt unfinished for some reason. Buggy as fuck.

To top it off, someone decided to create the most dog shit questline in the entirety of WoW's existence.

K'aresh felt like a missed opportunity like Nazjatar and Argus. /shrug.

[Cheezits]

The Ruutani come FROM the Rift of Aln, so I think it's actually a veil tear that goes into the Lifelands. If it was made when Azeroth was yoinked from the cradle, then the titans basically gave Elune and anyone else from there a backdoor to mess around.

[Jaggler]

The high Elf banner denotes the neutral areas of Silvermoon. Why would you want non-silvermoon elves in charge of a portal to Silvermoon? No way are Silvermoon officials letting the Silver Covenent control a portal to their capital city. You already asked this when the alpha came out & got a ton of people explaining this to you.

they are not even "High Elf" banners, considering, they are literally used by Blood Elves. High Elf blue is different to the neutral banners in Silvermoon

[LarryWithTheWeatherReport]

Yeah. While I'm not a fan of the looks of Nazjatar (would rather have an expansion about it, and if it's just a single zone I would rather take the eternal palace as a zone instead of ugly ruins ...),.

Same! Or at least an underwater zone even.

[Ersula]

they are not even "High Elf" banners, considering, they are literally used by Blood Elves. High Elf blue is different to the neutral banners in Silvermoon

Blood Elves are High Elves. And they are the neutral silvermoon banners.

[Jaggler]

Blood Elves are High Elves. And they are the neutral silvermoon banners.

It wasn't meant as some counter to your post. more like an addition, sorry if it came across that way! They aren't "Alliance-aligned High Elf"-Banners if you want to be that specific.

[Santandame]

Aside from K’aresh being fucking barren and devoid of any meaningful content it goes down as the worst patch zone ever added because of the idea of what it could have been. Blizzard took one of the most requested, highly demanded zones of the games entire near enough lifespan and gave us what they did.

I know you’ll get people arguing that in lore it was destroyed by Dimensius so a barren wasteland is what was left; but Blizzard also gave us Outland which prior to TBC was only known to resemble the climate of Hellfire Peninsula.

There’s no reason that we couldn’t have gotten an expansion continent out of K’aresh with some heavy Arabian Nights themes, as well making greater use of the Eco Domes. Just a total lack of creativity and or willing.

Genuine Blizzard = Bad on this particular point, and you’ll never convince me otherwise.

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K'aresh felt like a missed opportunity like Nazjatar and Argus. /shrug.

Argus and Nazjatar were both colossal missed opportunities but regardless of that, both were still decent for what they were. K’aresh failed on every single front.

[Count Zero]

The talent trees are too complex for their new simplicity and no addons and no external info mindset. They should go back to the simple legion talents or simplify most of the tree to only a bunch of choice routes.

They added the complex talents in the complexity era of DF, after POE's success. Even as a seasoned wow player, trying to understand talent trees from classes I play ocasionally feels daunting.

It's all so half-baked and disjointed. No unifying vision.

You can see it reflected in-game. They're more nimble and able to respond in specific areas since not everything is as tied together, but nothing feels connected and there is so little synergy. The story, the gameplay, the systems, all of it.

[allegrian]

It's all so half-baked and disjointed. No unifying vision.

You can see it reflected in-game. They're more nimble and able to respond in specific areas since not everything is as tied together, but nothing feels connected and there is so little synergy. The story, the gameplay, the systems, all of it.

Yeah, the game became too big and they split all teams. We sometimes get quests from a zone contradicting another. We then have stuff that doesn't make sense as Haranir allied race, a leftover from TWW and with the most detailed customization in wow, instead of Amani and even High elves in the Elf + Amani expansion. Blood and Void elves don't even get new customization, which would have made sense for blizzard to add as it'd give them more NPC variety.

[milkmustache]

Blood and Void elves don't even get new customization, which would have made sense for blizzard to add as it'd give them more NPC variety.

This is the part I'm most baffled about with Midnight. I get it, the Haranir needed a lot of development time, but man is it a spit in the face to debut a brand new race with the most customization as of yet, and not give the most popular race in the game who is the focus of the expansion launch a single new customization option.

[Merryck]

There's datamining to suggest they're at least working on new customization options for Void Elf Demon Hunters. It's mostly just black / white recolours of the underwear and blindfolds. I'll say this though, it'd be awful if they don't give Demon Hunters the option to have glowing Void eyes.

[KyleEverett]

So for open world content, Blizzard has added legacy scaling earlier than they did in Shadowlands.

Shadowlands content has a 10x modifier at 80 and DF has a 6x modifier.

[Hearthfinder]

For whatever reason, the team just did not or could not do a proper patch about Ethereals. I'm guessing sadly they just weren't seen as a worthy focus as opposed to something from Azeroth proper, so K'aresh overall got Siren Isle'd in regards to its importance in Warcraft.

Great raid and music though! Everything else was a miss IMO.

The reason is simple: splitting the original TWW into a trilogy. Basically anything that doesn't seem like it entirety belonged, was a bit barebones, or lacking in quality, this is why.

Basically I think they were willing to sacrifice TWW and much of Midnight in order to do the story justice in TLT.

[Jaggler]

The reason is simple: splitting the original TWW into a trilogy. Basically anything that doesn't seem like it entirety belonged, was a bit barebones, or lacking in quality, this is why.

Basically I think they were willing to sacrifice TWW and much of Midnight in order to do the story justice in TLT.

I think you can see that break pretty well at the end of/during Undermine.
1.) Orwenya was pretty prominent at the start of the Undermine story but then just vanishes.
2.) Suddenly at the tail end of the patch ethereals show up in force to take the Dark Heart to K'aresh, but they have no tie in to the raid (the Black Blood is still prominently used by one boss at least). Alleria shows up without having any role before. It's pretty obvious that Undermine was set up to lead into Harandar for the last patch. I wouldn't be surprised if the one boss raid in Harandar wasn't some remnant from the originally planned last raid of TWW.

[Super Dickmann]

The crystals also look like nails. Welcome to the cosmic dollhouse

Seeking not one but the culmination of five giant pieces of wood makes a great deal of sense if we're plunging into Xal's Shattered Abyss with each login. Speaking of...

The whole plot point of Teldrassil's roots still being on fire would make far more sense if azerite was used in the destruction. Somehow our catapults did more damage to the structure of the world than Ol' Yogg and his friends ever did using conventional weaponry.

Now, the heinousness of an act being literally inscribed into the land is cool. It's why Stratholme is cool, but the increasing obsession with cosmic powers and explanations therefor has made using this explanation thin, especially how literal everything else is.

I will also remind that we're now more than seven years removed, under the world's mantle, with the new tree in place and the locals rehoused in a new tree that reads 'dead elf storage' and some permutation of night elf is still there and still bitching about this tree as an irrevocable part of world content.