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

[Cheezits]

Most likely it's connected to the oathstones + reforged Tyr

Given Tyr might not go through with it, maybe Khoranos does it? Or they don't get empowered after all.

[KurtMash]

Ohhhh, how amazing would it be if they were to announce Warcraft 4 along the next WoW expansion? It would be a really good way to introduce The Other Side of Azeroth and Avaloren (I am guessing that they are at least two different continents), so that we actually care about what is happening there.

BTW, again, no news today. I am guessing that we will not get anything until next week. It is really frustrating but at the same time, when 10.2 is announced, we will have something new and shiny to look at right until Blizzcon.

Good times ahead of us indeed.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure if they would do W4 as an RTS... but - as unlikely as it is - I could see some sort of "Adventures of Captain Nightsquall" adventure game in hand drawn style, a tribute to Monkey Island series. Sure, adventure games are not quite as hot as other genres, but they are also probably much cheaper to make, and having such game as a pre-expansion promotion hyping and setting up the next expansion could work pretty well I think

It would also be a fun nod towards Lord of the Clans.

[Woggmer]

I agree...a strange agreement from me. But SL didn't harm the lore nearly as much as those damned "Chronicles," which was initially set in stone, only to be amusingly doubled down by Blizz almost as fast as it was called "canon."

That's actually something I had considered, if we're going the route where the Titans can't be trusted. Perhaps we might find out the "author" behind the Chronicles since as much as Blizz wants to say they are "canon" in truth the character writing them has a bias to the Titans and isn't a reliable narrator.

Whoever this person is, might be in connection to Tyr or Odyn, or one of the "heretics" that the Titans are after.

[Ersula]

Whoever this person is, might be in connection to Tyr or Odyn, or one of the "heretics" that the Titans are after.

I don't think the Titans care very much about a few rogue Titanforged. This counterculture based in Avaloren is only a heretic by Odyn's designation & Tyr himself is heretical for refusing the cull the curse of flesh. Good thing Odyn is locked away in the Halls of Valor.

- - - Updated - - -

Metzen left in Legion, and the lore took a massive nosedive as soon BFA pre-patch events started.

yeah but metzen was working on overwatch & diablo between mop & legion. Didn't Metzen start his own studio, why is he back at Blizzard?

[Raetary]

That's actually something I had considered, if we're going the route where the Titans can't be trusted. Perhaps we might find out the "author" behind the Chronicles since as much as Blizz wants to say they are "canon" in truth the character writing them has a bias to the Titans and isn't a reliable narrator.

Whoever this person is, might be in connection to Tyr or Odyn, or one of the "heretics" that the Titans are after.

This "Author" doesn't exist, as the books have an extradiegetic narrator.
There is no actual in-universe character writing this shit down, it's the omnicient voice of the Blizzard writing team telling us how it is.

"It's the titans perspective" is just a miserably executed cop-out because the chronicles ended up too restricting for them to work with.

[Cheezits]

I bet Wowhead is going to get a slap on the hand from Blizz for datamining the blue armor tint for Nelves, which looks like it either won't be used or will be an exclusive NPC tint. Yet another Nelf related thing with a downside.

Interesting that they keep hiding special race weapons as a surprise though. First the Tauren totem and now the Nelf glaives for other classes. Maybe the Troll spear will be used next?

[Woggmer]

I don't think the Titans care very much about a few rogue Titanforged. This counterculture based in Avaloren is only a heretic by Odyn's designation & Tyr himself is heretical for refusing the cull the curse of flesh. Good thing Odyn is locked away in the Halls of Valor.

...But we freed him once we defeated Helya in her realm in the Trials of Valor. She was the only thing keeping him in the Halls of Valor.

[Murlocos]

Yeah, IIRC Chronicles 1 makes multiple mentions to Warcraft in the text. It's clearly not meant to be any sort of in-universe document. Going back to the earlier topic, I think the sloppy retcon of this, along with certain Shadowlands elements, everything to do with the Jailer, etc. etc. was a constant stream of "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" from Blizzard in the past few years that has severely strained the suspension of disbelief in the setting for a lot of people. For some, it was the breaking point and they're never coming back.

[Cheezits]

Yeah, IIRC Chronicles 1 makes multiple mentions to Warcraft in the text. It's clearly not meant to be any sort of in-universe document. Going back to the earlier topic, I think the sloppy retcon of this, along with certain Shadowlands elements, everything to do with the Jailer, etc. etc. was a constant stream of "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" from Blizzard in the past few years that has severely strained the suspension of disbelief in the setting for a lot of people. For some, it was the breaking point and they're never coming back.

I genuinely believe the Blizzard devs did not understand how hardcore people were about the setting and lore of Warcraft, and it's understandable IMO. Some people take it almost too seriously when it at the end of the day is a videogame, and a developer with goals and managers breathing down their neck may not understand why people are so crazy about the setting. Not to mention new hires coming in who haven't acclimated to the culture.

I think this explains why during BFA, so many devs were genuinely hurt/offended when people got angry at them. It was very unprofessional but reactions like that really make me think they weren't expecting the level of outrage over story/setting things.

I also think it's a reason why there is not much setting/lore stuff at all in DF's MSQ. There are certain quests with HUGE lore implications (like the Orc heritage quest, also the Human one is like the only Stormwind lore since Cata) but they seem carefully tailor-made for lore nerds, while they are purposefully hiding what is going on in EK/Kalimdor.

[Murlocos]

I genuinely believe the Blizzard devs did not understand how hardcore people were about the setting and lore of Warcraft, and it's understandable IMO. Some people take it almost too seriously when it at the end of the day is a videogame, and a developer with goals and managers breathing down their neck may not understand why people are so crazy about the setting. Not to mention new hires coming in who haven't acclimated to the culture.

I think this explains why during BFA, so many devs were genuinely hurt/offended when people got angry at them. It was very unprofessional but reactions like that really make me think they weren't expecting the level of outrage over story/setting things.

Completely agree. I think a lot of the driving force over the cosmic vs. grounded argument is the belief that the cosmic stuff is replacing the older lore, and that the current writers see the factions and races that defined Warcraft as more throwaway in favor of this whole cosmological struggle where Order and Void are more important than Alliance and Horde.

Whether that's actually true or not ends up coming down to individual interpretation. For what it's worth, I don't think they went through Shadowlands intentionally writing "the Jailer is the true villain of the whole series and everything can be tied back to him". The problem is that people can logically conclude that based on what they wrote, and if the writers don't understand how people are drawing those conclusions, then that's incredibly worrying of their ability to understand the lore and setting they've been entrusted with.

[Catastrophy349]

https://x.com/mrgmyt/status/16947120...jgkgWvRvHdAuNA

[Cheezits]

Completely agree. I think a lot of the driving force over the cosmic vs. grounded argument is the belief that the cosmic stuff is replacing the older lore, and that the current writers see the factions and races that defined Warcraft as more throwaway in favor of this whole cosmological struggle where Order and Void are more important than Alliance and Horde.

My take on this is that they (the devs) believe they can't properly flesh out races and factions without setting an expansion on EK and Kalimdor, and for very obvious reasons this can't be done in a regular expansion's dev cycle, so they just dropped faction and race focus for SL and DF. They are trying to get around this by having heritage quests be beefier, have big racial rewards (moreso than in the past) and have big loredrops, but otherwise I think they are just avoiding race/faction content until they can do a revamp or something that is basically a spiritual EK/Kalimdor revamp in every way (AKA a new continent with racial/faction zones).

[Murlocos]

I hope that's the case, as a revamp hoper but not a believer right now. I'm hoping the new heritage questlines continue the human and orc trend of sowing seeds for future storylines rather than being one and done stuff. Though on that note, the lack of heritage colors being available after humans and orcs just got multiple colors along with the night elf face tattoo mess are such unforced errors. I really hope they're not ignoring the complaints there.

[Cheezits]

I'm thinking the lack of variants has to do with art team struggles (maybe busy with zones? also tier armor now) and not having enforced decisions on how heritage armor works. Likely the Orc one got multiple colors to represent the variety of clans, so they decided the Human one got multiple colors even if it was for just one faction of humans. But because they couldn't figure out another color for the Forsaken armor, they can't use the second one they made for the Nelves.

It's messy, but they seem obsessed with making things "fair" for both races in content drops like these.

[micwini]

https://x.com/mrgmyt/status/16947120...jgkgWvRvHdAuNA

Paladins for all races soon

[Cheezits]

Paladins for all classes soon

If they actually do all paladins and all druids this expansion, but without unique lore and druidic forms/paladin mounts for the new races, it will be the shittiest thing to come out of this expansion. What a waste.

New shamans just being ex-Primalists would be bad enough.

[micwini]

If they actually do all paladins and all druids this expansion, but without unique lore and druidic forms/paladin mounts for the new races, it will be the shittiest thing to come out of this expansion. What a waste.

New shamans just being ex-Primalists would be bad enough.

They're pumping out so many assets that I wouldn't be surprised if they have the pala mounts ready. It's "only" 14 mounts for the remaining races and they are always just an edit of the racial mount.
Druid seems to be the most work by far. Druid is 15 races and they need multiple forms for each race. And they are always completely new models.

[huth]

I genuinely believe the Blizzard devs did not understand how hardcore people were about the setting and lore of Warcraft, and it's understandable IMO. Some people take it almost too seriously when it at the end of the day is a videogame, and a developer with goals and managers breathing down their neck may not understand why people are so crazy about the setting. Not to mention new hires coming in who haven't acclimated to the culture.

I think this explains why during BFA, so many devs were genuinely hurt/offended when people got angry at them. It was very unprofessional but reactions like that really make me think they weren't expecting the level of outrage over story/setting things.

I also think it's a reason why there is not much setting/lore stuff at all in DF's MSQ. There are certain quests with HUGE lore implications (like the Orc heritage quest, also the Human one is like the only Stormwind lore since Cata) but they seem carefully tailor-made for lore nerds, while they are purposefully hiding what is going on in EK/Kalimdor.

There's definitely a sizable portion of the playerbase that is taking the lore unreasonably seriously and attributing far more importance to it than it actually has. Blizzard has always been rather openly put gameplay over lore and has always aimed for something closer to saturday morning cartoons than Lord of the Rings, yet these players expect the opposite.

[Cheezits]

They're pumping out so many assets that I wouldn't be surprised if they have the pala mounts ready. It's "only" 14 mounts for the remaining races and they are always just an edit of the racial mount.
Druid seems to be the most work by far. Druid is 15 races and they need multiple forms for each race. And they are always completely new models.

There's a couple mounts that would require entirely new models (horse with barding for Humans/Blood Elves, skeleton horse for Forsaken, regular raptors for Darkspear, some others I'm not remembering) and then people would go apeshit if Nelves didn't get white light options. The work being required makes me think its very likely they would just go all-in with every race getting the same mount, spell effects and lore (joining the silver hand) which would be boring, albeit easy way to shove in immediate paladins.

For druids, it's as easy as everyone being Cenarion Circle, everyone getting the same 5 generic glowing animal forms. So I also hope that doesn't happen either.

[micwini]

There's a couple mounts that would require entirely new models (horse with barding for Humans/Blood Elves, skeleton horse for Forsaken, regular raptors for Darkspear, some others I'm not remembering) and then people would go apeshit if Nelves didn't get white light options. The work being required makes me think its very likely they would just go all-in with every race getting the same mount, spell effects and lore (joining the silver hand) which would be boring, albeit easy way to shove in immediate paladins.

For druids, it's as easy as everyone being Cenarion Circle, everyone getting the same 5 generic glowing animal forms. So I also hope that doesn't happen either.

I don't see making an HD version for the human/belf ones as that much work. Neither HD'ing some old racial mounts and adding some yellow/brown armor on it. I do agree that I hope they don't end up rushing it and giving everyone the same. All classes for all races is not a prio and they should take their time and doing good. I don't like every race being every class, but I guess they're not stopping now.