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

[Reive]

I don't know...

Part of me hopes Fyrakk gets what he wants and claims the tree. Then in the revamp we just get an enhanced version of Mount Hyjal instead.

that sounds incredibly dumb. 2 expansions of wait for this neew tree only to throw it in the trash lmao

[Nymrohd]

Which hopefully means less emphasis on raids as the be all end all with more development added towards increasing more dungeons as well as world content.

We got 8 dungeons plus 1 megadungeon for a total of 41 dungeon boss encounters. Dungeons are just far more front loaded than raids are but they already get vastly more development time. The thing is they are completely repeatable so you choose to repeat them at far greater numbers than you'd repeat a raid so you will get sick of them faster.

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Housing is a natural fit for a world revamp, so there is that. And Ion did say in an interview that they were looking for the right time to start player housing.

It really depends on how one would do housing.
Imo the superior way I've seen is what ESO does. Houses unique to every zone that match the local environment, each House being a custom asset with thousands of available furnishings to place. That would absolutely fit a world revamp
But if you simply had instanced housing districts in capitals? No need for a revamp.

[CasualFilth]

I just have a gut feeling the 10.3 raid will be Titan themed (re: Ulduar/Throne of Thunder, etc.)

[Sondrelk]

We got 8 dungeons plus 1 megadungeon for a total of 41 dungeon boss encounters. Dungeons are just far more front loaded than raids are but they already get vastly more development time. The thing is they are completely repeatable so you choose to repeat them at far greater numbers than you'd repeat a raid so you will get sick of them faster.

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It really depends on how one would do housing.
Imo the superior way I've seen is what ESO does. Houses unique to every zone that match the local environment, each House being a custom asset with thousands of available furnishings to place. That would absolutely fit a world revamp
But if you simply had instanced housing districts in capitals? No need for a revamp.

I would argue you want a world revamp even if paired with capital cities, simply to ensure that everyone sticks to one capital while the housing is fresh and unproven. You don't want to have players lose interest in case it takes a few patches to really get going with whatever unlockable cosmetics.

Given the sheer amount of stuff needed to make housing great I imagine it will go through some growing pains like what Pet Battles did. It's easy to like Pet Battles now that we have raiding with leashes and pet battle dungeons, not so much back when it was just gathering critters and pet battle trainers.

[Ersula]

"Good story is when night elves die."

No, Night Elf fans don't/didn't want to constantly get story focus, no matter how much your obsession tells you so. They just want the race to be in a good spot and not constantly brought to the forefront to be punching bags or to get one of their homes torched.

Your seething hatred is not anyone else's responsibility.

You're proving my point, honey. Only good things are acceptable for the race who's only constant theme is their own self-victimization, apparently.

[micwini]

I would argue you want a world revamp even if paired with capital cities, simply to ensure that everyone sticks to one capital while the housing is fresh and unproven. You don't want to have players lose interest in case it takes a few patches to really get going with whatever unlockable cosmetics.

Given the sheer amount of stuff needed to make housing great I imagine it will go through some growing pains like what Pet Battles did. It's easy to like Pet Battles now that we have raiding with leashes and pet battle dungeons, not so much back when it was just gathering critters and pet battle trainers.

I feel housing is too big of a feature to be combined with a world revamp. It takes massive amounts of resources and we saw with WoD and Garrisons that it didnt really turn out well. I'm also not sure what the function of housing would be,

[Nymrohd]

You're proving my point, honey. Only good things are acceptable for the race who's only constant theme is their own self-victimization, apparently.

Every playable race should have a resolution to an acceptable state. I'd say they all should at the very least have
a) a capital representative of their race and architecture
b) a small number of unique NPCs that have at least some shallow characterization
c) a small number of unique units/archetypes

As it is now, Kaldorei lack a). That is just not an acceptable state. Heck they don't even have a starting area anymore.

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I'm also not sure what the function of housing would be,

What is the function of transmog?

[Sondrelk]

I feel housing is too big of a feature to be combined with a world revamp. It takes massive amounts of resources and we saw with WoD and Garrisons that it didnt really turn out well. I'm also not sure what the function of housing would be,

The function of housing would be to have housing. Though a secondary reasoning would be to have a use for all the old assets from old expansions and patches. Can't imagine the Tazavesh aesthetic would be used again any time soon.
The trading post will also need more stuff eventually, so having a place where the developers can put weird assets they don't use anywhere else would be nice.

And housing being a large undertaking is precisely why it should be paired with a world revamp. It will likely be very bare bones to start with, so you need to ensure the house is close to the main hub of the expansion to maintain interest. Then over the course of several patches, and possibly even several expansions you add the various environment doodads from across WoW. Very much similar to how battle pets went from bare bones to major selling point of patches with stuff like the Whelp Daycare.

[micwini]

Every playable race should have a resolution to an acceptable state. I'd say they all should at the very least have
a) a capital representative of their race and architecture
b) a small number of unique NPCs that have at least some shallow characterization
c) a small number of unique units/archetypes

As it is now, Kaldorei lack a). That is just not an acceptable state. Heck they don't even have a starting area anymore.

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What is the function of transmog?

Its so you can have a consistent set of visuals instead of having some misfitting random armor pieces, while still having the stats on said items. The transmog is also constantly on your character, so it matters a lot. It is on your screen 100% of the time.

Housing will just be Garrisons 2.0 with more customisation.

[Yarathir]

You're proving my point, honey. Only good things are acceptable for the race who's only constant theme is their own self-victimization, apparently.

"See! By offering your dissent, you betray your true nature and in so doing, prove beyond a speck of doubt my incontrovertible rightness!"

Whew.

[Sondrelk]

Its so you can have a consistent set of visuals instead of having some misfitting random armor pieces, while still having the stats on said items. The transmog is also constantly on your character, so it matters a lot. It is on your screen 100% of the time.

Housing will just be Garrisons 2.0 with more customisation.

It's also to give armor appearances a reason beyond the raid they exist in. Sure you could always just keep your favorite armor sets around to show off, but with transmog players have a reason to actually go back to old raids and farm the appearances, justifying the amount of effort put into making them look good, and allowing armor appearances to be a reasonable reward for high levels of play.

Housing similarly could be seen as an extension of RP. You could just go to any empty house with the visuals you want, but player housing would give it the framework required to make environmental assets an actual reward to give players. This would be true for all future content, but more importantly all past content as well, giving the developers a massive well of content to give players for fairly little ongoing cost once the framework is laid down.

[Holdodlig]

There won't be any 10.3 imo the glad mount found is a recolor of the S1 mount so it's likely going to be a fated season for DF with every dungeon of the expansion

[Yarathir]

There won't be any 10.3 imo the glad mount found is a recolor of the S1 mount so it's likely going to be a fated season for DF with every dungeon of the expansion

If the glad mount is a recolor, then a fated season makes sense, yeah.

Maybe that's just how they're gonna handle things from now on.

[Santandame]

If 10.2 launches in November and then we get 10.2.5 in April which has features like fated raids, new season, new world content, story quests, a decent solo challenge, heritage armour quests and possibly allied races like Drakonid and Tuskarr; with 11.0 launching August/September then I don’t think that would pose too much of an issue.

[Sondrelk]

If the glad mount is a recolor, then a fated season makes sense, yeah.

Maybe that's just how they're gonna handle things from now on.

How is there a link between recolour and no 10.3?

[Yarathir]

How is there a link between recolour and no 10.3?

The whole argument was that there was a gladiator mount datamined, therefore there had to be a 10.3.

But if it's a literal recolor, then that could just be a redo of Shadowlands where the last season is a Fated season.

[Sondrelk]

The whole argument was that there was a gladiator mount datamined, therefore there had to be a 10.3.

But if it's a literal recolor, then that could just be a redo of Shadowlands where the last season is a Fated season.

But surely that would be true regardless. All glad mounts used to be recolours remember, and they used to be datamined all in one chunk.

[micwini]

If 10.2 launches in November and then we get 10.2.5 in April which has features like fated raids, new season, new world content, story quests, a decent solo challenge, heritage armour quests and possibly allied races like Drakonid and Tuskarr; with 11.0 launching August/September then I don’t think that would pose too much of an issue.

10.2.5 in april would be bad. That should be when the next major patch/season comes. There is roughly 2 months between patches this expansion, so if 10.2 released early november, 10.2.5 would have to release somewhere halfway in january. then 10.2.7 in march. It would also mean 11.0 would have to be released somewhere in august unless they are planning of having another major drought.

[RahEndymion]

If 10.2 launches in November and then we get 10.2.5 in April which has features like fated raids, new season, new world content, story quests, a decent solo challenge, heritage armour quests and possibly allied races like Drakonid and Tuskarr; with 11.0 launching August/September then I don’t think that would pose too much of an issue.

Really?

Personally I think if this is pretty much it for the expansion; a rather uninspired looking zone with a rather uninspired looking raid and not much else to talk about then yeah, I can see this spiraling into genuinely the worst player base drop in WoW history.

Not a single person who I was playing with (out of a pretty large guild) in 10.0 and at the start of 10.1 is motivated to return to the game by this patch. Not one. It's actually quite worrying honestly. Now, imagine that it's just this for the next year? A whole year of this content?

I don't think even a world revamp will save the game from that. It's the sort of death spiral that when combined with the abundance of stellar releases that we've got in industry at the moment could really just spell the end for modern WoW.

There isn't even some sort of big, flashy and epic cinematic to get people hyped up.. just 'lol new raid, lol Val'Sharah 2.0, lol lego axe!!11!1!' - It just doesn't feel good enough. It feels very out of touch with the reception this expansion has actually received.

Talking about player retention at this point is simply just survivor bias..

[Darkarath]

10.2.5 in april would be bad. That should be when the next major patch/season comes. There is roughly 2 months between patches this expansion, so if 10.2 released early november, 10.2.5 would have to release somewhere halfway in january. then 10.2.7 in march. It would also mean 11.0 would have to be released somewhere in august unless they are planning of having another major drought.

This.

10.2 is releasing in the first two weeks of November unless something goes really wrong.

That would put 10.2.5 at late January in a worst case scenario.

10.2.7 then would be, at the latest, in the first week of April.

Then we could have a 10.3 in late June or early July, but as 10.3 seems really unlikely, we might get a 10.2.9 or something like that, because I doubt that 11.0 is releasing before the date of the anniversary.

Not a single person who I was playing with (out of a pretty large guild) in 10.0 and at the start of 10.1 is motivated to return to the game by this patch. Not one. It's actually quite worrying honestly. Now, imagine that it's just this for the next year? A whole year of this content?

I agree. 10.2 as it is, has the potential to damage WoW numbers in a serious way. I think that we all expected more.