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

[Cheezits]

Honestly, can't say I agree. The difference between K'aresh and the Shadowlands is that the former has had much more time to stew in the mind of the playerbase and connects tangibly to existing threats (i.e. the Void), and it's associated with a fairly well-liked race that's existed since Burning Crusade. I could see it working, myself.

An entire planet based off one race from one zone and a couple dungeons? Even SL had five existing aesthetic concepts to play with (Spirit Healers, Dreadlords, Scourge, Dream, ICC/Lich King).

Can you imagine the sheer amount of OCshit?

[Sondrelk]

Honestly, can't say I agree. The difference between K'aresh and the Shadowlands is that the former has had much more time to stew in the mind of the playerbase and connects tangibly to existing threats (i.e. the Void), and it's associated with a fairly well-liked race that's existed since Burning Crusade. I could see it working, myself.

I could see it working as a patch zone, not as a full expansion.
Have a full void themed expansion that slowly leads up to K'aresh as an endgoal. Maybe as an endgame zone with more zones as the expansion goes if you really have that many ideas.

It's not about whether there are good ideas for it, that is the easy bit. It's about whether you can sustain player engagement fighting the same enemies for a full two years.

[Murlocos]

You know, while we're all fantasizing about what we want, why don't we also prepare for the worst-case scenario? What's the most extravagantly awful thing you could expect being revealed for 11.0?

Shadowlands 2 is the easy answer: completely detached from the rest of the world in some cosmic realm helping races we've never met before that we'll never see again, vague monologues of intangible threats by boring villains, a new mystery box every patch. One of the faction leaders who tagged along says "For the Xlands."

The spicier answer is some sort of Azeroth expansion, Avaloren or revamp or otherwise, where the edges of the setting are completely sanded off. All races become reskinned humans lead by councils that share the same ideals as each other. All the good guys are pristine and boring, all the bad guys are toothless. Azeroth is united as one homogeneous bland blob, which I guess would inevitably lead to SL 2 as the next expansion anyways. This may sound like doubling down on Dragonflight's tone, but I'm thinking more them totally giving up on faction writing after BfA.

Content for both would just be the standard 4 zones, 4 reps, 8 dungeons, 1 raid, world quests, etc. with nothing else.

[Le Conceptuel]

I'd say Mists 3: Revolutions, but that'd be a lie, I badly want to see that plot yet again but with the current (absolute) state of the Horde.

Definitely fun to imagine how that would come about. Using precedent from Exploring Kalimdor, I figure it'll be the goblins' fault: "long-nosed greedy race uses multiculturalism to distort a faction" sounds like something that wouldn't usually fly, but doesn't seem too outlandish after someone seriously thought to publish the well-poisoning thing.

[Cheezits]

The spicier answer is some sort of Azeroth expansion, Avaloren or revamp or otherwise, where the edges of the setting are completely sanded off. All races become reskinned humans lead by councils that share the same ideals as each other. All the good guys are pristine and boring, all the bad guys are toothless. Azeroth is united as one homogeneous bland blob, which I guess would inevitably lead to SL 2 as the next expansion anyways. This may sound like doubling down on Dragonflight's tone, but I'm thinking more them totally giving up on faction writing after BfA.

Content for both would just be the standard 4 zones, 4 reps, 8 dungeons, 1 raid, world quests, etc. with nothing else.

That was literally BFA. After the fanbase had a massive hysterical tantrum about being "forced" to play bad guys for two years, they got rid of GALLYWIX. Who wasn't even THAT bad.

Bad/edgy is done, at least more than the level of Heritage Forsaken.

[Sondrelk]

Shadowlands 2 is the easy answer: completely detached from the rest of the world in some cosmic realm helping races we've never met before that we'll never see again, vague monologues of intangible threats by boring villains, a new mystery box every patch. One of the faction leaders who tagged along says "For the Xlands."

The spicier answer is some sort of Azeroth expansion, Avaloren or revamp or otherwise, where the edges of the setting are completely sanded off. All races become reskinned humans lead by councils that share the same ideals as each other. All the good guys are pristine and boring, all the bad guys are toothless. Azeroth is united as one homogeneous bland blob, which I guess would inevitably lead to SL 2 as the next expansion anyways. This may sound like doubling down on Dragonflight's tone, but I'm thinking more them totally giving up on faction writing after BfA.

Content for both would just be the standard 4 zones, 4 reps, 8 dungeons, 1 raid, world quests, etc. with nothing else.

Avaloren being Pandaria 2.0 with laid back races would be pretty awful I imagine.
Something like the backside of Azeroth hiding from the Titan Keepers would need a strong martial race of xenophobes, or at least actively hostile to Titans.

[Le Conceptuel]

Content for both would just be the standard 4 zones, 4 reps, 8 dungeons, 1 raid, world quests, etc. with nothing else.

Really, that'd be the actual Shadowlands 2.0. regardless of the theme.

The spicier answer is some sort of Azeroth expansion, Avaloren or revamp or otherwise, where the edges of the setting are completely sanded off. All races become reskinned humans lead by councils that share the same ideals as each other. All the good guys are pristine and boring, all the bad guys are toothless. Azeroth is united as one homogeneous bland blob, which I guess would inevitably lead to SL 2 as the next expansion anyways. This may sound like doubling down on Dragonflight's tone, but I'm thinking more them totally giving up on faction writing after BfA.

That sounds even worse than the first option given that an expansion set in an entirely unrelated realm wholly disconnected from Azeroth and preexisting lore comes with the caveat that it can't irrevocably destroy the setting like a terribly-handled expansion on Azeroth can. See: Shadowlands and BfA, where the consequences of the latter effectively left an entire faction thematically-crippled for the foreseeable future.

[Sondrelk]

That was literally BFA. After the fanbase had a massive hysterical tantrum about being "forced" to play bad guys for two years, they got rid of GALLYWIX. Who wasn't even THAT bad.

Bad/edgy is done, at least more than the level of Heritage Forsaken.

That was by the ending though. BfA had probably one of the most gripping concepts for an expansion since Wrath. But every patch made it worse and worse, until it even gave up the main theme and setting for the final patch.

[Zardas]

You know, while we're all fantasizing about what we want, why don't we also prepare for the worst-case scenario? What's the most extravagantly awful thing you could expect being revealed for 11.0?

Goblins invent a toy to reduce the size of entire armies, they push the wrong button and all the adventures are sized down. Gallywix seize this opportunity to take control of the world by eating us all. We then spend the whole expansion inside the fat goblin's body, fighting against diabetes.

[Osmeric]

the backside of Azeroth

Am I the only one who giggled like a tween at this?

[Cheezits]

Avaloren being Pandaria 2.0 with laid back races would be pretty awful I imagine.
Something like the backside of Azeroth hiding from the Titan Keepers would need a strong martial race of xenophobes, or at least actively hostile to Titans.

The name Avaloren is honestly pretty interesting because the obvious name concept (Avalon) does NOT mesh with the little info we get (heretics, enemies of Titans). So either the name is a red herring or its going to be a very weird framing of Arthurian Mytho.

[Murlocos]

That was literally BFA. After the fanbase had a massive hysterical tantrum about being "forced" to play bad guys for two years, they got rid of GALLYWIX. Who wasn't even THAT bad.

Bad/edgy is done, at least more than the level of Heritage Forsaken.

That's what I said right after, it's more following up what BfA did. The lack of a real conclusion to the Fourth War and not just Saurfang's story made writing that reconciliation between Alliance and Horde a daunting task, and from what we've all seen so far they just don't even want to tackle it so we've been doing two expansions with the factions barely existing.

[Cheezits]

Goblins invent a toy to reduce the size of entire armies, they push the wrong button and all the adventures are sized down. Gallywix seize this opportunity to take control of the world by eating us all. We then spend the whole expansion inside the fat goblin's body, fighting against diabetes.

This sounds great though. Gallywix's Inside Story!

Not even kidding, you get a lot of zone variety with anatomy.

[Sondrelk]

Am I the only one who giggled like a tween at this?

Well it's only the backside compared to what we know. Maybe we have always been on Azeroths butt cheeks the entire time.

[Houle]

Back to the topic of a world revamp. I know it's a meme, but what would Silithus look and play like in a world revamp? What kind of content would be good and justify the amount of lore surrounding the giant sword?

C'thun being revived by the Azerite shower he got, and he decides that the sword is the best stronghold for his body this time, so he starts burrowing inside it instead of the planet, with his big eye being where the big "energy ball" was before. Basically, the sword itself becomes a monument to him, where he watches over his new city/empire.

Imagine all of Silithus and Ahn'qiraj being reworked into one large, spiraling temple city, with the sword at its center and C'thun living in it, watching over it all. Now that would make an OG feel like a big deal again, just by a visual point of view, and actually give a feel of "constantly being watched" while playing there - because you actually are being watched.
Would be a pretty sick endgame zone imho in the spirit of Suramar: you fight yourself through the outer reaches of the city while leveling, and then the inner core+sword are a raid.
And it would be a little callback to both the swords original design (where an eye was at that spot instead of an energy orb) and the old, deleted Cata questline which was supposed to end with C'thuns gigantic eye floating over Silithus.



Granted, it would be veeeeeery similar to Sauron in the LotR movies lawl, but...basically everything Blizzard does is ripped from somewhere, so might as well go all out with it.

[Sondrelk]

The name Avaloren is honestly pretty interesting because the obvious name concept (Avalon) does NOT mesh with the little info we get (heretics, enemies of Titans). So either the name is a red herring or its going to be a very weird framing of Arthurian Mytho.

Or it's the name it originally had as a Titan outpost.

Regardless it's hard to say for sure. It's not a well defined theme by any stretch of the imagination. For all we know it's just a regular island off the coast of Northrend, and not a big landmass on the opposite side of Azeroth.

[Cheezits]

That's what I said right after, it's more following up what BfA did. The lack of a real conclusion to the Fourth War and not just Saurfang's story made writing that reconciliation between Alliance and Horde a daunting task, and from what we've all seen so far they just don't even want to tackle it so we've been doing two expansions with the factions barely existing.

The reasoning is either they have no interest in utilizing them ever again (moderately likely) or they are locking faction stuff to EK/Kalimdor, which I think is more likely. So when they are ready for a revamp they will explain what happened, but not a second before.

[Super Dickmann]

The spicier answer is some sort of Azeroth expansion, Avaloren or revamp or otherwise, where the edges of the setting are completely sanded off. All races become reskinned humans lead by councils that share the same ideals as each other. All the good guys are pristine and boring, all the bad guys are toothless. Azeroth is united as one homogeneous bland blob, which I guess would inevitably lead to SL 2 as the next expansion anyways. This may sound like doubling down on Dragonflight's tone, but I'm thinking more them totally giving up on faction writing after BfA.

This already happened. In fact, that was BFA's end state. Both SL and DF already exist in this status quo. DF's saving grace, such as it is, is that it goes with it and doesn't bother using any of these thoroughly useless characters and uses the fact that it's a new location and a bunch of ciphers to make its tone internally coherent, in contrast to the tonal trainwreck that were BFA And SL.

[Le Conceptuel]

C'thun being revived by the Azerite shower he got, and he decides that the sword is the best stronghold for his body this time, so he starts burrowing inside it instead of the planet, with his big eye being where the big "energy ball" was before. Basically, the sword itself becomes a monument to him, where he watches over his new city/empire.

Imagine all of Silithus and Ahn'qiraj being reworked into one large, spiraling temple city, with the sword at its center and C'thun living in it, watching over it all. Now that would make an OG feel like a big deal again, just by a visual point of view, and actually give a feel of "constantly being watched" while playing there - because you actually are being watched.

Pretty sweet idea, actually. Would also present a nice bit of irony that Sargeras' sword wound up being hijacked by his enemy.

[Murlocos]

That sounds even worse than the first option given that an expansion set in an entirely unrelated realm wholly disconnected from Azeroth and preexisting lore comes with the caveat that it can't irrevocably destroy the setting like a terribly-handled expansion on Azeroth can. See: Shadowlands and BfA, where the consequences of the latter effectively left an entire faction thematically-crippled for the foreseeable future.

That's why I've been saying for a while now that while SL is funnier to poke apart and laugh at all the strained attempts to connect it to the rest of the mythos, everything with the Jailer and THE SIGILS and FRACTALS and so on, BfA was enormously destructive to the actual setting itself. They just gave up!