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

[Sharby]

-snip-

I don't understand this take, have you been playing the game?


The centaur zone main questline is about as textbook "masculine warcraft" as you can get that culminates in fighting a big bad guy, several of them actually.

The dungeon for this zone is your group literally charging into an active battle-field by dragonback, slaughtering an army, and conquering a stronghold after killing their leader.

The blue-dragon questline is all about the causalities of war and borderline extinction and how even death wasn't a release for some people, that's pretty dark and it was written in a very serious and sad manner.

Zaraleck Caverns shows us Sarkareth throwing away the lives of his loyal warriors to advance his own gains and has us fighting failed experiments who are still alive in endless agony to reach him.



Yes Dragonflight has a lot of lighthearted Disney-esque moments, some are even a bit over the top (Algathar Academy comes to mind,) but there are plenty of grimdark moments too that aren't buried under subtext and are quite frequent.

I feel like in order to call Dragonflight "not warcraft feeling" you have to be pretty detached from the game. If anything I find the way they do worldbuilding way more satisfying now as a player than how it was back then.

You actually feel like your character's strength and prowess actively make a difference in the world, in the past no matter who you killed or how strong you were everything was still permanently stuck in a limbo of misery which was boring.

I quite enjoy seeing the denizens of the Isles being able to breathe and chill a bit due to us quelling most of the baddies threatening them, also helps to add personality to the characters outside of military skills.


I won't even touch the gender stuff because its awkward to read and I sincerely doubt anyone here is capable of a nuanced discussion regarding it lol.

[Woggmer]

I think this makes a lot of sense.

And it isn't a good idea take this approach video game storytelling is because not every player is gonna buy and read every novel they put out. Which is why we don't see much of those kinds of quests like in Icecrown where we see visions of Arthas's past and we play out how he gradually becomes the Lich King the longer he spends in Northrend.

When you want to tell a story in a video game, the presentation is the biggest factor at play. Instead of wondering how a character feels... you experience what they experience. Like imagine a whole questline where we go through ropes of why Sylvanas made a deal with the Jailer or a questline where we have experience the War of the Scaleborn through Alexstraza's perspective in-game... and not through a book that we have to pay separately in order to get the full context.

Edit: And I don't mean like what they did with Sylvanas in SL, but like every moment she "died" and saw the Jailer or every moment where she felt the Jailer's whisper in her mind. It wouldn't fix the Jailer, but it would at least help flesh out her character for why she is the way she is.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

I don't understand this take, have you been playing the game?


The centaur zone main questline is about as textbook "masculine warcraft" as you can get that culminates in fighting a big bad guy, several of them actually.

The dungeon for this zone is your group literally charging into an active battle-field by dragonback, slaughtering an army, and conquering a stronghold after killing their leader.

The blue-dragon questline is all about the causalities of war and borderline extinction and how even death wasn't a release for some people, that's pretty dark and it was written in a very serious and sad manner.

Zaraleck Caverns shows us Sarkareth throwing away the lives of his loyal warriors to advance his own gains and has us fighting failed experiments who are still alive in endless agony to reach him.



Yes Dragonflight has a lot of lighthearted Disney-esque moments, some are even a bit over the top (Algathar Academy comes to mind,) but there are plenty of grimdark moments too that aren't buried under subtext and are quite frequent.

I feel like in order to call Dragonflight "not warcraft feeling" you have to be pretty detached from the game. If anything I find the way they do worldbuilding way more satisfying now as a player than how it was back then.

You actually feel like your character's strength and prowess actively make a difference in the world, in the past no matter who you killed or how strong you were everything was still permanently stuck in a limbo of misery which was boring.

I quite enjoy seeing the denizens of the Isles being able to breathe and chill a bit due to us quelling most of the baddies threatening them, also helps to add personality to the characters outside of military skills.


I won't even touch the gender stuff because its awkward to read and I sincerely doubt anyone here is capable of a nuanced discussion regarding it lol.

And have you read my post? Yes i do play the game, on a break atm but i played a good chunk of DF, thanks to gameplay design - no the worldbuilding or story in most cases.

Everything you said here i already mentioned in this line - "Nowadays many things that are written seem very "soft" even when they try to be more "edgy'ier"

"I feel like in order to call Dragonflight "not warcraft feeling" you have to be pretty detached from the game." - The problem with dragonflight is not it not having "the warcraft feeling", it doesn't have any feeling at least to me, because storywise it feels like a big therapy session that they're trying to tell instead of actually captivating story with badass moments, characters doing cool shit instead of constantly showing this weird "self-insert" like emotional, almost depressed characters that we have in DF, especially nozdormu that was pretty much turned into "i feel so sad" character in this whole expansion.

Balance is good, there isn't much of it in DF story of worldbuilding, the same problem that SL had.

I won't even touch the gender stuff because its awkward to read and I sincerely doubt anyone here is capable of a nuanced discussion regarding it lol.

I think you're wrong about it and already showing "everyone here is too stupid to discuss it with me", you can fuck off with that stuff. ;p


Edit: In before some big A4 posts happens and i will be busy playing BG3 - Next expansion needs more balance and has to bring cool, heavy metal grit, badass moments, that you can back to in the future to watch on youtube, instead of constant stream of everything, everyone being so emotional that feels like you're reading TUMBLR.

[Lady Atia]

Afrasiabi wasn't the sole writer in charge, as Kosak wasn't before nor Danuser after. Metzen himself wasn't even technically on the WoW team; he was Vice President of Creative Development at Blizzard and had his hands full with every franchise as Lorgar noted. I don't exclude Afrasiabi from the faults of the writing at all, but Danuser was already Senior Narrative Designer by October 2017, and then Lead Narrative Designer by May 2019. He was hardly in a helpless role at the time, and the writing hasn't seen a seismic shift away from what we've seen in SL to suggest Afrasiabi held the reins alone.

Sure, but you can't do wonders if the outline of a story (which is what afrasiabi did) was just shit to begin with. He fucked up Sylvanas so hard in BfA that they had to write a book just to retconn her back lol. On top of that, he didn't even have a big plan besides "she evil now, make her a boss".

[Pyrophax]

The centaur zone main questline is about as textbook "masculine warcraft" as you can get that culminates in fighting a big bad guy, several of them actually.

Centaurs are as feminine as devs can put them.
"May your family be blessed with daughters" Imagine outrage if there was "sons".
Centaurs are Maruuk in name, but they give 2 shits about Maruuk, unstead his wife is saint.
Khans are all female. Only Nokhud one was male, but was killed bc he was evil, powerhungry maniac.

[Sondrelk]

Centaurs are as feminine as devs can put them.
"May your family be blessed with daughters" Imagine outrage if there was "sons".
Centaurs are Maruuk in name, but they give 2 shits about Maruuk, unstead his wife is saint.
Khans are all female. Only Nokhud one was male, but was killed bc he was evil, powerhungry maniac.

Matrilineal societies do exist you know. Jews are an obvious one that traces lineage matrilineally.

Maruuk is mentioned less, but it's still his name plastered over everything. Maruuk centaur living in Maruukai.
Is it just because they put emphasis on being children of Teera, rather than Teera AND Maruuk?

[Raetary]

Oh no, gender was mentioned.

Time to watch a bunch of people give their most braindead takes on the topic for the next 4-5 pages, just because they can't help themselves.

[Pyrophax]

Matrilineal societies do exist you know. Jews are an obvious one that traces lineage matrilineally.

Maruuk is mentioned less, but it's still his name plastered over everything. Maruuk centaur living in Maruukai.
Is it just because they put emphasis on being children of Teera, rather than Teera AND Maruuk?

Matrilineal societies is fine. But if khans are female role - why put Balakar as male in charge and make him villian? If Balakar was female we can assume that Maruuk centaurs are just matriarchal and be good with that. But unstead we have female good/male bad story, again.

[Sondrelk]

Matrilineal societies is fine. But if khans are female role - why put Balakar as male in charge and make him villian? If Balakar was female we can assume that Maruuk centaurs are just matriarchal and be good with that. But unstead we have female good/male bad story, again.

We also only have four major claims we know the leader of. One has a female speaking with a male interpreter, and another is represented by a male we do quests with, and who gives the orders in the dungeon.

This just sounds like a massive overreaction to a minor faction.

[Jaggler]

Khan isn't a female only role, the previous Khan of the the Nokhud has been said to be very well respected among the centaurs and the Khan of the Clan the Nokhud overthrew to rise up was also led by a male centaur.

[Worldshaper]

i am generally in phase with you but



are you seriously suggesting a return of borrowed powers?! wtf

All I know is that I had more fun with the Artifact Weapons than I am having without them.

[Skildar]

This just sounds like a massive overreaction to a minor faction.

This phrase is a massive exaggeration...

[Yunravel]

Matrilineal societies is fine. But if khans are female role - why put Balakar as male in charge and make him villian? If Balakar was female we can assume that Maruuk centaurs are just matriarchal and be good with that. But unstead we have female good/male bad story, again.

This, sadly. Nzoooth baaaad, big ass lazy octopus groomer

Azshara go go go girlboss.

Repeat this again and again on every stories we had since wod

[Skildar]

Matrilineal societies is fine. But if khans are female role - why put Balakar as male in charge and make him villian? If Balakar was female we can assume that Maruuk centaurs are just matriarchal and be good with that. But unstead we have female good/male bad story, again.

It didn't strike me when doing the quests that indeed, females have better roles in the ohn'aran plains because you encounter quite a few good guys males even if they don't assume position of power.

But it was said before and it is for sure part of the theme of dragon isles that marginalized people are good strong people. Being inclusive and open-minded and actively listening is a need that goes above anything else, just like setting aside your differences even if it goes against any common sense or the logic of the world they are in (to the point where you need to listen to terrorists c.f. Kalec themarore and Alex sundered flame, Noz infinite sisters questlines).

[Sondrelk]

All I know is that I had more fun with the Artifact Weapons than I am having without them.

Never liked Artifact weapons all that much. They were fun to collect at the very start, but once you had most of the available ones you ended up having no weapon skins to farm, which is a large amount of appearances not being there to farm.
In many ways it's like how BfA and SL in my opinion suffered from not having class sets. Not because they were necessarily all bad, but because there was less to farm.

[Kiria]

All I know is that I had more fun with the Artifact Weapons than I am having without them.

To be honest as a casual player I agree with this statement, AP if done right with no option of infinite grind so people feel the need to get the most power possible in the least amount of time need to relax, I genuinely enjoyed the artifact weapons myself and I never suffered the burnout hardcore grinders did because I took my time and enjoyed the content.

[Sondrelk]

This, sadly. Nzoooth baaaad, big ass lazy octopus groomer

Azshara go go go girlboss.

Repeat this again and again on every stories we had since wod

Or an alternative reading:

Azshara so weak and pathetic as she has to be rescued by the adventurers she hates.

N'zoth big and cool, whispering into our minds as we follow his plans to the letter. Big cool voice and looming over us.


Both are hammy villains. One is just not obviously dead yet.

[Worldshaper]

Never liked Artifact weapons all that much. They were fun to collect at the very start, but once you had most of the available ones you ended up having no weapon skins to farm, which is a large amount of appearances not being there to farm.
In many ways it's like how BfA and SL in my opinion suffered from not having class sets. Not because they were necessarily all bad, but because there was less to farm.

To be honest as a casual player I agree with this statement, AP if done right with no option of infinite grind so people feel the need to get the most power possible in the least amount of time need to relax, I genuinely enjoyed the artifact weapons myself and I never suffered the burnout hardcore grinders did because I took my time and enjoyed the content.

It's about having a personal sense of progression that keeps you engaged throughout the expansion, I think.

Renown factions are pretty neat, but they feel pretty generic and stressful. It's something everybody shares, and you always feel like you're behind unless you do a set of specific pieces of world content all the time.

With Artifact Weapons, it felt like my own thing. My personal path to power, that also included lots of cool quests and transmogs. And it was with me throughout the expansion.

I'm not sure it even needs to be tied to power per se. But that conent delivery structure was great.

[Sondrelk]

To be honest as a casual player I agree with this statement, AP if done right with no option of infinite grind so people feel the need to get the most power possible in the least amount of time need to relax, I genuinely enjoyed the artifact weapons myself and I never suffered the burnout hardcore grinders did because I took my time and enjoyed the content.

I think AP grind is just one of those things that will be divisive forever. One side will always enjoy having all kinds of content be worthwhile all expansion. Another will complain because they have to farm Iskaaran Stew forever to stay competitive.

There is also the question of what kind of power it should give. Artifacts were effectively another layer of passive and active abilities that you couldn't do without. While the HoA were linked to Azerite Armor.

Personally I didn't mind the AP grind, but I did mind the extraneous power. Azerite Armor specifically never grabbed me, and always felt like a boring system layered on top.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

To be honest as a casual player I agree with this statement, AP if done right with no option of infinite grind so people feel the need to get the most power possible in the least amount of time need to relax, I genuinely enjoyed the artifact weapons myself and I never suffered the burnout hardcore grinders did because I took my time and enjoyed the content.

I have great moments with artifact weapons - Fishing for corrupted ashbringer with people for hours and fighting with the other faction at the spot, farming hidden thunderfury appearance for rogues with 4 other rogues on daily basis, figuring out how to sneak through faster and faster to kill the bosses.

Amongst many other things, artifacts having objectives to unlock more appearances or tints were really a cool, long term content, especially for more casual players.

Mage tower and artifact weapons - trying to get better and training to finally beat the boss for that sweet mog for your main classes and other classes/specs you never really played is also one of this very memorable things.


Hardcore players will have different opinion, but it's always the case since those are the people that play, grind hardcore 18 hours a day, especially when new expansion launches and they will just skip everything to the grinding part.