Referring back to the roadmap https://i.redd.it/e27g8k6drp0e1.jpeg
11.2.5 has “new content” which, referring back to older patches is gonna be some side minigame thing akin to Siren’s Isle/Nightfall scenario. Snippet of story but mostly just more gameplay to tide people over.
11.2.7 has “new story and quests”, presumably to wrap up the expac and get ready for Midnight plus a final wheel-spinner of repeatable quests.
Midnight releasing…February 2026? Probably?
Assuming they keep on with what was originally announced of course. Times (and plans) change.
They literally bring up SL lore again and again: I don’t want it.
It damaged the game enough, it was a mistake, and ideally Blizz should just forget it. It is a reasonable expectations for them to realize that something doesnt work and won’t work.
That being said K’aresh looks cool but this expansion feels so disjointed from one region to the other? You have half-troll half-elves who have never been fleshed out and are a glorified scrapped concept, nerubians were a swing and a miss IMHO, and then you have stuff like goblins and ethereals popping out of nowhere.
Or alternatively, the expansion that was torn apart when Metzen took over, with most of its Danuser-made content condensed down into 11.0 or scrapped entirely, forcing the team to come up with completely new stuff for 11.1 and 11.2.
And considering that we got 11.1 as a homage to everything goblin and 11.2 seems to be a love letter to Outland and specifically Netherstorm, I think it’s clear that they’re hoping to appeal to us based on nostalgia rather than cohesion and interconnectivity.
They failed. Not entirely since yeah I could easily see Undermine work perfectly in a cohesive expansion but everything else has the stink of Danuser and the cheap attempt of Metzen to reel us back in with nostalgia-bait.
It reads as a lot of rewrites and change in direction when Metzen took over. For example, the abandonment of the Haranir storyline (and potentially an allied race) and plot points about the deeps. They will probably return to them later, but it’s clear Metzen wanted to go somewhere else.
Does it really matter where do they want to go if they can’t make things work or even write stories instead of another episode of the main cast’s overwhelming stupidity?
I am not sure why some people are so much bent on hating everything Metzen did. I feel like it’s for the sake of the opposite reaction to others praising him too much?
Maybe he did, maybe he tried to salvage something worse.
The thing’s that, Danuser was not an appreciated writer, and his attempts to address criticism were often condescending or low-effort, which alienated people.
I think the main narrative problem is that the world feels too disjointed. Take WotLK, Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion: have a very cohesive world.
TBC, WotLK, and Cata all shape up Garrosh and the faction war as secondary storylines that culmonate in MoP and the Siege of Orgrimmar. Meanwhile since MoP, Blizz tried to build the Legion as the big bad through the story, which culminates in the Legion expansion.
It felt like there was a vision - but the “Worldsoul Saga” so far is not starting out as well.
When I say that he tore the expansion apart, I don’t mean that as in “he tore apart Danuser’s baby and denied us something beautiful and wonderful and he’s why everything went wrong.”
I simply mean it as in “he tore apart the expansion because it did not fit his vision and Blizzard clearly struggled to replace what he removed with something cohesive, which is why this particular expansion feels so disjointed.”
It’s a potential explanation of a particular flaw with the expansion, not a condemnation of Metzen as the new-old Satan.
This does not always work out well. Battle for Azeroth was rather clearly building up to Shadowlands with an obvious and apparent through line, with Bwonsamdi and the Drust and Sylvanas, but look at how that went.
Interconnectivity between expansions doesn’t guarantee a good story.
Blizzard laid it out clear for us during their announcement at Blizzcon - they wish to pursue the Disney Marvel Cinematic model. That’s pretty much why things are they way they are and why so much focus is put on characters over world building. As a corporation they know that’s what sells and what markets their product. Every design philosophy from Legion has been from a much larger marketing directive to sell product over substance and ‘passion’. Every zone and story element will be based on analytics, trends, data and numbers on what sells.
Ultimately thinking this way will make you nihilistic towards WoW so it’s probably best to turn your brain off.
It makes sense and I think it’s largely correct, then again who knows, there are rumors the previous project was about having the Isle of Dorn, Midnight, and The Last Titan all in one.
Maybe they thought the Isle of Dorn had nothing else to offer and decided to drop goblins and now a new planet.
More confirmation than rumours, though people often interpret “the Worldsoul Saga is the original story of the War Within spread across three expansions” as “the Worldsoul Saga involved visiting Quel’thalas in 11.1 and Northrend in 11.2,” which I think is incorrect.
I think it’s more likely that the War Within was just going to have roughly the same plot as the next two expansions, that’s all, just still focused on Khaz Algar and the Coreway.
Additionally, new models for nether rays and observer demons.
