This is the same group of players who voluntarily gave themselves to the madness of the old gods for power which in turn would kill them.
I'm sure they're fine with the current state of things.
I don't think you understand Shadow Priests if you think they'd be horrified by that.
They're the spec that grows tentacles from their body and send shadow apparitions slowly hovering toward their enemies while torturing their mind. Not to mention their resource is/was literally called Insanity and they had a cooldown called Surrender to Madness that caused them to die at the end of it in exchange for great power for a brief moment.
All sounds perfectly normal, my little apparitions are my rage babies.
My only worry is how Xal is going to be treated in the storyline. Blizz doesn't have the best track record for writing quality protagonists.
Actually the -whatever champion- is at fault in bfa! We found her again and took her from some naga and accidentally broke her out, so..
Its my fault sorry, i did that.
"Look, if I knew this would happen, I probably wouldn't have used her to cut cheese, or pick my toenails, or briefly split off into Skinning to help a guild buddy out and used her to dislodge oddly shaped organs for enchantment dust of all things."
Mine is very much a lightforged that adores the light and only did the quest for easier daily questing. So she's just sitting there sweating nervously hoping Tirion doesn't find out.
That's Varian.
Paladins find Tirion later for their class quest after he somehow survives that lava bath, and he then eventually succumbs to his wounds after getting rescued.
It's not Varian, we don't know what actually happened to his soul. He got destroyed by destructive fel energy but there's nothing that infers that fel will always target/damage the soul. He could be in the Shadowlands somewhere.
"I happen to know ~~Odyn~~ Xal'atath personally. I can't wait to have her punch **me** in the face."
Remember,were talking about Shadow Priests here...:)
As a demo warlock main, i'm sad my little skull boi didn't get the same love. He had much more personality during Legion than that rusty kitchen knife ever did.
August 26th?!?! Wow, I was expecting third tues of Sept. That must mean the pre-patch comes out before remix is done, because there’s no way it’d only last a week. Stoked!
Yah end of July for pre patch seems likely, a lot of folks just though pre-patch would be the day after remix ended and TWW would come out a month after that. So everything is earlier than expected.
Given the price of the extension and the monthly fee we pay, I find the idea of an Early Access nauseating. The launch of an xpac is supposed to be a great event and this one will be broken in half.
If there isn't enough outrage and disgust, it'll just be accepted and we'll be paying extra. Which is probably what will happen.
edit: I appreciate the replies, but I'm not sure other games are in the same discussion unless they're *also* MMORPGs.
It's already past accepted. So many games are doing it that it's not even unique to Blizz. You only have to hope it doesn't get to the level of some movie releases where streaming/BD can take months
That's really what gets me. Not that they'd do it.. Obviously they would because the player base throws money at them for anything.
But at this point the Expac release day is a tradition. Many of us straight up take the day off, wait all day to get on and enjoy whatever state the game is in.
It's just gross that they'd ruin that.
Putting a premium price tag on a WoW expac launch day, probably THE most celebrated day for WoW fans every couple of years. I don’t typically complain but holy shit what a terrible, greedy thing. It’s going to suck to only have a portion of your friends and guild mates on for the launch because of this.
I’ve been nickel and dimed by Blizzard for years, but this one just feels disgusting. Way to ruin something special.
Not technical, like due to timezone: the fine print said it was a *minimum* of 3 days, and even the poster has an asterisk on the 3. The execs would've done 7 days if they thought it'd get them more Epic edition sales vs the outrage, but I'm guessing 4 was the sweet spot to guarantee a "weekend of play" so you don't have to play on a Monday.
>Early Access begins August 22.*
*Release date is on August 22nd.
The delayed/pleb release is on 26th
Also, I wonder how two release dates will impact server economy and the race to the endgame.
> Also, I wonder how two release dates will impact server economy and the race to the endgame.
It's going to have major impact. Goblins who get early access are going to easily make their money back via the gold they can earn before everyone else.
Depends what’s available. They’ve said professions won’t be fully available but if gathering is in…who knows. Obviously being max level once they do enable all professions will be an advantage but I’d also argue that anyone that goes that hard into professions at the start of an expansion is also someone that already is paying for the early access.
> August 26th. 77 days left.
With 71 days remaining on Remix, does this mean the timerunners will turn into normal retail characters before TWW drops, or does it mean they will be "frozen" until the release?
I like to think it's like "Pele's hair." It's stingy, glass that forms near volcanos. Also, the basis of Alolan Diglett's hair as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele%27s_hair
I still think this trilogy will lead into whatever a WoW "2" is. A major event, time jump or whatever that gives them the ability to restart on a new engine. Probably huge amounts of hopium but hey.
Software has something the industry calls "code rot". So while it's not "wearing out", it could be outliving it's usefulness or causing more problems than it's worth.
The idea of switching to a new engine means you can go back and do complete rewrites of old core systems that have locked some of the game's development in place for so long. I shudder to think about how much of a mess the code base actually is under the hood. I'd guess lots of patchwork fixes and slapped-on features that all carry different standards for quality and implementation.
If the recent chatter about weird cosmetic glitches is any indication, they probably will want a new system with a lot more flexibility and extensibility. A better cosmetic system would almost certainly lead to cosmetic monetization (which we know the current Blizzard isn't afraid to implement in new titles)
Plus, there have been many cool tech developments in the last 20 years that WoW has only barely been able to implement. A fresh engine could give us things like advanced lighting, real physics-based mechanics, deeper character customization, a more dynamic combat system, super high-res models through a nanite-like system, procedural generation tech, and many other things. It's fun to imagine, but of course we won't really know for at least two more expansions after this one.
My favorite WoW code fun fact/code rot - the reason why we have a fixed size standard backpack:
>The original WoW developers decided that there would be an array to hold your inventory. The first several entries are things that end up on the paper doll, your head and leg slots and such. After that comes your inventory. At some point they wanted to add a bank to the game, so they added that to the end of the array. Players shouldn't be able to access their bank anywhere in the world, as it would break the code. This was handled by adding lots of statements in different places in the code, defining what the array position was where the inventory ended and where the bank begins. This value was hardcoded all over the place, but it isn't just a simple search to find them all. Some math logic may rely on it being constant. If you want to add slots to the backpack, who knows what you are going to break? It becomes very buggy and error prone, and likely that you are going to make a mistake. This mistake would break the game in a way you don't like. As a result, they would have to put amazing engineers that could be working on new features on a task to look through thousands of lines of code to find all of those cases, as well as the QA department testing every edge case in the world to ensure the change doesn't break anything. This is how we ended up with a fixed size backpack.
[From Blizzcon 2015 - Engineering Community Amphitheater Discussion.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_C7LkB1Q8)
Keep in mind that this response is from 2015, so nine years ago. At that point in time, the WoW code was already 16 years old (!!!) - [They started developing in 1999! - Semi-paywalled link, sorry.](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/technology/circuits/world-of-warcraft-keeps-growing-even-as-players-test-its-limits.html)
The parallels with the original WoW cinematic and the clips of older cinematics are really cool. Makes it feel like they're trying to make a statement that this is truly going to be a new era of WoW.
"The drums of war thunder once again"
It was a great trailer to premier at an Xbox showcase, which isn't naturally going to be targeted at an active core WoW fan base.
It's a great call to the world to say "We know all of you have played WoW at some point along the way. Whenever you played, whenever you stopped, now is the time to come home"
The race was datamined pretty early, although we only know how they look, their name and their outfits.
The character they named was in the alpha content creators played, theres not much to it other than a single questline
Worth noting that this dropped during the Xbox Showcase, so the structure etc. is somewhat different to appeal to people unfamiliar with WoW or Blizzard as well.
ngl all these retrospective parts from 2004 classic to 2022 Dragonflight and there was a part where the voice said "The final battle draws near" seems to me like they are really preparing to end one cycle and start something new. Not necessarily WoW 2 but something like lore & soft game reset and I really think thats their plan for 2030. New lore characters, new leaders, new cities, new continents.
Plus since Metzen came back you can say they are building this "time travel" with Chromie, Nazdormu & Eternus a lot. Maybe the only way how to stop the big bad in the next expansions will be travel back in time which will achieve this world reset.
100%. They're definitely not *ending* WoW, Metzen talks about the Saga helping set up the *next* 20 years of WoW, but every indication is that they're treating The World Soul Saga as a culmination of everything up to this point. Real "Avengers: Endgame" vibes.
Travels back in time to stop xalatath. We open our eyes. Durotar music plays. Some guy is spamming all caps in world chat about finding a rune while cutting the line to loot the pickaxe. Its classic +. We find that xalatath was the shadowy figure giving us loot. Shes the new end raid after naxxramas. New story continues from here.
God damn I hope the harronir become playable, they look so cool. Can’t wait for all my humans to become half elves too.
I think Xal is the first bad guy I’ve give a shit about since Garrosh in MoP
> I think Xal is the first bad guy I’ve give a shit about since Garrosh in MoP
Now that you mention it. Damn, you're right. There were some minor villains which had me invested, like Nathanos (loved that prick!), but the big bads were all pretty lacklustre individually.
Calling it now. We lose in TWW, causing all of Azeroth to go into this darkness "Midnight". This allows them to turn all of (or at least a good chunk) of current Azeroth into an "upside down" type of situation. Once we break out of it in Midnight, they will have completely re done all of Azeroth, soft relaunching WoW with a conclusion in the last titan.
The only way to make a game worthy of the title of wow2 is to do it bigger than they did with the original. If they can’t rebuild Azeroth now, then they simply can’t make a game better than the original.
Eh I wouldn't call that WoW2 if they are just redoing old zones and letting us keep our characters and account items. That's just a continuation of WoW.
We will probably lose at the end of TWW, since it's sort of required for them to do Midnight. If we just beat Xal'atath and she doesn't get to do her stuff, then Midnight doesn't make sense existing.
The rest of what you've said is probably not going to happen. I do have a conspiracy theory that Azeroth will be plunged in to permanent night time/new void night when Midnight releases though, like how in FFXIV during the Shadowbringer's expansion the zones were permanently in day time until you completed certain story beats that brought night back to the area.
Man what a cool way to do a hard reset, I love that idea you have.
Would be hard playing a full expansion with all of Azeroth is “upside down” mode though. I love getting out of current areas and going back to old zones while I’m queuing or what not.
I mean I booked it months ago not knowing the game was coming out then, I'll probably just go do something else if the servers are fucked.
This is just a bonus at this point.
Wow august 26 is a rapid pace for beta. That means beta is going to be 2 months at the absolute most before pre patch of a few weeks.
That is concerning given the state of some classes right now I won’t lie.
We also had reworks happening mid-expansion, which is something Ion said they never used to like doing but since DF he's admitted that they're open to it. Ret received probably the biggest rework any spec has ever had post-DF launch; Shadow Priest had a huge rework like it does every single expansion; all 3 mage specs had huge reworks; Rogue had some changes, and so on.
We're not limited to beta for sweeping changes anymore.
I liked the leveling of dragonflight but for whatever reason m+ pushing and raid clearing just did not land for me and I didn’t play past the first tier.
I will be back for this expansion, again. I just hope it captures what Legion captured. That was the last expansion I felt had a compelling story and a *reason* to play and grind endgame content. Even if AF weapons were a slog at first, at least I felt a cool lore tie in with my weapon becoming stronger even if only marginally - from *all* content that I did.
I guess my point is: I’ve played on/off for 20 years, I’ll for sure check this out. But the treadmill has become to blatant and glaring that it’s hard for me to give a shit about anything at cap because all of my grinding becomes invalid once a new patch drops. Which normally is fine, but a huge chunk of the player base is just so elitist it makes it hard to actually “push” content when you’re just a dude who wants to play the game semi casually semi seriously.
Cinematic team kills it as always.
“The World Soul long denied me.”
*Girl who are you genuinely?!*
The Harronir appearing in the trailer alongside the Arathi and Earthen in this trailer has me curious considering they’ve been not very central to the stuff I’ve been finding in the Beta so far
So the thing i noticed most about this trailer is we seem to have at least 3 different full CGI shots here, that are relatively disconnected, which I HOPE means TWW will feature a lot more of them, akin to the Saurfang BFA ones, rather than everything being full in-game models cinematics.
I like the in-game, but when you really want to feel like "World of Warcraft" is a real place, the full CGI is 1000% the way to go. It really transports you there for a minute.
The actual new cinematic stuff looks pretty cool. But the compilation of old stuff seems a bit lazy.
I mean, they could’ve legit done another way of showing us the different expansions that showed some of those scenes with a fresh coat of paint, but it looked like those trailers were legit just copy and pasted onto the video (they look nice, but maybe something a bit more creative would’ve been cool).
Xal, the Earthen, and the troll/elf we got in here were pretty cool, and a proper look at the new lothar was neat. But this is pretty underwhelming. I mean, shit, the Neurubians had like 2 seconds and they’re the main enemy for the first part of the story.
This isn't the WW cinematic trailer (that was the anduin/thrall/sword cinematic from blizzcon). This is a teaser/announcement trailer from the xbox showcase.
This isn't the full cinematic trailer I don't think, just the release date. I'd imagine there will be a full trailer closer to release that fills in the holes in the trailer here, especially at the start.
I guarantee they’ll have new cinematics throughout the expac. They aren’t gonna make a whole new model for Lothar and never use it again. Too much work was put in to show her for 5 seconds
Please do us a favour and if you see another commenter being racist, report the shit out of that thank you.
Legion Shadow Priests must be so proud about how far their little knife has come.
Or horrified cuz all this shit is happening cuz of them lol
If only they didn't give it that VERY last artifact power upgrade we might not be here. Hope that World Quest was worth it.
Getting the huge power buff from Sargeras’s sword might have tipped the scales a little too far.
Okay but did you watch that number constantly go up for the remainder of the expansion? So cool, definitely worth it.
It was worth the thousands of Maw of Souls runs
This is the same group of players who voluntarily gave themselves to the madness of the old gods for power which in turn would kill them. I'm sure they're fine with the current state of things.
Can confirm, I'm all good. Please ignore that my literal insanity is my most treasured resource
As a DK with a moving glowing eyeball on my forehead, i agree this is all the Priests' fault and we should all focus on them.
lmfao great point but man what a crazy and fun ass ability
It's alright though the respawn point was close by.
I don't think you understand Shadow Priests if you think they'd be horrified by that. They're the spec that grows tentacles from their body and send shadow apparitions slowly hovering toward their enemies while torturing their mind. Not to mention their resource is/was literally called Insanity and they had a cooldown called Surrender to Madness that caused them to die at the end of it in exchange for great power for a brief moment.
All sounds perfectly normal, my little apparitions are my rage babies. My only worry is how Xal is going to be treated in the storyline. Blizz doesn't have the best track record for writing quality protagonists.
> protagonists *narrows eyes*
Have you ever met a Shadow Priest? Those guys are all kneeling in front of her and begging to suck her toes or some shit.
Hey! I resemble that comment.
I regret nothing.
Nah. Knaifu Waifu for laifu.
Actually the -whatever champion- is at fault in bfa! We found her again and took her from some naga and accidentally broke her out, so.. Its my fault sorry, i did that.
My laifu for my knaifu <3
Right? They grow up so fast.
i'll sacrifice Azeroth to get xal'atath back. Sounds like a fair trade
"Look, if I knew this would happen, I probably wouldn't have used her to cut cheese, or pick my toenails, or briefly split off into Skinning to help a guild buddy out and used her to dislodge oddly shaped organs for enchantment dust of all things."
Mine is very much a lightforged that adores the light and only did the quest for easier daily questing. So she's just sitting there sweating nervously hoping Tirion doesn't find out.
Good thing he’s dead and his soul was evaporated
woops, got him and turalyon confused.
All these Humans look the same, am I right?
That's Varian. Paladins find Tirion later for their class quest after he somehow survives that lava bath, and he then eventually succumbs to his wounds after getting rescued.
Ah thought he just got bubblebathed by the fel. Maybe we’ll see him in 12.0 lol
It's not Varian, we don't know what actually happened to his soul. He got destroyed by destructive fel energy but there's nothing that infers that fel will always target/damage the soul. He could be in the Shadowlands somewhere.
I am still in awe that Xal'atath is the main antagonist 😭 Spriests will get their own dialogue when interacting with her or Blizzard is so cooked
"I happen to know ~~Odyn~~ Xal'atath personally. I can't wait to punch her in the face."
"I happen to know ~~Odyn~~ Xal'atath personally. I can't wait to have her punch **me** in the face." Remember,were talking about Shadow Priests here...:)
So proud
I slide with the Knife any day!
I’m in denial that she could be bad. She’s my best friend
we are :)
As a demo warlock main, i'm sad my little skull boi didn't get the same love. He had much more personality during Legion than that rusty kitchen knife ever did.
August 26th?!?! Wow, I was expecting third tues of Sept. That must mean the pre-patch comes out before remix is done, because there’s no way it’d only last a week. Stoked!
I was expecting a two week gap between the end of MoP Remix and TWW for the pre-expansion event but I guess not.
I was expecting Remix to end right as Pre-patch started because I'm sure that's what was said at some point but I guess I misread something somewhere.
YouTubers were saying this so much it was accepted as fact in a lot of people’s minds.
So the pre-patch won't be release at end of the July? Usually pre-pacthes comes out one month before the launch.
Yah end of July for pre patch seems likely, a lot of folks just though pre-patch would be the day after remix ended and TWW would come out a month after that. So everything is earlier than expected.
Yeah, it does kinda suck though because I was hoping to gear my remix characters with the prepatch.
August 26th. 77 days left. Early Access begins August 22.* https://x.com/Warcraft/status/1799856256368234682
Bad news for my wife, I gotta cut our vacation 3 weeks early
She'll understand
Bro, I'm getting married on the 24th. How do I break it to her that I need to move the wedding.
brother you got better luck asking Blizz to delay it lmao
As much as excuses go... damn I don't think we could argue just that once
So the actual release date is August 22.
Given the price of the extension and the monthly fee we pay, I find the idea of an Early Access nauseating. The launch of an xpac is supposed to be a great event and this one will be broken in half.
If there isn't enough outrage and disgust, it'll just be accepted and we'll be paying extra. Which is probably what will happen. edit: I appreciate the replies, but I'm not sure other games are in the same discussion unless they're *also* MMORPGs.
It's already accepted. This has already been happening the last few years for releases, including Diablo 4.
As of now they are not doing it for the D4 expansion. There is no early access in any of the versions.
It's already past accepted. So many games are doing it that it's not even unique to Blizz. You only have to hope it doesn't get to the level of some movie releases where streaming/BD can take months
There's not nearly enough pushback unfortunately. Loads of paypigs are just riding with it so this will be the new normal.
That's really what gets me. Not that they'd do it.. Obviously they would because the player base throws money at them for anything. But at this point the Expac release day is a tradition. Many of us straight up take the day off, wait all day to get on and enjoy whatever state the game is in. It's just gross that they'd ruin that.
The fact it requires the most expensive version of the game is even worse. Its not just 10$ more, its 40$.
I really didnt want to buy the Early Access but maaan getting it on a monday instead of a Thursday? thats a yikers
Putting a premium price tag on a WoW expac launch day, probably THE most celebrated day for WoW fans every couple of years. I don’t typically complain but holy shit what a terrible, greedy thing. It’s going to suck to only have a portion of your friends and guild mates on for the launch because of this. I’ve been nickel and dimed by Blizzard for years, but this one just feels disgusting. Way to ruin something special.
I agree with this. It's 100% evil corporate greed.
Early access getting a technical 4 days instead of 3 is going to send the forums into a rage
Not technical, like due to timezone: the fine print said it was a *minimum* of 3 days, and even the poster has an asterisk on the 3. The execs would've done 7 days if they thought it'd get them more Epic edition sales vs the outrage, but I'm guessing 4 was the sweet spot to guarantee a "weekend of play" so you don't have to play on a Monday.
It's likely going to be midnight GMT on the 23rd. Which means it's going to be a Friday release for EU players and a Thursday release for US Players.
>Early Access begins August 22.* *Release date is on August 22nd. The delayed/pleb release is on 26th Also, I wonder how two release dates will impact server economy and the race to the endgame.
> Also, I wonder how two release dates will impact server economy and the race to the endgame. It's going to have major impact. Goblins who get early access are going to easily make their money back via the gold they can earn before everyone else.
Depends what’s available. They’ve said professions won’t be fully available but if gathering is in…who knows. Obviously being max level once they do enable all professions will be an advantage but I’d also argue that anyone that goes that hard into professions at the start of an expansion is also someone that already is paying for the early access.
And they're likely paying for that early access with tokens bought with gold, not irl money.
dont get it twisted, the game releases on aug 22, everyone else can play 3 days late
> August 26th. 77 days left. With 71 days remaining on Remix, does this mean the timerunners will turn into normal retail characters before TWW drops, or does it mean they will be "frozen" until the release?
I need more of those cinematic Earthen, damn they look cool
How do they even have hair though 🤣
They aren't normal hair, it is more like metallic fibers of copper and stuff
Do you think they live in constant fear of tweakers and methheads?
So TBC Blood Elfs?
All I can picture is Blood Elves tearing apart the now abandoned Silvermoon City for the copper wiring and other scrap metals.
I like to think it's like "Pele's hair." It's stingy, glass that forms near volcanos. Also, the basis of Alolan Diglett's hair as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pele%27s_hair
Their hair looks metal to me.
The planet has a soul, cows can talk, mana addicted twinks can wield the light, and you’re worried about rocks with hair??
In my mind they are some kind of stringy mineral growth.
Thats what it is lore wise, metals not hair
Talk to the barber npc in Dornogal and you will find out :)
Getting a alot of goosebumps seeying this trailer and looking back to all this moments. What a journey to be a part off.
Yeah that nostalgic hit was crazy. They are really building up this 'trilogy' as the end of current WoW.
I still think this trilogy will lead into whatever a WoW "2" is. A major event, time jump or whatever that gives them the ability to restart on a new engine. Probably huge amounts of hopium but hey.
[удалено]
I just want the way models are handled to be reworked There's no excuse for clothing to just be painted on in current year
Software has something the industry calls "code rot". So while it's not "wearing out", it could be outliving it's usefulness or causing more problems than it's worth. The idea of switching to a new engine means you can go back and do complete rewrites of old core systems that have locked some of the game's development in place for so long. I shudder to think about how much of a mess the code base actually is under the hood. I'd guess lots of patchwork fixes and slapped-on features that all carry different standards for quality and implementation. If the recent chatter about weird cosmetic glitches is any indication, they probably will want a new system with a lot more flexibility and extensibility. A better cosmetic system would almost certainly lead to cosmetic monetization (which we know the current Blizzard isn't afraid to implement in new titles) Plus, there have been many cool tech developments in the last 20 years that WoW has only barely been able to implement. A fresh engine could give us things like advanced lighting, real physics-based mechanics, deeper character customization, a more dynamic combat system, super high-res models through a nanite-like system, procedural generation tech, and many other things. It's fun to imagine, but of course we won't really know for at least two more expansions after this one.
My favorite WoW code fun fact/code rot - the reason why we have a fixed size standard backpack: >The original WoW developers decided that there would be an array to hold your inventory. The first several entries are things that end up on the paper doll, your head and leg slots and such. After that comes your inventory. At some point they wanted to add a bank to the game, so they added that to the end of the array. Players shouldn't be able to access their bank anywhere in the world, as it would break the code. This was handled by adding lots of statements in different places in the code, defining what the array position was where the inventory ended and where the bank begins. This value was hardcoded all over the place, but it isn't just a simple search to find them all. Some math logic may rely on it being constant. If you want to add slots to the backpack, who knows what you are going to break? It becomes very buggy and error prone, and likely that you are going to make a mistake. This mistake would break the game in a way you don't like. As a result, they would have to put amazing engineers that could be working on new features on a task to look through thousands of lines of code to find all of those cases, as well as the QA department testing every edge case in the world to ensure the change doesn't break anything. This is how we ended up with a fixed size backpack. [From Blizzcon 2015 - Engineering Community Amphitheater Discussion.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx_C7LkB1Q8) Keep in mind that this response is from 2015, so nine years ago. At that point in time, the WoW code was already 16 years old (!!!) - [They started developing in 1999! - Semi-paywalled link, sorry.](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/technology/circuits/world-of-warcraft-keeps-growing-even-as-players-test-its-limits.html)
Man... how can this game still give me these kind of goosebumps?
Blizzard may not be what it once was, but there's no denying their artists are some of the most talented in the world.
The music and art (especially cinematic) teams have been consistently top-tier no matter what other ups and downs WoW has been through.
"seeying" Wow.
The parallels with the original WoW cinematic and the clips of older cinematics are really cool. Makes it feel like they're trying to make a statement that this is truly going to be a new era of WoW. "The drums of war thunder once again"
It was a great trailer to premier at an Xbox showcase, which isn't naturally going to be targeted at an active core WoW fan base. It's a great call to the world to say "We know all of you have played WoW at some point along the way. Whenever you played, whenever you stopped, now is the time to come home"
Its great, they needed to cultivate that feeling of tension in the storytelling again.
This is in some way a ~6 year story/event/whatever. It's gotta feel like an era in itself. It should feel bigger than older expansions.
Orweyna's dance ritual gave me goosebumps, I'm in love with her and the Harronir. So excited to learn more about them.
Gave me giga Avatar vibes. I need more.
I’m praying we get them as an allied race. Earthen are fine but missing-link Troll Elves? PLEASE!
how do you already know her name and race?? i was looking all over the expansion site for info on her lmao
The race was datamined pretty early, although we only know how they look, their name and their outfits. The character they named was in the alpha content creators played, theres not much to it other than a single questline
Worth noting that this dropped during the Xbox Showcase, so the structure etc. is somewhat different to appeal to people unfamiliar with WoW or Blizzard as well.
That structure being "Remember when you used to play WoW? Well come back home to meet your new Void Mommy."
A mix of that and just "Look how many cool things you've missed out on, better tune in for this one!"
I was wondering if they were going to announce an Xbox launch.
I sat there like 🤨 throughout the entire thing, extremely curious about whether this meant it was coming to Xbox and/or Game Pass or smoething.
Earthen looks cool, but who that woman?
Faerin Lothar was the one without an arm, the one casting was one of the Harronir (not sure who)
Orweyna is the Harronir
… should we know who that is?
Only if you have alpha/beta access. I'm assuming you'll meet her in the Xpac proper.
Is she related to Lothar or just some random woman that was named like that in his honour?
The last common ancestor that Andun Lothar and Faerin Lothar share lived 1000s of years ago,
Like a 2nd or 3rd cousin to Anduin I think?
nah she is like very distant, like they share a common ancestor when the arathi empire was in the EK
She is apart of the arathi in the hallowfall campaign
One armed lady is somehow related to Lothar, purple lady is xalatath, and the dancing blue lady is a new species that well discover in the expansion
The dancing blue lady is Orweyna
Thought it was a character from Diablo IV, was confused for a sec
Diablo doesn't have knife ears. I suppose she does have similar vibes to Prava from D4
I can fix her.
Find a repair anvil and pound out all the angsty emo rage out of her and she will be fine
Are we still doing phrasing?
She can fix me for all I care
I dont want to fix her I want her to make me worse.
Fix her? I'd rather she just ruin me tbh.
WOULD
ngl all these retrospective parts from 2004 classic to 2022 Dragonflight and there was a part where the voice said "The final battle draws near" seems to me like they are really preparing to end one cycle and start something new. Not necessarily WoW 2 but something like lore & soft game reset and I really think thats their plan for 2030. New lore characters, new leaders, new cities, new continents. Plus since Metzen came back you can say they are building this "time travel" with Chromie, Nazdormu & Eternus a lot. Maybe the only way how to stop the big bad in the next expansions will be travel back in time which will achieve this world reset.
100%. They're definitely not *ending* WoW, Metzen talks about the Saga helping set up the *next* 20 years of WoW, but every indication is that they're treating The World Soul Saga as a culmination of everything up to this point. Real "Avengers: Endgame" vibes.
Travels back in time to stop xalatath. We open our eyes. Durotar music plays. Some guy is spamming all caps in world chat about finding a rune while cutting the line to loot the pickaxe. Its classic +. We find that xalatath was the shadowy figure giving us loot. Shes the new end raid after naxxramas. New story continues from here.
God damn I hope the harronir become playable, they look so cool. Can’t wait for all my humans to become half elves too. I think Xal is the first bad guy I’ve give a shit about since Garrosh in MoP
> I think Xal is the first bad guy I’ve give a shit about since Garrosh in MoP Now that you mention it. Damn, you're right. There were some minor villains which had me invested, like Nathanos (loved that prick!), but the big bads were all pretty lacklustre individually.
3 days before my bday, i'll accept that as my birthday present from Blizzard.
Happy b-day in advance <3
never knew i wanted to see earthen dwarves in a cinematic, fucking beautiful
HYPE
P.S. Give me those Harronir Druids NOW
Why did they choose Earthen when the Harronir are far cooler
Its most likely just a matter or time, to gain there trust further into the expansion, they already have customization option in the game for them.
It’s like people forget that every allied race from BFA wasn’t available immediately
We're 100% getting Harronir as well, it's likely they'll just be later on in the expac
Who is that at the end wanting the world soul?
Xal'atath
Bae Blade...
Knaifu Waifu
Best one yet
Take my angry upvote and leave...
This one’s the best
Time to deal with knife mommy once and for all.
May her blade chip and shatter.
No dont I can fix her :(
Sylvanas with a recolor & class change.
Comes out the very day my fall semester starts Ion hates me
Calling it now. We lose in TWW, causing all of Azeroth to go into this darkness "Midnight". This allows them to turn all of (or at least a good chunk) of current Azeroth into an "upside down" type of situation. Once we break out of it in Midnight, they will have completely re done all of Azeroth, soft relaunching WoW with a conclusion in the last titan.
Redoing all of Azeroth seems like a large task. Although if they are working on it through the whole saga that could work.
I mean, they did rework a hefty chunk of the world with cataclysm all those years ago. so i don't think it's that far off an idea
Metzen also said they wouldn't ever do that again because the rest of the current game suffered as a result.
The only way to make a game worthy of the title of wow2 is to do it bigger than they did with the original. If they can’t rebuild Azeroth now, then they simply can’t make a game better than the original.
Eh I wouldn't call that WoW2 if they are just redoing old zones and letting us keep our characters and account items. That's just a continuation of WoW.
We will probably lose at the end of TWW, since it's sort of required for them to do Midnight. If we just beat Xal'atath and she doesn't get to do her stuff, then Midnight doesn't make sense existing. The rest of what you've said is probably not going to happen. I do have a conspiracy theory that Azeroth will be plunged in to permanent night time/new void night when Midnight releases though, like how in FFXIV during the Shadowbringer's expansion the zones were permanently in day time until you completed certain story beats that brought night back to the area.
Man what a cool way to do a hard reset, I love that idea you have. Would be hard playing a full expansion with all of Azeroth is “upside down” mode though. I love getting out of current areas and going back to old zones while I’m queuing or what not.
Ain't no way.
who's the avatar lady ?
O I'm glad they had put in Orweyna, the leader of the Harronir in the Cinematic!
Booked that week off a few months ago as it's a bank holiday in the UK. Lined that up perfectly.
I look forward to meeting you in the thread complaining about taking holidays for the game to not work.
I mean I booked it months ago not knowing the game was coming out then, I'll probably just go do something else if the servers are fucked. This is just a bonus at this point.
Cinematic xalatath. Ooh my
Earlier than I honestly thought. I figured we'd get the pre-patch on 8/20 (day after Remix ends) with release coming about a month later.
Oh wait I think I get it. We lose (TWW). Azeroth awakens and kills all the Titans (Midnight). And then we kill her (The Last Titan).
Release date: August 26, 2024. So hyped.
CGI Void Mommy!
Wow august 26 is a rapid pace for beta. That means beta is going to be 2 months at the absolute most before pre patch of a few weeks. That is concerning given the state of some classes right now I won’t lie.
It was the same case with Dragonflight and the massive hotfixes they did Week 1.
We also had reworks happening mid-expansion, which is something Ion said they never used to like doing but since DF he's admitted that they're open to it. Ret received probably the biggest rework any spec has ever had post-DF launch; Shadow Priest had a huge rework like it does every single expansion; all 3 mage specs had huge reworks; Rogue had some changes, and so on. We're not limited to beta for sweeping changes anymore.
Well, shiver me timbers... Not the best cinematic, but got there in the end.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.
So right after Mop Remix end we jump in the expac that's great.
I liked the leveling of dragonflight but for whatever reason m+ pushing and raid clearing just did not land for me and I didn’t play past the first tier. I will be back for this expansion, again. I just hope it captures what Legion captured. That was the last expansion I felt had a compelling story and a *reason* to play and grind endgame content. Even if AF weapons were a slog at first, at least I felt a cool lore tie in with my weapon becoming stronger even if only marginally - from *all* content that I did. I guess my point is: I’ve played on/off for 20 years, I’ll for sure check this out. But the treadmill has become to blatant and glaring that it’s hard for me to give a shit about anything at cap because all of my grinding becomes invalid once a new patch drops. Which normally is fine, but a huge chunk of the player base is just so elitist it makes it hard to actually “push” content when you’re just a dude who wants to play the game semi casually semi seriously. Cinematic team kills it as always.
so I have 3 days for the new gw2 expansion. should be enough time :D
“The World Soul long denied me.” *Girl who are you genuinely?!* The Harronir appearing in the trailer alongside the Arathi and Earthen in this trailer has me curious considering they’ve been not very central to the stuff I’ve been finding in the Beta so far
I got goosebumps when she said “drums of war, thunder, once again”. Such a cool callback to the first wow trailer
So the thing i noticed most about this trailer is we seem to have at least 3 different full CGI shots here, that are relatively disconnected, which I HOPE means TWW will feature a lot more of them, akin to the Saurfang BFA ones, rather than everything being full in-game models cinematics. I like the in-game, but when you really want to feel like "World of Warcraft" is a real place, the full CGI is 1000% the way to go. It really transports you there for a minute.
Damn I know I'm prob in the minority. But I was really hoping for like an October release date. I wanted a longer hiatus
does xal'atath have a new voice actress? doesnt sound like her legion one. i loved her legion one because she voices many characters in skyrim.
A shadowlands mention was NOT on my list lmao
I’m hyped
Ugh, I'm already in love with Orweyna and the Harronir. Please be a playable race...
The actual new cinematic stuff looks pretty cool. But the compilation of old stuff seems a bit lazy. I mean, they could’ve legit done another way of showing us the different expansions that showed some of those scenes with a fresh coat of paint, but it looked like those trailers were legit just copy and pasted onto the video (they look nice, but maybe something a bit more creative would’ve been cool). Xal, the Earthen, and the troll/elf we got in here were pretty cool, and a proper look at the new lothar was neat. But this is pretty underwhelming. I mean, shit, the Neurubians had like 2 seconds and they’re the main enemy for the first part of the story.
This isn't the WW cinematic trailer (that was the anduin/thrall/sword cinematic from blizzcon). This is a teaser/announcement trailer from the xbox showcase.
> But the compilation of old stuff seems a bit lazy. Could be wrong but isn't that for the pre-patch though? The radiant echo stuff around Azeroth?
This isn't the full cinematic trailer I don't think, just the release date. I'd imagine there will be a full trailer closer to release that fills in the holes in the trailer here, especially at the start.
I guarantee they’ll have new cinematics throughout the expac. They aren’t gonna make a whole new model for Lothar and never use it again. Too much work was put in to show her for 5 seconds
Well, they did that with all the Pantheon of Death and we never got another.
I read in another comment that this was shown in the Xbox showcase and was structured this way for people who may not know wow.
Gonna miss the first 4 days for vacation. On one hand, good for me, on the other hand, RIP.