So… the logo reveal for the War Within expansion as well as some brief clips in other cinematics has that image of a planet with comparatively huge cracks spreading and fracturing when they deal with War Within content.
This makes me wonder, is that a literal prediction for the future of the expansion itself, or is it going to be more of a metaphor for consequences we are fighting against and trying to prevent? Is it just an artistic way of confirming early on their focus on everything underground for our content… or an actual developer promise of making inescapable changes to the geography and art of every zone all over every continent in the existing game…? Is this them committing to more work than they did for the Cataclysm world revamp while not revealing this feature to us in any of the announcement or blizzcon interviews…?
I would have thought that they did not have that much money or employee commitment to changing the world given how many corners they cut in the past 3 expansions to give reskins and re-use of things they didn’t really have to change much.
Replacing Silvermoon City for better art and a larger scale as well as enabling flight is fine… but that could be done without moving it anywhere nor acknowledging the truly world wide disaster that the art for the cracking planet implies. Same for a new Draenei city in a zone that previously did not allow flight. So I’m not dismissing your predictions… I’m just thinking of more drastic and inescapable changes that might happen to the entire world.
Or…as I said, if they are just being hyperbolic with their art for the sake of a mood…?
One of the things I was upset that was cut from Alpha Gorgrond. Being able to ride the Grimrail outside of the instance as an alternative ‘fast travel’ system.
If they were to do something of that sort, the most reasonable thing for a revamp would likely be to cut the old world into quarters and redo it one chunk at a time. For example, in Midnight they could choose to revamp everything above the Thandol Span.
My dream would be the next saga after the Worldsoul Saga is a world revamp saga with a substantial timeskip where events can happen and set up new story arcs.
3-4 expansions to cover Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor revamps with the regions getting the kind of development we expect from modern expansions. Patch content can add further zones over time. I.e. Northern EK is the first revamp and then patch content can go up to Quel’thalas and then down to like Wetlands & Twilight Highlands.
In general I miss the public transportation of old WoW. Yeah waiting for a boat isn’t exactly high fantasy adventure but it made the world feel more real and provided opportunities for fun random player encounters.
Stuff like the bronto busses and paddle boat lines in BFA were neat. Yeah I didn’t use them much but it was a cool bit of world building that made the place feel used and lived in.
I know it’s incredibly dark, but I kinda like the idea of the final boss being fought is Azeroth’s brain, in it’s skull as it’s starting to hatch, and we’re basically lobotomising it to keep it in it’s egg/planet form and keep the entire world’s population alive.
No, Malfurion, Thrall, Ebonhorn, and their associated followers are going to play midwife and allow Azeroth to be born through the impromptu hole in the planet made by Sargeras, but without blowing up the rest of the planet.
Southern Kalimidor will still be a ruin but it gives an excuse to renovate most of Kalimidor north of 1k needles/Feralas
The entire reason for my topic was to ask if that cracking animation is meant to be taken literally… thus, literally the global catastrophe as you mention… and “NOT” ever meant to be any topic about slightly modifying the art in a city. Nor was it about public transportation.
I’m literally wondering if the entire world is going to be broken apart or if the artists for the logo animation were just being extreme to start a mood.
We had a broken animation with Shadowlands before and nothing actually happened the Jailer couldn’t even kill any lead character like the Legion did despite the huge threat he apparently was supposed to be.
That’s not the same, though… because that logo had a magical barrier in the sky breaking, and that shadowland logo didn’t have the world graphic doing anything. Meanwhile the War Within logo animation clearly does, in a very dramatic and global scale.
Really it depends how world souls manifest… and given how marvel inspired they are… we would get a Celestial bursting out of the planet sorta situation, yeah…