iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

can you guys imagine if wod classic does the impossible and finishes the expansion. we would finally cleanse the timeline of people saying a finished wod would be good.

i anticipate that they will kill her at the end of midnight and that TLT will be entirely the consequences of her very successful invasion of azeroth. like a 2 expansion long gul'dan. not a bad purpose for a character who was always trying to become a bigger fish, but couldnt quite stick the landing

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i made a big thread 2 years ago about why she was the only choice for the big bad scary thing at the end of wow's first 20 years of storytelling and she has thankfully delivered at every turn for me. i thirst for 12.2 and to see how this turns out.

at least the worldsoul saga gave me her, her depiction as the main antagonist has been pretty good, even though i personally think her backstory still feels only 80% complete. learning she was the silver surfer for dimensius was so gaggy, as well as getting killed as a child. my goat.

also spoilers but datamining scripts confirm xal'atath makes history as the first warcraft villain to reach the worldsoul! this officially puts xavius in 2nd place (who knew the rift of aln was so close) sargeras antorus in 3rd, n'zoth in 4th, and the jailer in 5th for worldsoul getters

me and porter are kind of beating a dead horse when we say this but it's just so weird that the level up and the voidspire were so incredibly strong and everything after that is just....not. like why did nuance just evaporate after voidspire.

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kith'ix loading screen once again doing some actual "this is a saga" lifting with more black blood. it is becoming increasingly clear to me that this is 2 expansions of setup and the last titan will be as many payoffs as possible in 3 patches.

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ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

they are at least partially succeeding on the "oh my god why are we just constantly under direct attack" this expansion which should hit a boiling point in 12.2 when xal's army pops out of the ground. as ive said, they cant write other zones, but the core 'saga' thread is intact.

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you will save a tinker copium for me when I see u in 9 days

ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

i think about k'aresh an inordinate amount. i fear we peaked here but i would love to be proven wrong. this was the one tho i fucked w this patch so hard

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ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

back to ek/kalimdor with updated graphics feels pretty logical so thumbs up from me. i do wonder what the 'story' plan is lol.

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i absolutely understand there are a lot of wow fans who don't do anything at all! you talked about me in this post unintentionally though and so im upset about it bc this is literally what i do! or maybe im crazy and i am so much further gone from wowtwt than i thought

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i absolutely understand there's a lot of people who don't contribute to real life. it's called a couch leftist. but the intent here does not feel like getting people engaged-this is said with derision and venom. this says "i am better than you, person who cares about a story."

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why are we not allowed to do both. i do both. constantly. the real world is absolutely more important to me than wow. what is this line of thinking. why do *you* get to assume that you know the real life hobbies of every player who is an amani fan. what is this tweet.

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don't know who tweeted this but someone sent it to me and i hate, hate, hate this line of thinking. this is so presumptuous. you do not get to automatically assume someone who comments on a piece of media doesn't do anything irl. many of us do-and work in actual changemaking!

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LOL ya there were ways to do it, such as xal'atath wakes malacrass up to distract us so she can have more time at the worldcore, or xal'atath's cult keeps us busy with kith'ix in a troll temple, but it just didn't materialize. they did not succeed this time unfortunately.

and even when they do, it's sadly still not as strong a hook as "xal'atath is in undermine, alleria is down here trying to catch her, because she is fixing her apocalypse weapon." it's going to look fine, but it isn't going to feel organic like undermine did.

it's just kinda really a shame that 12.1 feels like SUUUUCH a side quest even though yes obviously kith'ix can get busted out because ulta'tek died. but that isn't as strong a hook as "xal'atath is here in undermine fixing her death laser." it's just not.

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dragonflight has story problems for me but one thing it actually does well is staying on task for the entire expansion. even dawn of the infinite is still related to the presence of the primalists-though iridikron was secretly a saga villain.

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someone was talking about zaralek as a side quest. it wasn't actually-the A plot brings you directly there and the A plot antagonists operate on screen, the final boss of the *raid*, yes, was a B plot commander. but did everyone forget fyrakk taking a bath in shadowflame and blowing up towns

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your major patch should not truly genuinely feel like a side quest in this limited time saga. undermine succeeded. it was in a different general area of the story, but it made perfect sense to have the goblins be the ones fixing the dark heart (they made the dragon soul).

this one is....actually just a side quest. undermine actually had a pretty meaningful status quo shift for goblins lol. they replaced trade princes once and for all. that's huge! it also ended with the k'aresh cutscene! that was awesome! xal was on screen with gallywix! it was cool!

lastly, i dont like the undermine comparisons. undermine had a very strong, thematically cohesive, self-contained story about labor exploitation, fascism, and unionizing. literally. and it tied to the A plot successfully. if you read undermine as a side quest, you were wrong. sorry!

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i will acknowledge my own bias which is that i burned out REALLY hard on L'ura bc of my own irl insanity going on that made it hard to enjoy the game, so im tier off from raiding this season, but this patch is really a struggle for me. it just feels like everything here has been done before.

additionally, having played every raid tier in this game, most at mythic/CE level, many of the fights in the venomous abyss are derivative. lost explorers is council of elders from throne of thunder, to a T. vashnik is maloriak. the raid is just troll hellfire citadel, the zone is troll tanaan. huh?

one of my other notes about this patch feeling SO derivative is that zul'jan basically has sarkareth's story from dragonflight and the raid map for venomous abyss is *identical* to aberrus boss layout except removing zskarn. literally the same wing layout. lol. what.

day 6 of realizing 12.1 really was just to kill zul'jan because literally nothing else meaningful changes in the status quo, much like how shadowlands was written specifically to stabilize sylvanas. what a sham.

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it reads very similarly to another irl "share the land" colonial situation, where foreign governments support one internal ruling party. 12.1 lets the elves' preferred governance win with an "approved" head of state. even if zul'jarra didn't start as that, she is now a palatable leader to elves. 3/3

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to then have people say "folks who read him as a systemically traumatized person who is thinking about systemic issues are wrong" is insulting-we're not wrong lol, he is thinking purely systemically in 12.0. worst part of all of this? loa are maybe the only thing elves *support* for amani. 2/3

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another great thread. im not sure if in 12.0 the authorial intent was actually the generationally traumatized young man zul'jan came across as, but there's a huge disconnect between his 12.0 and 12.1 portrayals. even in 12.0.7 he was still being portrayed as such. 1/2

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I thought midnight was gonna be the best of the trilogy story-wise and it’s certainly doomed to be the worst purely because of 12.1 what a shame

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I think they might make it even worse and make zul’jan a loa if they decide they suddenly do wanna act on feedback about him

even 11.1 had a point and had things worthwhile happen. like the undermine revolution is sick even with no xal ties. what actually is the point of 12.1 other than to execute zul’jan in the most disrespectful way possible. there were 10 other ways to break kith’ix out than ula’tek

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and also, when you examine what status quo changes occur in SL….sylvanas wins! lol the maw will be emptied and the afterlife will be fairer than it ever was. just. that was her goal. she even gets to find an additional goal of finding out what the shadowlands really are. like. jan deserved better.

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serial orc enthusiast @eternalseething.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

yup i’m also going insane that the narrative suggests sylv should live and jan has to be executed. i’ve also loved her since day 1, so I wanted her to live, but if your setting lets her find atonement but not jan, when his goof up is 2% as bad, your setting is silly.

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Reposted by ilyana

Please also notice that the same expansion that suddenly reveals all the Amani actually hate Zul'jin is the same one that has the elves unify in the name of Anasterian, a leader previously portrayed as a moron whose isolationism and nationalism lead to the massacre of his people.

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ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

I also like. my god so many white people talking over black and indigenous players about that story ending. and you really shouldn’t lmao. this is like when exploring kalimdor came out and you needed to not talk over black and indigenous players bc that book was racist as hell.

ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

same for me. it’s mostly because the other ones were doomed from the start-this one wasn’t. midnight 12.0 in ZA was spectacular. the major issue I had in 12.0 was elven unity. this was an unforced error for no reason. these other endings were already pretty cooked imo. jan wasn’t.

ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

guessing since you're back on socials you have also seen folks remarking on the significance of hair to the real world cultures trolls are inspired by. idrc if it wasn't intentional, it definitely leaves a bad taste.

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Reposted by ilyana

Serpentwined -Midnight Spoilers- @serpentwined.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Yeah...This is how it feels. Black and brown people will see the pattern repeat over and over again in our world, in our fiction, and our stories. People that do not see the problem will continue to pull the wool over their eyes and try to deny that there even is one.

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ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

as always! im never ever saying lose job or have bad things happen to people! not at all! that's reserved for severe breaches of conduct or being a shitty person. making a poor story decision does not mean someone deserves to lose a job. we are all in agreement.

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Reposted by ilyana

Khono Chronos @khonochronos.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I shouldn't really have to say it. But just incase... No, I do not condone the demand of firing writers over the story decisions I heavily disagree on. I want reflection. I want fixes. But I don't think people deserve to lose their jobs. That is not my angle. I'm upset and angry. That's all.

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Reposted by ilyana

Sean Gardner @seangardnerxiv.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I think a lot of people would like to deny this so they don’t have to think about it, but if a setting draws heavy inspirations from a real life culture for a fictional race, then said race’s portrayal deserves to be scrutinized as if it were portraying the race itself, at least to a degree.

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ilyana @buff-fire-mage.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

so true. we can be saved by xalleria. i miss TWW.