Eclipse: All Gas, No Brakes
The second act of the Worldsoul Saga is ending, Xal'atath has torn the Mantle Vault open, and Blizzard says 12.1 was the last slow patch. Plus spec-relative M+ rankings, and a plea about the Race to World First.
What Blizzard confirmed
Eclipse (12.2) is the final major content update of Midnight. New zone: the Mantle Vault, a hidden Titan vault. The Worldcore is the eight-boss raid to close the expansion, with Xal'atath and her motivations finally laid bare. Midnight's Edge is the first Legendary of the Worldsoul Saga. Season 3 adds a top-5% reward alongside the top 1%, both ranked against your own spec; the 0.1% title wasn't mentioned. 12.1.5 and Talebound in 12.1.7 come first.
We are coming to the end of the second story in the trilogy Blizzard announced. According to Ion and several other developers, from Eclipse onward it's all gas and no brakes. The patch we're in now, 12.1, is the last time we'll have anything players would consider slow. Until this point they've been building story and putting pieces in their places. Now that we're here, a lot gets revealed, a lot happens, and I imagine it plays out in quick succession, with the major changes the developers warned us about at the start of the trilogy. Major characters will die. Not everyone makes it through this.
What the cinematic tells us
We see Xal'atath make her way to the Mantle Vault, the area surrounding the world soul. She breaks in, gives a little speech to the hologram of a Titan watcher standing in front of the gates, tears them open, and now there is nothing between her and the world soul. Time is of the essence, and players are going to have to take care of this as best they can. I imagine we finally contend with Xal'atath as the final boss of the expansion, and of its last season.
A lot hasn't been revealed, and honestly the timing of BlizzCon is slightly off for how Blizzard likes to unveil a story. Being told about Eclipse was great, but it's probably a little early: we usually don't get this kind of information until much closer to release, and we still have 12.1.5 and 12.1.7 to get through before 12.2 is even the conversation. There isn't much to go on. It's still enough to be very excited about where the end of this expansion takes us.
The systems change that matters to a Mythic guild
Season 3 brings spec-relative top 5% and top 1% Mythic+ rankings. As far as we know the 0.1% title still stands as an overall ladder for any class or spec; that one wasn't mentioned. For everyone below it, you're now measured against people playing what you play.
A plea about the race
By the guilds' own account, the Season 2 Race to World First was a bit of a drag. I enjoyed watching them progress through the Venomous Abyss, but I'm hopeful Blizzard reins in the tuning on these bosses in a way that allows a shorter, more exciting race.
Spending that long on every boss makes it competitive, and for Liquid and Echo, always neck and neck, that's interesting. But lowering the difficulty doesn't just mean those two stumble through effortlessly. It means many other guilds get a chance to be competitive. Once a guild figures a boss out and gets a kill, the technique is known, and others can follow if they execute well enough. I'd like to see the race tuned toward that kind of progression.
Only time will tell. At the very least we can hope the raid is as visually compelling as the fight with Alleria in Season 1 was, and as the fight with Ula'tek was, because that one was genuinely exciting.