Apparently there was a bug preventing the quest chain from being doable, but I just didn't get around to doing the story quests around Voidspire until today.
I play WoW largely as a solo player these days, and I do sort of wonder to what degree I'm just falling down the path of least resistance and how much I actually prefer this. You can (with a lot of diligence and some luck) get a full set of hero-level gear if you just do Delves (though the game is pushing us to do Prey - a system that I think has a lot of potential but is not quite meeting it as it currently exists). I intended to do the second Raid Finder wing, but maybe it's just Tank anxiety (tanks are generally expected to understand fight mechanics better because they have to - I actually did the first wing as Retribution) but after my eyes glazed over watching the Ready Check Pull video for Crown of the Cosmos (the final fight of Voidspire) I just decided to go do it in story mode instead. Gear-wise, there's very little incentive to go do LFR, which is both a good and bad thing. I ran tons of LFR in Dragonflight, and I appreciated the forgiving difficulty balance of the latter two raids.
Anyway, let's get into story:
Spoilers for the end of Voidspire and the follow-up quests ahead:
This is WoW, and we've got to remember that it operates on comic rules, but it sure looks like Alleria is dead. Turalyon might be too, but I think there are far too many unanswered questions about the influence of the Light at work here for his story to be truly over.
Anyway, evidently Xal'atath's fixation of Alleria was not an attempt to corrupt her, but to get her in a position where she could extract L'ura from her (given that Alleria absorbed L'ura during Legion, it's actually reasonable to think that canonically, there was a Shadow Priest in the party at the Seat of the Triumvirate and thus Xal'atath might have witnessed this event).
We're also given to understand that the Vanguard of the Light has been basically wiped out - we go and rescue a few survivors, which includes Anduin, Faerin, Moira, and Velen, as well as a few less prominent NPCs. But there are some notable missing names from the ones we rescue, such as Taelia Fordragon (I had literally just done Arator's Journey on my still-leveling Warrior, and so I was primed to look out for familiar faces). Unfortunately, story mode doesn't give you a lot of context for the Lightblinded Vanguard fight (which appears to happen in the same spot as the Crown of the Cosmos) and so I don't know how the paladins become hostile.
Anyway, with Light's Vanguard basically gone, Arator suggests that the elves unite to defend the land and re-take what has now become the Darkwell.
Notably, there's a big "Argus in the sky" change here - for much of the expansion so far, there's been a giant beam of light shooting out of the Sunwell. Now, there's a beam of darkness shooting down into it, and while Eversong Woods is still bright and sunny, Silvermoon itself is now shrouded in shadow.
I expect all of this will change again after the March on Quel'danas (which I think opens up on Tuesday,) but what our skybox will look like is unclear.
The Ren'dorei are, of course, already there and assisting, but Arator takes us to Bel'ameth to talk to the Night Elves (and yes, I occasionally forget that there's a new Night Elf capital). The Night Elves are not super-jazzed to help out the Blood Elves, but the existential threat to the whole world is pretty clear. Maiev, interestingly, makes the point that between the Scourge, the Legion, and now the Void corrupting the Sunwell, that maybe it's time the Blood Elves dismantled it and learned to live without it.
That is tough: we did see in BC that when the Sunwell wasn't working, the Blood Elves (and High Elves) suffered from withdrawal that turned them into Wretched (similar to how the Nightborne became Withered,) which is why they made the initial deal with Illidan to sate their addiction with fel energy. Is there a less destructive way they could wean themselves off of the Sunwell? (And no, I don't think Astalor's "Anguish" is the best option).
The Blood Elves are even less excited to enlist the aid of the High Elves, whose Silver Covenant purged them from Dalaran. It's always a little funny to me, though, that the vast majority of Sin'dorei did actually call themselves Quel'dorei in the past - of all the different kinds of elves, the Quel'dorei are the most closely similar to the Sin'dorei (Void Elves have gone through three different elf-names, though their more recent change was more deeply physiological). Vereesa and her Silver Covenant bring relics from before the Third War and the remains of spirits of Blood Elves slain in the purging of Dalaran as a peace offering. Aethas Sunreaver ultimately accepts their aid, though with some reluctance.
Finally, the Nightborne are eager to help (Thalyssra is literally married to Lor'themar) but when their forces don't show up, you go to investigate and find out that the Twilight's Blade has infiltrated Suramar. This leads to a fight in the Darkway delve (one that I'd already done, and wasn't bountiful today, so I just blasted through it on a tier 1 difficulty).
With all these powers assembled, we now wait for the March on Quel'danas.
It's interesting: we're seeing a kind of "old rivals learning to work together" plot here, but rather than the usual Alliance and Horde team-up, this is a little more narrow and specific. I mean, it is an Alliance/Horde team-up, but just the elves in each faction.
There are some remaining questions, though:
The few survivors we rescue from Quel'danas are "void-scarred." They are basically unconscious and on the verge of death when we teleport them away (with Umbric's help). Arator survives the Voidspire by being teleported away by Umbric (as are we). But we see Alleria and Turalyon falling from like miles up. Alleria has also just been stabbed in the back (notably, Xal'atath seems to be wielding the blade that was her prison, which some speculate now hold some of N'zoth's essence. She also holds it point-up, unlike how we did as Shadow Priests).
The story of the super-charged zeal of Light-wielders feels like it hasn't really been resolved, but our main faction that represented potential excesses of the Light has been basically wiped out.
While I'm confident that the island off the coast of Zul'aman is probably our next major patch, I have zero clue as to where the final patch of Midnight is going to take us.
Notably, Arator mentions that, despite everything she did, he wishes Sylvanas were there to help defend Quel'thalas. She has been in the Maw doing her Sisyphean atonement, but I think that they made a point not to actually kill her off in order to create an opportunity for her to come back. And honestly, this is probably the expansion in which they should do that.
I'm really curious, when we get to Last Titan, the degree to which the Scourge will be a factor in the story. Naturally, the Titan installation in Storm Peaks, around Ulduar, is going to be the main focus, but if they're revamping the entirety of Northrend, surely we'll have to see what, say, Icecrown is like. And the last time something big happened in Icecrown was Sylvanas' fault.
If Midnight is the middle part of the Worldsoul Saga, it stands to reason that we'd be getting a darker story (also consider the name). Certainly the Voidspire is a loss, but is that going to be reversed soon after with the March on Quel'danas?
Also, is Xal'atath just trying to corrupt the World Soul? At this point, she's secured both a Void Lord (Dimensius) and a Dark Naaru (L'ura) to, in both instances, blast void energy toward the Sunwell. The Sunwell isn't actually directly connected to the World Soul (though it was made with water from the Well of Eternity, which itself was formed from a wound in the world). So, what's actually happening here?
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