Since Cataclysm, the game map for almost every expansion except Warlords of Draenor has been premised upon “Random new Island has been retconned into the middle of Azeroth!”
Previous posts discussing this stretch back to 2019, yet it is clear with the Dragonflight and War Within maps, they seem to be dragging their feet on this.
I just want to clarify, making TWW zones underground is an amazing idea, and one that I wholeheartedly believe was a move in the right direction. However, it’s preceded by another “Random island retconned into Azeroth!” via Isle of Dorn, and I’m disappointed that you didn’t choose from one of the many zones that are already in the game to be the entry point for the expansion.
My hope for Midnight and the Last Titan is this: do something more interesting with the zone locations than random retconned islands. Have the lore team sit with the map design team and hash out a compelling story for a new zone/set of zones. Every expansion it gets less and less believable that we just had 1000+ new continents and islands between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, and they were just “somehow” ignored on all those ferry flights between the two.
edit some ideas:
New Zones in Eastern Kingdoms/Kalimdor are accessible via dying and talking to a spirit healer. They’ve been unaccessible until now due to the imbalance of order/chaos that has been plaguing Azeroth.
A meteor plunges into Azeroth sending bits of land into orbit, creating “moons” that could be new zones.
(Old but gold) Azeroth has another hemisphere that went undiscovered. More believable than random islands due to Christopher Columbus.
Vashj’ir erupts again and forms a land bridge with the Eastern Kingdoms, expanding the continent.
No new zones. Just expand the content of the old world, breathe some life into once again for people not into classic.
not going to debate the semantics or details of any of these ideas. But as a baseline they are far, far more interesting than the everlasting trend of retconned islands.
This is my FAVORITE part of the “random island found” method… It was SO NICE of Deathwing to not burn the broken shore, pandaria, and the dragon isles to a crisp when he was out to DESTROY AZEROTH. What a good guy Deathwing was to save the pandas and dragons from the worldwide Tsunami that was caused when he erupted from the ocean floor!
Deathwing wasn’t a bad guy after all!
(I’m in the “lets add more stories to wow’s older zones to make it feel like a living world instead of a museum” camp if you couldn’t tell lol)
There really isn’t any normal way to add landmasses to the world unless it was more planned like ff14. ( They literally had the world built but covered in clouds and keep uncovering more and more as the game goes ) since wow hasn’t really planned much of the story beyond the sagas all they can do is bring up stuff out of the sea ala naz or find more island.
What I’m hoping they do is make a larger continent on the back side of azeroth and use it for the next three expansions. Entering or uncovering more continents as we go through the expansions.
No, it’s an issue with design. This isn’t a problem with ffxiv because so much of the map is obscured by details/graphics, hiding something waiting to be discovered.
I am not paid to find solutions, Blizzard is. But this attitude of “well can’t be helped!” is just plain false.
Pandaria and the dragon isles were both inaccessible to him and there was nothing at the broken isles of note besides a giant magical shield he wouldn’t be able to break.
I like to think of it more like you’re viewing your own world map, and as you discover more islands / more lands become known, they get mapped out. Azeroth is still being explored by the hero / player, and there’s probably still many continents to be discovered.
As for people’s comments on Deathwing, it was confirmed in the books that Zandalar was hit / affected by the Cataclysm. Unsure about Kul Tiras and Broken Isles, but can assume they were affected too in some way prior to our visit. Pandaria’s mist was cleared as a result of the Cataclysm. And, in Chronicles, Deathwing didn’t intentionally destroy much in terms of EK / Kalimdor, most of the damage was a result of the barriers torn between the elemental planes and Azeroth.
All the additional landmasses added with expansions have always existed in the lore, they just weren’t in the game. The only exception is the Isle of Dorne, however, Azeroth is a large planet, finding a new island never before visited by the Heroes of Azeroth really isn’t that unbelievable.
Anyway, in Midnight we’re getting an updated Quel’thalas so we’ll see how they expand the zones for that. In the Last Titan, we’re going back to Northrend.
I kind of like the notion that “a giga volcano causes a giant landmass to grow off the side of the Eastern Kingdoms” and “being dead leads us to a secret area because of cosmic rays” are being considered less random than “we go to an island we’ve known exists, but either never had a reason to visit or didn’t know how to navigate to” in this premise.
I think the Dragon Isles is the worst offender. Arthas would have had to sail around them to reach Northrend. Good thing The Scourge didn’t set up shop there, with all these powerful titan relics and such laying around.
Seems to me you’d be able to see them from High Elf territory on a clear day. Forget about the orbital space station the Lightforged have had access to since the end of Legion that shows a totally rendered rotating Azeroth from space.
Not trying to be a smarty pants… but there are islands/places on EARTH that have never been visited by man… Why is so hard to accept that there could be places on Azeroth not yet discovered?
A lot of good ideas (except space - unintentional pun there) My vote is on a whole new continent with a bunch of kingdoms already there and some fighting already happening. Opens up a few expansions at least, if not more. Lots of new races, and some based on preexisting race and lore we don’t know about. Plus new classes, not just reskins.
I do agree that any further significant landmass on Azroth have to be found east of the Eastern Kingdoms, west of Kalimdor, south of Pandaria, and north of Northrend
Zandalar and Kul Tiras i guess did some black market deals with deathwing. Jaina probablyt parey-ed with deathwing “ok you can ravage azeroth, but our little island of seafarers need protection from that tsunami”
(Its ok to admit Blizzard aren’t infallible, are they really going to dock your pay because you say “they were lazy and didn’t care to put any effort into the story of the world itself”?)
But sure, Deathwing was planning to destroy ALL OF AZEROTH except the part with the clouds and the part with the big purple bubble and the one with the two nations right next to where he erupted from… ALLL ACCORDING TO PLAN! wink wink wink wink
Well, I do admittedly want to revisit old zones. It’s INSANE that we still don’t know the state Lakeshire is in after the Scourge attacked it 5 years ago.
