Exploring Azeroth: Northrend preview

I feel some of the confusion can be traced to why the fairgrounds were in Icecrown to begin with. Iirc, it was going to be in Crystalsong Forest. Hence why there are Alliance and Horde flight masters in the middle of nowhere in the zone. You never go there for any quests or anything directly. The closest is getting some supplies from the nearby ruins for the Icecrown intro. However due to Dalaran and the infamous server hog that it was, having another major hub in the same small zone would’ve been a nightmare. I can remember being unable to log in if I parked my characters in Dalaran during Wrath.

That area of Icecrown had little to no quests, outside of that tribute crusader quest chain and one of the memories the spirit of Kid Arthas shows you (Arthas raising Sindragosa).

Q. Why is there hardly anything in Crystalsong Forest? It is a shame to see such a beautiful zone go to waste!
A. Yeah, it makes us sad. Part of the problem is that it sits beneath Dalaran, which ended up being more of a resource hog than we had anticipated. We didn’t want to draw too many more players to that zone. Initially the Crusader’s Coliseum was going to be there, which is why some of the quests send you there. We just worried too much about the performance hit. Anub’arak ended up working out well though in Icecrown.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100121015853/http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22418868790&sid=1&pageNo=1

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