I’d totally be down for an Atlantis expansion, especially if it gets us more Azshara.
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During fan expansion season, prior to Nazjatar being a small single patch island, this concept, and the Dark Below, were two common fan expansion concepts.
I’ll be honest, I miss the days when the concept of an expansion was to go beyond what was comfortable and become more dangerous and more alien. Nowadays we live in whatever the current expansion continent is so they have to make it very toned down and comfy and it’s definitely a loss for us.
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An Azshara expansion set in Nazjatar proper is sorely needed.
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There’s always a plethora of ways to do things when you’re dealing with fantasy worlds. Most of them are good avenues, but the writers have to commit to those difficult stories in a way that makes sense and gets fans really devoted to the outcomes. I think Shadowlands was one of the more dangerous, alien concepts they took us down and it was messy. The Emerald Dream -could- have been another one of those dangerous places/avenues they took us down, but they made it pretty cotton candy like. Where in lore it’s a place anyone could easily lose their sanity and begin fail to realize the difference between reality and the dreaming. We completely ignore the druids are carefully trained and called to the dreaming. They’re also tended by priests and priestesses in the barrows dens, they don’t just stroll casually into the dream. Now we just pop in for a superbloom whenevs and off we go, which is severely disappointing.
Anyways.
There’s some good content and meaty ideas out there that can be more fully developed. The problem is that the writers get too scared that people will get bored with what they’re churning out. Hence why they’re moving to this fast paced slapping out of patches and evergreen content. It’s sad. I understand it from a marketing standpoint. But it’s sad.
Personally, I feel like Pandaria was the only true “and suddenly it appeared” island. At least from the context of civilizational knowledge. It had been truly cut off from the rest of Azeroth, physically and societally, since the Sundering. The Dragon Isles are the next closest thing, but unlike Pandaria they were never forgotten or mythologized. Dragons lived on all major continents of Azeroth who remembered their youth on the Dragon Isles. They had a living memory of it, and though it was physically hidden by magic, there was never any doubt that it existed and everyone knew the isles were somewhere.
All the other expansion islands were also known about, just rarely visited by the dominant modern societies of the world (outland, northrend, broken isles, zandalar, kul tiras).
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I don’t think us exploring new islands for the first time is really all that unrealistic.
Even with our spaceship that can see the island, if we don’t have a reason to go there, then why should we? We’ve been dealing with war after war after war for decades. We don’t have time to bother exploring random islands until the wars give us a reason to go there.
Furthermore, the in-game world map is a huge reason folks keep thinking giant continents keep appearing. I’m dreading what the Isle of Dorn ends up doing to the world map. It’ll probably be the size of the Broken Isles and pop ther between Kalimdor and Pandaria…even though it’s realistically intended to be a small island between the two continents.
The real scale of the world map (as seen in Chronicle) is much less dramatic. There’s a whole lot more ocean between these places, and most of them are smaller than you think.
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When we say “suddenly it appeared” we don’t mean to the NPCs. We mean to us. Dragon Isles did not exist prior to I want to say BFA when they first teased them.
Dragon Isles is equal to Pandaria in terms of being a place that did not exist back in 2004. Whereas Outland, Northrend, Broken Isles, and Kul tiras all did.
If it wasn’t up on Metzen’s wall in 2004 it “suddenly appeared”.
https://i.redd.it/7uveo9ilea021.png
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Bro if in 2024 we just suddenly discovered “New Merica” with new elements of the periodic table, that would be insane.
Unless Isle of Dorn is supposed to be lore-wise a tiny island in the South Seas (as we know there are numerous islands in the South Seas), then sure, okay. But if we are to believe Isle of Dorn is the size of a small continent… then its absurd.
Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t just set the new continent on Tel’abim or Undermine or something, since most of it is underground anyways.
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Agree to disagree I guess. Dragon Isles were a WIP since they showed up in the vanilla collector’s edition art book as far as I’m concerned. It was always going to be the homeland of the dragons, and was always going to be located on the map exactly where it is now.
Scrapped what-if that never had any backing in the fiction anywhere until BFA.
Bub, it wouldn’t be a meme if there wasn’t truth behind it.
Unconvinced, but you’re entitled to your (wrong) views.
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Well, you’re not the main character, so, y’know, I don’t really care if you’re not convinced. The court of the public opinion has convicted Blizzard of Islanditis and that charge is not overturned.
Lol. 
The Isle of Dorn exists and has for a while, there was even a great event known as The Mountain and the Viper which depicts a prince of Dorn fighting a giant.
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Dragon Isles was a scrapped Vanilla high-end zone that was going to be north-east of Tirisfal. Its just an expanded version of those little islands that were on the map
Its where that famous big old god temple dungeon was going to be
Personally I think its just that, exploring new zones is more exciting than existing ones
As someone who was around for Cata launch, the highlights of that expansion were finally able to go up and see Hyjal and similar places, not that zones had been revamped
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It’d be the fourth time.
MoP was hidden by the mists. Zandalar was hidden by loa magic, and Kul Tiras was just plain hidden. Dragon Isles were hidden by magic.
This would be number four.
Zandalar and Kul Tiras weren’t hidden? KT had moved from where it used to be, but it was very much a case of “The establishment is against us”, and Zandalar was just a case of “We have no reason to go here”, just like we haven’t been to Kezan since the one stop we made there in BFA
We ran into plenty of NPCs from both locations
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I don’t think running into people from the locations has anything to do with the actual location being hidden. I thought Zandalar had been hidden because of the whole cinematic where Talanji did her loa shenanigans to make the mist part and reveal the fleet. If I’m incorrect, then that’s fine.
Yeah that’s just her dramatically calling out the signal to destroy the Alliance. Fleet kept hidden so no one could just jump it and the Zandalari’s true power was hidden. Everyone knew where it was, just last time we dealt with Zandalar they were very angry at the Horde and if they just sailed over there was a 90% chance Zul would have had them blow up the Horde ships
That’s why we have that whole quest we have to sabotage their fleet before we can do Siege, and we have the whole sacrificial team up in Nazmir to buy us time to load up all the boats with explosives
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I can see it now.
AU Draenor. In the Alternate timeline, Draenor DOES have a World Soul inside of it. We must return to save it from the Void Lords before they corrupt the slumbering Titan and destroy the cosmos!
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Just rip AU Draenor out of the alternate timeline and plop it in the main timeline.
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