Either it appears where Outland is and gets bombarded with continent-sized chunks of planet, obliterating all life on it, or else it appears near Azeroth and then we’ve got the Roche Limit to worry about.
Pretty much nothing in WoW is truly new. At least from a lore perspective.
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Outlands was teased in Vanilla (and was in the old RTS games, it’s always existed.)
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Deathwing, same deal, under different names (Blackwing, Neltharion, Earth-Warder), since like Warcraft 2, and has left hints of himself having been in both Outland and Azeroth, just we never knew he’d return (in Cataclysm).
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Pandaria is probably the closest thing to being an original, new continent, although Pandaren themselves are really old, appearing back in Warcraft 3. Chen Stormstout helped found Orgrimmar, and he was a wanderer, but was always implied to have had a homeland he came from.
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Broken Isles/Suramar, along with Tomb of Sargeras, was part of Warcraft 3 campaigns.
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Isle of Dorn, we’ve never heard it by name, but it’s probably been hinted at since Legion, at least, as another titan facility, there’s honestly a ton of them we haven’t yet visited. I believe it was mentioned again in BfA.
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Uldum (the zone) and Uldir (the raid) have been referenced to since like WoTLK when we discovered Ulduar, we found out other such titan facilities existed. Ulduar was kinda our first real one outside of Vanilla’s Uldaman.
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Draenor, is just Outlands, but we went back in time before it was shattered, so again, it’s not exactly a new place lorewise.
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Kul’Tiras - The first humans that Orcs and Trolls encountered in Durotar were Kul’Tiran sailors and holdouts in Tiragarde Keep. Also Theramore Isle south of that is/was mostly Kul’Tirans.
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Zandalar/Nazjatar - Both of these places have been referenced to since at least Vanilla and more in Cataclysm, Nazjatar is the capital of the Naga and they’ve been regularly-occuring villains since Classic, and Zandalari trolls were an old reputation for the old Vanilla Zul’Gurub.
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Zul’Aman and neighboring Quel’thelas - These are old locations as well, old playable areas from Warcraft 2 & 3, finally brought into WoW come TBC. I’m glad we’re visiting these areas again in future expansions like Midnight, imo they are underutilized.
It’s just by design, they leave tons of unaddressed lore and locations and we later will visit in future content, it’s just potential setup for other patches/expansions.
We still haven’t visited places like Tel’Abim (bananas in Azeroth come from there) and Undermine (all neutral goblins’ capital city).
Well, back in Legion (on Argus), we had invasions where we’d take portals to random planets to kill demon bosses there, I think those were truly random and new areas to the lore, but that’s kinda of a one-off thing- we’re never going back to those planets, we were just saving them from the Legion.
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I guess the next logical question is WHY wait until you have to go somewhere? After a couple times of discovering “hey this place is really important,” wouldn’t you put some more time and effort into taking a trip and touching down on these random islands?
It’s always dumb to compare WoW to real world but if there was an island in the middle of the Atlantic do you think anyone would leave it alone? No, they’d be there to learn about the people and resources ASAP
We knew he’d return when it was teased in Burning Crusade.
The Isle of Dorn was about as canon as the Jailer was canon back during Legion. Actually, no, that’s way too generous. Someone like the Jailer was actually implied to exist. There was never any reason to think the remaining titan facilities were on some random remote island with a vast underground cavern system.
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Honestly it’s highly unrealistic that we’d leave those planets the Legion was invading, full of fresh resources, all alone lol.
Especially since we had spacecraft that could take us around to Argus and stuff. I guess Velen just told us “No, that’s not morally right.”
Half the entire reason we fight in the Warcraft universe is for resources, it’s why the Orcs invaded in the first place, Draenor was dying and drinking the demon-blood was a desperate attempt to secure victory, because they were losing.
The other half of the reason for fighting is misunderstanding/cultural differences, revenge or for glory lol (Alliance v. Horde, Forsaken v. Humans, Goblins v. Gnomes, etc.)
We’d 100% take our wars to other planets, just like we took our war to Pandaria.
I guess lore-wise, the Legion only accessed those new planets due to Fel magics, and those portals were collapsing due to our actions there.
We just got the hell out afterwards due to not wanting to be trapped in a unknown location within the Twisting Nether lol.
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Warlords is very heavy on railroading zone progression, that will be a terrible grind for alts to venture across Draenor. 
To be fair, Outland isn’t where Draenor used to be anymore, spacially speaking. It was ripped into the Twisting Nether when Ner’zhul did his mass portal gambit and those floating bits were all that survived the transition. It doesn’t exist on the physical plane, to use D&D terms.
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Dorn is new in the sense it has not been explored by us before, but it does not appear to of been hidden in the way Panderia or the Dragon Isles were.
It was just an obscure titanic facility in the middle of the ocean no one much cared about enough to go mess with in light of all the chaos in the world. Nothing of vast importance seemed to be there. The Earthen are a self contained society of robots without any needs a merchant would likely be able to exploit, and a history of turning outsiders away in a very brusk fashion. So, they were ignored.
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I absolutely love the nerub! I am excited we get to do more underground stuff around them like we did in Lich King. Think they are just really cool spooky spider peoples.
tbf to Pandaria, it did exist prior to MoP as far back as WC3: TFT. When you first meet Chen in the Rexxar campaign, he mentions that he is from Pandaria. Obviously this later got retconned in the Lei Lei comic to him being from the Wandering Isle. But Pandaria did exist in the lore. We just had very little going for it until MoP.
Chen Stormstout: Ah, greetings, my friend. I am Chen Stormstout, humble brewmaster of Pandaria. I have traveled the wide world searching for rare, exotic ingredients to use in my special brew! After all, good ale can solve all the problems of this world, don’t you agree?
…who ever said it was a whole continent? I guarantee you it’s an island. Most of the area we are exploring this expansion (at launch) is underground. There’s only 1 above ground zone…the ISLE of Dorn.
Many of our supposed “continents” are just islands. They aren’t nearly as big as they appear in game.
We do have a little explanation thankfully - there’s been impassible storms to the left of Kalimdor and the Right of the Eastern Kingdoms for ages and ages. Anyone who’s sailed either direction hasn’t returned - frankly I think it’s why so little of Azeroth is mapped. Everything after the Sundering is just…new and difficult to reach. It’s barely worth the risk to sail around the Maelstrom - Lordaeron thought it was a suicide mission to even attempt that. Kalimdor was a forgotten, ancient land that nobody in the East thought actually existed - and there it was regardless. You’ve got cultures upon cultures who just aren’t aware of eachother because of long-held fears and environmental barriers.
As for the Draenei and Dalaran - I feel like we’re going to get to see firsthand why Dalaran isn’t used to explore territory like this (hells, we barely made it to the Broken Isles in one piece!!!) and the Vindicar may not be able to see islands/other areas because of the aforementioned storms. Azeroth is also just…really weird. Space isn’t the dark abyss everywhere as it is in our universe - the Twisting Nether warps and changes things, and reality itself seems to come apart after a certain extent.
I will concede that a lot of that is me yes - and’ing the lore, and it is a little silly - but there COULD be explanations is all I’m saying 
Dorn?
Did he ever finish reinstalling the imperial palace?
And why the heck would he relocate it to Azeroth?
Must be some webway shenanigans.
Next thing we’ll be seeing is oiled-up, barely-clothed custodians running amok.
If anyone remembers the old RTS days. I believe the developers literally treat Azeroth like one giant planet covered in the fog of war
And it’s only revealed after we intentionally explore an area.
Pandaria is literally a fog lifted, and now everyone showed up reference. Dragonflight too. And the fun fact is that any point someone could bang a gong and another island disappears into the fog again.
Or better yet, it could go the way of the broken Isles and sink into the ocean again and then then come back up.
Some kind of giant version of Mario three where the entire level decides to get flooded and not be flooded.
Maybe in 100 years from now we can have MMO’s where the world is dynamically changing as we play it and it’s not just a series of snapshots.
Literally there are massive storms to the East and West that have been keeping us from exploring past the EK and Kalimdor - that was why Pandaria was so major. That’s resources that we can use again. That’s food, medicine, and fuel for the armies and citizens of the Alliance and Horde. It’s why the Dragons were so militant about there not being any Alliance or Horde conflict in their ancestral homeland - they know they’re hungry for resources and that often drives their battles.
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reminds me when I was Playing Warcraft, looking for another Goldmine and trees that needed chopped down.
Always looking for more resources, knowing that a threat was out there somewhere just didn’t know where exactly.
Unless you sent scouts. But I suppose that if the scouts die on the way then you don’t really know
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I wish zones had more environmental effects like this.
I think one of the biggest tragedies of the current expansion model is that newer zones are not “heroic” zones that are more challenging places to quest… they’re just “more”.
Sure, we get the rare zone like Suramar or Torghast once every few expansions but for the most part zones are “green”/safe.
I wish places like Netherwing Ledge were more baseline expected, that every expansion you would get some zones with death hazards.
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That’s exactly right! That’s exactly what every faction in WoW is going through - hell the Dragons could even find the isles because of the storms and the mists. People lose the way to Kul-Tiras and Zandalar frequently because you can’t just use the stars to navigate. There’s walls of fog and storm that you have to sail through to get there - to get anywhere. The advances we’ve gotten with the sky-ships and our navies are all that’s enabled us to get what little cross-continent travel we have.
Think about Gilnean settlements like Bradensbrook in the Broken Isles and Surwich in the blasted lands - both of those were attempts to reach Teldrassil - and they got horribly lost and wrecked. Just had to settle where they were.
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Actually in this note this is a big part of why I liked Shadowlands.
In my mind, expansions are supposed to take you beyond your comfort zone. Warcraft 2 Beyond the Dark Portal and Warcraft 3 Frozen Thronr both took us to hostile worlds beyond the safest of the familiar. Burning Crusade did the same. That’s what expansions should feel like. Expansion zones shouldn’t feel cozy.
I like the coziness in WoW Classic don’t get me wrong but that’s because it’s base game content. Base gane contebt can be worlds 1-4 of Mario. Expansion content should feel like worlds 6-9.
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This is a problem, because?