It progresses the world past what we see in Cata, for better or worse.
War of Thorns/Battle for UC. That a revamp would be wasted on destroying old zones rather than developing them/updating them.
Duskwood. I’ve always believed that area would be perfect for more Night Elven or Gilnean stories. Maybe turn the small Gilnean encampment in Raven Hill into a proper town, and turn that entire chunk of the zone into a new town/quest hub for Kaldorei/Worgen displaced from the WoT.
Meta: Cataclysm’s split focus caused some zones to feel pretty bland even after an overhaul. Though I think this is solved by updating specific regions of the map at the same time, rather than the entirety of the two largest continents on the map at once. Be it by territories- (Zones of Khaz Modan, Lordaeron etc) or regions (Northern and central Kalimdor separately to focus on the tons of specific threats or zones in need of fleshing out)
If region means zone- Mount Hyjal. If Region means like, a general geographic area, Northern Kalimdor in general.
Winterspring has nothing to actually do in lore there. Felwood is an active plot of renewal and progress that should be addressed. Seeing Ashenvale getting fortified or something by the druidic magic of the elves and their spirits to shape the land into a living weapon would be great. We know from Exploring Kalimdor that most of Ashenvale is Kaldorei, including p much all the Borders except the Ashenvale - Orgrimmar Rear Gate one. Demolish the Horde’s walls in Mor’shan, grow living ones with archer platforms grown from the cliffs and such. More interesting use of druidism to express that the place was supposed to feel like a magical and threatening forest, and maybe spicing up the lore thats starting to get stale with more stylistic inspirations playing into the east asian stuff already present in some of their architecture, among other things. Some of the flora and color you’d find in something like Ghost of Tsushima that just feels different than other kinds.
Hyjal i’d put over other northern Kalimdor zones simply because it is the most important place in Kaldorei lore, and really doesn’t feel too well designed. The shrines could look way more interesting and overflowing with the purity of nature’s aspects, perhaps more barrow dens in places hard for a normal walking person to reach without beasts or flight. Focusing as much on bringing back a lot of the nature stuff that they never ported over from Warcraft 3, like the kinds of Ancients they never made models for in WoW, such as the Ancient of Wonders.
For arguments in general;
For- There is a vast amount of essentially unused space which only really appears for Chromie-time, and additional stories could be told to focus on the original races rather then new places.
Against- Those old zones are nostalgic, but they aren’t as interesting art-and-design-wise as the current generation of zones. Redoing them up to standard would be a long process with little overarching narrative gain since most would not build into the raid tier focus of the game’s patch cycles (unless the entire expansion were built around a region, though the Azerothian enemies are rather slim now, Scarlet Brotherhood and maybe a new Scourge Warlord for a Lordaeron expansion is about all I can think of off the top of my head).
There are no valid story arguments against a world revamp. How could there be ? What could possibly justify continents looking exactly the same as they did before the Legion’s invasion and the Fourth War ?
I don’t think theres a story argument against updating most zones. As all of them are unstuck in time.
Most of Cata is probably the worst offender as there’s still natural disasters and wars going on that were sorted out over a decade ago.
It’s supremely frusturating to me of the countless zones to revisit, they went with Tirisfal and Arathi. Which were one of the few zones that didn’t need an update.
Meanwhile neighboring Silverpine and the Wetlands are still on fire. Just bizarre resources allocation.
Sentinel Hill in Westfall still burns I believe. (I stopped finishing that zone for that very reason.)
Have this be the permanent stalemate
Eastern Plaugelands, but I would like it to be through some kind of Bronze Dragonflight scenario where we visit pre-Scourge Eastweald. I would just like to see it back in it’s Glory days. Alternatively I would like to see the same thing happen to Duskwood because I would like to see what Brightwood looked like long ago.
I think the questions have been answered but just to add to these couple
There really are not any at this point. Arguably player preference for new lands (read islands) until the whole ocean might as well be a serious of straights and channels that we never thought of mapping out before or cosmic plane hopping until we go super cosmic.
Even then, the only argument I see is that we “lose” the stories of the past in game. Which sure, that is what happened when Cata was released. We lost all opportunity to experience Classic wow until Classic came out, or you private server’d it. However with Chromie time or some carefully placed Bronze Dragons, that is not an issue. Just a matter of putting in the work.
As Vale mentioned, North Kalimdor needs it. While I agree, I want to pitch the case for Central/Southern Kalimdor.
As a an aside/starting point, every zone redone should be doubled in physical size. Make them truly feel like large and detailed spaces, of course with the added content to fill this new space.
Thousand Needles/Feralas and below have been the long neglected zones of WoW and only received sparing updates with questlines that were often fractured or simply not interesting to a large amount of players. As I fleshed out ideas, I started noticing a trend that southern Kalimdor is a ripe for Reliquary and Explorer’s League expansion and story, with relevant friends. So, it became the theme that southern Kalimdor is archeology themed.
Feralas, arguably being the best of the lot up there with Uldum, could use a huge update and has so much room for growth. Diremaul is an uptapped potential that I’d love to either see the Night Elves start to reclaim, or the Nightborne seek to call their own as a center of arcane study and training in the heart of Kalimdor. The tauren refugee crisis from Thousand Needles needs to be settled and there is so much that can be done with Feathermoon Stronghold.
Speaking of Thousand Needles, what a fun concept with what they ran with as far as story went with a fully flooded zone, but the layout and and design really flopped. Im not wholly sure on how to fix that, as just undoing the flood seems like a odd direction to go. Opening more area to quest, making some larger islands to hop around, might be a direction.
Then we get to the really abandoned zones, Tanaris, Ungoro, and Silithus. There is just no story here outside of some one offs. They are disconnected and really seem like an afterthought.
Tanaris has great troll opportunity as Darkspear and Zandalari attempt to bring them into the Horde/Zandalari fold, or at least making them increasingly less antagonistic to Horde interests. The Reliquary is down south fighting the Explorer’s League but little came of that, so there is room to grow. Gadgetzan is unimpressive and boring that could use a huge make over have it appear similar to its Hearthstone representation, and the pirates off the coast need to be more… piratey. It can still be a hodgepodge of things, but they need to be better fleshed out and updated.
Ungoro has story, it has a lot of titan things, and dinosaurs, and fun, but again it seems so disconnected and presented as an afterthought. Im not too sure what to do with it, but where there are dinosaurs there are Zandalari, so throw a few of them down there with the Reliquary to do dinosaur titan things. For the Alliance… more of Brann?
Silithus becomes the most frustrating because it did receive an “update” and story. By update, we all know a big sword stuck in the middle and now an otherwise unusable zone except to run AQ for transmog and do BFA things. I dont really know what to do with it. Blizzard really said ‘F this zone in particular, its boring as sin’ and stabbed it dead. IDK, chip away the sword and dump its remains in Thousand Needles? Make the deep inland harbor less? Turn it into a salt lake by having the sword damn up the coast? IDK. Stupid choices lead to stupid solutions, though Im not sure many of us would actually be upset if they just poof’d it over there/away. I would 100% bring the Cenarian Circle/Hold back to the area.
Uldum, the other well developed zone and most recently updated, could use new story revolving around the Tol’vir securing their home further and taking up their roles as protectors of their titan facilities. More Reliquary, more Explorer’s League, more Harrison Jones, a true WoW intro to Reno Jackson, Sir Finley, and crew. Have the Earthen Ring show up and give them a little town/outpost down south by Skywall.
The big addition should be turning AQ, given the raid is actually in world, into an actual questing area/zone. Same can be said for ZG, ZA, and ZF. Tolvir in some sections, Magni and company in other sections, Reliquary and Explorer’s Leagues in others, all there to lockdown, study, and secure the area from any Old God shenanigans.
Thats really about it. A starting point for at least a mildly more cohesive southern Kalimdor
I purposefully did the whole thing on my Defias character just to see it burn in perpetuity 
Brightwood would be cool to see. I’d would also like to see what the land around orgrimaar looked like before it became a desert 
Just throwing in my two cents, as I think an overhauled Kalimdor needs to have mechanics that make the land itself feel more living an interactive.
For Central Kalimdor: We are def at the technology required for nomadic encampments. I’d argue we’ve been there since classic, due to how they would set up the Darkmoon Faire before. Tauren should have a few migratory villages, set in a place for a few months, a week of setting up at the other site, and then setting it there. I agree that the zones should be doubled in size, and also very dynamic and stylistic, to really sell that Kalimdor is the more primordial of the early continents, with the strongest connections to the land and nature compared to the Eastern Kingdoms.
Tying into that, we don’t need the lore of central Kalimdor be explored in a 100% objective way. I enjoy when settings use storyteller cultures to convey values and a epic version of history, like Nords in the Elder Scrolls. They should play into the oral history of the Tauren, in a way kind of like what you can do with Lorewalker Cho in Pandaria. Maybe more of the ‘storytelling quests’ we’ve had since Cata where you take control of something in a myth, or when you take control of Huln, nature spirits, or other tauren champions in the War of the Ancients quests and dailies.
Absolutely and while on the idea of tauren for a moment, a lot more on An’she, Mu’sha, the Earth Mother, and the Sky Father. We’ve been told these things for so long, but hardly ever gotten anything in game with reference to tangible experience with them. We’re running into or killing a Loa every other patch, Elune has received personification recently and has been drawn from since classic, the wind chimes for the Dreanei been popping up since BC, the Sunwell exists, and every major orc ancestor pops up here and there while being the poster boy shaman people with elements just chillin with them.
So yeah, Im here for that in-character story telling experience.
For me it’d be Silverpine. Cata Forsaken had a real thing for making everything they touched a complete eyesore, and what in Vanilla was one of my favorite zones got the brunt of it, with a grape Nerds rope road and plastic Easter basket grass. Golden’s Exploring EK book gives the Alliance craptons of Silverpine offscreen, and unlike in Tirisfal, I’d actually welcome their inexplicable new ability to cure haunted/cursed/plagued lands just by standing there.
I’m not generally a big fan of the post-WoD artstyle or the obsession with spreading it, but Cata is twice as old as Vanilla was when it dropped, and a lot of its updates were pretty lazy in the first place. There’s no real argument against another update unless, like me, you suspect it would be even worse with Danuser calling the shots instead of Metzen.
If they wanna explain it really easy- Teldrassil’s ashes. Even just the burnt sapling of an unblessed Vordrassil’s ashes contained tremendous life energy. Teldrassil drank in titan blood, was fully matured and had 2 dragon blessings. Real talk, could probably throw it as a Forsaken and watch them start blooming flower or decomposing lol, but would make sense to have the ashes start to mend parts of Kalimdor where they land, and be taken and used by the Gilneans for the restoration of their own home because… you know, that’d be a lot of ashes.
In my opinion they should always have a MAX LEVEL phase that everyone gets into when they pass the original level of the zone. And these max level phases always reflect the current state of the world as of whatever patch is currently live.
I would abuse the living bajeebus out of chromie with a far better refined story mode package.
There are so many zones I would revamp for one reason or another. Azshara was done dirty and needs straight retconned to pre-goblin eras.
If I had to choose 1 zone to revamp it would be Feralas. I love this zone so much and was extremely relived when Cata didn’t destroy it like everywhere else. But It can still use improvements, from the missing quests, to a better flow of quests with the Ysondre.
I would gut Diremaul and remake it as a destroyed Suramar tileset with atleast one ‘city’ district for the Shen’Dralar to live in.
I would rebuild Feathermoon Stronghold up as an actual military base with expansive docks building night elven ships.
Add more of the mystery quests they left out of the cata revamp ( Shay Leafrunner, The entire Harpy chain dealing with the thing in the pillar, Marrowgrain, ect)
Use the naga better, they were such a large presence in the vanilla one, and then they just get a throwaway quest in cata…
Re-add that cute Faedragon quest. I can’t believe they took that out and made it a horde only pet…
Better use of the night elf ruins. They were pretty much forgotten about in exchange of killing ogres, and the nightmare dragon quests which disapears until they remembered at the end of the zone…
All of Kalimdor could use help really. It seems like only the Barens got proper work done…
Current world zone quest at least on the horde & Kalimdor side is all about fighting the alliance. It would be nice if that could be taken out.
This would be nice then we can focus on building lore for those zones and focusing on local threats. Another huge benefit is, It will or should show those these races live day to day what their society and culture is like. Horde races really lack this, take orcs do not lie as an example. It would be cool if this could be shown in one of the orc zones. It would go a long way to rebuild the world and explore the different life styles and cultures the different races have. Wow has really dropped the ball on this since Cata.
Dazar’alor does what i mention above really well as is, so it be a waste to redo it. I also think Kul Tiras zones do a good work of this as well. At least those zones could be left alone. But burn the rest…
It be cool, if a town or city gets bigger or more active depending how many player quest in that zone. Or how many quest have been completed. something along those lines would really help players feel as if they are connected.
The story arguments for a world revamp are rather simple, and one in particular stands out. Many of the zones that were revamped were originally intended to evolve over the course of the expansion, but due to them vastly underestimating how much work and money it involved, they never did, and it was left. Zone stories end with plot threads left unfinished, never to be touched on again.
A lot of great replies and great ideas for revamping zones thank you everyone.
To answer my own questions the primary reason for revamping old zones in terms of story relevance in my opinion is that Cata developed the zones to be tied to Cata’s story. Most of those zones have had significant story developments since then and would benefit from being updated/revamped. Also, they would be more fun to play through if they had their own stories rather than being tied to one expansion.
While in my opinion a world revamp would be preferable there are some story reasons not to do a world revamp. The simplest being that the stories of these zones are well liked by some and they would be sad to see them removed. Another is that many of these zones are tied to the leveling process. That being said the current leveling paths available to players are confusing already so there may not be much reason to keep them.
As for what zone I would like to revamp most (cracks knuckles) I would want to revamp Westfall. In particular there are four major changes I would make to the zone and its story. For one thing I would have the drought that has been ravaging the land finally end and for settlers to start to flood into the zone. The story would open with a dispute over land between settlers that would need to be resolved (players being key to helping with this). From there players would learn that two noble families are attempting to manipulate the situation to their advantage by either helping the settlers or sabotaging their efforts.
The zones main story would focus on how one of the families is going too far by using the memory of defias brotherhood to intimidate the locals and settlers alike. In particular they are using someone they claim to be Edwin Van Clief’s true heir to rally support and scare people into submission. Vanessa Van Clief arrives in the zone and is able to discover that this person is the daughter of the Fullbrow family and that she is only cooperating with the nobles to protect what is left of her family. Vanessa works with players to rescue this girl and her family and to show these nobles for what they are. The effort is successful and the nobles flee to the Deadmines to make a last stand.
The story concludes with Sentinel Hill finally completed and the effort to heal the land well under way.
Between a zero success rate on expansion cadence and how many things are written or roped off because it all needs to tie into a specific expansion theme, I wish they would just abandon that release format and shift to content-by-patches. Won’t ever happen because expansions tend to be a huge upfront draw, but it is getting old hearing about how X or Y can’t be done because only things related to Z are allowed to be greenlit.