When it comes to Blizzard, yeah, it’s best to temper your expectations. But it’s still fun to speculate.
If they only did four zones, maybe the other two would be post-Scourge versions of the Plaugelands.
Maybe it won’t be an endgame zone, that’s just a guess on my part. I still doubt it.
I am not against revamp. I am against turning it into anything else then the starter zone. Because as endamge stuff it WILL be overrun by the void. And my biggest dread is a neutral Silvermoon. Despite being a race capital.
Time for this to become the new Void Elf capital.
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I disagree. I am a Blood Elf fan. I like the idea of the antiquated old scene being revamped.
I mean, people want to play in Blood Elf stuff. It sells.
I played that old blood elf intro enough.
Are you aware that new content is forgotten after initial launch? Only starting zones are forever. Escpeially when we give up half of it to appease the high elf crowd.
Hmm this is always a possibility. Especially with the tease about the new draenei capital.
Lets also not forget we will likely see the Arathi homeland.
Well they’ve noted ‘Quel’Thalas’ — So naturally I’d imagine a revamped zone of Eversong Woods + Ghostlands, but I would imagine there’d be some other isles / islands in the mix too; such as the isle of Quel’Danas & more that are classified as part of ‘Quel’Thalas’ so-to-speak.
That being said, I’d wager we might also see the Amani Mountains & Forests – Ultimately the wider Amani Kingdom outside of just solely ‘Zul’Aman’ – which lay to the eastern borders Quel’Thalas … Whether they additionally have some kingdoms that stretch out too, like isles / islands; which conflict with other elven-settled isles as well, is another story.
Personally I think we’re actually going to see the Sunwell towards the end of this expansion which’ll be corrupted or infused with void — which leads us INTO the Midnight expansion, but I suppose we will see …
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I believe Ion said something in an interview after BlizzCon about how it would be nice to be able to fly directly north from Eastern Plaguelands and not hit a loading screen. I believe there has also been discussion about making the revamped Quel’Thalas zones bigger to match up to current zone size standards, as even regular slow static flying would make the existing BC zones feel tiny. With this in mind, I expect that the current Quel’Thalas zones, which are all contiguous with each other but not the Eastern Kingdoms map due to how the BC zones were built, will be preserved exactly as is but be accessible via some sort of portal in order to preserve the BC starting zones, as the fact that they aren’t contiguous won’t matter much since all the vector quests out of the zone send players far away via teleportation. This would allow for the revamp to have much more freedom in building out the zones rather than worrying about phasing capability with the old starting zones (or trying to migrate the BC-era versions to the Eastern Kingdoms map). I don’t think the BC starting experience itself is going to get a complete overhaul, though I wouldn’t be surprised if updated creature models like the new lynxes show up.
Now, if the revamped Quel’Thalas is going to be contiguous with the current Easter Kingdoms map, there’s quite a bit of room to fill in that is currently off limits. For starters, the current Ghostlands map only extends to the west coast of the continent, leaving everything east of the Zul’Aman raid entrance out. Looking at the world map, there’s a sizeable chunk of the Ghostlands that’s off limits in the southeast corner, directly north of where the DK starting zone is. The portal between Eastern Plaguelands and the Ghostlands also skips over the territory that would make up the mountain pass there. There’s also the inaccessible part of the world map north of Stratholme. These are all areas that could be built out or sized up substantially without much consequence, since they’re currently blocked off, and it wouldn’t be a big deal to adjust the world map slightly to account for changes since it’s been done before for other zones.
Beyond that, I expect the areas corresponding to the existing playable zones to be up-scaled and/or expanded. There’s a whole lot of mountainous geography that could be adapted to be actual playable area rather than just acting as a barrier to player movement. Quel’Danas will likely be made much bigger if the Sunwell is a focus of content. I wouldn’t be suprised if Zul’Aman gets a massive build out considering that it was mentioned in the Dark Heart prologue quest for TWW.
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I feel a full on Zul’Aman zone is probably a given. As it was always more than the raid / dungeon we got in TBC / Cata respectively. Even the vanilla WoW manual shows there is more to it than what we ended up getting. I feel cutting a full on Zul’aman zone was something Blizzard regretted when developing TBC. Given that there used to be a Zul’aman like gate in Eversong Woods before it got removed in Cata’s prepatch. Also I think there was another zone mentioned in either WC2, WC3 or vanilla WoW that was in between the Ghostlands and Zul’Aman. I can see Zul’Aman being like Surumar and Azj’Kahet. A zone with an actual city inside of it.
My guess is that Sunwell Plateau 2.0 will either be the first or second raid of Midnight. Assuming Blizzard sticks to the 3 raid tiers we have gotten recently. I’m leaning on second with either a void corrupted Silvermoon or a void corrupted Zul’Aman as the first. Thereby furfilling a similar role that Tomb of Sargeras, Eternal Palace and Sanctum of Domination did in their respective expansions. Where the ‘villain’ of the expansion gains an advantage. The Legion getting a direct route to Azeroth, N’zoth being freed from his prison and Zovaal getting his sigil back, allowing him to access Zereth Mortis.
I feel like midnight might hit similar plot beats from Legion. I.e. a “font of power” on an island turns into a portal for X antagonistic force. We try to stop it but are pushed back. We have to slowly work our way back with a stronger, more unified force. Ultimately going to the font of power and end up on a somewhat destroyed world where the main villain is stationed.
Given that BFA was basically MoP 2.0, Dinosaur boogaloo and Shadowlands felt like a Wrath 2.0 Blizzard does have a history of repeating their stories.
I remember seeing it somewhere that Zul’Aman actually exists in the outdoor Ghostlands map as well. But you can’t get inside it unless you are a demon hunter (stupid double jump). The WC3 manual map of Northern Eastern Kingdoms (p.g. 152) shows a similar shape to the area that is sandwiched between the North eastern part of Eastern Plaguelands and the South eastern part of Ghostlands. In which it is labelled as ‘Zul Aman’. With some landmarks being the Maisara Hills and the alter of Ula’Tek.
I could see the Maisara Hills being a zone for Midnight. Have it North of Zul’Aman and east of Eversong Woods.
My money is on the portal in Shattrah to the Isle of Quel’danas. There is also the orb in the Undercity (pre BFA phase) for Horde players.
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Ghostlands, Eversong, SMC and IQD are gimmes, maybe the area to the south of Ghostlands on the map that was never implemented. If we’re lucky, EPL, WPL and maybe even Tirisfal get love as well.
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Such a scenario would be a really good time to visit K’aresh, assuming that we don’t get to it before that point.
Yes, there’s some interesting stuff to play with there. Ula’Tek was something in the RPG, that may have been an Old God or something connected to them. Of course, the RPG isn’t canon to the game, but Blizzard have pulled elements from the RPG lore before and reworked them to make lore that is canon (ex: Tandred Proudmoore).
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A lot of people speculate that Ula’Tek was basically replaced by Kith’ix. And that the ‘dark power’ Hex Lord Malacrass kept for himself was meant to be Ula’Tek but is now most likely Kith’ix. I do hope Ula’Tek is a different entity though and shows up in Midnight. Although there was nothing in BFA in Zandalar that involved them. They weren’t even mentioned as a lesser loa of a ‘lost loa’ (aka Loa that are for the moment, dead). But that doesn’t mean they can’t show up in Midnight. They could be a loa that the Zandalari does not officially recognize but the Amani do. For example, the Blood Trolls saw G’huun as a Loa but the Zandalari did not.
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100% chance this will include Azol Nerub
probably also revisiting titan facilities like Ulduar
All of that makes sense to me. I do agree that it would be nice if Ula’Tek turns out to be something separate from Kith’ix.
I sure hope so. I know that cutting Azjol-Nerub from Wrath was a major regret of the devs, and the two Wrath dungeons have so much care put into their environments. All the shiny new Nerubian art assets built for TWW could be applied to TLT, and since it would be an underground zone, it could be built independent of the above-ground Northrend footprint. Maybe we’ll also get something in Crystalsong Forest?
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I vaguely recall there was meant to be a high level and low level dungeon in Quel’thalas. There would be a low level dungeon for like level 20 Horde and max level Zul’aman wing.
This would be what the gate was.
I think if they really wanted a zone they would’ve done it. Probably they just didn’t want to do another low level dungeon there. Another dungeon for Horde wasn’t needed since Draenei islands didn’t have one and there’s plenty of dungeons around that level already.
Notice a bunch of stuff in BC is actually unfinished classic stuff.
- Outland itself was in classic
- Quel’thalas was blocked off with an NPC called “Adon”
- The Caverns of Time have no connection to the expansion
The final Zul’aman is a mid-tier raid for a smaller number of players so its kinda like they reworked the dungeon, since Zul’aman is not a proper tier raid. Quel’thalas was worked on since way back, maybe as far back as the Dire Maul patch. That gate was probably put there in very early builds of of the zone and just stuck around even after there was no longer a dungeon planned for launch.
I don’t think its some major scrapped content like a zone.
I don’t think they’re going to use the existing zones. They’ll make new, modern-sized zones from scratch using the old ones as a reference. Kind of like how Draenor was based on Outland’s maps.
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Endgame content means alliance can RP in it without being attacked. And I reject that with all my being.
It’ll be a novelty for a week or so and than people will quickly grow bored and go back to Stormwind
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You underestimate the high elf crowd trying to marry their human husbands somehwere where it hurts the other faction.