3rd Sundering of Azeroth is coming

[Chonar]

Excellent - we can't attack until the 4th sunder.

You rascal. I see what you did there.

[Toxuvox]

A revamp of ALL of Azeroth is a long time coming, and would be the perfect accompaniment to the rumoured level squish. I've been saying for a long time now that a reset like this would be the perfect time to use the beautiful new art from the last few expansions to update the scenery assets and textures in the older zones, bring Quel'thalas and Exodar into the Azeroth world server (with an update as suggested here already), and fix all the inconsistencies that have come to the fore with so many expansions being laid on top of each other. Maybe somewhere down the line, should folks want to (for whatever reason), there could be a Caverns of Time means of going back to older content as it was, or have a Chromie type NPC in each zone that does a time warp just for that zone.

[Stricks]

The timing makes sense. If you want the old Azeroth you can always now play Classic. Of course it leaves retail zones without a home though. Unless there's a dimension aspect to it.

[Nomads]

What? This is not a bug. Dark Portal goes to AU Draenor, you get to Hellfire Peninsula by using a Portal in the mage tower in SW

It's a bug. Go try it.

[dcc626]

The shit you people smoke...you think they will rewamp Azeroth now that they have more expansions to cover? Remember Cata and how that affected the amount of content? You're dellusional.

its fine. these are the same people who will complain about it after its done.

[Lord Pebbleton]

I hope so, and this time I hope they go with a more conservative set up for the old world. As fun as putting a gaint tornado in the middle of a zone or shatering that big dam is, it dose get old to look at a lot faster..... I always liken it to a kid who built a Lego set then had fun "destroying" it, ya it was fun to do, but now it's not nearly as pleasing to look at.

I agree. The tornado is hideous and all buggy, there is damage that should have been fixed already by the inhabitants of Azeroth (or at least fixed by nature, like the scar in the Barrens). Darkshore and Loch Modan got utterly destroyed without any hope of recovery and no one seems to care.

[THEORACLE64]

It needs to happen, it should happen, but then again - if China doesn't want to happen, it's not going to happen.

Omg wow so edgy. edgElorDdd2004.

But yeah, it needs to happen - we've had Cata world longer than the Classic version now.

[plz delete account]

It's no secret that WoW desperately needs another reset/revamp. The old world leveling storyline is so broken and disjointed thanks to so many expansions, that it's a bit of a joke. There are tons of bugs in the old world that never get fixed (just encountered by me, you can't enter the Dark Portal any longer to visit Outland, and must be ported to Shattrath).

With Pandas and Allied Races being opened up to the DK class in the near future, it pretty much confirms for me that Blizz is getting ready to do a reset for the next expansion. Whether this 3rd Sundering will happen due to N'Zoth fall out, a new Scourge invasion, Nyalotha, Void Lords, or any number of other threats, I think we should be ready for a revamped Azeroth to be announced at Blizzcon.

I can't ever take a boat to SW anymore. I get ported to Alterac Valley every time.

[ercarp]

They're definitely building up to it. Anduin and Taelia will get married and Wrathion will probably become Anduin's advisor or some such, perfectly paralleling the throneroom in Vanilla with a Wrynn, Fordragon, and a member of the black dragonflight present. It's the perfect opportunity to start fresh.

[Raetary]

Azeroth is fine, its all of the expansion content imo that is stuck in the past that is the problem. If they revamp vanilla again while leaving silvermoon and exodar in outland then i will consider it a failure.
The absolute last thing a new player needs is to go to outland to level. Thats whats messy, not hillsbrad, not stranglethorn, not ashenvale.

Hence why they should do a lvl squish along with a revamp.

Make Kalimdor and EK the main questing zones.
Put Outland, Northrend, Pand, etc. in CoT and make them optional lvling content instead of forcing players into them.

[Trekkie]

Even the Cataclysm wasn't a real sundering.

[Raetary]

The shit you people smoke...you think they will rewamp Azeroth now that they have more expansions to cover? Remember Cata and how that affected the amount of content? You're dellusional.

You are delusional yourself if you honestly think they'd revamp more than Kal and EK.

The problem with cata was that they didn't take advantage of the revamp at all, once you hit cap the entire revamp was worthless as all you did was spend time in the new cata specific zones.

With the systems we have today, they can easily take advantage of the world.
Boom, all those "wasted resources" are no longer wasted at all.

[Kralljin]

Don't try to fix things that cannot be fixed.

First off, the only Zones / Continents that are out of place (or time) are Northrend and Outland.
1-60 takes place in a Cata era, then you suddenly go back to BC / Wotlk, only to go back to Cata / MoP.

But even there, it feels so awful because you never properly wrap up an expansion.
If you use Rested XP / Heirlooms, you probably outlevel the Highlevel Cata zones by just doing Hyjal, same goes for MoP, if you do a full set of Jade Forest, you're probably done with MoP in terms of leveling.

You go from:
1.Oh fuck the worlds on fire, save it!
2.Go to that Panda Island
3.Go Timetravel
Without any coherent connection between them.
That is what makes it feel so completely disjointed, you start one story and already drop it after the first act to start another one.

The attempt to tell a coherent story and having maximum flexibility in your quests zones, along the intended level speed, doesn't mix.
The leveling process is a mess because the time it takes a character to max level should stay the same, yet more content gets added with each expansion.

Same goes if you now update all those zones, they're going to be outdated by the time the next expansion rolls around.

[Soon-TM]

I very much hope for it, OP. I never really liked the Cata zones, aside from a couple of outliers (Blasted Lands and Desolace imo), and after so many years I'm sick of them. Especially with the constant yelling OMG THE CATACLYSM HAS JUST HAPPENED OMG by NPCs everywhere, or those stupid rifts in the Barrens or Loch Modan, or the uber on-rails questing... Argh.

[Sondrelk]

I feel like 8.3 Vale of eternal blossoms really is a good example of a world revamp done well.
Not spending a whole lot of time to make it look completely new by revamping all the graphics, but instead rolling back the damages from 5.4 and adding in a few callbacks to it, in this case allowing oyu to go into the underground areas that became part of the SoO raid. Not to mention filling the vale with the Rajani and generally giving the feeling that stuff has happened here since we left.

To give a direct comparision i would imagine the giant scar Deathwing made in the Barrens would look slightly less dangerous and the rift being traversable by various bridges going across.
While i would love a complete overhaul of the old world, that might just not be feasible. Would be fun if Blizzard generally improved several areas that looks particularly old. And even just updating the remaining old models would work wonders for the game.


Generally i feel that a levelling revamp should disconnect the zones more from the cataclysm and instead give the impession that the world is changing, without rooting every single quest to a specific event, at least not in the way cataclysm did it. Having for instance Westfall reference the invasion there during the Legion prepatch would be okay, seeing as that is not a current event by any standard. At teh very least, so long as Blizz does not make every single quest there about a direct consequence of the Legion invasion, but instead just reference it as a thing that happened that they ahve to deal with, like one of the spaceships having crashed in the middle or something.

- - - Updated - - -

Don't try to fix things that cannot be fixed.

First off, the only Zones / Continents that are out of place (or time) are Northrend and Outland.
1-60 takes place in a Cata era, then you suddenly go back to BC / Wotlk, only to go back to Cata / MoP.

I would argue that what Blizz should do is revamp EK/Kalimdor, allow you to level fully in just those zones, then frame all previous continents as retellings of what happened there, either by literally starting the questlines as retellings, or making the quests a bit out of the way, thereby making it obvious that this is not hte "intended" path, without completely ignoring the people who might prefer levelling there either for efficiency or nostalgia.

This would also make it a nice surprise to people who might start playing WoW after the revamp, learning after they got ot max level that if they ever intend to level another alt for AR heritage armor or new races that there are other levelling paths they can try.

[ReleaseDay]

More importantly, I really hope they add the replaced content into caverns of time as a seperate zone/continent so quests and their rewards are not removed from the game. That irritated me more than anything else with Cataclysm, its one thing to revamp content, its another to literally remove it and make it unplayable.

This, if we even have to get another revamp at all. I prefer entirely new zones. No more revamps.

[Buliwyf the Omen]

While I would like a overall world revamp, I think some people expect a bit much from just ONE expansion.

[ArkantosChampion]

It would be interesting to see ALL locations reworked as NEW Arathi

[Khaza-R]

I severely doubt a revamp is coming in 9.0.

I would be pleasantly surprised if it was, but I really doubt its coming until 10.0 based on what they've said in interviews and what we've seen so far in 8.3.

[Calfredd]

It's a bug. Go try it.

The Dark Portal? That thing in Blasted Lands? That exclusively goes to AU Draenor since Warlords of Draenor. There's a portal in the Stormwind mage tower that takes you to Hellfire Peninsula near the Outland Dark Portal.