Really? I'm not seeing this, outside of a few forums. It's hard for me to find anyone I know who isn't delighted with Naxxramas. Has Blizzard said that player reaction has been negative?

Could also look at it as him being shown visions via the Old Gods such as from Yogg-Saron since both visions depict areas (the Maelstrom and Emerald Dream) where we assume or know a Old God is located.

The way it reads it seems more like ner'zul is providing these visions since the make a point of noting that in life he had the gift of foresight. But I agree, more old god involvement seems just as likely.

They did mention that while Arthas will die the Lich King himself will not back when they announced WotLK but then again they said we would just get in Illidans way and not kill him so I guess we will have to wait and see. The part about Arthas dying makes more sense after the book though considering what we now know about the Lich King.

I don't have the book in front of me at the moment but I recall,The events prior to the Wrath of the Like king launching (city invasions by frostwyrms) and the event of Wrathgate. Perhaps 1 or 2 more recognizable visions as well.

I have read the exact same thing. Blizzard was extremely pleased with how many new people started raided because Naxx was so accessible. The only thing was they admit it may have been a a bit too easy, but I am sure the benefit outweighs that for them.

Naxx is likely to remain a strange throwback. Even entry level stuff will likely be a little more complex come next expansion, Blizzzard has just gotten better at making things interesting. I am thinking stuff more along the lines of Malygos or Lurker, who is when you get down to it a better entry level encounter then Magtheridon ever was, despite the tier differences.

Anyway... maybe they will combine the Emerland Dream and the Maesltrom? Emerald Dream would be a really hard place to cram a Neutral City and a bunch of quest hub towns in.

Blizzards only measurement for such things is how many people went to Naxx each week. Given that it was the only raid content available it was either go there and gear up your raid for potentially better content later, or simply not be the least bit prepared for the later content. Or, obviously, quit.

Most WoW players chose option 1 so while attendance to Naxx may have been high that doesn't mean people liked it.

Right, but that's irrelevant to the point of how fast the content cycles are moving. WotLK's is slower, hence I'm assuming that means they're putting in more effort on other projects - ie. the next expansion.

You have a source on this? I would be very surprised if it were true. Once Icecrown was finished in the beta, content development effort pretty much just stopped, and it sure as hell wasn't shifted to Ulduar. Where would it have gone if not the next expansion?

Anyways, I agree that the ED doesn't seem like it has enough content to have its own expansion... but I'm sure that Blizzard could expand it as necessary. I don't think mashing it in with the Maelstrom would work, however, as there's already plenty of South Seas lore for an entire expansion if Blizzard chooses to utilize it.

I think if they did a "Dreamtime Moonglade" as the capital for an ED expansion, it would be viewed as a copout. Shattrath City and Dalaran both represented dramatic new directions in city design, while Moonglade is just the same three or four NE buildings arranged in different configurations.

I have a lot of trouble believing that there is enough content in the Dream to warrant it's own expansion. Aside from corrupted green dragons and Hakkar recolors, what else is there to fight? How do you handle the power disparity that would logically exist between druids in the real, druids in the Dream, and everyone else?

The Dream will likely be instanced or be a substantial step forward in their implementation of phasing in the old world. But I think the plot of the Emerald Nightmare might mirror the Nexus War -- though I hope for something as steeped in the lore as the Dream, we get a lot more mileage out of it than what we got in the Nexus War.

My bet is that the Maelstrom's expansion's capital is going to be Undermine. It would bring the Goblin Princes back into the story in a big way, and present a new challenge for city design because you want the city to be sweeping in scope but still subterranean. When you consider the establishment that the Goblin Trade Princes might not want to parlay with the Alliance and the Horde directly, it's interesting to wonder what threat would encourage them to open up the 'Mine to the two warring factions.

You could have made the same criticisms about Outlands or Northrend - before TBC, Outlands was just a bunch of floating red rocks, and who wants to base an expansion off of Hellfire Peninsula? (Admittedly, there were maps of Draenor from the Warcraft II expansion, but it just looked like a dried-out version of Zangarmarsh back then.) Likewise, before the LoM book, Northrend was just a big snowfield with a glacier and an underground kingdom.

So I think it goes without saying that Blizzard will make up the lore as necessary, and that they'll probably do a good job of it. It's true that there's no major villain in the Emerald Dream like there is for other expansions (Illidan, Arthas, Azshara), but that doesn't mean that they couldn't be introduced and be built up in a compelling manner. There are a ton of awesome possibilities for the Emerald Dream and I'd hate to see it become just a single set of instances or even a non-instanced zone.

Personally I like the idea of mixing it in with Elemental Planes zones, but it's much harder to imagine how those would work.

Unfortunately it is a bit hard to search news posts on worldofwar.net so I can't exactly find it but I do recall reading that last year. Also sure development stopped pretty quick once Icecrown was finished but it was the same exact thing in TBC also (but worse because they did no raid testing). Now sure they probably did have a small team begin work but they have more than 1 team working on the game.