Server population limits are probably defined by world server, of which there were originally two (Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms), three in BC (add one for Outlands + Azure/Bloodmyst + Eversong/Ghostlands), and now four in WotLK (Northrend, obviously). Of course, as a previous poster pointed out, the bulk of the population will always be on whatever area is on the "current content" world server with the current model of new expansions introducing a new area and making the old ones obsolete to end-game. They can count on a certain number being in Kalimdor and EK simply due to keeping the Auction Houses there keeping Orgrimmar and Ironforge/Stormwind busy, but that's about it. If a fifth is added in Cataclysm for the Maelstrom, plus adding lots of stuff to do on the original two continents, it should go a long way to stabilizing things relative to the last two expansions, even though it won't add more "space" than BC and WotLK did.

Well that was underwhelming.

I recall the same thing. Roughly paraphrased, I think it was "There's an extra 25% landmass, so server limits are going up by 25% as well."

Blizzard is only able to fit so much content into a expansion since they only have so much time to do everything. Well if they spend a large chunk of that time re-doing content for the early levels then there is less content to do at whatever the new max level is. Right now with WotLK many players are getting bored quickly due to the way end-game content is being done so it would only be made worse if they spent so much time re-doing old content. I guess that could be seen as the REAL reason for the cap being 85 if this is true since that means far less content for them to make compared to Northrend when they bit off more than they could chew. Re-doing old content is nice for new players but the amount of new players joining this game now days likely pales in comparison to the amount that have been playing for some time (they could have hopes that this will cause players to level up alts more). It sounds good on paper to re-do old content but it would also end up like Everquest 2 and alienate the playerbase just as much due to people liking the old world content and wanting it to stay the same even if it's nostalgia.

I'll try to bring a personal angle to this, but I wouldn't actually mind the old world being redone provided there are sufficient things to show that they didn't just copy/paste the scenery, change the textures and replace the mobs.

Also, I feel that redoing the place is dictated more out of actually finding meaningful ways to tie in the lore in the expansion to the existing one. Even the classes would make more sense. For example, if you had a ZG related event to show why troll druids are a good idea, it would all sound a lot less implausible. And you wouldn't even need to create a new zone for each class... everyone could see it, and people would just pick up the references that relate directly to them, in the case of a mid level area.

Then there's always the good, old fashioned need to balance the population of the world servers (although Outland and Northrend should be fairly empty, except for the rerollers and maybe the related battlegrounds). IF the old world refers to having areas spread out (both in terms of lore and hardware) across all the existing continents, then that would be a good idea, depending on how some form of fast travel is implemented.

And lastly, Leviathon mentions that the new player base that might find revisiting the old world interesting is dwindling. I would disagree, in more than one way. Firstly, how many of the current subscribers experienced the old world as it was meant to be played (i.e dungeons, group quests, BRD jailbreak runs, Mankirk's wife, Battle for Darrowshire, and so forth)?
I would assume a lot less than half (take the current subscribers, deduct the amount of active accounts at the end of Vanilla and there you have the rough figures). And if they alter the whole world, they won't be able to do so ever, unless they somehow phase the whole thing.
But the real question rises if they don't phase it. How many of those new people would actually get the inevitable references to the past? I'll use Mankirk's wife as an example again, but a washed up skeleton on the coast of Mulgore wouldn't ring any bells if it was labeled 'Mankirk's son'

So, what I'm trying to say is that this seems to be directed a lot more at the old player base than it lets on.

Personally I think they are just going to scrap all of the old content and start from scratch. The storyline is going to move forward for everyone including level 1 players. I think the amount of work is not too far off what they did in TBC where they had to create 4 new leveling zones for draenei and blood elves. Considering that 1-60 leveling speed is probably going to be vastly increased I think they can condense that into about 6 zones (mainly the northern parts of the continents like Azshara and the Hinterlands). All of the remaining zones in southern Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms are going to be "new" high level content. At least that is how I imagine it happening.

It's probably 50% more work or so in total than what they had to do for TBC but they have since had a lot more experience creating expansions so I don't think it would be too far fetched.

I'm inclined to believe that's a lot more work than that. While it wouldn't be nearly as long as WoW's development because they don't have to create all the art or game code from scratch, you have to take into account that each continent (Kalimdor and EK) are very large, and they would be reconstructing and making new content for each of them.

It's a lot of work, yes, but if they've had this down for a while, they've had a lot of time to get on it. No one is ever going to convince me that the Stormwind overhaul wasn't at least partly an experiment to see what was involved in redoing some of the more Hollywood set parts of the old world.

Well, to be fair, we won't know the exact extent of the content revamp (or even if the leaks are all true, despite MMO-C's historical trustworthiness) until Friday-ish, so patience is key.

But it might not be as much work as we think. They work on expansions years in advance; it's far easier to revamp old content than to create new. Some zones might not get much of a revamp anyway. If we presume the Cataclysm emanates from the Maelstrom, we can assume that the most affected areas would be the eastern coasts of Kalimdor and the western coast of the Kingdoms. That leaves us with a list areas more likely to get a revamp:

(I am not betting anything on this list, btw. It's utter speculation and I fully expect Blizzcon to prove it wrong on many accounts.)

• Azshara - major revamp
• Durotar - major
• Barrens -> split into two zones, supposedly
• Dustwallow Marsh - unsure
• Tanaris - unsure
• Thousand Needles - major
• Tirisfal Glades - minor
• Silverpine Forest - major revamp due to Gilneas
• Hillsbrad Foothills - major
• Arathi Highlands - minor
• Wetlands - major
• Badlands/Searing Gorge - included because a "new" Blackrock mountain was mentioned in MMO's notes
• Dun Morogh - Gnomeregan; more of an instance revamp than anything else
• Elwynn Forest/Westfall - major
• Stranglethorn - major
• Darkshire - I assume Darkshire would be addressed somewhat because of the Worgen storyline

The rest of the zones would get small, minor revisions: quest changes and clean-ups, small terrain modifications and improvements for flying, NPC changes, etc.

So that's, what, 17 zones up for revamp, with about half of those being true overhauls? We also have to consider that Azeroth zones are about half the size of Northrend zones on average, so that comes to about 6-8 Northrend Zones in content. This doesn't include the "new" zones like Gilneas and the Goblin Starting zones, so add about 3 new zones there (I presume Silverpine will count as the Worgen 10-20 zone), so it's about 11 new Northrend zones overall. Then you add in some of the "underwater" zones and it goes higher.

It's more work than Northrend, but if you also consider that even major revamps are less work than completely new zones, it's about the same work as a new expansion.

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The timeline issue stands only if you assume the content and leveling path stays the same. Players will be offered "a greater narrative and sense of progression" according to MMO-C, so I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the leveling curve we're all be used to be will be cleaned up and heavily modified.

However, I don't think the problem will be resolved entirely unless they phase all Azeroth. Players in Outland are still urged to go into SSC and TK even though those places and bosses are dead lore-wise. There will be always be anachronisms in WoW.

I keep seeing this pop up everywhere and I honestly don't know how people are reaching the conclusion. The Bronze Dragonflight are only interested in preserving the timeline and ensuring no-one messes with it. Opening a gateway to the past "just for fun" hardly seems in their best interest, and presents MORE opportunities for people to mess with the timeline. Somehow I can't see them favouring the idea.

To me it seems pretty clear cut. You can see how much they've advanced in quest & zone design since Vanilla. Going back and levelling alts or picking up the Loremaster title demonstrates exactly how far they've come. Doing those old dungeon quest chains and progressing back and forth across continents with a series of time consuming bread-crumb quests was never a good design. So they're simply taking a look at old Azeroth and saying to themselves, "If we could do it over again, what would we do differently?"

We're gonna find out soon enough.

To me, advancing the world is nothing but good news. It still frustrates me when I pay the odd visit to Westfall and see them still constructing the Inn. It's been 5 years, what are these lazy bastards being paid for? Immersing yourself in a thriving, living world only goes so far when you never actually see time pass in it.

I know someone who's name currently escapes me provides an overview of the chapters of the comic as they come out, but just thought I'd tip everyone off if you haven't already seen it to the most recent preview released by blizzard on the upcoming issue of the comic.

WoW Comic Issue 22 Sneek Peak

Atleast from my own opinion, reading the few pages they provide, pretty much confirms atleast some of the info from mmoc regarding the upcoming expansion's lore, specifically the reasons for the formation of a new coucil of tirisfal, and Thrall's relationship to it, not necessarily as the Guardian though.

• The cause for the need to reform the Council being the attention of most of Azeroth's focus on Northrend while the power of the most prominent mages, Aegwynn, Jaina, etc being diminished because of the Nexus War and Malygos.
• Aegwynn and Jaina discussing the need to reform the council but with a more diverse selection of the various forms of magic, including nature and divine, stating the need for priests, paladins, druids (Malfurion?) and shamans.
• They discuss Marad, Khadgar, Broll, and yes Thrall.

Also interesting is Med'an being tutored in Divine magics, as well as Cho'Gall's order to capture him, possible explanation why Med'an doesn't become the guardian if the leak is true?

I'm kinda repeating myself on what I said 2-3 pages back regarding phasing, but my assumptions are based on this leaked quote right here:
In terms of eliminating redundancy, they could reward low level players tremendous amounts of experience/levels so that proportionally, you can level directly from 1 to 80 in EK/Kalimdor whilst getting up to speed on the events of the Cataclysm and actually contributing to whatever reconstruction/war efforts are happening at the time. (Removing the requirement to level up alone in a Ghost Town Outlands & Northrend - following the trend of "eliminating redundancy.")

I envision a series of daily quests outside each capital city, requiring you to complete a range of tasks which scale with your level. So for example, a level 80 walks out the front gate of Stormwind, and one of the daily quests is to simply take an Axe and chop down 10 trees in Elywnn forest. The level 10 player walks out the front gate, and is given the same quest, except his objective is to plant 10 trees. This is just me talking out of my ass, but it's a simple demonstration of how two players in the same zone can contribute to the same effort regardless of level. The irony of it is, the level 10 would figuratively be chopping down the trees he planted 70 levels (or X years) ago when he completes the quest at 80.

Going back to my original point though; I really do expect them to analyse the critical points of story/level progression and consolidate them. For example, the entire VanCleef quest line; assuming it were to stay in the game, could be broken down to a single quest: go to the Deadmines and bring back his head. None of this Defias Messenger back-and-forth crap. Alternatively, the level ~18 quests to fly back and forth from Redridge, to Stormwind, to Redridge, to Duskwood, to Redrige, to Westfall and back to Redridge again would be removed from the game entirely.

It wouldn't take much for them to increase the experience rewarded per quest in order to have you reach 60-80 on a single continent. I guess the final part to consider is yes, whilst it may be a lot of work, the quest design team is probably the one team who has the most time on their hands. They bust their asses for a year to fill an entire continent with enough quests to last an expansion, and after that they spend maybe a week or two adding a few new daily quests for each patch or world event. Considering how far ahead Blizzard seems to plan this stuff, it's really not that much of a stretch.

For an individual, or a group of people to re-create two entire continents from scratch and design content to fill out those continents, yes, it is a daunting task. But remember that alot of these teams work independently. The Raids & Dungeons team don't need a new world to be modelled and textured in order to design their encounters and layouts. The modelling team doesn't even need textures to re-work the entire layout of Azeroth. The quest team doesn't need to wait for the art team to give them NPC skins before they can design the quest - we've seen this on the PTR/Beta with various [PH] labels, doodads and models assigned to stuff. They design the quest, flag it, and wait for someone to design/update the model further on down the track.

I'm sure anyone who has more exposure/experience to the industry can demonstrate far better examples of the autonomous nature of such development cycles.