Has there been any mention of the Maelstrom (Queen Azshara), Emerald Dream or Titan "Scheduled revisitation" in any quests yet? Given that WC3 ended with "Arthas, Illidan and Vashj" as the primary characters - TBC+WOTLK is set to have used up all three of them and leave us without a character tie-in many veteran WC3 fans are personally familiar with. Id think having such an intimate character players can respond to would be very important for Blizzards potential new players and marketing future games: character recognition/familiarity when buying new Blizzard games is important (Ex-WC3 players will surely respond favourably by seeing a WOTLK box with Arthas's face on it) A new hero/villain will need to be created/groomed as early as possible. Im interested to see whether there are any hints from quest/zone text at where the story (and long term: next expansion) could go.

Thrym in Zul'Drak uses Thaddius model. While browsing Wikipedia article about Þrymr (Thrym, Thrymr) I saw some other familiar names (Jotun, Freya) that are also in the game - all elites.

There are a few mentions of Azshara and the Emerald Dream (Green Dragon questchain in Maelstrom), but nothing out of the ordinary. Titans get a lot of mention, but nothing about a revisitation afaik - maybe that'll be for Storm Peaks.

I don't think Blizzard will tie in the next expansion's plot too strongly with the current development. That'd spoil the surprise, I guess, and possibly commit them to story threads which they haven't really thought through yet.

Relatedly, Crystalsong Forest is supposed to have one of those Emerald Dream portals, but it looks like Blizzard isn't going to add one... kind of annoying, especially since I'd put money on Emerald Dream being the focus of the next expansion..

Freya is a titan avatar. Jotun is... a titan construct of some sort. Thrym was the Thaddius clone I had in mind, yes.

Crystalsong Forest seems to be unfinished though; you can see a bloodelf post there but not npcs. It would also seem a bit odd that so large an area would be totally without mobs or quests. I believe they opened unfinished Crystalsong Forest just because it was needed due to Dalaran being there.

Maybe they add a portal to emerald dream, maybe not (would be cool if they did!) They could leave it non-functional as they did with Dark Portal in vanilla. They could also make it so that you can enter a small restricted region of emerald dream for some quests without tying it too strongly to the next expansion.

Wait what? Why do they need to re-use models? Leaving some models to be unique, especially when they were/are renown and powerful beings should be an asset, not something to be demolished. It saddens me already that Ragnaros, Nefarian, C'thun, Kel'Thuzad, Archimonde and such have had their models largely re-used.

But on the topic of Outlands races... As far as I can tell there were only a handful of "good" Arrakkoa, the vast majority (Hellfire Penninsula, Terokkar Forest - Auchindoun and Skettis) are not good. There's like 5-6 that are good.

Sporeggar are too inept to fight their own fights, much less be anything more than footstools in Northrend.

What happened to there only being 7-8 Gronn? Anyways, most of them seem to primitive to be in Northrend sort of something like being captured/cage (a la Arcatraz).

The Broken, especially now with Illidan dead, might be an option. But I suspect they have a lot of their own loose ends to tie up.

Ethereals have promise, they're almost like the new Goblins.

And even Spacegoats, they've just recently gotten to Azeroth, I hardly think they would have enough time to build up anything in Northrend. I mean, you don't really expect the Spacegoats to have a presence in Eastern Kingdoms or most of Kalmindor, did you?

I am not really sure what other sentient beings there are. And I do suspect we'll be seeing more ethereals.

With regards to the Dream, I've been following the "phased" (and now the Dynamic World Change) developments very closely, because honestly that's sort of how the Dream is. It's our world, but different. Sometimes largely, sometimes subtlely... although by now I assume it's very overgrown. Still, I could see them implementing some sort of link between the two realms, like by going through a portal or doorway, but realistically just changing your "phased" state.

It's pretty neat to think about at least.

There's at least one ethereal striking a deal between the Blue Dragonflight and the Ethereum in the Dragonblight. Presumably we'll see more of them in later Nexus instances, as the deal was apparently completed and a success.

I'm concerned over how the Aspects are portrayed as they are very significant beings in the history of the Warcraft.
The newer blue dragonflight with the runes and such on their skins feels much better to me than what happened with the IDF and gives me hope that they will not resort to basic recoloring to achieve a different look.

That said; Malygos, Ysera & Nozdormu all show up in their Aspect forms and I'm really hoping they get a lot of attention to make them as special as they should be.
There are some -very- big dragon corpses in Dragonblight and I'm skeptical if any dragon would approach the size of an Aspect - I'm not sure if Malygos as he appears in the quest events matches the size of them...

Have they said whether they intend to change the models they're currently using for them?

I'm sure Malygos will get his own model at some point. I'm not so sure about Ysera and Nozdormu, however, possibly they'd just receive variations on the Malygos model, and maybe they'd get their own if they become more central to the story.

Also, one of the quest chains in Dragonblight reveals that the really big dragon skeleton (Galakrond) is actually the super-protodragon from which the Aspects were made. It would be neat to see him revived somehow as a raid boss, but I suppose he's waaaay too big for that to feasibly happen.

There's a C'thun-looking thing being summoned in Shadowmoon valley.

They never re-used Gluth, did they?