And you would be wrong.

It wasn't until the Old Gods were defeated, and imprisoned 'till the Elemental Lords were banished away.

Remember when you go to guess at something, use WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft first, as it helps you from making uninformed guesses. Mainly this last page is just full of bad information.

People, please start using sources to back your information up, and don't make guesses on stuff that is already documented on what happened, PLEASE!

WoWWiki is not an official Blizzard site so a lot of the stuff there are also guesses. Until the lore guys of Blizzard say WoWWiki is 100% correct I keep guessing, just like the editors (=anyone) of WoWWiki do.

So the information that has come from books, comics, blizzard, and whatever other source you want to claim as credible, that gets neatly organized on WoWWiki is not credible?

Sure some of the articles are not correct, just because the information is speculative, but almost all of the important WoWWiki articles cite where they information comes from, which book, and where else. The thing WoWWiki doesn't do is include the settings and all the dialog that the books include, just the information we seek.

If using WoWWiki isn't a valid course of citing material now, then shouldn't this thread be locked as we've gone through all the information we know about, and are trying to make connections that are unconfirmed?

Umm no, because this is a fun speculation thread that I enjoy discussing with the rest of you lore whores, not some end-be-all lore guide that is written as law in the World of Warcraft. :P

If you see a problem with what somebody said, just correct them, no biggie.

I don't think it is fair to say everything is discovered. There is a lot out there; but it doesn't mean everyone knows or everyone has discovered it.

Prime example is the map/globe in Loken's room.

In regards to WoWWiki, while it's true everything there is suspect to being false or fraud; most articles usually cite an official book which (should be, at least) is canon.

Well that is all fine and well with information that is yet to be published on line and available in-game only. But when it comes to information that is on WoWWiki, in books, in comics, on Worldofwarcraft, there needs to be a level of awareness to what you're typing, and that it is as correct as you can get it.

Also just running Old Kingdom, Jedoga Shadowseeker refers to Yogg-Saron as master, and yells "Yogg-Saron! Grant me your power!" So it seems that Yogg is influenced in Azjol-Nerub more than Ulduar?

There's not going to be a WoW 2 when WoW is generating more revenue than 1/8th of the entire U.S. theatrical box office, and with a much better profit margin. Even at half its current revenue, WoW would still be the single biggest entertainment property on Earth.

All the initial talk of expansion cycles and perceived life of the game went out the window a long time ago. It's inconceivable that Blizzard would "end" WoW or WoW story/new content for any arbitrary "let's move on" sort of reason. They'd repackage Azeroth as Oblivion-level graphics and have the third iteration of the Lich King return to lead the new Scourge/Death Knight/Forsaken/Vykul faction in an invasion of a Legion homeworld to kill Kil'Jaeden for the 4th time first. Including three-way naval warfare on Lake Firegrasp!

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More seriously, I think a revamp of Old World Azeroth to at least look as good as Northrend is probably on-tap somewhere. They've shown they can do it with Stormwind with the harbor and the new "horizons".

For the foreseeable future (i.e. years) the story content is going to go into WoW.

How much work would that take? Given the choice between new content and a 'revamped Azeroth' I would definetely prefer the former. A fancy Azeroth would be nice to check out for a few weeks or a month, but we've all seen it before. It's new content that will keep people playing for years from now, even if a revamp will perk up interest and admiration for the short term.

A much more practical solution is for Blizzard to pick ~3-5 zones at a time in Azeroth (gamer favourites) and do it slowly. I would love to see STV revamped, but that would probably be very similar to Scholazar Basin. Azshara would probably be my most wanted zone revamp pick. It has a great setting and colour scheme and really was very underused in vanilla WoW. A lot of people didn't even level in it.

With the running theory that a Maelstrom-centric expansion will follow Wrath, Azshara is fairly certain to get a revamp. As it stands right now, I don't imagine people go to that zone for anything but whatever leg of the level 50 class questchain they have to accomplish. The possibility that the Azshara Crater battleground might actually get purposed into being the next big BG would be interesting, if it's mechanics allowed it to be different from all of the other BGs so far.

On the topic of a revamp, a top-down redraw of Azeroth probably isn't in the cards, but would give them the chance to fill in some of the holes in the world. The uninstanced southern half of Silithus? The Titan Vault of Terramok, purportedly located underneath Maraudon? The blank zones bordering the Burning Steppes?

Bloody hell, I just want to know what Lower Karazahn is for.

I think I would feel cheated of a decent expansion if Blizz just re-vamped Azeroth. True, a lot of it is going ot waste now - its valuable surface area. But we've already seen it and I think it wouldn't be a good move because it's extrememly susceptible to people just getting bored of the content.

Yeah, I think everything agrees that a revamp of Azeroth would be cool, but that it's not worth doing at the expense of new content. I think Blizz should aim to complete some of the Azeroth zones that weren't fleshed out well, but these are minor side projects at best, like what they did with Dustwallow.

I'm a bit baffled by Blizzard's secret MMO project. Maybe they mean to cannibalize WoW, or maybe it won't be a competitor. Maybe WoW will be "modernized" graphics-wise in a future expansion, but I could see WoW 2 being in the works. I'd say that if they keep the graphics up to date, there are at least 3-4 expansions worth of content left to add that's already canonical.

I certainly thought it would be awesome to see Elwynn Forest/Westfall/Duskwood/Redridge post-Alliance starting area quests. There's always potential for a redone Azeroth, and I know we're all dying to see Hyjal.

Incidentally, why *is* Hadronox fighting the nerubians? Who is he and what is he doing there in the first place?

Since I hadn't seen it mentioned so far: there is a preview of the upcoming "Arthas" book at the end of "Night of the Dragon", which features Arthas, Ner'zhul and Mathias Lehner. The transscript was posted here.

This scene settles, I think, the question of whether Matthias Lehner was the Lich King manipulating us or an autonomous part of former Arthas.

The new MMO won't be in any existing universe and while I imagine that a lot of the formula which made WoW so successful will be retained, the story will likely be entirely different. They've done fantasy and sci-fi, so I would assume it won't be either of those... but then I'm at a loss to consider what it could be.

To me it seem Hadronox is a Living Nerubian, some type of brood mother or egg layer, who is trying to escape from the scourge infested Azjol-Nerub.

Nozdormu yells: To me, champions! You sought to slay me, yet my Infinites and I have only been working for your salvation! We will not survive the purging of the world -- I was shown my own death by these Titans, and I know it is not a fate that can be avoided -- but there is still hope!

The shimmering energies in the air rapidly converge into a shining portal at Nozdormu's side.

Nozdormu yells: This portal stretches five years into the future, and it is up to all of you to right whatever wrongs you can! Go now, we'll hold them off!

---

How's that for phasing the future? (And of course we'd have to be able to go back again -- just like in Ocarina of Time)

Yeah. Tirion might have screwed the pooch, not that he had much choice in the matter in those circumstances.

Can we stop hearing about "can we develop the other side of the Lich King, he's not just Arthas, there's an ORC in there too?" now as well? Ner'zhul isn't recognizable as anything but a pure evil entity at this point.

This is a most impressive idea: The Infinity Dragonflight was working to undo all those COT events, to prevent Azeroth getting messed up, which ultimately was to prevent the Titans returning to Azeroth very angry and attempting to purge us all. Nozdormu saw the future and perhaps his/our death was due to the Titans of all things. In a grand twist of irony, the titans would now be the effective bad guys and the Infinity dragonflight were our salvation and allies all along - we just didn't understand why when we fought them previously. One of the most innovative ideas i've read here in a while.

The portal could also stretch 10 000 years into the past when we had a single continent and the well of Eternity in the middle. Players would essentially live out the game from that point on in the past: We would still have 'familiar Azeroth' in many ways, but its an entirely new single continent which could deliver so much fresh content. There are some pre-existing characters players will be familiar with, but also the opportunity to develop many more.

Except you'd be effectively entering into a world with no orcs, no draenai, MAYBE humans/dwarfs/gnomes (someone said upthread the vyrkul started giving birth to humans 15k years ago) and absolutely no familiar characters other than Night Elves or dragons (and Broxigar, which would be awesome). While I suppose the Horde could find some interesting stuff regarding the early Taurens or the great Troll Empires, it seems like there's not much supplemental stuff there to be interested in.

This certainly sheds some light on the Matthias Lehner quests. I don't think he was trying to remove all hope of defeating the Lich King. Rather, he wanted to show us that we can't succeed by overpowering him. That's why he showed us how the Lich King raised Sindragoa, how he killed his own men to build his army, and how futile it is to destroy his minions. The only way to defeat him is to somehow get Arthas to rebel against Ner'zhul.

This does raise some questions about what's going on with his heart. Did Tirion screw up by destroying it, and therefore Matthias? Or was the heart a prison similar to the frozen throne, and now that it has been destroyed Matthias is free and can exert greater influence over Arthas?