I’ve been leveling trough the starter zones of WoD and that reminded me, that there are so many unfished plot stories there .
In particular we never got to see :
1: The Apexis . Who are they ? Why did their civilization crumble ?
2: The ogres . There is supposed to be a whole continent of them , but we got to see almost nothing of their story .
3: The orcs . Where did they come from ? Were they made , evolved , or what is their creation story ? Are there orcs on the other continents … there seem to be some ?
4: The gron . Some interesting interactions there with titan technology . What are these things ?
5: Of course the titans and what were they messing about in there . Could it be that they killed off the apexis ? Maybe the orcs are a failed product of theirs of some genetic mutation ?
6: All those mushroom , zangarmarsh and underwater world . Seems to be a lot going on there .
Over all I kinda like the variations of the zones . We have snow , jungles , deserts , forests . Its not just more of the same .
It could be quite fun to return there , but not in the role of the all mighty commander , but perhaps as an explorer . Perhaps in a disguise , where no one knows you are an alien ? It could give a chance to start over as a simple explorer , looking into weird stuff . Perhaps build new characters and stories .
Overall , every time I play trough WoD I can’t help but feel what a massive letdown and potential loss that is . So much story to be told and explored and it was just unfished , scrapped and forgotten .
As with many addons, the main plot (the Iron Horde and the forces behind it) was the weakest part of the addon. So I’ll agree that there was some cool stuff that would have been nice to revisit.
I fear it’s too late for that now, though. The Mag’har quests turned the Draenor we know into the empire of the Lightbpund. Yrel took it over with her forces, and, going by the dialogue, blighted the land in the process. I guess we could theoretically go to another continent on the same planet, but that’s really no different from going to a new continent on Azeroth, so I really don’t see the point of calling up dimensional travel for that.
In general I’d prefer more content for older zones to new content in zones that I have no attachment to, but I don’t think we can really do that with Draenor. Indeed, I might be more interested in expanding on Outland, where we could reasonably include more of the stuff we saw on Draenor…
Definitely this. There’s a limit to how much new and random stuff can be added to the world before credibility is stretched too thin. In fact, I think the entire concept of tortollans and drogbar was the result of that.
Come on Blizz, let’s add more detail to the stuff we already know. Why aren’t there saberons in Outland? What’s the state of Zangarmarsh now that we cleaned up Coilfang?
I agree on the story of WoD being very … let’s say “unpolished” and incomplete . That being said traveling to a new world felt kinda fun , when it happens once in a while and some of the stories could have developed really well . I personally like the raw , savage and unexplored feel of the place .
Outland was also cool in that regard , so exploring something there would have been fine too . The problem with Outland is that it is too much about space and demons , so i can’t really see them making Outland+ without void lords , demon lords , hex lords , cringe lords or who knows what .
That being said perhaps it would be fun to find more pieces of Outland floating around . Perhaps figure out a way to reattach them together somehow ? Exploring new environments , histories and cultures .
The point however is that Draenor presents the opportunity to play as a random adventurer , rather than cosmic force slayer X .
A 100% this. It almost sounded like they were going this direction in BFA, what with the warfronts taking place in old zones. But what we got were some loot piñata zones, stuck in a fixed temporal bubble whilst the narrative is solved in books and transmedial mini-cutscenes with nothing being reflected in the actual game.
It would be cool to see what has happened in Outland since our departure. What has the Cenarion Expedition been up to? Have they managed to revert the damage the Naga have done? And since the Outland is an exploded planet, it’s not difficult to imagine how they could add new zones by simply having the existing Outland colliding with other floating islands.
Which is exactly why the latest leaked video has the Night Elves annoyed once again… Well, to be fair, they always easily annoyed, but using new zones for stuff that should be in old zones is a point I can at least understand.
Here’s a though . Maybe Outland never was an “exploded planet” . Maybe it is simply shifted in another plane of existence /dimension .
Basically we had something similar in Draenor Nagrand around Oshu’gun , where you do a ritual and are transported to a version of Nagrand in the Twisting Nether .
What if the twisting nether is basically that “behind the film plane” . Where nether creatures constantly roam and are trying to brake trough the thin veil into the real world . In that sense the Outand we see is basically just a sniped of Draenor that is phased . Draenor itself is whole , but we can not get to it , because the Dark Portal is leading us in the phased zone .
You can easily explain this by the shenanigans of Nerzul , who tried to open multiple portals at the same time and ended up creating Outland . Instead of leading to the twisting nether and braking the world they ended up connecting to each other and creating a whole zone between them where the twisting nether is visible .
We know there are a bunch of those portals and ritual sites around Outland that Illidan tried to close and ironically they are around the edges of the land mass.
In that sense the crazy goblins in Area 52 building a rocket aren’t that crazy , because perhaps if you fly high enough / far enough , you can end up outside of this bubble and actually get to the real Draenor .
WoD is my favorite expansion even though it didn’t live up to its potential. I would love to go back there. Orcs and their ancient world are my favorite warcraft stories.
To be honest I’m super in favour of revisiting old content.
In Outland for example I would assume that with Illidan and the legion mainly defeated most of the alliance and horde forces would abandon the place (yet Nazgrel and Danath seemed to remain their for several years for some reason) and a that most of the locals in outland would flee to azeroth as refugees since you know its not a floating hunk of rock in the nether.