WoW demon Cortyn is convinced that Blizzard is working on something big. Nothing less than a complete overhaul of Azeroth is being prepared.
Even though Dragonflight is only a few months old, many fans are already imagining what the next World of Warcraft expansion might look like. But while some are already envisioning the story of the War of Light and Void or the return of the Naga Queen, there are plenty of in-game clues that Blizzard is “secretly” working on another project – a new game world overhaul or even a Cataclysm 2.0.
But let me explain how some in the WoW community got that idea.
A complete, new overhaul of the old game world would consume a lot of time and resources. If Blizzard were to tackle this as a single project, it would probably tie up all developers for a year or more.
Therefore, Blizzard seems to have chosen a different path and gradually renewed the old world while creating new content at the same time.
The first indication is the type of people that got a new, modern design with Dragonflight. Gnolls, centaurs, and furbolgs all play a major role in Dragonflight. They’ve all been completely overhauled, with new models, sound effects, and sometimes even animations.
The positive side effect here is that you can easily insert these models into the old world later in a major revision without having to do any extra work. In some cases this has already happened.
Of course, this could be coincidence up to this point. Maybe it just happened that a large part of the inhabitants of the Dragon Islands consist of the – technically model – oldest peoples that exist on Azeroth.
There are new houses that have not been used before
But that doesn’t explain why there are already new designs for the human houses and taverns. You read that right. High-resolution models of the human houses, such as the old version found in Elwynn Forest, have been around for a while. They haven’t been used anywhere in the game so far, so there’s a lot of speculation as to why they even exist.
One of the most common theories is that the Human Houses overhaul was a “test balloon” to see how much work it would take to bring the old assets up to the level of modern World of Warcraft. Based on this, Blizzard could then roughly calculate how much work and time it would take to spice up all the old assets.
This evidence also includes the fact that Blizzard has started to give the city guards in the major capitals a new design. Ancient Silvermoon City got new city guards, and in patch 10.1 data, Ironforge’s guards got new high-resolution armor as well. Why modernize this unless the story will take place in the old “new” world again?
Did I mention that before the launch of Dragonflight, Blizzard hired almost 100 new developers in a variety of areas? While you can clearly feel that Dragonflight is releasing faster and more content than Shadowlands, for example, the thought is close that some of the developers are working on the long-term project of modernizing the world.
The fact that the houses have not yet been used in Elwynn seems logical. Because the high-resolution houses would seem quite out of place next to the very pixelated textures of the street, the trees and fences and would rather reduce the immersion than increase it. If they are used, then all the “trappings” must be brought up to date.
A last indication are the statements of the developers from the past few months. You have realized that you have a large game world with numerous dungeons and areas, but they have no relevance in the endgame. Even an interview on the Trading Post revealed that the long-term goal is “to bring all of Azeroth to life” – and the Trading Post is one of those efforts.
In another interview with Bellular on YouTube, Hazzikostas indirectly confirmed that kite flying is likely to become an “evergreen” feature and will most likely be included in new expansions. And for a feature that needs as much space as possible, what would be better than the big continents that already exist?
Finally, Blizzard is now able to avoid the “problems” of the first Cataclysm. Because a huge criticism was that a lot of the old content was lost forever. It was simply no longer possible to see the world in its original state and numerous quests were lost forever.
But now there are far more options. Using time walks and different phases, it is possible to get the old design as well. You could switch back and forth between the “old world” and the modern using the bronze dragons if you wanted to do something in the old content.
Of course, Blizzard will probably not comment on such plans in the next few months. But if we continue to find a revision of old assets that are used in many places on Azeroth in the game data in upcoming patches, then everyone can count their own conclusions.
Maybe the “major overhaul” won’t be the next expansion yet – but it should be done with Sargeras if that’s not in the planning for a long time. Because the clues are all there.
Or how do you see it all?