WoW demon Cortyn is convinced that Blizzard is working on something big. Not 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 expansion of World of Warcraft might look like. But while some are already picturing the story of the war for Light and Void or the return of the Naga Queen, there are a lot of hints in the game that Blizzard is “secretly” working on another project – a new overhaul of the game world or even a “Cataclysm 2.0”.
But let me explain how some in the WoW community come to this conclusion.
A complete, new overhaul of the old game world would consume a lot of time and resources. If Blizzard were to approach this as a single project, it could bind all developers for a year or longer.
Therefore, Blizzard seems to have chosen a different path and is renewing the old world piece by piece while simultaneously creating new content.
The first clue is the type of races that received a new, modern design with Dragonflight. Gnolls, centaurs, and furbolgs all play a larger role in Dragonflight. They have all been revamped, receiving new models, sound effects, and sometimes even animations.
The positive side effect here is that these models can be easily inserted into the old world during a large overhaul, without additional work. In some cases, this has already happened.
Of course, this could be a coincidence up to this point. Perhaps it just so happens that a large part of the inhabitants of the Dragon Isles consist of the – model-wise – oldest races that exist on Azeroth.
There are new houses that have not been used so far
However, this does not explain why there are already new designs for human houses and taverns. That’s right. For quite a while now, there have been high-resolution models of human houses, similar to those found in the old variant in Elwynn Forest. So far, they have not been used anywhere in the game, leading to much speculation about why they even exist.
One of the most common theories is that revising the human houses was a “test balloon” to find out how much work it would take to bring the old assets up to the standard of modern World of Warcraft. Based on this, Blizzard could then roughly calculate how much work and time it would take to update all the old assets.
This line of evidence also includes the fact that Blizzard has begun to give the city guards of the major capital cities a new design. The ancient Silvermoon received new city guards, and in the data for Patch 10.1, the Ironforge guards also received new high-resolution armor. Why would they modernize this if not for the story to take place again in the old “new” world?
Did I already mention that Blizzard hired almost 100 new developers in various fields before the launch of Dragonflight? While it’s clear that Dragonflight is releasing content faster and more than Shadowlands, the thought is close that some of the developers are working on the long-term project of modernizing the world.
That they have not used the houses in Elwynn so far seems logical. Because the high-resolution houses would look quite out of place next to the very pixelated textures of the road, trees, and fences, and would rather diminish than enhance immersion. When they are used, the entire “surroundings” must also be brought up to a more modern standard.
One last clue is the statements of the developers from the past months. They have acknowledged that they have a large game world with numerous dungeons and areas that have no relevance in the endgame. Even in an interview about the trading post, it was revealed that the long-term goal is to make “all of Azeroth more vibrant” – and that the trading post is one of these efforts.
In another interview with Bellular on YouTube, Hazzikostas indirectly confirmed that dragon riding will likely become an “evergreen” feature and will probably be carried over into new expansions. And what would be better suited for a feature that requires a lot of space than the large continents that already exist?
Finally, Blizzard is now able to avoid the “problems” of the first Cataclysm. A major criticism was that many of the old contents were lost forever. It was simply no longer possible to see the world in its original state, and numerous quests were lost for all time.
But now there are significantly more possibilities. Through timewalking and different phases, it is possible to preserve the old design as well. It could be possible to switch between the “old world” and the modern one using the bronze dragons when wanting to achieve something in the old content.
Clearly, Blizzard will not comment on such plans in the coming months. But if we continue to find an overhaul of old assets used in many places in Azeroth in the game data in upcoming patches, then surely everyone can draw their own conclusions.
Perhaps the “big overhaul” will not be the next expansion – but it would have to be with Sargeras, if this is not already in the planning stages. Because the hints are all there.
Or how do you see the whole thing?
