Advertisement

The WABAC Machine takes you to early Azeroth

For those of us who got into Warcraft lore through WoW, looking back at what the world used to be like can be shocking. Kurdran of Aegwynn stunned the WoW Forums with a map of the Azeroth of twelve years ago.

Not too many people are still able to play Warcraft I, so it was nice to see how the map originally looked. It looks vaguely like the middle of the Eastern Kingdoms today, with Stonard, Stonewind/Stormwind, the Deadmines, Moonbrook and Northshire Abbey in roughly the same places as they are in WoW. Rockard and Temple of the Damned have disappeared off the face of the planet, and "Orc Camp", "Medivh Tower", and "Grand Hamlet" turned into Grom'Gol, Karazhan and Darkshire.

I also enjoyed looking at this map from Warcraft II. Apparently Azeroth has been undergoing some strange tides, because a lot of the land that would make up Silverpine Forest, Hillsbrad Foothills and Arathi Highlands seems to be underwater. Kul Tiras, as shown on these maps, seems to have disappeared in WoW, and the Dark Portal migrates south every new game.

Checking out these maps makes me realize how tough it must be for the designers to reconcile the previous Warcraft geography with WoW. Now that Azeroth has gone from a place of isolated campaigns to a huge world you can run across, they had to retrofit all the lore locations into an accessible, unified form. Making Outlands must have been a big relief in comparison.

What do you think about how Azeroth has changed? What locations from previous Warcraft games would you like to see in WoW?