@@MatthewTheWanderer Still, we're talking about literally navigation. I didn't think about the orcs, but I thought about the navigators like, come on, Dragon Isles are closer to Lordaeron than Kul'tiras, you telling me that a fucking nation of navigators never thought about a small trip to the north? D:
@@tamiko_chxn4974 Yeah, that's a lot harder to explain. It never made sense to me that The Dragon Isles were somehow hidden from the view of everyone, including the dragon aspects. But, I was originally only referring to what OP said about Thrall and the Orcs missing all the continents in between Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.
@@MatthewTheWanderer The point is, you dumwit, that they were never mentioned on their journey or in general. I didn't question the destination even though they could have easily mistaken ANY of these locations for Kalimdor, as they were only instructed to sail West.
Zones not mentioned: 3:01 - Isle of Quel'Danas 4:44 - Crystalsong Forest and Hrothgar's Landing 6:33 - Isle of Giants and Veiled Stair 8:37 - Eye of Azshara 9:33 - Mechagon Island and Nazjatar (hard to place on a map, so understandable) 10:49 - This one is sorta a technicality, the zone itself is 'Amirdrassil' in our realm (Azeroth). We simply visit the Emerald Dream, equally a zone itself, in order to unlock it. But from a map making perspective, it would be labeled 'Amirdrassil'. This video is AWESOME! I love seeing everything plotted out and shown on the planet! I hope we get to see a new version in a couple years when we get more junk added lol Missing stuff aside, 10/10, stellar job
It makes it make MORE sense. Because the odds of an entire continent almost completely vanishing and the two main remnants being thousands of miles apart...yeah the sundering was pretty bad but it wasn't THAT bad. There just isn't enough water for it. It makes a lot more sense to just have it broken up into a bunch of pieces. There is evidence that the dragon isles were an island even before the sundering though.
@@StormsparkPegasus none of this is to scale in the lore, places like zandalar kul tiras and the broken isles are much smaller in lore than in game, they just make them big for gameplay purposes
Pandaria, Northrend, Kalimdor, and Eastern Kingdoms are all continents but are shrunk significantly because mechanics. Broken Isles, Dragon Isles, Isle of Donagal, Zandalar, ect are just islands they are much smaller than the map represents.
Zandalar was also on the Vanilla-Wrath azeroth map, although whether thats accurate is unknown because the island is actually located around 500 miles west south west of that location in the chronicles maps.
I always thought the map just wasn't to scale and was more about relative positions. Like sail west from Eastern Kingdoms and you'll get to Kalimdor, probably.
This was me. Hadn’t played since wrath in like 2008. Always kept up on the announcements and cutscenes. I moved to a really boring area August last year and picked it back up. It’s A LOT to get used to as it’s not the same game at all (realistically probably took me about 6 months to get into the rhythm of knowing what I’m doing and didn’t start raiding until maybe 4 or 5 months in. Luckily everything has been made easier and less intimidating. There’s also more types of things to do like exploring old expansions/getting mounts/collecting cosmetic appearances. Each of these can take months on their own if you’ve been gone as long as me. Just some food for thought. I still keep finding zones I haven’t seen and stories and characters I never heard about before.
I’m pretty sure canonically all the islands are a lot smaller but for gameplay/map reasons they are bigger in the in game map. Otherwise Northrend and Pandaria would also just be islands and so would all the other continents cause they’re roughly the same size on the map. In the future can you scale down the islands for a more accurate Azeroth from space?
Yeah the Chronicle maps show more accurate representation for all the continents and islands. Ingame scale varies, but is usually smaller than it should be.
ingame is alot smaller than Lore because limitations back then. South Shore in Hillsbrand is the size of Ingame Stormwind for example the newer zones are alot closer to real scale but still not quiet there. the Stormwind from Warcraft movie is to scale just to give you an idea. or Between Andorhall and Bullwark there are atleast 3 Villages and Farms missing from the WC3 Campaing Map. the Lake around Sholomance is big enough to have Naval Battles and Pirate hideouts like Bootybay.
Not just gameplay but tech reasons, Eastern kingdoms and kalimdor havnt been touched in nearly a decade and back then game sizes need to be smaller and efficency was more of an issue
Couple of notes: * The Isle of Quel'Danas is the small island to the north of the Eastern Kingdoms. It was added in late TBC and was the first time a was zone added to the game between expansion cycles. I believe it's technically in the same world space as Outland, so you can take a flight master there from the Blood Elf areas. * In WotLK, Hrotgar's Landing is a tiny zone that I believe was added with patch 3.2 that's just north of Icecrown. Dalaran floats above a zone called Crystalsong Forest that has seen very little use in the game to this day. The Borean Tundra has a large subzone called Coldarra that's kind of fenced off from the rest of the zone, but that's really just trivia. A lot of the Northrend zones look like they're the same when viewed in this manner, but they all have distinctive post-processing effects going on that makes them visually distinct in-game. A small, previously inaccessible, section of the Eastern Plaguelands was reworked for the Death Knight intro experience. * For Cataclysm, The Isle of Dread might still be there, but it's underwater now. One of the patches added the Firelands, an extraplanar zone that also doubles as a raid instance. * Mists of Pandaria also had The Wandering Isle, the starter zone of Pandaren characters that was also repurposed into a class hold in Legion. I think that canonically it just moves across the entire ocean. The Thundering Isle is not part of the Pandaria continent for some reason, while the Timeless Isle is. * In Warlords of Draenor, Tanaan Jungle was inaccessible outside the intro questline until patch 6.2. You could still look into it, the game just didn't let you re-enter the area. The game pokes fun at the fact that the area which supposedly formed the Netherstorm in Outland is nowhere to be found in the game -- I believe the explanation is that it's a land mass off the coast. There was talk of using it as a newbie zone like Exile's Reach, which was added in Shadowlands. * In Legion, the Eye of Azshara can be visited normally, although there is not very much content there. Demon Hunters have their own starting area that also contains their class hold. There are a small number of miniature zones that can be accessed during World Quests or special events. * Battle for Azeroth added two new zones with patches: Nazjatar and Mechagon. The former is in its own instance and is quite large, while the latter is a small, Timeless Isle-sized area off the northwestern coast of Kul Tiras (the continent). * Shadowlands added a small zone called Korthia that was an extension of The Maw in 9.1, and Zereth Mortis was added in 9.2. It's worth noting that there's a small island in the southwest of the Shadowlands continent where the entrance to Tazavesh is located! * Dragonflight added a lot of stuff over time. The Forbidden Reach was technically in the game from the start, but was closed off after the Dracthyr starting experience until patch 10.0.5. Patch 10.1 added Zaralek Cavern, a medium-sized zone located under the Ohn'ahran Plains. 10.2 technically added *two* zones: Bel'ameth and the Emerald Dream. The two mostly share the same geometry, though, with Bel'ameth having been transported in from the Dream. Prior to 10.2, there was just a big crater in the area that happened to be the right size for a new zone. The Emerald Dream is in a separate instance.
Wow! Can't thank you enough for all of this additional background (and corrections). Next map video I need to ask you to proof. Really very interesting stuff. Now that you mention it I recall somehow being able to glitch my way back into Tanaan Jungle, and finding it with no mobs, during WoD. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to provide all this info.
@@720zone I forgot about the Veiled Stair or whatever it's called in Pandaria. A small zone that connects the Four Winds to Kun-Lai and the original location of the Black Market Auction House.
@@MatthewTheWanderer Isle of Giants is part of the main Pandaria continent. I don't recall if it existed as a land mass before patch 5.1. Amirdrassil is the name of the tree. Bel'ameth is the name of the zone/city (which is just a handful of buildings right now, although I expect Blizzard will revisit that in a few years, given how they've been good in the past few years about going back to check in on older storylines like FFXIV does).
@@Whitecroc Okay, well, Isle of Giants wasn't mentioned in this video. He mentioned "Timeless Isle and Isle of Thunder." No, Bel'ameth (the city) is just a subzone of Amirdrassil (the tree/zone). I really hope they revisit this zone in the future, also.
Been playing this game since mid to late 2009, Most of my close irl mates I met from a gaming cafe and they all played this and got me into it, still 15 years later I’m one of the few that still dabble and play it, usually couple months at a time then take a break for some months. When I try to explain to other mates that mostly play FPS games with like Tarkov or CS(they have played new world too) about how big and immersive the game truly is they can never understand, yes new world you Run around (atleast from launch before they added mounts) and they areas are huge but it truly gets dwarfed by the sheer size of WoW. It’s a game I’ll always love and eventually I’ll assume I’ll move on from it, but that day I hope doesn’t come as it’s been something I’ve played from my teens up till now at age 30. Off all the memories over the years I remember running from the top of Kalimdor Mount hyjal all the way through every zone down to Tanaris for the explorer achievement I was grinding, it took virtually all night (10 hours or so) and even though it was technically pointless and achieving nothing in reality, running around seeing all the little towns, caverns , getting the flight paths, seeing how the zones changed as you go through them still brings me back a smile and it’s a shame I won’t be able to do it again as now flying is just second nature. Deep respect for the game and hopefully they can knuckle down and put together a game that brings people together and enjoy for many years to come.
Hey man - thank you for taking the time to write out this comment - I've also played wow for so long that its a part of my life, and have also never been able to adequately described just how huge and immersive the world feels. A bit of what you describe; the exploration and community aspect (that "Feel") exists on the hardcore era servers now. The game was still huge, but small enough that all of the map is in-use, there are no dead areas that were from years' gone expansions like in retail. Thank you again; really appreciate the comment.
Wow! What a labor of love! Yes, as a WoW veteran I really do appreciate your hard work on this. I want to screen shot the 3D version because, for me, it helps me feel even more like I'm actually on the PLANET of Azeroth (and the other planets and dimensions or zones) when I'm playing the game. Well done mate!
For a while now Ive been realizing that for azeroth to make any sense is that the equator is nearer stranglethorn/feralas/un'goro than centered on where the maelstrom is usually placed. This would instantly solve a lot of climate problems with tropical/desert zones being too far south and there not being any southern cold pole. So maybe there is a hidden southern continent
True! Never thought about it from that perspective. Although even places like Northrend have more temperate zones. They've definitely taken some liberties with the geography/weather aspects. Appreciate the comment!
@@720zone I've tried to fix that as well, if there is a warmer sea current hitting Howling Fjord it would cause the average temperature climate wise to be warmer, similar to europe's and canadas latitude leading to different climates. The only zones that are harder to explain are Dun Morough which is meant to be a mountain but ingame not that high and perhaps winterspring, but for the same reason that howling fjord is warm, a cold stream and wind could freeze winterspring? It's a stretch though given that Teldrassil, Moonglade and Mount Hyjal are not that cold. Sholazar can be ignored as it's titan magic
I stopped playing when MoP launched, so I learned quite a bit about what these new places look like from this video! This is actually a really awesome way to explore the map. I wish the in-game world map looked like this lol. Everything is so easy to recognize
@Stefanlvanov188 Pretty much every culture before the Iron Age believed the world is flat and it wasn't until it was studied in Sicily that there enough evidence otherwise. Even after that much of the world was sure the world is flat like in China or India.
Pretty cool to see, crazy to think I've experienced all these changes over the years. Will be interesting to see after the World Soul Saga if we make our way around Azeroth and see other continents such as where the newly discovered Arathi Empire currently resides.
This might be dumb, but I would love to see a Google Earth version of Azeroth, using the timeline feature to scale back and forward in the expansions to see the changes :D Some fun facts: Not only is Ghostlands instanced from the mainland, it's actually on the same instance as Outland. After the burning of Tedressil, you can actually still find it out there, but you have to do some work to get to it. Maldraxus is built on the back of some massive creature that was never explored fully.
isnt it that the draenei starting zone is also in the same instance as outland and the blood elf starting zone? also im so curious if theres videos exploring what you mean about teldrassil
@@princembat Yeah, I tend to forget that is lumped in with Ghostlands and Outland, it's so out of the way and no one goes there! It's actually very easy to do, you only need a hunter and something that gives you underwater breathing. You need to create a new macro: /cast !Eagle Eye This macro allows you to cast Eagle Eye when you've already cast it instead of cancelling it out and having to recast it. Get your underwater breathing thing (I use one of the fishing poles) and head out to Darkshore. Swim toward Teldressil until you hit a wall and dive underwater. Begin casting Eagle Eye and it'll bypass the wall. Eventually, as you keep casting it toward the tree, you'll start to see the ground change and you'll find the roads and building locations. All the static props and NPC's are gone, of course, but the zone map is still there under the picture of the burned tree!
I started playing 2 months before you and I completely agree. The massive size of the world and the fact you can explore almost all of it are among the best parts of the game for me.
Quite interesting that many of the places later added to WOW through expansions are already present in Warcraft 3. Northrend where Arthas hunted down Malganis and ultimately ended up becoming the Lich king, The broken Isles which Maiev chased Illidan to, Kul Tiras where the fleet Rexxar fights together with Jaina and the horde originates.
If you choose to update this in the future, you could add Tol Barad from Cata, The Isle of Giants from Pandaria, Mechagon & Tol Dagor from BFA, The Forbidden Reach from DF, and correct the Emerald Dream to Amirdrassil (since while the Emerald Dream in game takes place on Amirdrassil, it's in another plane). All that aside, awesome work!! Subbed :)
Really appreciate it, and you're 100% right. Watching this back, and learning from so many of the great comments here makes me want to do a corrected part 2.
PLEASE DO A THEORIZED VERSION OF THIS BUT BEFORE THE SUNDERING!!! I would love to see Azeroth as it was before the Sundering of the Well of Eternity when it was more "Pangea-like" . Especially in a 3-D Satellite breakdown comparing where most likely the parts of the world align with the map/information we have of what the pre-sundering Azeroth was like :D
the CHronicle books already have done this.. there are maps of Proto-Kalimdor all over the web, including the ones showing where the old gods each had their own area of influence.
I did something similar awhile back with a 3d render on the computer. Based the separation of the two main continents by what we see from that Draenei disco ship. That’s not a map, it’s “reality”. By the time Kalimdor starts peaking over the horizon the Eastern Kingdoms is almost completely past the other horizon. Which would mean the OG Kalimdor covered well over half the planet and the “far side” isn’t nearly as vast as people seem to think. And, I’m pretty sure the expansion islands are canonically way smaller than what we play on - gameplay yadda yadda. That doesn’t really matter though because Kalimdor, EK, Pandaria, and Northrend are our anchor points.
Its worth noting that WoW is probably not to lore scale, based on population numbers alone. To what scale I imagine just depends on whatever the writers want it to be at the time.
@@crungushakooter There's to-scale maps in the lore books. I have to imagine places like the Broken Isles are far closer to actual scale than the continents, as it's roughly the same size as Howling Fjord lorewise. Here's the map from Volume 3: i.redd.it/4f029bvwpvs31.jpg
Oh yeah, the whole game absolutely is scaled down for gameplay and technical reasons mostly. Stormwind is actually quite small in size when you think about it. It's THE capital of the entire alliance and is supposed to be a bustling city with a huge population, as stinky and as non-canon as it was, the warcraft movie did do one thing right and that was scale. I don't think we're getting a cata-lvl full world overhaul anytime soon but i'm excited to see if they'll pull what rumors say and do a Quel'thalas revamp in Midnight
This is really cool. Super good job! I wish they did more with Draenor, like I know there is an entire other continent south of the “draenor” continents that is WAY bigger, it’s where the ogres come from
Played during BC up to Cata and just noticed there is stuff I still havent seen, areas I haven't done a single quest in. This is unbelievable. No other game managed to do this for me
Thank you for your work. This I appreciate because it helps me figure out the wider world of Azeroth. So much change. It's funny how blizz literally patches in new land masses. It's at a point now where I wonder how is it the people of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms didn't notice all these places when moving between each other for so many years?!
Hey man, really good job! As a more recent player (since BFA), I learned a tonne about past expansions :D I noticed a few things in the more recent zones/expansions - don't forget Silithus changed when Azeroth was stabbed in Legion and now the top-down map shows a more desolate area. Nazjatar and Mechagon from BFA were missing and would have been viewable from space (Mechagon is off the coast of Kul'Tiras to the left and Nazjatar is "located inside a massive crevasse in the middle of the Great Sea; the entire zone is below water level and is entirely surrounded by waterfalls", probably in-between Zandalar and Kul'Tiras noting the story). Lastly, technically the Emerald Dream is another realm - that area in the Dragon Isles is Amirdrassil.
"Technically this would have the continents on the other side. " Canonically, we have seen globes of Azeroth. There deadass has to be another continent back there, because if you look at it straight on, the whole map is only one half the planet
thing that bothers me in-lore with the map layout is that either the continents should be way smaller relative to the ocean mass or the inhabitants of azeroth are extremely dense traveling from the eastern kingdom to northrend to kalimdor on a frequent without ever accidentally encountering these continents between them since they seem hard to avoid.
@@720zone well, Zandalar , the Broken Isles and I think it's Kezan are already on the map during vanilla. So it's not like they were suddenly discovered. More that they were brought into importance.
@@charlesbordier5312 Yeah some places like Zandalar, the Broken Shore (at least), Kul Tiras and even Pandaria existed in the lore prior to their relative expansions added them into WoW. Zandalar is first mentioned in vanilla, Broken Shore (Gul'dan raised the island to access the tomb of sargeras) and Kul Tiras from WC2: Tides of Darkness , Pandaria from WC3: TFT (in the rexxar campaign, Chen says he was from Pandaria. This obviously has since been retconed).
Most of those landmasses where never truly unknown to the people in the Warcraft universe. We just had no reason to go there. The only exception would be Pandaria which was shrouded in mist and Khaz Algar which was just far into the Southern Sea.
Honestly great work, one major change is that oribos is directly above the maw in fact i think all the shadow land realms might be but atleast the area of the maw we visit is directly below oribos
Ahhh - thank you so much; I wasn't aware. I'd quit playing just before legion, so I missed Shadowlands completely - I'm sure it shows in my descriptions. Appreciate the comment!
Okay this was very cool and interesting to watch ! Very nice job on this, bro ! I remember when I crossed the Dark Portal for the first time, a veryyyy long time ago. I got my last levels in the relaxing and so purely white Winterspring, then I hopped in Hellfire Peninsula. The sky, the floating planets, all the red/orange/green/black everywhere, that giant robot walking around, the music, the fire, it was truly amazing. I stood here for a moment, with my eyes fully open like a kid during Christmas. Probably my best memory of WoW. I may be dumb but what are those two islands at the south of Tanaris ? It's one of my fav regions so I went there and couldn't go far away from the coast because of the fatigue, even with the dragonflight. Are those we see during Cataclysm when our boat crashes and we fall in Vash'jir ?
I really wish they would make the in game world map the actual size of what everything should be. I will say if you look at the Old Kalimdor Map, you can kinda see outlines of everything we have. I don't know why it is so hard to scale the in game map to size. They could just treat it like capitol cities.
I love how some of the land masses that happened to be islands as half the size of Northrend and Pandaria. I cannot imagine how would have been traveling from Easter Kingdoms to Kalimdor in person, but in the Vanilla era. You would see these large landmasses and be "Huh, probably nothing". Because some of these, in lore, were islands that were either hard to reach or unaccessible. So, I do think that, in lore, the main continents are supposed to be larger, but have this size for gameplay purposes.
I think you're right, that or the distances are way different from what is shown on the maps; like, those big land masses are all so far apart that they were missed. Appreciate the comment!
The trouble you run into is that all these continents are larger than is indicated in the game and smaller than is indicated on the map because it's a video game.
Its funny seeing it on a globe at this scale because you can't help but ask how in the hell they DIDN'T discover all these other lands traveling between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Also does feel weird that most things are to the right of the maelstrom, very unbalanced.
11:25 that's amirdrassil, the tree grew large and that island serves as some new zone for nightelves now, the emerald dream was accessible via portal just right of the amirdrassil island, the emerald dream technically isn't part of the world, it's just a parallel dream world existing ...somewhere lol
anything beyond a 10x optic is outside of the tech level. Orbital Photography needs better then that. Further, its not discoveries, its places the alliance/horde havent funded expeditions to.
Ignored zones TBC: Isle of Quel'Danas WotLK: Crystalsong Forest, Hrothgar's Landing MoP: Isle of Giants Legion: Eye of Azshara (named but not added: Krokuun, Mac'Aree/Eredath, Antoran Wastes) BfA: Tol Dagor, Mechagon, Nazjatar SL: Korthia, (Tazavesh, kinda) DF: Amirdrassil (Shown but named as Emerald Dream)
quel'thalas zone (above eastern plaguelands - ghostlands, eversong woods and isle of quel danas) is next to outland, that's why there is white portal in EPL
YES! Always has bugged me. I very recently went back into Retail, flew out to where Strath is in the world, and was annoyed that you still can't fly over it.
@@720zone You can't fly there because those areas are in "Outland" zone and there's no texture. You can go to Silvermoon and Exodar from Outland without any portal, its just really far away. Simple answer th-cam.com/video/9rFE8HzIijY/w-d-xo.html
I mean, our characters travelled by boats and zeppelins between continents since Vanilla, and they couldn't spot those massive areas of land? Some powerful magic is involved in this, I'm quite sure. 🪄✨ Nice video, I enjoyed watching it. 🙂
If these rumored updates to the overworld are true, they need to make more massive farmlands and various villages to fill in the space and make the world's nations and how they function make sense. The overworld scale would have to be quadrupled probably. Then they'd have to make more quests or activities to do otherwise it would just be space. No matter how cool it would be.
It's crazy to see that everything is to scale and that as the expansions went on the zones just increase in so much land and detail compared to vanilla. It's quite shocking to me. Is there anyway I can download this? I'd love to zoom in and poke and just poke around for nostalgia.
If we follow our earth logic. The equator is where most tropical countries are and the more north and south you go the world will get colder with snow. So in Azeroth is makes sense Northrend will be mostly snow because it's set high up north. What I'm trying to understand is how the other zones like dragon flight and BFA have snowy zones or tropical zones when they're placed higher up in the map. It's like the weather in Azeroth is having a life of its own for each zone.
Exactly! Even in Northrend there are smaller zones that are more temperate. I think the Blizz team didn't stick to the typicals geographic / temperature rules all that much. Great call-out here.
I really think they need to resize everything and make kalimdor and eastern kingdoms bigger, and make all the islands look like actual islands. when playing warcraft 3, the broken shore, kul tiras, and zandalar just seemed like tiny islands to me but they are so HUGE in game. pandaria is also just a small continent that was supposed to be believably shrouded in mist so it could be a little smaller too.
I wait for the day when Azeroth is really one big planet and I can get into a boat and sail the oceans, from landmass to landmass, fishing in between and occasional storms. Like Zelda The Windwaker.
I would love if someone recreate the original wow continents at scale in Unreal Engine or some other software. No need for game mechanics, just a scaled up version of Azeroth would be awesome to explore. BTW you forgot the two additional zones in BFA, Nazjatar and Mechagon, and lets be honnest, Nazjatar is one of the best zones in game to this day.
Could you overlay the new TWW zones on top of each other. I wanted to see if the 2 elevators on Isle of Dorn to Ringing Depths actually align with the geometry vertically or are the elevators doing a "non" straight line. I felt that they are in "approximate" locations if it was 1-1 i would think the maps are actually "ROTATED" and not true north.
@720 Zone.. Can you share the site or tools you used to get all these actual overhead images? I used to check WOw Slippy Maps or somethign like that but they stopped after Pandaria I believe.. Trying to get imaging of the newer expansions
Deepholme may be in the game under the Malestrom (sorry if i write the names wrong. I play in German and there are sadly some names translated..) but in the lore that is a portal to another dimension. It still hurts that we never got the version of netherstorm how it was on Draenor... Actually there are many small islands missing. One even on the other side of the planet (the dark moon island). On argus we see the globe. As easter egg we also see the classic areas. lol
Yep. You're 100% right, there were lots of little changes to the maps in the prepatch stuff prior to each xpac, but I just couldn't include it all. Cheers!
I have to say, Blizzard definitely made some mistakes with the biomes. In some areas, the snow makes sense due to elevation, but things like Quel'Danis being warm that far north is pretty wild. And then there's the northern part of Pandaria being cold rather than the southern, even though it's near the southern pole-it's just odd.
The main problem for new islands is Vindicar floating above Azeroth. You can clearly see there is not Dorn or some other islands. They should've change that too.
Hah! Man I knew I'd get some call-outs for that. I honestly was thinking I should go through cinematics or something to figure some of them out. Lots of these zones are from expansions I didn't play, so I was pretty much sounding them out. Appreciate the comment.
Yes! You're 100% right, and I toyed with adding it when I did the Mists section, but there was nothing concrete about the location on any of the Blizzard maps. In lore its described as moving around, usually between Northern Pandaria and the Maelstrom. Really good catch man; appreciate the comment.
I always imagined Northrend was sort of like the equivalent to Antarctica, but on the top of the planet instead of the bottom. It's the continent that caps off the planet of Azeroth.
I'd be very curious to see what the worlds would look like if everything was canonically accurate, since everything has to be way scaled down to make gameplay work. The continents should absolutely dwarf all the islands on the map, and even the islands in game probably take up less actual distance than they realistically would. For instance, I kind of imagine that Kul'Tiras would be at most a similar size to the British isles, where the Eastern Kingdoms should probably be about as big as the Americas. With things we've learned during the War Within, it seems extremely likely that after the world soul saga is done we'll be finding out what's beyond the west or east edges of the map we know, and I wonder how they'll visually manage that when we do
YES! Honestly, that was my first thought when making this video and trying to create a "From Space" view. I was trying to think of what would the WoW really look like....for real. But quickly the project morphed into this evolution of the map files, and I ended up grounding myself in the way the game shows everything laid out, which is not truly realistic. Maybe a part 2 will be something like canon driven geography. Appreciate this comment man; ty.
I always thought that Eastern Kingdoms is Europe, Kalimdor is America both north and south, Pandera is Asia and Northrend is Antartica. Oh and Draenor/Outland is Mars.
I am wondering if these "new" islands on the Azeroth only popped up with the new expansion. Before the new "islands" were added, the old ship routes went through those islands or at least close to it. For example. the ship route from Stormwind to Auberdine definitely goes through to at least close to Kul Tiras or Broken Isle. Same with the route from Stormwind to Borean Tundra in the WOTLK. If these new island already existed, then the ship routes did not make any sense lol. Like did the Azerotheans, before the new islands "popped up", know, lore-wise, the existence of these islands? They had to, giving that the ship went through those "new" areas. That's a big puzzle for me.
I refuse to believe that Thrall just conveniently missed all of these landmasses when he sailed the orcs to Kalimdor
literally, the thing I was thinking through the entire video.
It wasn't that he missed all those other landmasses. It was that Medivh (The Prophet) told him to go to Kalimdor specifically.
@@MatthewTheWanderer Still, we're talking about literally navigation. I didn't think about the orcs, but I thought about the navigators like, come on, Dragon Isles are closer to Lordaeron than Kul'tiras, you telling me that a fucking nation of navigators never thought about a small trip to the north? D:
@@tamiko_chxn4974 Yeah, that's a lot harder to explain. It never made sense to me that The Dragon Isles were somehow hidden from the view of everyone, including the dragon aspects. But, I was originally only referring to what OP said about Thrall and the Orcs missing all the continents in between Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.
@@MatthewTheWanderer The point is, you dumwit, that they were never mentioned on their journey or in general. I didn't question the destination even though they could have easily mistaken ANY of these locations for Kalimdor, as they were only instructed to sail West.
Zones not mentioned:
3:01 - Isle of Quel'Danas
4:44 - Crystalsong Forest and Hrothgar's Landing
6:33 - Isle of Giants and Veiled Stair
8:37 - Eye of Azshara
9:33 - Mechagon Island and Nazjatar (hard to place on a map, so understandable)
10:49 - This one is sorta a technicality, the zone itself is 'Amirdrassil' in our realm (Azeroth). We simply visit the Emerald Dream, equally a zone itself, in order to unlock it. But from a map making perspective, it would be labeled 'Amirdrassil'.
This video is AWESOME! I love seeing everything plotted out and shown on the planet! I hope we get to see a new version in a couple years when we get more junk added lol Missing stuff aside, 10/10, stellar job
Crystalsong Forest was a huge miss. Really appreciate the insight here. I'll note this comment for my update someday!
I like how with every new expansion, it's more and more like Kalimdor never even blew up in the first place.
ikr, it feels like high elf cancelation ❌
It drives me insane because THERES A WHOLE OTHER HALF OF THE PLANET WE HAVENT EVEN SEEN YET
@@sonofbelz Yep and we just established there's a whole ass empire there lol.
It makes it make MORE sense. Because the odds of an entire continent almost completely vanishing and the two main remnants being thousands of miles apart...yeah the sundering was pretty bad but it wasn't THAT bad. There just isn't enough water for it. It makes a lot more sense to just have it broken up into a bunch of pieces.
There is evidence that the dragon isles were an island even before the sundering though.
@@StormsparkPegasus none of this is to scale in the lore, places like zandalar kul tiras and the broken isles are much smaller in lore than in game, they just make them big for gameplay purposes
Pandaria, Northrend, Kalimdor, and Eastern Kingdoms are all continents but are shrunk significantly because mechanics. Broken Isles, Dragon Isles, Isle of Donagal, Zandalar, ect are just islands they are much smaller than the map represents.
Zandalar was also on the Vanilla-Wrath azeroth map, although whether thats accurate is unknown because the island is actually located around 500 miles west south west of that location in the chronicles maps.
I always thought the map just wasn't to scale and was more about relative positions. Like sail west from Eastern Kingdoms and you'll get to Kalimdor, probably.
Really cool video, I havent played WoW in over a decade but I still am obsessed with the game.
It’s changed a LOT. You should try out TWW
I second the other comment, TWW has been so awesome!
This was me. Hadn’t played since wrath in like 2008. Always kept up on the announcements and cutscenes. I moved to a really boring area August last year and picked it back up. It’s A LOT to get used to as it’s not the same game at all (realistically probably took me about 6 months to get into the rhythm of knowing what I’m doing and didn’t start raiding until maybe 4 or 5 months in. Luckily everything has been made easier and less intimidating. There’s also more types of things to do like exploring old expansions/getting mounts/collecting cosmetic appearances. Each of these can take months on their own if you’ve been gone as long as me. Just some food for thought. I still keep finding zones I haven’t seen and stories and characters I never heard about before.
you are obsessed with the game but haven't played in a decade? ''Oh yeah I'm obsessed with my wife but I haven't seen her for 10 years''
@@djurius There’s always stalking your wife.
I am a simple being. I see well produced WoW history content, I give like. Fair compensation for honest work.
Really appreciate it man. Thank you!!
A fair compensation for honest work would probably be money but what do I know
I’m pretty sure canonically all the islands are a lot smaller but for gameplay/map reasons they are bigger in the in game map. Otherwise Northrend and Pandaria would also just be islands and so would all the other continents cause they’re roughly the same size on the map. In the future can you scale down the islands for a more accurate Azeroth from space?
Yeah the Chronicle maps show more accurate representation for all the continents and islands. Ingame scale varies, but is usually smaller than it should be.
I mean, that *is* what the continents are anyway, canonically. Given the whole Shattering thing.
ingame is alot smaller than Lore because limitations back then. South Shore in Hillsbrand is the size of Ingame Stormwind for example the newer zones are alot closer to real scale but still not quiet there. the Stormwind from Warcraft movie is to scale just to give you an idea. or Between Andorhall and Bullwark there are atleast 3 Villages and Farms missing from the WC3 Campaing Map. the Lake around Sholomance is big enough to have Naval Battles and Pirate hideouts like Bootybay.
Not just gameplay but tech reasons, Eastern kingdoms and kalimdor havnt been touched in nearly a decade and back then game sizes need to be smaller and efficency was more of an issue
You’d think in vanilla the ships from one continent to another they’d have found the broken isles etc lol they are right in the path
Couple of notes:
* The Isle of Quel'Danas is the small island to the north of the Eastern Kingdoms. It was added in late TBC and was the first time a was zone added to the game between expansion cycles. I believe it's technically in the same world space as Outland, so you can take a flight master there from the Blood Elf areas.
* In WotLK, Hrotgar's Landing is a tiny zone that I believe was added with patch 3.2 that's just north of Icecrown. Dalaran floats above a zone called Crystalsong Forest that has seen very little use in the game to this day. The Borean Tundra has a large subzone called Coldarra that's kind of fenced off from the rest of the zone, but that's really just trivia. A lot of the Northrend zones look like they're the same when viewed in this manner, but they all have distinctive post-processing effects going on that makes them visually distinct in-game. A small, previously inaccessible, section of the Eastern Plaguelands was reworked for the Death Knight intro experience.
* For Cataclysm, The Isle of Dread might still be there, but it's underwater now. One of the patches added the Firelands, an extraplanar zone that also doubles as a raid instance.
* Mists of Pandaria also had The Wandering Isle, the starter zone of Pandaren characters that was also repurposed into a class hold in Legion. I think that canonically it just moves across the entire ocean. The Thundering Isle is not part of the Pandaria continent for some reason, while the Timeless Isle is.
* In Warlords of Draenor, Tanaan Jungle was inaccessible outside the intro questline until patch 6.2. You could still look into it, the game just didn't let you re-enter the area. The game pokes fun at the fact that the area which supposedly formed the Netherstorm in Outland is nowhere to be found in the game -- I believe the explanation is that it's a land mass off the coast. There was talk of using it as a newbie zone like Exile's Reach, which was added in Shadowlands.
* In Legion, the Eye of Azshara can be visited normally, although there is not very much content there. Demon Hunters have their own starting area that also contains their class hold. There are a small number of miniature zones that can be accessed during World Quests or special events.
* Battle for Azeroth added two new zones with patches: Nazjatar and Mechagon. The former is in its own instance and is quite large, while the latter is a small, Timeless Isle-sized area off the northwestern coast of Kul Tiras (the continent).
* Shadowlands added a small zone called Korthia that was an extension of The Maw in 9.1, and Zereth Mortis was added in 9.2. It's worth noting that there's a small island in the southwest of the Shadowlands continent where the entrance to Tazavesh is located!
* Dragonflight added a lot of stuff over time. The Forbidden Reach was technically in the game from the start, but was closed off after the Dracthyr starting experience until patch 10.0.5. Patch 10.1 added Zaralek Cavern, a medium-sized zone located under the Ohn'ahran Plains. 10.2 technically added *two* zones: Bel'ameth and the Emerald Dream. The two mostly share the same geometry, though, with Bel'ameth having been transported in from the Dream. Prior to 10.2, there was just a big crater in the area that happened to be the right size for a new zone. The Emerald Dream is in a separate instance.
Wow! Can't thank you enough for all of this additional background (and corrections). Next map video I need to ask you to proof. Really very interesting stuff. Now that you mention it I recall somehow being able to glitch my way back into Tanaan Jungle, and finding it with no mobs, during WoD. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to provide all this info.
@@720zone I forgot about the Veiled Stair or whatever it's called in Pandaria. A small zone that connects the Four Winds to Kun-Lai and the original location of the Black Market Auction House.
@@Whitecroc Did you mean "Isle of Giants" when you mentioned "Thundering Isle"? Also, I thought "Belameth" was called "Amirdrassil".
@@MatthewTheWanderer Isle of Giants is part of the main Pandaria continent. I don't recall if it existed as a land mass before patch 5.1.
Amirdrassil is the name of the tree. Bel'ameth is the name of the zone/city (which is just a handful of buildings right now, although I expect Blizzard will revisit that in a few years, given how they've been good in the past few years about going back to check in on older storylines like FFXIV does).
@@Whitecroc Okay, well, Isle of Giants wasn't mentioned in this video. He mentioned "Timeless Isle and Isle of Thunder."
No, Bel'ameth (the city) is just a subzone of Amirdrassil (the tree/zone). I really hope they revisit this zone in the future, also.
Been playing this game since mid to late 2009, Most of my close irl mates I met from a gaming cafe and they all played this and got me into it, still 15 years later I’m one of the few that still dabble and play it, usually couple months at a time then take a break for some months. When I try to explain to other mates that mostly play FPS games with like Tarkov or CS(they have played new world too) about how big and immersive the game truly is they can never understand, yes new world you Run around (atleast from launch before they added mounts) and they areas are huge but it truly gets dwarfed by the sheer size of WoW. It’s a game I’ll always love and eventually I’ll assume I’ll move on from it, but that day I hope doesn’t come as it’s been something I’ve played from my teens up till now at age 30. Off all the memories over the years I remember running from the top of Kalimdor Mount hyjal all the way through every zone down to Tanaris for the explorer achievement I was grinding, it took virtually all night (10 hours or so) and even though it was technically pointless and achieving nothing in reality, running around seeing all the little towns, caverns , getting the flight paths, seeing how the zones changed as you go through them still brings me back a smile and it’s a shame I won’t be able to do it again as now flying is just second nature. Deep respect for the game and hopefully they can knuckle down and put together a game that brings people together and enjoy for many years to come.
Hey man - thank you for taking the time to write out this comment - I've also played wow for so long that its a part of my life, and have also never been able to adequately described just how huge and immersive the world feels. A bit of what you describe; the exploration and community aspect (that "Feel") exists on the hardcore era servers now. The game was still huge, but small enough that all of the map is in-use, there are no dead areas that were from years' gone expansions like in retail. Thank you again; really appreciate the comment.
Wow! What a labor of love! Yes, as a WoW veteran I really do appreciate your hard work on this. I want to screen shot the 3D version because, for me, it helps me feel even more like I'm actually on the PLANET of Azeroth (and the other planets and dimensions or zones) when I'm playing the game. Well done mate!
Thank you so much for the comment man!
For a while now Ive been realizing that for azeroth to make any sense is that the equator is nearer stranglethorn/feralas/un'goro than centered on where the maelstrom is usually placed.
This would instantly solve a lot of climate problems with tropical/desert zones being too far south and there not being any southern cold pole.
So maybe there is a hidden southern continent
True! Never thought about it from that perspective. Although even places like Northrend have more temperate zones. They've definitely taken some liberties with the geography/weather aspects. Appreciate the comment!
@@720zone I've tried to fix that as well, if there is a warmer sea current hitting Howling Fjord it would cause the average temperature climate wise to be warmer, similar to europe's and canadas latitude leading to different climates.
The only zones that are harder to explain are Dun Morough which is meant to be a mountain but ingame not that high and perhaps winterspring, but for the same reason that howling fjord is warm, a cold stream and wind could freeze winterspring? It's a stretch though given that Teldrassil, Moonglade and Mount Hyjal are not that cold. Sholazar can be ignored as it's titan magic
I stopped playing when MoP launched, so I learned quite a bit about what these new places look like from this video!
This is actually a really awesome way to explore the map. I wish the in-game world map looked like this lol. Everything is so easy to recognize
Thanks so much man! I stopped a couple expansions beyond you, and still was surprised at how much was added.
There are people who actually believe Azeroth is flat
Flat Azeroth-ers!!!
It’s because Chris Metzen makes reference to the firmament in his scriptural writings… 😂
@Stefanlvanov188 Pretty much every culture before the Iron Age believed the world is flat and it wasn't until it was studied in Sicily that there enough evidence otherwise. Even after that much of the world was sure the world is flat like in China or India.
@@galten7361 "Studied in Sicily"!? WTF!?
@MatthewTheWanderer Look up Pythagoras. He moved to Sicily and taught that the world was a sphere.
Pretty cool to see, crazy to think I've experienced all these changes over the years. Will be interesting to see after the World Soul Saga if we make our way around Azeroth and see other continents such as where the newly discovered Arathi Empire currently resides.
This might be dumb, but I would love to see a Google Earth version of Azeroth, using the timeline feature to scale back and forward in the expansions to see the changes :D
Some fun facts:
Not only is Ghostlands instanced from the mainland, it's actually on the same instance as Outland.
After the burning of Tedressil, you can actually still find it out there, but you have to do some work to get to it.
Maldraxus is built on the back of some massive creature that was never explored fully.
Yes! In fact I had to pull the Ghostlands map files off of the Outlands map for this exercise - Great callout!
isnt it that the draenei starting zone is also in the same instance as outland and the blood elf starting zone? also im so curious if theres videos exploring what you mean about teldrassil
@@princembat Yeah, I tend to forget that is lumped in with Ghostlands and Outland, it's so out of the way and no one goes there!
It's actually very easy to do, you only need a hunter and something that gives you underwater breathing.
You need to create a new macro: /cast !Eagle Eye
This macro allows you to cast Eagle Eye when you've already cast it instead of cancelling it out and having to recast it.
Get your underwater breathing thing (I use one of the fishing poles) and head out to Darkshore. Swim toward Teldressil until you hit a wall and dive underwater.
Begin casting Eagle Eye and it'll bypass the wall. Eventually, as you keep casting it toward the tree, you'll start to see the ground change and you'll find the roads and building locations. All the static props and NPC's are gone, of course, but the zone map is still there under the picture of the burned tree!
@@princembat Yes, that is correct.
Playing since February 2006, I really love how truly ginormous this universe has become!
Cheers & Love, for the Horde!
I started playing 2 months before you and I completely agree. The massive size of the world and the fact you can explore almost all of it are among the best parts of the game for me.
Quite interesting that many of the places later added to WOW through expansions are already present in Warcraft 3. Northrend where Arthas hunted down Malganis and ultimately ended up becoming the Lich king, The broken Isles which Maiev chased Illidan to, Kul Tiras where the fleet Rexxar fights together with Jaina and the horde originates.
Well done! Thank you for the research and work you put into making this!
You're welcome; really appreciate the comment.
If you choose to update this in the future, you could add Tol Barad from Cata, The Isle of Giants from Pandaria, Mechagon & Tol Dagor from BFA, The Forbidden Reach from DF, and correct the Emerald Dream to Amirdrassil (since while the Emerald Dream in game takes place on Amirdrassil, it's in another plane).
All that aside, awesome work!! Subbed :)
Really appreciate it, and you're 100% right. Watching this back, and learning from so many of the great comments here makes me want to do a corrected part 2.
@@720zonewould be really cool
PLEASE DO A THEORIZED VERSION OF THIS BUT BEFORE THE SUNDERING!!!
I would love to see Azeroth as it was before the Sundering of the Well of Eternity when it was more "Pangea-like" . Especially in a 3-D Satellite breakdown comparing where most likely the parts of the world align with the map/information we have of what the pre-sundering Azeroth was like :D
the CHronicle books already have done this.. there are maps of Proto-Kalimdor all over the web, including the ones showing where the old gods each had their own area of influence.
@@ZakhadWOW Not in a 3D version overlapping all of our current content comparing old Azeroth
@@TheCaptainRex What do you need a 3D map for. And of course all current continents can be seen on this map in there exact location...
I just need to see the Turtle Wow full map like this. They did crazy stuff on this server.-
I did something similar awhile back with a 3d render on the computer. Based the separation of the two main continents by what we see from that Draenei disco ship. That’s not a map, it’s “reality”. By the time Kalimdor starts peaking over the horizon the Eastern Kingdoms is almost completely past the other horizon. Which would mean the OG Kalimdor covered well over half the planet and the “far side” isn’t nearly as vast as people seem to think. And, I’m pretty sure the expansion islands are canonically way smaller than what we play on - gameplay yadda yadda. That doesn’t really matter though because Kalimdor, EK, Pandaria, and Northrend are our anchor points.
The 3D version is great, it makes you want to have a Google maps, and streetview of the map in its entirety.
Yes! I'm working on a 3d version in Blender, where I could show it spinning.
Vashj'ir is missed in this video, huge underwater zone in Cataclysm.
th-cam.com/video/Xpzz22OrOmo/w-d-xo.htmlsi=wXfxqeq_Us44zxM9&t=370 -- there it is!
Its worth noting that WoW is probably not to lore scale, based on population numbers alone. To what scale I imagine just depends on whatever the writers want it to be at the time.
No source but I vaguely remember reading that the real world scale is meant to be some 10-100x larger than the in-game areas across the board
@@crungushakooter There's to-scale maps in the lore books. I have to imagine places like the Broken Isles are far closer to actual scale than the continents, as it's roughly the same size as Howling Fjord lorewise.
Here's the map from Volume 3: i.redd.it/4f029bvwpvs31.jpg
Oh yeah, the whole game absolutely is scaled down for gameplay and technical reasons mostly. Stormwind is actually quite small in size when you think about it. It's THE capital of the entire alliance and is supposed to be a bustling city with a huge population, as stinky and as non-canon as it was, the warcraft movie did do one thing right and that was scale. I don't think we're getting a cata-lvl full world overhaul anytime soon but i'm excited to see if they'll pull what rumors say and do a Quel'thalas revamp in Midnight
This is really cool. Super good job! I wish they did more with Draenor, like I know there is an entire other continent south of the “draenor” continents that is WAY bigger, it’s where the ogres come from
Played during BC up to Cata and just noticed there is stuff I still havent seen, areas I haven't done a single quest in. This is unbelievable. No other game managed to do this for me
Thank you very much for this awesome video. Brings back a lot of memories.
You're so welcome! Really appreciate the comment.
Thank you for your work. This I appreciate because it helps me figure out the wider world of Azeroth. So much change. It's funny how blizz literally patches in new land masses. It's at a point now where I wonder how is it the people of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms didn't notice all these places when moving between each other for so many years?!
Really appreciate this comment; thank you!
Great video, thanks for making it.
You're very welcome. Really appreciate the comment.
Hey man, really good job! As a more recent player (since BFA), I learned a tonne about past expansions :D
I noticed a few things in the more recent zones/expansions - don't forget Silithus changed when Azeroth was stabbed in Legion and now the top-down map shows a more desolate area. Nazjatar and Mechagon from BFA were missing and would have been viewable from space (Mechagon is off the coast of Kul'Tiras to the left and Nazjatar is "located inside a massive crevasse in the middle of the Great Sea; the entire zone is below water level and is entirely surrounded by waterfalls", probably in-between Zandalar and Kul'Tiras noting the story). Lastly, technically the Emerald Dream is another realm - that area in the Dragon Isles is Amirdrassil.
Thank you! Some of this I knowingly omitted, but you're 100% right I missed Mechagon and the Nazjatar nuance. Appreciate it!
Tol barad also missing and the Isle of thunder is wrong (also the world tree in the dragon Isles is amirdrassil not teldrassil)
you mean Amirdrassil, Teldrassil was burned down by the horde
Yeah shit I meant that ahaha. Edited to reflect - Tytyty
from just two continents to dozens now, time flies
I started playing WoW in 2005, i think. Still amazing to see this!
Love it - you're old-school.
Amazing work, what a world!
still my #1 all time favorite main tank.
flying over the new land masses in a zepp. goblins are like "did you buy a Ticket to go there? No? then were not going there"
this map is so cool just the classic looking map looks beautiful
I enjoyed every minute! 😍 Nice job!
Awesome! Thank you!
Nice Vid mate, but you forgot the bfa classic map areas and val'shir or what ever it calls 😄 keep it up ✌🏼
Thanks! This content was awesome.
Appreciate it so much! Thank you!
"Technically this would have the continents on the other side. "
Canonically, we have seen globes of Azeroth.
There deadass has to be another continent back there, because if you look at it straight on, the whole map is only one half the planet
I mean since TWW we know for a fact there is a continent. The Arathi Empire has to be _somewhere_
thing that bothers me in-lore with the map layout is that either the continents should be way smaller relative to the ocean mass or the inhabitants of azeroth are extremely dense traveling from the eastern kingdom to northrend to kalimdor on a frequent without ever accidentally encountering these continents between them since they seem hard to avoid.
Same! It was too convenient that they were all just undiscovered, especially with their relative sizes. Appreciate the comment man; thank you.
@@720zone well, Zandalar , the Broken Isles and I think it's Kezan are already on the map during vanilla. So it's not like they were suddenly discovered. More that they were brought into importance.
@@charlesbordier5312 Yeah some places like Zandalar, the Broken Shore (at least), Kul Tiras and even Pandaria existed in the lore prior to their relative expansions added them into WoW. Zandalar is first mentioned in vanilla, Broken Shore (Gul'dan raised the island to access the tomb of sargeras) and Kul Tiras from WC2: Tides of Darkness , Pandaria from WC3: TFT (in the rexxar campaign, Chen says he was from Pandaria. This obviously has since been retconed).
Most of those landmasses where never truly unknown to the people in the Warcraft universe. We just had no reason to go there. The only exception would be Pandaria which was shrouded in mist and Khaz Algar which was just far into the Southern Sea.
Underrated channel!
Yo - can't thank you enough for this little comment; thx man.
Honestly great work, one major change is that oribos is directly above the maw in fact i think all the shadow land realms might be but atleast the area of the maw we visit is directly below oribos
Ahhh - thank you so much; I wasn't aware. I'd quit playing just before legion, so I missed Shadowlands completely - I'm sure it shows in my descriptions. Appreciate the comment!
Okay this was very cool and interesting to watch ! Very nice job on this, bro ! I remember when I crossed the Dark Portal for the first time, a veryyyy long time ago. I got my last levels in the relaxing and so purely white Winterspring, then I hopped in Hellfire Peninsula. The sky, the floating planets, all the red/orange/green/black everywhere, that giant robot walking around, the music, the fire, it was truly amazing. I stood here for a moment, with my eyes fully open like a kid during Christmas. Probably my best memory of WoW.
I may be dumb but what are those two islands at the south of Tanaris ? It's one of my fav regions so I went there and couldn't go far away from the coast because of the fatigue, even with the dragonflight. Are those we see during Cataclysm when our boat crashes and we fall in Vash'jir ?
And for the next expansion they can make the map a sphere, and start adding continents on its "other side" :P
Love this idea.
The next expansions zones are technically already there. so Are the ones for the next one after that!
Yup there's now this previously unknown Arathi Empire on the other side of the world, I assume we'll get to see that in the next two expansions
I really wish they would make the in game world map the actual size of what everything should be. I will say if you look at the Old Kalimdor Map, you can kinda see outlines of everything we have. I don't know why it is so hard to scale the in game map to size. They could just treat it like capitol cities.
I love how some of the land masses that happened to be islands as half the size of Northrend and Pandaria.
I cannot imagine how would have been traveling from Easter Kingdoms to Kalimdor in person, but in the Vanilla era. You would see these large landmasses and be "Huh, probably nothing". Because some of these, in lore, were islands that were either hard to reach or unaccessible.
So, I do think that, in lore, the main continents are supposed to be larger, but have this size for gameplay purposes.
I think you're right, that or the distances are way different from what is shown on the maps; like, those big land masses are all so far apart that they were missed. Appreciate the comment!
so you mean these whole ass continents aren't just as big as two football fields?
Nostalgia got me, I miss the pre-Cata zones & quests.
Same man. Love the early stuff. Come on over to hardcore!
The trouble you run into is that all these continents are larger than is indicated in the game and smaller than is indicated on the map because it's a video game.
I legit IRL LOL here at my desk on this one. Its true.
Its funny seeing it on a globe at this scale because you can't help but ask how in the hell they DIDN'T discover all these other lands traveling between Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Also does feel weird that most things are to the right of the maelstrom, very unbalanced.
@@JohnathanCronnelly technically only Pandaria was undiscovered prior to them being visited in their expansion, every other location was known about
MoP had the best layout of continents. It was also the most believable that both factions could've somehow missed it up until that point.
Agree 100%.
11:25 that's amirdrassil, the tree grew large and that island serves as some new zone for nightelves now, the emerald dream was accessible via portal just right of the amirdrassil island, the emerald dream technically isn't part of the world, it's just a parallel dream world existing ...somewhere lol
The new islands kinda made sense as new discoveries. Right up until we all got our own personal spaceship in legion
anything beyond a 10x optic is outside of the tech level. Orbital Photography needs better then that.
Further, its not discoveries, its places the alliance/horde havent funded expeditions to.
Damn that was a great video
Thank you so much man.
Nice job! 👍
Thank you! Cheers!
Well done !
During BFA there was also an Exile's Reach added as a starting zone.
Love this!
That is really cool! I would love if Blizz implemented some sort of Google Azeroth view.
That would be awesome! Someone made a geo-guesser game that is pretty cool: lostgamer.io/world-of-warcraft
Perfect!
Thanks so much!
Great Video !!!
Appreciate this so much. Thank you!
Ignored zones
TBC: Isle of Quel'Danas
WotLK: Crystalsong Forest, Hrothgar's Landing
MoP: Isle of Giants
Legion: Eye of Azshara (named but not added: Krokuun, Mac'Aree/Eredath, Antoran Wastes)
BfA: Tol Dagor, Mechagon, Nazjatar
SL: Korthia, (Tazavesh, kinda)
DF: Amirdrassil (Shown but named as Emerald Dream)
Thanks so much man. Need to hire you as a video editor on stuff like this. Really appreciate the comment.
quel'thalas zone (above eastern plaguelands - ghostlands, eversong woods and isle of quel danas) is next to outland, that's why there is white portal in EPL
This is so cool!
Thank you so much!.
I always assumed Padaria was at the equator of the planet and the entire southern half of the planet is still undiscovered.
amazing thank you
Thanks so much!
I haven't played since Cataclysm, the world is twice as big now. Sheesh.
You quit at the right time. Come back to Hardcore on Era!
"So that flying would work..."
Except in the Ghostlands, Eversong Forest and Quel'thalas, which to this day you still CANNOT FLY IN!
YES! Always has bugged me. I very recently went back into Retail, flew out to where Strath is in the world, and was annoyed that you still can't fly over it.
@@720zone You can't fly there because those areas are in "Outland" zone and there's no texture. You can go to Silvermoon and Exodar from Outland without any portal, its just really far away. Simple answer th-cam.com/video/9rFE8HzIijY/w-d-xo.html
I mean, our characters travelled by boats and zeppelins between continents since Vanilla, and they couldn't spot those massive areas of land?
Some powerful magic is involved in this, I'm quite sure.
🪄✨
Nice video, I enjoyed watching it. 🙂
Yeah... I guess the lore kinda ignores that. Thanks for watching! 😊
If these rumored updates to the overworld are true, they need to make more massive farmlands and various villages to fill in the space and make the world's nations and how they function make sense.
The overworld scale would have to be quadrupled probably. Then they'd have to make more quests or activities to do otherwise it would just be space. No matter how cool it would be.
It is interesting how to map of Draenor implies more land in the lower left corner
It's crazy to see that everything is to scale and that as the expansions went on the zones just increase in so much land and detail compared to vanilla. It's quite shocking to me. Is there anyway I can download this? I'd love to zoom in and poke and just poke around for nostalgia.
its Yimo at the end ♥
If we follow our earth logic. The equator is where most tropical countries are and the more north and south you go the world will get colder with snow.
So in Azeroth is makes sense Northrend will be mostly snow because it's set high up north.
What I'm trying to understand is how the other zones like dragon flight and BFA have snowy zones or tropical zones when they're placed higher up in the map. It's like the weather in Azeroth is having a life of its own for each zone.
Exactly! Even in Northrend there are smaller zones that are more temperate. I think the Blizz team didn't stick to the typicals geographic / temperature rules all that much. Great call-out here.
I really think they need to resize everything and make kalimdor and eastern kingdoms bigger, and make all the islands look like actual islands. when playing warcraft 3, the broken shore, kul tiras, and zandalar just seemed like tiny islands to me but they are so HUGE in game. pandaria is also just a small continent that was supposed to be believably shrouded in mist so it could be a little smaller too.
Got a like here...from Highlord Dracomaxus of the silverhand, Herald of the Sun!!
Yooo! Thank you Sir Highlord Dracomaxus!
I wait for the day when Azeroth is really one big planet and I can get into a boat and sail the oceans, from landmass to landmass, fishing in between and occasional storms.
Like Zelda The Windwaker.
That would be amazing.
I would love if someone recreate the original wow continents at scale in Unreal Engine or some other software. No need for game mechanics, just a scaled up version of Azeroth would be awesome to explore.
BTW you forgot the two additional zones in BFA, Nazjatar and Mechagon, and lets be honnest, Nazjatar is one of the best zones in game to this day.
Could you overlay the new TWW zones on top of each other. I wanted to see if the 2 elevators on Isle of Dorn to Ringing Depths actually align with the geometry vertically or are the elevators doing a "non" straight line. I felt that they are in "approximate" locations if it was 1-1 i would think the maps are actually "ROTATED" and not true north.
I'll look into it!
@720 Zone.. Can you share the site or tools you used to get all these actual overhead images? I used to check WOw Slippy Maps or somethign like that but they stopped after Pandaria I believe.. Trying to get imaging of the newer expansions
Hey Hey! Thanks for the comment - Go to: old.wow.tools/2022.php - and click 'Map' at the top - WoW tools is an incredible resource. Cheers!
do you have a link or something so i can see the map myself?
Deepholme may be in the game under the Malestrom (sorry if i write the names wrong. I play in German and there are sadly some names translated..) but in the lore that is a portal to another dimension.
It still hurts that we never got the version of netherstorm how it was on Draenor...
Actually there are many small islands missing. One even on the other side of the planet (the dark moon island).
On argus we see the globe. As easter egg we also see the classic areas. lol
Hell yeah
idk why, bit this comment. Absolutely love it.
Nice video. I suspect everything up to WoLK is in the northern hemisphere though. Colder weather up north, deserts and jungle down south.
orbiting a gas giant has some fucky effects on the climate.
didnt even talk about how there was construction going on in the middle of khalmdor in the beginnning before it was released lol
Yep. You're 100% right, there were lots of little changes to the maps in the prepatch stuff prior to each xpac, but I just couldn't include it all. Cheers!
good work.
Appreciate it very much.
There are some hints in the lore of a continent on the other side of azeroth. So we could actually only be on one side of the planet.
I have to say, Blizzard definitely made some mistakes with the biomes. In some areas, the snow makes sense due to elevation, but things like Quel'Danis being warm that far north is pretty wild. And then there's the northern part of Pandaria being cold rather than the southern, even though it's near the southern pole-it's just odd.
Agree 100%, there are exceptions all over. Sections of Northrend are totally green.
The big problem with this is that Vanilla was not done at the same scale that expansions do the zones. They should be double the size.
The main problem for new islands is Vindicar floating above Azeroth. You can clearly see there is not Dorn or some other islands. They should've change that too.
YES. So true.
Really amazing video. I got 5 nosebleeds from some of these pronunciations though haha
Hah! Man I knew I'd get some call-outs for that. I honestly was thinking I should go through cinematics or something to figure some of them out. Lots of these zones are from expansions I didn't play, so I was pretty much sounding them out. Appreciate the comment.
@@720zone Ignoring pronunciations this is one of the coolest videos I have ever seen man :) Keep up your niche work man!
Great stuff
Legion provided a full 3D globe of Azeroth in the skybox of Argus
Really!?! I need to find that. Thank you!
@@720zone I mean it consists of 80% of clouds so...
You forgot the Wandering Isle. The great Turtle Shen Zin-Zu.
Yes! You're 100% right, and I toyed with adding it when I did the Mists section, but there was nothing concrete about the location on any of the Blizzard maps. In lore its described as moving around, usually between Northern Pandaria and the Maelstrom. Really good catch man; appreciate the comment.
No worries, so did Blizzard.
pretty sure he forgot/missed or just thought it wasnt worth mentioning quite a few like isle of giants, isle of quel'danas, nazjatar etc.
maybe since it is the WANDERING Isle?
I always imagined Northrend was sort of like the equivalent to Antarctica, but on the top of the planet instead of the bottom. It's the continent that caps off the planet of Azeroth.
soo... the Arctic? Or Ant-Antarctica you want
You know God doesnt draw in straight lines, but seeing those mountain ridges in Kalimdor makes me think that game devs certainly do 😂
Hah! Well said.
Disappointed you didn't include Argus, but otherwise a great video :)
I would have loved to see a map of Argus.
Dude honestly - me too. I should have added one more small planet. Good callout.
@@720zone I wonder if there were any continents on Argus.
I'd be very curious to see what the worlds would look like if everything was canonically accurate, since everything has to be way scaled down to make gameplay work. The continents should absolutely dwarf all the islands on the map, and even the islands in game probably take up less actual distance than they realistically would. For instance, I kind of imagine that Kul'Tiras would be at most a similar size to the British isles, where the Eastern Kingdoms should probably be about as big as the Americas.
With things we've learned during the War Within, it seems extremely likely that after the world soul saga is done we'll be finding out what's beyond the west or east edges of the map we know, and I wonder how they'll visually manage that when we do
YES! Honestly, that was my first thought when making this video and trying to create a "From Space" view. I was trying to think of what would the WoW really look like....for real. But quickly the project morphed into this evolution of the map files, and I ended up grounding myself in the way the game shows everything laid out, which is not truly realistic. Maybe a part 2 will be something like canon driven geography. Appreciate this comment man; ty.
@@720zone I would love to see a part 2 with canon sizes. Maybe base it off the chronicles maps?
I always thought that Eastern Kingdoms is Europe, Kalimdor is America both north and south, Pandera is Asia and Northrend is Antartica. Oh and Draenor/Outland is Mars.
can't wait for the arathi empire to get on here.
for some reason i can like the vid
so subbed and commented atleast
Much appreciated!
I am wondering if these "new" islands on the Azeroth only popped up with the new expansion. Before the new "islands" were added, the old ship routes went through those islands or at least close to it. For example. the ship route from Stormwind to Auberdine definitely goes through to at least close to Kul Tiras or Broken Isle. Same with the route from Stormwind to Borean Tundra in the WOTLK. If these new island already existed, then the ship routes did not make any sense lol. Like did the Azerotheans, before the new islands "popped up", know, lore-wise, the existence of these islands? They had to, giving that the ship went through those "new" areas. That's a big puzzle for me.