The Consolidation of the Old World

When WoW first came out, one and a half years before I started playing, a friend was showing it to me. He told me how there were two continents - one where the good guys lived and another where the bad guys lived.

Obviously, things were more nuanced than that. And as I would come to understand, each faction had a toehold on the other continent.

Not anymore, apparently.

Teldrassil is going to burn, and Kalimdor will become the territory of the Horde, while the Alliance invades and retakes Lordaeron, making the Eastern Kingdoms Alliance territory.

Now, obviously it's going to be more complicated than that. I doubt you'll simply not be able to quest in those areas, and they haven't made any announcement of a Cataclysm-like rework that would get rid of old leveling zones.

But this is huge. Even if it only affects max-level characters.

My Horde main is an Undead Rogue, and while there isn't a ton of reason to go there anymore, I loved leveling up through Tirisfal, Silverpine, Hillsbrad, and all those spooky undead areas. The Undercity, with its vaguely Tim Burton-esque style, has always been one of my favorite cities.

And apparently it's getting destroyed. The battle we see in the Battle for Azeroth cinematic seems that it will go to Anduin and the Alliance (also, is he a Paladin now, or just a Priest with some melee abilities and plate armor?)

How is this going to work? What are these zones going to look like? And what of Quel'thalas and the 'myst Isles? Where do the Worgen go after they finish the quests in Gilneas?

Blizzard has not specified, but I guess I could imagine a sort of mini-Cataclysm, with some zones getting reworked quests. Still, given that there's enough nostalgia that they're finally caving and making vanilla servers, are they really going to dump a bunch of work they did in Cataclysm as well as screw up the story while leveling even farther? (Is your Void Elf Rogue going to be utterly confused?)

This is an area where more details are really needed.

Oh, also there's another stat squish. Not terribly surprising. Worked ok last time, and especially with level scaling everywhere, it should be a lot easier to keep track of what kind of gear people should be getting.