So, Zaralek Cavern accomplished something that Blizzard had been forced to abandon after the initial pitch for Wrath of the Lich King. Northrend, of course, is the home of the ancient kingdom of Azjol-Nerub, but the subterranean realm was reduced to mostly just two dungeons and a handful of outdoor areas (such as the pit into which Arthas had tossed his heart, which we found during the Matthias Lehner quest chain).
It was roughly fifteen years later that we got a true underground zone, which allows you to just fly right in (or, I guess, walk) and appears to be seamless, but is actually some complicated engineering that allows them to hide the fact that there's actually a kind of "virtual load screen" going on as you transition through the caverns.
Clearly, they felt this was a great success (and it was) because The War Within, as the name implies, really doubles down on it.
The four zones in War Within will be pretty much stacked on top of one another, with the leveling process likely having us delve deeper into the ground, discovering newer and stranger regions as we go.
The first zone is the Isle of Dorn. This appears to genuinely be above-ground, an island that seems to be somewhere between Kalimdor and Pandaria, and is home to the local nation of Earthen Dwarves. The Earthen are divided into three groups, with one group remaining steadfast to their devotion to the Titans and the directives they were left with, another group seeking to live free of those tenets, and another that seems to be tied to the ancient Titan machinery on a spiritual level. The capital city will be here, and is called Dornogal.
(As a side note, the name reminds me of Donegal, a region in the north of Ireland (though not Northern Ireland - it's in the Republic of Ireland,) and I almost wonder if our Earthen will have more of an Irish accent than the traditional Dwarven brogue that is more in line with a Scottish accent.)
The next zone is the Ringing Deeps, home to the aforementioned Machine Speakers, and seems to be a combination of traditional grand Dwarven mine with a bit of a Lost World vibe, with plentiful wildlife, as well as various cenotes that allow light from the surface to shine down.
Next, interestingly enough, is something completely different: Hallowfall is home to a group of Arathi Humans who have been here for centuries, battling it out with the Nerubians. Hallowfall is a vast and open cavern with a giant crystal that functions as its sun, giving the illusion that you're aboveground unless you look carefully. The Arathi here look to be very strongly bound to the Light as their shield against the darkness below, and while there's a bit of a steampunk vibe as well (with lots of dirigible airships) I also suspect we might see some of that zealousness perhaps manifest in... less benevolent ways. Anyway, I always find it cool when they find new places for human culture to exist in Azeroth.
The final, deepest zone is Azj-Kahet, a Nerubian city that is all creepy and spider-ridden and is where Xal'atath is gathering her power and "evolving" the Nerubians into deadlier soldiers to assault the surface world and, likely, the very World-Soul of Azeroth.
Now, naturally, there's every likelihood that over the course of the expansion's patches we'll get one or two additional zones. But I'm very eager and curious to see how it will feel to explore these zones.
Dragonflight being built from the get-go as a flying-centric expansion allowed the world-designers to play around in a way we haven't really seen since Mists of Pandaria, and... well, honestly since Wrath. With flying considered a reward for completing world content or hitting max level, zones become kind of flat as a necessity. But in Dragonflight, we saw a return to zones with lots of verticality like we had seen in Storm Peaks and Icecrown. Thaldraszus couldn't really exist if you didn't have access to flight.
The entire expansion here looks like it will really double down on that idea of verticality, and I'm very excited about that.
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