There's such a wealth of factions and locations in World of Warcraft, an MMO that has been around for over two decades, and which has had a new expansion release every two years. If you're unfamiliar with how an MMO like WoW works, a new expansion is an enormous endeavor: Typically, it involves the addition of a new landmass (a "continent" in game terms) with multiple zones (kind of thematic regions) that have extensive storylines told through quests, usually with one major throughline quest chain and then various side quest chains. Then, each expansion also comes with several dungeons and raids (raids are basically higher-stakes dungeons that you have to have more players for, and are where the major villains of an expansion's story are confronted in very elaborate boss fights). Expansions even have major patches, spread out over the two years between their launch and the launch of the next expansion, which will often add new zones and new raids (sometimes also new dungeons and other such thing,) so it's truly a massive amount of content, and they've done this every two years since the game launched in 2004.
What this means is that there's just an absurd number of places and storylines existing in-game that you could crib from to build a D&D adventure around, basically simulating an existing questline.
But we're not going to do that, obviously. We're going to come up with something original.
Now, I had a first draft of this post that detailed an adventure in which a Scourge Death Knight allies with the Coven of Drustvar to open a conduit to the necromantic powers of Thros, the realm form which the ancient Drust drew their death magic. I think that could work fine, but I'm going to try to do something a bit different.
WoW's game mechanics are focused primarily on combat. A dungeon is really a series of combat encounters, with the rare and occasional bit of puzzling (there's a dungeon from the Legion expansion in which the final part involves you going into a party disguised as an elven aristocrat looking for rumors over who is the secret Burning Legion agent hiding amongst the guests). But if we're going to have the flexibility of a TTRPG, why don't we try for some kind of plot that involves the other pillars of play?
First off, let's pick a zone. We'll go with the Blasted Lands. This region, in the southeastern corner of the Eastern Kingdoms, is central to the history of Warcraft, as it was here that the Guardian Medivh (basically the most powerful living Mage, sworn to protect the world,) possessed by the Dark Titan Sargeras, opened the Dark Portal, which linked the world of Draenor to Azeroth and allowed the Orcish Horde to invade Azeroth, leading to the First War (aka Warcraft I).
Originally the Black Morass, a vast, dark swampland, the energies of the Dark Portal desiccated the land, turning it into a barren desert. Since that initial invasion, the Burning Legion used it to try to invade Azeroth again (at the start of the Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion) and later, the portal was hijacked to link Azeroth with an alternate timeline and allow the alt-history Iron Horde to invade through it.
Now, if we assume we're setting this during the modern WoW timeframe, the Legion has been pretty much scattered to the winds, the Iron Horde failed and its Mag'har Orcs were incorporated into this world's Horde, and the Horde and Alliance have been at peace for a few years (with Alliance forces even permitted to stay in Silvermoon, the Blood Elf capital).
So, here's how I see the Blasted Lands looking: both Alliance and Horde need to maintain a presence there to keep watch over the Dark Portal. Tensions between them have certainly lowered since the end of the Fourth War (the events starting in Legion and ending in Battle For Azeroth,) but there are still some simmering resentments and rivalries.
Perhaps the party is sent there by the Kirin Tor, a major faction (neutral, but perhaps Alliance-leaning, as it was the ruling magocratic body of the Human city-state of Dalaran, which was sadly blown up at the start of The War Within). A mage, Eldridge Cosper, had sent a message to Archmage Modera (one of the Kirin Tor's Council of Six, its highest office) that they had discovered something very important that he couldn't discuss via remote communication, but that he would travel to Stormwind to meet with her and speak in person. Cosper never arrived, and so Modera sends the party to go find what happened to him.
Cosper was Forsaken (sentient, free-willed Undead and members of the Horde), so when the party gets to Nethergarde Keep, they find that the leadership there was not too happy about having him around, and refused to give him quarters in the fortress. The party might then travel to Dreadmaul Hold, the Horde base in the Blasted Lands, but find that they were also sort of hostile toward Cosper, and refused to allow him to stay there.
So, the party then has to search the Blasted Lands for wherever Cosper actually is. Along the way, they might have various side quests (I'm really eager to start running more sandbox-like adventures once I wrap up my Ravnica campaign - I just don't know that that style would work for players in tier 4,) which could hint at a few things:
First, that the Shadow Council, insidious warlocks who controlled the Old Horde from behind the scenes and were working in league with the Burning Legion, has actually infiltrated both the Alliance and Horde garrisons here.
Second, that the Dark Riders of Karazhan have been seen in these parts - the Dark Riders being cursed undead horsemen who seek out powerful artifacts, commanded initially by the possessed Medivh to gather them all and bring them to his tower of Karazhan nearby in Deadwind Pass.
Third, that no one has heard anything out of Surwich, the village on the southern coast founded by refugees from Gilneas (the kingdom whose population is mostly Worgen now,) for several days.
Eventually, the party will discover that Cosper had uncovered a powerful artifact carried by a member of the Shadow Council into Azeroth during the First War. The artifact, the "Cube of Aghan," has similar properties to the Sargerite Keystone (a relic used by Illidan in Legion to create a portal in the sky between Azeroth and the Legion's home planet of Argus - which is also where the Draenei originally came from). The Cube could be used to connect the Dark Portal to any number of other worlds, which, naturally, makes it extremely dangerous.
The party would have to deal with Shadow Council forces trying to follow them in their search for Cosper, and maybe need to expose the double-agents in Nethergarde and in Dreadmaul Hold. Then, they'd need to find out what happened to Surwich:
There, Cosper accidentally activated the Cube. While it is less powerful if not connected to something like the Dark Portal, it did manage to conjure in a number of dangerous creatures - perhaps these are aggressive plant creatures that have taken over the town and the nearby Tainted Forest. Maybe they need to get to Cosper and the Surwich residents, who have been taken into the forest by the plant-monsters, before they're consumed.
And then, of course, they would be harried by the Dark Riders - though perhaps they might decide that Karazhan would be a good place for the Cube to be stored, which is not the solution that Modera or Cosper would be happy with. Maybe the Riders take the Cube and the adventure culminates into an incursion into the famed haunted Wizard tower (which is, by the way, one of the most popular raids in the game's history, back in Burning Crusade - it was later also revamped as a "mega-dungeon" in Legion, though they learned their lesson and kept the original raid accessible by giving the dungeon a different entrance).
Naturally, I'd like to see what kind of monsters we get in the book, but I think you could do a lot of this with stuff from the Monster Manual. Shadow Council members could use Cultist stat blocks (maybe using Fiend Cultists for their more powerful forces). Depending on the level, the plant monsters at Surwich could use Blights. Dreadmaul Hold also has its fair share of Ogres. Depending on level, you could make the Dark Riders either Wraiths or Death Knight Aspirants. And the various monsters out in the Blasted Lands could include a number of monstrosities like Bulettes and Basilisks. There would also be plenty of demons there (I think fiends in general can stand in for Burning Legion demons - arguably they're more Lawful Evil in contrast to the Void's Chaotic Evil aberrations).
I think this premise for the adventure could be relatively linear if you wanted, but if you took the time to sprinkle in subplots and sidequests, you could make it a pretty fun sandbox adventure. I actually think this might work as a tier 1 adventure (though maybe start everyone at level 3) or it could be good for early tier 2. Cosper, I'd say, is probably either a Mage or, if you wanted to make him more vulnerable, maybe just an Apprentice Mage. I think the quest can be completed whether Cosper survives or not, as long as the Cube is secured.
Now, I think this could also be relatively self-contained, or it could be part of a larger campaign about resurgent cosmic threats. If you wanted this to lead into a larger plot, perhaps you cut the Dark Riders part and the Cube has already been claimed... but maybe the Shadow Council didn't get it, and now it's in the hands of Twilight's Hammer (or Twilight's Blade, the newer version of it) or perhaps the Cult of the Damned (though why they'd want interplanar capabilities would raise even more questions).
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