Yeah, I mean, you had to expect I'd be writing a lot about this, right?
With the exception of Azjol-Nerub, all the dungeons featured in the World of Warcraft D&D book are from the original release of World of Warcraft.
"Vanilla" WoW featured the two large continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Broadly speaking, the continents were mostly home to one of the two player factions, with the Alliance having a larger presence in the EKs and the Horde having more territory in Kalimdor (but with each having a bit of territory on the other - the Undead control the fallen kingdom of Lordaeron, in the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms, and the Night Elves' home territories are in the north of Kalimdor).
Anyway, the way dungeons work in WoW is that most have somewhere from 3-5 bosses. Boss fights tend to have special mechanics that players need to contend with to successfully defeat them (though admittedly there were some fights in the early days which were "tank and spank" fights that were extremely straightforward). Usually they're pretty linear, though sometimes you can beat some of the bosses in different orders, and occasionally (though I don't think any in recent years) there will be optional bosses. Each boss drops loot from a unique table, so if you know that a particular, say, belt you want drops from a boss, you might run that dungeon until that item drops for you. Between these boss fights are "trash," which are less powerful enemies that can still potentially be challenging, but are there to kind of pace out the dungeon. Other than the normal randomized loot that anything will have, these typically don't drop anything predictably. WoW, of course, can't have all the complex nuance of character interactions that D&D has, so its gameplay is almost entirely combat-focused, and a dungeon is a long string of fights.
In 2010, six years after the original launch, the Cataclysm expansion saw a major revamp of the original two continents, redesigning the questing experience and, in some cases, changing some of the dungeons to reflect the story's development. Some of these dungeons from Vanilla would also get revamps later on that weren't tied to Cataclysm. (One reason for the changes was that, starting in the first expansion, the idea of Heroic Dungeons was introduced, which let you set the difficulty of a dungeon up so that it would be appropriate for max-level characters. While initially this was only for dungeons from the latest expansion and within that expansion's expanded level range, starting in Cataclysm, they made heroic versions of dungeons you'd have visited at low levels, including Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep).
Which is all to say that some of these dungeons have multiple versions of them.
What I'm here to investigate, ultimately, is whether the 30 "dungeon boss" stat blocks are specifically meant for these dungeons, or if these will be more broadly 30 iconic dungeon bosses from across WoW's history.
So, let's total them up:
Azjol-Nerub: 3
The sole dungeon not in the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor, it's instead up in the frozen continent of Northrend, home to the Undead Scourge put also the seat of the Titan Keepers, Ulduar. Underground, the spider-like Nerubians have their realm, which has been conquered by the Undead Scourge, including its Scarab Lord king, Anub'arak, who is its final boss. There's only one version of this dungeon, which has three bosses.
Blackfathom Deeps: 8
Big underground cave system with some Night Elf ruins buried in it. Naga and Satyr came to the caverns to claim the ancient power of the place, which was once a temple to Elune, the moon goddess worshipped by the Night Elves. The hydra Aku'mai, thought to be an ancient pet of the Old Gods, has taken residence here. In Vanilla (and in the currently-available "WoW Classic") the dungeon has 8 bosses, with Aku'mai as the final one. The dungeon got a sort of "light" revamp during Warlords of Draenor, but wasn't tied to that expansion's plot and not given a Heroic version, and it still has 8 bosses.
Deadmines: 6
Now, Deadmines got a pretty major revamp in Cataclysm, moving the timeline forward six years, and it's explicit that the conflict in it was caused by the events of the original version. Interestingly, the normal mode of the dungeon didn't have us confront Vanessa VanCleef, the main antagonist. It was only on Heroic mode (a difference of doing this at, like, level 15 versus level 85) that we had our bout with her. (She's also revealed to have survived in the Legion expansion six years after that, and can even become an ally for Rogue players). Anyway, the map of the dungeon remains the same, and I think there's a new boss in the place of each of the old ones (though I think "Captain" Cookie, the murloc, is in both).
Dire Maul: 16... Technically
Dire Maul's weird. It's actually treated as three separate dungeons now, and many of the bosses in the northern part, which is ogre-themed, are really more like mini-bosses with similar if not the same mechanics. If we cut them out, the total comes out to 12, which is still a lot, though only 4 per wing, which is more typical for a dungeon.
Onyxia's Lair: 1
This one was a bit of a surprise, because Onyxia's Lair is basically one big cavern with a fight against a powerful black dragon. There are a couple of trash pulls to get to her, but the main appeal to this back in Vanilla (and later when they brought it back for WoW's 5th anniversary during Wrath of the Lich King and boosted her to a level 80 challenge) was that you could go in, do a single raid boss, and be done.
Scarlet Monastery: 6 or 7
In Vanilla, Scarlet Monastery was actually four very short dungeons with one or two bosses each, the Scarlet Library, Scarlet Armory, Scarlet Graveyard, or Scarlet Cathedral. In Mists of Pandaria, which came out in 2012, they did a total revamp, basically rebuilding the place from the ground up as two more conventional 3-boss dungeons. The Graveyard and Cathedral were combined into what is now called Scarlet Monastery, and the Armory and Library were combined into what is now called Scarlet Halls. The reason the boss count here isn't the same is that the original Scarlet Graveyard began with a torture chamber and a boss there that was the lead torturer (whose name escapes me,) who didn't make it into the 2012 revamp. Interestingly, the "canon" of our previous fight through the Monastery was preserved, with bosses playing similar roles to the original ones but as different individuals, with the exceptions of the undead skeletal mage Tlanos the Soulrender (a former Scarlet inquisitor who succumbed to the Plague of Undeath) and High Inquisitor Whitemane, whose resurrective powers evidently allowed her to come back after being defeated the first time (fun fact, she earned her "redemption" by becoming one of the Ebon Blade's Four Horsemen, among its most fearsome Death Knights).
Shadowfang Keep: 5 or 10
Similar to Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep kept the same map, but underwent a pretty profound revamp to what was actually found in the dungeon. In Vanilla, it was mostly Worgen (basically werewolves) and Archmage Arugal, who went mad after he summoned the worgen to Azeroth to fight the undead Scourge and didn't realize the whole "infectious wolf-men" problem would be a thing. In Cataclysm, it's almost entirely different, with the treasonous Lords Ashbury, Walden, and Godfrey of Gilneas holing up there after betraying both Gilneas and the Forsaken. The dungeon currently has five bosses, but had twice as many in Vanilla (though some of those were really minor fights). The "new" (16-year-old) version of it ends with a fight against Lord Godfrey (an NPC who specifically shows up to mock Worgen players after they're infected in a cutscene, so we're really set up to despise him).
Totaling it:
Obviously, the numbers here aren't consistent. But if we assume the simpler, smaller versions of each dungeon, it comes out to 41.
Given that we're only getting 30 "dungeon boss" stat blocks, I'm inclined to come to two conclusions:
One is inescapable: that some of these boss fights will not require bespoke stat blocks, and might be presented simply using either some of the 50 regular monster stat blocks or even existing D&D ones.
The second is not guaranteed, but would be my preference: that we get plenty of dungeon boss stat blocks outside of these dungeons. After all, only one of these dungeons is from an expansion (even if some got revamped with the release of an expansion). And these don't cover all the dungeons from Vanilla, either. Memorable bosses like Ook-Ook from Stormstout Brewery or Mueh'zala from De Other Side (who's also pretty important lore-wise) would be really cool to have.
Indeed, I'm sort of surprised that the dungeon list is so weighted toward Vanilla. Maybe they figure those are the most recognizable to WoW players how might have lapsed for some of the expansions, or maybe the books will primarily focus on the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor (which is honestly pretty reasonable given how utterly massive Azeroth is as a setting, fleshed out enormously over 22 years and ten expansions). There is, of course, the Icecrown Citadel adventure being sold separately, which is meant for levels 16-20 (which, as epic as the Lich King is as a foe, I had thought he was a perfect "tier 3 endboss.") But I think Wrath content is nearly as universal as Vanilla stuff, given that the expansion came out so long ago and was, for many people, WoW's peak (personally I think it was Legion, though there's an argument that the Dragonflight/War Within period was even better. For me it's a matter of taste rather than my attempt to be objective).
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