World of Warcraft: The Worldsoul Saga was officially announced at this year’s BlizzCon, along with the trilogy of expansions that will be contained within it. And while I have limited interest in the underworld promised in The War Within, or the return of the Titans in the appropriately named The Last Titan, I am overjoyed at the prospect of returning to Quel’Thalas in WoW: Midnight.
It’s no secret that I love blood elves. I’ve tried all the races that WoW offers over the years but I somehow always find myself back playing one. The blood elf starting zone is the one that holds the most nostalgia for me: it’s where I started my journey on my very first character, a hunter, way back in Cataclysm, when I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, and it took me roughly three months to get to level 80.
So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that the Midnight expansion would take place in Quel’Thalas, the home of the elves, nestled in the northernmost part of the Eastern Kingdoms. Of course, we’re going to need to deal with the Void invading and trying to corrupt the Sunwell, but that’s a small price to pay for getting to revisit the area.
I’m a sucker for lore-heavy storylines or locations, especially when it touches on things from the distant past of Warcraft’s history. I adored the Legion expansion, for example, because it took us to the Tomb of Sargaras, a place where Aegwynn, an old Guardian of Tirisfal, buried the corrupted Titan’s body. That expansion also linked back to many other things too, such as the Corrupted Ashbringer, which was an unlockable appearance for the paladin artifact weapon. And don’t even get me started on the Broken Isles zone, Suramar, and how that links back even further, to the Sundering.
Legion wasn’t the only expansion to excavate Warcraft’s history—Warlords of Draenor was steeped in it, though the timey-wimey storyline wasn’t to everyone’s taste and skewed some of the history in that timeline. Despite how we got there though, the expansion was full of lore-rich environments we’d never seen before, giving us a whole new perspective on the land that would become Outland if it had never been corrupted by the Burning Legion and subsequently destroyed.
I spent an embarrassing amount of time poring over maps of both Outland and Draenor and matching them up to see which areas still existed in both, and whether or not I could explore to spot the differences—or similarities—between the two. I spent hours, pointlessly flying around Blade’s Edge Mountains, trying to pinpoint where the Horde garrison might have stood had it been in Outland or looking for clues of other recognisable features of the Draenor timeline.
As far as Quel’Thalas goes, the place is obviously in-game and visitable right now. But it’s a region that’s been largely neglected over the years. It really only served as a prologue for new blood elf players, and since the changes to the starting experience no longer even does that.
It’s too early to say how much the kingdom of Quel’Thalas will change with the Midnight expansion, but we do know that we’ll be able to fly for the first time in those zones. Presumably, the entire area will get a facelift, as one of the reasons cited in the past for not adding flying there is because the entire place was never meant to be viewed from anywhere but the ground, though that has yet to be confirmed.
It’s also unclear whether the Midnight-specific zones will be phased, similar to other expansion story beats that return to older areas. One thing I can tell you, though, is that if Silvermoon City becomes the main hub for the Midnight expansion, I think I might actually burst.
I don’t know exactly what we’ll be doing in WoW: Midnight, but I’m excited to see where it leads us. If I may also suggest, an expansion taking place in the home of the blood elves, with Silvermoon City as a potential central hub, does seem like an excellent reason to call back a certain Ranger-General from her exile in The Maw, doesn’t it? But whether or not Sylvanas returns for World of Warcraft: Midnight, I’m absolutely here for it.