What we know about Northrend

So far to date, the following is what information we have about the new zone Northrend in the new expansion Blizzard is working on, here is what we know from Blizzard right now:

What can you reveal about Northrend?

The first area of Northrend we're showcasing is the Howling Fjord, a region of grasslands overlooking massive cliffs at the southeastern edge of the continent. This, along with the Borean Tundra, is the front line of the war against Arthas, and players will come face to face with his minions as soon as they set foot on Northrend. Eventually, as players progress further, they will explore the Grizzly Hills, Dragonblight, and more. We'll be showing off some of these new areas in the months ahead.

Will we be able to fly in Northrend at level 70?

From a design standpoint, we don’t want people to just fly over continent and skip things when they are leveling up. Instead we want people to explore and experience the environment around them when they first reach the shores of Northrend. You will walk (or ride) from one quest to another as the zones unfold before you instead of just flying over it without batting an eye.

At some point though you will definitely be able to fly in Northrend. We are currently thinking around level 78, but haven’t made a final call on this yet.

We are investigating the possibility of making new flying mounts available for purchase though we won’t be able to elaborate on this until the expansion is closer to launching. For now we will have to wait and see if any new creatures are strong enough to remain tame in the cold harsh lands of Northrend…

Will murlocks make a return in the new expansion at Northrend?

But they are in the expansion (For Burning Crusade). They are just in the starting areas for the Draenei and Bloodelves. We'll be back in Azeroth but I honestly don't know if murlocs will be having a more northern location for them to terrorize you with. Northrend is going to have quite a nice population of new foes for people to encounter though.

*As someone pointed out, you also release some into the wild and a nice Troll has some baby mulocs he cares for too. (Horde quest)

But because I was in no rush to max out my level, I did not get to run a lot of endgame stuff. No Onyxia or Ragnaros for me. Now, with the expansion out, no one wants to do these things anymore. Yes, it's partly my fault but it is also Blizzard's fault for not giving players a reason to want to run them again.

There are definitely players that were late to the game and didn't get to experience the higher end content of the original game. However, there are also definitely a lot of players who did. As I see it what it comes down to is do we incentivize old content, making players who may have been in those instances night-in and night-out for a year go back through it, or do we focus on new, exciting content?

All of the old instances are great, but I think moving forward we're making even better dungeons, better boss encounters, and better itemization choices and distribution.

The one straying point could be Naxxrammas, which has a strong possibility to just fly its way to Northrend in Wrath and see some more use, and that's because there's a lot of strong reasons for doing it. First, about two people actually saw the dungeon, but what those two people saw was a fun and well crafted instance. It makes a lot of sense to re-use Naxxrammas specifically and let everyone (and I mean everyone) who never experienced it before see it for the first time.

Now you're going to decrease the time it takes to get to 60 pushing everyone forward to the new stuff. This will just make more people ignore the old endgame. And I'll miss out.

I would disagree that there will be any fewer people that are leveling willing to do these instances now than there will be after the change.

0 + 0 = 0

Aside from the levelers out there, I commonly see people forming pick up raids for Onyxia on the weekends, guilds that run an old end-game instance on an off-night with whoever wants to. Sure it's not guaranteed, there's people that just want to focus on the prize, but it does happen, it's not impossible to find people who want to go. Maybe try asking in your realm forum if there are any guilds who are hitting old content every once in a while, and if you can attend.

This article will be updated as more information arises.