Howling Fjord will be one of the two starting points for those entering into Northrend. The other starting zone will be the Borean Tundra. Wrath of the Lich King will raise the level cap to 80, introduce the Death Knight class, new PvP warfare, and new group and solo play.
WoWWiki has the image listed as a "player made" image. However, the image itself has been found around several other galleries on the internet, and there is no credit to the original author on the image. Additionally, the map itself closely resembles the terrain and layout of the zone that was playable at Blizzcon in 2007. We'll keep an eye on this, and other Wrath of the Lich King media that might be legit, and get you all the latest information when we know it. Stay tuned!
Update: The map is a fake, produced and propagated by user Kanaru on WoWWiki. Welcome to the World of Fakecraft.
Blizzard has released an interactive map of Paris, done in the style of World of Warcraft. Paris is the location for the World Wide Invitational 2008, and the map is a real gem. If you click on any of the locations, a tooltip will popup with two facts about it. One fact is real, and one is an in-joke tied to the World of Warcraft.
When I found this, myself and several other writers were laughing out loud at them. While it's not as good as a Wrath of the Lich King map (to quote fellow writer Alex Ziebart, "Holy cow, is that a map for Wrath?" *looks closer* "Oh... it's just Paris. Lame."), it's still pretty darn funny and cool.
For instance, when you click on the La Defense up in the left hand corner of the map, the quip at the bottom reads "If you put Tempest Keep in the middle of Stormwind it might look something like this – but with less dragonhawks." Just hilarious, especially if you've ever had to deal with the annoying dragonhawks in Tempest Keep: The Eye.
Thanks to Michael for alerting us to a post over at the WoW LiveJournal. He has managed to piece together a map of Sunwell Isle and the new Azeroth world map from the beta files currently available for patch 2.4. Of course, this is just beta information and may change at any time.
As far as the PTR goes, you can now download the patch files. However, when you try to copy a character you get the error message "You have no characters on Anvilmar," or what ever server you live on. This is because while the patch files are available, the server is not up yet.
Stay tuned to WoW Insider all this weekend for the latest patch news!
We love quests, but they can be excessively frustrating sometimes. Usually they annoy you most when they make you wander all over, back and forth, without seeming to accomplish things efficiently. The fastest levelers will tell you to try to "stack quests," or do all the quests in a small area first, then gradually move around the map to other areas. But often the best way to do this isn't clear -- you may not even know exactly which area a quest is asking you to go to.
Addons to the rescue! First, there was LightHeaded: an in-game database of comments from Wowhead.com that could help you when you get confused. Now, there's QuestHelper: an in-game guide which can tell you which direction to go, what to do, and what order to do everything in, all before you even get confused in the first place. QuestHelper isn't always right -- you still have to use your own brain, for sure -- but using this addon you'll be much less likely to make silly mistakes in your questing that slow you down and waste your time.
Alterac Valley has never been completely balanced. Before patch 2.3, most people generally agreed that the map favored the Alliance, but now, we can see that it favors the Horde. The difference mainly lies in which parts of the map are most important, and how either side can use the terrain differences to win the game.
Before, the only way to win the game was to kill the opposing faction's general; anything less was effectively an on-going stalemate. But now that we have reinforcements, the general will automatically die of grief and shame once too many towers fall and players bite the dust, regardless of whether he's actually seen the enemy or not. This seemingly simple shift has totally turned the faction imbalance on its head, and placed the game entirely in Horde hands to prosecute as they choose. Assuming a relative equality of gear, player skill and morale (and of course AFKers), the Horde can decide to make AV a slow but certain victory, or else toss the dice and make it a quick but uncertain race to the end.
Keep reading to see how they do it, and why the Horde can't play their ultimate best if they want to play at all.
Well this is exciting. MMO Champion points us to WoW Wiki, where some enterprising person has assembled a map of Utgarde Keep, the first instance in Wrath of the Lich King. The map is apparently based on one published in Games for Windows, but as it appears on WoW Wiki, it's a little empty. Let's see if we can't clear some things up-- I've added letters to the map above, and below, I've described what is probably there, based on my own impressions and what we've heard elsewhere.
A. This is the main entrance, and as I said before, it consists of Vrykul metalworkers and forgemasters. The big firey graphic is the Forge, which has three "walls" that only open up after the mobs are defeated there. After you clear all three walls, you head around to the left, and find...
B. Dragonhandlers and "Trained Proto-drakes," which appeared to be Blue Dragons. Draw your own conclusions there. This area is a stable type of place, which explains the stalls.
Pheonix_singing found Outland... and it's in South Carolina. Doing a little searching, I also found Durotan, Nagrand, Crossroads (oh man watch out for all the Chuck Norris jokes there), and Lakeshire. Unfortunately, Azeroth doesn't appear on Google Maps anywhere-- at least until they start mapping other planets. Until then, of course, MapWoW's got the monopoly.
I have to give it to Blizzard for their place names-- they're really, really good at coming up with names that sound real, but aren't. Stranglethorn Vale is a perfect name for the southern tip of the Eastern Kingdom, and Feralas and Desolace are perfect for their ambient locations as well, but none of those names directly refer to anything on a real map. And even Azeroth is a pretty epic sounding name that Blizzard (Metzen, probably) pulled out of thin air. Well, not completely thin air-- they did kind of nab it fromone of their first games, which was based in "Androth." But still.
And my favorite name from Warcraft isn't on any real map either-- it's Thousand Needles (or 1K Needles, as I like to call it). I don't know how a designer looked at the hundreds of plateaus south of the Barrens and decided to call it that, but I'm glad they did.
Currently our map of Azeroth has two continents, but anyone who's played the original RTS games knows more is out there.Blizzplanet has some interesting information that leads me to hazard a guess that we may be seeing more added to the cartography of Azeroth in the future.
They start with the information, lore and such that were added to the World of Warcraft RPG: Lands of Mystery tabletop rulebook.Should you own a copy (I, alas, do not) you will find it contains new info on Northrend and the South Seas.The maps that we saw on the WoW Collector's Edition behind the scenes DVD of Azeroth show that they have been planning such an expansion since 2004.On the map, it shows Northrend at the top of the world, with the Maelstrom and Nazajatar in the middle and the Isle of Kezen/Undermine at the bottom.
Cartographer is a map mod. In fact, from what I've seen, Cartographer is the map mod -- it provides every feature I've wanted for my various map needs, and looks rather pretty while doing so. (The one exception to this is AtlasLoot's "what drops where" functionality; Cartographer doesn't do that.)Edit: apparently it does do that too! Sweet. In the screenshot above, you can see:
Flight point locations
Mining vein spawns
Trainers
Vendors
Available/completed/repeatable quest giver locations (there's a quest I could get at the Temple of Telhemat)
Levels and caps of instances
Full map, even the unexplored parts
Coordinates and distance from the player to where the cursor is
All the location notes on the map are learned as you play, so you have to visit an NPC or resource node once and from then on Cartographer will remember where it is. It's clever enough to auto-switch mining and herb displays on and off as appropriate, and I believe it will also not say a quest is available unless you're of sufficient level to take it. You can also create arbitrary notes on the map for any reason, and it has instance maps with boss locations and such. But I haven't even hit its best feature yet...
Since this is the international year of the spy (2-007), and every spy needs reliable intelligence, I humbly present to you the following. Gnomeproblem.com has posted some lovely maps of 5 of the 7 Outland zones (they're missing Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley [thanks, Kaziel]). The maps include sub-zones, so you should have no trouble figuring out where exactly that quest secret mission is trying to send you to.
In case you guys haven't noticed yet, by the way, you can now see Outland and its zones in the in-game map. I particularly like the furthest-zoomed-out map, with the demon and the white-haired guy. But what's that thing just to the left of Azeroth, with the propellor?
Howling Fjord will be one of the two starting points for those entering into Northrend. The other starting zone will be the Borean Tundra. Wrath of the Lich King will raise the level cap to 80, introduce the Death Knight class, new PvP warfare, and new group and solo play.
Pheonix_singing 
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