WoW Forever: Grim Batol and Emerald Dream on the wish list

Blizzard has started to talk about where WoW Forever could go after launch. In an interview ahead of release, principal game designer Kris Zierhut and lead Classic designer Tim Jones named several places they would like to explore, while stressing that the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor remain the canvas for the game.

Grim Batol is one of them. The team said it would like to go there at some point and do more than the single dungeon it had in Cataclysm: explore the depths of the mountain and climb to the tops of its towers, the way players saw the whole of Blackrock Mountain. The Emerald Dream is on the list too, along with unexplored corners of the Caverns of Time and a Forever version of Mudsprocket, the goblin town later added to southern Dustwallow Marsh.

Gilneas is already built. All of its terrain from Cataclysm is in the game, but the way in is closed for now, and the designers joked that sharks will eat anyone who tries. The plan is to go there eventually with a new story, set before the land is destroyed in the Cataclysm. That matches what players found sealed off in the world during testing.

Further afield, the designers said Outland, Northrend and Pandaria exist in Forever's timeline, and a quest or dungeon could take players there for a mission or two. Jones floated a very hostile level 60 Northrend, visited while Arthas is still sending Kel'Thuzad to the Eastern Plaguelands rather than the one seen in Wrath of the Lich King. A new dungeon at the north end of Un'Goro Crater already nods to the titan sites from that expansion.

None of this is scheduled. It comes from one interview, Blizzard has not tied any of these places to a patch or date, and the same conversation set out a pace of new content roughly every 4 months. Forever launches for Europe at midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.