TYDKaWoW #012 | Blizzards early Kalimdor Design was totally different

Well, not totally totally, but there are a bunch of changes.

You might have seen a few early design maps for World of Warcraft floating around without sources, but this is certifiably the real deal. During the BlizzCon 2014 and for the 10th birthday of World of Warcraft, Blizzard shared a bunch of pictures from the early days. You could only find them online as blurry pictures of the monitor. And then Dave Wilson, who works as Talent Attraction Guy for Blizzard, shared the originals on his twitter account. And now it's double legit.

So what are the differences, between this early concept and the final product, that was shipped to the players? I did a little painting to make comparing the early design map and actual release a little easier.


The early design has a color for each zone, with the dividing mountains in a brown, swimmable water in a light blue and a few connecting ways for the zones in yellow. The names of the zones are white, level-ranges of the zones in red and dungeons with their level-ranges in yellow. The little white lines in the zones, are actually names of areas and smaller cities, which are hardly legible in most cases.

For my map, I took the minimap of the earliest released version of Kalimdor 1.1.0 (from @marlamin.com) and colored each zone in the same color as the concept version. And then I just added the zones and dungeons that were available with the release of World of Warcraft to their locations. The level-ranges for each zone and dungeon come from their wowhead Quick Facts.

And now it's just a game of spot the difference, maybe speculate and question some things?

Northern Kalimdor

  • The starting zone for the Night Elfs was supposed to be Kalidar? Why did it change to Teldrassil?
  • Blackfathom Deeps, was only called Blackfathom an located in Darkshore? Why did that change?
  • There were no quests in Moonglade during classic and you learn Teleport: Moonglade at level 10, so why did Blizzard mark it as 45-55? Only because it was between Feldwood and Winterspring, or were actual quests planned for the zone?
  • When and why was the Hyjal zone abandoned? The terrain was even finished with release.
  • Why doesn't the river connect to Moonglade, as it was supposed to? Even now after Cataclysm it just starts in Hyjal? Maybe Winterspring is now in the way, because it shifted positions?
  • Why did Ashenvale loose it's forest?

Central Kalimdor

  • What is the story behind the Ragefire Chasm, if it wasn't planned from the beginning?
  • Was Razorfen Kraul and Razorfen Downs supposed to be one big instance simply named Razorfen? Like the original big Scarlet Monastery dungeon?
  • Who spelled it Mullgore?
  • Was the Maraudon release planned to be at a later point, with Patch 1.2.0, or was it supposed to be available right away and something happened?
  • What was supposed to be at the area connecting Desolace and Feralas? Nothing was there, when World of Warcraft released, right? And with Cataclysm, the whole area changed to water with a random burning tower in the middle? Lake Dumont?
  • When and why was Onyxia's Lair introduced? And why as a Raid?
  • Was there supposed to be an ogre population in Thousand Needles, or why is Dire Maul located there? Why was it changed? Why wasn't it finished with the initial release, or was that never planned?

Southern Kalimdor

  • What is the story behind the Zul'Farrak dungeon? - Well we actually have the answer for this. The original picture came with it: "Zul'Farrak was a skunkworks dungeon added because Matt Sanders did such a cool job with the level design of a point of interest in Tanaris". And we also learned about a new word with this answer. A skunkworks project is a project developed by a relatively small and loosely structured group of people who research and develop a project primarily for the sake of radical innovation. And Matt Sanders was Exterior Level Designer for World of Warcraft, who did this radical innovation.
  • Why weren't the Caverns of Time released? Was it supposed to only be one instance named Caverns of Time?
  • Is the blue dot, the caverns of time, or was there supposed to be a lake? Was the mountain later added? Is that why you have to swim all the way around, to get to the lower part of the map? There are mobs down there, like the Surf Glider.
  • Uldum is marked as it's own zone and The Platinum Discs, you get at the end of Uldaman, sends you there in classic; what were the plans for it during classic? Why didn't they come to fruition?
  • The level-range never hit 70 in classic, so why is Ahn'Qiraj 70+? Was ist always planned to release at a later date, maybe even at a point, where the level cap had increased? Or was the original plan to release with a level 70 cap?
  • Also why was the level-range for the zones so badly set up? If you end up in the Stonetalon Mountains and actually manage to use it to its full extend of level 35, there is no zone connected to go to? Desolace starts at level 40 according to the map. Very weird.

And finally, where is the Eastern Kingdom part of this map? The third shade of ocean water implies to me, that there was a second half of this image? So why was only the left part shared? Did only the Kalimdor Team save their part? Was there something on the Eastern Kingdom part, that the public isn't supposed to know about? Was it just not finished? Isn't it that just weird?

So we now know about a lot of things, that were planned, but didn't happen, or happen and weren't planned, but why? It's probably more fun to think about why, than knowing the answer. Most things probably just had really boring answers, like the Zul'farrak one. It either happend or it didn't.

More importantly, did you like the map I drew? And also...

Was this a Thing You Didn't Know about World of Warcraft?

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