Forum:Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor

This is regarding a couple recent changes of mine that sparked reverts, in particular Children's Week and Activities guide for characters at level 80, and some discussion is at my talk page.

Some articles in the past broke down either geography or content by "Azeroth" vs "Outland". At the time of BC, this made some sense, with "Azeroth" meaning "pre-BC". But now with additional Azeroth content in Northrend, many of these sections were appended to be "Azeroth", "Outland", and "Northrend". This is at best misleading since Northrend is part of Azeroth (the world).

I have made some updates to change this to four sections: Eastern Kingdoms, Kalidor, Outland, and Northrend, which seems without question the way to break something down by geography. EK, Kalimdor, and Northrend could be under a subgroup for Azeroth.

My main purpose has been to remove the term "Azeroth" to mean "Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor", or "the playable world before BC", because that's just wrong. But a) there is not always a clear term for "EK and Kalimdor" that is simple, and b) some people apparently think the usage of "Azeroth" in that case is unambiguous and correct.

Looking for ideas here, and also a Blizzard source if anyone has one, that says that "Azeroth" correctly means "Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor".

Harveydrone 00:25, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * More notes since I have time: I added this common misusage of "Azeroth" to mean "the playable world before BC" to an old version of the Azeroth disambig page, but was convinced via the talk page that without a cited source, this erroneous usage should just be in a note and not in the list of meanings of "Azeroth".


 * Some points to keep in mind: There is BC content on Azeroth, ie the draenei and blood elf starting zones, and the Isle of Quel'Danas. The Isle even has "Outland" or "BC" ore (khorium and adamantite). So in many ways the breakdown of content by edition does not match a breakdown by geography. -- Harveydrone 00:34, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I realize that the term "Azeroth" to mean the land (pre-BC) is as you say "wrong" but for 4 1/2 years that is what it has meant (pre Wrath) it is the same as in the south we say "I want a Coke" even though we drink Dr. Pepper or Pepsi, or saying hand me a "Klenex" to refer to all tissue's. That is encoded into our vernacular now, Right or Wrong. Granted newer players probably would get confused by this, but 4 years of a habit (albeit a bad habit now) is going to be hard to break. -- 00:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah I know there is some BC content on EK and K (that is why usualy when I refer to those locations I add the  tag so that they know you must have BC to enter those areas. We also have  content in Kalimdor in  via the Waygate in . --  00:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Colloquial usage

 * Moved from Talk:Azeroth: 7:31 PM, 9 Aug 2009 (EDT)

While I will secede that Azeroth does not technically mean the combination of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, it seems like this keeps coming up, because Northrend and Outland already have names. Classic WoW just doesn't have the same ring to it. It seems like noting this usage of the term would be a good idea. 10:31 PM, 7 Aug 2009 (EDT)


 * I'm against that, firstly because I have done a research of all the most important sources of information and decifrated all the uses of Azeroth and I didn't find that as a use. Secondly because you don't have a source that supports you. Thirdly because I'm trying to cleanup all the links to Azeroth and redirect it to their actual use, not to the disambiguation; and if you start making this it would complicate more that work. Benitoperezgaldos (talk) 03:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * By definition of colloquial, you won't have any citations. The best examples I can think of (ironically) is the wiki itself, without trying to find examples on the forums, although I'm sure there are. Many pages have "Azeroth" in opposition to Northrend and Outland, as I'm sure you've found. The mere fact that they've been that way for years suggests to me that many people use Azeroth interchangebly with "Classic WoW" even if that is technically not correct. 7:08 AM, 8 Aug 2009 (EDT)


 * That's why that I'm saying I'm trying to clean up all this uses of Azeroth and you are making it harder, if Blizzard doesn't use the term then we shouldn't. This sounds like a term used by some fans and so it would be like a fan term used in the wiki, going against the WW:NPOV, it says: "Writing articles at WoWWiki with a neutral point of view helps remove conflicts that may occur from conflicting fan opinions stated in articles.". For me, saying that WoW classic is also called Azeroth is just a fan opinion.
 * Also many pages have Azeroth in opposition to Northrend and Outland because before Wrath of the Lich King the term Azeroth, when talking about World of Warcraft items or gameplay, didn't included Northrend because it wasn't playable (i.e. if you said befor WotLK that you can't fly on Azeroth it was correct, but after WotLK when you say that it is not correct as you can now fly in Northrend). The problem is that no one actuallized that. Benitoperezgaldos (talk) 18:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't realize this discussion was here and started Forum:Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor to discuss this. Not sure which is a better place. One point, people have not "for years" been using "Azeroth" to be distinct from "Northrend". That's only been happening since WotLK came out less than one year ago, and in many cases was done by mistake, not intentionally. -- Harveydrone 03:47, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The term "Azeroth" meaning Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms has been going on for longer than before Wrath came out because it was used to mean those lands all during Burning Crusades ( so 2 years minimum ), thus it bacame an Incorrect term only since Northrend came out, since Northrend is on the world Azeroth and far north of the continent Azeroth. As I mentioned on the forum page we have been using the term to mean the World Azeroth (that only had Eastern Kingdomes and Kalimdor for so long) that is is going to be hard to break that habit over night. Although, I do agree we need to get away from it because of Northrend. Newer players that came in after Wrath's release could easily be confused with us using the term in that maner. So, I agree we need to get away from it but and pre-warning that it is not going to be a easy road to travel because of all the Years (plural) in using the term now deemed "Wrongly". -- 04:19, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * What Morph said is what I was trying to say, we need to change that old, and now wrong, habits to the correct ones. Benitoperezgaldos (talk) 04:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Can't wait until the next expansion comes out and makes us saying "Outlands" wrong to use for the lands refering the the nearly destroyed Orc homeworld and the next expansion will make "Northrend" wrong for the nothern continent of Azeroth (World). -- 04:58, 9 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see why that would happen unless there was a new region added to Outland in WoW (say Haven of the Damned), and people started saying things like "I need to get out of Haven of the Damned and go back to Outland". In any case, since there appears to be agreement at least that the best usage is just for Azeroth to mean the whole world (along with the other usages just for the continent or kingdom), I'll continue to use other words where Azeroth is used inappropriately. I'll avoid "Classic" for now since that seems to be not understood as well. -- Harveydrone 15:50, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I was being a little sarcastic when I mentioned the next few expansions making us saying "Outlands" or "Northrend" being wrong. But with Blizzard you never know. --  16:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * "Outlands" isn't really correct anyway :P So anyway, yes, we should be specific about the areas being referenced. Given each expansion requires the previous ones, and many new players will immediately get the newer ones, the concept of "classic WoW" will make less and less sense. 16:20, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

FYI, I've added a note on this colloquial usage to Azeroth. -- Harveydrone 18:04, 11 August 2009 (UTC)