Zone

Zones are areas of the map with designated themes, mobs, and scenery. These areas have borders much like a state or country, and though invisible, they define areas. They may contain subzones, cities, towns, villages, or instances. For example, the zone of Dun Morogh contains the subzone of Coldridge Valley, the city Ironforge, the town Kharanos, and the instance Gnomeregan.

World of Warcraft currently consists of four continents, Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Northrend, and Outland, which are sometimes divided into other sections which are also called continents, and further divided into smaller sections in-game known as zones.

In lore and the official web site, a zone is usually referred to as a "region" (however, the community has basically forced Blizzard to start using zone instead). Furthermore, lore regions and in-game zones do not always match up (what may be a region in lore may be reduced to a subzone in-game, or some subregions may become their own zones).

For a graphical list, see Zones by level.

Eastern Kingdoms
* Based upon the flight path for Alliance characters becoming available at level 65 in Ironforge and the ability for level 65 characters to use it to travel to the island. (tested 6/25/2009) However, only level 70 characters can accept quests here.