Good day to you, yes you, you essplorers (for the majoriry of you).

Today I will tell you a story. *Oh yeah ganpa fean, tell us a story !*. I'll tell you about the Burning Crusade.*Waaaaaaaah, Burning Cruuuusaaade !* Yeah, Burning Crusade, what an expansion! It brings (among other things) flying mounts, Blood Elves, Draenei, but also Outland! Blizzard planned to implement Outland very early (as explained in Souline's report about the Hellfire Peninsula). It was planed to be a patch for Vanilla, instead we got it for the first expansion.

Let's introduce myself. I'm Aléquia Moowisle, still mage, still gilnean, and still assisted by my old dwarf friend, Saouline. Some of you might remember me ? I had written a report about the history of Old Outland, which was published here a few weeks ago. It consisted of analyzing a pre-release version of the zone in order to deduce elements about the final version of the zone.

This time, I'm not going to talk about a zone you can find ingame, but a zone that's never been officially accessible, despite its constant evolution following the game itself : I'm talking about the "test" zone of the developers, also called "Development". This report is going to be longer than the one about Old Outland, since there's much more to show.
But before we start, you may wonder what a "test zone" actually is ?

Let me introduce myself : Aléquia Moonwisle, gilnean mage, and I am going to talk about how the Outlands were created.

So, this article will show what the designers wanted to do, and especially why the Outland we discovered in Burning Crusade was not the same Outland that was originally intended.

We will explore and analyze a place that was never officially open that my guinea-p... assistant Saouline the dwarf was lucky enough to visit ! And doing so we'll see what happened to the Outlands during WoW Vanilla. I will obviously not deaf anyone with thousands of code explaining how every tree was positioned (and honestly, we care about this as much as we care about the King of Gnomes...). We will simply observe several elements, and compare. This will also be an excellent opportunity to review Outland's history.

Hello everyone ! I'm going to speak about Ulduar raid, more precisely how it has been developed. Ulduar was planned to be a Wrath of the Lich King raid from the beginning of the expansion, the first drafts of this area was in the game files even in 3.0 . Although it's interesting to see how it evolved through this data.
But before everything else, a little historic point. Ulduar is one of the 3 Azeroth's complex created by Titans with Uldum (in fact, the Halls of Origination) and Uldaman. Ulduar is full of the Titans' knowledge, but is also used as a jail for the Old God Yogg-Saron. Remember, the Old Gods are entities linked to the essence of Azeroth, and behind the Curse of Flesh. So Yogg-Saron was locked deep in Ulduar, kept by five powerful Earthen, the Ulduar Keepers : Hodir, Thorim, Mimiron, Freya and Tyr, however he released from his shackles and took the fortress control, submitting the Keepers to his wishes.