World of Warcraft's Next Expansion Will Kick Off by Wrecking Yet Another Beloved In-Game Location

ign.com:

Correctly, Blizzard loves to start new World of Warcraft expansions with a Big Explosion of some sort. In Legion, Khadgar teleports an entire city to float above an island chain. In Battle for Azeroth, there's a tense ship battle influenced by a demigod. In Shadowlands, basically everyone dies. Seriously. Now, with The War Within on the horizon, Blizzard has conceived of another way to kick off an expansion with some proper fireworks, by completely demolishing a beloved in-game location.

Warning: Major spoilers for the inciting incident of The War Within lie ahead. If you don't want to know anything about the story of the expansion going in, don't read onward! Stay away!

So, I didn't actually get to play through the opening scenario of The War Within. My alpha testing period began on a beach in the Isle of Dorn, trapped in the rubble of some sort of crash site. World of Warcraft is no stranger to opening expansions with wrecks or natural disasters, but as I played through the first few quests, I got the sense this was no ordinary crash site. The what that crashed seemed, uh, a bit more significant than a ship.

I had woken up, it turns out, in the ruins of Dalaran, the beloved capital city of two entire World of Warcraft expansions. Dalaran is a hell of a place to destroy. We were first introduced to the mysterious city in the original World of Warcraft, albeit behind an impenetrable magical barrier. In Wrath of the Lich King, the city took flight to become the capital hub of Northrend, floating above the Crystalsong Forest and leaving a giant crater in the Alterac Mountains where it had once stood. Dalaran remained in Northrend until the pre-patch for Legion, when it moved to Deadwind Pass to protect the Eastern Kingdoms. Then, when Legion kicked off, the entire city was teleported to the Broken Isles and given a major facelift to serve as the new capital. It's been there ever since, and is a player favorite.

We don't know for sure yet what happened to Dalaran to