World of Warcraft’s upcoming The Last Titan expansion, which is expected to release sometime in 2027 at the earliest, is returning to Northrend. First introduced in the brilliant 2008 expansion Wrath of the Lich King, the area is core to many players’ introduction to Blizzards’ long-running MMORPG.
Coming after the closely-approaching release of World of Warcraft: Midnight, director Ion Hazzikostas has explained that the upcoming expansion is “going to inform our approach to Northrend” as well as other returning areas in future expansions. (After all, The Last Titan is just the middle of a trilogy of expansions.)
Speaking to Game Informer, Hazzikostas explained that the return to Silvermoon in Midnight and its reception by fans is key to the development of the game’s return to Northrend. While Silvermoon is also an iconic area, it doesn’t have the same iconic status as Northrend, but sticking the landing for all returning areas is essential.
“I think it’s about striking a balance between nostalgiaa and freshness,” the director said, “having those familiar anchors the players are looking for and can’t wait to see in fully modern fidelity”. While WoW isn’t the most graphically impressive game around, the MMO has come leaps and bounds from its 2004 release and returning areas need to match that.
“We would never want a situation where a player is standing in one spot and then they walk 20 yards in that direction or 200 yards in that direction, and suddenly they’re in the middle of stuff that was built 20 years ago,” the director continued, explaining that Midnight’s recreation of Silvermoon and Ghostlands is easier than most as they’re fairly self-contained.
As for the treatment of Silvermoon, Ghostlands and, eventually, Northrend, Hazzikostas explains that they will not only be refreshed in terms of graphical fidelity, but also design. After all, the world has changed a lot since The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, and these areas need to reflect that.
The director explained that the key to making these expansions work isn’t just remodelling but “also having expanded areas, clearly transformed areas, in a way that makes it abundantly clear that a lot of time has passed.”
It’s going to be a long time until we actually have our hands on World of Warcraft: The Last Titan, but the game’s Midnight expansion officially releases on March 2, 2026. It’s an exciting time to be a WoW fan—it usually always is, in my experience—but with these expansions, it’s clear that Blizzard isn’t just looking to the past, but also to the future.
