What Is Project Camelot?
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One of the first things players may notice about this map (other than the new zones) is that the original level cap for World of Warcraft was intended to be level 70. There also appear to be several islands off the southwestern coast, or perhaps these were meant to be separate small maps for zones connected to the Emerald Dream?
Dragon Isles Raid
This level 65-70 raid, all the way at the northern end of the continent, would not come to fruition until it became the main continent of the Dragonflight expansion in 2022. From this portion of the map, we can also see that both the Stratholme dungeon and Eastern Plaguelands were originally intended for level 60-70 characters.
While little is known about what content Blizzard was planning for this raid, players are able to explore the original unreleased map of the Dragon Isles on the noclip website. However, it should be noted that this map appears to have been used by developers as a test map, rather than actual content for the game.
Karazhan
Unlike the Dragon Isles, Karazhan does not have the word "raid" next to its level range, indicating that this instance was originally intended to be a Dungeon. Karazhan has existed in World of Warcraft since the very beginning, and players have seen multiple iterations of the Tower since The Burning Crusade, and most recently the Karazhan Crypts in Season of Discovery.
An interesting thing to note about this portion of the map is that Zul'Gurub appears to have been originally planned to be a Zone, rather than an instance. Additionally, the Tainted Scar area of the Blasted Lands is labeled as Demon Lands and is intended for level 70+ content, showing that Blizzard may have had more content planned for this subzone.
While Karazhan Tower is inaccessible in Classic, Hayven Games was able to explore the unreleased version of Karazhan from WoW's 0.8 Alpha patch and shares his walkthrough in the above video.
Outland & Black Temple
Another piece of content that would eventually make its way into World of Warcraft in The Burning Crusade, Outland was originally intended to be part of the base game. Again, as this zone was never available to players, it's uncertain what kinds of content Blizzard had planned. But once again, thanks to Hayven Games, we are able to see what the first version of Hellfire Peninsula looked like back on the Vanilla client.
Finally, one of the most iconic raids of all time, the Black Temple, was also originally planned to be included in the original version of World of Warcraft. Similar to Karazhan, this raid was likely delayed due to time constraints and was later pushed back to release with The Burning Crusade expansion. While it doesn't appear that this raid was ever developed within the Vanilla client, it is interesting to see how far in advance Blizzard was planning in the early stages of the game's development.
Classic+
While the future of WoW Classic is uncertain, many players speculate that Blizzard could be planning a big announcement during this year's BlizzCon. The hype around a potential Classic+ is palpable, and everyone is creating wishlists for the kinds of content they would like to see in the next iteration of Classic, including some of these previously unreleased zones, dungeons, and raids.
One way that players are making their voices heard is by taking surveys, pitching ideas, and voting on the wowclassic.plus website. If you'd like to see any of this content in Classic+, or if you have any ideas of your own, head over to wowclassic.plus and join the conversation with over 50,000 other players who are eagerly waiting for the future of Classic to be revealed.
