2010-10-18, 11:22 PM
Birdie Wrote:the first two expansions brought in new continents, outlands and northland, so players without the expanions could not travel to the new lands. As for cata i believe the old world will be phased into the cata zone for those with cata and stay old world for those without. Expansions do not cause you to start over, just to progress further.
Well for Cata, come 4.0.3, the entirety of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is changing. Couple blue posts have stated that this is replacing the old continents, so new players who are starting out for the first time will have access to the new Kalimdor and EK. The only thing the expansion adds is the typical new level zones, profs, etc etc, and I believe the ability to fly in new Azeroth, since you still have to buy the flying skill.
Honestly, I also thought they were gonna phase all of old Azeroth to be in line with Vanilla WoW and Cata WoW, but seems it's nigh impossible to pull off without causing some insane problems.
Don't forget, we're getting 4.0.3 a few weeks before the actual expansion comes out to compensate for the delay from Nov -> Dec, so we'll have access to new Azeroth to goof around with until we're ready for the 80-85 content.