"When Wrath came out, I fell in love with Northrend, and not having a proper continent to discover in Cataclysm was really one of the downsides to the expansion in my opinion. I'm looking forward to adventuring around Pandaria."

I totally agree with this, 100%. Having a new continent to immerse yourself in is part or most of what makes WoW work. But I think there *was* a new continent in Cata, but it was 1-60 together with 80-85 that made the continent.

The great tragedy of Cata is that player expectations were not in line with what the expansion really was: the meat of the expansion was the revamped 1-60, which was enormous, sweeping in its changes, and really well done. For me to do literally every single quest, and love it, in zones like Feralas, Desolace, Darkshore, Westfall, etc, really testifies to the fact that they produced A LOT of solid content.

80-85 in contrast was smaller in its content, and probably not as consistently delivering (even postmortem interviews with devs revealed that the 1-60 was intensely focused on, resulting in less development time to spare for 80-85). But the player expectation was that 80-85 was THE expansion, and the were anticipating some monstrous new questing area like Northrend or Outland. Expect it wasn't. The monstrous new continent was vanilla Azeroth herself, and the 80-85 experience was constituted by a small sprinkling of zones.

"Exploring new regions isn't often one of those things that you say you do. You say that you raid or you PvP or you level alts. But, the more that I reflect upon it, the sense of wonder and exhilaration that comes with stepping into this fantastic new land and having your breath taken away at the scope and the beauty and the possibilities is really what makes the game for me."

I really think that what makes good dungeons so memorable and exciting isn't even necessarily the mechanics or the dungeon in and of itself, but the atmosphere of the new continent and how the dungeon is built into that.

Hellfire Peninsula was menacing and stark, and particularly jarring (in a good way) as it was the inaugural zone for Outland. Whereas in 1-60 our greatest fears were maybe a rogue wandering elemental or band of murlocs, in Hellfire we had 200ft tall Fel Reavers belching fel smoke and grinding skulls into the dirt, and blood lusting fel orcs carving people to mince meat in berserker rages. In that context, the Hellfire Citadel dungeons/raids just felt *amazing*. You really felt like killing all those damn orcs mattered.

I could say the same thing about the dungeons in Zangarmarsh, the same about Howling Fjord with UK and UP. The three icecrown dungeons especially!

It's the engrossing mood and atmosphere coupled with the dungeon design that makes them so much fun. Playing through Scarlet Monastery in Zangarmarsh wouldn't be any fun, and Shattered Halls in Borean Tundra would just feel out of place.

I could not disagree with you more. Respectfully, of course. Sure theres no new continents in Cata, but you can't really argue that the new zones they implemented didn't have a wow factor. I loved both Hyjal and Vash. Deepholm was really cool, as was Uldum. All four of these zones told an awesome story as well. I still love flying over Hyjal.

That being said I really am looking forward to more of the same kind of storytelling from Mists.