Northern Lordaeron

World map of the area

File:North lordaeron.gif

Minimap texture of the area

Northern Lordaeron (also called Between Plaguelands) is a zone wedged between the northwestern border of the Eastern Plaguelands, the northeastern border of the Western Plaguelands and the southwestern border of the Ghostlands. It is an inaccessible zone that can be part of the fallen Kingdom of Lordaeron or Quel'Thalas. This zone is mostly empty.

In World of Warcraft, the entire region north of the two plaguelands is classified as an own zone called Quel'Thalas. If the player swims around the shore from Tirisfal Glades to the edge of this zone, he will get a message stating he discovered Quel'Thalas. Interestingly, the swimmer will eventually reach a deserted High Elf lighthouse at roughly the position directly northwest of Stratholme.

Even though Ghostlands and Eversong Woods were added in the Burning Crusade, this zone is still empty in the game. A curious bug is that, even with BC installed, you will swim along the north coast from Tirisfal to the edge of the Eastern Plaguelands, while on the world map you are shown as moving through the middle of the Ghostlands.

The aforementioned bug is due to how Blizzard set up the Burning Crusade map files. Eversong and Ghostlands are not in Azeroth proper; they are located on the same map plane as Outland - the Ghostlands are separated from the Eastern Plaguelands by an instance portal in the formerly-blocked pass. This was done most likely to make sure that people without the BC expansion cannot access BC content. This is also why Quel'Thalas (along with the Azuremyst Isles) is a zone that has a separate loading screen from the Eastern Kingdoms (Kalimdor in the case of Azuremyst), in order to prevent those who do not have the Burning Crusade expansion from accessing the expansion zones. The same method is used for access to Outland via the Dark Portal.

Speculation

This article or section includes speculation, observations or opinions possibly supported by lore or by Blizzard officials. It should not be taken as representing official lore.

File:Northeron.JPG

Mixed among the lies spread by Deathwing when he took on the form of Daval Prestor there could be some truth. Described as being in northern Lordaeron, this could be the land that Prestor claimed to have originated from during the Second War. While Daval Prestor does not actually exist, its possible that Deathwing had lived there at one time.

This could also be the mysterious Northeron mentioned in lore. Early sketches had Northeron located in southern Quel'Thalas region. Perhaps Northeron was a term shortened from Northern Lordaeron.

It should also be noted that some also believe that Northeron was renamed into the Hinterlands (as the Wildhammer clan is originally described as hailing from Northeron in the manual to Warcraft II). However, while this is possible, it would also seem that Hinterlands location was also moved from its original planned location, to a place south of the former Kingdom of Lordaeron. However, to make things more confusing, Day of the Dragon (as well as Warcraft III) added the idea that Wildhammer Clan originated from the Aerie Peaks. Day of the Dragon references to both Aerie Peaks and Northeron, perhaps as two separate locations. The differences of Hinterlands, Aerie Peaks, and Northeron may never be fully clear.