Summary
- World of Warcraft has expanded the Stormwind portal room in the Patch 10.2 PTR, potentially to accommodate future portals or other expansions.
- Patch 10.2, Guardians of the Dream, is currently being tested on the PTR and includes new story elements and features.
- The expansion of the portal room in Stormwind may signify the addition of more portals to other Alliance capital cities or across Azeroth for easier fast travel.
World of Warcraft has doubled the size of the Stormwind portal room in the Patch 10.2 Public Test Realm. This extra space is likely being added to future-proof World of Warcraft, but it could mean other portals could be coming to the chamber as well.
Recently, World of Warcraft announced Patch 10.2, Guardians of the Dream, and started testing it on the PTR. This means the first bits of the new content update are available for testing, including parts of the story campaign, the Emerald Dream zone, and several of its new features.
However, World of Warcraft fan and content creator MrGM recently discovered a secret on the PTR that he didn’t expect. The portal room located within the Wizard’s Sanctum in Stormwind appears to have received a new stairwell that leads to another portal hall. Identical in setup to the first, this expanded chamber has places for 10 more portals in it, though its purpose is currently unknown.
Historically, World of Warcraft has added one new portal in each expansion, usually leading to a major capital city or other hub. Dragonflight filled the final spot in the portal room, meaning it would need to expand the area further once the 10th expansion pack was released. If it follows this precedent with future expansions, this new portal hall will have enough space in it to last 10 more World of Warcraft expansions–and since it gets a new expansion about every two years, WoW will be fine until around 2044.
At press time, the Horde’s portal room in Orgrimmar in World of Warcraft has not been expanded yet. Unlike its Alliance counterpart, the Orgrimmar portal room is not located in a separate instance, so fitting it in might be slightly more difficult. It is likely World of Warcraft is still working on how to add more portals to Orgrimmar.
That said, it is possible these new portal spaces could indicate something else. This extra room could mean World of Warcraft is re-adding portals to other Alliance capital cities like the Exodar or Ironforge back to Stormwind. Alternatively, more portal locations could be added across Azeroth to simplify fast travel, perhaps as a part of a world revamp for World of Warcraft. Regardless of the purpose, the Stormwind portal room is primed to get more destinations in the near future, and with Blizzcon in a couple of months, WoW players probably won’t have to wait long to get the first glimpse at where these new gates might lead to.
World of Warcraft is available now for PC.