Blackmaw Hold

Where it lies

In Azshara, behind the gate that never opened. Anyone who explored the zone in Classic found it and then found nothing behind it - the door was scenery. Forever makes it a door.

What it is about

Behind it lies a furbolg city, and the Blackmaw clan is fighting a corruption spreading through its groves and mountain tunnels. Blizzard's overview of 20 October describes a substantial max-level dungeon with several routes and bosses, and ends on a hint: in the hold's deepest reaches you may find a path leading even farther below Azeroth. The raid overview the same day says where - Blackmaw Hold is one of the three entrances into the Barrow Deeps, the raid that unlocks on 9 December.

What stood there before

The gate has been in Azshara since 2004, and it has never opened. It is one of those pieces of Classic geography that everyone found and nobody could use - solid, finished, deliberately placed, and leading nowhere. Players built theories around it for two decades. Forever answers it with a furbolg city, which is a choice worth noticing: Azshara is night elf ruins and naga coastline, and the furbolgs of the zone were always a side note. Putting their city behind the gate makes them the reason it was shut. The corruption they are fighting is the second half of that answer, and the part Blizzard has not explained.

What it is built for

Levels 55 to 60, from Blizzard's list. Second to last of the nine, and the first of the two that reach the cap - content you run at the end of levelling rather than on the way through.

What the beta can show of it

Out of reach. At 55 to 60 this is among the last content before the raids, and the beta stops at half that. The gate in Azshara can be stood in front of today, as it could for twenty years - what is behind it stays shut until 4 November.

What is not known yet

What the corruption is. The tunnels are no longer a question: they lead into the Barrow Deeps, Blizzard said so on 20 October. Whether the raid entrance needs the dungeon cleared first, and the encounters and loot of the hold itself, are unpublished.