Talk:Howling Fjord

Files hint at new expansion
files in the 2.1 PTR show some scenery models from the Howling Fjord, under the title Expansion 02, which points to Northrend as the next WoW expansion. --Adonzo 12:06, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

Starting Zone for Wrath of the Lich King
It's just been reported that the Howling Fjord will be the new 'starting zone' (like Hellfire Peninsula in TBC) for the next expansion, someone might want to add it when it's confirmed by Blizz on Friday at Blizzcon07. Silent002 15:16, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Apparently, the two factions will have different starting zones - probably Howling Fjord for the Alliance (Valgarde is there) and Borean Tundra for the Horde (they are allied with the Tuskarr). This suggests that there are different entry points to Northrend - boats and zeppelins perhaps? Ygoloxelfer 21:12, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * There are no docks left in Menethil. Will one be added?-- 22:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * No, Ygoloxelfer - Howling Fjord has an Alliance town (Valgarde) and a Horde town (New Agamand). So does Borean Tundra - Alliance (A Gnomish town with airplane strips, actually the second Gnome town seen in-game besides Gnomeregan, the other one being Toshley's Station in the Blade's Edge) and for the Horde (Warsong Hold). So don't worry, both factions may enter the two areas.
 * The zeppelin tower outside Undercity does only have 2 platforms, I guess a third one was added leading to Northrend, not that hard to add another platform to Menethil Harbor's dock as well.
 * --  Shandris   talk / contribs  22:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * In one of the screenshots of Vengeance Landing, there is what clearly resembles a Forsaken zeppelin tower with two landing docks. Similar ones might be erected somewhere on the preexisting continents to accomodate transit. -- 22:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The Alliance will arrive by boat directly into Valgarde. There's an unused dock in Theramore that could be put to use for this purpose. -- 22:27, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I was getting at that. The page says Menethil.-- 22:29, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Source
Can I just get a reliable source that the Forsaken has a town here named New Agamand? --  Shandris   talk / contribs  17:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Blizzard released a series of screenshots showing off Howling Fjord locations. One of the pics was the one in the New Agamand article, and the picture was titled with the town's name. -- 17:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Link to screenshots? Thanks. --  Shandris   talk / contribs  18:20, 4 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Found one here on worldofwar.net - http://wow.incgamers.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=557 -- 22:15, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Connected Port to Valgarde - Did We Not See This?
I happened to read some info about Relentless' encounter against Prince Keleseth in Utgarde Keep:

"...while on the boat to Northrend ( departed from Auberdine ) we spent our talent points and picked up some consumables..."

Does this, perhaps, answer the question of where the port in Valgarde is connected? --Joshmaul 22:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Great info. But it is already the biggest port... there are no docks left.-- 22:25, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * My thought would be to remove the Rut'theran-Auberdine boat path and make it the path from Auberdine to Valgarde, and make the flightpath between Teldrassil and Darkshore accessable to all, regardless of which one they start at (something like the Stair of Destiny-Honor Hold/Thrallmar FP, perhaps). --Joshmaul 22:31, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Added more specific info from my recollections. 23:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, they replaced the Menethil line for the preview? Seems a little odd to me - I say they shoulda replaced the Teldrassil line. In fact, I still say they should anyway, and just make it like the Dark Portal-Hellfire towns flight paths between Auberdine and Rut'theran. It's proven to work - so why not? --Joshmaul 07:43, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Layout
I like the banner--Ithar 22:41, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Zone Design Layout Image
Did the same thing I did with Dragonblight and cleaned up the design layout image of the zone and added areas that I could make out or that are known to be that area. If anyone can make out any other captions I will add them or if theres anything anyone feels needs to be changed. Leviathon 23:00, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

RPG and WCIII subzones
What is to be done about them? If they are not in WotLK, then I suggest taking them out of the subzone template and putting them in a section of the subzone list on this page, like on Western Plaguelands.-- 02:37, 28 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Like what? Valgarde and Daggercap Bay? RPG didn't discuss any other locations as far as I know.Baggins (talk) 00:41, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Ship
How did a burning ship manage to get stuck half way up between the cliffs on either side? 14:28, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The vrykul probably used harpoons anchored to chains to snag it, then dragged it up the cliffside and set it on fire as a warning to any other ships that might pass through. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 19:51, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like more trouble than it's worth. 21:11, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

The Howling Fjord is really just a "pseudo-fjord"
What makes a geographical feature a "fjord" is the slow process of glacial ice sliding and carving its way across a landscape towards the ocean, whereupon it breaks apart into smaller chunks to form icebergs. That's the only thing which would actually define a geographical landmass as such.

The Howling Fjord actually shows absolutely no signs of this. There is no actual glacier further inland that's slowly making its way towards the ocean through the region; as the only glacier really noted in Northrend is Icecrown itself, which is in the opposite part of Northrend from the Howling Fjord. The vrykul structures themselves throw further doubt on the idea that it's a true fjord, as they are cited as having been there since before the War of the Ancients, since the vrykul went into their slumber before the war and these features have remained perfectly intact since, which would make the fjord originally a landlocked region during the time of the vrykul, as we can see from the Ancient Kalimdor maps. Due to the formation of the region, Utgarde Keep itself would actually stand in the way of a hypothetical glacial slide, yet there's no glacier behind it and it's been there since before the Fjord's southern, southwestern, and western shores formed (which further begs to question why there are icebergs along those coasts, as there's no glacial ice to have broken up into it, and icebergs don't just form by sea ice freezing). Even if Utgarde were built later and a glacier were present in the north of the region, it would take well more than 10,000 years for the ice to sufficiently carve through the land and form a fjord.

Of course, what looks like a glacier does exist in the snowy mountains in the north of the region, but it doesn't extend down to the actual inlet; fjords aren't formed by the water eroding the rock (that forms types of canyons), but by the ice itself moving across the landscape. Basically, the Howling Fjord has the look of one, but otherwise cannot actually be called one.

Really just wanted to bring this to anyone's attention who might want to include a note of this in the trivia section. Mjadunn (talk) 21:28, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting! Xporc (talk) 12:41, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Might be analyzing this a bit too closely. Especially when the Chronicle map is not meant to be a 100% accurate one, you don't necessarily know that the area which used to correspond to modern Howling Fjord was actually 100% land and not already made of ice (a fjord) for example, it'll just be represented the same. -- MyMindWontQuiet 20:47, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Azeroth is a world of tens of thousands, if not millions of years. Maybe an actual fjord was located here but in time it disappeared and much, much later the region was populated? Anything could have happened, the Great Sundering supposedly destroyed much of the old world and it "moved" the continents. Tbh, such cataclysm should have turned lands upside down. --Ryon21 (talk) 00:44, 5 August 2018 (UTC)


 * It's worth noting that my point, while obviously very wordy, is not meant to be an in-depth criticism or analysis of Warcraft's story; if it was meant to be, I'd write a full essay on it and publish it online. I'm just very wordy even when explaining a random bit of trivia; it's really not that complex an idea to me, because I readily understand the concept, I just have to lay it out which looks more extensive than it already is. I could've just said, "The Fjord can't be a Fjord because Utgarde blocks any possible glacier, and there's no glacier to begin with in the Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak or Storm Peaks", but not everyone understands fjords and glaciers, so I just laid out that info as concise as I could.


 * Obviously Blizzard isn't putting in every ounce of knowledge they can into this setting, it's really just a fluff bit of entertainment that's a game first and a story last. We're not given an exact date as to how old Azeroth is, or its cyclical ages (i.e. ice ages) and I'd be curious to see any citation saying that the maps of Ancient Kalimdor aren't 100% accurate, as the map in Chronicle and the the map in Black Rook Hold in-game are consistent with their basic outline (this isn't to say I doubt the claim, as we know Blizz changes lore at the drop of a hat); it rather defeats the purpose of having made those maps to begin with if they aren't accurate. The Howling Fjord is too angled southward to have let out to the ocean prior to the Sundering, where it obviously would've been landlocked by the northern Eastern Kingdoms and Broken Isles, as well as the former landmass now submerged.
 * A key problem with the Howling Fjord's rendition is that it's treated as a peninsula just south of the redwood-like forest of Grizzly Hills, which itself is south of the tiered Zul'Drak, and in turn south of the towering Storm Peaks. Since none of those regions show a glacier, particularly one in retreat, and none of those regions are rendered as if carved by glacial slide to be consistent with the Howling Fjord, Northrend's whole eastern half actually makes no sense if the Howling Fjord is meant to be a true fjord. If Blizz switched the Howling Fjord with the Borean Tundra and Sholazar, where it would be south of the Icecrown Glacier, it would make far more sense.


 * That's why I initially cited that the Howling Fjord is a "pseudo-fjord"; it obviously has the appearance of one, but it could not have been formed as a true one would be. So far as I could make sense of it, the Sundering collapsed the landmass south and west of it, which created a narrow valley inlet from a formerly solid cliff that fed a former lake out to the new sea, rather than actually forming as a result of a glacier. Even if the Howling Fjord was created naturally, the geography of Northrend isn't consistent with it, and not even the Sundering could explain it, since Utgarde Keep and Zul'Drak were constructed before the Sundering and they show no consistent signs of tectonic damage that would explain it. Even if the fjord formed before Utgarde Keep was constructed, the geography of the regions north of the fjord show no signs of it. Glaciers don't just crop up at random, they're the former part of a much larger ice sheet that would've started from the poles and gradually worn down with time, wearing down the terrain with them. Northrend is supposed to be within Azeroth's arctic circle, but many of its regions are depicted in a sub-arctic fashion, even in the north of the continent.


 * In short, I know that this is just a game and Blizz isn't creating maps based on actual geography, they're just making regions lightly inspired by real world locations slapped together in a hodgepodge. I just thought it'd be interesting to point out that the Howling Fjord, to a basic geographer's and geologist's eye, would not be a true fjord due to the surrounding landmass based on the modern map and the presented ancient map. If you want to handwave it as "the Sundering broked it all, so anything can be true", you can, obviously Warcraft's setting and writing lends to that sort of thinking. The key flaw in my argument to begin with is how often Blizzard will cite something in lore, and later retcon it, and then later retcon that, and so on, as every expansion seems to include with it a bevy of new retcons, contradictions, inconsistencies and plot holes.
 * Originally, Blizz cited that Icecrown was the polar north of Azeroth, but this was altered when they made the map for the original Warcraft RPG where it now sits at the northwest part of Northrend, and Hrothgar's Landing is north of Icecrown itself, suggesting that the true polar north of Azeroth lay further on, which completely skews any actual analysis - big or small - of Azeroth's layout, as no information given is accurate. Whatever Blizz does say about something cannot be assured, as they're fickle writers who'll change something they laid down at a moment's notice. Mjadunn (talk) 23:08, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with you and your points are good. I'm not against a couple of lines in the notes if you want to address it, though it'd be better to keep it as small as possible. And yes, all of Azeroth is a bunch of regions that do not make quite the sense, though you can always say "IT'S MAGIC!" but meh. And we are also very aware of what is known as the "Blizzconsistency" since they are always changing things. And there's also the possibility that the name is simply wrong and the Howling isn't a true fjord. It wouldn't be the first time Blizz has used a named for something that isn't that something. --Ryon21 (talk) 23:51, 15 May 2019 (UTC)