Check Out Two Of World Of Warcraft's Most Dangerous New Zones

Thanks to the World of Warcraft savants over at MMO Champion, we've got some short video clips to share showing off two extremely dangerous-looking new areas from Blizzard's upcoming third expansion for WoW, Cataclysm. If you thought Azeroth was a somewhat friendly place to hang out, think again.

The first area is known as the Maelstrom, a location Warcraft lore nerds like myself have been wanting to explore for a while. Situated in the middle of the ocean between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, this foreboding whirlpool was once the location of the Well of Eternity, a powerful source of arcane magic. After blowing up and separating the two continents that WoW players have become so familiar with, the Maelstrom became home to the fish-like naga race and has been avoided by most other races. We'll finally get a chance to see what awaits us in the Maelstrom in Cataclysm. This video offers a brief glimpse of that encounter:

Over in the Eastern Kingdom, Cataclysm explorers will also be delving into the Twilight Highlands, home of Twilight's Hammer, a cult that serves the Old Gods. If you know the plot for this expansion -- the powerful dragon Deathwing is driven mad by the whispers of the Old Gods and escapes captivity to threaten the world -- then you can guess that Twilight's Hammer plays a pretty big part in it. However, the Twilight Highlands also houses some other horrifying creations, such as the beast that MMO Champion has smartly dubbed "Tentacle Thing." If its appearance isn't gross enough, its fully-modeled insides suggest that adventurers will probably be going inside of it. Ew.

I'm sure many more exciting locales await when the Cataclysm expansion is released some time this year. For now, though, consider me totally excited (and terrified) at the possibilities awaiting in these two zones.