Great Sundering

From WoWWiki

The Great Sundering (or simply the Sundering) was a cataclysmic event which reshaped the world approximately 10,000 years ago, at the end of the War of the Ancients, when the Well of Eternity was destroyed.

Prior to the Sundering, there was only one continent on Azeroth, referred to as Kalimdor. In the catastrophic explosion, eighty percent of the land mass was destroyed, leaving the major continents and scattered islands known today: Northrend, Kezan, the Eastern Kingdoms, and the remnant still referred to as Kalimdor.

The site of the Well of Eternity became a swirling vortex of power, known as the Maelstrom.

Trivia

• The concept of sundering, or a world being reshaped, is a common theme found in fantasy. Tolkien described a reshaping of Arda, and lands lost to the seas in his writings, and the Dragonlance Dungeons and Dragons gameworld underwent the Cataclysm, where seas receded to the point that a coastal port town became landlocked.