Couple of corrections I'd like to make: 1. I was under a strong impression that the Bengal Tiger mount *was* available during alpha, and that it then got removed. A couple of comments made me check this, only to find out that there's no evidence for that, and that I've further reinforced the decades-old hoax. Sorry :D 2. What I called the 'Northern Plaguelands' is in fact slightly visible during Kel'Thuzad's boss fight, and represents Northrend. Though my theory is now damaged, I still enjoy it :)
I remember the Tiger cave a long time ago, eventually i reached the cave, and i think the Bengal Tiger hoax spawned from a video showing off the vendor. (Secretly filmed in a private server)
Fun fact about Teldrassil: It's still there in the latest version(s) of WoW... kinda. Years ago, when Teldrassil was burned and Blizz replaced the zone with one of their "smoke and mirrors" backdrop of the burned tree, they made it so you couldn't go out to it. However, I found a way to see what was out there without having to bypass the invisible wall. Hunters have an ability called Eagle Eye which lets you see great distances, but there's an in-game mini-script you can use to let you cast it while it's already cast: /cast !Eagle Eye I went underwater with a fishing rod that gives underwater breathing and began casting (you can't cast it underwater if you're on top of the water). I found that all the roads and a lot of the areas where there would be trees and buildings are still there, I even found Darnassus (just no buildings, of course).
Underrated comment, that is pretty cool. I remember casting an ice spell (can’t remember the name, it’s a DK ability) that makes you walk on water to explore distant islands.
I mean, you can go there talking to Soridormi too. They did not remove the zone, they put a barrier when you are on current time, so you can still see it if you can get across it.
i keep really really wanting to find videos of people exploring this, but i cant seem to find anything because every result is just about the story stuff :']
The snowy area inside Naxx is actually what you see out of the portals in the Kel'thuzard fight in the phase where he summons adds. Surprisingly the portals don't just have a texture applied to them but are actually semi-transparent, with the snowy area visible through them existing just outside the boss room. It's definitely intended to represent and area in Northrend where the adds are summoned from.
I forgot to mention that! You're right, it's definitely supposed to be Northrend, though as the area is so large and detailed, my theory is that it once served a different purpose!
I've visited all of these places, most during the golden years of actual Vanilla. Exploring was always the task I pursued with the greatest enthusiasm, and even when upgrading my PC, I made a point to optimize my FPS for walljumping -- even though it cost a little extra in terms of hardware. Thanks for sharing, it never stops being magical.
IIRC, it was a prototype for a pre-TBC Outland that was essentially going to be a single zone. Eventually that idea transitioned to the outland we know today, and whatever original expansion they had been thinking of doing (Emerald Dream/Hyjal, maybe?) got put to the wayside.
Wonderful video. This sort of thing is my absolute favorite World of Warcraft content, much like the wonderful Hayven Games (may he rest in peace) whose channel has brought me back to the game with exploration nostalgia year after year.
Man, the juxtaposition between your well delivered script and the utter confusion of what was happening in the emerald dream was hilarious "...Titanic canyons of... green? Over on this side is a man [chuckle]"
Hello Verigan! I can confirm that the ''snow part'' inside Naxxramas is NOT said fabled ''Northern Plaguelands'', nor is it an early rendition of Northrend... However, it is actually an early DEPICTION of Northrend. You see, when you fight Kel'Thuzad, he starts summoning Undead minions from these ''gateways'' that he opens inside the boss room, and through the gatesways you can actually see ''the snowy landscape'' outside, which is supposed to depict that Kel'Thuzad opened up magical gateways from Northrend to his floating citadel of Naxxramas, allowing minions of the Scourge to travel from Northrend and into his boss room.
Underneath GM island is a large hollow cube room with blue/white checkboard walls. In my WoW private server GM days this is where I would bring the naughty people after stripping their hearthstone from them.
I still have a character on gm island, but I can't log in or I'll get in trouble. Never saw the cube you mention, it's not accessible from the island as far as I could see.
@@ruadeil_zabelin They outright removed the island some time ago, so if that person's character were to log in, it'd probably put him at some generic graveyard somewhere
@@ruadeil_zabelin I got a little file (emailed to me by ingame buddy) which changed the org-stv flight path. It flew over the island and I jumped out. I am not sure if the file is a hack, I pasted it into a directory and believe I removed it after. This happened in 2004 or 2005, so forgive me if not every detail is perfect. I don't like cheaters and would not use stuff to gain an advantage, especially in a multiplayer game.
It's kinda cool to see the influences of the original that made it into the Emerald Dream that we got in retail. It's much more dense ,but it's clearly still the same Dream
I'm extremely surprised at how many details remain. The large statues embedded in the ground and the weird ground spirals are present in the retail version of the dream. Really makes it feel like this wasn't something they pulled out because they needed another location, and more like someone on staff has been iterating on these ideas for two decades, waiting for them to be implemented into the game.
To comment on the Emerald Dream segment, its possible the reason it's *so big* is because of the lore. The Dream is supposed to be what Azeroth is without mortal meddling or something along those lines, so it's possible Blizzard was trying to make a separate Azeroth sized zone for the Dream (kind of like the Dark World in A Link to the Past). But trying to fill a single zone that huge would be a daunting and lengthy task, until it was scrapped (and later re-emplemented on a much smaller scale in Dragonflight).
the Dream is the Ideal state of Azeroth and what the planet is slowly trying to return to even if most of the titan devices that are supposed to fix it aren't functioning anymore except in a few specific areas (it's also what the Forge of Origination would use as it's blueprint if it ever properly activated to do a full reset, which is why N'zoth was trying to infect the Dream with corruption, as a backup plan in case someone said F-it and initiated Re-Origination (i.e. Algalon's plan wouldn't have worked since the Dream was already corrupted and that corruption would be introduced into the new Azeroth to start tainting it anew). the World we see now is the world caused by outside interference.
@ZanathKariashi I was more talking about the gameplay side of it; if the Dream was supposed to be Azeroth, it'd be a daunting task to *fully* realize it from a gameplay perspective (especially back when WoW ran like a potato). Like, imagine them making an entire zone that's the combined size of Kalimdor and EK, that kind of thing. But thanks for the clarification! I only had a vague idea of what the Dream actually was lol.
Thanks for another great video. I've recently been playing WoW again, reading some of the books, really getting back into the spirit of exploring this wonderful world Blizzard created. I'm sure you know, but in Cataclysm when Blizzard recreated the Vanilla landscape, the southern part of Silithus was turned into an outdoor Ahn'Qiraj. This was simply done to smooth out the area so you could fly over it without seeing a big empty unfinished zone, there's nothing there. They also removed the tauren farm, but left the cave in. Inside the cave was nothing for a quite a while, but as of 5.3 there is a lone sleeping red dragon NPC named Andrestrasz. He does nothing and has no purpose, save for speculation that he is a reference to a developer's child.
My WoW subscription ends in 3 days and I'm not going to renew it for Cata Classic. So, that quiet tauren farms seems like a nice place to end my WoW journey after 18 years.
Hey, to everyone replying, no, I haven’t gone back to playing yet. I originally played from Vanilla up until WoD, but I didn’t enjoy the game after Cata. I came back when Classic launched and cleared everything up to HLK 25, but now all my friends have quit. I’m not really into the gameplay of the newer expansions, and I’m not interested in the recent lore either. I never said I’d never play again, but right now, there’s nothing pulling me back in.
To quote @Xephie - "These little adventures fill me with nostalgic yearning for places I've never been." Exactly this! I know about so many of the hidden places after playing so long and watching so many videos about so many of them, but you've shown me some new things...and all of it was incredibly relaxing. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to be a soothing voice on a nostalgic journey.
This is so good, I am 35 now and spent so many years in Vanilla playing, I loved this game so much, this video brings so much nostalgia, there will never be a game that even touches what feeling WoW gives. I don't play anything anymore, however, the time playing WoW was incredible.
Thank you for sharing these little hidden places that have always been just in front of our noses for so long. Also, I appreciate all of the amazing aerial views that we can pause and maybe grab some screenshots to use as our own desktop wallpaper.
The score cutting from Oblivion to Halo Wars was a delight 20 years in the making. These little adventures fill me with nostalgic yearning for places I've never been.
Great video again, Verigan. Just lovely. These videos remind me of the good times of WoW. I honestly wish I could relive them. Some thoughts of mine as you go through each of these locations: - I remember seeing images of The Dream area. We used to talk about it over the years. - I remember going to The Village at some point many years ago, likely in Vanilla. - I've been to The Tiger cave at some point over the years, but I didn't know about the rumor of a tiger mount being there in alpha, etc. - We went to Mount Hyjal a few times back in Vanilla. We wall jumped our way in from Darkwhisper Gorge in southern Winterspring. - We went to GM Island back in Vanilla. We killed a GM who was AFK there. I still have a screenshot of our shaman standing next to the slain GM. - I had no idea The Chasm existed, nor did I know about the Deadmines glitch to get there. The chasm reminds me of Deepholm from Cataclysm. - A friend of mine used to go exploring with me sometimes, and we swam out to The Tower in Vanilla or TBC one night after getting the Swift Zulian Tiger out of ZG. - I never knew about the winter zone area attached to Naxx, although I am aware of being able to see the winter zone out of Kel'Thuzad's throne room. - The unfinished desert area south of the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj is a place I never went to. By the time we got flying mounts, I'm not sure if I went back there. - The remote Tauren farm and cave is a place we swam to in Vanilla. I returned to it later, only to discover that the farm was removed. Pretty lame move on Blizzard's part.
I really enjoyed the video! The cinematography, the narration, and especially the varied background tracks (especially the Shadow of the Colossus one!) really made it enjoyable :)
Awesome video. I have good memories of the GM Island, when i met WoW for first time I wasn't cappable to buy it, so I end playing Private Servers as a kid. I remember one day o got a problem in some Latin Server and the TP me to the GM Island to talk with one of them in order to solve it. For a long time, when I get older, I always believe that it was a mistake and that island do not exist, was a nice surprise when I discover that it was the "GM Island" hahaha. Sorry for my bad english, nice video! You really make me feel nostalgia, more than that, was a relaxing tour between old memories.
the novelty, whimsy, and wonder of my days in classic wow seemed to have fled, but i can see now they merely took up shop in these lovely videos. Thank you
Subbed. This is an incredibly well done video. Good commentary, good shots, good audio quality and soothing voice. Having played wow since I was 9 years old I always loved simply exploring the world. I was never too good at end game or pvp, but I just LOVE walking around. I’ve been all over, including in a trinity repack I ran just to explore and watched hundreds of videos - so this is a big deal that I am saying your videos showed me new stuff I never knew about. It is unbelievable to me just how massive the game is, to the point that over a decade later I still haven’t seen all of it.
I click your videos so fast every time I see a new one. Thank you so much for the work you put in to make these videos. The gentle tone you narrate the videos with while showing the scenery of Warcraft landscape leaves me with such a feeling of wholesomeness. One of my favorite things about Classic WoW to this day is running through a zone on foot and getting lost in the music and background sounds, not worrying about the most optimal questing route or gold per hour to be made. I hope you make more videos where you tell a short story with some of the games quests. I really really enjoyed the paladin hammer quest video you did. Thank you so much again for your work and I hope you find the success you deserve :)
i know this is specifically classic but its so interesting to see some of these compared to what i know theyre like now since i only started playing in the last few years. the mysterious empty cave at the bottom of kalimdor now simply holds a lone, sleeping red dragon. sadly the tauren farm is no longer there for some reason
Thank you for incorporating "Deconstruction" from the Destiny soundtrack into the video. I haven't played either of the Destiny games since the beginning of the Forsaken expansion for Destiny 2 (several years ago at this point). "Deconstruction" was one of my many favorites from D1. I have not heard it in a long time, and almost forgot about it. Thank you for reminding me of it's beauty. Please continue to make videos. I have enjoyed each and every one so far. You have a wonderful ability and talent.
Great videos! Sadly there is limited amount of things we can really find over so many years. Have you heard yet about the underwater Gnome Village near Tanaris? Or a very recent discovery of Air elementals on top of the Rocks in Thousand needles which can be only seen when you drink the Shaman Sapta quest item?
The fact that I have been almost all of these places during TBC really brings me back and makes me wonder how much time I spent in the game just to explore and chat with guild mates.There is no feeling I could compare to this, just taking the ambient and music in and enjoying everything.
The way you describe these places is full of grandeur and awe. It's been hard not to see things as grey, useless, or bland today, and the way you talked about these fictional places most people who play won't even see did something for me. Thanks for the video, it was fantastic.
I never knew the emerald dream was so massive I've seen a couple of screenshots and videos about it but they only showed the verdant fields part, congratulations, you showed me something that I didn't know about this old zones/removed content
I didn’t know about the trailer before and went to check it out; very cool! However, it seems like the trailer used Winterspring as its background (that being said, I’m pretty sure the Naxx snowy location is just cut and paste Winterspring as well, just without the purple effect)
What I really like about this mini Quel Thalas is that, during Vanilla, you can hear dialog that sounds like some ancient battle. In reality, I believe it's the priest quest for Benediction. But without that knowledge, it adds a great spooky vibe to this hidden nook.
I remember once being teleported to the GM island on a private server for something I don't remember now, but then I completely forgot that it exists somewhere, and now when I saw it a struck of nostalgia really hit me :D thank for your content, as always, xx
I was a little bit tired since the start of Cata...rushing to 85, dashing through the dungeons and then through the raids...I stopped leveling at 83 and quit for a month. But then I saw your videos and started just leveling on a new server, reading the quests, discovering the new storys in the zones and I had a blast...I never played Cata and it feels a little bit like seeing the world (of Warcraft) for the first time ones more. The world offers a lot more than items and the best skills...I totally forgot this part of the game. Thanks mate. :)
I started in Wrath, but I feel like Cata was when I REALLY started having some truly memorable fun - plus you 'birth' Wrathion in Cata! I'm almost so envious of people seeing that again, that I nearly want to do Cata classic.
4:16 I didn't piece it together at first but they actually used that cave in Cata STV as part of the questline. Felt like a nod to the old hoaxes. There's also a GM Island reference in-game now near Feralas, indicating that the GMs are a tad less organized than we tend to give them credit.
I’ve been to all of those places (at least the ones you can get to), I went to all of them in original vanilla, many with wall walking. Went to as many as you could get to in Classic. Sadly they made Hyjal impossible to get to in Classic, it was always my favorite. We used to go to the bottom of the water pool under the world tree and take water breathing pots then summon people there and they would drown before they could reach the surface, it was a hilarious prank! Video brought back a lot of good feels, thanks for making it!
Other than the dwarven village I've learnt so much from your video! Thank you. ♥ Despite no longer playing Classic, I still love the world that once was. Original WoW really was special in so many countless ways.
Verigan! Your videos never fail to amaze me. When I think I knew everything Warcraft has to offer, you show me things i've never seen. I will be exploring some of these locations in due course! Amazing content
that empty mountain tunnel you described on the side of the mountain over ironforge was one of the ways to get into the old ironforge area, if you use slowfall and point in the correct direction you can float down and clip into the area!
2:57 - "The Village": That "tunnel that leads to nowhere" actually used to be one of the ways to get to Old Ironforge. I forget the exact direction you had to go at this point, but if you got the right speed and brought slow fall capabilities with you, you could fall off and drift in such a way that would land you safelty in Old Ironforge.
Nice video. Vanilla Azeroth truly is an amazing world to explore. I had an amazing time playing through classic with a fantastic guild, a very fulfulling experience that I miss dearly
There's a lake under the world tree in Hyjal that is extremely deep. Extremely. After getting undewater breathing, we would swim to the bottom and summon our guildies to the 'forbidden land' for a gander at Hyjal. Of course, unless they could breath underwater, there was no way to swim to the top before drowning. *Sniff, good times.
Love these videos you've created! A few recommendations if you plan to make more vids of this nature: 1. Stonetalon Camp - Northwest Stonetalon (To get there: Swim down from Ashenvale near BFD) 2. Tirisfal Glades Secret Area - West of Deathknell (To get there: Mountain climb) 3. Echo Isles - South East Durotar (To get there: A long swim off the coastline towards the isles) 4. Azshara Crater (I think datamining may the the only way to get live video footage) Keep up the good work!
Love exploring so much! Hidden places in wow are just so cool. I used to go to hyal all the way back in Tbc! I also was a regular visitor in the caverns of time xD
I love this ❤ i was never a wow-guy (picked it up once with friends back in school, but it just wasn't my game), but you give me a glimpse of the experience i have missed out on. I'm glad for that. It's fun 😊
In the early versions of WoW (1.7 and below), Southern Silithus had a huge chunk of what eventually became the AQ raid, including underground tunnels and apparatus that dripped slime (matching the one in Undercity), placed where Buru would be in the 20-man raid. The tunnels were so expansive that you could actually fall into them if you were swimming right around the southern tip, where the Tauren Village is. Over the course of the patches, these features were removed, until 1.8 hit and completely broke the southern area, leaving jagged holes in the landscape, which were shown off in this video. Fun fact about 1.8: It removed wall walking from the game, and also completely broke the southern tip of Silithus, causing the water to become fully solid.
@@Veriganic If you locate a server running on 1.8, I'd love to see it. There was a lot of broken areas in and around there that I did not have a chance to fully explore before it was fixed. Additional fun fact: There used to be a Silithid that would sit in Southern Silithus yelling in Dwarvish for his Southshore Stout.
@@Dezrustrian yep Silitus was so broken in old wow (sadly never got around to see it). like in wow 1.0.1 (day one) Silitus was 1/3 of it is later in wow story, like the "town" was not even there all there was for the player was a small camp near the entrence whit the flight point maybe a INN keeper and some tents whit vendors. no buildings. and the AQ raid that was just a solid wall of flesh or something. and even though player could get there in 1.0.1 there was not a whole lot like half the mobs there did not even have drop tables (meaning they did not drop anything and if skinned droped light lether I think if they could be skinned at all. and still the terrain was at part buggy. (silitus was the zone that got the biggest change between launch and the end of vanila. Western Plauge land only had the ruined city in the middle city wall removed for performance reasons.
I believe I remember hearing that that strange area inside Deadmines was used to test certain new things in game, specifically for early versions of assets that'd be added with The Burning Crusade, built inside the instance to ensure they don't break anything in the game without accidentally ruining live game servers, the trees floating on crystals being early versions of the ones we see in Nagrand, and the hole likely testing potential edges for The Outlands. In the cave by the Tauren village in the south of Kalimdor after Wrath they added a dragon sleeping there.
Wonderful video, thanks! Well narrated and depicted! Indeed a great option for Private servers to make out something. For the last 5 years Turtle WoW has been such a place. The dwarven village is bigger and with interesting quests, aswell there are High elves as a playable race with a recent expanded starting zones. Other zones are improved (West of Tirisfal glades, elven outposts in Eastern Feralas and Ashenvale and more) or even made anew. RP is strong there.
Allthough I knew all those places, your presentation, your editing still made it very entertaining. Also, the only real reason for GM Islands visit, was to spot GMs that quickly warned or ported you away. (Or just stood afk lol)
Nice video! I remember about most of the places (because i had run a local server and explored it with friends), but i like to see them once more- P.S. 14:33 Ferrari sucks
If anyone is interested in not only visiting alot of these wonderful places from these incredible videos, but quest in them too, I can wholeheartedly recommend trying out Turtle-Wow! They've restored so much of the cut content in a Vanilla+experience, complete with well written quest and lore. Too name a few: Hyjal, Gilneas, Tel'Abim. They've added 2000+ quest to both new and existing zones, added new dungeons such as Karazan in Deadwind pass. I could go on, but let me stop here and just say that it's the best wow experience I've had, with a great community and very active player base. Give it a try!
Back in Vanilla, before BC, I visited many of these places. Hyjal, Ironforge airfield, the small village at the wetlands, the waterfall between Elwynn and Burning Steppes. Back then you could bug yourself up mountains by slowly walking at an angle, before it was patched out. We were once on top of the Stormwind walls. Then a GM showed up and asked us to leave. That was fun. First and only time I ever saw a GM in person. Hyjal was easy. You just had to die close to the gate, then walk through as a ghost and revive on the other side.
Hearing halo wars music is always a pleasant surprise. And i never expected someone to use fallout 76 music in a video not about the game or the state its in, that was also a nice surprise to recognize after years of being away.
It’s fun looking at zones that never made it into base wow and seeing how they influenced zones that would come in the future. Or random things added to these hidden corners of the world when the game was updated to cata. Like that cave at the end of the video has a red dragon in it now. We know nothing about it, other than it’s likely a tribute of some kind. But he’s there.
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this in the comments, but there is an entire old versions of Zul'Gurub that is reachable without godmode within Karahzan (in TBC ofc im not sure any other xpac). It's really neat, and a cool insight in to the design process of an early Blizzard Team instance! I have also heard my friends refer to that Chasm within Deadmines as the early version of Outland? My buddy is always telling me how the trees reminded him of Nagrand. Anyhow, I'm really glad we got the version of outland that we did..but still cool to see a possible early design. My favorite of these has to be the Ruins of AQ. I love walking through what was once proclaimed as a massive city, harboring so much life, and to see it now without the truth of it's former self. Haunting, really, especially since a race of god-awakened bugs would function in a way that humans could barely comprehend. Great video! Love em as always!
Something I find so charming about old wow is how weird they got with their designs. Like looking at the ideas they had for the emerald dream, the strange plants, the floating trees, the bright green atmosphere. I like the dream that we got in retail but it’s definitely a lot more softer and refined.
This may have just been an aspect of the private server build, but when my friend and I made one during the time of TBC just so we could explore; there were NPCs there that you could interact with to get gear and items.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
Couple of corrections I'd like to make:
1. I was under a strong impression that the Bengal Tiger mount *was* available during alpha, and that it then got removed. A couple of comments made me check this, only to find out that there's no evidence for that, and that I've further reinforced the decades-old hoax. Sorry :D
2. What I called the 'Northern Plaguelands' is in fact slightly visible during Kel'Thuzad's boss fight, and represents Northrend. Though my theory is now damaged, I still enjoy it :)
the 'Northern Plaguelands' is also just a section of Wintersprings used so that Blizzard can give players the cold breath effect and for the scenery.
I remember the Tiger cave a long time ago, eventually i reached the cave, and i think the Bengal Tiger hoax spawned from a video showing off the vendor. (Secretly filmed in a private server)
@@kristoferkravis1474 lmfao me too thats one of those core memories
the last homestead reminded me of the place thanos retired to...
There also use to be a Dragon in the cave near the abandoned Tauren coastal village. Had a name and everything, but all it did was sleep.
Your channel encapsulates the old feeling of WoW. It's more than just nostalgia, it's just magical.
That's how blizzard became so successful, they used real, actual magic. True story research it
I couldn't agree more.
Fun fact about Teldrassil: It's still there in the latest version(s) of WoW... kinda.
Years ago, when Teldrassil was burned and Blizz replaced the zone with one of their "smoke and mirrors" backdrop of the burned tree, they made it so you couldn't go out to it. However, I found a way to see what was out there without having to bypass the invisible wall.
Hunters have an ability called Eagle Eye which lets you see great distances, but there's an in-game mini-script you can use to let you cast it while it's already cast:
/cast !Eagle Eye
I went underwater with a fishing rod that gives underwater breathing and began casting (you can't cast it underwater if you're on top of the water). I found that all the roads and a lot of the areas where there would be trees and buildings are still there, I even found Darnassus (just no buildings, of course).
Underrated comment, that is pretty cool. I remember casting an ice spell (can’t remember the name, it’s a DK ability) that makes you walk on water to explore distant islands.
I mean, you can go there talking to Soridormi too.
They did not remove the zone, they put a barrier when you are on current time, so you can still see it if you can get across it.
i keep really really wanting to find videos of people exploring this, but i cant seem to find anything because every result is just about the story stuff :']
@@TheRayny yes but that's completely different than what OPs point was.
The snowy area inside Naxx is actually what you see out of the portals in the Kel'thuzard fight in the phase where he summons adds. Surprisingly the portals don't just have a texture applied to them but are actually semi-transparent, with the snowy area visible through them existing just outside the boss room. It's definitely intended to represent and area in Northrend where the adds are summoned from.
I forgot to mention that! You're right, it's definitely supposed to be Northrend, though as the area is so large and detailed, my theory is that it once served a different purpose!
it's actually just a copy-pasted section of winterspring. which is the reason it seems so large and detailed.
@@Hephera It's not Winterspring. The trees are different.
@@Notpoop906 it can be both, a dev can copy a part of winterspring and then add different trees
@@Notpoop906 it is winterspring. There's even the tent one of the night saber trainer npcs hangs out at
I've visited all of these places, most during the golden years of actual Vanilla. Exploring was always the task I pursued with the greatest enthusiasm, and even when upgrading my PC, I made a point to optimize my FPS for walljumping -- even though it cost a little extra in terms of hardware. Thanks for sharing, it never stops being magical.
Getting firsts on noggenfogger forums was way cooler than raiding
"The Chasm" @7:48 is a prototype for Outland!
Thanks as always for making some of the coziest wow content I've ever seen, it's lovely 🥰
IIRC, it was a prototype for a pre-TBC Outland that was essentially going to be a single zone. Eventually that idea transitioned to the outland we know today, and whatever original expansion they had been thinking of doing (Emerald Dream/Hyjal, maybe?) got put to the wayside.
It looks like it could’ve been a great concept for a possible entrance to Deepholm.
6:20 I WAS THERE! No one of my friends belived me that this existed. Thats a closure after all this years.
Wonderful video. This sort of thing is my absolute favorite World of Warcraft content, much like the wonderful Hayven Games (may he rest in peace) whose channel has brought me back to the game with exploration nostalgia year after year.
Man, the juxtaposition between your well delivered script and the utter confusion of what was happening in the emerald dream was hilarious
"...Titanic canyons of... green? Over on this side is a man [chuckle]"
Liking the Age of Mythology music! Cosy haha XD Great video as always.
I had the exact same thought! I love hearing it pop up, seems to be everywhere lately!
Prostagma?
@@Zagreus717 Vulome!
@@benvos2458 ETIMOS
@@Veriganic isvoli!
Hello Verigan! I can confirm that the ''snow part'' inside Naxxramas is NOT said fabled ''Northern Plaguelands'', nor is it an early rendition of Northrend... However, it is actually an early DEPICTION of Northrend. You see, when you fight Kel'Thuzad, he starts summoning Undead minions from these ''gateways'' that he opens inside the boss room, and through the gatesways you can actually see ''the snowy landscape'' outside, which is supposed to depict that Kel'Thuzad opened up magical gateways from Northrend to his floating citadel of Naxxramas, allowing minions of the Scourge to travel from Northrend and into his boss room.
Underneath GM island is a large hollow cube room with blue/white checkboard walls. In my WoW private server GM days this is where I would bring the naughty people after stripping their hearthstone from them.
I went there! Completely forgot to include it somehow :\
I still have a character on gm island, but I can't log in or I'll get in trouble.
Never saw the cube you mention, it's not accessible from the island as far as I could see.
@@hansolowe19 I dont think you can get there on the real servers without somehow hacking to it.
@@ruadeil_zabelin They outright removed the island some time ago, so if that person's character were to log in, it'd probably put him at some generic graveyard somewhere
@@ruadeil_zabelin I got a little file (emailed to me by ingame buddy) which changed the org-stv flight path. It flew over the island and I jumped out.
I am not sure if the file is a hack, I pasted it into a directory and believe I removed it after.
This happened in 2004 or 2005, so forgive me if not every detail is perfect. I don't like cheaters and would not use stuff to gain an advantage, especially in a multiplayer game.
It's kinda cool to see the influences of the original that made it into the Emerald Dream that we got in retail. It's much more dense ,but it's clearly still the same Dream
I'm extremely surprised at how many details remain. The large statues embedded in the ground and the weird ground spirals are present in the retail version of the dream. Really makes it feel like this wasn't something they pulled out because they needed another location, and more like someone on staff has been iterating on these ideas for two decades, waiting for them to be implemented into the game.
They also recycled the trees and other stuff in Season of Discovery while doing the Nightmare Incursions. Really a nice touch.
To comment on the Emerald Dream segment, its possible the reason it's *so big* is because of the lore. The Dream is supposed to be what Azeroth is without mortal meddling or something along those lines, so it's possible Blizzard was trying to make a separate Azeroth sized zone for the Dream (kind of like the Dark World in A Link to the Past). But trying to fill a single zone that huge would be a daunting and lengthy task, until it was scrapped (and later re-emplemented on a much smaller scale in Dragonflight).
the Dream is the Ideal state of Azeroth and what the planet is slowly trying to return to even if most of the titan devices that are supposed to fix it aren't functioning anymore except in a few specific areas (it's also what the Forge of Origination would use as it's blueprint if it ever properly activated to do a full reset, which is why N'zoth was trying to infect the Dream with corruption, as a backup plan in case someone said F-it and initiated Re-Origination (i.e. Algalon's plan wouldn't have worked since the Dream was already corrupted and that corruption would be introduced into the new Azeroth to start tainting it anew).
the World we see now is the world caused by outside interference.
@ZanathKariashi I was more talking about the gameplay side of it; if the Dream was supposed to be Azeroth, it'd be a daunting task to *fully* realize it from a gameplay perspective (especially back when WoW ran like a potato). Like, imagine them making an entire zone that's the combined size of Kalimdor and EK, that kind of thing.
But thanks for the clarification! I only had a vague idea of what the Dream actually was lol.
Thanks for another great video. I've recently been playing WoW again, reading some of the books, really getting back into the spirit of exploring this wonderful world Blizzard created.
I'm sure you know, but in Cataclysm when Blizzard recreated the Vanilla landscape, the southern part of Silithus was turned into an outdoor Ahn'Qiraj. This was simply done to smooth out the area so you could fly over it without seeing a big empty unfinished zone, there's nothing there. They also removed the tauren farm, but left the cave in. Inside the cave was nothing for a quite a while, but as of 5.3 there is a lone sleeping red dragon NPC named Andrestrasz.
He does nothing and has no purpose, save for speculation that he is a reference to a developer's child.
Your episodes are always so wonderfully written. I look forward to each and every one of them, they are a real treat to the mind, they put me at ease.
My WoW subscription ends in 3 days and I'm not going to renew it for Cata Classic. So, that quiet tauren farms seems like a nice place to end my WoW journey after 18 years.
How long were you subscribed?
You will be back
Did you come back?
What server are you on now
Hey, to everyone replying, no, I haven’t gone back to playing yet. I originally played from Vanilla up until WoD, but I didn’t enjoy the game after Cata. I came back when Classic launched and cleared everything up to HLK 25, but now all my friends have quit. I’m not really into the gameplay of the newer expansions, and I’m not interested in the recent lore either. I never said I’d never play again, but right now, there’s nothing pulling me back in.
To quote @Xephie - "These little adventures fill me with nostalgic yearning for places I've never been." Exactly this! I know about so many of the hidden places after playing so long and watching so many videos about so many of them, but you've shown me some new things...and all of it was incredibly relaxing. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to be a soothing voice on a nostalgic journey.
So glad I became a member, wonderful content as always!
Thank you Dan!
These videos are so well made and a delight to watch. It's obvious you really enjoy it all. Hopefully you can make more of them!
This is so good, I am 35 now and spent so many years in Vanilla playing, I loved this game so much, this video brings so much nostalgia, there will never be a game that even touches what feeling WoW gives. I don't play anything anymore, however, the time playing WoW was incredible.
Never clicked a video faster. I cannot get enough of these 'hidden places in MMOs' videos that you do, keep em coming please! :D
Glad you like them!
Thank you for sharing these little hidden places that have always been just in front of our noses for so long.
Also, I appreciate all of the amazing aerial views that we can pause and maybe grab some screenshots to use as our own desktop wallpaper.
The score cutting from Oblivion to Halo Wars was a delight 20 years in the making.
These little adventures fill me with nostalgic yearning for places I've never been.
Great video again, Verigan. Just lovely. These videos remind me of the good times of WoW. I honestly wish I could relive them. Some thoughts of mine as you go through each of these locations:
- I remember seeing images of The Dream area. We used to talk about it over the years.
- I remember going to The Village at some point many years ago, likely in Vanilla.
- I've been to The Tiger cave at some point over the years, but I didn't know about the rumor of a tiger mount being there in alpha, etc.
- We went to Mount Hyjal a few times back in Vanilla. We wall jumped our way in from Darkwhisper Gorge in southern Winterspring.
- We went to GM Island back in Vanilla. We killed a GM who was AFK there. I still have a screenshot of our shaman standing next to the slain GM.
- I had no idea The Chasm existed, nor did I know about the Deadmines glitch to get there. The chasm reminds me of Deepholm from Cataclysm.
- A friend of mine used to go exploring with me sometimes, and we swam out to The Tower in Vanilla or TBC one night after getting the Swift Zulian Tiger out of ZG.
- I never knew about the winter zone area attached to Naxx, although I am aware of being able to see the winter zone out of Kel'Thuzad's throne room.
- The unfinished desert area south of the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj is a place I never went to. By the time we got flying mounts, I'm not sure if I went back there.
- The remote Tauren farm and cave is a place we swam to in Vanilla. I returned to it later, only to discover that the farm was removed. Pretty lame move on Blizzard's part.
I really enjoyed the video! The cinematography, the narration, and especially the varied background tracks (especially the Shadow of the Colossus one!) really made it enjoyable :)
Awesome video. I have good memories of the GM Island, when i met WoW for first time I wasn't cappable to buy it, so I end playing Private Servers as a kid. I remember one day o got a problem in some Latin Server and the TP me to the GM Island to talk with one of them in order to solve it.
For a long time, when I get older, I always believe that it was a mistake and that island do not exist, was a nice surprise when I discover that it was the "GM Island" hahaha.
Sorry for my bad english, nice video! You really make me feel nostalgia, more than that, was a relaxing tour between old memories.
11:02 this place reminds me of the video that they released of the new patch that introduces naxx. the one where kel thuzad walks in the snow
Thats what it is i believe
@@nyx_jupiter-trash Blizzard - Shadows of Necropolis
the novelty, whimsy, and wonder of my days in classic wow seemed to have fled, but i can see now they merely took up shop in these lovely videos. Thank you
I am loving your content mate. You have ignited the old flame to track down as many of these places as possible with my little Paladin. Thank you.
Love the Age of Mythology sondtrack in the backgroud!
i was thinking the same, this is a whole vibe
So thankful for Turtle WoW for bringing life to so many of these areas
@@silvereyeraven All of them. With the exception of GM Island
@@erp7625 I don't think the tauren town is used.
It’s nice to see that some features of the dream remained the same like the spiral ground, the dream catcher’s
And the big stone statues!
Your videos have kept me grounded for a long time.
Thank you, Verigan.
Subbed. This is an incredibly well done video. Good commentary, good shots, good audio quality and soothing voice.
Having played wow since I was 9 years old I always loved simply exploring the world. I was never too good at end game or pvp, but I just LOVE walking around.
I’ve been all over, including in a trinity repack I ran just to explore and watched hundreds of videos - so this is a big deal that I am saying your videos showed me new stuff I never knew about.
It is unbelievable to me just how massive the game is, to the point that over a decade later I still haven’t seen all of it.
Back in the day we traveled into Orgrimmar's "instance", went from Kargath to SW through the mountains, and glitched into Hyjal. It was glorious!
I click your videos so fast every time I see a new one. Thank you so much for the work you put in to make these videos. The gentle tone you narrate the videos with while showing the scenery of Warcraft landscape leaves me with such a feeling of wholesomeness. One of my favorite things about Classic WoW to this day is running through a zone on foot and getting lost in the music and background sounds, not worrying about the most optimal questing route or gold per hour to be made. I hope you make more videos where you tell a short story with some of the games quests. I really really enjoyed the paladin hammer quest video you did. Thank you so much again for your work and I hope you find the success you deserve :)
Thank you very much!
I’ve unsubscribed from all WoW channels a long time ago but I refuse to miss your uploads. Wonderful story as always.
i know this is specifically classic but its so interesting to see some of these compared to what i know theyre like now since i only started playing in the last few years. the mysterious empty cave at the bottom of kalimdor now simply holds a lone, sleeping red dragon. sadly the tauren farm is no longer there for some reason
Still my favourite new channel! All your videos have this nostalgic and cozy feeling to them.
Also nice Halo soundtrack in this ;)
Thank you for incorporating "Deconstruction" from the Destiny soundtrack into the video. I haven't played either of the Destiny games since the beginning of the Forsaken expansion for Destiny 2 (several years ago at this point). "Deconstruction" was one of my many favorites from D1. I have not heard it in a long time, and almost forgot about it. Thank you for reminding me of it's beauty.
Please continue to make videos. I have enjoyed each and every one so far. You have a wonderful ability and talent.
Great videos! Sadly there is limited amount of things we can really find over so many years.
Have you heard yet about the underwater Gnome Village near Tanaris? Or a very recent discovery of Air elementals on top of the Rocks in Thousand needles which can be only seen when you drink the Shaman Sapta quest item?
You totally understand what i find so interesting about old games and game design, thank you!!
The fact that I have been almost all of these places during TBC really brings me back and makes me wonder how much time I spent in the game just to explore and chat with guild mates.There is no feeling I could compare to this, just taking the ambient and music in and enjoying everything.
The way you describe these places is full of grandeur and awe. It's been hard not to see things as grey, useless, or bland today, and the way you talked about these fictional places most people who play won't even see did something for me.
Thanks for the video, it was fantastic.
I love these videos, they remind of those early days first getting into WoW, which really was a magical time.
fascinating how after so many years there's still things and places which I have never seen! thanks for the video!
I never knew the emerald dream was so massive I've seen a couple of screenshots and videos about it but they only showed the verdant fields part, congratulations, you showed me something that I didn't know about this old zones/removed content
It was designed to be an endgame continent.
There is a super old official trailer for when vanilla Naxx was released that I believe uses that hidden snowy zone in the instance!
I didn’t know about the trailer before and went to check it out; very cool! However, it seems like the trailer used Winterspring as its background (that being said, I’m pretty sure the Naxx snowy location is just cut and paste Winterspring as well, just without the purple effect)
What I really like about this mini Quel Thalas is that, during Vanilla, you can hear dialog that sounds like some ancient battle.
In reality, I believe it's the priest quest for Benediction. But without that knowledge, it adds a great spooky vibe to this hidden nook.
I remember once being teleported to the GM island on a private server for something I don't remember now, but then I completely forgot that it exists somewhere, and now when I saw it a struck of nostalgia really hit me :D thank for your content, as always, xx
Oh my god using the Destiny soundtrack at 10:00 gives me chills, so nice.
I am glad your channel got recommended to me. Love the topics and your sound is very pleasant.
Nice, you did cover that little Wetlands dwarf town! :D
Turtle made it into a fascinating quest hub with its own music.
That was definitely one of my favorite little hubs in turtle wow
This is such an unbelievably good channel Verigan. Such a shame it’s so new and there isn’t 100s of videos I can binge ☹️
very cool. It's crazy how this 20-year-old game still has stunning beauty, and all the zones are meaningful.
I was a little bit tired since the start of Cata...rushing to 85, dashing through the dungeons and then through the raids...I stopped leveling at 83 and quit for a month.
But then I saw your videos and started just leveling on a new server, reading the quests, discovering the new storys in the zones and I had a blast...I never played Cata and it feels a little bit like seeing the world (of Warcraft) for the first time ones more. The world offers a lot more than items and the best skills...I totally forgot this part of the game. Thanks mate. :)
I started in Wrath, but I feel like Cata was when I REALLY started having some truly memorable fun - plus you 'birth' Wrathion in Cata! I'm almost so envious of people seeing that again, that I nearly want to do Cata classic.
4:16 I didn't piece it together at first but they actually used that cave in Cata STV as part of the questline. Felt like a nod to the old hoaxes.
There's also a GM Island reference in-game now near Feralas, indicating that the GMs are a tad less organized than we tend to give them credit.
I’ve been to all of those places (at least the ones you can get to), I went to all of them in original vanilla, many with wall walking. Went to as many as you could get to in Classic.
Sadly they made Hyjal impossible to get to in Classic, it was always my favorite. We used to go to the bottom of the water pool under the world tree and take water breathing pots then summon people there and they would drown before they could reach the surface, it was a hilarious prank!
Video brought back a lot of good feels, thanks for making it!
Other than the dwarven village I've learnt so much from your video! Thank you. ♥
Despite no longer playing Classic, I still love the world that once was. Original WoW really was special in so many countless ways.
Verigan! Your videos never fail to amaze me. When I think I knew everything Warcraft has to offer, you show me things i've never seen. I will be exploring some of these locations in due course! Amazing content
Lowkey using these amazing videos to get locations to explore in WoW with the VR mod, awesome work!
that empty mountain tunnel you described on the side of the mountain over ironforge was one of the ways to get into the old ironforge area, if you use slowfall and point in the correct direction you can float down and clip into the area!
2:57 - "The Village": That "tunnel that leads to nowhere" actually used to be one of the ways to get to Old Ironforge. I forget the exact direction you had to go at this point, but if you got the right speed and brought slow fall capabilities with you, you could fall off and drift in such a way that would land you safelty in Old Ironforge.
Nice video. Vanilla Azeroth truly is an amazing world to explore. I had an amazing time playing through classic with a fantastic guild, a very fulfulling experience that I miss dearly
Another fantastically cozy video as always :)
There's a lake under the world tree in Hyjal that is extremely deep. Extremely. After getting undewater breathing, we would swim to the bottom and summon our guildies to the 'forbidden land' for a gander at Hyjal. Of course, unless they could breath underwater, there was no way to swim to the top before drowning. *Sniff, good times.
Sounds like its exactly out of the Attack on Titans origin lol
Love these videos you've created!
A few recommendations if you plan to make more vids of this nature:
1. Stonetalon Camp - Northwest Stonetalon (To get there: Swim down from Ashenvale near BFD)
2. Tirisfal Glades Secret Area - West of Deathknell (To get there: Mountain climb)
3. Echo Isles - South East Durotar (To get there: A long swim off the coastline towards the isles)
4. Azshara Crater (I think datamining may the the only way to get live video footage)
Keep up the good work!
No, there are private 1.12 servers where you can TP to Azshara Crater and see it in its entiretly
Thank you for the awesome video! You and JediWarlock encapsulate what I love about WoW.
I'm also curious what program / method you use to view this.
Mostly done using GM commands on a private server :)
@@Veriganic Thank you :)
Love Song of the Elves at 11:09, one of my favorite OSRS tunes
Love exploring so much! Hidden places in wow are just so cool. I used to go to hyal all the way back in Tbc! I also was a regular visitor in the caverns of time xD
I love this ❤ i was never a wow-guy (picked it up once with friends back in school, but it just wasn't my game), but you give me a glimpse of the experience i have missed out on. I'm glad for that. It's fun 😊
In the early versions of WoW (1.7 and below), Southern Silithus had a huge chunk of what eventually became the AQ raid, including underground tunnels and apparatus that dripped slime (matching the one in Undercity), placed where Buru would be in the 20-man raid. The tunnels were so expansive that you could actually fall into them if you were swimming right around the southern tip, where the Tauren Village is. Over the course of the patches, these features were removed, until 1.8 hit and completely broke the southern area, leaving jagged holes in the landscape, which were shown off in this video.
Fun fact about 1.8: It removed wall walking from the game, and also completely broke the southern tip of Silithus, causing the water to become fully solid.
That's really cool! Looks like I'll have to make a Places BEFORE Places at some point
@@Veriganic If you locate a server running on 1.8, I'd love to see it. There was a lot of broken areas in and around there that I did not have a chance to fully explore before it was fixed.
Additional fun fact: There used to be a Silithid that would sit in Southern Silithus yelling in Dwarvish for his Southshore Stout.
@@Dezrustrian yep Silitus was so broken in old wow (sadly never got around to see it).
like in wow 1.0.1 (day one) Silitus was 1/3 of it is later in wow story, like the "town" was not even there all there was for the player was a small camp near the entrence whit the flight point maybe a INN keeper and some tents whit vendors. no buildings.
and the AQ raid that was just a solid wall of flesh or something. and even though player could get there in 1.0.1 there was not a whole lot like half the mobs there did not even have drop tables (meaning they did not drop anything and if skinned droped light lether I think if they could be skinned at all.
and still the terrain was at part buggy.
(silitus was the zone that got the biggest change between launch and the end of vanila.
Western Plauge land only had the ruined city in the middle city wall removed for performance reasons.
I believe I remember hearing that that strange area inside Deadmines was used to test certain new things in game, specifically for early versions of assets that'd be added with The Burning Crusade, built inside the instance to ensure they don't break anything in the game without accidentally ruining live game servers, the trees floating on crystals being early versions of the ones we see in Nagrand, and the hole likely testing potential edges for The Outlands.
In the cave by the Tauren village in the south of Kalimdor after Wrath they added a dragon sleeping there.
Haha ! "The Tower" served me and my arena partner as a wedding ceremony location when i used to play on a private server! Damn... so many memories
The tauren farm was my hangout in vanilla. I discovered it by swimming around both continents. We staged a small play there for our guild. Good times!
I absolutely adore this channel! Keep up the great work!
Wonderful video, thanks! Well narrated and depicted! Indeed a great option for Private servers to make out something. For the last 5 years Turtle WoW has been such a place. The dwarven village is bigger and with interesting quests, aswell there are High elves as a playable race with a recent expanded starting zones. Other zones are improved (West of Tirisfal glades, elven outposts in Eastern Feralas and Ashenvale and more) or even made anew. RP is strong there.
Allthough I knew all those places, your presentation, your editing still made it very entertaining. Also, the only real reason for GM Islands visit, was to spot GMs that quickly warned or ported you away. (Or just stood afk lol)
Nice video! I remember about most of the places (because i had run a local server and explored it with friends), but i like to see them once more-
P.S. 14:33 Ferrari sucks
If anyone is interested in not only visiting alot of these wonderful places from these incredible videos, but quest in them too, I can wholeheartedly recommend trying out Turtle-Wow!
They've restored so much of the cut content in a Vanilla+experience, complete with well written quest and lore. Too name a few: Hyjal, Gilneas, Tel'Abim.
They've added 2000+ quest to both new and existing zones, added new dungeons such as Karazan in Deadwind pass.
I could go on, but let me stop here and just say that it's the best wow experience I've had, with a great community and very active player base. Give it a try!
I just wanted to thank you for the amazing camera angles and scenery That you put in your videos. It really sucks me into that world again.
Such a nice trip into the World I thought I knew... thanks for your dedication and work!
This is my favourite WoW channel on youtube.
Back in Vanilla, before BC, I visited many of these places. Hyjal, Ironforge airfield, the small village at the wetlands, the waterfall between Elwynn and Burning Steppes. Back then you could bug yourself up mountains by slowly walking at an angle, before it was patched out. We were once on top of the Stormwind walls. Then a GM showed up and asked us to leave. That was fun. First and only time I ever saw a GM in person.
Hyjal was easy. You just had to die close to the gate, then walk through as a ghost and revive on the other side.
Hearing halo wars music is always a pleasant surprise. And i never expected someone to use fallout 76 music in a video not about the game or the state its in, that was also a nice surprise to recognize after years of being away.
14:00 empty cave had a red dragon
Always a good day when you make a post, thank you for your work
Excellent video. I had a lot of fun watching this
It’s fun looking at zones that never made it into base wow and seeing how they influenced zones that would come in the future. Or random things added to these hidden corners of the world when the game was updated to cata. Like that cave at the end of the video has a red dragon in it now. We know nothing about it, other than it’s likely a tribute of some kind. But he’s there.
Beautiful background music, very well narrated.
I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this in the comments, but there is an entire old versions of Zul'Gurub that is reachable without godmode within Karahzan (in TBC ofc im not sure any other xpac). It's really neat, and a cool insight in to the design process of an early Blizzard Team instance!
I have also heard my friends refer to that Chasm within Deadmines as the early version of Outland? My buddy is always telling me how the trees reminded him of Nagrand. Anyhow, I'm really glad we got the version of outland that we did..but still cool to see a possible early design.
My favorite of these has to be the Ruins of AQ. I love walking through what was once proclaimed as a massive city, harboring so much life, and to see it now without the truth of it's former self. Haunting, really, especially since a race of god-awakened bugs would function in a way that humans could barely comprehend. Great video! Love em as always!
Something I find so charming about old wow is how weird they got with their designs. Like looking at the ideas they had for the emerald dream, the strange plants, the floating trees, the bright green atmosphere. I like the dream that we got in retail but it’s definitely a lot more softer and refined.
This may have just been an aspect of the private server build, but when my friend and I made one during the time of TBC just so we could explore; there were NPCs there that you could interact with to get gear and items.
I love that final Tauren place. I will definitely visit it some day and fish from The Coast!
I loved hearing the Fallout 76 music during the othet farm. It's very fitting and I am glad you went with it.
Yet another amazing video. You really don't miss!
I like how you have the chapters pop up at the bottom of the screen. Reminds me of the Halo 1 chapter titles.
This is so interesting! So many cool little secrets! :^)
Few people have probably ever even seen this stuff!
I love your videos! Gives that feeling of exploration and so cinematic🤩