One thing the players ACTUALLY wanted for "Classic /Vanilla +" was the completion of the original map, adding new zones for the dozens of missing areas, and finishing the incomplete questlines.
That takes effort, and more importantly, CARE and LOVE for the game. That of which, left with the forefathers of Blizzard. Just a small indie dev company now. Sad times.
How about Grim batol in classic etc 🤔 Its there could be easily made like 60 dungeon If i remember right theres even stairs leading to closed area of dungeon. Close cataclysm era part of dungeon and open stairs leading to dark and twisted version of ironforge
@@el3ndir97 you guys should look into Turtle WoW if that interest you, they're mainly focusing on completing vanilla wow unfinished content while keeping a blizzlike feel, they already added Tel'Abim, Gilneas, Hyjal, the "Thalassian Highland" which is basically northern lordearon iirc, it's also the high elf starting zone, an Emerald Dream raid and a lot more. Next patch is Tower of Karazhan but Grim Batol is supposed to be released in another patch at about the end of the year.
One thing I always found interesting with the real version of the map is how so many of the regions are roughly square or rectangular in shape - likely somewhat intentional so that they fit the map screen while in a zone. It's much more pronounced in the Eastern Kingdoms since the developers worked on those zones first. By the time they got around to Kalimdor, they started experimenting with more unique shapes that, for the most part, still fit well on a square or rectangular map screen.
Exactly! My friend and I were discussing last night and think that it looks like the early zones were designed independent of each other, perhaps by different devs, and made in a loose shape, then just placed on top of the larger map, which is why the borders between zones are such a mess.
duno if its still that way but back when they made the vanilla wow they basicly stringed together wc3 maps (square form) because wow was running on a extremly modified wc3 engine. so you could say every zone is basicly one or multible map,s on its own that are connected with a sort of cell loading tech to load in the new map and assets when you cross certain points that reminds me of gamebyro (morrowind).
Indeed, Azeroth was incomplete when WoW came out. I think many developers thought at the time they would finish in later expansions, but is very likely they never had the chance as new expansions were always the priority. I wonder from time to time what would have happened if instead of expansions, the team would have kept working in the same map until finished
I once played a heavily modified 3.3.5 private server. How modified it was? You started at lvl 80, standard, but there were no mobs. Only way to get gear, aside from White statless starting gear, was by getting honor. Which meant fighint players or enemy npcs. *All* towns, cities and outposts had their NPCs replaced by guards, leaders and subleaders. And all zones were capturable by a faction, by controlling all towns in it. How you gained control? You just had to burn a flag and hold it for five minutes, but the flag wasn't vulnerable unless the Town/City/Outpost Commander was dead, and if there were several buildings, some would have in them subcommanders that buffed the Commander, AV style. And the Commanders, particularly in large outposts, were no joke, even unbuffed. Every daily reset you go paid some gold, honor and arena depending on your contribution to the war effort, as well as how many zones your faction controlled. What if you were losing? Well, you would also get extra HP and Damage depending on how many territories the enemy controlled, and this applied to your faction's npcs as well. This applied by continent however, so Kalimdor and EK had their own buff stacks. I played rogue, and forming druid/rogue groups or even raids to go stealth, infiltrate and capture zones behind enemy lines was amaizing. Sadly that server died years ago.
One noteworthy thing to mention about Azshara: The old mountain at the center of the main landmass had the Alliance and Horde entrances for the scrapped Crater of Azshara BG. Supposedly they were going to do a MOBA style BG in it, in which waves of NPCs clash while the players tip the balance by fighting and completing objectives, kind of an expansion of what they already done in Alterac Valley. Sadly they weren't able to finish it due to AI Pathfinding being wonky at the best of times and later, with TBC, players began to gravitate towards shorter BGs, which meant that a very long BG, as Crater was meant to be, wouldn't be played. And so the BG was scrapped and later with Cataclysm the zone was reshaped and the mountain leveled by Goblins.
I love how this just has an early WoW kind of feel when there were videos, screenshots and stories about the small, less known things about the game that little to no people had seen or knew about. It gives off that charm of the world, about its wonders and the nooks and cranies that you need to actively search for to find them - the treasures that may not be tangible, but where the finding them and their tales are the reward by itself. Really well done.
Man, this kinda put me back 18years ago, very nostalgic watching these places from up above and remembering myself questing there as a teenager... WoW lives like a very fond memory in my brain, almost as a past life or something like that. I'm happy you did this on classic, I stopped playing just after WotLK
10:39 I love how they implemented GM isle there. I still have screenshots of a friend going there. We were in a group and I followed his dots on the minimap and he went there way in the northwest of kalimdor at the exact spot where it is on the map you show.
Super interesting. I understand that the area above Stormwind was originally planned to be an area where deathwing would surface from and they were going to make a raid there. But they eventually decided not to as it would have been difficult for Horde to get there with it being between Stormwind and Ironforge so they just removed it and made him come out of the Maelstrom instead.
This is even reflected in the Cataclysm cinematic: After leavign Deepholm, Deathwing first bursts out from a snowy mountain range: ruclips.net/video/Wq4Y7ztznKc/видео.html
@@720zone Old??? I was there 17 years ago, at BestBuy, picking up a little brown box with some angry elf dude on the cover.... We entered the Dark Portal, broke into Tempest Keep, and brought justice to Kael'thas Sunstrider. :-D
As of last week, you can still access Hyjal in SoD. A friend and I got into and took a bunch of screenshots together, explored the whole zone. We never got ported out.
Back in the very beginnings of vanilla classic in 2019, my 36 shadowpriest was on a flight path one day that crossed between Mulgore and Desolace, when I got dc'ed. Once I logged back in, I was no longer on the gryphon and fell down onto an area similar to the dwarven airport: an area that was rendered and meant to be flown over on the flight path, but not meant to actually be traversed on foot. (You can see these areas at 15:51: this cut-through where I fell is directly west of Stonebull Lake and north of the gray rectangular unfinished area.) After I fell, I ran east out of that pathway, and then south along those brown-topped mountains that form Mulgore's western border. To the east, I could look down toward the Tauren staring area of Camp Narache. To the west was an absolutely massive 90º cliff down into that gray unfinished zone. The "ground" in that gray area is down at the bottom of the world, quite a ways down from the Mulgore mountaintops... (levitate ftw!) When I ran south through the gray void, I made it into the brown area underneath Dire Maul. I could look up and actually see and target the elite ogres patrolling around the big courtyard far above me. Heading back north from Dire Maul, there was a small valley entrance cut into the giant vertical walls, with an actual rendered path leading north into that massive bowl-shaped crater on the map. Just like the map shows, the ground texture changes in a perfectly straight line in the north of the crater, it looks pretty trippy in person. Those were the only areas I was able to access after jumping down into the gray area, unfortunately. It was a unique and memorable little experience for sure. Getting to see what all of this actually looks like on the real physical map is really cool!
The level 50-60 zones are the zones I have the least, if any experience with even after starting playing in early TBC. Very much looking forward to next phase
1:53 I would have loved it if there had been a mountain pass from Stormwind to Dun-Morogh. With strong winds and snowdrifts, even without questlines and only with some mid-level yetis. That would be epic in my opinion to pass this mountain instead of take the train.
Just one minor correction, Wailing Caverns is the oasis south of the Crossroads, not the one in the north that you pointed out, you can even see the entrance of the instance, it's the light grey portion of the map there.
Thanks so much - I completely missed a few places; mostly Horde side stuff. Wish I'd have researched a bit more before blowing through this. Appreciate the correction.
@@kyleellis1825 No caves in the other pools (well at least caves deep enough), there's only 1 entry way, I used to level there a lot back during Vanilla
@@SampoPaalanen No, I'm saying the other pools filter through looser ground to reach the wailing caverns underground, with only the one entrance big enough for a person.
You used to be able travel (be patient, it takes some doing) from Kargath to SW and then glitch into a basement in that town. Got "under" Orgrimmar by going up the mountains to the west of the southern instance entrance. Saw Hyjal by dying and rezzing on the other side of the instance portal. The Hydraxian guys are on the little island to the north of the one you indicated. 😄
Oh man, this brings back SO MANY memories! Back during classic, made it a point to get into all those areas in the game, on the servers, no hacks and I managed to get into all of them, including UNDER Stormwind and into that large area, which was actually easy as there was a bug in Stormwind where if you jumped up on a wall, north of the bank near the exit that went to the left, there's a spot where two sections clearly join along the wall and you could "fall" through it if you jumped at it right, and end up under SW. You could get behind the portal, into different parts of SW and of course that huge zone. It was awesome. I miss those days.
LOVE this comment man. Exploration and getting to the broken spots in the game was the best part of the game back in the day. I'm with you - I miss our ability to explore; many of the small defects that made it possible were fixed even for classic, and of course they're all gone in Retail. The entire architecture of SW sitting above the texture map was completely redone as of Cataclysm, so there is no more "under" Stormwind. When the game is "fixed" it loses something. Really appreciate you commenting man. Thanks.
Seems like there is a general lack of Warcraft lore knowledge in this video, but it is interesting for those who are newer to the game or started with Classic. The “worgen starting zone” is the Kingdom of Gilneas and was done dirty in later WoW expansions, although its king, Genn Greymane gets a decent role in events going forward. I may add more missing tidbits of lore after I finish this video. …okay I finished the video. No major complaints except that Lordaeron, which is a very important zone lore-wise, was skipped since it I guess the BC parts were instanced and not available in the viewer used. It should have been at least mentioned that this huge chunk was not covered so no Silvermoon City or the zones around it or the Isle of Quel’Danas with the Sunwell.
Really appreciate your comment - especially that you still took the time to charge through the entire video. Thank you, and thanks for the follow-up piece. You're right on that I missed quite a bit of the lore, and a few locations even. I was originally only pointing out a few points to orient the viewer to each zone, but ended up screwing up a few. Anyway, like I said, thanks for checking in!
@@720zone You still did a good job overall. You could make a few more videos plugging some holes and maybe covering Nothrend, Pandaria, Outland/Draenor. etc.
In the alpha client the outdoor dungeons didn't have instance portals or even dark portal placeholders like Scholo and such, so places like ZF might have been planned to be similar to Jintha'alor before deciding on being made dungeons.
Huh... So instead of making all the elite areas into normal mob areas in Wrath, they could have made all of the elite areas into dungeons. Stromgard, Alterac Ruins, Hearthglen, Jintha Alor, Durnholde, etc.
@@kyleellis1825 Turning them in to dungeons would have taken way more work since they would have needed new dungeon maps (even if they were mostly copy + paste jobs) and tuning and stuff like that. I mean by the time TBC was out, the mindset "End game is real game" was already prevalent, that's why 2.3 turned a lot of elites in to normals so questing to the "real game" was smoother, it was just easier and more effective to remove the elite status in those areas. While I personally didn't like this, I understand why they did it considering by Wrath that was clearly the way they were taking the game. It makes me wonder why leveling is still a thing in retail considering the experience is extremely neglected and you can hit max in a day or two. I am digressing from the topic a bit, but I always thought, in retail WoW, they should have (by this point) removed leveling and converted questing in to an "end game pillar" and hide gear, transmog, mounts, etc. behind it. instead of making it some boring obstacle that doesn't reward you with anything useful it is now (as opposed to vanilla where you leveled slow enough gear mattered and mobs didn't scale, so leveling up actually felt like an increase).
@@720zone Yup! They were originally debating whether or not to have instanced zones. I guess previous MMOs didnt even have instances. If you wanted to kill a raid boss, they were all outdoors and you needed to be the first guild to get to them and slay them. Kinda wild in hindsight, isn't it? But this is my guess for as to why so many of these places in the open world exist as little mini dungeons like Stratholme, ZF, and ZG. They probably intended to make those areas the full dungeons before scaling them back in size as weird placeholders and making the instances a thing.
@@m0002856 yes, and the whole idea of instances was kept secret for quite a while, even after they finally decided that that was the way to go. The decision was before E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) 2003 but they didn't want to showcase it then because they didn't want the competition to copy it.
You should look at the maps and then compare it with maps which we used in Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 and you see how the continent slowly changed or that they had area's developed but never finished because something was there in WC1, 2 or 3.
Would be nice to know whats the actual % of playable map (including finished mountains) vs non playable map, Its actually a quite decent area, all put together.
I always forget about GM Island. Every single time I see a video like this and it comes up, I get absolutely blindsided by memories of the first time I heard of it, but it's like it doesn't exist in my brain outside of that
This video is like teleporting 15 years back: Classic Wow graphics, bad microphone, no annoying background music, long duration and paused and relaxed explanations. Back when internet wasnt overrun by rats without focus and emotional problems. 10/10
I think the most interesting is how "video gamey" the map ends up being. Obviously it was built for a purpose. Every zone being perfectly gated by conveniently huge mountains despite the environment being flat grassland, the square shape so it would fit nicely on a square map, but also the vastly different climates of neighboring zones. Dun Morogh is completely frozen over despite being directly on the equator, and right next to Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge. I guess maybe the excuse is it's elevation in the mountains. Though it's really utilitarian it's fun to look at it and see why it was built this way, what were the designers trying to accomplish. The Dwarf airfield is a good example. They know you will be flying through these areas and it's purpose is to make long flights more interesting.
I looked at this, as I was on my first playthrough. I was fascinated, that humans basically spawn right next to an end game zone. 😂 I love the whole forensical / archaeological stuff, where you can see, what game development back then meant.
I can see why it's difficult to dice that to put there. Its a vulnerable space between 2 major cities. I'd have made it an area accessible by booty Bay, and enclosed enough that you can only exit through a ship, or flight path.
I don't know if this is right or if I am making it up but I thought I heard that they might be adding new areas in SOD with endgame content and putting it in places that were undeveloped like some of the plain flat areas. Maybe I dreamt this
You can use far sight to explore areas like Hyjal. I will say, many of the unfinished areas are unsettling. One time I was in Ghostlands and I far sighted over the portal to EPL and got to the edge of that particular map and the world just ended with a huge drop off and that made me feel very unsettled.
I had the TBC version of the game and I was able to get to old Hyjal. In the place of the World Tree there is the skeled Archimonde in armor. It was possible to get there using various manipulations with the character’s speed, the length of the jump and long flight with the help of a pen. This is something worth seeing. In principle, it is worth seeing what kind of entrance was planned to Naxaramas through the portal in Stratholme. (i hope i can publish this link here with Archimonde 4.bp.blogspot.com/-d_3aAQSztQU/TlkWMaHo56I/AAAAAAAAAZs/RhkGz4rjCkw/s1600/WoWScrnShot_103010_150931.jpg)
Hey Jeff it's Telli. Basically a lot of the stuff you covered was what should have been in SoD - without all the extra nonsense we have in it now. Side note - you glanced right over Troll Village! One of the best hidden farm spots.
@@Blackadder75 Enter on the northern hill in Winterspring outside the furblog cave. The steps to get down there are slightly complicated so I'd suggest looking at a video on YT. You can get stuck and have to hearth or die and have to spirit res if you do it wrong, .
I believe most of Dun Morogh was not supposed to be there to begin with. The starting zone probably was supposed to be somewhere else and included the Ironforge airport. As for the Plaguelands they were supposed to be much smaller too with Stratholme located more South where they raised the terrain and created hills.
Why didn’t they make the map like the most recent version but keep the classic lifestyle in SOD? That would have been better. SW with ports would be awesome in SOD. Same classic game style.
One of the worst things Blizzard ever did for WoW was making these formulaic "new expansion = new continent" updates. Imagine how amazing the continents would be if they polished them to perfection. Kind of like how that tiny unfinished blip became the entirety of Gilneas, or what they did with Hyjal in Cataclysm. Retail looks like a joke partly because there's always some new super important continent that becomes completely useless the moment a new expansion comes out. When's the last time you reckon anyone's been to Draenor?
I see that you did not do the History view of the south part of Silutus as I know peaple said it looked completly diffrent between. 1.1.0 (retail Gold launch of wow) vs the beta build and later. Like AQ was not even there it was just a flesh wall going straight through as Blizzard did not have time to put an impasible ingame wall (what was there between launch and when AQ open). Senarium hold was not there at all the flight master and all that was on the road right before the swamp zone.
Wish you would've discussed more the hidden places with actual something to explore such as the dancing troll village, Silithus tauren village, New Man's Land etc. But good video(s) nonetheless!
Dude you're so right. Others pointed out the exact same thing...total missed opportunity. I might make another video dedicated to these secret areas. Really appreciate you watching and commenting. Thank you!
While others went raiding Blackwing Lair, i got bored of raiding after Molten Core and instead my endgame content was exploring the world just like that. Went up Mount Hijal and never got banned for it. (Friend back then told me that could happen anyway haha, maybe he was bullshitting, told me there were lines/panels that if you cross them GMs would automatically get alerted) Sometime i installed a private server for myself just so i could look around everywhere including GM island but the magic faded after that.
I show the way there for multiple players on live servers. Never had a problem with GMs. We even using summons there to kill other players under the world tree lake :D
Was disappointed to find my Classic WotLK char turning into a Classic Cataclysm char. But I still much rather play Cata than retail. Infinite mana is so strange, why even play?
Игры
One thing the players ACTUALLY wanted for "Classic /Vanilla +" was the completion of the original map, adding new zones for the dozens of missing areas, and finishing the incomplete questlines.
Twilight Dream as it would have been
That takes effort, and more importantly, CARE and LOVE for the game. That of which, left with the forefathers of Blizzard. Just a small indie dev company now. Sad times.
How about Grim batol in classic etc 🤔
Its there could be easily made like 60 dungeon
If i remember right theres even stairs leading to closed area of dungeon. Close cataclysm era part of dungeon and open stairs leading to dark and twisted version of ironforge
@@el3ndir97 you guys should look into Turtle WoW if that interest you, they're mainly focusing on completing vanilla wow unfinished content while keeping a blizzlike feel, they already added Tel'Abim, Gilneas, Hyjal, the "Thalassian Highland" which is basically northern lordearon iirc, it's also the high elf starting zone, an Emerald Dream raid and a lot more. Next patch is Tower of Karazhan but Grim Batol is supposed to be released in another patch at about the end of the year.
@@BadMaalox yeah this serv is gold :)
One thing I always found interesting with the real version of the map is how so many of the regions are roughly square or rectangular in shape - likely somewhat intentional so that they fit the map screen while in a zone. It's much more pronounced in the Eastern Kingdoms since the developers worked on those zones first. By the time they got around to Kalimdor, they started experimenting with more unique shapes that, for the most part, still fit well on a square or rectangular map screen.
Exactly! My friend and I were discussing last night and think that it looks like the early zones were designed independent of each other, perhaps by different devs, and made in a loose shape, then just placed on top of the larger map, which is why the borders between zones are such a mess.
duno if its still that way but back when they made the vanilla wow they basicly stringed together wc3 maps (square form) because wow was running on a extremly modified wc3 engine. so you could say every zone is basicly one or multible map,s on its own that are connected with a sort of cell loading tech to load in the new map and assets when you cross certain points that reminds me of gamebyro (morrowind).
The game designers saw the Canadian province of Saskatchewan and thought: "PARADIIISSSSE"
This is why I love the private servers that are playing around with these spaces as their version of classic+.
Indeed, Azeroth was incomplete when WoW came out. I think many developers thought at the time they would finish in later expansions, but is very likely they never had the chance as new expansions were always the priority. I wonder from time to time what would have happened if instead of expansions, the team would have kept working in the same map until finished
I once played a heavily modified 3.3.5 private server.
How modified it was? You started at lvl 80, standard, but there were no mobs. Only way to get gear, aside from White statless starting gear, was by getting honor.
Which meant fighint players or enemy npcs.
*All* towns, cities and outposts had their NPCs replaced by guards, leaders and subleaders. And all zones were capturable by a faction, by controlling all towns in it.
How you gained control? You just had to burn a flag and hold it for five minutes, but the flag wasn't vulnerable unless the Town/City/Outpost Commander was dead, and if there were several buildings, some would have in them subcommanders that buffed the Commander, AV style. And the Commanders, particularly in large outposts, were no joke, even unbuffed. Every daily reset you go paid some gold, honor and arena depending on your contribution to the war effort, as well as how many zones your faction controlled.
What if you were losing? Well, you would also get extra HP and Damage depending on how many territories the enemy controlled, and this applied to your faction's npcs as well. This applied by continent however, so Kalimdor and EK had their own buff stacks.
I played rogue, and forming druid/rogue groups or even raids to go stealth, infiltrate and capture zones behind enemy lines was amaizing.
Sadly that server died years ago.
Epoch WoW this summer.
One noteworthy thing to mention about Azshara:
The old mountain at the center of the main landmass had the Alliance and Horde entrances for the scrapped Crater of Azshara BG.
Supposedly they were going to do a MOBA style BG in it, in which waves of NPCs clash while the players tip the balance by fighting and completing objectives, kind of an expansion of what they already done in Alterac Valley.
Sadly they weren't able to finish it due to AI Pathfinding being wonky at the best of times and later, with TBC, players began to gravitate towards shorter BGs, which meant that a very long BG, as Crater was meant to be, wouldn't be played. And so the BG was scrapped and later with Cataclysm the zone was reshaped and the mountain leveled by Goblins.
I love how this just has an early WoW kind of feel when there were videos, screenshots and stories about the small, less known things about the game that little to no people had seen or knew about. It gives off that charm of the world, about its wonders and the nooks and cranies that you need to actively search for to find them - the treasures that may not be tangible, but where the finding them and their tales are the reward by itself. Really well done.
Can't thank you enough for this comment, and your excellent point; very well said. Thank you!
Man, this kinda put me back 18years ago, very nostalgic watching these places from up above and remembering myself questing there as a teenager... WoW lives like a very fond memory in my brain, almost as a past life or something like that. I'm happy you did this on classic, I stopped playing just after WotLK
holy moly what a time travel experience you took us through. I loved your ending or when you rapped it up to show us the details the dev team done.
Pls more content like this!! I’ve never even played WoW but I was enthralled from start to finish of this video. Subbed.
Hey man - I can't thank you enough for this comment and the sub. You made my day. I definitely have some similar stuff in the works.
Wow, thank you for this video. Great explanations and breakdown. Kudos and hope you continue to make content you are bound to get big
Much appreciated!
10:39 I love how they implemented GM isle there. I still have screenshots of a friend going there. We were in a group and I followed his dots on the minimap and he went there way in the northwest of kalimdor at the exact spot where it is on the map you show.
Love the content! Your dagger farm video helped me finally get it !
YES!!! grats!
awesome video, ive always wanted to see the world from this perspective :)
Great video idea! Was definitely a good watch!
Super interesting. I understand that the area above Stormwind was originally planned to be an area where deathwing would surface from and they were going to make a raid there. But they eventually decided not to as it would have been difficult for Horde to get there with it being between Stormwind and Ironforge so they just removed it and made him come out of the Maelstrom instead.
WOW Really!?! That's awesome!
Well, not the original plan. It was the original plan for the cata update. WE don't know what the vanilla plan for it was.
This is even reflected in the Cataclysm cinematic: After leavign Deepholm, Deathwing first bursts out from a snowy mountain range: ruclips.net/video/Wq4Y7ztznKc/видео.html
Its a strange deja-vu seeing videos like these pop up 15 years after seeing videos like these. 😁
Its the way it goes, what's old becomes new. Appreciate the comment!
@@720zone Old??? I was there 17 years ago, at BestBuy, picking up a little brown box with some angry elf dude on the cover.... We entered the Dark Portal, broke into Tempest Keep, and brought justice to Kael'thas Sunstrider. :-D
Nice how you returned to your first question in the end and answered it.
Good video, I'm always interested in those inaccessible places, I remember trying to climb mountains for many hours haha.
Thank you for the great video and for sharing the source! That‘s exactly what I‘ve needed!
Wow!
Just wow!
Such an incredible video I’ve just witnessed!
As of last week, you can still access Hyjal in SoD. A friend and I got into and took a bunch of screenshots together, explored the whole zone. We never got ported out.
Whoa really? I was able to climb in via Azshara and got ported out instantly. I'm going to try again. Appreciate the comment!
@@720zone We went in thru darkwhisper gorge
Back in the very beginnings of vanilla classic in 2019, my 36 shadowpriest was on a flight path one day that crossed between Mulgore and Desolace, when I got dc'ed. Once I logged back in, I was no longer on the gryphon and fell down onto an area similar to the dwarven airport: an area that was rendered and meant to be flown over on the flight path, but not meant to actually be traversed on foot. (You can see these areas at 15:51: this cut-through where I fell is directly west of Stonebull Lake and north of the gray rectangular unfinished area.) After I fell, I ran east out of that pathway, and then south along those brown-topped mountains that form Mulgore's western border. To the east, I could look down toward the Tauren staring area of Camp Narache. To the west was an absolutely massive 90º cliff down into that gray unfinished zone. The "ground" in that gray area is down at the bottom of the world, quite a ways down from the Mulgore mountaintops... (levitate ftw!) When I ran south through the gray void, I made it into the brown area underneath Dire Maul. I could look up and actually see and target the elite ogres patrolling around the big courtyard far above me. Heading back north from Dire Maul, there was a small valley entrance cut into the giant vertical walls, with an actual rendered path leading north into that massive bowl-shaped crater on the map. Just like the map shows, the ground texture changes in a perfectly straight line in the north of the crater, it looks pretty trippy in person. Those were the only areas I was able to access after jumping down into the gray area, unfortunately. It was a unique and memorable little experience for sure. Getting to see what all of this actually looks like on the real physical map is really cool!
The level 50-60 zones are the zones I have the least, if any experience with even after starting playing in early TBC. Very much looking forward to next phase
make sure to visit winterspring, ashara, silithus, etc. lvl 50 - 60 zones are among my favorites theyre so vibeful
1:53 I would have loved it if there had been a mountain pass from Stormwind to Dun-Morogh. With strong winds and snowdrifts, even without questlines and only with some mid-level yetis. That would be epic in my opinion to pass this mountain instead of take the train.
Oh man that would have been EPIC! Great suggestion. I've got a job on the wow team for you... :)
@@720zone oh man, the best days of wow (and blizz) are long ago - i wouldn't like to join a sinking ship.
@@Scabbalate if you had joined in the golden days, you would have to work 60 hours (or more) a week for 40 hours pay....
What a curious way to see the map, that was cool!
Just one minor correction, Wailing Caverns is the oasis south of the Crossroads, not the one in the north that you pointed out, you can even see the entrance of the instance, it's the light grey portion of the map there.
Thanks so much - I completely missed a few places; mostly Horde side stuff. Wish I'd have researched a bit more before blowing through this. Appreciate the correction.
I always assumed it was just the entrance at that one and the caverns kind of went to all three pools underground.
@@kyleellis1825 No caves in the other pools (well at least caves deep enough), there's only 1 entry way, I used to level there a lot back during Vanilla
@@SampoPaalanen No, I'm saying the other pools filter through looser ground to reach the wailing caverns underground, with only the one entrance big enough for a person.
You used to be able travel (be patient, it takes some doing) from Kargath to SW and then glitch into a basement in that town. Got "under" Orgrimmar by going up the mountains to the west of the southern instance entrance. Saw Hyjal by dying and rezzing on the other side of the instance portal. The Hydraxian guys are on the little island to the north of the one you indicated. 😄
Oh man, this brings back SO MANY memories! Back during classic, made it a point to get into all those areas in the game, on the servers, no hacks and I managed to get into all of them, including UNDER Stormwind and into that large area, which was actually easy as there was a bug in Stormwind where if you jumped up on a wall, north of the bank near the exit that went to the left, there's a spot where two sections clearly join along the wall and you could "fall" through it if you jumped at it right, and end up under SW. You could get behind the portal, into different parts of SW and of course that huge zone. It was awesome. I miss those days.
LOVE this comment man. Exploration and getting to the broken spots in the game was the best part of the game back in the day. I'm with you - I miss our ability to explore; many of the small defects that made it possible were fixed even for classic, and of course they're all gone in Retail. The entire architecture of SW sitting above the texture map was completely redone as of Cataclysm, so there is no more "under" Stormwind. When the game is "fixed" it loses something. Really appreciate you commenting man. Thanks.
That was really interesting, plus this map tool will be helpful for my conan exiles buildings :)
Glad to hear!
Awesome video thanks!
Seems like there is a general lack of Warcraft lore knowledge in this video, but it is interesting for those who are newer to the game or started with Classic. The “worgen starting zone” is the Kingdom of Gilneas and was done dirty in later WoW expansions, although its king, Genn Greymane gets a decent role in events going forward. I may add more missing tidbits of lore after I finish this video.
…okay I finished the video. No major complaints except that Lordaeron, which is a very important zone lore-wise, was skipped since it I guess the BC parts were instanced and not available in the viewer used. It should have been at least mentioned that this huge chunk was not covered so no Silvermoon City or the zones around it or the Isle of Quel’Danas with the Sunwell.
Really appreciate your comment - especially that you still took the time to charge through the entire video. Thank you, and thanks for the follow-up piece. You're right on that I missed quite a bit of the lore, and a few locations even. I was originally only pointing out a few points to orient the viewer to each zone, but ended up screwing up a few. Anyway, like I said, thanks for checking in!
@@720zone You still did a good job overall. You could make a few more videos plugging some holes and maybe covering Nothrend, Pandaria, Outland/Draenor. etc.
*_"Interesting stuff!"_* -720 Zone
Dude - not a joke - I thought about trying to edit out saying that so much. I was cringing while editing.
...interesting right?
@@720zone Lol it's fine I do shit like that, too. 🤣
In the alpha client the outdoor dungeons didn't have instance portals or even dark portal placeholders like Scholo and such, so places like ZF might have been planned to be similar to Jintha'alor before deciding on being made dungeons.
Really?!? I never knew that, but it makes sense for sure. Love hearing tidbits like this; thank you.
Huh... So instead of making all the elite areas into normal mob areas in Wrath, they could have made all of the elite areas into dungeons.
Stromgard, Alterac Ruins, Hearthglen, Jintha Alor, Durnholde, etc.
@@kyleellis1825 Turning them in to dungeons would have taken way more work since they would have needed new dungeon maps (even if they were mostly copy + paste jobs) and tuning and stuff like that. I mean by the time TBC was out, the mindset "End game is real game" was already prevalent, that's why 2.3 turned a lot of elites in to normals so questing to the "real game" was smoother, it was just easier and more effective to remove the elite status in those areas. While I personally didn't like this, I understand why they did it considering by Wrath that was clearly the way they were taking the game. It makes me wonder why leveling is still a thing in retail considering the experience is extremely neglected and you can hit max in a day or two.
I am digressing from the topic a bit, but I always thought, in retail WoW, they should have (by this point) removed leveling and converted questing in to an "end game pillar" and hide gear, transmog, mounts, etc. behind it. instead of making it some boring obstacle that doesn't reward you with anything useful it is now (as opposed to vanilla where you leveled slow enough gear mattered and mobs didn't scale, so leveling up actually felt like an increase).
@@720zone
Yup! They were originally debating whether or not to have instanced zones. I guess previous MMOs didnt even have instances. If you wanted to kill a raid boss, they were all outdoors and you needed to be the first guild to get to them and slay them.
Kinda wild in hindsight, isn't it?
But this is my guess for as to why so many of these places in the open world exist as little mini dungeons like Stratholme, ZF, and ZG. They probably intended to make those areas the full dungeons before scaling them back in size as weird placeholders and making the instances a thing.
@@m0002856 yes, and the whole idea of instances was kept secret for quite a while, even after they finally decided that that was the way to go. The decision was before E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) 2003 but they didn't want to showcase it then because they didn't want the competition to copy it.
I don't even play these kind of games, but this was super interesting!
Nice! Really appreciate your watching!
very beautiful the map from above
Eggsellent video. Cheers from a fellow explorer. Used to glitch 20 years ago myself.
awesome! Much appreciated.
Bad lands was always my favorite place to go, it just looked beautiful and no one quests there much, had it all to myself
Wrath client priests with levitate can explore these places pretty easy since you'll stick to the side of sheer drops
Ah, the memories. It was amazing getting to all those secret places.
You should look at the maps and then compare it with maps which we used in Warcraft 1, 2 and 3 and you see how the continent slowly changed or that they had area's developed but never finished because something was there in WC1, 2 or 3.
Dude such a good idea.. I might check those old maps now.
great video
Would be nice to know whats the actual % of playable map (including finished mountains) vs non playable map, Its actually a quite decent area, all put together.
Thanks for the nostalgia! ;-)
Wailing Caverns is one hill to the south, I think... you can actually see the entrance on the map. ;-)
Thanks for that!
I love these exploration videos. I love WoW so much.
Glad you like them!
You can also setup a private server and fly around, visit hidden areas and even edit and add your own content
I always forget about GM Island. Every single time I see a video like this and it comes up, I get absolutely blindsided by memories of the first time I heard of it, but it's like it doesn't exist in my brain outside of that
This video is like teleporting 15 years back: Classic Wow graphics, bad microphone, no annoying background music, long duration and paused and relaxed explanations. Back when internet wasnt overrun by rats without focus and emotional problems. 10/10
No joke. One of my favorite comments ever. Thank you so much man.
WHAT is the sand colored square box just below Zul Gurrub , at 10:11???
this is just a cave in a mountains (there's rumor that you can buy a Tigre in that cave but its false)
I think the most interesting is how "video gamey" the map ends up being. Obviously it was built for a purpose. Every zone being perfectly gated by conveniently huge mountains despite the environment being flat grassland, the square shape so it would fit nicely on a square map, but also the vastly different climates of neighboring zones. Dun Morogh is completely frozen over despite being directly on the equator, and right next to Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge. I guess maybe the excuse is it's elevation in the mountains.
Though it's really utilitarian it's fun to look at it and see why it was built this way, what were the designers trying to accomplish. The Dwarf airfield is a good example. They know you will be flying through these areas and it's purpose is to make long flights more interesting.
I remember using priests levitate to reach off limit zones like plateau next to Ironforge, Hyjal, Gilneas.
I looked at this, as I was on my first playthrough. I was fascinated, that humans basically spawn right next to an end game zone. 😂
I love the whole forensical / archaeological stuff, where you can see, what game development back then meant.
Humans spawn right next to an end game zone but cannot go there as there is no path. Undead on the other hand... lol
I can see why it's difficult to dice that to put there.
Its a vulnerable space between 2 major cities.
I'd have made it an area accessible by booty Bay, and enclosed enough that you can only exit through a ship, or flight path.
Or a zeppelin for the horde. IIRC zeps were added a little bit into classic too.
Would be cool if you can actually see the map from the side and compare how high the zones are related to sea-level.
Extracting the map textures and pasting them together in photoshop was a personal hobby of mine archiving each map update by build number.
"The starter area of Brill" Deathknell in SHAMBLES.
If you haven’t, try mentioning some of the stuff that we don’t typically see. There’s something off of Westfall and another off of durotar.
All the desert and rainforest at the south end of the map makes me think that’s the equator more than it is the bottom of the map.
06:50 ALL the way to the right of Arathi
The small patch of land a long the coastal line is a secret zone :)
Home of a dwarf farmer and his wife, the most wholesome npc's in Azeroth
great stuff...would be fun the see what difference TBC did to this one :)
Interested in Northrend!
cool video
This brings memories😄
I don't know if this is right or if I am making it up but I thought I heard that they might be adding new areas in SOD with endgame content and putting it in places that were undeveloped like some of the plain flat areas. Maybe I dreamt this
They did say that, and thats what the incursions are. Those portal areas were never really used.
It would have been awesome if they added more.
They also did it with a thing off the coast of arathi as well.
Is there a tool like thus but have higher resolution maps? Do I can zoom further.
Yes! old.wow.tools/maps/
@@720zone it zooms but the resolution stays the same. can't get more detail
You can use far sight to explore areas like Hyjal. I will say, many of the unfinished areas are unsettling. One time I was in Ghostlands and I far sighted over the portal to EPL and got to the edge of that particular map and the world just ended with a huge drop off and that made me feel very unsettled.
You could get into Hyjal by collision glitching the gate. But I dunno what patch that was fixed.
I had the TBC version of the game and I was able to get to old Hyjal. In the place of the World Tree there is the skeled Archimonde in armor.
It was possible to get there using various manipulations with the character’s speed, the length of the jump and long flight with the help of a pen. This is something worth seeing. In principle, it is worth seeing what kind of entrance was planned to Naxaramas through the portal in Stratholme.
(i hope i can publish this link here with Archimonde 4.bp.blogspot.com/-d_3aAQSztQU/TlkWMaHo56I/AAAAAAAAAZs/RhkGz4rjCkw/s1600/WoWScrnShot_103010_150931.jpg)
You can still sneak into hyjal by squeezing through the hills in the high lvl demon zone at the very south of winterspring
Would be nice if they actually started remaking most of the game based on classic finish all the zones with content graphics etc
Totally agree.
Great memories.
cool vid
I was able to get this map in my classic era addons but sadly it didnt work in Bc or Wotlk
It's weird how long it takes to get to Blackrock Sprire from Stormwind, but they are practically right next to each other.
Yes! You feel like its so far away...such a long journey. Really appreciate the comment man; thank you.
Subscribed!
Appreciate it very much man. Thank you!
do you have a link to this game files map?
You know I really should have added that and explained better. Appreciate you commenting! -- old.wow.tools/maps/
I wish someone would do this for Fallout 3 I always wondered what the Capitol Wasteland looks like
Hey Jeff it's Telli. Basically a lot of the stuff you covered was what should have been in SoD - without all the extra nonsense we have in it now. Side note - you glanced right over Troll Village! One of the best hidden farm spots.
Telli! - Hope you are well dude! Good callout on the troll village, should have pointed that out.
I know how to get to most of these 'hidden' spots, but how do you get to that Troll village?
@@Blackadder75 Enter on the northern hill in Winterspring outside the furblog cave. The steps to get down there are slightly complicated so I'd suggest looking at a video on YT. You can get stuck and have to hearth or die and have to spirit res if you do it wrong, .
I believe most of Dun Morogh was not supposed to be there to begin with. The starting zone probably was supposed to be somewhere else and included the Ironforge airport. As for the Plaguelands they were supposed to be much smaller too with Stratholme located more South where they raised the terrain and created hills.
I love that in Hyjal zone you can find Archimonde’s skeleton stucked to the Nordrassil tree
The little details like this were amazing. Definitely. Really appreciate your commenting man. Thank you!
15:03 which book ? my knowledge is limited XD
My bad! Its a bag, not a book: Karnitol's Satchel - horrible frustrating drop-rate quest.
Why didn’t they make the map like the most recent version but keep the classic lifestyle in SOD? That would have been better. SW with ports would be awesome in SOD. Same classic game style.
What a rich history, just need someone to remake it in UE5 and it will be the best moderm mmo
lol, you would need 50 people working on it for 3 years straight, or 5 years if you kept civilized working hours and conditions
typical alli doesn't know where wc is
RIP - totally fair.
As an alli player I have to say, typical alli spents 90% of gametime outside of closed instances in goldshire dueling and trashtalking randoms 😎
And this is a good example why sticking to just one faction in vanilla is just playing half of the game.
this shit is fascinating
Yea I thought so too. Appreciate the comment!
Haven´t played in many, many years, so why is every inch of this map still etched into my memory? *sigh* ;-(....
The “monumental” work - put it under water 😂
If you don' t know what to put in the unfinished spot? Add Water!
biblically accurate wow map:
his name is Jef
could use a private server. and explore Emerald dream in person
true! good call!
The entrance of uldaman is a bit more north near the border with Loch Modan, you hovered over a dwarven fortress.
Yes! Missed that, and Wailing Caverns.
One of the worst things Blizzard ever did for WoW was making these formulaic "new expansion = new continent" updates. Imagine how amazing the continents would be if they polished them to perfection. Kind of like how that tiny unfinished blip became the entirety of Gilneas, or what they did with Hyjal in Cataclysm.
Retail looks like a joke partly because there's always some new super important continent that becomes completely useless the moment a new expansion comes out. When's the last time you reckon anyone's been to Draenor?
THIS - really well said.
is this steven from ashes of creation
👍
erhm.... west is to the left hand side, east is to the right hand side. Kalimdor, is west of Eastern Kingdoms :)
Gadget-STAN 😂😂😂
Wow! Kalimdor look Iike evil penguin
LOL - I see it!
I see that you did not do the History view of the south part of Silutus as I know peaple said it looked completly diffrent between.
1.1.0 (retail Gold launch of wow) vs the beta build and later.
Like AQ was not even there it was just a flesh wall going straight through as Blizzard did not have time to put an impasible ingame wall (what was there between launch and when AQ open).
Senarium hold was not there at all the flight master and all that was on the road right before the swamp zone.
WoW climate doesn't make any sense 😅😂
Classic world has so much potential. I really hope Blizzard realizes it.
Blizzard didn't make wow, and they will never understand it.
It's over
Wish you would've discussed more the hidden places with actual something to explore such as the dancing troll village, Silithus tauren village, New Man's Land etc. But good video(s) nonetheless!
Dude you're so right. Others pointed out the exact same thing...total missed opportunity. I might make another video dedicated to these secret areas. Really appreciate you watching and commenting. Thank you!
While others went raiding Blackwing Lair, i got bored of raiding after Molten Core and instead my endgame content was exploring the world just like that. Went up Mount Hijal and never got banned for it. (Friend back then told me that could happen anyway haha, maybe he was bullshitting, told me there were lines/panels that if you cross them GMs would automatically get alerted)
Sometime i installed a private server for myself just so i could look around everywhere including GM island but the magic faded after that.
I show the way there for multiple players on live servers. Never had a problem with GMs. We even using summons there to kill other players under the world tree lake :D
Solo mance :D
huh, kind of odd, you mainly just looked at a map and said "there's nothing here" 45 times
Yea, that's fair -- Also: "Interesting Stuff" - like a 100 times.
Was disappointed to find my Classic WotLK char turning into a Classic Cataclysm char.
But I still much rather play Cata than retail. Infinite mana is so strange, why even play?
Tarren mill! Not tauren the race.
edit: and another one! it's Gadgetzan, "zan" not "stan"