Exploring the REAL WoW Map

[@mwhighlander]

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.

[@niqhtt]

Twilight Dream as it would have been

[@DJDekgit]

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.

[@el3ndir97]

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

[@BadMaalox]

⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠@@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.

[@postgarodegoogle2389]

@@BadMaalox yeah this serv is gold :)

[@Minorou]

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.

[@720zone]

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.

[@Theigzorn]

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).

[@sintanan469]

​​@@720zone Back in vanilla theres a place you can sneak up the rocks by Swamp of Sorrows path coming from the gorge. You can skirt the mountains to get up onto the "out of bounds" and see how the various regions overlap since all the out of bounds mountains are just copy/paste. There's actually a point just north of SoS where four zones meet and it's all just hard texture edges. Oh, and you can't forget Newman's Landing. There's a small area south of Wetlands along the west coast. Takes some water walk and some way to increase your jump distance (say, move speed buff), but you can get up to Newman's Landing. There's a sign, a ruined dock, and a ruined house. Newman's Landing is where all new characters spawn when first created; it is basically 0,0 spawn point for everyone. Once your character spawns in the first time they're teleported to wherever their race starting point is. If you stick around Newman's Landing long enough you can rarely catch new characters spawning in for a frame before they teleport to somewhere in the world.

[@steve81937]

@@Theigzorn No, the first prototype of WoW was running on a modified wc3 engine, later WoW got its own engine because the wc3 engine was too limited.

[@TTMS-Khaz-kun]

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.

[@720zone]

Can't thank you enough for this comment, and your excellent point; very well said. Thank you!

[@kyleellis1825]

This is why I love the private servers that are playing around with these spaces as their version of classic+.

[@189Blake]

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

[@IsmaelSantos-xv9qf]

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.

[@DrRhyhm]

Epoch WoW this summer.

[@Riael]

@@IsmaelSantos-xv9qf Ascension needs to make something like this with their money Buff professions so people craft gear that is competitive and turn it into a better version of Albion Online

[@Aztonio]

@@189Blake Midnight. 🙏

[@NorthshireGaming]

In the older versions of the retail map, far off the coast of Booty Bay, assuming you could reach it, there existed a kind of alpha version of Outland, heavily influenced by the Warcraft III interpretation of the zone, complete with trees floating atop large crystals. The layout wasn't too dissimilar from what we got when BC came out, but all of the buildings were clearly deteriorated versions with placeholder textures. Classic WoW is this time capsule of unending possibilities, there was so much content that just blew out the scope of what they could reasonably achieve. So much was just there, sitting unused, like when some people stumbled into hidden GM commands that weren't meant for players that got them access to a proposed test version of the Emerald Dream raid that would only be fully realized much later.

[@FallingOranges]

I thought the Alpha Outlands was in an out of bounds area in the Deadmines dungeon

[@IsmaelSantos-xv9qf]

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.

[@pikpik42]

Wonderful and very valuable video. For me it show's how genuine the community still is in it's admiration and fascination of the original vanilla map. I think Metzen said "The main character in vanilla is the world" and this one really got me. It's exactly how I feel while playing vanilla and why I love to revisit the imaginary place over and over for years. I told my brother some years ago "You know, all that famous green area in front of stormwind, the whole vibe and all that. This place doesn't really exist. It's just a virtual experience." and the fact that people feel connected to a virtual place still 20years after means a lot imo. I think the vanilla devs might be very nostalgic too, seeing this original raw version of the map, because they probably have a lot of memories with it, connected to hard work and busy nights and all that intent to create a world that would fulfill every warcraft fan's wildest dreams. They had so much fun when they played classic again for the first time ("Original World of Warcraft Creators Play WoW Classic!"). WoW truly has a magic value in our time. You can't make things like this up.

[@yuppi3495]

This really helps show how much stuff the Cataclysm revamp had to change to allow flight in the old world.

[@LordEmilous]

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

[@RaimaNd]

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.

[@Leeches-]

One of the things I always liked about looking at the WoW map this way is how colourful it is, or rather how obvious the splits are between the zones. You're in Swamp of Sorrows and its this cloudy yellow / green colour, head south and its immediately bright orange, head west and its completely grey in Deadwind Pass. Theres no blending, or basically none at all. One second its orange, now its grey. One second its grey, now its green. They got better with this in later expansions, but in these early ones I always found the transitions fascinating for some reason. I loved standing in the canyon thing that connects Redridge Mountains to Burning Steppes, or the gap in the hills that connects Duskwood to Stranglethorn Veil. I liked looking at the floor texture and the texture on the hills next to me and watching them rapidly and abruptly shift as I moved just 20 or 30 yards into the next zone. Skyboxes, same deal. Being in the Zangarmarsh skybox while looking into Nagrand for instance. Later in the game, I think around Legion, they introduced a potion called the Inky Black Potion, which when drank, changes all of the skyboxes in the game for you to be pitch black dead of night with a few stars here and there. It completely changes the vibes in zones.

[@720zone]

Really love this comment - I feel exactly the same way. They almost over-colored the world to make it vibrant and epic. I made a video flying over all of Eastern Kingdoms and really noticed how even the lighting and sky changed drastically from zone to zone. Thanks so much for the comment!

[@angelmusicvideos]

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.

[@kira_io]

thanks for taking the time to make this. great video, and love how interested you are in whats going on behind the scenes. i remember exploring the wow map files as a kid and still love to use wow assets for prototyping levels and stuff when im working on a project

[@br9377]

Pls more content like this!! I’ve never even played WoW but I was enthralled from start to finish of this video. Subbed.

[@720zone]

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.

[@iagopineiro9233]

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

[@720zone]

No joke. One of my favorite comments ever. Thank you so much man.

[@robezharvey8475]

Most based comment ever.

[@robezharvey8475]

@@720zoneI’m admittedly one of those rats (99th percentile ADHD since like 8yo) I agree fully however. Lots of space, relaxing, nothing overwhelming - your voice maintains a natural tone, nothing being spoken for the point of feeling in space or capturing engagement. Amazing truly. Love the comment, loved the video. Really hits the golden age of everything

[@lethalchicken1able]

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.

[@720zone]

WOW Really!?! That's awesome!

[@kyleellis1825]

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.

[@Lahiss]

This is even reflected in the Cataclysm cinematic: After leavign Deepholm, Deathwing first bursts out from a snowy mountain range: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jaKXimqwqd-hgcU

[@lorefreak94]

1:35 somewhere I had heard before Cata was a thing that zone north of stormwind was where deathing was intended to return at. This was later changed to that fracture below the maelstrom and that area north of storming became vestigial of past plans.

[@lorefreak94]

Thank you for the 💗 heart. Your videos remind me of what Hayven Gaming used to do. Looking forward to more.

[@Antares03]

My guild and I used to get underneath Stormwind in vanilla by starting in Dun Morogh and hopping up the hill at the point where the road eastward split. From there you can straddle between Loch Modan and Dun Morogh, walk past the mountain camp (that you fly over on the gryphon route, I can't imagine what the people riding the gryphons thought), and then walk along the northern border of Searing Gorge westward. At that spot was probably one of the highest cliffs I ever saw in vanilla. Usually only mages (using feather fall) and paladins (who would bubble) would survive the fall if they timed it right. If I recall it was so high that mages would need to cast feather fall multiple times and would end up like a kilometer downrange. After the paladins rezzed everyone (who jumped from the top and went splat), we walked for quite a while and we eventually got to the spot you were talking about at the start of the video under Stormwind. We would make our way over to the entrance-way of the city and have conversations with people inside the city through the wall there. The speech bubbles popped out of the wall to the people on the outside. lol My guild was never any good at raid dungeons but man did we have fun exploring all the corners of Azeroth no one else would tread. Those were some fun times.

[@SampoPaalanen]

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.

[@720zone]

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]

I always assumed it was just the entrance at that one and the caverns kind of went to all three pools underground.

[@SampoPaalanen]

@@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

[@kyleellis1825]

@@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.

[@kevorka3281]

Best map ever. I loved exploring any normally inaccessible area in WoW back in the day. I remember leveling a mage so me and a buddy could get into the secret deadmines areas (among other secret areas)

[@TheGoobMeista]

Dude, I've been playing WoW since right around the middle of TBC. This video helped me to truly understand the scale and just how big the map actually is, how much work and effort was put into the map and how much love and care was shown. Truly a work of art, both the Top-down geographical map and the in game map. WoW will always have a special place in my heart, whether it's the gameplay, art, or the map.

[@NeilRoy]

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.

[@720zone]

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.

[@avici0182]

This brings me back down memory lane. The amount of walking and that constant sense of danger i felt exploring new zones was some of the best feelings. One of my favorite zones was Hillsbrad Foothills :)

[@doopness785]

I’ve been playing Wow since 2005 and I didn’t notice until your video that Duskwallow Marsh is the shape of a dragon head breathing fire.

[@AhimtarHoN]

woah

[@legendofmira4759]

It's more seahorse shaped

[@MoosePolo]

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

[@eskaban_edits_beats_and_more]

make sure to visit winterspring, ashara, silithus, etc. lvl 50 - 60 zones are among my favorites theyre so vibeful

[@mjzangenberg]

Uldaman main entrance is just a tiny bit above where you pointed, the small green excavated ruins, dig site, not the dwarf bunker

[@pickle0177]

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.

[@720zone]

Whoa really? I was able to climb in via Azshara and got ported out instantly. I'm going to try again. Appreciate the comment!

[@pickle0177]

@@720zone We went in thru darkwhisper gorge

[@M0oseTacular]

I remember getting into Zulgurub and zul farrak a few times back in Retail TBC by simply blinking at the instance entrance.

[@BubskoTheMage]

You can still visit Hyjal in SOD. With the displacement glitch it wasn't possible, but there's a way to climb in and explore the entire zone

[@720zone]

Yea, I'm butchering several pronunciations here unfortunately. Fair call-out.

[@Scabbalate]

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.

[@720zone]

Oh man that would have been EPIC! Great suggestion. I've got a job on the wow team for you... :)

[@Scabbalate]

@@720zone oh man, the best days of wow (and blizz) are long ago - i wouldn't like to join a sinking ship.

[@Blackadder75]

@@Scabbalate if you had joined in the golden days, you would have to work 60 hours (or more) a week for 40 hours pay....

[@martyrzade]

I remember sneaking in to all of these areas back in 2005-2007. Toured a lot of the flat out of bounds areas and Mount Hyjal. Never got to GM island but got almost everywhere else. There was a cave up in Dun Morough that would tell you you were in Silithus and a nice little empty plain that would become northern Uldum. Old Ironforge and under Stormwind and some little unfinished places hidden all over the map.

[@720zone]

Love these memories man; thank you for the comment.

[@sebastaroth]

Really makes you appreciate the work that world designers/devs needed to do to allow flight, patching up all those dead zones and making things really fit together. :)

[@Pompomatic]

14:15 tiny mistake: Wailing Caverns is by the oasis to the southwest of Crossroads, not northwest. You can see a grey square on the map which is the entrance

[@720zone]

More than a tiny mistake. I missed it by a mile. SORRY to all my Horde bros, botched a couple horde locations in this run-through.

[@KevinArcade87]

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.

[@720zone]

Dude such a good idea.. I might check those old maps now.

[@RocoPwnage]

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?

[@720zone]

THIS - really well said.

[@xXESproductionsXx]

I really love this view. It really feels like you're doing a bird's eye view of everything as if there are players running around there.

[@Blackadder75]

WHAT is the sand colored square box just below Zul Gurrub , at 10:11???

[@g2n1337]

this is just a cave in a mountains (there's rumor that you can buy a Tigre in that cave but its false)

[@SnarlyCharly]

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!

[@720zone]

Dude - this is an AWESOME story! Love finding out of bounds areas like that. What I've found is that the game world is really divided into the primary texture maps (i.e. The map) that you play on, and models that are built separately and placed over or under the map. Like you can get under Stormwind because SW is a model placed over a portion of the texture map, which is just flat and beige. Sounds like Dire Maul is the same thing, and you got a chance to get to the texture map under it. Thanks so much for sharing this. Very cool.

[@THCV4]

Back in the day, the carbonate addon would replace the in-game map with one that was based on the real map tiles shown in the mini-map. It would let you seamlessly zoom in and out on continents and zones google maps style.

[@alphawoolf5981]

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. 😄

[@tobiaspause1775]

i explored a lot of theese zones ingame. For example, you can walk towards the above Stormwind area from the dwarf area. (the mountain who seperate the starting zone from loch modan are a good start). Hyal can be accessed from Winterspring, Below silithus from Tanaris, Southern Island and the corner of the World also from the southern most point of Tanaris while swimming. (at some point fatique buggs out) And the area northwest of the eastern plaquelands... you guessd it from the plaquelands. Also the bis snowfield left from the dwarfen starting area is accessible by a long march over the mountains. And you can even shortcut to menethil with that. And both, the caverns of Time and Kharazan crypt are well known already. However this was on vanilla Minecraft, and on vanilla Private servers. in actual Classic, they might have fixed some of theese possibilities. edit: Oh yeah, and there are som minor interesting places too. Sleeping Dragon cave on a Coast, or an abandoned hut northcoast from westfall. Places i didnt manage to reach ingame... emerald Dream and GM Island.

[@domehammer]

I remember back before Cata, you could go to southern Tanaris, could climb up a hill all the way up. Then creative noggenfogger use for slow fall to traverse until you reach behind AQ area of Silithus. Was stuff like a square of floating water back there.

[@720zone]

YES!! loved the early days exploration stuff.

[@pelagir1548]

Its a strange deja-vu seeing videos like these pop up 15 years after seeing videos like these. 😁

[@720zone]

Its the way it goes, what's old becomes new. Appreciate the comment!

[@pelagir1548]

@@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

[@good-questions]

Wow, thank you for this video. Great explanations and breakdown. Kudos and hope you continue to make content you are bound to get big

[@720zone]

Much appreciated!

[@supabass4003]

That small section of grey flat terrain between north west Badlands and south east Loch Modan is reachable on foot in vanilla. IIRC you can go to Kargath, and walk north west up into the hills and jump your way up out of bounds over a bunch of rocks. No wall walking or glitches are needed.

[@720zone]

Going to look for this. Never heard of that path.

[@Ollgabopi]

I remember we had the old wow map (with terrain) printed out. It sat at my father computer, and whenever you wanted to see what the level recommendation were, I ran to the map (because it had printed levels on it) good old kind of Analog days 😂 This video reminded me of it because it's the exact same map you use!

[@NPC-nn4qe]

*_"Interesting stuff!"_* -720 Zone

[@720zone]

Dude - not a joke - I thought about trying to edit out saying that so much. I was cringing while editing. ...interesting right?

[@NPC-nn4qe]

@@720zone Lol it's fine I do shit like that, too. 🤣

[@dadtype2339]

Just found you, and you're my kind of channel, subscribed. Been playing since 2005, a buddy and I would explore and get into some crazy spots, and it all started when my buddy said, I found a way to get under SW, wanna see??? Lol, oh Yeah! This brought me back thank you❤

[@720zone]

Right on man! Thank you so much. Like you, I'm really into the exploration, secrets and forbidden/unintended areas aspects of classic wow. Thanks so much for the sub; appreciate it!

[@shadowboy813]

@14:15 You got wailing caverns in the wrong spot. It's near the oasis to the south of the one you pointed out. You can tell because you can see the large cave mouth to the north of the oasis. What you pointed out was dreadmist peak.

[@720zone]

Yes! Totally missed it. Appreciate the comment.

[@jynx0riZ0r]

Thanks for the nostalgia! ;-) Wailing Caverns is one hill to the south, I think... you can actually see the entrance on the map. ;-)

[@720zone]

Thanks for that!

[@neckreth]

Nice how you returned to your first question in the end and answered it.

[@Vidordesign]

Back in 2004 I was making a machinima video, on an offline server. I teleported myself on GM island as well as in the area of mt. Hyjal and explored it with a dragon mount which couldn't fly. Sweet memory...

[@720zone]

Love exploration and old memories of WoW. Thanks much for sharing and commenting!

[@TheDolphinTuna]

5:08 Surprised you didn't mention the tower on the north coast. You can get there by swimming along the cliffs from the Hinterlands, but to the best of my knowledge there's nothing to do there in Classic.

[@720zone]

I should have!

[@phaethos]

Wrath client priests with levitate can explore these places pretty easy since you'll stick to the side of sheer drops

[@spongerobert]

I used to explore a lot of the inaccessible areas around Stormwind in game as there was a very easy spot to clip out of the map. You had to jump on a box, then a wall torch, then kinda wedge yourself between the top of the archway and the roof and mount your mount and it would push you out of bounds. I don't think you can do the glitch in current WoW classic though. I also used to do a ton of "climbing" with the forward + jump tap. I spent more time trying to climb places than lvling my character. My greatest climbing achievement was climbing up Northshire Abbey all the way up into that tower bit at the top. Also climbing the rafters of the AH and doing a little dance at the top. Just climbing up to the tippy top of the fountain in front of the bank in Stormwind was pretty cool. We didn't have very good internet at the time and I didn't have millions of hours to spend on the main game so instead I just screwed around and tried to glitch myself into strange places, having to message a GM every now and again to TP me back because of getting stuck and unable to Hearthstone.

[@720zone]

Dude I love that you remember this. I still do this clip on SOD. You can do it. You have to get to the exact spot you remember, start mounting up and alt+F4 kill your wow client. When you log back in you're mounted and 1/2 clipped through the wall. You can jump and you fall down below the SW model to the flat texture map below. LOVE exploring old wow.

[@Lo3devtrader]

We searched everywhere and under that lands also. Even the ocean. Found areas that were in development and everything

[@fergus247]

the map that was explored was designed without flying mounts in mind, would be interesting to see how it looks in Cataclysm and onward after flying was enabled in the classic zones

[@shawnganske8731]

Bad lands was always my favorite place to go, it just looked beautiful and no one quests there much, had it all to myself

[@wombatpandaa9774]

If a world revamp ever happens in retail, I really hope the whole map is made more cohesive, with a lot of these "hidden" places fleshed out and made into playable spaces rather than the boring mountains they are now. The previously unavailable empty nothing between Stormwind and Dun Morough is particularly funny to me. In a real world, that place would absolutely have have settlements or at least a road. In retail it's currently a bay, which would be the perfect place for a joint naval/air force base.

[@Wegetsignal]

Extracting the map textures and pasting them together in photoshop was a personal hobby of mine archiving each map update by build number.

[@LucasWolthuis-j1d]

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

[@sintanan469]

You missed the fun of raiding the island, then. Turns out with water walk and mount speed from a paladin, you can get three people juuuuuust close enough to GM Island that the island's graveyard is closer than Teldrassil's as you die. This allows for graveyard res, then you can warlock gate people to the island. We all got banned for a week. :D

[@TheFrantic5]

I managed to get under Stormwind onceby climbing up a mountain range on western edge of Dun Morogh and walking around and down, past the dwarf starting area. I had more fun doing that than playing the actual game, to be honest. I also got to the dancing troll village once, but forgot how.

[@ShadowdaleA]

First area they have finally teased with the test realms. It's Searing Basin. You can actually find the cut off cave in Searing Gorge that would have led to it.

[@IS4Studio]

Ah, the memories. It was amazing getting to all those secret places.

[@matthewrheinschild6818]

I don't even play these kind of games, but this was super interesting!

[@720zone]

Nice! Really appreciate your watching!

[@TurkishSupremacy]

Haven´t played in many, many years, so why is every inch of this map still etched into my memory? *sigh* ;-(....

[@DrewPicklesTheDark]

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.

[@720zone]

Really?!? I never knew that, but it makes sense for sure. Love hearing tidbits like this; thank you.

[@kyleellis1825]

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.

[@DrewPicklesTheDark]

@@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).

[@hctaz]

@@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.

[@Blackadder75]

@@hctaz 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.

[@Matikz007]

12:34 No, that's not the case. I've gone there in SoD from winterspring over the hill and around the actual TP trigger. I ended up going there last phase just because I was bored at 50.

[@720zone]

Thanks for the correction; I'm sure you're right.

[@zeitok8]

Good video, I'm always interested in those inaccessible places, I remember trying to climb mountains for many hours haha.

[@Malikor]

Is there a tool like thus but have higher resolution maps? Do I can zoom further.

[@720zone]

Yes! old.wow.tools/maps/

[@Malikor]

@@720zone it zooms but the resolution stays the same. can't get more detail

[@albuquerqueThomas]

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.

[@TheJeshito]

I've been to GM island, back in the day when I started playing wow, there was no way to get official live wow in my country, so what we had was a private server some friends got built up, it was actually kinda neat, it was a TBC server and it wasn't all that buggy even, back to the GM island story. We usually used it to hang out with my friends when we weren't doing anything in particular or we where just having any kind of small event or something, it was pretty cool, nothing special about it other than it was an "out of bounds" place, which made it kinda VIP and exciting.

[@720zone]

LOVE this story, and agree completely. Its not really about what is at the forbidden location; its that you were able to get there, and how you did it. Thanks so much for this comment.

[@XRCADIA]

It's actually really easy to create your own local private server and give yourself gm powers to explore

[@MajorSquiggles]

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.

[@shokeya]

I remember using priests levitate to reach off limit zones like plateau next to Ironforge, Hyjal, Gilneas.

[@JoachimFosse]

06:50 ALL the way to the right of Arathi The small patch of land a long the coastal line is a secret zone :)

[@Blackadder75]

Home of a dwarf farmer and his wife, the most wholesome npc's in Azeroth

[@Eskoxo]

Would be nice if they actually started remaking most of the game based on classic finish all the zones with content graphics etc

[@720zone]

Totally agree.

[@katalinks]

I love that in Hyjal zone you can find Archimonde’s skeleton stucked to the Nordrassil tree

[@720zone]

The little details like this were amazing. Definitely. Really appreciate your commenting man. Thank you!

[@rjrulz327]

Love the content! Your dagger farm video helped me finally get it !

[@720zone]

YES!!! grats!

[@AndreasHontzia]

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.

[@MajkaSrajka]

Humans spawn right next to an end game zone but cannot go there as there is no path. Undead on the other hand... lol

[@BoomixDe]

You can also setup a private server and fly around, visit hidden areas and even edit and add your own content

[@danilocalic797]

Notice how the border between Searing Gorge and Badlands is symmetric

[@lichy2390]

awesome video, ive always wanted to see the world from this perspective :)

[@Shadovvwithoutbody]

I started playing wow in early tbc. What happened with Stitches? I feel like I've seen him, but not sure, I was little kid. -retail I rp walked few days ago in the middle of the night in duskwood and it hit me that I've not seen or heard about him for long. Although I've met bunch of unknown elites - the pumpkin was my favorite - and a ghost fox in the bushes. :D

[@720zone]

You should come to HC-Era man. That version of the game is full of players like you that missed original Vanilla. Plenty of Stiches kills on Defias Pillager. :)

[@othsasaa5386]

15:03 which book ? my knowledge is limited XD

[@720zone]

My bad! Its a bag, not a book: Karnitol's Satchel - horrible frustrating drop-rate quest.

[@HotNHorny]

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.

[@TheStarForge]

Classic+ should really just be about adding to the existing world. SOD sorta started doing that, but then fell off HARD when it went into the emerald dream easy leveling crap. It's a journey through the WORLD of Warcraft, that is what Classic is about.

[@thinkeightsix]

It's weird how long it takes to get to Blackrock Sprire from Stormwind, but they are practically right next to each other.

[@720zone]

Yes! You feel like its so far away...such a long journey. Really appreciate the comment man; thank you.

[@fandyllic1975]

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.

[@720zone]

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!

[@fandyllic1975]

@@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.

[@fadenkreuzjohn4369]

I'm only at minute 4 at the moment of writing this, but i think it would have been cool, if you show how they changed these "flat" or "unfinished" parts in Cataclysm/Retail when flying on the classic map became available. I know we can check all that our selves, but i know my self and i will never really do it ingame. E.g. the area above Stormwind is water now.

[@720zone]

Dude, thanks so much for the comment. Here you go! kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z5LMhXiHaNWWh7s

[@adriangar95]

What a curious way to see the map, that was cool!

[@720zone]

Really appreciate it. Thank you!

[@foxmoulder7724]

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.

[@MajkaSrajka]

Or a zeppelin for the horde. IIRC zeps were added a little bit into classic too.

[@Moldfingers]

Great video idea! Was definitely a good watch!

[@720zone]

Thanks so much!

[@emazio4122]

I can't find the website, can anyone share a link?

[@720zone]

old.wow.tools/ - click the 'maps' link, and change your version and continent with the menu at the top left. Super fun exploring these maps. GL man!

[@lethalchicken1able]

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

[@trisst9370]

They did say that, and thats what the incursions are. Those portal areas were never really used.

[@720zone]

It would have been awesome if they added more.

[@brandoncastellano1858]

They also did it with a thing off the coast of arathi as well.

[@viprkings4418]

I was able to get this map in my classic era addons but sadly it didnt work in Bc or Wotlk

[@Scott89878]

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.

[@niqhtt]

You could get into Hyjal by collision glitching the gate. But I dunno what patch that was fixed.

[@SetAngelGreen]

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)

[@breed4659]

You can still sneak into hyjal by squeezing through the hills in the high lvl demon zone at the very south of winterspring

[@CarlosSpicyweiner-iv8mq]

how do you not understand layers?

[@720zone]

Not sure what you mean man? I think I understand them? Appreciate the spicy comment nonetheless. Cheers man!

[@terrence4982]

The moment I saw a map I knew this was gonna be a good listen

[@720zone]

Appreciate you so much man. Thanks!

[@brandoncastellano1858]

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.

[@nb-xc8rk]

do you have a link to this game files map?

[@720zone]

You know I really should have added that and explained better. Appreciate you commenting! -- old.wow.tools/maps/