WoW Exploration: Blackwing Lair Behind the Scenes Secrets

[@mulgrath3750]

As someone that became a programmer because of Warcraft 3 and WoW I absolutely love these exploration videos!

[@stonemove4207]

Damn I also became a programmer because of Warcraft 3. I made a few maps, my most popular was Dismembered TD. Anyway, cheers !!

[@720zone]

Thank you so much for the comment. Awesome that you were inspired by WC. I was a WC2 through TFT player before jumping to wow in 04.

[@WastedDad]

Dido

[@nickykasan]

This was an incredible video. Please do more with more of the classic raids. There were so many tricks used by developers to make the game work while also being presentable and these videos help show those tricks. Deeply enjoyable. Please do more!!!

[@720zone]

Can't thank you enough for this comment; really appreciate it. Definitely planning to do more.

[@jeffsaffron5647]

I loved this... I never realized they actually did the work to make sure BWL actually fits inside the mountain.

[@Nohugsforyou1]

I found this interesting and very well produced! One of my favorite “secrets” that I discovered in-game was a window in Karazhan that led to an early model of Zul’Gurub on one side and a creepy farm on the other side. The farm included corpses strung up by nooses on a tree.

[@zentarion.]

im not sure if the old zg model is sitll on retail but atleast on the vanilla version of the game you can climb over the wall of zg in some places and see the old models aswell

[@Ben79k]

My younger self enjoyed exploring the maps in vanilla to find all of the "secrets" and "hidden areas".. even playing Classic as a more mature adult I still felt a lot of intrigue from the maps, as a player, even though I had knowledge through model viewers and private servers, and, well, age.. such a gorgeous game. It really played a huge part in my LIFE. thanks for making this little tour around and you did a wonderful job explaining, for what it is.

[@720zone]

Thank you so much for the thoughtful comment here man; made my evening. :)

[@Omgamage]

How neat! I remember back in Wotlk being able to get under what I now know to be the Stormwind model and run around the unfinished textures underneath. Brought back a lot of fun memories, thanks!

[@720zone]

You're welcome! Thank you for watching and commenting. Love the old memories of exploring.

[@Skiballer]

Used to do that in org to get under the bank, had to mount under a slope and dc just at the right time

[@TheFlyingZulu]

Too cool... brings back a lot of memories. Playing a NE rouge and raiding MC, BWL and Onyxia was my favorite part of WoW. Raiding Naxx and ICC in WoTLK as a human paladin was my second favorite part of WoW. I actually completed Shadowmourne. That was the last time I played.

[@ErikvsLenny]

This felt like a 7 Min Video. Time flew by :O Thank you !

[@720zone]

Thank you so much!

[@duhg599]

I don’t know if this would be possible, but it’d be wonderful to see all of the models that make up Blackrock Mountain linked together, from Blackwing Lair all the way down to Molten Core. Just to get a sense of scale of the whole thing. Because when you think about it, it’s amazing how much story Metzen and Morhaime packed into this megadungeon.

[@720zone]

Dude, what an awesome idea. This could definitely be done using WoW export, and bringing the models into Blender. I'm trying to teach myself that program now.

[@fsgjafgja]

@@720zonewould be awesome to see!

[@Skiballer]

@@720zone Would you be able to export the model, and import it into your wow server?

[@easycake3251]

This was actually awesome to watch, and to just see the models from "Blizzards perspective" and how the original legends did it in the day. Thank you for showing this.

[@720zone]

Appreciate the comment; thank you!

[@sssrgreat]

Wow, one big model for whole insances and even Stormwind city, this is mindblowing to me. Great exploration videos., I enjoy it so much. Keep going!

[@720zone]

Hey! Thank you so much for this comment. Really appreciate it.

[@prz9ano5]

Wow this was really cool. I find this stuff super interesting as well. So much time raiding BWL, to see from this perspective is really fun to think about. I can see my tiny ant look self from afar hiding behind the wall for Broodlord and Chromaggus. Fun to see.

[@TheFalladin]

Not gonna lie, I wasn't even gonna press on this video. I thought it would just be another out of bounds/lesser version of Hayven Games. But no this was very original and a nice breakdown that I did not expect. Hats off to you 720 Zone

[@720zone]

I appreciate this comment so much; thank you. Just the mention of Hayven hits me hard. I take so much inspiration from him. I was a huge fan.

[@AlexeyFilippenkoPlummet]

Thanks for the tour into inner workings of WoW mapping, Jeff! For me as a game creator seeing videos like this is especially inspiring - I'm on a development stage of my game where I will be creating new maps for it soon. And my game (action survival called Pupencia) is heavily inspired by WoW (in graphics style, fantasy setting and lore etc), so watching how WoW is made always motivates me :) The main fun for me is in seeing how the worlds you created get populated/studied/played by people and start truly living. As a separate example, this year I created a lush map for Quake Live, and recently I saw people invent and perform such tricks on it that I never even knew were possible. I made it, and now it's alive in the hands of other players. That's just a magical feeling.

[@720zone]

That's really awesome - glad you're finding my exploration videos inspiring! Pupencia sounds awesome - I'll have to keep an eye out.

[@AlexeyFilippenkoPlummet]

@@720zone thank you for admiring my project and inspiration!

[@AENock]

I personally love exploring unused assets hidden within the game files. The alpha version of Karazhan and the human-themed WSG base are two of my favorite finds. I would love to see them rigged up properly but that is well beyond my scope of understanding 😅. I just have to settle for day dreaming lol.

[@Eyevou]

One of my favorite things to do is load up a sandbox and go through old versions of the game and just look at the maps and how they changed. I've recently went down a rabbit hole that lead me to The Alpha Project, a group of enthusiasts attempting to recreate WoW in its earliest state.

[@720zone]

Yea same here! You and I share similar interests for sure, I can tell by your other comments. I really loved this portion of this Staats interview. He discusses the earliest versions of WoW, and whether we might get them at some point like we did with the Alpha project that was leaked recently. This old stuff is so interesting: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5LbdaSQiqaIhLMsi=DjmpxK8h8XJbp1tT&t=6901

[@Eyevou]

​@@720zone Omar Gonzalez, previous wow classic lead, once talked about how their internal SVN worked and that they had changelogs for all the way back to 1999, back when wow was a WC3 mod. It's all super interesting stuff.

[@sirflimflam]

In the old days in vanilla before flying mounts and all that one of my favorite past-times was exploration. I was a mage so that made getting around and through invisible walls easy. One of the really fun things about getting out of dungeons in particular is the outter maps are often older, beta maps because the dungeons were being developed in conjunction with the outside map. So even the BRM map around Blackwing Lair has beta elements to it. Getting out of Zul'Gurub has some beta elements of Stranglethorn Vale. Same goes for Zul'Farrak, and well, really any map that has loaded chunks copied from the base map. I managed to find ways out of every map basically in game, and would spend hours detailing the differences I could find. It's one of my fondest memories of vanilla wow.

[@720zone]

Absolutely LOVE this comment. My favorite kind of story here. You were far beyond me as a wow explorer. I enjoyed wall-jumping and trying to reach the unfinished areas between zones in on the main continents, but never did much exploring beyond dungeon walls, which i'm getting into now with these videos. I'm amazed at what people did on the live servers back in the day. Love the nostalgic stories like yours. Thank you!

[@sirflimflam]

@@720zone I'm sure you've heard or seen it, but my absolute favorite one was getting out of bounds in Deadmines, slowfalling for like a minute into a black abyss, and if you got the angle just right, instead of dying you'd land in a dark area that eventually lead to an area designed to look like old school outland with the floating crystal trees and stuff. It was mental the weird things you could find out of bounds.

[@bengabrielson9381]

awesome work. love these "behind the curtains" videos, hope more are coming

[@bengabrielson9381]

ive never seen a youtuber have an in depth look at the wow models like you are doing here. would be cool to see the "world model object" models associated with karazhan in TBC, like the main library and netherspace

[@720zone]

Can't tell you how much I appreciate the comments man; made my day. I'm definitely planning to look at Kara soon and other TBC models soon. Thanks again.

[@Malikor]

1:11 in some more plain looking zones, like tanaris, you can sometimes see the sims between the chunks. 3:41 oh yeah, the chapel towers are also sitting on top of trade district, not where they ought to be. I believe the sw keep also has some models that when you view from afar present themselves more majestic than the actual thing you visit in game. 9:00 interesting, so that means they they already knew how the first raid encounter would look like way before the BLW patch. 12:16 I've actually been there in game on live servers, there's a jump you can do in eastern dun morogh that takes you up the mountain and leads you in between zones to either behind the searing george FP or under the stormwind model 13:20 silvermoon city in Tbc was notorious for these smoke and mirrors where as soon as you went somewhere just a little out of bounds you would see that all the towers are only textured from the specific angle you can see them normally. I believe it was such a hassle for the developer that it was the only city that didn't allow flying in cataclysm. 15:50 bc they would work on these simultaneously, sometimes these 'instanced' zones would hide older versions of zones before changes. I think EPL as viewed from outside stratholme was one example. Great video, keep em coming.

[@Eyevou]

The BWL instance (released in 1.5.0), itself, was introduced in 0.11.0, although it wasn't in its final version. It's crazy how many assets were introduced during the development cycle of classic. They had so much planned out that it took until TBC to actually get through most of what they built.

[@KallTorak]

Awesome video bro! Was super cool to see how everything was set up!

[@720zone]

Thank you so much KT!

[@jufius]

These are cool because of how secretive Blizzard is with how they developed WoW. And how they put invisible walls / etc, preventing people from exploring beyond what they want people to see. So yes this is neat! 🤓

[@ar4ijs97]

3:10 Those model clusters, like stormwind, aren't actually based on proximity but rather view angle of your camera. There are special assets, square planes (forgot how they are called, portals or smth) and every section of the city is assigned to them. the sections only activate when camera looks trough those portals. Also those sections are assigned as "Inside" and "outside" so if camera does not see portal but are "inside" collision box it will still show the model, vice versa for sections assigned to "outside" like exterior of an inn. The Stormwind Trade District is assigned as "inside" so when you used flyhack you only saw the model when you got "inside" the model and not when hovering above it. sometimes, if those portals are placed badly, you may experience flickering of places when you are ingame, this is especially noticeable in Razorfen Kraul dungeon. someone made that dung very poorly :P you will also experience these glitches when using macro command to increase camera distance further than intended. ..and yes, it is done to optimize game, to be able to play it on potatoes :P

[@720zone]

Hey man, thank you so much for this explanation. I was guessing a bit at what's happening, but only being visible from inside, as you explained, makes much more sense. You see that often when you fly around outside of these models, then occasionally they flicker into view at certain angles or distances, like when I'm above the bwl suppression room, but for the most part you only see the majority of detail when you're very close or inside. I was hoping folks with better understanding than me might chime in; really appreciate it.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

In traditional rendering a *Sky Box* shows an “outside” 6 textured planes when you are inside the box volume. Al so called a Cube map because you store 6 textures for +X, -X, +Y, -Y, +Z, -Z. L4D uses this technique to make the “outside” model of the surrounding building seem far away. WOW is using a generic portal system to determine LOD (Level of Detail.)

[@MrGrus11]

What I find the most interesting about some of these WMO's is that when they imported the part of the map they wanted to include with the WMO, sometimes they'd use an earlier version of the one we ended up getting when a patch actually released. I'd be interested in some instances for that very reason especially during the vanilla days because often times the dungeons / raids were developed in very early builds of the world design so you'd find things in the maps included in the WMO's that were not released in the final version of the world design. Take Karazhan for example where you could find interesting parts of Zul'gurub or even a smily face in the ground from when they were creating the surrounding maps. Another interesting fact about the map ID's is that they would often use the same ID for maps that were extremely far apart.

[@Gurchen]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing this! Definitely would love to see more videos like this about other hidden parts of the assets!

[@DavidBarryOfficial]

Reminds me of how in Warcraft 3 map editor, you could place down a bridge as a model but also interact with it in game. I had no idea that raids, BRM, ect. Were basically expanded version of the same idea.

[@overdev1993]

Wows engine is based on the Warcraft 3 one so it makes sense ;)

[@OmegaFlec]

Behind the scenes stuff always fascinates me; a peek behind the curtain.

[@freedonx]

BWL has a special place in my heart , right after completing my T2.

[@EQ_EnchantX]

always fun seeing how they made old games work. Its so hacky but done so well you would never realize it when playing normally.

[@user85937]

I don't play WoW anymore, but it's always interesting to see how it works.

[@720zone]

Thanks for watching! I do the same with SC2, haven't played in over a decade, but I love watching the videos. Really appreciate the comment.

[@Chase516]

Very awesome video man, thanks for making it!

[@720zone]

Appreciate you watching; glad you enjoyed it.

[@Catalyst8487]

Don't know how true this is, but I heard a long time ago that the reason the models extend well past the raid/dungeon portals, beyond player visibility, is because early on latency and server issues would sometimes result in a player going thru, and they way beyond, the portal before the game registered it and changed your map. In order to keep a sense of continuity, instead of players just walking into the abyss (end of the model), they extended them way beyond where players would normally be able to get to, even in crappy server / latency times.

[@overdev1993]

Yeah with a high latency you can get last the portals, but there is a collision wall right behind them so you can't walk very far having the existing world copied over is basically just for scenery

[@platty7047]

Super informatives Video sehr interessant 👍😉

[@xbaxdark]

For anyone who might care about some of the specifics and terminology: Textures are the bitmaps (texture maps) applied to models, the 'ground' that is often referred to as 'textures' in this video is 'terrain', which can also some times be referred to as 'ground models'. If you've ever built a miniature model or even just assembled toys with decals you can imagine 3d models being the base toy/model and the texture map being the decals. Terrain are also just 3D models with texture maps applied the game engine just handles them a bit differently from the 3D model props or assets that sit on top (or below) terrain. There's a variety of ways models load (and unload) for performance, render distance being one of the more straight forward. There is also LODs for models (Level of detail) where a model will decrease in poly count and often also texture resolution based off viewing distance. In interiors 'portals' are often utilized to limit what is rendered, there's a variety of ways portals can limit what is rendered as well. When you see sections of models unloaded while viewing from normally impossible viewing points this is typically done with 'occlusions' or 'occlusion models' which are typically just simple invisible boxes that will tell your client to unload assets in specific areas while you're located in a specific area. Models will also have 'bounding boxes' which you can think of as an invisible box which reach the furthest extents of the model x,y and this is what will tell the client to render the model, if the bounding box is within the view of the camera the model will load. In addition to bounding boxes models will often have meta data attached to them in the form of 'streaming extents', this is another reason why we see interior models in particular unload from certain distances or angles. The 'map' view we see in the model viewer is basically just like google earth satellite view of the map, it differs from the in game map because the map we see when we press 'm' is an artist rendition of the map compared to the mini map or the model viewer map.

[@720zone]

Thank you so much for this comment. Going forward I'm going to use the term "Terrain Map" as suggested. I've learned here (from you and other commenters) that "Texture map" is a very specific term in 3d modeling describing the image that gets wrapped around a 3d polygon. Really appreciate the education here; thank you!

[@MichaelPohoreski]

WoW’s terrain is a 16-bit *height map* texture.

[@blakedewayne6059]

Great vid. Cool to see the game this way, thanks for sharing

[@720zone]

Appreciate you checking it out and commenting; thank you.

[@fredagsfys]

I rarley comment on any youtube vids, but this was fenomenal! Please continue!

[@720zone]

I really appreciate you taking the time; thank you.

[@raven1844]

Great Video! Brought some good old memories back

[@720zone]

Glad you enjoyed it; appreciate the comment.

[@normalwhitedude]

Pretty cool and informative! Thanks for making this!

[@720zone]

You bet man man, thanks for watching and commenting. Appreciate it.

[@chadghar]

If you haven't already - doing this to naxxramas is a treat. The outer map is EPL. Naxx is oneway culled all across the air infront of live side strat, clippin thaddius tethers in the mountain. The TP to sapp's/KT's room is in a mountainous area that later becomes the ghostlands entrance, mimicing icecrown scenary. There is this giant DC hole under sapph's arena just cut out - that pissed off alot of killing spree rogues and warrior charges that clipped through the terrain in wrath (whatever dev put that oob plane there is a d-bag :^) ) The culling is good for dinosaur computers to render- an eyesore from an OOB perspective though. You can private server or hop on retail and clip through KT's room with a demon hunter. One way clipping is annoying with the glide though. Majority of stratholme is there and it has weird oneway properties for underground segments and the og naxx rough draft teleport is there in strat undead just unusable. I wanted to do a video on it years ago but never bothered- seems like it'd be more up your alley anyway. Edit: There are like a bajillion goofy lanterns pathing along the snowy mountain side and I have no idea why.

[@zeustiger1]

The snowy area surrounding KT's room is itself a slightly modified and duplicated copy of the northern part of Winterspring. You can even find remnants of questgiver camps there. As for "a bajillion goofy lanterns pathing along the snowy mountain side", it seems to be because, when they copied the terrain chunks from Wintersprings to some parts of the Naxx map, they didn't copy the decorations over, and the original decorations from EPL remained there. Also evident by the orange EPL trees not being a good fit for the snowy area. Those lanterns are from an elf camp (Quel'Lithien Lodge) in northern EPL. Funny that the decorations got adjusted to the radically different terrain after it was copied over, instead of remaining where they were placed. Curiously, there's some extra decorations there around the elf camp which aren't present in he real EPL map, perhaps they got removed for whatever reason. Also there's a patch of green trees further north from where the elf camp used to be, which could indicate that perhaps Ghostlands were being in development back then, on the real EK map, before the decision was made to turn them into an expansion area and move them physically to a different - Outland - map. Or it was just an accidental copy from elsewhere.

[@imyourdj]

@@zeustiger1 Interesting read!

[@jfour6591]

Exactly, EXACTLY the kind of boomer content I have been looking for. Subbed, looking for more like this! I think an in depth of the LUA engine/add-on engine would be fantastic.

[@cablio]

Interesting stuff, thanks! Also much nostalgia!

[@twylanaythias]

Few newer/younger programmers can even begin to comprehend just how limited RAM and processing power was even back around 2004, when WoW launched, let alone back in the 1980s. Developers had to invent so many asset management tricks and shortcuts in order to make their visions playable on even the most powerful 10% of systems - they had to get REAL creative to optimize performance well enough to be playable on midrange systems. To put this in perspective, it means that a truly mainstream modern PC game has to be playable on a system with the following specs: ~ 9th-gen 6-core CPU (only some of which had multithreading) ~ 4 (possibly 8) GB of RAM ~ Nvidia GTX 1660ti or AMD RX 590 ~ 1920x1080x60Hz resolution ~ 100GB or less install space With any major title release, the biggest limitation to sales is how many people presently have hardware capable of running your title. As the proliferation of mobile gaming has so aptly demonstrated, FunStupid™ gameplay trumps fidelity. Also keep in mind that (arguably) best-selling video games of all time - Tetris and Minecraft - are literally nothing but manipulating simple blocks! This is not to say that games need to be 'simple', but rather that accessibility equals sales; anyone who lacks the hardware to play your game in an enjoyable fashion is automatically a lost potential customer. This is even more astonishing when you consider inflation - relatively speaking, the Atari 2600 cost well over $1000 (closer to $1400 due to insane demand) and each individual game was $150-$200. And keep in mind that this system used a 1.2MHz 6507 (8-bit) CPU and 128 bytes (not gigabytes, nor even kilobytes - BYTES) of RAM to create an entire paradigm shift in the entertainment industry! The best of the best developers for the Atari 2600 were the guys who founded Activision, which later merged with Blizzard Entertainment. Many of these OGs were still working with Activision/Blizzard and/or had personally trained most of their core developers. So it's hardly surprising how many Old Skool tricks of the trade they used to make the original World of Warcraft perform well on a system with: ~ 800 MHz Pentium III, AMD Athlon, or Mac G4 ~ 512 MB of RAM (1024 MB recommended) ~ 32 MB Nvidia GeForce2 or ATI Radeon 9500 (the old AGP standard; 64 MB recommended) ~ 6.0 GB install space ~ 56k dial-up internet connection One of the simplest tricks I noticed was simply reusing assets, such as a number of the open-world caverns: ~ Burning Blade Cavern in Valley of Trials (Orc starting area) ~ Fel Rock Caverns north of Dolanaar (Night Elf starting area) ~ Frostmane Cavern south of Anvilmar (Dwarf starting area) ~ etc (I recall like eight or nine total, but can't think where the others are atm) All of these are the same mesh/object, most likely also with the same UV and Normal maps, but with different textures. Not so different from how most every Vanilla barn uses the same model, most every (Vanilla) village inn uses the same model, etc - often using the same texture, though they sometimes get sneaky with one-off textures in specific locations.

[@720zone]

Really appreciate the thoughtful comment here; and you're spot on. John Staats goes into very interesting details behind the limitations they had designing larger spaces, other assets because of performance/FPS concerns. At one point he explains a major technological breakthrough that allowed them to drastically increase the size of interior dungeon areas, and still maintain framerate, which allowed them to use the large cavern at the end of Deadmines. He also talks about the use and re-use of certain dungeons, primarily small caves, to save resources as you mention. Thanks so much for the insight here.

[@imyourdj]

It would be awesome with a video about ZG. Since it is an "outdoor" raid, you can see an old version of it in the STV map (which is easily accessible with a couple of jumps). And from inside the raid you can see a huge part of the outside world as well. I know you can see some of the old Karazhan and a huge part of STV.

[@RowBowLP]

very nice, thanks for the deep dive!

[@vegardertilbake1]

It's kindof amazing how well the engine handles all these models and maps so seemlessly back when wow was first released.

[@ryanshaw9301]

It did but it didn’t lol. By today’s standards vanilla WoW would be “unplayable” for how much lag there was. You could get permanently frozen/disconnected inside cities trying to load them.

[@720zone]

So true! If you read John Staats book he references their struggling to balance acceptable frame rate with the number of polygons WoW would need to draw at a time during those early days.

[@StormXTS]

Awesome video and I would love to see more. Technical details of warcraft is a personal obsession. I have some input but this isn't meant as nitpicking but rather further information in case anyone is interested. So your description of map vs WMO is pretty good. But I would hesitate to call the maps 'texture maps'. When I read that I thought you were talking about the UV mapping (how textures are wrapped onto 3D models). If you export models into Blender you can actually learn some interesting stuff by analyzing that UV mapping, some cool artistry that you don't see in modern 3D so much. I'll put more technical details about the terrain in a response comment later because there's a lot. I would maybe refer to them as "terrain maps" or something else, not sure what a good fit would be. For WMO 'rendering portals' are used. That's why it seems to load/unload stuff based on the angle you're looking. Basically, parts of the model only get drawn if you can 'see through a window' to them. And it is often quite literally a window, or a door frame, or even just a sharp turn. Did you ever notice how each district of Stormwind is walled off, and most of each one is obscured until you round a corner? This is really a clever way to divide the city with rendering portals. Same applies to BWL here 8:50 The cool thing is that the performance hit from loading this unplayable room are fairly trivial. It's already using the same textures so you only have to load the geometry, which is also going to be culled by portals when not in view. Deadmines might be an interesting one to cover. From what I remember it was one of the earlier dungeons modelled, and it was done by John Staats (who has a fantastic book about his work). It actually has its own independent terrain for the part with the giant boat.

[@StormXTS]

Terrain - forgive me for any errors as it's been a while and I'm already tired lol. world of warcraft has an incredible terrain system that puts a lot of modern ones to shame. A lot of technical changes have happened in the backend, but even current retail is still using the same foundational concepts, as far as I know. The most important thing about terrain geometry is the height, the raising and lowering of the land, right? The modern standard is usually to use a heightmap, where colors on a texture are sampled to offset points on a plane. Like, a pixel represents a vertex at this location, and if it is black it is at the lowest point, and white it is at the highest point. etc. I believe both Unity and Unreal Engine still use this for their terrain system. And it works well! But you can only get so much variation in height; because there are only so many values between pitch black and bright white. So past a certain height everything would be completely flat. Not a problem for WOW when the map chunks are stored in their own format, which contains the height of each point of terrain as a number -- a really large number, that lets you have the vast canyons and giant mountains, from Teldrassil to Hyjal to Un'goro, all connected together. The only problem? You can't have terrain underneath another. So at that point you would need to use WMO. As you pointed out most cave systems are WMO and it is no problem for them to be overlapped vertically (take Maraudon which spins over itself several times). They just mark a big hole in the map chunk to fit the WMO into and voila. I could add more but this is already getting essay length haha

[@720zone]

I can't thank you enough for taking the time to respond here. I welcome and very much appreciate any corrections you take the time to write out; so thank you very much - not nitpicking at all! I knew I was a bit over my head explaining the technical aspects of this; this is more of my digging around and guessing at what is going on. I was hoping people with a better understanding than me might confirm/correct as you have here. I have to say: You (and another commenter @ar4ijs97) have sent me deep down a rabbit hole of researching rendering portals. The explanation makes perfect sense, especially your SW example, and you can see this even flying around just outside, or just in and out, of the model, that you can only see certain areas at a time. I made a video on the Deadmines model a few months back, but it was focused more on the layout of the model and less on the technical aspect. kzbin.info/www/bejne/o6Cch3mDn7qle6c I've read through John Staats book twice now. We're so fortunate that he took the notes he did 20-24 years ago and have his work. When he describes creating the early dungeons like Deadmines and Zul Farrak and others, its very clear why they have so many pathing issues, and evade spots, as they were made before many of those mob systems were even created, as opposed to late dungeons and later expansion dungeons that have nothing like that. ...and "Terrain" map it is! That makes much more sense. Thank you again!

[@StormXTS]

@@720zone I'm really glad! And honestly I think you did a great job handling the technical stuff, because you developed understanding through your own experimenting.

[@jwillingham88]

Excellent video gamer, keep em coming!

[@720zone]

Really appreciate the comment man; thank you.

[@screenbag2192]

this is sooo cool, please do more!

[@720zone]

Thanks so much! Definitely going to do more of these.

[@Zuldria]

I enjoyed this! Thank you so much!

[@720zone]

Really appreciate the kind comment!

[@joshea7861]

one place id love to see is the map the deeprun tram operates on

[@cr103]

Dungeons and raids in wow we're tested in the quake engine according to the wow dev diary. So theoretically you'll could extract the map files and run them in quake

[@MagusFlorren]

yupp this was for sure a very interesting video! 10/10

[@720zone]

Appreciate you man. Glad you enjoyed it.

[@Tr0ll321]

super interesting, more please!

[@shakntalk]

Love your style. Keep it up!

[@720zone]

Really appreciate it; thank you!

[@williamday9628]

This was really cool to see! I The first time I went on to Nefarian's balcony all those years ago I was so WoW'ed (pun intended) at the fact that I could see Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge below, and it looked like the real zones! So my follow up question here, is if you mashed all the models of Blackwing Lair, Blackrock Spire and Blackrock Depths together (and Molten Core), do they actually all fit into the real Blackrock Mountain on the world map? I feel like if they don't, it's not far off, and this was quite important for immersion in my mind, I really hated by come TBC they had completely abandoned this, the Tempest Keep dungeons (and raid) really felt like an unrealistic Dr. Who tardis in terms of being way bigger on the inside than outside. Also I was really in love with the arquitecture in Blackrock Spire, the main central room (the one I presume it's named after), which has all the bridges criss crossing it at various different levels in both lower and upper parts of the instance was really nice.

[@tapanapatapa]

Great video! Please do more:)

[@720zone]

Really appreciate this comment. I'll definitely do more soon.

[@uioup7453]

Hello, thank you for this fantastic video. What are some good resoirces that could help explain how the rendering works in vanilla wow? How about the armor textures on playermodels? Thank you.

[@720zone]

Start with the links on this page: old.wow.tools/2022.php

[@desnebula5699]

Love it. Great vid

[@Teltharion]

I knew the game loaded pieces of the outside map, it wasn't just a window to the "outside", but I never imagined they loaded so much of it.

[@720zone]

Exactly! That piece is very interesting to me. Who knew all of Razorgore's room is right there in ubers.

[@Mareka6969]

very cool, thanks for sharing.

[@MrShadowmario666]

Need more of this tbh...

[@720zone]

Thanks so much!

[@Korelock990]

Noggit red would be the map editor if you ever wanted to mess with it. you can move WMOS and even make custom maps but thats more advanced.

[@connorattard5632]

As someone who has been playing on and off since 2006, I'd never have guessed that Stormwind and the Blackrock instances were stored as a single model in the game's files. Fascinating! Would you say this approach was more common back in the early 2000s? Did it have performance benefits on older machines?

[@overdev1993]

the one wmo file has a bunch of different parts so they can hide them for performance reasons, like shown in the video It depends, the engine and how models were build was quiet different for each game

[@iamrichlol]

This is awesome! Could you do anything with vanilla hyjal / the tbc hyjal raid?

[@maajkemii]

very cool vid. I wanted to ask for naxx but i see you've done it already.

[@720zone]

Hey! Thanks a lot! Yep, Nax is there with more coming.

[@LemonGingerHoney]

Great content!

[@720zone]

Really appreciate it; thank you.

[@Sparklebeard9000]

Good video!

[@720zone]

Appreciate it!

[@MrRaffing]

Show Caverns of time and Karazhan in Era please! I go there sometimes in ERA but it would be nice to see the map!

[@General12th]

This is super interesting!

[@720zone]

Thank so much man; really appreciate the comment.

[@alexrobles7744]

very cool seeing this.. thanks

[@720zone]

Awesome; appreciate the comment.

[@herrpez]

I have to admit that none of this was new to me, and my understanding of WoW. But it is entirely in line with how I've pieced together the workings of the world... and I'm a dev, which may or may not give me certain understanding of how solutions would be engineered. One thing I'm unclear on, and maybe you can check it out, is how cutouts in the terrain are handled. E.g. the holes where you fit cave entrances, dungeons etc. I believe the terrain under Orgrimmar is unbroken, but the terrain under Stormwind has at least one hole (for the warlock basement?) Now... I think I have a vague recollection of private servers not handling caves and the like properly early on in the history of them. That is to say, I think the terrain cutouts didn't exist. So... is "hole punching" a feature of WMOs, or is it a... terrain texture flag, perhaps? Or something else? Painting a hole on the texture layer would probably be the easiest, so that would be my primary guess. Anyway, I enjoyed the video, and hope that you keep it up!

[@zelfa1616]

this is so good! which 1.12 server do you prefer for these types of activities?

[@720zone]

Really appreciate the comment man; thank you. I use Single Player Project for these.

[@zelfa1616]

@@720zone I originally meant to say "client" but I guess any 1.12 client will do? thanks! enjoying the uploads

[@T3hG4m3rz43v3r]

I've always wondered where barron geddon in molten core patrols. He's got a short patrol and a long one. Could you do a deep dive on molten core and show us? This is hella cool and you've earned my sub.

[@720zone]

Hey! I was looking around MC today and was thinking of your comment. He circles around by where we pull him, then goes all the way up the hill, just to the start of the bridge with the douse, then turns back around. I might do and MC vid soon. Really appreciate the comment and sub man. Thanks!

[@T3hG4m3rz43v3r]

@720zone so on his long patrol he just sorta stands there for a bit and turns around? Very interesting. Thank you!!

[@T3hG4m3rz43v3r]

Looking forward to the video!!

[@xTcr0x]

That's pretty cool you can explore azeroth like that, is the private wow client available for download to public at all? or is there a way I can do the same?

[@Jbayz]

This reminded me of a great channel from back in the day. Hayven Games. Maybe you've seen the channel. Maybe not. Perhaps it can inspire.

[@720zone]

I knew the channel well. I still go back to it from time to time. I never met him or knew him at all, but that final video on the channel still hits me very hard. He was the best at videos like these, and even the slightest comparison is the highest of compliments. 💙💙💙

[@Jbayz]

@@720zone yes. I shed some tears.

[@KevinArcade87]

Was there not a cut room in Blackwing Lair? Pretty sure I seen it in som exploration videos, but perhaps it was present in a earlier build of the game?

[@realAXtiger]

nice channel bro !

[@720zone]

Hey! Appreciate it very much!!

[@DerHody]

I can't believe you didn't show the little room under nef's balcony.

[@720zone]

HUGE miss. Not a joke, I went back in and checked it out because of your comment here. There's not much to see in that room, but its cool nonetheless just because its unused. Appreciate the comment here, and you're right I should have shown it.

[@Ragranos]

Are you able to do this for that top kara room? Where it's seemingly impossible dimensions? This was interesting.

[@720zone]

Dude I've been looking into this exact thing. There was a plan to have a raid portal at the top of the original Kara that transported players to an asteroid raid with demons.

[@andyhug90]

oh nice this was interesting

[@gbxmusicchannel3836]

I remember you could use giant elexir or something to bug out of real wotlk naxx/kt bossroom and go to stratholm dungeon area and it was so big. back in 2008

[@720zone]

Yes! Check out my Nax video; you can see how Strath lines up below Nax

[@Lesani]

Missing a lot of out of bounds exploring, like whats that little room below nef, what differences are between the instanced world map and global map

[@VonoMoon]

Very cool. I now want to try this for myself. Where do I start? Trusted links?

[@720zone]

Start off here! old.wow.tools/2022.php -- At some point I might make a guide to doing this in some detail.

[@dimadoh2542]

Thanks for this video, really i interesting. If you have a possibility - make a new one but with more tech stuff😅

[@720zone]

Really appreciate the feedback. I'm working on more accurate and hopefully interesting technical explanations for future videos for sure!

[@Swift016]

Please do Molten Core!

[@Seventizz]

Bonkers to think the entire BWL model is in the world and not just an instanced dungeon. Even more bonkers to think that the bosses are there too. I think it was Kara before they patched in the dungeon prior to BC and you could walk through it unmanned as well - but there was no boss or NPC models wandering about.

[@Dizeliun]

3:45 so is this why sometimes when I move my camera the whole screen disappears or certain chunks despawn?

[@720zone]

Yes! I'm actually learning more about this from commenters here. There are 'view portals' that cause sections of models to load in and out of view depending on the player's location.

[@Dizeliun]

@@720zone not just where you stand, but could you stand near a chunk that loads like SW, and instead of moving, can you shift your camera around to see if that also causes it to load/unload without moving your character?

[@rch5991]

i did not know you coudl see Nef's platform from the outside world

[@seremix774]

Could you show the map called Scott Test? I was curious xd

[@JohnAlpha1]

I love this

[@720zone]

Thanks so much man!

[@Buffalo_ill]

It would be nice if Nefarion would respawn in classic

[@zadarthule]

Hayven Games made almost 10 years ago a very good series 'hiw it REALLY looks'. Sadly he died of cancer. Maybe you can continue his work for newer instances.

[@mikewhitaker2880]

not the secrets i was thinking, but kinda cool still.... as for BWL itself, its one of the FEW raids/dungeons that you NEED at least one buddy to complete due to one boss's mechanics.... having one party member in the raid area guaranteed to die with no way to escape the effects makes solo'ing at HIGH levels kinda hard to do....

[@norfy]

pacman gestapo, dog winkle opolis, khazadum, oh lawdy, bit o honey pie

[@720zone]

bruh.

[@leonschumann2361]

16:20 the guys living there having a bad time?

[@wendelinspegel2842]

This shit is gold

[@720zone]

Little comments like this really hit the mark; appreciate it so much.

[@Rexvideowow]

Take a shot every time he says "sort of".

[@720zone]

Sweet new drinking game. Dude, you know how you record yourself and hate your own voice? I hear so many cringe things like this when I play these back that I almost can't watch it. In other videos I say "so that pretty interesting" like 50 times. Its rough. Need to work on the delivery for sure. Really appreciate the comment.

[@seremix774]

where I can download a private server?

[@720zone]

Its a bit more than just downloading, but also does not required programming or other advanced knowledge as long as you can follow instructions and don't mind troubleshooting a bit. I would start with this excellent channel: www.youtube.com/@Digital-Scriptorium

[@taze7]

You look like David Coulthard

[@720zone]

I race and play wow so what? :)

[@danizrp5155]

Unfinished game, like 80% of Blizzard games.

[@JustinTarahomi]

Really cool video

[@720zone]

Thanks a lot man!