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Role Playing (Games)

Unfinished Area Exploration in WoW 56

Posted by Zonk from the those-wackty-devs-(tm) dept.
TubaJon writes "Exploring all of the maps in World of Warcraft can be very interesting, especially to see the parts that Blizzard is still working on. Silithus is one major zone that Blizzard is still working on, which a guy got to and took screenshots of. He also went to the airport in Ironforge and the Wetlands Farms, both of which are still areas in development. There are even whole websites devoted to getting to these areas."
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Unfinished Area Exploration in WoW More

Unfinished Area Exploration in WoW

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  • Easy to Do (Score:4, Informative)

    by ironwill96 ( 736883 ) on Friday July 01, 2005 @09:43PM (#12966879) Homepage Journal
    There isn't really any challenge in getting to these areas. People who are running emulated servers can use hacked clients to fly to any area they please.

    Heck, they can even teleport directly to some spot on the map if they want to. No point in trying to get to these on the live servers unless you have too much time on your hands.

    • Re:Easy to Do (Score:1, Redundant)

      by aztektum ( 170569 )
      There's already WoW server emulators? I didn't read much about the EQ ones but thought that had taken a huge amount of time to accomplish.

      Either I'm misinformed or is there something about WoW that made it a lot easier?
      • There are, but they're many patches behind the live servers. I tried one out. It wasn't even as complete as it was when I played in Beta. Nearly every class was broken horribly, some weren't even playable (No weapons for hunters, no spells for shamans). Basically you could be a Paladin, a Warrior, or useless.

    • Re:Easy to Do (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No point in trying to get to these on the live servers unless you have too much time on your hands.

      Or have decided to stop playing and don't mind not being able to come back. [worldofwarcraft.com]

      Exploring such areas on the live servers will get you banned.
    • >People who are running emulated servers can use
      >hacked clients to fly to any area they please.

      Why would you ever need a server for that? You allready have the full map on your own computer. Instead of using the normal client to show it, there is at least one program that simply access the map and graphics files directly and allow you to travell arround anywere in the world that you want, you don't need to connect to anywere.

  • Not Hacked (Score:2, Informative)

    by TubaJon ( 786172 ) *
    I actually did all of these with my Character, Ayoshen, on the live server Terenas. It took a little bit of work, but not an exceptional amount. All the areas (except Southern Silithus) you can get to in about 10 minutes, if you know what you're doing. And on flying to these places: It's not very easy to do this, as most private servers are laggy, and vary as to what versions their servers support. If they use the newest patches, most hacks will not work.
    • What about Mt. Hyjal? I've seen videos of the inside, and I have to say it's the coolest of the closed zones. At the very center, you can even see the skeleton of Archimonde.
  • One hour, 3 reples later, and all the links are fried. Hilarious!
  • As much as I would like to play WOW and explore the world I have no interest in supporting Blizzards game until they do the right thing by Australian players and put a server in Oceania. Its not like they are short on cash.
    • They aren't short on cash but they aren't going to throw it away. And yes Im Australian, and I played on the US servers with no lag problems (beyond general lag that everyone had).
      • Thats funny I've just been reading a thread on the WoW forums that is now upto page 42 and is full of posts from Australians moaning that they are getting pings in the range of 800-3000ms even on the "unofficial Aussie" WoW servers. Guess you are lucky. I do not get your comment "they are not going to throw it away" I appreciate their big players bases would be in Europe and the US but that said they have sold enough units in this region to justify at least one server somewhere in oceania. They have skipp
        • I'm in Japan in a guild with 20 Aussies, the only one who has trouble is the one stuck with that government semi-monopoly as his ISP. You probably know the name better than I do. Although I don't really understand how its a semi-monopoly if one out of twenty has it... then again, I can appreciate with 2000ms pings why nineteen out of twenty would find somebody else.

    • Re:Wheres Australia? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have no interest in supporting Blizzards game until they do the right thing by Australian players and put a server in Oceania.
      I think the reason that they don't do this is that WoW has always been at war with Oceania.
    • As much as I would like to play WOW and explore the world I have no interest in supporting Blizzards game until they do the right thing by Australian players and put a server in Oceania. Its not like they are short on cash.

      I just stole 49.95 from your bank account because you live in australia. Don't worry, it's not like your short of money, it must mean it's okay.
    • As a Hawaii player I'm glad to see Aussies and Kiwis on the servers as I finally have more players who are awake and gaming when I am. At least half of my guild is from Australia or New Zealand. Lag hasn't really seemed to be any more of an issue for those players.

  • Silithus? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TelJanin ( 784836 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @12:28AM (#12967447)
    Is that what happens when you connect to WoW without protection?
  • I did some exploring myself during the closed beta, and ended up swimming around half of Azeroth (almost literally; I started from Westfall) and sneaking into the Eastern Plaguelands before the area opened. Used Blink (was a mage) to jump past a solid wall blocking a city, and had fun looking around there until I walked out the back of a building and suddenly found myself falling to my death (similar to the tunnel in the article). Still have some screenshots from it.

  • Other programs (Score:1, Informative)

    by Callik ( 755051 )
    http://wowmapview.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] is availible for anyone to download and you can access and view pretty much all areas in-game, including instances, outlands, the emerald dream and some other not implemented and impossible to reach on normal server areas.

  • I found a few spots (Score:5, Informative)

    by Banner ( 17158 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @01:37AM (#12967642) Journal
    If you swim down the eastern shore of the eastern contienent (Sorry I can't remember the names, but I quit WOW a few weeks ago), there are two interesting places. One is a small little village with nothing in it. The other (hidden in the hills) is a huge valley with absolutely nothing at all in it but the base world texture grid. I ran around that place for about an hour checking it out, it was pretty sizeable.

    I spent quite some time swimming around everything and doing some investigation. Found a lot of small things, but never anything really big and cool like the airfield, which is only place I never made it too, just not -that- good at climbing I guess!

    After WOW made their 'get caught exploring and we'll ban you' rule, I stopped looking around. (which was one of the many things that led to my eventual quitting).
    • I'm really new to WoW. What's this about being banned for exploring?

    • I remember seeing a while ago about a place that someone explored that they didn't get banned for. I remember it was an island, and it was somewhat well known in the beta and quite accessable. Ocean fatigue makes it hard to get to now, obviously, but someone still managed to get there and on the island now is a note that says "What are you doing here?"

      • Re:I found a few spots (Score:5, Informative)

        by TroZ ( 160902 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @10:22AM (#12968907)
        There are two small Islands off of Tananis to the south east. If you have 4 people (horde), you can get to the island, and then bring as many people as you want.

        3 people, (one warlock, 2 other), need to get mounted on the coast of Tanaris at LandsEnd Beach, close to the Islands, see http://www.worldofwar.net/cartography/worldmap/kal imdorcont.php [worldofwar.net]
        Have a Shaman cast Water Walking on you. If you stay mounted, it effect your mount, but the spell will break if you get off your mount. Head toward the islands being carefull not to take damage, which will also break the spell. The shaman gets left behind as they can't cast water walking on themselves while mounted.
        You should be able to see the islands in the distance, head slightly east of them, as there is an area of the higher ocean floor that prevents fatigue that juts out further, a little east of the direct course.
        As soon as the fatigue bar appears, head directly toward the islands.
        You can make it there on a normal mount just as the fatigue bar is running out. It should be no problem with any speed enhancments such as carrot on a stick or with an epic mount.
        The center of the northern island has the message in a bottle.
        Use the warlock to summon the shaman who cast water walking on all of you. Also summon any guild mates :)

        Mal'Ganis has a bunch of dead lvl 1 corpses on the island from my guild.
      • Yeah I swam out to that island too after I heard about the bottle. Wasn't there anymore though, and there were a few creatures out there, but nothing outrageous.

    • Re:I found a few spots (Score:4, Informative)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @12:41PM (#12969496) Homepage
      That's a bit of a misnomer. The people getting banned weren't "exploring", they were exploiting.

      Some of them enter a "protected area", get killed by the Guardians of Blizzard a few times (super mobs) and walk away with an imaginary badge (and screenshots) saying "they did it." That's fine.

      Some would find ways to enter the areas as ghosts, or kill mobs they weren't supposed to (killing the king from Old Ironforge because he can't get there). That's not ok, and they got banned because of it.
  • After going on a few exploration trips and seeing realy cool sights, I realised how lame the actual game was. It was way more fun for me to set off on a glitch hunt, climb a huge mountain (East of Loch Modan), and try to jump to the ocean (90 second fall) than it was to keep killing the same stupid monsters for an hour to level up or to get gold.

    I wish Google Earth had a little guy I could control and walk around the same way. Virtualy climbing everest would rock.
    • You obviously didn't click the NPCs with the exclamation points on their heads? At level 56, I've only twice spent an hour killing the same monsters, and both times were for quests. You can get to level 60 and never spend a minute doing the traditional grind. At no point have I ever had an empty quest log, and more than half of my total experience is from quests.
      • I did go on quests. They just got boring. I couldn't bring myself to care about the stupid story they were telling me. I would clasify going on quests to get exp a traditional grind.

        Click on guy with exclamation point, click through fantasy themed dialog, follow instructions, get exp. It was more fun exploring, and trying to get places they had tried to make off limits.

        Partialy, the reason it was more fun exploring was to see what would happen when I got to the edge. It just shows how poorly they though
  • Up, up, up the stairs we go!
  • ...is already open and is now "itemized" (i.e. the mobs there have appropriate loot tables for their difficulty). The only thing closed in Silithus is the area at the southern end of the zone that will, eventually, lead to a new instance.

  • Things to do in WoW when you're dead... or not (Score:5, Informative)

    by JackAsh ( 80274 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @11:18AM (#12969151)
    Ok, I'm one of the folks that's done a bunch of exploring in Azeroth. Here's a list (I think fairly comprehensive) of places I've been to or seen people get to. Much of this has been done on the live servers, with the threat of banning over my head. I'll list places I've seen with the http://wowmapview.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] utility when appropriate.

    ===Azeroth===

    1) Airport above Ironforge (and surrounding mountains)
    This is kind of neat - it's the area you see when flying from Menethil or many other northern places to Ironforge. The trick is to walk from Dun Morogh to Loch Modan through the north gate pass. Once you exit the tunnels on the Loch Modan side, immediately on your left behind some trees (very very close to the gate) there's a small gap in the mountains that has a diagonal you can climb. After that it's all exploration through the mountains.

    1.5) Village between Ironforge and Loch Modan
    Jumping down from the airport or the mountains above Ironforge leads to this very interesting little village. It has a ramp that leads to nowwhere and some animals. It's apparent Ironforge was originally meant to connect to this village, and this village would lead to Menethil via a path in the mountains (possibly the one above the excavation site with the raptors). Ironforge was likely meant to use the flightpath at the airport via the blocked off tunnel up there.

    2) Old Ironforge
    This is curious. Apparently a remnant of Ironforge from the beta days, the doors at the throne room in Ironforge can be walked through in ghost form. Die close to them (I use Divine Intervention, but you can jump in the Lava instead) and then resurrect on the other side (after a brief walk from Kharanos). You'll need to hearthstone out. This would make for an awesome inside-the-city instance like the Orcs have.

    3) Area behind Stratholme
    Nothing much to see here. When swimming along the coast northbound from the Hinterlands, you can eventually climb up the mountains next to the Eastern Plaguelands and get into the unfinished terrain. Continuing north eventually leads to some somewhat interesting areas, such as the gap where Stratholme should be (it's in a separate instance, not the main map), as well as a little house in a path leading North from Eastern Plaguelands (I think this is supposed to be the old Elven Kingdoms - they're on the map as the northeastern most section, but do not exist for now - maybe in the expansion)

    4) Village east of Arathi Highlands (south of Hinterlands)
    Easiest way to get here is swimming south from the coast of the Hinterlands. Neat, kinda peaceful.

    5) Broken down bridge near Dun Modr (Between Wetlands and Arathi)
    You are actually meant to get here, but few people know about it. In the Thandol Span bridge, the Eastern bridge has been destroyed by the Dark Iron dwarves. You can get into it by drinking a potion or using some speed ability (a horse will do). There's a small quest here for a delivery. There's another quest on a scroll hidden in the water underneath.

    6) Little house on coast west of Stormwind
    Swim north from the coast of Westfall. You'll eventually reach an abandoned house with a sign "Newman's Landing".

    7) Early entrance into Stranglethorn Vale instance
    I was once poking around as a ghost in Stranglethorn Vale when I managed to climb the mountains directly south of the SV instance and get inside. Neat architecture, not sure if it can be done alive.

    ===Kalimdor===

    8) Jump off Teldrassil
    This is neat and easy as a Paladin. Get to Darnassus, exit into the tree, and go to the southern border. There's a couple spots here where you can get on a branch on the outside of the tree (this overlooks the Rutheran Village area). Climb out as far as you can on the branches, and using a horse or a speed potion, jump out as far as you can (otherwise you'll hit other branches on your way down). Once you're close to the bottom (you'll be able to see it with plenty of tim
    • The Cavern of Time can actually be accessed in the game without the mapviewer thing. Simply run up to the dragon and die as close to the door as you possible can. Ghost back and pass through the door, and revive on the other side.

      Also, do not revive and you'll see a really awesome area that appears to be objects floating in an odd space-like background, think of something like the Mission to Mars background when they are with the alien at the end. You have to teleport or hearth out of here.

      My account ends

    • and screw the bans! :)

      This is the first time I've heard of any such bans (although I'm not really a big WoW-er, best character I have is like level 15), and it gives me no desire to come back. Blizzard banning people for exploring is just about the stupidest thing ever. There are some people, like me, whose primary interest is poking around the world and seeing hidden stuff. It's fun, it hurts no one, I can use a hearthstone instead of bugging admins, and doesn't have any effect on game balance.

      • Re:Things to do in WoW when you're dead... or not (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rallion ( 711805 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @03:29PM (#12970249) Journal
        A while back people got banned for going into unfinished areas, and exploiting them for benefit. It wasn't sinply being in the areas that was the problem, not really, it was the mobs they had put there. (Though there was certainly never any question that they didn't want people in the given areas. Giant mobs called "Guardians of Blizzard" that can kill you by looking at you are a good clue.)

        I don't think any of them are actually exploitable anymore, though I could be wrong.

        • He still has a point, though (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @08:14AM (#12979000) Journal
          Disclaimer: I haven't exploited those, didn't get banned in any MMO, and I'm not against banning people that used exploits. But if I put on my "let's think about security" cap, I find the it laughably unprofessional to put that content there and accessible in the first place.

          I mean, for example, stuff like "playtester only" flags, and the corresponding player/playtester/builder/admin/etc permission levels for the characters, have existed on MUDs for ages. I'm not even a game designer, and just off the top of my head, I can come up with stuff like:

          - flag a map as incomplete: if the server gets your coordinates there and you don't have the flag that says you're allowed in restricted areas, just get teleported out.

          - flag incomplete/unreleased NPCs as such: if you don't have the right permissions flag, you can't attack or interact in any way with such an NPC

          - ditto for treasure chests, mineral deposits, and the other interactive objects

          - and for that matter, again, check the released/unreleased flag for the whole area where that object is, as a second line of defense in case the devs forgot to flag one item or NPC as such

          See, it wasn't even that hard to come up with something more effective at stopping those exploits. Without needing any bans. It just needed some 5 minutes of thinking.

          By comparison just placing there an aggressive NPC with an insta-kill attack is an unbelievably _cheap_ hack. It's such a slipshod solution held together with duct tape and band-aid that's outright laughable.

          Not to mention the whole putting that content on the live servers and connected to the to start with. They did what? Place test content simply past some body of water and hoped noone will swim/water-walk some 2 miles in that direction? Even as security by obscurity goes, this is _the_ lamest thing I've heard in ages.

          Geesh, didn't these guys ever hear of _test_ servers? Or for that matter of having development servers before allowing content even on the test ones? Developping directly on the _production_ servers (and pushing that incomplete stuff to the clients too), is the kind of thing that FFS, even in web stuff is right fully considered the mark of the unprofessional and probably incompetent. In a major MMO, from a major developper and backed by a major publisher, there is _no_ excuse for something this unprofessional happening.
          • In games where all zones are isolated from each other, that would work. However, WoW zones are all interconnected, with the only 'zone' lines being instanced dungeons and between the continents. Because of that, there really is no way to isolate an area using any of the methods you give.

            As for their testing methods, while they do have internal testing servers, and player testing servers, there really is no substitute for taking a change, and throwing it out on a live server for testing in that environmen

    • Not all those areas are bannable, mind you and everybody. The areas that are simply 'out of the way' like the ones you have to swim to are fine.

      I also believe that they don't care about the airport, either, even though you do need to use a little trick to get there. (No mobs, and anybody that pays attention on their gryphon rides already knows it exists.) I'm just wondering if they ever plan to make it easily accessible, and put useful stuff there. Though...if I remember right, there's a trainer of some ki
      • Good points on all of the above. I haven't played PVP at all (I think I'd get ganked given I'm only in my 50s) so I don't know the PVP instances - I assumed PVPs 1 and 2 were in production and 3 would be upcoming. PVPInstance02 in Wowmapview is Azshara Crater, which after reviewing http://worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/battlegrounds/ [worldofwarcraft.com] I think is not out yet.

        Outland: I really don't know if it's an instance, right now it's about the size of a zone, a pretty big one though. Ideally they would create an entire world o
    • 10) Little mushroomy area in Desolace
      This is not a secret area, but when I got here it was completely unpopulated. Now it has some horde there. It's all the way at the southeast of the Desolace map, behind a centaur village.

      They populated it a few patches ago. (With Twilights Hammer cultists, if I recall.)
      • A few weeks ago, dying to pass into Old Ironforge was fixed so that your ghost cannot walk through the wall. The exploit still remained for mages by casting Blink to appear through the wall. Not much to see there, but it would be nice to give Horde a backdoor to the dwarven King. Pretty Amethyst ceiling, lots of lava/molten iron (can't tell which but looks same as molten iron in IF), and several doors connecting to the path back to the throne room. Neat place to visit! :D Just go to the IF throne room,
      • I mine alot in Desolace and use that as a smelting point. Now that there are cultists there, I have to do a little killing before I smelt.

  • GM Island. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JavaLord ( 680960 ) on Saturday July 02, 2005 @07:35PM (#12971262) Journal
    Hah, they mentioned they are going to explore GM island for their next article. Good luck on them losing their accounts. I remember reading over at Blizz Hackers there was a guy who used a teleport hack to get to GM island. He claimed to have walked around a bit, and found a room with a big table and a bunch of chairs around it. Another member claimed that while walking around on the island he got a whisper from a GM saying "You shouldn't be here", and his account was banned. From the stories I've read it's somewhere in the middle of the world. People claim to have been teleported there when accused of hacking into an questioning type room that was totally dark with the exception of a beam of light coming through one window.
  • If these places are unfinished, why is this content even on the live servers?

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