Ever since Mario missed the jump from the pipe to the floating platform, video game characters have been falling to their deaths. Falling in WoW is very annoying, since not only do you lose 10 percent durability and have to run back to your body, your body has often fallen into a less-than-accessible place. Plus, there's the humiliation of a totally avoidable death.

As a rogue and then a paladin, I've been spared a lot of falling deaths, but the times I have died are memorable. It almost makes me wish that there was a list of Azeroth's most dangerous drops, like there is for dangerous mobs and most looted items. So after consulting with friends and guildmates, here's the Top Five List for falling deaths in WoW.

1. The Aldor Rise, as evidenced by the huge pile of skeletons beneath it. "Hmm, guess I wasn't on my flying mount after all."
2. The Undercity elevator, which keeps magically dropping people straight through it to their deaths. The floor of this elevator must be as ghostly as the city's inhabitants.
3. The Telredor elevator in Zangarmarsh -- the Alliance version of the UC elevator. Let's see, the Draenei have built two messed-up elevators, but the Tauren ones in Thousand Needles and Thunder Bluff work okay.
4. Midair, anytime you accidentally click your mount macro or button or start casting a spell if you have auto-dismount on. My mount button is the scroll wheel of my mouse, so I find myself falling quite a bit.
5. And, last but not least, that stupid mine shaft in Searing Gorge. The worst of it is when you fall down the mine shaft during a corpse run from Thorium Point to any of the Blackrock Mountain instances, making anywhere from four to thirty-nine other people wait for you as your ghost desperately tries to remember how to get out of the Slag Pits.

Do you fall to your death often? What equipment or abilities do you use to live through great falls? What are the most dangerous heights in WoW?

Tags: aldor rise, AldorRise, falling, falling damage, FallingDamage

Filed under: Odds and ends, Humor