by Elizabeth Wachowski 
May 6th 2011 at 10:00AM
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Filed under: Around Azeroth
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Love Is In the Air | 2/2 - 2/15 |
| Blackrock Foundry Normal and Heroic open | 2/3 |
| Darkmoon Faire | 2/8 - 2/15 |
| Blackrock Foundry Mythic opens | 2/10 |
| Lunar Festival | 2/16 - 3/2 |
| Blackrock Foundry LFR wing 1 opens | 2/17 |
| Blackrock Foundry LFR wing 2 opens | 2/24 |
| Darkmoon Faire | 3/1 - 3/8 |
| Blackrock Foundry LFR wing 3 opens | 3/10 |
| Blackrock Foundry LFR wing 4 opens | 3/24 |
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Drakkenfyre May 4th 2011 8:54PM
Instances have chunks of the outdoor world around them for visual purposes, if any part of the outside world is visible inside the instance. If they haven't changed anything, outside of ZF, the map extends all the way to the middle of Gadget.
In Diablo 2, when you got bad lag, you hit a "black wall". This wall would mean you lost your connection to the server. It usually also meant "Oh shit, move because you are going to die." Because anything in that immediate area could be beating on your character, and you wouldn't know. The game could reestablish the connection, and you would see the wall go away. This only happened on closed realms. So if you never played a closed realm character, you never saw it.
Scooter May 6th 2011 10:08AM
I can confirm this after managing to blink my way past the 2 gated entrance/exit of Stratholme. There was actually quite a bit out there in spite of how little you get to see of it. A lot of the terrain didn't match up with the actual world outside either. It was really cool when i got to the part without texture layering and it was all just giant icecream colored mountains.
On a side note, many raids also have outdoorsy landscaping even if they are completely enclosed for most of the instance. Karazhan even has a troll village on the outskirts outside of the tower.
Shyama May 6th 2011 10:22AM
I keep finding these walls as well. Although, randomly throughout the game while I'm changing where I need to be while leveling archaeology. They seem to happen to me more often in or around low level alliance areas (me being Horde). It's really quite annoying.
xvkarbear May 6th 2011 10:57AM
Sounds like all your game data isn't downloaded.
(cutaia) May 6th 2011 12:02PM
Yes, these walls show up occasionally and temporarily if you're in the "playable, but not fully downloaded" stage of patching. Next time you leave your computer, try just opening the launcher and letting it download for awhile so that it won't have to do it while you play.
lyk13 May 6th 2011 10:26AM
I remember venturing into this end of the world in vanilla ZG. Scale the wall at the entrance from inside the instance and you will be able to enter the outside ZG world. You can be alive to do that.
Anyone remember this?
Zabre May 6th 2011 10:35AM
Yes - in fact there used to be TONS of content outside of ZG (still instanced) including lots of content that was scrapped clear back in alpha. If you scaled the wall properly and knew where to go, you could see what almost the entire continent of EK looked like back in alpha - pretty cool to wander around an instanced EK. I don't know if that is possible anymore with the changes and what not.
Mindmaster May 6th 2011 11:03AM
this is still possible in razorfen kraul. if you suceed to jump out of the instance, you can visit old feralas and old 1k needles (w/o the water!) :)
Strawder May 6th 2011 1:03PM
@mindmaster
But wait.... I thought it was changed to if you left the instance's dungeon boundaries, you would be ported outside the instance? Or was that done only with certain instances? Or do you need to know juuust where to jump at..?
nieboh May 6th 2011 7:11PM
I did that once (scaled zg wall) and got so broken after jumping off the world that I had to log onto another toon to submit the stuck ticket. I don't know why slowfall affects me as it does, but on my mage I just can't help jumping off of stuff.
Aaron May 6th 2011 10:55AM
*sings* and I feeeel fiiiine.
Herman May 6th 2011 11:02AM
I've seen those, mainly when exploring the world outside of ZF. but they weren't walls, and you could go through them and fall to your death.
joepsu777 May 6th 2011 11:07AM
You can also get outside of Deepholm and fly around. Once outside deepholm you can see that deepholm itself is nothing more than a big sphere area dug into the standard "building" square of WoW.
As you fly around the outside of deepholm you can see all the scrapped and tested areas that never name it into the final product. At one point it looks like deepholm was supposed to be a standard, flat area with mountains, etc. There a textures they didn't use and some other interesting items.
WoW is built into zones and those flashy bordes are the edge of ONE zone. When you hit the border, your download symbol shows the game trying to load the next zone. BUT in the case of deepholm and single square instances, there is nothing to load. That is why you can't pass through them.
dodgeballer2005 May 6th 2011 11:18AM
You are the farthest ever in Azeroth.
WHY ME AZEROTH
Because you are the best.
I'M THE BEST AT AZEROTH?
Yes.
Azeroth, can't wait. Wanna see me, buy a longsword. Guilty! Of being in Azeroth!
Bynde May 6th 2011 1:02PM
These are my favorite screenshots.
Gimmlette May 6th 2011 1:05PM
Remember the Hellmaw fight in Shadow Labs? His fear, if you were positioned just right, feared you through the wall of his hallway. Usually, this resulted in instant death. But one time, I lived and found myself outside Auchindoun. There were all these shapes and structures that may have been planned for the Bone Wastes but were never used. I couldn't get back to where my party was either. I walked around for a bit but there didn't seem to be any way to die, either.
So, I logged off, counted to 5 and logged back on. The game said my character didn't exist. I had to log onto an alt to tell my group mates. They said I was still connected on my main, even though I was clearly talking to them from my alt. They kicked my main from the group. I attempted to log onto her and found myself dead at the graveyard. At the time, I didn't know about screenshots so when someone asked me what I'd seen, I could only describe it.
I've had several guild members tell me that they have been to the edge of the world in ZG. They were just killing mobs and had a glitch after dying. So many have had this happen, we laugh when someone doesn't get to experience it.
Strawder May 6th 2011 1:16PM
You used to be able to pass through the world walls, but apparently in Patch 4.0 it was changed to be solid, unpassable walls, according to Merhaba. I would imagine it was because of the Patch Downloader being changed to let you play the game before it was fully downloaded.
But speaking of Merhaba, he did a video in which you can clearly see how World of Warcraft is built and how all this stuff fits together. It's called "Flying From Outland to Azeroth" and you can see it here: http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=180013
The movie above is old and deals with Pre-Shattering Content, so it's nothing you can do currently in WoW. If you don't want to ruin the "magic" of WoW, and go down the rabbit hole to its deepest depths, I suggest you not watch that movie, because it's quite mind-blowing.
He's also the guy who has figured out how to get past the invisible wall that is currently blocking off Vanilla Quel'thelas from the rest of EK. That video of his is on that site as well, but it deals with current content, and is an exploit (Wall Jumping, etc) so I'm not going to link that one.
It's nice to know though, that as they keep unlocking or revamping old content to fix the bugs and unfinished areas present for six years, that there's still things hidden away, waiting to be found.
I heard the version of Outland that existed in Vanilla WoW, long before Burning Crusade, is still there.
Drakkenfyre May 6th 2011 3:46PM
The original Outland was an island sitting off of the Eastern Kingdoms. You would enter the Dark Portal, and end up there. Because it was out in the middle of nowhere, it looked like you were on another world. It was a much smaller version. Entire zones shrunk down to an area. You could fit multiple zones into one zone from the normal Outland.
They decided to scrap it, and make Outland it's own expansion.
The area supposedly still exists after 4.0.3a.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFco1v8AnwY
Drakkenfyre May 6th 2011 8:25PM
There's a map floating around out there that is all of the minimaps from Outland and the two starting areas extracted and compiled, and it shows where everything is in relation to one another. The map he has on that video is pretty accurate. Both starting zones are a little further out, and the Draenei starting area is a little further down.
I have known for a long time that all three areas were on the same map, but wondered what it would look like going between them. The closest I ever got was on the 4.0.1 PTR when the water rendering bug made the water in the Draenei starting area cease to exist, and I ran all the way to the edge of the zone, and could mount up and fly there, hitting the wall. Eventually once I got high enuf, I could see the Hellfire Pennisula sky fade in and mix with the Azuremyst Isle sky.
Voting up for that link to the video.
Narshe May 6th 2011 2:02PM
Cool, a Hordie from Llane! My first toon was on Llane, a Troll Mage named Ryyne. I miss that realm, and it seemed to die off a bit before TBC came out, it was like most of my friends on that server just transferred or something, so I switched servers.
Good times.